 So let me call to order the South Burlington City Council meeting of Monday, February 6th, 19, 2023, 1923. And the first order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. So instructions on exiting the building in case of emergency? Sure. Thank you for those who are joining us in the room. If there is an emergency, you can go out either of the doors at the back of the auditorium and turn left and right or left or right to exit the building. For those participating remotely, thank you for joining us. If you would like to speak on any item on the agenda, please turn your camera on and the chair will recognize you. You can also message me in the chat and I will have the chair call on you. We are not monitoring the chat for content. Thank you. Item three is agenda review. Excuse me. Are there any additions, deletions, or changes in order of the agenda items? Okay. Tom is not on yet. Okay. So seeing none, we'll move on to comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. Please welcome. Why don't you go up and make sure the light, you turn it on and the light, the green light is very bright green. Well, I know the feeling. Okay. My God, you're two minutes late. Okay. My name is Kevin Donahue, resident here at Salt Burlington. It's been a while but I'm meeting to get over here. Actually, once we get back from COVID and my topic I'd like to inquire about is the solid waste districts operating the drop off centers. What has gone on since COVID began when they originally closed it? I remember seeing the sign they closed the facilities during COVID early on in March of that year. What was that 2020 going back? I don't remember what was called, I found a kind of humor, a deep cleaning of the drop off center. When they reopened, services were cut dramatically. I don't know whether they were still using COVID as an excuse but you could no longer bring brush and I'm going to speak about the patch and road drop off center. You couldn't bring any brush over there that had any like wood to it. Everything had to be a leafy type of drop off. Go forward to Christmas. You couldn't bring a Christmas tree over there. All your Christmas trees had to be brought to the McNeil plant. I had to go to Williston. You couldn't bring appliances. You should be able to bring someone to bring their refrigerator after it crapped out. You could bring it over to the drop off center and then the solid waste district would send a truck over there once a month or whatever and they would haul them all away to wherever they took them. So mattress is bedding. A whole bunch of things that can no longer be dropped off at the drop off centers that have to now be sent to Williston or some other facility. So I want to go back to what I remember the drop off centers were originally set up for was to avoid a city or town would say 10,000 people, 15,000, 20,000 people all running around to bring their things to, you know, to drop them off. Bring them to a central location like Patchin Road and then the solid waste district would take care of moving them. We, according to Kevin Dawn, when Kevin and I spoke of this back when he was still manager, they pay us the city $1 a year for the use of that space and our services have been cut. To me, about 75% of what they used to be able to accommodate the city residents for. So to me, I think it should be looked into. I know when I talked to Kevin, unfortunately, I believe another contract had been signed. I don't know how long these contracts are for. I don't know whether anybody really read the fine print or whether they agreed to have all these services cut from the residents. But it needs to be looked into because the whole scope and meaning of what that district was set up for is now completely changed. They're not serving us anymore. They serve themselves. They make millions of dollars. I remember watching late night on public access one time. They had a board meeting. They didn't know what to do with the money. They literally had a joke about it. We have so much money we don't know where to invest it. I think we're not being served anymore. That's that. And if I have just time to speak about one other quick item, it's back to paving. And it kind of relates to this $15 million pedestrian bridge. We have money to, and I understand some of it's a grant and all the rest of this, but we seem to have money for these projects that are, to me, a luxury in wants and they really needs. And we have roads crumbling. If you come up to our street five years ago, they paved the front side of our street on Pinnacle Drive. The backside of that street hasn't been paved since the development was initially done. And that's almost 30 years ago. There are holes back there. They come and do a little patchwork quilt thing on there, drop a little cold patch once in a while. But the street in the back, you should take a ride around the back. It's in really bad shape. It doesn't deserve to be that way. It shouldn't be that way. And it should have been paved about the when the front was done. I don't know why it wasn't public works. I've talked to public works show. I think Tom the Petro indicated that Pinnacle was not on the agenda until probably 2024 2025 to get that backside done. And if I remember going back, some of you may have been on the board. It was held over. The meeting was held over at the on Patchin Road. And that's when Justin gave a presentation that indicated that roads need to be paved within 15 years or you have to pretty much rip them, you know, the whole surface of the road off and redo it. And they shouldn't get to that point. Now I was there at that point. Now he's gone and 30 years is now double what he's saying. It should have been the maximum. You should let any of these roads go. So I'd rather find money and I've, we've never really tried to get a bond through. You know, I've brought auto parts in here because we spend more money on our cars fixing them from these roads than we do, you know, any kind of bond that you would put before the residents. So that's it. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. I'm sorry we didn't hear from Kevin before we had the present the annual presentation on the solid waste district. Didn't we have one recently? Yeah. Yeah, it would have been nice because I don't know the answers to those questions and we probably should find out. I'm happy to look into that. I have my own complaint that they they changed, you know, Pine Street to compost only after the pandemic and that services that whole area of Burlington in the south end, right? And, and so you can't take anything there. You can't take used to be able to take trash and get it weighed appliances, furniture, and I mean, it's still functional area. I don't know if it's a problem with the with Burlington about that land and what the plans are for the future or what but it's a it's a good to me. It's a complete waste of a site that you can't bring your normal household trash to Pine Street because you've got so many people there. They only accept the only accept compost. Yeah. Yeah, they changed the whole thing. So I mean it was closed during the pandemic to so Okay, we'll be good to get answers to those questions. Are there any other comments or questions from the public? You know, forget your glasses. How about online? Anyone online? Okay, seeing none. Go to item five. Counselors announcements and reports on committee assignments and the city managers report. Megan, do you have anything I do attend the committees to which I'm a liaison, including the formal housing and the charter review committee. But as of now, there are no big announcements, but just continued serious work and good work. Good suggestions, I think we'll be coming forward. Great. Um, Matt. Yeah, move a new person. Yes, we do. And I really hope he comes in. He's his name is the Green Mountain Transit Authority is the committee that that you've all signed me to or now I'm on their board. I've been on their board and we have a new director president CEO, whatever his title is named Clayton Clark. And you'll know him when he comes in the room because he's always wearing suspenders and a cowboy hat. I'm from southern Vermont. I don't understand look, but he is. He's an interesting and fascinating guy and he's doing a fantastic job. Establishing some well needed structure and organizational work that that organization needs. So I'm very happy to be working with him. The information for the budget, which has been in the news. So let's just address it right now, which is two things. One is they've asked for 10% more. That's $600,000 from South Burlington so they can meet their budget. That's the assessment. And for Chittenden County, we're talking about putting bus fares back for the urban roots, which remember when COVID happened, largely, but then it became something else for safety issue. Bus drivers stopped collecting fares and all bus rides were free. And then, thanks to the federal government. The state government funds came in to keep those fares free. There is an effort that says we should keep fares free in perpetuity and find a proper funding source. And that's a good conversation to have. But not having that funding, the GMTA Board, of which I am on, has made a decision to move forward as if we are not going to get those funds from state government. And that in July 1, there will be fares for those riding in Chittenden County. Our assessment here, the total assessment, by the way, is $591,554. So there's that. I'm happy to answer any questions about that. And then the last piece I wanted to say is, this is my second to last meeting as a city councilor. You've asked me to serve on the GMTA Board, which I'm happy to do and continue to do, but these are real decisions facing your budget. And if it's more appropriate for you to pick whoever on the council on March 8 to pick someone else to serve that role as your liaison board member representing South Burlington to GMTA, I happily resign and step down. I enjoy this work. I think it's important work, but I understand the need for you to have someone report back to you and tell you what's happening with our bus authority. So I just want to say that publicly, so there'd be any question about who should serve or who should not serve. If there's a city councilor that wants to serve, I would gladly step down and make space for that person. Just note, I mean, given that all our meetings are on Zoom. I don't know what the council will decide, but if we opt to have you continue, since it's pretty easy to tune in for five minutes at the beginning of a meeting to bring us up to date and share information, I might ask your thoughts about doing that. I'm happy to do that, and I'm happy to serve until you find someone that wants to serve that role. I don't think it should be unfilled. I think if I'm not there, the alternate should attend these meetings because I think they're very important or there should be an alternate opposed. And I think Tim is the alternate right now. No? Maybe. I was. I think you still are. You were at one point, right? No. No, I was, I was for one meeting kind of the incoming and then just the morning meetings just don't work with my teaching schedule. Okay. Yeah. It is a volunteer position. There is no stipend. Mm hmm. Okay. Well, thank you. Any other committees or anything? No. Tim. Thank you. So I attended remotely part of the planning commission meeting last week, especially interested in the discussion about the age 68 proposed legislation. So I listened to that for a while. I also then dialed in on Thursday to the Department of Public Services webinar on where does our electricity come from in New England, which was very educational for me. And there was a good slide deck. I'd like to have that deck and that there was some chatter going on in the chat behind the scenes. So I picked up on the fact that there's a really excellent webpage for ISO New England. And so of course we had a nice cold snap. And starting Friday night, I started looking very closely at the temperature map across New England. And then looking at the load across New England on other charts. And then looking at the resource mix. So the interesting thing that was a Saturday morning, everybody was below zero. Friday night, the amount of oil being used was very small. But by Saturday morning, 30% of all the power in New England was being generated from burning oil. Next was natural gas, then nuclear, then some hydro renewables is very small because the demand was so high. And I think at its peak, I think the peak price being paid was $143 per gigawatt hour, megawatt hour. Maybe it was maybe it was $700 per megawatt hour. But it started out at $46 Friday morning. And it went all the way up to like almost $800 when it reached the peak. And so the formula, the way that's done is there's a little auction that goes on the background. I didn't get all the details, but I'm fascinated by this. And I've been communicating with some people. And so in addition, I noticed that the power went out along Heinsberg Road on Saturday morning. And I'm driving around not seeing any plumes of steam coming out of people's chimneys. And so I emailed Green Mountain Power and they said that a tree branch fell down on some lines on Heinsberg Road. Now they said that out is only an hour and a half. Is that about right? So City Hall was it without power as well, right? Is that true? It looked like the whole block in between Kennedy, Willister Road, Heinsberg Road, and Dorset. And Dorset was all out, but I don't know if it affected here or not. I think it did affect here briefly, but we had generator power backup. But it is what I think led to the fire alarm going off here on Saturday to evacuate the library on Saturday, which was not ideal. And a very cold day. But it was out very, we had start, well, I had it, but the team who was here had started conversations about opening a warming shelter and conversations with GMT. We knew it was going to be back on really quickly and it wouldn't cause the need for that. Well, I'm glad it came back on pretty quick. I was just concerned about there were like 1349 homes which were without power for a significant amount of time during a below zero weather system, so anyway, glad it was short. Well, just to piggyback, we have one room, a pretty large room in our house that uses a heat pump. And it was the warmest room in our house, the entire cold snap. So when people say, oh, they don't work when it's really, really cold, ours did really nicely. Our furnace didn't, but that did. So just to let you know that it worked. I was wondering, my husband and I were both wondering, is this not going to produce heat when it gets really, really cold? And it did. I think a lot of people suffered from some frozen pipes, including the Islamic Society of Vermont. They had a frozen pipe that burst and had some water event, unfortunately. But these types of stresses help to identify these situations and hopefully homeowners and building owners can take the time to go in and re-insulate and seal up stuff and then make sure areas stay warm during cold snaps like that. Great. Well, I've had several airport commission meetings. So I have a number of things that I think the council and the public might be interested in. One of the questions I asked was about the hotel because they've been working on that and they had their permits and then they changed the spot. And then the FAA had some other additional thinking about the hotel. They have a new partner now and it's still going to go forward, but they're not certainly, they're not certain when, but it's not a dead development. Shelby Lucier is leaving and she was in charge of operations and she was great. And I'm very, they're very sad that she has left. I think in part, well, I don't know why she didn't explain why, but during the pandemic there were some retirements and the management store. And Nick, for example, was only the interim director. So he still was operations director and then somebody left and he had to take that work on and people were really getting very stressed. Kind of like here where, you know, someone has to take in charge and there isn't a person to give that to. So it was pretty intense for a while and I think it will improve. I know it will. The fencing around the cemetery, they are getting a bit on that and they hope it will go in, I think in the spring. And by September, oh no, maybe it's by September, then the final nose, nose, noise exposure map will be released to the public. Maybe that's in September. And yeah, they did a second, you know, an updated noise map with the F-35 information. And they've had a number of public hearings and worked through that. So the new map will be available to the public. Was it the last map, an F-35 map? Yes. Well, it was only projected. This is the actual. Okay. And you have to have one, I think it's every five years or 10 years. So I think they, we had one, I think done a little bit earlier. They asked for one. Because we asked for one, but this is the one that is in the sort of normal queue. And it has, you know, all the actual data from the F-35 and they're all here. So it's a little bit different than that one. When were the hearings? I don't know because I didn't attend any. We didn't get any word of hearings. Well, maybe there weren't hearings, but they have done the map. Okay. Maybe the hearings will be when they present it and they share it. Okay. Because it's not exactly, I mean, it's data driven. So it's not as if public hearings, someone could say, I don't think that line belongs there. So perhaps that's when. Could you just double check? I will. I will check when that, exactly. Will this affect the homes that may or may not have been selected for insulation? They didn't think it would. Okay. In a preliminary look, they said the lines don't really change. And then as a final goodwill message, I guess, or gift from Senator Leahy, he managed to get into the appropriations bill. $34 million that for the north redo of the airport. So I'm guessing you'll probably have his name on it or something. But I don't know if that's been decided yet. Runways? No, of the actual terminal building. Oh, okay. And then there's one other thing. And we received the audit report and there were no findings, good comments. The bottom line is very healthy. Good. So that's that. I don't know what else I did. I did other stuff. I can't remember. But that was the big stuff to share with you. City manager. Oh, I'm sorry. Did someone. Oh, okay. Okay. Tom, do you have anything to report? Nothing to report, but thanks for asking. Okay. Peter Taylor, it did have his camera on very shortly. Peter, you didn't want to make a comment on anything. Did you? I guess not. Okay. City manager. Great. Thanks. I have quite a bit. It feels like a while since I've been at city updates. I was just getting used to weekly meetings. So first and foremost wanted to share that for the council and for the community, we have built a town meeting day website on our website where all the information, we're trying to centralize all the information for both city and school information, obviously linking to the city clerks page for voting information. So if folks are looking for information on what is going to be on their ballot in March, the website is south berlington vt.gov backslash TMD town meeting day, but just the acronym TMD 2023. So you can go there for all of that information. It also includes a listing of all the upcoming public information sessions. And we really would invite any of the counselors. I can share an email in more depth about this later. But if any of the counselors would like to attend any of those outreach sessions and help with the presentation, please do let me know. We would welcome your participation. Those are upcoming on February 8th at the 12 30 at a senior center lunch. Valentine's Day the hashtag love your city event to do with your sweetie before dinner at six o'clock on Valentine's Day and then February 28th at six o'clock. And then obviously we'll have the pre town meeting day event on March 6th. So hopefully folks will come and get educated about what is on the ballot on that town meeting day 2023 link on our website is also the recording to the town meeting TV presentation we did last week. So folks want to watch the presentation. They can also do that on that website. Great. So as we've alluded, you all have alluded to all ready. It was a very busy cold and power outage weekend in the city. We've had a very busy few days of public safety issues. So as you talked about, there was the fire this morning at the construction home on Spear Street. Nobody was hurt. That was in addition to 32 calls for service. They got on the 24 hour shift from Saturday into Sunday during that really cold snap. That's obviously a lot for one 24 hour shift. The PD also responded to 113 incidents over the weekend. Many of those having to do again with cold and outages and then of course the notice you all got about the stolen car event that damaged two of our police cars over the weekend. Again, none of our police officers were hurt, but those two cruisers are currently out of service. And while just while we're on public safety for a minute, we had want to share a good highlight in January. We had 10 direct referrals to our community justice center. That's our police officers identifying subjects of crime and perpetrators and referring to community justice as opposed to going through the court system. That's in comparison to one referral we got from the court system, so 10 from our officers, one from the court system. And of those 10, 60 were resolved, 60% of them were resolved through that restorative process. The balance then gets referred on to the court system. So great work by our community justice staff, our volunteers who support that work, our neighbors who work on that restorative process. I just wanted to let the council know Chief Locke and Chief Burke and I did attend an all PD staff meeting the week before last to talk about dispatch and our kind of parallel processes we're currently working to move forward with the public safety authority as well as explore options for us providing regional services. So more to come on that and we had a really great conversation with some of the officers and dispatchers there. I think the council is aware and hopefully the community is aware. We are in the midst of a community, set of community conversations we are having over the next month and a half as we update our comprehensive plan. So there's a series of eight different listening sessions. I think there are eight, maybe 10. There's three this week, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. They're all in 301 and available through go to meeting. And again, they're linked right off of our website. They're linked right off of our website. They're linked right off of our website. And I think there's a series of eight different listening sessions. So today's big conversations are about tomorrow night's jobs, business and the economy. Wednesday night is energy and climate change. And Thursday night is the northwest neighborhoods meeting. So we encourage folks to attend. Have their voices heard again in person or remotely. We are seeing huge success in our senior center. We are averaging about 55 folks for lunch every week. We are looking for some senior center volunteers. So if anyone knows anyone who's looking to get involved, we would love to have some more volunteers helping with senior programming. And then just a couple of more updates. The dorset street signals project is kicking off this week. You, our contractor will be there doing subsurface investigation over the next couple of weeks. So you may see during community times the lanes go down just to do a couple of. This is a very long term closure. And that's coming up in a lot of different ways. It won't be a permanent, it won't be a long term closure, but they are starting that work this week. Also on the council in your BCA rules to know we are tax sale process is moving along. We had 44 homes. Properties go to not homes. Properties go to tax sale. Of those were done to seven remaining properties that are owners around payment plans full payment what not we really hope to come to that solution before a sale but if a sale is necessary that auction is set for March 16th and we are just a reminder to those folks and folks in the community the VHAP program which is the Vermont assistance to property owners program as results of COVID is still out there and available five of the properties that were on the tax sale list took advantage of that program and got their taxes fully up to date so folks are out there struggling please VHAP look up that program it's a great benefit to the community and then finally I just want to invite the council we are having a fire department recognition night on February 23rd to swear in several new firefighters and celebrate some recent promotions I'll send some more details to your inboxes but we would welcome you to join us for that event on February 23rd I believe it's six o'clock but I will send you details thank you very much great thank you yes so in the note from Chief Lockey says that officer Wilson was struck by his police cruiser as he was a position outside of it attempting to stop the stolen car is he okay yes okay well that's good okay let's move on then to item 6 the consent agenda and there are six items disbursements approval of minutes from January 3rd and January 17th approve an application for a community recovery and revitalization program grant to support the construction of additional water storage in the city's high service area approve the application and acceptance of an ARPA 2022 pre-treatment grant to complete an assessment of our industrial wastewater users fifth the prove the annual certificate of highway miles mileage and F approve the FY 2022 TIF annual report I move to approve but I do have questions about the annual report and ideally I would like to move that out or else we can just ask questions as part of the annual read the TIF of the tip so item F yeah okay so why don't we move that out and we can approve the first five and then have a conversation on the TIF okay any further comment or question okay all in favor oh Tom I'm not looking at the screen you're okay I'm okay all right so approval of A through E all in favor say I I okay now we'll move to F the FY 22 TIF annual report and Councillor Emery has a question or two yeah I was just looking through the amount paid with TIF revenues the amount paid with non TIF revenues and the total improvement expenditure for this report period and there were just a couple of items that that seemed I'm just going to try and find it now sorry and it might have actually been total I'm sorry the second one sources of non TIF revenues total amount secured for each source total amount spent to date what page it is let's see for what packages it's 66 in our packet 56 yeah 66 66 I'm sorry 5 6 6 6 okay so it's page 3 out of 8 I do want to preface this by saying Alana I just texted her see if she can jump on she's got a really bad cold so I will do my best to answer questions but we may need to table this okay go for it all right it was the number 11 the efficiency Vermont rebate and I was really curious about the total amount secured for each source and then total amount spent to date so if we've only secured 5,600 how can we spend 55,000 or is that if total amount secured for each source this year and then the total amount is for all of the years I think it's a simple hopefully a simple explanation but yes it is the 56 that is under that was the initial payment that we'd received two years ago but the 55 was received this year so it's just an error in the formula that was in this purchase that we completed okay so yes the 55 is an actual amount that we actually received from efficient superman okay so is that a correction we need to make before we approve no she said the 55 is the accumulative right no 55 was the actual amount that we received in FY 22 but the 5,600 that is secured was reported in the previous year reported in a previous year so it was a previous error that's now correct yes all right oh I so the total amount secured would be the 55 plus the 5,600 which would be 61 600 and then the yeah I guess it's just a this is just annual so for this is now page two of eight in the tip report under debt instruments so we have the City Hall Senior Center Public Library we have the principal of five million dollars the interest of one million dollars plus is that just in one year that's just this year I just wanted to understand exactly how no the that's the overall interest that will be paid on the five million bond throughout the whole isn't it 20 year period yes I think it was less than 20 years and and we are only paying five million dollars over 20 years now five million was the total amount of bond that we took out one million is the interest on that so the total the total principal plus interest on the bond is the six million and that's just the tiff portion of the debt for this building there's then non-tiff debt on this building as well thank you yes okay sorry I would assume that it was yes this building is much more than that's another library or something or we're only reporting here what's eligible for free reimbursement thank you I think that those are my two questions so I'm willing now to move that we approve the fiscal year 2022 tiff annual report second any discussion when is the audit the tiff audit yeah with the state order yeah it is underway currently underway and Burlington just had theirs and found some discrepancies that are being taken care of found some discrepancies we if we find discrepancies we will happily correct them but we are confident in our management of our tiff disc we are confident that's all sure instead of a three and a seven being an 11 I believe those my understanding Martha correct me if you have a different understanding is when in our original tiff application we had a number of projects public projects that were authorized by Vepsi when we did our significant what do they call it substantial change request last year some of those projects we took out but we have to still report on them to line them up for the state reporting mm-hmm okay so all in favor of approving this tiff annual report say aye aye and we'll move on then to number seven receiving a presentation from the Sexton's committee and provide direction to the staff or take an action please make sure the little green light is nice and bright and the mic is relatively close to your mouth thank you hi Donna Kinville City Clerk and chair of the Sexton's and Maureen O'Brien secretary of the sexton and we have Peter Taylor online who is again he's home under the weather so sorry I don't mind if everybody knows okay thanks Peter well he's blaming Marta for it but thank you I was wondering when my computer changed so we're here before you tonight and we were here not that that long ago but there are a couple things that we've been kind of working on and at our last presentation we discussed about the possibility of raising the cost of the lots and we'll get into that in a little bit as well so as you know because you have all helped us at some point during our cemetery work we have really been working hard to make our cemeteries get them up to an acceptable level and these cemeteries for many many years really had no intention other than our highway department mowing and they did a fantastic job but really the cemeteries were really forgotten for a long long time and as Sexton's our role is also very limited by statute so and most of everything else is is statute but as the cemetery commission so all decisions on cemeteries are made by the cemetery commission we have kind of gone above and beyond what sections do and we've looked at some things we've kind of come up with a draft of rules and regs on you know what should be acceptable in it and so you know we're just quite those process we're doing a lot and therefore in order for us to keep moving in a positive direction we're asking for the council to consider making the Sexton's the cemetery commissioners so that we can move forward and make some decisions without having to come to you in your very busy schedule and say hey we've got these rules and regs could you please review them and prove them so we're kind of looking for that authority to do that kind of work on ourselves and if for some reason that you are not comfortable giving up that role then if there's somewhere you could expand through a resolution or something expand our role a little bit so we can do a little bit more we've kind of almost gone to the point where a sexton's are really can't do much else other than you know continue to clean and and and take care of some of the the cemeteries but they need more attention than a sexton's title can give is this something that exists in other municipalities the commission is there a model for it yep every state statue says that if there's a cemetery there shall be a cemetery commission that oversees it so therefore the council select for the governing body of the municipality would appoint somebody to be the cemetery commission and by statute failure to appoint people to be the commissioner the cemetery commission in effect makes that governing body the cemetery commission you might want to pull that slide up yeah I try to see I can get there well no no this is that well first of all can we get back to that one then because this next slide is really kind of we're here two reasons one for the cemetery commissioners and one for the lot sizes so so lot sizes we we compared our lot sizes and prices with a number of the surrounding communities and found that we were very inexpensive but also I think because of the condition of the cemetery is we weren't selling any lots so we we did the research and we are proposing to have five hundred dollars for residents and seven hundred for non residents and keeping the lot size pretty much the same three and a half by ten feet and as I show on the slide Burlington is charging seven hundred dollars for residents and twelve hundred for non residents sx's website which we haven't checked it probably six months was six hundred dollars for residents the other item to consider is you know for cremations you know you obviously don't need a whole entire lot for a cremation so do we want to reduce the size and possibly sell cremation lots so these are just something we would have to come back to you guys for for consideration you know when we get farther down the this road and right now the when someone pays for a lot they reserve it ahead of time correct or could buy it because they need it mm-hmm with a loved one where does that money go who manages it what does it pay for currently now there is a special fund sitting in the city books okay so every lot seal goes to that but it comes with perpetual care so which means that five hundred dollars that someone is paying is for the lot but it's also for the care and the maintenance as well of it so that price has been on our books for I think about ten years was the last time we had a price increase in the cemetery lots so it sits in the city coffers as a special fund Tom Hubbard started a couple years ago and Tom Chittin knows this that we were able to get the city to start putting a little bit of money into this fund so we could start doing some things that we need to do to get them back up to a certain level and I think we're down to I think we have a thousand a year that we put into the city puts into the cemetery fund to help us with the maintenance I mean we're talking we've probably got 13,000 in it we're not talking as a huge slush fund and so the maintenance is more than just mowing correct it would be what keeping the headstones straight cleaning them laying down the fence cutting back the crush day at the brush that keeps kind of creeping in from the sides fence fence repair you know okay all that kind of is there was some talk about having an agreement with you know the restaurant next door for parking is is that they've been very open and to us parking there they don't it doesn't matter them and actually my husband's been down there quite a bit doing a lot of trimming all around that that particular cemetery and the he's noticed that the not the restaurant the guys who plow the restaurant parking lot are pretty good they'll kind of keep the snow away from the fence where the car dealership on the other side on the other hand has pushed the fence pretty much right over so that's that's something they can fix well but I don't think I accept to my husband to call exactly that's what that's that was a segue to we'll have Matt take care of that guys couple real basic questions so the fund to maintain the cemetery is comes out of the Sexton's budget doesn't come out of public works public works is not public works does mow the lawns but that's I don't think they get in a cemetery fund does not get charged contract or for what no no for private it's like it's all volunteers yep okay but any other if I add in public works also has helped us with removal of the trimmings we've done and so they do some yard work if you will but most of the yard work we've done recently has been volunteer there was a number of trees that fell down at Eldridge during that windstorm a couple weeks ago and we happened to notice it and anyway they public works came over you know within a week and took care of all the debris and that's great thank you the fund also purchased materials for the stone cleaning and and and the days we did those stone cleaning so they funded that act that fund funded that activity so just to clarify the fund comes the prices and it's managed by the Sexton's not the council it is managed by the city it is managed by the city and then and then of course the fees are decided by the council yeah okay what's the what's the balance right now 13 thousand about about 13 thousand so do we need to follow up with the auto dealer on the fence that would be nice his name is yes have you thought about erecting a columbarium what we did look into that and the cost was it's a locker for cremated remains oh yeah we were thinking about that especially for Shelburne roads since that might be a better place yeah the cost was very it'd be a capital cost there yes right right but since I mean the last Memorial service I went to I asked the funeral directors what the ratio of was of cremation to non-cremation it's 80% right now yeah so there's a lot less interest in full size burial plots just I mean I think that's the change that's going on right now Burlington has a columbarium at Lakeview yeah it's small but they're probably end up having to add more yeah there's one over Resurrection Park has one too yeah and we can we can come back to the council with a pricing on one of those if you'd like but that'd be something I think the Sexton's if they were the cemetery commission would try would try to do if they had it in the budget if not they'd have to go to the council and ask for additional funds but those are the kinds of things we would work on it's definitely more than we have in our current budget you have to have a cement pad and it was a lot okay so and then with this change to becoming a commission we would still appoint the members correct okay just like it like the planning commission or whatever okay and then would the commission we appoint are we elect the voters elect the town has voted to elect elected does that mean like they've selected to do that like we elect to have blue and gray as our high school colors oh and less the city town has voted to elect so we have not voted to elect in the history of South Burlington they've never held a an election an election to to elect their their cemetery commission like me nobody's running for the office so is truly under the governing board to appoint who they would wish to serve okay and then if we do that would you then be able to determine the costs of plots or is that something that you would come back to us to recommend and the council approve I'm just curious I don't have any strong feelings about it but yeah I would imagine it would be the city council's decision I mean we we make recommendations okay we can kind of go through and kind of do the the day-to-day work kind of thing but when it comes to the money issues and the bigger things that's I think that's outside the commissions duties okay we're working on our rules and regulations right now and they're actually with Colin McNeil the city attorney being reviewed and there's a lot of language in there that's confusing because the refers to the cemetery commission which is the de facto city council and a lot of there's a lot of things that the cemetery commission has to do but we don't necessarily think it should be you guys because you guys all we don't think you want to sell lots visit people a lot at you know nine o'clock on a Saturday morning or Friday morning to sell the lots okay and we don't have the power to delegate well that was the question if you don't want to make us the cemetery commission you still wish to hold on to that title you could delegate us more responsibility right so that's the but as I since what we have right now really we're just for the care of the cemetery that's about it okay so we've really kind of overstepped a lot of do you have a model in mind that you would like to I don't know it just seems to be something that we would establish in terms of the structure it's every place is so different every place is so different so it is up to us to structure it so the finances would come to the council those be perhaps one stipulation mm-hmm well it says current work in progress approving rules and regulations they're awaiting feedback from the city attorney so perhaps when the city attorney has completed that or do we need to ask him to do that or direct him to he's working on it he's working on it then we could see because those would be the rules and regulations to potentially create this cemetery commission of not the city council but this other commission well the rules and regsway gave mr. McNeil is the all has to do with the care of the cemeteries the sales of lots who goes out and meets with the person who collects the money who the deeds the deed you're creating a deed and having the deeds written so it's all that it is technically the on the boots on the ground kind of work which I think is what the commission would do anything above that management wise would be the city council so payments got made out of the cemetery fun it goes before the council to approve if we needed to raise funds we need to do something or we would come to the council could I mention when the council gets the proposed rules after we develop those and calling looks them over when you read that I think you'll get a better perspective of what is expected out of the commission and out of the sextants or the people in charge of the cemeteries so maybe at that time it might help you as you look at what what the commission could or should do separate from the council well I'm happy to wait for that report and make a decision I think you're kind of moving in the right direction so just there's two decisions we were right the price I'm in favor of increasing the price yes and to get the feedback from Colin about the proposed rules and regulations and then hopefully it sounds like that will clarify what we're gonna call this and in the rules and rights that we gave Colin we left a lot of who's responsible for what out because it is a lot there's there's a lot of steps in the time someone's first interested in in purchasing a lot into all the record keeping and everything else in between to the actual burial and in arranging with the funeral there's a lot of steps in between so I said it's a lot of boots on the ground it is truly how does one go from step A to the end so there's a lot of work so we left a lot of who was responsible for it out because not showing who was counsel who was commissioned who sextons who's who's a clerk a lot of times I want to put a lot on the clerk's office I'm like you did all this right was that she does do all this now but that's not why you're retiring one of the reasons so that was the other concern if Donna is no longer going to be the city clerk I mean she still wants to be on the cemetery commission but we'll have to find somebody within the city clerk's office to handle the money and handle the deeds and so is it kind of separating what is the clerk's duties and what is just mine is a sexton I've kind of lumped them all we've kind of need to separate them so I just put that on your radar but I just want to point out at Shelburne know that this shot that you have there if you look there's that brown spot underneath that was where that cemetery stone had been laying well on both of those so that is the kind of work we have done and we've taken something that was completely buried in the ground covered up broken and stood it out clinked it off and made it legible again not not brand new but certainly yeah honorable yes so Jesse I think this is a great overview presentation I think all of these steps that is are being outlined are our multi-stage steps I think in order to set fees we need to bring you a resolution with fees included I think in order to appoint the sections as the cemetery commission we need to figure out the legislative process to do that I think Collins only had this for a few days I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done before you guys are ready to vote on anything didn't you all talk about this on Wednesday at your cemetery commission meeting I haven't seen this until today did we talk about the no Wednesday we just we just went over the slides to get ready for today yeah have we asked when did we ask Colin for the legal opinion about creating the Cemetery Commission we have not okay so we have a lot of background work to do before you guys are ready to vote on anything but I think this is a great overview presentation of like what are the act what what are the work steps we need to do you all and and staff in order to get there okay and we have one more addition to this and that is the project the art project we got approached and there's been some conversation about Chevrolet cemetery and how does it fit into the comprehensive plan and you know how do we draw attention to the cemetery it's a nice city-owned piece of land in the middle of Shelburne Road it is currently by deed to be only used as a cemetery but we were approached to have this permanent art display in front of the Shelburne Road cemetery so they're looking for for approval and although we do want to draw attention and good we're just sextants it's not a decision is you know it kind of that is the permanent thing that I think that kind of scares us is because if it is permanent we don't know what the future has I mean we only have these two lots for cemetery plots for sales there is no other land dedicated in the city for it so I would hate to make a permanent art project knowing that when time is needed for the area that the the the the art project is on it need to be moved and we wouldn't then be able to have those lots for sale so it's the permanency I think that kind of gets us so I talked to a member of the public art committee about this and the question was is it's not inside of the fence it's outside of the fence there's no fence well the front the entrance it's out it's closer to the road and even the the question was isn't it in the city's right away do you know the answer to that outside of that entrance I wouldn't think I mean it can't be more than 60 the average one which would be the sidewalk which would be it would have been right there but you're they're talking they actually want to put it right that's another thing they want to put it right back by the tree line and they said be nice good backdrop for it that goes against everything as a sextant we're trying to open that up to stop the fragrance from people from being in the back and having the parties and hanging out and bring more notice to the cemetery yeah so it kind of goes against what but we're kind of working on it it doesn't doesn't we want people to come to cemetery we want to draw attention to it but we also don't want the back section of it to be secluded off from the front because the member of the public art committee's understanding was that it would be closer to the road it would not be hidden or you know I don't think it would be hidden it would just be back like instead of being 20 feet from the road they might what we're understanding is that it might be 80 feet from the road so I was closer to the tree line as well yeah I think this is a decision that we need to decide who the commission is and what the rules are and the processes and once that's established and we have you know appointed that commission if that's the road we go then we can do a little more long-range planning for the for the cemetery I mean it occurs to me that if we really clean it up and make it look lovely maybe it should be on the website maybe it is I've never looked for a cemetery I didn't even know we had to there's fairly recently but I mean but if you have people knowledgeable about then they might use it and then they might go to it it isn't just land that's set aside for a cemetery but it's never used it is in my research it is very unusual for a city of our size to only have as little cemetery you know city owned cemetery land as we do and obviously not many people have chosen to get buried in either cemetery well we've got a couple other big ones so well I'm just non non-religious right I understand that but that's the other alternative for many religious one because I think Colchester has like four or five of them yeah yeah cemetery city owned cemeteries they have a commission separate from the select board okay well I appreciate all the work you've done Tom really got this started so maybe he'll continue come back to be a section or commissioner to fulfill his dream I just want to point out that John Barrows has roped my brother-in-law into some extensive landscaping and my brother-in-law was a professional landscaper so there's some good talent working down there right now right as soon as it warms up I think they're going back tomorrow they're going back tomorrow yeah okay well thank you very much thank you oh one more thing no do we need to have a motion for the price increase oh I I think we need to do that through a resolution oh okay so I think that will be part of the whole package of redesign and okay regulation and processes that at some point we'll see I think that's the cleanest okay arts need a decision by any date does anybody I didn't ask that question yeah well I for one I'm not ready to make that decision I don't even know what it costs and I mean I'm not it's a $10,000 grant that I have no idea where it came from but it was this this group came okay well I still think I mean I guess we can find out when they lose the grant when they need to but I think it's a little great idea right now for us to say let's let's do that at least that's my feeling oh we can't do it tonight no what about the marketing plan do you have a marketing plan set up first we have to figure out who's buried where and how many people are buried okay yeah Peter do you have a comment yeah I would just like to thank the chair for her diligence and getting the fence done thank you it's been a long time at the airport well thank you then staying on that okay ladies thank you okay moving on to item 8 which is receiving and accepting the FY 22 audit from our HR Smith and Miranda McDonald will be presenting that and Martha are you part of this or you're just you were the part you were a part are you going to be presenting or all right please come down yeah I got it just stop sharing click stop sharing on your computer the screen the button that says screen at the bottom thank you okay thank you Donna so as Miranda setting up I just want to point the console in the audience to where the audit is in the city council package included was just the memo but to at the end of the memo there is a link the actual audit report which was 125 pages that's why we only included a link and as stated in the memo FY 22 was the second year we've actually ended with a huge amount of surplus which the council actually funded a good number of specific projects and those are also listed in the memo when and the amount as well and in the memo actually I think I had a type when there was a that the council was able to use the FY 24 surplus point that is supposed to say FY 22 surplus front thank you Martha as she said my name is Miranda McDonald I come all the way from National Guard Avenue and South Burlington over by the airport so far ways to drive but it was a pleasure working on the South Burlington audit this year did not have to travel far so I was excited the usually one of the first questions we get was what's the opinion of the audit this can be found on page one in the second paragraph where it says in our opinion the accompanying financial statements present fairly in all material respects so what this means was it was a clean audit we did not find anything materially wrong causing us to restate I'm going to highlight the management's discussion and analysis which can be found on page five of the audit this is a very good synopsis of what happened during the year so if you're not going to read the full 125 pages of the audit which you know puts me to sleep then at least read this summary so you get a good understanding broad understanding of what happened during the year the next big question we get is what is our fund balance for general fund this can be found statement C which is page 17 of the audit in the first column so right so right for FY 22 your general fund fund balance ended with about four point eight million dollars two point five of that is unassigned fund balance this is in keeping with your fund balance policy of maintaining at least eight point three percent a minimum of eight point three percent which equates to about one month's operating expenditures so you are in compliance your target for that fund balance is two months you're not quite there yet but I know you're working on it the one point nine million dollars in assigned fund balance that listing can actually be found note 13 back in the audit but about one point two million of that is reserved for is assigned for the Dorset Street project so that's what makes up the most of the assigned fund balance the other funds are considered major funds in your books the TIF district fund and then you have a capital reserve fund as well that's listed here the TIF district increased their fund balance increased to about fifty nine thousand dollars and your capital improvement reserve fund decreased about four hundred thousand dollars zoom in yep I can't scroll down now I get that but it's being blocked by the go to meeting yeah let me see if I can move it over here so the so your capital reserve fund fund balance decreased about four hundred thousand to about three point two million dollars and then the other governmental funds are going to be your special revenue funds such as ARPA impact fees you have some other capital project funds included in that and your permanent funds these all can be found in schedules starting in page 62 of your audit in the back of it what is the non-spendable fund it means you can't spend it so it's if you look up above the inventory of forty eight thousand and the prepaid of 252 so those are assets you've actually already spent the items but because they're not revenue or expense you have to remove them as assigned or unassigned they're non-spendable because they've already been spent okay that's clear as mud but it's you know it is clear as mud but it's it's inventory and prepaid items which are assets listed above that is what totals to the unspendable okay yeah and I just want to add that the only inventory that is in our books is the fuel DPW they buy fuel a big chunk of the fuel in the storage tank and at the end of the year we do the reading of how much in is in that and that is money that has been spent in the current fiscal year that is actually going to be used in the next fiscal year so that's why it's carried in there as a firm balance but it's already money that we've already spent we do not have to spend on new project because we've already spent that money but it's actually what I said same thing with the prepaid is expenditures that we've already paid for that are going to be used in the next fiscal year okay and I would say like prepaid your largest one was insurance you would pay for it in June but it doesn't actually begin until July 1st yes okay thank you this next statement statement of revenues expenditures and changes in fund balance statement E which is page 19 of your audit and of course we include education the school district is part of this but that's forty two point nine million dollars so your general fund shows seventy one million dollars less the forty two point nine is about twenty what I say twenty eight million dollars of revenues in the general fund and then your expenditures of you know sixty five million sixty four million dollar sixty seven twenty twenty five million dollars of expenditures then with your transfers in and out so you had a net increase to fund balance of two million little over two million dollars when we look at this most of that is attributed because of you exceed your revenues exceeded what was budgeted and if we remember when you were building your FY 22 budget it was December of 20 so we were in COVID and you were you're being fiscally conservative which I appreciate in building your revenues and building your expenditures because we didn't know what COVID was going to bring for us so that being said we've we've returned to a normal and your charges for services is is really what increased almost nine hundred thousand dollars over what was budgeted you also receive some additional grants then what was budgeted as well for your expenditures you've actually you know some public safety was over over you over spent what was budgeted but public works you under spent was budgeted so all in all use you actually under spent your budget by about three hundred thousand dollars which out of a twenty five million dollar budget I would say is pretty accurate you know it's gonna be hard you're gonna be hard pressed to get much more accurate than that the statement also shows your TIF activity as well so you can see the net increase to TIF of about forty one thousand dollars and then your decrease to your capital reserve fund of about four hundred thousand the next statement G is has to do with your proprietary funds as we look down through this I would say not a whole lot of activity happened pretty stat status quo from prior year to current year no major capital increases no major debt in addition you you know fees came in about the same and you spent the same all in all if we look at the next schedule you can see that with the rec programs actually your net position your well you had a deficit but that is decreased by about seventeen thousand dollars so that's getting better and then all the water funds you know had a slight decrease in their net position but overall you do have a positive net position in all of your enterprise funds which is is great I mean when we compare it to some other municipalities they definitely have no negative net positions and are working towards that as well so I would say pretty pretty status quo with your enterprise funds so that's what I'm going to show you for the audit if you have any questions related to some other notes or statements you can absolutely ask them I did want to bring up the management letter that we provided to Martha there was one comment about bank recs not being reviewed by another by another person but in talking with Martha my understanding is that's already fixed or in the process of being fixed we didn't find anything else that felt needed to be dressed with best practices or any other concerns that we had with that so I wanted to thank Martha's thanks Celine and Jesse for working with the audit and I look forward to next year's audit as well okay are there any questions Tom you do but I can't see you so if you have any no questions very clean audit thanks for everything you presented for Tom I mean we've had good audits but he usually has good questions anyone else okay well thank you thank you if I if I can just take a quick moment and say Martha specifically for this clean audits while sometimes boring for councils are extraordinarily important for the fiscal health of the city and our ability to do anything else and that is really dude in large part to her diligence and professionalism in managing our day-to-day finances fifty seven million dollars in and out is a lot and she and a very small team of people do a great job they do thank you see you next year well and you should be happy since you live here this is your community right thank you thank you so now we move on to excuse me receiving the December financials representing our financial state through the first half of FY 23 so included in the city council package at the financial reports through December 31st and of the second quarter and also department budget narrative is department we do currently have is department look at their financials and give us where they are and where they think we are heading to so that we can make decisions as we come closer to the end of the year this is our way through and so far the expenses are very consistent with how we have been spending in the past fiscal years our revenues on the other hand are at 62% that is really huge and that is actually even without doing the internal transfers that we normally do we will be doing those in the third quarter and now the huge increase actually in those revenues are on the revenues projection that we did in FY 20 not FY but in 2021 when we did the projections and we are very conservative I think as I stated earlier COVID was still going on and the revenues that we had and projecting what would be coming the fees especially inspection fees fire and electrical inspection fees those are actually coming out really high I think there's a lot of construction and we've been talking about what's going on in the city center that is bringing in revenues through permit fees and inspection fees as well and interest on investment when we did the projection back in 2021 the interest rate at that point was 0.2 right now we are receiving 3.59 so that is why we're interested in investment revenues have more than triple at this point and we hope it would continue to grow and I think all the lines were free it must explain in the narrative by the department heads and if you have any questions on those happy to answer or happy to bring you back no sense if I can not are there any questions yes I'm looking at this paragraph that talks about the the interest on investment income yep and that TD bank pays 80% of the federal rate increase so does that mean that the current interest rate on that account is 80% of whatever the federal rate total rate is or was it at some rate and it's been increasing by 80% of each increase yeah it's at some rate and then it increase if the federal increase is 5% or 8% we get 80% of what that is and then what original interest rate is increased by that much so can we all invest in that is there a phone number we can call the Z that's a pretty good money market fund yeah okay well thank you TD bank thanks to them well I appreciate their written reports yeah I really helps me understand where we are with each department I'm sure it's sort of a pain in the neck for them to write but it's also probably really helpful and the fact that the local option tax came in higher is really good and if you heard Colchester is proposing to build a rec center based and funded solely for the via bond that they would pay for by their own local options tax oh thank you I think they were proposing an extra 1% for that right is that what their vote is for on town meeting day huh was to add another percent just for their for their rec center hey I could be corrected on that I nobody yeah so they had a plan but this also plays into the you know the kind of the proposals you know in the legislature about increasing tax transparency for those communities that that don't collect their LOT directly like St. Alvin's and Burlington right but giving other towns the ability to have greater visibility for those people who are allowed to as to where the money's coming from and so because we I mean we've talked about that since 2016 right Tom did you have a comment since you show just a moment ago okay do you have a comment just to your point Helen about these reports it is a fair amount of staff time but it also you know this is data that Martha and her team are looking at all day every day but it's a great accountability tool for the department heads to be able to tell the story behind the numbers and also make sure that they're they're tracking their own budgets very closely on a month-to-month basis so it's a really good exercise that Martha and Andrew brought to the brought to the process and appreciate it yeah no I appreciate it okay moving on to item 10 the proposed land development regulations amendment LDR 22-09 adjust the environmental protection standards adopted in 2022 and our work tonight is to hear a little bit about them and possibly set a public hearing. Hey folks Paul Connor director of planning and zoning thanks for having me this evening as chair really just explained these are essentially minor amendments to improve the functionality of the environmental protection standards we've had them in place for a year the planning commission reviewed some of the feedback that we've received at the staff end and have proposed a few changes essentially simplifying the process for review of environmental restoration projects or projects that are specifically intended to benefit the environment stormwater projects things like that to distinguish between naturally occurring steep slopes and human created steep slopes on a site plan so that the latter is not subject to the steep slope regulations if somebody built a building 30 years ago and put an embankment behind it that isn't considered a naturally occurring steep slope and could be improved potentially by redevelopment through better site design. Exempting one and two family house lots smaller than a half acre in size from what was the expanded wetland buffer so that those properties would return to having the 50 foot buffer what we found was that many neighborhoods in south burlington were built with the edge of individual lots being at that 50 feet so adding the additional space essentially took up their backyards and possibly part of the house as being in the the new wetland buffer so as a functionality those properties are almost entirely lawn areas in the back and so this allows them to return to that 50 foot which is what the house the lots were built as so that doesn't it goes back to the standard that was in place a year ago only for pre-existing lots for single and two family homes of less than half an acre and that would allow them to put a deck or something correct yeah or build a little shed or something yep exactly whereas this past summer we had about a dozen folks come in and wanted to be able to put a deck or a pool or a shed or something like that and then the process that they would need to go through to demonstrate that they don't have a wetland there would be potentially to get a wetland delineation which is several thousand dollars and then go to the drb for an exemption a lot of process to prove a negative there and so the commission felt that that wasn't the intent of what the regulations were trying to accomplish and then lastly i'm sorry matt just to clarify so we're going from from what to what from what was adopted last year to be a hundred feet right back to the 50 feet that is the was the standard in south berlington as the state standard and then lastly on the administrative side allows for wetland standards in the city center form-based code area to be reviewed administratively um where there's a minor change to a wetland so otherwise everything in the city center form-based code is already administrative what we found is that there's been a handful of applications for which a small wetland buffer impact is the only reason that the entire project has to go to the drb so it still gives the administrative officer the authority to say this seems like something substantial i'm going to send it to the drb but it gives the administrative officer the authority to say oh this is really small um and to still use the same standards as the board would use to allow or reject that's it um so we would recommend if the council is willing to schedule public hearing for march 20th i'll move that i'll second that did you want to move it no i seconded your motion it's already done tim okay we could um short discussion here yeah we can have a short discussion we have a motion on the table but that's fine okay uh just i wanted to clarify the steep slopes sure um first of all thank you and the planning commission for the 50-yard buffer i think that makes a lot of sense so thank you for doing that steep slopes are we striking a definition we had a 25 grade that was the number we attributed to steep slopes right correct now i'm confused so now this past year prior to a year ago there were no standards regarding steep slopes so this was new uh the standard says any development between 15 and 25 slope um is must be reviewed with an additional layer of scrutiny and essentially development above 25 percent is prohibited with a handful of exceptions the changes do two things one they uh make it clear that something that is restoring a failing retaining wall or something like that is not subject to the regulations it's just a restoration of something like that that's part of the environmental protection standards uh restoration standards and then secondly it distinguishes between a naturally occurring steep slope and something that was approved on a site plan 10 years ago 20 years ago 50 years ago um an example of that might be the um the maple leaf motel on shellburn road right behind it is a really steep slope down to the hannahford's parking lot that was entirely created to bring that property up to the shellburn road site that steep slope is over over 25 percent in theory that's a no touch area as a result of these regulations but it's entirely a human constructed embankment and so changes to that would now be exempt yeah no i get that no that that's good the what i'm getting at is it where it naturally occurs how is it if there's not a number ascribed to it oh it's defined as a three-foot drop three-foot drop right so over that 25 percent in a naturally occurring area in a naturally occurring area and i failed to mention there is one other very small change which is the board is given the additional authority to drb to determine that a section of a steep slope is de minimis so there happens to be a tiny little outcropping somewhere that if it's so small as to be not significant in any reason the board can allow that to be changed as opposed to having to design an entire project around something that might be the size of this table that's fantastic thank you so well we have a motion on table we can i can still ask do we have a second yeah okay yeah so um it's to move to hold a public hearing on monday march 20th at 7 30 p.m so are you ready for that vote all in favor hi hi hi okay thank you all have that can i just ask you just a quick question about that slope thing so an exit is another example um like the retaining walls that were built in the o'brien um project or do they have to get um and it's not a variant but permission to do that to build one now in the future is that what you're saying if somebody wanted to build a retaining wall like that so this is more about protection of existing steep slopes not the creation of a retaining wall there's still the authority to create retaining walls um but if there was a naturally occurring area that had a 25 plus error steep slope that somebody wanted to put it into a retaining wall that would not be allowed today oh okay there aren't very many 25 steep slope areas in south brilington they're more found in the bolton area but there are some okay thank you all ready okay moving on to um item 11 which is discussing h68 enact relating to remove moving state and municipal regulatory barriers for fair zoning and housing affordability and potentially take action we have um jessica louisa's chair of of the um planning commission who is here to present the suggested language and you know share with us a little bit um of the um their discussion and it's um we'll hear from the public if there are public comments and then have a council discussion my hope is that we as a council can provide clear direction about the position i guess of the city regarding some of the proposed changes and how we um it is my opinion we can best respond if we respond as a city and so we'll get input from the planning commission they have really taken the lion's share of this but then um have our discussion about um how a desert does not help us continue to create the community that we've spent years trying to design and the parameters for that so that's the purpose of this and so we really i would like us to go to Montpelier um with this kind of shared vision and language that um does not say we hate this and you need to not pass the bill but rather as reflective in this letter a really thoughtful discussion of what we've done here and ways that we think the bill could be improved to not undercut all that we've done or undermine all that we've done okay so Jessica sure um i'd like to give a lot of credit to Michael Matei who's here and Andrew Chalnut two commissioners that brought this forward and did some background research and you know following our commission discussion took the land share of kind of breaking that discussion down into the letter in your packet so that was really great and we had a really robust conversation about about the bill also knowing that there might be a companion bill in the senate which we don't have language for and thought it would be important for the city to give feedback following our discussion we decided that it would probably be best to come from you rather than the planning commission which is why it's in your packet you know hopefully for your action and you know i think the idea was is really laid out in the kind of draft letter in that you know it's a really admirable kind of goal that they're you know working towards but some of the way that it's currently drafted in this very draft form doesn't really fit well with some of the work we've done here um i guess specifically in that you know we've done a lot of planning to figure out like where in the city it is appropriate to have higher density and in fact we were really excited when staff told us that over 1400 acres in our city are are zoned at five plus units per acre you know that's something where you know it was nice to know that we are providing you know areas of the city for for denser development and you know we have no problem with areas where you know we've made the planning decisions to have high density development continuing to have high density development i think where we did have some issues were in areas where the current draft might potentially impact areas we've designated for natural resource protection areas and we just want to make sure that you know kind of as the bill moves forward towards potential law that you know it's not having inadvertent effects on areas that make sense to be you know non-development areas or natural resource protection areas so we've pointed out a few of those specific items for your consideration and you know we were trying to portray that we're we're pro-growth but pro-growth in kind of a smart way you know looking at different areas of the city really proactively we do have some adjustments to the the version that was in your packet i know there was a kind of placeholder for one of the the facts that staff had not provided at the time that your packet came out i think there's maybe a yellow mark we have some printouts here to hand out there's also there were a few typos the commissioners metagant chelonic kind of noticed after it had gone i hadn't noticed when i did the last review so the paul connor the the adjustments in there are to update the number of permanently affordable homes in the city so what was in the letter that you saw was the number that were built between 2016 and 2021 which is 169 where will the verify that there's approximately a thousand total existing so that was added to the letter and then on the second page where as jessica pointed out there was a placeholder for the amount of land that's zoned at four units an acre it's the draft letter would be added to say approximately 2500 acres or 24 of the city are zoned to allow four or five plus units per acre with the majority of that being over seven units an acre it's about 1400 acres is more than seven units an acre seven or more and 1100 acres are four units an acre so those are the two proposed modifications and then as jessica pointed out a few little typos here and there okay any other comments from you too i think that was the general gist of our discussion okay yeah i'd just like to remind everyone that this was looking at h68 there is a larger bill that the senate is putting together and as often happens the house has lots more committees and they tend to focus on their own area of expertise and develop a bill that deals with that and then another committee does a different aspect and the senate conversely often since it's smaller and you often are not often you are always on two committees at least you tend to build create bigger bills that then go to other committees so the process is a little bit different in both houses but it also takes a fair amount of time i know there's with some concern that this is really rushing through and i had a good conversation with senator ram hensdale today and she was pretty certain that her bill they would like to mark it up in the next two weeks but then it has to go to natural resources it has money in it and has to go to appropriations both places that have other stuff on their table two or on their walls so the process is there's a lot just stages where the city can comment or assist with language that perhaps not perhaps but really meets the goals of these bills but also protects the hard work that south burlington has already done so i think it's good to get in we have a slot on wednesday to present this and but that won't be the last time that we can make comments and assist them in understanding at least our perspective and we two days this wednesday yes yeah which committee is that um it's economic development housing economic development it's kind of like on the senate side so it won't be age 68 but it's this larger bill that encompasses um the portions of 68 that we've looked at as well as other aspects of kind of this whole housing climate change economic development infrastructure zoning it's a pretty big bill how does that work on wednesday what's the what's the timing who will be presenting what will be presented well what we have to discuss tonight is what we will be presenting we have this letter from the planning commission and if there's other things that the council would like to add or to change now's the time so that um i think it will be paul and jessey and jessica can you i don't know if you can maybe not but um i hadn't heard before this moment well we just have testified before but not yes yes um i don't see us on the agenda so we just received the request this afternoon we have not confirmed it so we are not we have a couple of time slots slots that are available and and for my position i wouldn't confirm that we were going to speak on something like this without a vote of the council directing us to give testimony so we have yet to confirm it and i think it's a discussion tonight how you all want what you want to the five of you vote on as a statement of the city's position if you want to vote on us as a statement of the city's position obviously we have 20 000 residents who can make any statement they would like about any bill before the legislature but if the city wants to take an official position you all should vote on that and it would be helpful i think to staff if you gave us some direction about you know what you wanted us to provide testimony on and how as we move forward because as several folks have suggested this is an incredibly detailed very well written letter about one bill that will change in the days and weeks to come and how nimble do you want us to be to provide testimony as that iterative process moves forward or do you all do you want to identify somebody on your body to be the point person to provide that testimony so those decisions that's what we have to talk about today Jessica i think um you know we were as a commission um you know hoping to keep this general enough to get the major points out there and then we also do recognize that it'd be really nice if someone either from the planning staff or you know obviously if you authorize it but um we do think kind of ongoing nimbleness to comment on future versions could be really helpful and my understanding from Keisha's that they've heard from and will continue to hear from lots of different planning directors around the state so we're not the only ones who've weighed in and they've already made changes um or potential changes they haven't voted anything out um to that bill to um address issues that that municipalities have raised that are important that um even the best intentions and the best drafters um you can't think of everything there's a date you got to get the thing printed and then you know that you're going to change it and you know other committees will also have their imprint there can be amendments on the floor that change things and then you go go through the other body so there's a lot of steps along the way to try to reflect um as broad a spectrum of interest as possible thoughts man yeah can i ask a question to our city manager yeah yes please has the vermont league of cities and towns made any um declarative statements about either set bond guards bill 68 or senator keisha ramsville and and where are those statements so the board the vlct board met with representative bond guards and senator romkins dale in december before the session started um they had they had my understanding is for months since august they have been meeting with different stakeholders to put together um drafts of bills so we were one of those stakeholders the league was one of those stakeholders that they stakeholders that they met with um we have not taken a specific position um i will be totally transparent wearing both hats i think one of the concerns and i think that the planning commission captured this really well one of the concerns that the league is trying to walk here is that we know that there is a housing crisis in the state we experience it as an employer we hear it from our business community we hear it from our residents um and i think some perceived municipalities as being the voice of no in legislation historically and so the league is very interested in staying a partner you know as as the planning commission outlined municipalities are the incubator of ideas of ideas in our state we are the places where we test out things sorry this is a long-winded answer where we test out things and we think that the more municipalities can stand in partnership with the state to solve climate change challenges housing challenges what not the better so we have not taken a hard position saying no we don't like you talking about local zoning to address the housing crisis we are open to those suggestions i think what they heard from the board as a whole at that meeting was to solve the housing crisis solely focusing on changes in municipal permitting is not going to work that to actually address the housing crisis in the state we need to look at municipal permitting we need to look at state level permitting we need to look at financing financing mechanisms and we need to look at the court appeal system and unless we do that holistically we are not going to solve the crisis so the challenge for the league is how and this is these are i know words that the planning commission was trying not to use but how do we accept the willingness to to give up some local control or to have state impose policy positions on municipalities when it might only solve 20 or 30 percent of a crisis if it will solve that to begin with and would undo some of the incubator innovation that has already been done at the local level so we have not officially taken a position we are but we are purposely not saying no and the we there was the league for which i serve as the board president which is sorry that's a little confusing and and has very capable competent amazing advocates in the state house but nothing on short term rentals or a rental registry that the the league you know included in the whole package because i would see those two things as additional items that need to be included in any solution sorry those are other policy positions of the league they weren't specifically commented on to those two legislators at that meeting okay thoughts so do you intend to have us sign this letter is that the okay that would be my attention that was that was what we thought was probably the strongest position to go forward i think if you were not interested week i don't know i guess did we i'm not sure that we made an official decision but we about whether we would send something on our own but i think the intent was that you would sign it and it would come from you okay all right so i'm i don't know if we have to vote to sign it i'm happy to have that vote but you said you had paper copies of the most recent i have a paper copy one paper but i'm happy to make more as i said the those were the two those are the um additions the numbers and the and the additions of the numbers and then a couple little typos that were not consequential i'm happy to go print other copies of others would like to review it though i would love to see the most updated copy yeah the word compromise was something that as a council i can see as a planning commission that it was a compromise perhaps you know your process but from the from my position here on the council i saw it as really refined and and specific set of of regulations um the compromise was done you know in a different in a different setting um so it really i saw it as something that reflected um a very thoughtful process with with very refined rules that came out based on all of the different questions that that you went through so that was the one word that stood out to me is perhaps that's something a planning commission perspective but from my position on the council where is that which paragraph it's right it's the large it's the page that has the number it's the page that has the number one bullet and it's the large paragraph above that and it's um thank you jesse you're good i know i had to word search for it okay so it says many of these provisions are compromises the there you are pud is a good example yeah i saw it as you know and the way i i read it as it was a way to check these homes from from flooding it was a way to provide green space and well-being to to the residents it was um i mean it serves various purposes it keeps salt and phosphorus away from waterways i mean there's just so much that i saw that's not a compromise that's really a strong set of rules that meet a lot of our goals um and and the needs quite frankly in order to uh you know be healthy you know stewards of of of our environment and that includes our waterways and lake my later on we talk about the careful balance that the city has struck you know kind of at the bottom of the page in your right that's maybe a better um that's how we did typically you talk about kind of the balance between different um regulations as we have made changes so if i can can i just have michael because i think he helped the compromise uh would you go to a mic please thank you make sure it's on michael i'm also on the planning commission uh the compromise that we refer to there is meant to indicate that uh this set of rules was a was a result of a lot of consultation and input from in the public hearings from all interest in the city so i like that compromise comes from i like what you just said we didn't compromise the rules we made the rules as a consequence of compromising to get everybody on two years well so maybe you can say many of these provisions are a result of consultation and you know in-depth discussion or something right i think that's better because compromise can have a negative connotation to it um okay matt you had wanted to say something well just that i appreciate the letter it's extremely well written um perhaps i shouldn't say too much but 68 is not the bill that's gonna move it's gonna move out of the senate oh i understand that but that's the bill we had yeah but no we don't we mean we have a we have a senate bill well they didn't when they were discussing this okay well anyway i've removed 68 because it doesn't it's doesn't really make sense in the context number one number two i will not sign this letter and i'd like it reflected that i'm not signing this letter i got some things to say too okay so rather than say on 68 maybe it can say the um omnibus i think that's the name of it do you know the name of um it's right here the title it is well to dr it's david hall's dr request dr rq 23 dash 0091 draft 6.1 is the latest version draft request 23 dash 0091 draft 6.1 okay it's senator romp in stales bill okay thank you um so you don't want to make any other statements matt other than you're not going to support it is that right well i would remove 60 if i were well it doesn't really matter because i'm not supporting well i i think the but 68 is 68 would be i'm arguing against my position but i would still remove it because it makes it clear that we haven't read the senate bill well it talks about the firm matt 868 is specifically referred to but those of us that are in the building know that that senator romp hindsdale's bill is the one that's moving 68 stuck up on the wall in a michelden's committee so there is reference to the senate yeah i don't want to sign this bill i don't want to sign this letter so i mean it's up to you but that's what my my suggestion for those that do want to send it okay tom you wanted to make a statement or a comment or yeah just a couple of things so i just uh i want to say that uh there are 6.1 million acres in the great state of vermont and i think it's entirely appropriate for the state for us to consider our climate and housing goals uh very appropriate for the state to be considering the policies that are used at the local level regarding housing so i applaud the leaders in the house and the senate that are looking at this important topic and i hope we all agree and i see that in the letter that this is well worth our time and attention i i just also want to recognize that senator romp hindsdale has been doing remarkable work on this and then i know she sent to all the counselors over the last couple of days it is continuing to evolve so thank you chair really for articulating the entire process and that there's going to be plenty of time to weigh in i don't support this letter as is because i just think it's a little premature i also don't necessarily agree with some of the sentiments in there which is consistent with why i voted against some of the land development regulations that were put before us over the last year or so i haven't had anything to do with the conversations on these bills i just applaud and oh and senator romp hindsdale mentioned this bill and i saw reports of it last december i'm just glad the discussions being had uh so i'm not going to vote on this because i don't necessarily agree with some of the statements in here and i also just think it's premature i think nothing has left either chamber so far and if this body wants to consider something that does make it on over through crossover or after the senate economic development committee does mark up the bill and make some changes i think that'd be more relevant testimony otherwise i think you're going to have to keep going back and revising this letter over and over again so i'd encourage this conversation to be punted until march or so okay i you know i comment with senator romp hindsdale is that she welcomed this input um and that it wasn't premature that that they need to understand and appreciate how much they need to understand um different perspectives in the local communities that that as you are well aware there are lots and lots of communities who don't have any zoning there are more communities who do not have sewer and water in their town center than do um so aspects of the policies that they're discussing um address the lack of things but that isn't the case in south burlington and i appreciate that neither you nor matt voted for this but um this is the ldr's and the regulations and the um approach that this city has embarked upon you know i think they identify how long we have been working on affordable housing and thought about where that should be developed and i don't recall you being opposed to affordable housing and developing densely in certain areas so the fact that you didn't like habitat um blocks is is an issue but i think these bills both sets and and cash cashes are much broader than that and and i think to give um sort of a broader view to a committee that's struggling to and i'm sure they will be struggling to find language that works for all communities and not know that one of the largest communities in the state has really thought about this tried things been successful um at developing much affordable housing in the very recent time in spite of some of these ldr's um so i i think will it be what we say on wednesday if we do um the last thing we'd want to say to me no but i think it's incumbent upon this community and our city management to keep abreast of that so we don't find um in may uh that there's a bill that um is vague doesn't um have language that clarifies for everyone what um is meant by where sewer lines run um does that mean all of the property that's part that runs next to that line or is it just a certain amount of of space is it you know 60 feet in you know it has impacts all over um our city and uh you know and that's our city policy so i think it's very timely that we let them know that we've looked at at least parts of this and um have uh helpful thoughts and recommendations in terms of what would work for south burlington and maybe ruttland and some other communities it doesn't say don't do anything it says when you do do things please be aware that you might have a negative impact on a community that has embraced um development affordable housing um taking care of the environment and having open spaces for um our our residents i mean we've kind of tried to balance all of it maybe the balance isn't perfect for some but that was our goal and at least the majority of the council um supported that michael i think we've also been at pains not maybe not enough to to um to improve this bill to improve it in a way that it will meet the objectives of more housing which as it's written now won't there as chairman really just pointed out there are a lot of communities that don't have water and sewer and they will not be captured by this bill at their town centers um jericho is one of them culturester to some extent charot as another they all just have private septic so but i'd also like to say just to matt and tom you know you endorse the climate action plan that south burlington has adopted and part of what's in this bill you didn't endorse it well it was at least the majority of the council i mean you you they represent the city you represent the city so as i see it and probably as other outsiders see it the city of south burlington has adopted a climate action plan and um this bill in some ways preempts some of the work that we've done and will make it very if passed will make it very difficult for us to improve on our action plan in the future and meet the objectives that we want to meet by 2030 and 2050 so it's important from that point of view as well but i'll go back to my first point we did try to improve the bill and make sure that its objectives will be met other comments or thoughts tim so i support the letter um you know the regional planning commissions work with local municipalities really hard to create this web of of regulations that best serves each community but that work together with each community as well and they dovetail and they they complement each other uh to implement specific objectives and anytime you have the state trying to do some central planning where we have local planning and they want to override our local planning and as you can know we do a lot of work with our local planning and a lot of work creating and crafting new regulations and changes regulations um i can't see i know that the that the source of the bill comes from it's hard as well placed but um i i really don't like the sense that it overreaches into local municipalities and attempts to to tell them what to do in their own zoning because we work very hard to manage ours on our own and we spent a lot of money and it's a lot of time and and i think that south burlington has done an excellent job in creating that balance that you spoke about in the letter right where you're trying to uh to balance many things at the same time your reactions to climate action and the needs there and affordable housing and open spaces and we went through iz for three years and what came out of that was a change a set of changes and i know they weren't supported by by tom and matt but you obviously support the process that was used to get there and if you support the process you should support this letter because what the state is proposing is they want to do away with some of the our own ability to come up with our own process which is really important for the voters to understand about how their community derives regulations that affect the quality of their own life so i'd strongly support the letter and i support any actions that we take to go to Montpelier and make our voices known so that we can create a better outcome whatever legislative process produces i know what they want to try to do you know and and so but they just i don't think they understand i don't think they really know what goes on in some of the larger cities and we'll be glad to tell them well i guess that was my point i think they need to understand what's going on all over vermont um in order to craft something that will be useful and and really um move the ability to create more housing more good housing some of it some of which hopefully will be affordable and um yes yeah yeah i i might have that it's very interesting that one of our favorite developers in south burlington um did call senator ram kinsdale to complain about the duplexes the language in here that requires duplexes because he was fearful that that would change his living community because there wouldn't be enough parking spots so some of these duplex owners would have to park their cars on the street and they don't do that now because they don't have duplexes so i mean it's just kind of ironic to me a builder who's very anxious to put up a ton of building but not not in my um the place where i live because i don't want to see a car on the street because we don't have duplexes now and they belong somewhere else just ironic other comments or i too support the letter um i um i know that wednesday is around the corner so i guess i'll output just these comments out there i'm not not necessarily expecting them to be included but if we could remove compromises i i like the consultation much much more and i also would say that i would like to see more about the buffer so that our new homes and what we hope will be more affordable homes will be less subject to flooding with the severe weather events that we'll be facing as a community in the decades to come and centuries to come and also the current progress that you're making on infill i think that's important to include that you know we have the number of acres and the percentage of acres but we intend for that you know four plus to to go up with with infill projects that will so just a slight little which we expect will increase since we are currently developing regulations um governing infill um i just like to say you know we're not done yet we're we're we're still working to you know increase beyond this density that we currently have in the city and i guess the question i had too was how having state regulations imposed what would that do to our tdr program i have no i have no idea what that would do you know we're we're trying to create incentives to go above four units per acre and giving people who have tdrs to sell you know a market in which to sell it i mean i just and i don't know the complexities of that um but i i think that you make mention of the tdrs in this letter and i think perhaps when we go in whoever goes in for testimony there could be you know some a little bit in the weeds that we we have a bank and and we can't leave these people hanging without making good on the promissory notes we've given to them so i guess those are the three big things um that you know if it doesn't make it into the letter because i think the letter is very good we should include it in in testimony and i do support also regular testimony because i i think we are an incubator i think we are innovative i i took great pride voting for the new land development regulations and knowing how hard you all had worked knowing that we have an expert in stormwater as the chair of our planning commission who has the respect of the entire planning commission and jessica you have just been an amazing leader for the city and and no way do i want to throw you under the bus like just no way look at our director of planning and zoning the two of you together along with with the commission i mean you have i believe steered this community to a sustainable future and and i i just i will defend that and you know i'll i support whoever can go to my failure to defend that so i i just want that to be loud and clear too because all of these hundreds of hours and sweat and tears that went into these for it all just to go to naught i mean who who would want to be part of the planning commission anymore who would you know go home after a busy week of dealing with you know all the permitting and the rules and the vying interests and just have it all be washed away and say wow my work and almost hours and you know all the effort i'm giving it's for naught maybe i'll do something else there's there's just there's something that's very i find you know i don't like the word anti-american because i find that to be too big of a bag but there's something that rubs me wrong to have this be so centrally directed when um we have such expertise but also incentives that the state has put in place and that we have been actively responding to i mean we have i think been in a nice dance with the state so i'll put it that way you know and let's carry on that dance yeah let's play some more music yes michael i'd like to thank jessica andrew paul and jessica and um kelsey because we got this done in 48 hours and it was very tough it was a weekend in between and uh i think everybody really really pulled their weight and the other i have a question for jesse would it be appropriate for this council to send this letter also to the league for distribution to its members you certainly could send it to the league that that's not typically how testimony to the legislature moves forward it usually moves directly to the committee now i didn't mean as testimony i meant as something that would be interest of interest to its members sure right okay paul do you have any thoughts of um how to structure this and um i think my only suggestion would be to reiterate what our city manager said at the beginning which is that um if the council does give the um go ahead on this letter or some adjustments to it to maybe also give some broad parameters and guidance to um whoever you choose to assign to speak to the legislature so that we can speak as this bill or the senate companion or other related ones evolve and speak maybe to the um the uh vision the objectives the successes and as several mentioned the the next steps of what the city is looking to do and how that can be a um considered and be a model in other places around the state um so that would be my one suggestion to add that so would that be kind of an administrative or city letter on top of this i think it would be direction in a motion to if you were to assign a member of yourselves or to staff i think it would just be in a motion to um to to that that's some guidance to staff as well yeah yeah well i appreciate it i i do think you need the guidance and and i will make that motion but i also um just thinking about in terms of the um the most effective presentation on wednesday is i mean i think this is this is long and powerful and you're not going to get through all of this in in um half an hour and you don't need to because they'll get it ahead of time and hopefully they'll have read it and you'll just do some highlighting but we also i think would start out with the kind of city vision or comments that you made and paul just kind of summarized as well sure uh i i guess i'm i'm a little um this is a really hard position for staff to be in when you have a three two what i perceive to be a three two vote on a council to go and be nibble and give policy guidance to to other elected officials um i'm wondering if there's a middle ground solution where i think this is i think we all know where each other stands i don't think there's confusion about um what we've done in the past to be an incubator these four specific points about how to improve the current bill um and the kind of high level values we want to maintain in our ldr's which are the policy documents of our city um i'm wondering if there's a middle ground approach where i'm sorry sorry for you under the bus here but for you to go and provide the you helen as council chair to go and provide the main testimony on wednesday given what you've heard with this letter if it's signed by three counselors um and then paul to be there with you to talk about any kind of um operational specifics about the ldr's you know how to the greatest extent we can as defined as it is which is not very much yet what those kind of on the ground permitting implications might be and have and really focus on those two areas at the moment you know what is the current policy documents and conversation the planning commission the council has had in the last week what are any operational implications and then as we get closer to crossover and know how the bills are really going to formulate then potentially come back to the council and say are there other kind of specific asks we want to be making through the process okay i have just a question because oftentimes when we have a letter it's signed by the chair as long as the council gives her direction to do that and we have a majority of the council giving her direction to do that i don't see a need for me to sign the letter or us to have five spaces like an ordinance um i i just wanted to put that out there um we clearly have a majority here that's the same majority who passed these ldr's but it's the law of our of our municipality excuse me um and we i think um can just give Helen that authority i mean that's my position with regard to who signs the letter the second thing is um kasha put out on the front porch forum that there was a joint hearing a week from this thursday at five with the house and the senate so that would be a second opportunity i think you know within the next week and a half to have someone go and then the um deadline for signing up to speak was the wednesday at noon so that's february 15th right at noon to sign up and then with speaking february 16th at five so i just wanted to bring that to people's attention um well what's your pleasure all right so my opinion is that since matt and tom voted against the ldr's i would prefer if they just abstain in the situation and not sign at all and just not even talk about it and then you still have a majority and we move forward as megan just said just with me just from me just the fact that you have three you have a majority of three counselors at this point yeah yeah so i would just have to say something to that yes um so i work i wear a couple of hats so tim i i wouldn't agree and i'll hopefully say that i i can't say nothing i have a responsibility to the constituents in my other role that when asked on these things i'll have to weigh in on them so i'm not disagreeing with most of what you just said but uh i am against this letter and uh if i asked about this in my state senate capacity i'll weigh an opinion when the bill gets to a closer state of possible passage so tom are you saying that you won't sign this bill in part because the letter or the letter rather that it's the timing is off it's it's premature and you're almost suggesting that if if later in the session if um the bill has you know seems to have made some changes or is coming together then you would be supportive of having the city describe how this might um undermine their current ldr's and their vision for climate housing economic development whatever transportation all those kinds of things the environment i think it's always difficult to deal with hypotheticals and so in your question there i see a lot of caveats and so what i'll say is um i've gotten in trouble before when i've made clear a position and only had to change it after i collected more information as we go forward on this and please know that i will definitely be following the issue closely this letter because of for example there were two reasons why i didn't vote for the land development regulations that i stated in multiple forums was one the habitat blocks i think have a questionable from a constitutional perspective and the other one was the conservation puds i do not think was a a good use of land or a good prioritization and i see in this letter some contrary points to that position that i previously had so for that those reasons as well as i think this is premature um i'm not supporting this letter tonight in its current form and i do think uh more time could be had before you officially weigh in as a city when you see what the changes are that senator keisha ron hinsdale has already mentioned to her in her email uh so that's the premature piece uh council really i don't sorry go ahead yeah you can take the turn it's three three people want to send this letter it's going to happen i just either it has to be mentioned that i am not supportive of it or i will do it separately independently that's doesn't matter to me i can have it either way but it will be said somehow i don't want the interpretation to be that city councilor matt cota supports all the items in this letter and opposes these actions in the bill that senator keisha ron is currently considering at her committee well what would the council like to do you want to have three signatures or do you just want to i want to empower you and if you want to go to my appeal here or talk to people i mean that's your prerogative matt and and tom is there okay i find it to be disrespectful of the planning commission and the whole process here in the city but that's your choice thank you okay well i can make it clear if someone asks what the vote is from my perspective this is city policy right and that's what i'm sharing and need to share and its impact on how we envision the city and the development of housing and infrastructure and all of that because but it would be nice to have paul there it's always nice to have paul there yes okay all right so shall we take a formal vote or is this just so i'll move that we approve the letter as amended so changing compromises to consultation i think jessica wrote that down and then just taking out the number h68 in the first paragraph many of these provisions so many of these provisions are the result of the result of consultation and in-depth discussion and then you said also about changing where it says h68 to be removing h68 i don't know yeah my as a reference like an interactive vermont planners association referenced it as h68 and dr 23-091 okay let's include that number but that tracking i think tracking is probably helpful for the recipients yeah because i imagine that there are many many bills that are unrelated to this that are also made considered by the legislature that's fair enough so just the just the compromises part and authorizing chair really right yeah authorizing chair really to sign on behalf of the city and also authorizing chair really and other city planners to to participate in uh the state level discussion uh as including city manager jesse baker and paul conner our director planning and zoning second okay any further discussion okay all in favor signify by saying aye aye those opposed no nay okay so it passes through i know i can't count that he said nay and i said no um three to two okay well thank you for all your work thank you and thank everyone who worked on it yes it was quite a thank you for not nominating me thank you okay all right so now we are aware um discuss a potential leaf blower ordinance and provide direction to staff to council request i don't know who's a request i mean someone requested it so this is uh sorry no go ahead uh this is i my recollection was that several of you have talked about this as a potential priority to regulate the use of this equipment um over the last couple of months we are in the process of drafting lots of ordinances so before we spent a whole lot of time um drafting something that was not of interest we wanted to just bring it to you and see what specifically you're looking for and if at all possible where this sits with the priorities of uh you know heating and existing homes short-term rentals rental registries and our full ordinance update that we're working on so we're fits in terms of the priority unless you given that i don't think you want us to bring you you know a whole code of ordinances to update all at once like if this is more important because it's seasonal seasonally appropriate we would we could fast-track this one um and really just want to hear some conversation before we start spending a lot of time on it yeah yeah i would think there's already an ordinance out there uh burlington's that serves as a model hopefully this wouldn't be a heavy heavy lift i think that the short-term rentals would be a heavier lift yes yes and we we mean non-electric leaf blowers right so any internal combustion leaf blower i'm assuming i i don't yeah i don't know what the burlington ordinance says i don't know what i don't know either might as well just copy there should we should at least that should probably at least be the basis for the ordinance and then if we want to modify in any way we can make it a gentler kindler version kinder version or harder i think the thing that i recall from the discussion is that burlington has a window where they can't be used when the windows are like open because it's warm outside whereas the recommendation that brought came forward to our body was that it would be year-round it wouldn't just be this window former weather months that are noisy yeah right so is is that enough direction i mean i don't know i've done tim do you agree that this could be moved up well i mean yeah i mean can we could we at least get the content sent to us of the burlington ordinance if we if we can find that out quickly and then we can look at it and say hey this this looks like it's easy to do or to ask burlington how it's enforced and is is it working yeah that's right get some feedback from them not just copy it i don't know how that's i don't want to replicate something that isn't working well right right and then so they don't enforce it then that's you know and then with regard to the existing homes for um for uh non fossil fuel use and all of that and the short-term rentals i guess i'd like to hear from our city attorney on what works best for him in terms of how long it would take and do we have to say one before the other i don't know i mean i think that the house i mean the reporter that i spoke with and who reported in the other paper said that the number of short-term rentals in south burlington has increased by 25 percent in over a year so that's a pretty big number um and i guess we should maybe find out if they're being taxed as commercial as opposed to just residential i mean that could be kind of a short that's where the state could get involved i've said that every time i've written and do their part and maybe fund the municipalities to take over this type of operation if they lay a groundwork for it exactly or propose the groundwork for it right number one all rentals have got to be hard-bired interconnected smoke detectors so they got to be inspected right number one safety yeah number two registration right affidavit number three tax collection and verification of tax collection right yep yeah mad with regards to short-term rentals to hear a contrary not a contrary viewpoint but a another viewpoint if someone is there's real a statewide expert in this is to contact julie marx for the short-term rental alliance she's worked with different cities on different ordinances it may not be what you end up with but at least to have that conversation there's a wealth of knowledge and she's a she lives in burlington is a very bright individual and she could give context to what's happening to the marketplace that would be great should we ever come to a council i'm sorry go ahead what are you gonna say so just on the short-term rentals rental registry side we have we stood up across departmental team that's working on that so they have listened to your discussion last time gone through like the key questions about taxation what not are doing that research with the intention of coming back to you likely the first meeting in april once the new council is seated not necessarily with a full book of ordinances but with some kind of here's where we're going here are what we see as the high-level goals that we are writing your audience to are we on the right track so that's often often running i don't mean to suggest that we're pausing on all of these until we get your priorities i think the question more was that is a bit of a heavy lift so if this leaf blower one i think you and i had emailed about the seasonality of this if this was really something we wanted to get in place you know by the end of april then we would need to know that that timing requirement so we could go through the full ordinance process that's really what i was trying to get at tonight not not to say only work on one thing until we only work on another thing okay that's all right wasn't clear on that okay yeah so i think this is helpful guidance we can get going just helpful to hear you talk about a little bit before we start pulling pulling sentences so thank you okay uh kayla is saying she would like to make a comment okay kayla more oh kayla more if you would like to make a comment hi yeah thank you can you hear me yes we can thank you yeah thank you um i just i thank you uh to the council for putting the leaf blower ordinance on the agenda for discussion i just want to say quickly um i know that the burlington ordinance is seasonal and i think that that was put in place more um around noise um but i think that was before um well maybe not before many people realized but before it was maybe many many people realized how harmful leaf blowers really are to the climate and to our health the emissions are really really harmful um and so that's i think justification for a year wide ban and not just doing what burlington has done so i just want to put that out there thank you any other that's it right oh michael from what kayla just said is that these um this equipment these leaf blows are not used in winter they're only used from spring to fall so the season out is not an issue you could just make it year round you don't have to define when it may or may not be used they're only used oh i meant i meant seasonal from when we want to go into effect so if the council if the council was concerned that spring is coming and people are going to start using them therefore we need to fast track this so it's ready for spring that's what i'd meant by season i was referring to burlington's window oh yeah which we don't need to have so it turns into a snow blower in the winter time well you know i've seen thank you michael so they do use it in the winter too yeah we'll leave it in certain conditions right fluffy fluffy enough okay rock uh rocks in roseanne did you want to say something yeah i want to echo what kayla and michael said i really support this uh and as michael and kayla pointed out it's uh i don't know how it originated but it's way more than just noise although noise is horrible and we go into that if you want but um i mean the effect on the climate crisis these gas powered equipment uses massive amounts of fuel and produce massive amount of pollution so in and of themselves but just that should be enough to to to ban them but uh but as you're talking about seasons our seasons are changing so i hope this is year-round because we may be uh blowing leaves in february in a few years so um with with the climate change so i totally support uh which what you're doing and support what kayla and what michael said okay thank you all right i don't see anyone else who wants to speak so i will move on to third item 13 is there any other business i do have some okay megan yeah this the beauty of this is going to be in the enforcement of course so keep neighborly everybody but what i wanted to say was um just walking our dog at wheeler and on a leash um there are still dogs off leash walking through wheeler on those trails and i talked about it um with my husband as we were stepping over little dog excrement um that one of the goals of having a park there was to make sure that the dogs who were off leash were in the park in the on the trails so um what you know we were thinking and i'll just say i because i don't want to put him on the hook but um is perhaps the the dog of the common area for dogs committee that they could do some enforcement perhaps or some education but what the city could do is put a sign at the entrance to the trails saying your dogs must be leashed and here is the fine you know for for being unleashed or for you know not picking up after your dog right and i just making it really clear because that is a beautiful uh trail system right next to is it muddy brook um so one of our waterways that we're trying to protect i mean we just really need to put it up there for people this you know these are our rules and if you want your dog off leash there is a dog park just right around you know right the bend so just really making it clear because the fear is of course since this is now a destination dog park is we might get more dogs walking off leash on the trails as a result of trying to solve that issue so uh i know matt i don't know if you're going to be with the dog park committee at all um but i don't know if um it's okay if i talk to betty about having them to discuss enforcement yeah could i could i reply to that sure um absolutely 100 as the as the uh as someone who has a dog was 138 pounds and is always on a leash the issue is not those that have dogs that are well trained and can run side by side the issue is with the dogs meet the other dogs that are on the leash and you have to have a dog that's 138 pounds that's where the trouble is so you are exactly right counselor emory the reason why we have leash laws is not because your dog is fine so it's the other dogs that need to be on the leash it's because of the reaction that occurs right and and the people that could be in between that could be harmed so you've nailed it there are signs that the uh they are like campaign signs or realtor signs that the committee for common area dogs have put up at wheeler and at um red rocks um they have a picture of a dog with a leash in his mouth saying leash up they have been taken down because the snow they're usually up in the in the summertime in the spring and the fall um so they should go back they we have them they don't say what you said though they don't remind people that there is a fine on the books or not having a leash dog so yes we have signs yes they should go back up um but but the question about whether we should talk about the actual fines if you don't I think that's a good discussion to have with Betty in the in the commentary doc so that's that's all I'm gonna say about that I've had a discussion with Betty on a number of issues um because we were both in the dog park one day and um grousing both of us about there's a dog park there are bags as you walk in there are two containers right for the dog waste and people still don't pick up the dog poop I mean I so I understand you're they're running around and you lose you have two dogs there or something and you don't have an eye and one of them you know it goes to the bathroom and you don't notice it so you don't pick it up but it's more it it's so common it's not that so um and I suggested that you have conversations with the common area of dog for dog committee about she had wanted to at least um offer you know some um people on the committee or others who would be willing to do some monitoring would be willing to pick up dog poop um and encourage other people to do that have you know a little you know maybe even have a little ambassador thing you know or whatever you'd have in a dog park um and I also thought it was important for them to discuss and come to the council um you know maybe it would be helpful if one of the dog bags and container or maybe just the dog bag was on the far side of the part of the fenced-in area because I get it you know you get oh darn I had two and I used them yesterday I don't have any dog bags and here's my dog pooping and the bag is way over there and you you don't walk all or you if you walk over there you forget where they pooped and then you know it doesn't get picked up I appreciate that so um you know maybe it's something that filling them could be one of the activities of dog common area for dog committee members because they seem to be really willing to put in that time to make it so so nice but even walking through so I thought that she should come to this they should meet and they should come to the council with whatever recommendations they might have about what they would like to do or what they want um public works to do and we could have that conversation and what they might need what they might need to be ambassadors if they need yes or or yeah or whatever I mean I just think they really care about it and buttons right or something I don't know it just it's a beautiful dog park people do come from all around they say it is the nicest one in the state um so let's keep it nice yeah we need to keep it nice and I believe there is a fine for letting not picking up after your dog is that right or is it just off leash I thought it was also I don't know it's an issue seems to be everywhere but okay all right um so any other business Tim no okay well then we will go into executive session when we have a motion but we will I'm just announcing we will not take an action and we will Paul I need to just chat with you just for a second okay um uh but we will not come back into into the meeting it will be done I would like to move yes you make the motion but not for my house I move that the council enter into executive session for the purpose of discussing the appointment employment or evaluation of a city employee specifically the city manager inviting city manager Jesse Baker into the session with the council second all in favor I I okay so we will move into executive session Tom I sent you the materials have you received them I have them thank you okay good all right so we'll see you upstairs or something let's give me upstairs no we can go into the