 I'll call the first board of finance meeting at 0.23 and it's at work at 5.03 PM. Hope everyone enjoyed their time away. I hope you had some good downtime. I did. I'm excited to be back with you and diving in for another year here. So the first item on the agenda is the agenda. I'll put a welcome motion to amend it or not. I would move to adopt the agenda. Second. Great. Thank you, Councilor Spickey and Jang. Any discussion of the agenda? Seeing none, we will go to a vote. All in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. We have an agenda. This brings us to the public forum and I am looking around the room. I don't see anyone in the room that is wishing to speak to the board of finance, checking our attendees. Please raise your hand if you do want to be recognized now. I don't look like there's anyone online. So we will close the public forum and move to the consent agenda, which really involves just the adoption of the December 12th. Are we ready for a motion to adopt the consent agenda? So moved. Thank you, Councilor McKee. Seconded by Councilor Jang. Discussion of the consent agenda. Seeing none, we will go to a vote. All in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Okay, that brings us to the section four of the agenda, which is we have five items for approval and recommendation of the city council, then we'll have one item just for board of finance to approve that is the agenda. And we are hoping to be out of here in about 25 minutes when there is a work session planned for the full council. So 4.01 is the authorization to accept grant funds for the operation of the Elmwood and Warranty filter. This is good news as we sometimes have been seeking additional funds from the state beyond the funds that we already have committed and we have some good news in this area. And I'd like to welcome Sarah Russell, our special assistant at homelessness, who's going to raise up the speed on where to stand. Sure. So we're successful. As the mayor mentioned in our request to AHS to increase our funding, they agreed to fund us at, we had originally asked for 1.4 million. They've agreed to fund us at 1 million. And this grant agreement will be as prorated for October 1st through June 30th. They need an extra point to tell us that they could not guarantee ongoing funding that it was a year-to-year grant. So we need to begin another application to OEO in a couple months for next fiscal year's funding. And we're working with CHT. They agreed to make some changes to their budget. And so we're working through that with them right now. So this is what you have as a request to execute the grant agreement when it comes from OEO this week. Great, thank you. It's Laura Jumpin for questions, discussion, motion. Councilor McGee. Thank you both for bringing this to us. We've got the additional funding. Kind of unfortunate that it's a year-to-year grant and uncertainty is never a funding agreement. Is it chromatically changing the operation plan for CHT? No, not at all. Okay, so essentially an augmentation to what they've committed already from funding. So it's really an increase with recognition that the staffing law straightly projected needed to be expanded to ensure good outcomes, basically. And I guess if you have another question I have, which I sent earlier as regards to the timeline for opening that we're in January, just kind of managing expectations there for folks. We are, obviously, as I think all of us, we wanted this in place a while ago. So let's just start with that as the baseline. Okay, supply chain issues, labor force issues. We have a builder for both the bath house and the common building for Maine. Maine has got this modular company, which turned out to be a very good choice in terms of the quality and the price point. Maine as a state is incredibly restrictive on when you can travel with these extra wide loads. You can't travel Monday, you can't travel Friday, you can't travel when the weather is precipitating in any way and you can't travel on either side of a holiday. So when you look at a calendar, it leaves you very few days to travel this time of year and we've been really hit by that. So we lost some days there as well. But the common building has been lifted from the crane by the crane onto the site, or should say onto the, essentially the sill that it sits on, which is the structure that supports it. And the two sections, which are basically two modular units have been married together and the roof has been shingled. So that building is ready for the interior work to take place that is needed. We expect the bath house in the next few days. And fortunately the crew that brings it can actually just turn around and go back to Maine with their equipment because once it comes off the flatbed, the local contractor who's been managing the project knows enough just by being there today how to set the building, how to set the structure. So once it's there, that project will begin on the bath house as well. So we're, you know, crossed our fingers, but it's about a two week process from the time it arrives till the time it's ready to be occupied. So looking at that, you know, by the end of the month is work really optimistic about. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. No, we've had a lot of outside forces that have influenced the timeline for this. I appreciate you all working through that. So. Yes, Jane, go ahead. Thank you. They know about a fence out there. Yes. All right. Yes. So it seems that this funding that we're in total for this project to be operating for three years. Now we experienced some delays, would you extend that delay? I think we're still anticipating a full 36 months of operation that's changed from now. We think too that the funding from the state while it's competitive and it's annual, as long as we do a good job, we're going to be highly competitive as a grand applicant. So our focus is on great outcomes for the residents and reward is to get more funding to support more people to move from homelessness to permanent housing. The states also has really prioritized expansion of non-congregate emergency shelter options throughout the state obviously because they're such a challenge with the hotel system being so backed up that they are newly desired to implement more emergency shelter across the state. So this is the huge priority area for agency income and services. Thank you. You know, I was just to add that for three years, some ways seems to go really quick. Other ways, you know, it is a significant amount of time since we have seen a lot of variability in the size of this population in recent years. I think it's a little early to definitively conclude exactly what the kind of end dates look like this things could change. So we also, we do anticipate we have sort of had preliminary discussions with CHT about the site becoming a permanent, formal housing site as we discussed a little bit before and, you know, I think more, well, I think it's accurate and it was just said to you that we're suspending for 36 months, there could be some amendments to that as we get farther into all these conversations. I think it's very good news that we've been able to get this substantial increase in the state funding for year one. I grew with the notion that it is true it's just someone you're committed but we'll be pushing very hard. The state has been very stated, the state talks a lot about this project. They see this succeed. I'm certainly hopeful about future year funding and at this level now, which is much closer to what we had originally projected. It makes me hopeful that we'll be able to come back to you in the coming months with a second level of housing investments from our ARPA funds. If you remember, we had a year marked together about $5 million of our $27 million in special ARPA funds for homelessness and housing initiatives. We committed about $3 million of that. We haven't committed any more in part, frankly, because we were concerned we may need to put a lot more towards this project, starting to have some hope that we have to do that and we'll be able to have to bring other housing initiatives forward. Order, a lot more to say about that. That's where it stands on. And there is still some more to work through here but that's where we are now. Okay, so where are we? I don't think we've had a motion yet on the side. I'd be happy to. So I thank you, Councilor Dief. Seconded by Councilor Jay. Any further discussion? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. Thank you both. Thank you. 4.02 is a request to execute a contract with motor road solutions for public safety communications systems and services acting fire chief Eric Libby has been working hard on this since it was handed over to him from Chief Fock. And it's pretty exciting to be in the milestone in this effort to be able to form this contract. So I think that. I mean, like DM memo says, this replaces an aging and unsupported system that is essential for public safety throughout the city. You know, there was a discussion in questions earlier about regional dispatch, the need for this system, what happens if regional's position right now, regardless of what happens on that front, this system is needed now to maintain communications throughout the city. If we were to stay local or go outside, the infrastructure is still necessary to allow emergency services to communicate. Throughout the process, we worked with Burlington Police Department and Department of Public Works to make sure that all pre-agency's needs were met and really had a design process that took everybody into account and looking at not only best practices as far as infrastructure, but also that as the end user of getting a system built that we can live with networks for the community. You saw in the memo or in the packet, the attachment from Dr. Magnuson from Texas A&M, we were asked to get a third party evaluation of the design work that was done just to ensure that someone outside of a vendor saw the value of the system and agreed that it worked for us. And I think as multiple page letter confirmed, the design work that is done will meet our needs. Thank you, Chief. There is a reference to this in the memo, but it just seems worth just making sure we all are on the same page that this project was called out when we went to the voters back in town meeting day last year with a $24 million bond package with the expectation that about four million of that would be used on this project and we're still in that ballpark. Why do that ballpark? Yeah, part of the numbers that we presented have the contingencies in there for overages, but also does not hold in the station alerting for the five firehouses. And with that in there, we're still going to be under budget and meet the $4 million, but we'll be coming back later on with another ask that completes the entire package. I would just note that the Public Safety Committee reviewed this. We signed onto it. We're happy with the memo and I appreciate the work that's gone into this. I just want to note that there is the item that is listed as the Public Safety Committee recommendation was actually the letter from the professor at Texas A&M. So I don't know if there's another document that coincides with our recommendation, but I just want to flag that. I'd be happy to say what you're saying, but I want to thank you, Councilor McGee. Are you guys following that? Just that there's a document on Bordax that's labeled Public Safety Comm recommendation. That was that a written recommendation from. I think that may be the title of the document that the doctor had sent to us, Public Safety Communications. Ah! Okay. It's partly not the committee. Great, yeah. It's a little confusing number. But it is helpful to appreciate that you guys took that. It was supposed to be communication, but it looks like committee, I see. Yeah. Would be, I don't know if there's a way to... Yes. You should maybe like somehow let the full council know that the committee has taken action. You know the checklist that's marked off that they supported it. I think in the memo it speaks to... Yes. On the checklist, it does a Public Safety Committee review it on the 1st of December. And it is in the memo, but it's very lengthy memo. So it's a little dense to get through all of that. All right. So I wanted to clear up any confusion. Thank you. Very good. I'm happy to get it. Thank you. Councilor McGee, is that a second? Question. Good question. Okay. Before we go to the question, do we have a second? For the motion since... Second as well. Okay. Then go ahead with the question. Thank you. And especially with the community leaders and the people who design this technology, but probably to other people, that's great. But how do you actually try product itself? Currently we use 90 plus percent Motorola products and part of the importance of staying with Motorola is the interoperability with infrastructure. The radios we have in trucks, the portable radios that officers and firefighters carry allows compatibility of it. So the Motorola product is tried and true in the Burlington Fire and Police. We've tried other products that have led us back to Motorola. And what do you do with people technology? What do you do with it? A lot of it's recyclable that it's no longer supported. It's end of life. That is true. Yeah. Thank you. And this is also part of the geo bound from the voters. This is, yeah. The voters have already supported this. Yes. Thank you for being with us. Thank you. Thank you. Great. Any further questions? That discussion? Not. We will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion will please say aye. Very opposed. Motion carries unanimously. Okay. 4.03 Roosevelt Park. Thank you. Thank you. Just moving on to try to get us through the 4.530 here. Roosevelt Park Tennis Court's reconstruction. I was just going to zoom in on that. But why don't we see how the board likes to proceed? Are you ready for our motion on this? Or is it like here from parks? Go with you. Okay, great. Go ahead, Max or Cindy. Can you go through how we got to this project? Yes, I can go through how we got to this project. We had a request from Penny for Parks actually in her previous fiscal year. So this would have been in November of say 2021, I suppose. Just to resurface the courts and sort of rushing them up. And we had set aside Penny for Parks funding in the amount of about $10,000 to $15,000 just to do a quick resurface. We got a number of contractors out there to take a look at it. And there was nobody who was willing to take on resurfacing those courts in that amount who would also be willing to warranty our work due to just the overall age of those courts and the likelihood that the cracks would reappear. So coming into this year, we had requested some assigned fund balance and are pursuing a full reconstruction of these courts which are about 30 years old, which is kind of beyond what you can expect for the lifespan of the pavement. So that's how we got to this point. We put it out to bid, we got two bids and are going with the low bidder whose bid amount comes to about $125,000, which is a little higher than what we've seen in the previous years, but it's not far over what we were expecting. Great. Thank you, Max. I think this is these courts, we have courts all over the city that Parks has worked hard to keep in good shape. I think these are particularly important courts for the partnerships. So we have around this with youth on the ball, right? Yeah, kids on the ball. Kids on the ball, right. This has been a great program of partner figures now. So, Councillor James. Yeah, we'll cut. You can make the motion as indicated. Thank you. Seconded by Councillor McGee, the questions for the discussion. Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. And all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. Thanks, Max. Thank you. Okay. Next up, we have a Human Resources Director or Market Factor Adjustment. There is a memo from me on this item. We also, Jordan, had worked with me on this and say a happy answer. Any questions about this proposal or to say or get a happy to do that to you? That's your take. I was wondering if we have anybody from Calabar and Plink about they have questions about the methodology and get over here. Sure, we don't have someone from Gallagher for in here. Jordan did work with them. My name is Jordan and I go ahead, Ali, if you can expand on your question. I did work with Gallagher, Flint, so I'm happy to try and answer Ashrafat's report if you have it. I mean, on the memo, all of you from Calabar and Plink, I mean, I think they stated here very clearly that they do comparison with similar position across all the organizations. And I just wanted to understand if they made comparison with all the cities, municipal companies, our size, and the scope of the meetings. I don't know if they got to that level exactly. I do know that they did an analysis of government versus all industries. And I think the government included both municipalities and probably state government. And then, what was the second part of your question? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, one thing that they look at is they reviewed our specific job description and evaluated that with the comparison to the number of employees in our organization. And they use that as a factor when looking through their other models and determining comparable positions. I want to note that if I'm reading the report correctly, that it does list a range of government organizations from 50 million to 200 million. So, we're kind of right in the middle of that range, almost under a million dollar budget, more if you consider our enterprise funds and whatnot, that if you cross over that, then we're right around 200 million if you put all the enterprise funds in there. So I think they made an attempt to look at comparable organizations this way. I understood the stock conditions. Yeah. I really wanted to also understand those government entities, their compensation philosophy as well, because it's missing, that's part of the report. And yeah, that's why I need to ask them a question about who they come and what it seems. It's state, only around the state and not national. And also government is one thing, but government about size. And so in terms of people being managed, supervised, I think it's also completely different. But does that just possibly work? Okay, thank you, Councillor Chang. I hope we've given you some answer to your question. I'm not sure we can do more tonight, but again, I do think it's pretty clear that they looked at governments, they looked at, they did offer us if you wanted to compare it to like the private sector, which we don't typically, for most positions we don't, there are a few positions that are a little bit, there's reason to really look to the kind of private sector comparisons. We haven't done that here. What made sense is just to stick with the government and again, I believe they have looked at comparable governments in a way to bring this forward. The way that Gallinger Flynn does their analysis and from what I understand the way their models work is that they're not necessarily picking specific cities and saying, these are the cities we're gonna compare to. They have more complex tools that aggregate salaries and that type of information off of many different organizations which more accurately reflects that what we're looking for versus just picking certain cities and using those as the benchmark necessary. Using those as the benchmark, this looks at a much broader pool of information and the budgets and number of employees in those organizations. And if Capnitz worked with Gallinger Flynn before, would you say that that's an accurate representation of their process? That is accurate and there's a lot to get through in this report, but on the, it looks like on page seven, you can see the various data sources and they have their own has been good about doing. You will also see them on page eight, we have the salary comparison with government and then on nine with all industries. And so we are focusing on page eight with the government, but you can see it kind of sliced both ways here. And I think also he made a very, they made a very good point. And so whenever we talk about government to make the distinction between local, state and national politics. I think in this report, they didn't specifically say which one they compared this analysis to which one. On the overview, they made it very clear because all of those are completely different. My only concern is basically we are being asked to make a vote here today tonight. And this comparison, this is not a recommendation for us to move forward, it's the range, right? And I would really would love to see all of these studies being done with department heads to be done basically thinking about the next fiscal year. And also this is also asking to do a retroactive day October, which I think is a little bit concerning for my facility. And this is important, yes, but also let's think about it from the next fiscal year, but not this fiscal year. That's... It's pretty, it's actually in our personnel policy that some reclassifications are retroactive to the day when he started, when the staff conversations began. And so generally when we seek reclassifications, very common for us to seek for them to be retroactive to a certain date is that is in the personnel policy. I'm not sure I understood the first question, was it that you think that this should be enacted for FY24 versus today? So let's make these studies and start to take them accordingly at our next fiscal year. That's what we need to form. But not. And also to make the decision between positions that are already in fields and also position that we are trying to deal with is our position that are being held by our CDM employee already. But I feel like, yes, we need to make the study in order to give them competitive pages that's starting next fiscal year. This is all about how do we manage our events as we move? Yes, there's a couple of things in there that I guess I'd like to respond to. It's just make sure we're on the same page. So in memo makes the point that there have been, since the last time a study of department at salad, 2009 was the last time there was sort of a comprehensive across the board study of the salaries. It took several years of our couple of administrations for all the findings from that report 2009 to be implemented. But they've actually worked by 2012, all of those positions except for the mayors that have been changed. Since then, more than half of the department had some other action has come up where we've felt, the administration has felt and the council has agreed that some adjustment to those salaries was necessary. A number of those just in the last few years we've increased some of them to be aligned with sort of challenging job market and the pressures of the last years that we talked about a lot of times and in all levels of public employment. What we are identifying, although not really seeking approval tonight, but I do wanna be sort of telegraphing a future conversation is I do think is a matter of equity for the department heads that have had no assessment in 13, 14 years now that we do a study like this for them. And I'd be happy. I think it's an interesting point. If I could discussion, be happy to have Galger Flynn present on their methodology for doing a bunch of them I think for the future having them kinda either mid-process or at the end of the process having you hear directly from them how they do it I think could be helpful particularly. So you're not just, we're not trying to attempt to articulate this. So that really is, we are envisioning that as an FY24 conversation. So we start these reports now, take some time, we have that information to agree that it won't necessarily come back saying we need to make a change in all cases to agree they do we would be looking to build that in for the FY24 budget. So I think we're in agreement about that. That's what we're referring to. With respect to this particular individual, the HR director, I, we've listed in the memo several reasons why it made sense to us to make sense to me to pursue the salary review and why I am asking for us to make this change now. And I am hoping that we have support for that tonight, but with respect to the other positions, I agree with you. At this point, we are anticipating bringing any of those forward before the beginning of FY24. Thank you. And, you know, I think this position and all the other positions that are being studied, I think I would like to make one vote supporting them for the understanding of I will see all the details. Response to all the questions that I have from Canada. I will not be some of this. Once it is supporting it, we will bring it forward for the MRT. Okay. Understood. I'm giving that, I'm interested in Councilor McGee, Councilor Hightower seems to want us for this conversation, are we going to be able to make a recommendation on this? After hearing your reporting, I feel like I'm comfortable to make a recommendation. See me. I agree with Councilor Chen, which should have a pretty solid plan for reviewing these future positions in a very intentional way, especially if we're going to continue to see it. It's not an insignificant adjustment in salaries, especially if we're doing multiple of these, so just echo that. So your agreement going forward, you want some more discussion methodology and planning, I actually did not fully hear your first, with respect to the action tonight, are you ready to take action with me? All right, okay, thank you. Councilor Hightower, you've been able to follow this discussion. Yeah, I heard most of it. I didn't hear all of it. Moving forward with this a little bit more proactively, I'll go with the conceptions in the room, which I wasn't quite sure what Joe was saying was his consensus, but... Okay, thank you, Councilor Hightower. I believe we're at is, I obviously intend to vote yes on this recommendation with respect to the HR director. I believe Councilor McGee will be voting yes as well. I can't, City Council President Karen Paul is not here, but I have discussed this matter with her at the time and I'm confident she will be voting yes as well. So, Councilor Jeng has indicated that he's not comfortable for the reason he had to do it. So I think that's where we're at. And with that, in the interest of time, if there's no, go ahead, Councilor McGee. Happy to. Yeah, that'd be great. So the motion from Councilor McGee. Second. Second by Councilor Hightower. There's no further discussion, we'll go to vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. So we have three ayes and one no. And also a request to put it on a delicable set of consent. To put it on a deliberative. So we said yes please. Yeah. Okay. So, great. That's 4.04, that brings us to 4.05, which is the authorization for reimbursement from Waterfront TIF, downtown TIF district related costs for FY22. This is a routine item that we do basically on an annual basis or the TIF districts. Quickly, we are, we're running one in 10 minutes late. So if you could. This is annual housekeeping, working within regular project budgets each year at the end. Well, around this time of year, after the last fiscal year, we cleaned it up by having a reimbursement resolution for all our related costs for both of our TIF districts to complete the bookkeeping and do those funds into the respective TIF district accounts. So they can be reimbursed with TIF equity. Great, one of the many things you do on a regular basis to stay in compliance with the complicated TIF clock. Correct each year and we try to tie it in with our annual TIF reporting and our annual water. Great. Hopefully that's enough of a summary for folks. I have more questions or are we ready for a motion on this end? Yeah, we'll be as indicated on the question. Thank you, Councilor Chang. Seconded by Councilor McGee. Any looking to see if Councilor Hightower has a hand up, she does not. So I think we're going to go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Are you opposed? I believe that carried. 4-0, I did hear Councilor Hightower as well. So with that, the final item, thank you both. The final item is authorization to execute a contract with the economic planning systems for impact fee study. This is the beginning of an important process we've been talking about updating for quite a while now. Playing director, Megan, tell us here. You want to add anything to the short summary here? Yeah, I don't have anything major to add other than we already have a portion of our impact fee study underway with the Regional Planning Commission evaluating our transportation impact fee currently. That work is being primarily funded by the RPC. So this is our funding for the assessment of the other service areas alongside the transportation impact fee. So these are the fees. Of course, anytime a new development project comes forward there, so long list of fees, impact fees that they're responsible for, they haven't updated the methodology for assessing those fees in a long time. And in particular, there's been an interest in changing the way we think about transportation projects that will be done by this. Yeah, I'm happy to elaborate if anybody would find that helpful. I apologize, I was really... No, I appreciate you keeping us. I'm happy to make the motion as recommended. Great, thank you. That's a game, nodding. So if there's no further questions, we will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say hi. Hi. All right, I'm ready to post. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you, Megan. Thanks, everyone. Sorry to keep some folks waiting. We will adjourn the Board of Finance at 5.45. And meet President Paul upstairs through his right there now. And we'll learn about financial literacy, which I know everyone's really excited about.