 Second. Motion by Jim, second by Brandon, all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thanks so much. Thank you. Great. Thank you. So this brings us to the end of the military control board agenda. Can I have a motion to adjourn? Is that moved? Second. Motion by Jim, second by Aurora, all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. So it's 6.23 Congress. I will call to order this regular meeting of the Liberty City Council. First up is agenda review. Any concerns about the order of this evening's agenda? I was actually wondering if it might make sense to switch items F and G so we can talk about what's going on with the housing initiative as a stand before we speak about the position. No. I think that's appropriate. All right. Laura would you like to make a motion to swap items F and G? So moved. Second. Motion by Aurora, second by Jim, all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. So we are public comments. So this item is reserved for comments and questions on topics not included in the city's agenda. If you are here for a new topic on the agenda please wait us and reach that item. If you do over in public comment area on the agenda. With that, please use the Fraser OUR chat feature if there isn't any public comments where they areadores dilo here's really anticipation. Seeing no public comments. Honour to make it a sense agenda. We'll move to the consent agenda. We have our city council member for 12 minutes from December 5th, and it counts to get a little more than December 8th. Any questions, concerns, other consent agenda? Get to approve. So moved. Second. Motion by print, second by Jim. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Was that, did all three of you say aye? Settling, okay. Motion carries, thank you. Okay, so we are on a council reports. Can I start with reason? Sure. I sat in on the planning commission meeting this past Thursday. It was a very full agenda, so we didn't get to everything. We discussed initially the historic preservation incentives. There was no concern from the commissioners on that. There will be some, some. Move from where it is section four. I think further down into section 4.12 or another later section that addresses incentives is more inclusive of additional incentives. So no concerns from the commission on what was proposed there. And we moved into talking about shared parking incentives. And right now it's set for 10,000 square feet. And the commissioners said that they were interested in seeing what a tiered approach might be considering what retail space has gone in the last year to two years has been much lower than that. So, so that they were willing to look at some additional options for shared parking as an incentive for developers. And then we ran out of time. So the next meeting will be in January. Eric Warwald reminded us that the remote meeting authorization from the legislature is winding down so that believe all meetings moving forward need to be at least hybrid or in person. So I thought that was good to emphasize and make sure all the counselors were aware of that. And then this week we have a municipal infrastructure meeting. Since historic preservation is actually one of the items underneath the infrastructure portion of the master plan will be offering an opportunity for commissioners to provide some feedback on that the proposed incentives from planning commission. We're going to go over the work plan because we've actually been talking mostly about the budget the last two meetings we've had in October and November. So we're a little behind in that. And then if we have time, we might talk about some multifamily and renter based energy efficiency incentives and opportunities that the city might be able to support as part of housing quality. So we'll see how far we get again a packed agenda and lots of discussion for each of those items. Hopefully we have some public interest. Welcome everybody that wants to comment ahead of time to email me or to join in person at the pool this Thursday at 6 30. Thank you. So to start, I'm going to share that I won't be seeking reelection this year and have a meeting day so I wanted to let the community know that so that there's plenty of time for folks who might be interested to step up. This isn't a fantastic job and a hard one to leave. But it is time for me to stop running for city council. So I wanted to share that news for folks so that they're aware. I was for and I'll have more to say at another time. So I attended the housing commission meeting last Thursday. It was off cycle unusual meeting because we had technological challenges and I apologize to members of the public that weren't able to join our zoom meeting. But I will provide a very full update to the community through our council liaison update the council the commission discussed down payment assistance application that will review in a little while. We looked at timelines for other activities such as just cause eviction and other policy priorities and in particular spent some time talking about what information the count the commission would like on just cause evictions. There was a quest for legal language that fits the charter and what that might look like. Exploration of what the city's responsibilities would be in enforcement or staff costs. Specific data for when you ski that would better support assessment of need and the type of program that we would need. And so in an interest to continue having those discussions on just cause eviction and there's also a petition being circulated for charter change that may play into this as well. There's also interest in continue to discuss the security deposit being held an interest bearing account and housing board review and those items also so similar to what Burlington has a housing board review and what that could look like for when you ski. So as were other interests shared by commission members and could be brought up in the future if we have additional housing capacity come on staff to support that policy work. We spent the bulk of the time talking about the changes to the housing quality ordinance. This is a multi meeting effort by the housing commission to address several sections of ordinance and fees that relate to how we inspect for building for housing quality and life and health safety issues. The commission walked through one of the relevant chapters of public building registry and talked in depth about the some staff recommended changes to resolve issues of subjectivity issues around inspection cycles and issues around equity between the different types of properties and how we can kind of bring all of our properties up to the same inspection standard. So there was a good walk through good discussion and I think a charge for staff to move forward and we'll be meeting at our next meeting to discuss the other relevant chapter, which is the name of which is escaping me at the moment. So there's one other chapter that we will spend time with. So our housing chapter. Sorry. Thank you, Elaine. There's also a discussion about the housing initiative director, which I'll save for our conversation later in the meeting. And the next meeting is our next two meetings conflict with holidays or existing city council meetings. So the housing commission will be meeting sometime in January, not on a Monday, probably not on a Wednesday. And we will be figuring that date out soon. But that's that will make sure that meeting date is noticed. And at least the meeting date is posted soon so that people know when that housing commission meeting will happen. And that is all I have. Last week, we had our meeting of the inclusion and belonging commission, which was a really productive meeting. In addition to the ambassadors kind of checking in with each other and sharing updates from the commissions, they are ambassadors to the commission talked about thinking about its own ground rules such a community agreement because it is a slightly different structure from our other commissions. The commission has decided to have doing a trial run with having a chair and secretary who will have a three month term before kind of checking in on how that's going, which is a little different from what they were thinking of previously, which was a rotating chair. So still exploring how to best create a kind of equitable and inclusive structure within the commission itself. Also discussed was the equity audit and specifically thinking about ways that there can be action steps in the ways those action steps can be communicated to the. When you ski community at large, and we didn't it was packed agenda for this so the commission doesn't use is usually meets every other month on the even months but is planning on having a special meeting on January 12, most likely at 6pm. Specifically to talk about the final two agenda items from December meeting, which is how to engage people and understanding the proposed budget, as well as speaking more about kind of arpa languages and connecting with folks around that because those items are very timely. So we look for more information on that. And then to tomorrow we have the next safe, healthy connected people meeting and that will be at 630 via zoom if anyone wants to join. Thank you. So city updates for today, December 12 2022. As you know, we are continuing the fiscal year 2024 budget committee meetings tonight, or I'm sorry, budget meetings tonight. Community members are encouraged to get engaged in the process to see the full budget and meeting schedule. Please visit when you ski vt.gov slash f y 24. If you have questions, please contact us at 802 655 6410 or budget at when you ski vt.gov or get in touch with me or New York counselors. Today we promote promoted our annual winter parking ban reminder. If you haven't yet, please sign up for our winter parking ban alerts by texting when you ski to 888 777 or by visiting when you ski vt.gov slash parking. As we head into the holiday months to see when you ski encourages our residents and visitors to do everything you can to prevent the spread of COVID-19. More COVID-19 illness is to be expected as people are spending more time gathering indoors to learn more about vaccines, testing masks and other resources. Please visit when you ski vt.gov slash COVID-19. Test kits are available for free at City Hall, the library and the senior center during regular working hours. Speaking of which, the Vermont Health Equity Initiative is hosting free BIPOC vaccination clinics in culturally affirming spaces that offer education and language interpretation resources for community members and their households. No proof of insurance or identification is required to receive care. Community members can get the bivalent vaccine for ages 5 and over and the flu vaccine for anybody aged under 65. The dates are December 17th and January 7th from 9 to 11 a.m. and the site is the Cathedral Church of St. Paul at 2 Cherry Street in Burlington. Updates from the Manuski School District that might be of interest for folks. Bus transportation to and from school for students living 0.75 of a mile from the campus kicked off this week. Actually, last week. Drivers and riders are still adjusting to their routes and the district is hopeful for consistent pick up and drop off times. The district also wants community members to know that they're continuing the driver hiring and training process in order to expand bus routes and are currently focused on the students who live the farthest distances. They are hoping to have more drivers by the end of the month. The second and last school district announcement is the Vermont Agency of Education has released an application to help build a newly formed Family Engagement Council. This council is intended to advise the Secretary of Education on policy and topics of interest to parents in Vermont. Manuski parents of younger children, parents in non-traditional families and grandparents or other relatives that act as primary caregivers are especially encouraged to apply. To do so, please see the latest edition of the school district email updates or contact the Manuski School District offices for assistance. And finally heads up to council. The building at 72 West Spring Street that experienced that fire this weekend has been deemed unstable and there is a high risk of further collapse, especially in the event of a heavy snow such as forecasted for this Friday. And it appears as of late today that the owner does not have insurance or do they have resources to mitigate the risk. Therefore the city will likely move forward with demolition to protect public health and safety which will require use of fund balance. However we do not have those quotes available to make that request today. So we'll be likely using our emergency procedures to approve that work timely. And you would see the actual request after the fact to affirm that. Just so you know the cost, so you have some sense. The cost will include for a demolition contractor disposable waste which might include consideration that it is all asbestos. We don't know that fact but we might assume that. Or we might have to do it that way. And a marmal assessment and or supervision of removal as well as state and local demo permits. That's all. That was enough. I just wanted to remind me that in my housing update I didn't comment on the fact that the chief and fire marshal Palmer managed to put together a significantly sophisticated and robust set of recommendations after dealing with the multiple fires last week. And I really do want to acknowledge that that that was no small feat. And that was one of the one of the most productive sessions that we've had the housing commission in a while and I appreciated that the chief and fire marshal Palmer put that time in and made that effort. So thank you for that on top of everything else. Mayor if I might mention something. So we do have a community cleanup fund that we have access to through chinets always district. So for depending on the expense of the disposal fees we likely have some money to pull from in our balance to offset the revenue that would otherwise the reserve funds that would otherwise be needed. I'll check in with you about that. That's interesting. We would be putting a lien on the property. So I wonder how that would interrelated. But thanks for that. We'll follow up. Okay. So let's move into our regular items first for discussion. If you have a question for what your presentation for the community services. Excellent. Well, super excited to be here. Before I jump in, I do want to just give a couple quick preemptive acknowledgments on Angela LDR our finance director was waiting in the wings to kick me virtually. If I see you currently I'm in lane both were super helpful and putting this presentation together and certainly to my staff, who I will butter up further down the line. But this is very much a team effort that you're going to hear about tonight and just want to kind of express my gratitude to that crew for making this possible. So without further ado, I'm going to jump in. I'm going to set some quick content. Well, not quick context. I'm trying to answer a number of questions that have come in kind of rampantly from counselors around some details about staffing who does what what our programming levels look like. And then we'll dive into highlight some recent investments that the city's made in our community and social outcomes and then get into the fiscal year 24 budget. So I've got a few scheduled pause points here. I love what I do and can talk ad nauseam about it. So at any point I'm banging on and you need me to stop. I trust this group will throw something or looking out but very excited to present tonight. So as mentioned, I do want to give my staff a quick shout out. This is not everybody but is a great photo of a good chunk of my team. Again, they make the work possible day in and day out and go out of their way to serve this community and make it a great place to live and recreate. So I just want to really appreciate them as a group. They make my job really also an easy so appreciation to them for that. And in terms of who those people are and what they do. So I'm going to go in through each section but wanted to kind of show a quick overview of the department and the work chart. This is largely unchanged from last year. There have been a few iterations of this over time in particular around the recreation and parks area where we had briefly tried to tease out recreation and parks separately into two part time roles and found that hiring retention for part time positions was really challenging there. And we were also having some difficulties with recreation. Most of our operations were going to be happening in those facilities and so that disconnect was actually creating some inefficiencies. So we kind of squeezed those two positions back into a full-time Rec and Parks Manager. But again, largely unchanged from last year's budget presentation. So starting with the Children and Family Programs Manager, I'm just going to look kind of left to right here. So that is the position that manages our THRIVE program primarily. So the main points that I want to make around that position, you know, we are running a regulated, state-regulated licensed child care program through THRIVE. And that comes with a lot of regulatory oversight and expectation. And so in addition to the sort of day-to-day of just being prepared to manage the number of kids that we do, there's a lot of nuance around paperwork, documentation, and even little things like how we take kids to the bathroom that have to happen in a very particular way based on state regulations. I'm here to say that's a good thing. I think that those are in place to help our kids to be safe and help our programs to run professionally. But it does add an element of requirement on the director of that position. You know, throughout the year, lots of training and support for staff. We've been really fortunate in THRIVE and I'm knocking wood to have a very consistent staff team. But as new folks have come on this fall, we've had quite a bit of training that's had to go into supporting the staff to get up to speed. And again, they have to be ready to help us implement those regulations as well. So as much as Clyde was responsible ultimately for making sure it's happening, all of those support staff have to be involved as well. And again, there's a lot of program planning that happens in the course of the THRIVE program. So every day we try to have activities, scout with it, and set up for kids. And there's time and energy that goes into making sure we've got a plan, got the supplies, and have staff that are ready to run those programs. And then in terms of the direct service staff, their program assistants, they're really the boots on the ground working with kids, playing with kids, making sure that we are keeping kids happy, safe, and enjoying their time with us in THRIVE. I say that not to oversimplify what they do, because they do really fantastic work. And this is an interesting place where I am not only a manager of this program, but a customer of it as well. And it's really cool to see my own children enjoying this and connecting with those staff. They're like, my wife tried to go pick up my oldest early, and she's like, no, I want to stay. And as much as that was a pain for our family, it's a great kind of building confidence from the customer base that they're doing a great job. Again, Recreation Parks, I'm going to use a sports metaphor because I'm a sucker for those, but I've always really viewed Rec and Parks as the centerfielder that's covering the spaces in between the left and right fielder that are otherwise kind of uncovered. So there's a lot of places where the Rec and Parks team is running programming that you might look out on the surface and say, that's a senior program, or shouldn't Claudine and THRIVE be running that really childhood piece. But it's really trying to add capacity and flesh out our offerings across the board. And again, Robin and her team really do kind of head and flow between a lot of different spheres. So within Robin's role as Rec and Parks Manager, certainly planning and implementing a year on calendar programming, making sure that that's meeting community needs and interests in that regard, they are going to be coming out early in the new year with a community needs and interest survey around programming as we start to look towards future program planning. We're about four and a half years removed from our last one, so it's time for us to re-up that. Again, lots of training and management of staff. These are often positions where we see turnover. In some cases, like AmeriCorps by design, and others in lifeguarding where there are seasonal roles. So we're bringing a lot of new folks pretty frequently. So lots of time growing in there. Definitely a lot of work with partner agencies, and you'll hear a little bit more about this later on the programming side, but we're a pretty small Rec team and can't do it all ourselves. And so there's definitely an effort to figure out those experts and partner agencies in the community that we can bring in or to bear for residents so they can get a wider array of program access. For all of these staff, lots of work and support around registration. And I will say this is something we've really leaned into this year in terms of the amount of time and effort we're putting into that process. We can very easily open registration online, let folks who can get on a computer and sign themselves up and pay with a credit card get first go. And my team has really made an effort to kind of bifurcate that registration process so that there is that on an option for the first half of seats in all of our programs. But the second half we reserve for paper registration, which just by virtue of the amount of touch points takes longer. And those are often being filled out by folks who have limited English proficiency, may have multiple working parents, may not have computer access. So it's really been a concerted effort to more equitably deliver programs and it takes a lot of time and effort. There's a lot more touch points. So it's something that we've put a lot of energy into this year. Also want to mention again we'll get into more details at the Myers pool. That's not an insignificant amount of the REC team's work over the course of the year. Obviously consolidated in the summer months, but summer is a really busy, busy time to REC and the pool is a big part of that. And then the other piece that I think, you know, Recreation and Parks is intentionally titled in that order because we did really want to emphasize recreation and programs and the opportunities for people to engage. Parks is also part of that. And so there's a lot of work there. You know, daily operations, everything from trail maintenance to cleaning up encampments that may happen to dealing with identified safety issues. We just met with a part of the staff speaker about a dangling branch. So a lot of those just kind of day-to-day pieces that need to be dealt with. And then obviously, too, we have this beautiful Parks and Open Place plan, a 20-year plan that we're trying to move towards implementing. So that's another piece of this team's work. In terms of how these folks break down just quickly, REC Assistant and AmeriCorps youth programs coordinator are primarily frontline service delivery staff. I will say the REC Assistant tends to do more support around program planning, but by and large, those three folks are very focused on direct service. And that then allows the Rec and Parks Manager to spend more time on program planning, resource acquisition, and then some of the other pieces I mentioned around the pool of Parks. Senior programs. Sorry, before you move on, I saw a race game. Oh, great. Thanks, Christine. I'm not doing a great job taking attention to that. So keep me honest. All right. This is Mary on that piece with Wiskie. We have partnership for prevention. I'm just wondering if you can move a little bit closer. Is that better? A little bit. Is that better? Let's try it. It's been sent. Thank you. Like so? There is one mic in here that doesn't work as well. I'm wondering if that's your... Yeah, exactly. I'll take yours, Wiskie. Double mic, yeah. All right. Is that better? Excellent. Okay. Thanks, Marielle. All right. So Senior Programs Manager, again, largely managing the operations of the Winooski Senior Center through programming. So that includes both drop-in hours that are there three days a week where we're kind of open to the public. Folks can come in and get a cup of coffee. There's often sort of coffee chat type programming there. A lot of support around partner programs as well. So the Bone Builders Group, which has been really super active and growing, which is awesome. Some work to help kind of get the word out and get the space prepped for that. Work with the Meals on Wheels program, AARP, Age Well. So a lot of partner agency work there. Certainly, and I'll talk a little bit more about program outreach in a minute, but definitely a unique population in terms of how we are outreaching and definitely some additional work there around creating a print newsletter, going into the Winooski Housing Authority buildings with materials, and then distributing things through our More Than a Meal program, which happens weekly and serves about 100 seniors with a sort of grab-and-go meal. And that was a COVID development that we've had good success with. And so we've stuck with, we went from 10 folks at a congregate meal in person to 100 people a week through the grab-and-go, so that's been a really nice kind of outcome of COVID if you can have a nice outcome of COVID. And then also client communications. So work with wellness checks, phone calls, just checking in on folks, so and so didn't show up this week to get their meal, calling in to see what's going on, make sure that we have touchpoints with community members as well. And then a fair bit with building maintenance around just kind of setup, breakdown, preparing for the various programs that are happening in that space. And then there are those larger events, pumpkins, voting, where we kind of come in and take over. And so Barb kind of works to help support those pieces as well. And as a reminder, Barb is a 28-hour employee, not full-time, so she's the lone employee there. And then the library. So collection development and circulation, weekly open hours for the community, reference support, a regular schedule of programming happening there, and increasingly youth programming. Kirsten's done a fabulous job of growing that program slate for us. And then a lot of outreach work too, Neat and Kirsten have been great about connecting with Housing Authority, Our Lady of Providence. They go up to Thrive once a week for a story hour. And then with working with various childcare centers in the community as well. So I think they collectively, and Amanda before, have done a good job of like getting outside the walls of the building with library services. And that's definitely something we are wanting to do. All right. Me, community services director. So main items on my plate, managing and supporting staff, including training and hiring, budget management, compliance with plans and regulations, interfacing with city leadership and other departments, capital plan oversight in terms of the portions that are related to parks and rec facilities. And then it is not uncommon to see me supporting direct service as well. If anyone's been to the pool or has kids in Thrive, I try to help out where we have gaps as well. So that's another piece that depending on our staffing levels and what's going on can be not an insignificant portion of what I'm doing. And then two positions here, one of which I'll talk about in detail, one of which I'm going to wait and talk about a little bit further down the line. Our admin and outreach coordinator, which is a position that's come on board through the ESER contract, I can't say enough about how valuable this position has been to our department as a whole. This is in addition to me, the one other person that's really working across the department every day and providing support. So there are the basic admin functions of having a person to answer the phone for us, you know, return phone calls, schedule meetings, make sure our supply levels are there. But I think there's so much more that Zara is doing week to week. She's played a really critical role in terms of our outreach and connections in the community. She's been working recently with Paul to help us develop a citywide approach to using WhatsApp. We've started in our department to dabble there, a broader approach that's consistent and valuable in terms of reaching people where they are. Lots of work supporting, especially multilingual clients with registration. Zara has multiple languages herself and that's been hugely helpful there. Maintenance of the website, the calendar, things that are often those afterthoughts that you get home and you're eating dinner with your family and you're like, ah rats, I forgot to do that. That administrative task. That's what we're doing here. We're going to be working with a group of people who is thinking about that. The other piece that Zara is really going to be stepping into, and this is sort of burgeoning coming and I don't want to say out of COVID because we're not out of COVID, but into this next phase is kind of reestablishing our volunteer program, which had really gone pretty dormant during the COVID early COVID years. So Zara's position is also going to be really important. So that is Zara and the admin and outreach coordinator. And I'll talk more about youth interventionist down the line. Ray, did you mention space use? Did I mention space use? Oh, no I did not. Thank you. Yeah, so Zara has also been our point of contact for rentals and space usage at the O'Brien Center, which we're seeing start to grow again since the departure of Northern Studios has been a very long time. All right, I'm going to pause. There were definitely questions about sort of who does what and I just wanted to make sure that I leave that groundwork. It was probably a little bit thick, but any questions on the staffing levels or who does what? All right. Are you going to get to programming later? Yes. Yes. In fact, right now. If I can make one comment that I'd like to revisit in the future and that's because some of these we've had improved that great. Yes. Yep. So later on, there is a slide that specifies which of those positions is where our were and currently are as are funded, but I'm happy to update that org chart and I can send that through Lane. Yeah. Yeah. So speaking of programs, you know, a couple of things to mention here and again in responses to some questions we got in advance. First and foremost, I want to remind counselors and the community you can always go on to the city's website and find the current slate of programs on the city website. And in addition, I mentioned Barb's kind of unique population in terms of outreach. She also does a regular monthly newsletter that goes out to the community through various channels that has sort of a print copy of what she's got going on. One thing I will say is that Civic Rec, which is our platform and rec management and that plugs into our website, the senior center programming is not all captured there and that's been slow to pick up partially because our audience there has not historically been hugely focused on getting information online. We are trying to move forward with that and that's a place too where Zara is actually going to be helping work with Barb to get more of our programs uploaded there. So stay tuned. So when you go on now, just know that the senior programs listed on the website are not everything at the moment. And then from a program planning perspective and this is just to kind of answer a question preemptively about if you're cutting staffing, what does that mean for which programs get cut? It's a little bit of a tricky question to answer now and I say that in that we are typically planning our programs about a season in advance. So we operate more or less on a four season programming cycle. So we're always planning for the winter fall or fall winter and you know as a for instance my hope for our department is that most of our summer programming will be pretty well buttoned up and ready to promote by the end of January and then fall programming by the end of the spring. So we're always you know more or less a quarter in advance and so obviously you know regular hours at the library our meals programs through the senior center camps during vacation our youth soccer program which has been really popular community gardens some of those things we know are going to be sort of steady and static and so I think as we start to talk about potential staff reductions it's the extra new different stuff that is probably going to be where you see that impact. I'm really going to try to stay focused on those core programs and making sure that we can keep those going but where folks may see some of those adjustments is I'm going to use it for instance the climbing program we've been running through ESER. Super popular every time we open it up it fills like within a day it serves a relatively small number of kids it's a pretty expensive program for us to run and so I think what and but we've had it like constantly throughout ESER because it's been so popular so I think one of the things in the face of reduced staffing that you might see is like we'll offer climbing twice a year and really try to like pair that down because the cost for you know entrance to the climbing gym the van to get kids to and from the staffing hours that go into it is makes that a pretty expensive program for us to run so again it's a little hard to say like these are definitely the programs you're going to see cut if we cut staff so I just wanted to sort of highlight that process of how we kind of plan in advance over the last year we've run about 200 unique programs and that's across the department so that's you know again library pool rec senior center and again with a reduction of staffing as projected we would likely see a reduction in particular in the recreation arena for programming so I'm going to pause there make sure I was clear perfect, oh god. She can't see you. Sorry Mayer, Elaine has your hand up. Okay so Roy are you going to talk about what you traditionally would have tried to do if you want me to do that? You can lead me. I'll do it. Traditional I mean just today Ray sat in my office and said I mean we would try to offer those programs we would supplement and and then we talked about the fact that Ray and Robin's time cards this summer during peak pool peak summer programming was regularly 60 to 70, 80 hours a week Yeah pushing 60 pretty consistently for both of us. 60 hours per per week for many weeks in a row throughout the season. So that means Ray and Robin are not doing leadership. They're not planning, they're not being strategic they're not trying to get ahead of issues, they're not planning ahead so when we've tried this is an example of where we've subsidized less funding in the past through leadership sacrificing a leadership role so I just wanted to use that as an illustration so I explicitly told them we're not doing that this year to see what happens. Yeah and that is captured later but thank you for making that point. If I may I'm really glad that you called that out. I think that's really important and something that I think the rest of the council would get behind like we don't want staff working in that way and Ray the programs that you called out bribes, soccer, renewables, community gardens those are the programs that we've seen consistently here to here. People really value and we should be thoughtful about what we're planning and these other key things like what we're going to be able to return on the investment what are the key things that we can offer that will engage many persons in the community so I think it's what we share as a smart approach to working within our needs and not trying to distract from what we have in the future. Alright I'm going to keep moving on. So I do want to highlight before I get into the proposed budget this community has made some significant investment in the community services realm over the last number of years and wanted to really, I think number one acknowledge and appreciate that but also you know really kind of spell out that we're delivering outcomes for the community based on those investments so there's a number of things here that I wanted to kind of go through and just kind of highlight in that realm. So some recent investments in community services in particular recreation and again through ESSER you know the ESSER program has injected a significant amount of resource into our department in the last two years and I think as a snapshot last summer during the months of June, July and August we ran 81 programs served 700 individual youth nine weeks of summer camp 96 kids signing up for those camps all that programming was delivered to Winooski residents for free and as a comparative that's a three-fold increase over 2019 which was the last sort of pre-COVID summer that we had so yes we got a lot of resource brought on board financially and we cranked out a lot of programming and served a ton of folks with that so I think the point being those investments are being put to good use and are showing outcomes for the community again 2500 enrollments for ESSER programs and I think I can't remember if I shared this data point with you all but this one really struck me is that for the programs where we're tracking registration preemptively, 86% of our seats are filling up so I know Brian you've asked before about like program success and things that are working and not you know this tells me that we're hitting some chords with the community and putting things out there that they are responding to programs that are not working we're not going to continue to try to push that through usually we'll give it maybe two goes and if it's really not working then we'll move on and try something new and then also just I think this is a good data point too but 94% of respondents we've started doing for every program we run a post program survey and 94 of those responding have said good or excellent how they kind of rate the program four or five stars so that also is a really affirming data point for us as we look at those responses again acknowledging that that is not the panacea of every participant but for the data that we're getting back it's good I think REC2 I just want to make this point recreation is a critical component of intervention work we're doing with the community and the equity work that we're doing with the community I think this is the I often say the front door that brings a lot of folks into the fold for us and so I could see very easily looking at oh soccer whatever like kids kicking a ball around no big deal this is where we are making those connections and getting those kids to sign up then for the next program or connect with that family that is suddenly struggling and needs a support and so I think that continuing to find ways to use REC programs to build community build spaces build places where people can be together and connect is really critical as we think about our master plan and the goals of our equity audit as well so I just wanted to highlight that because I think some of the other pieces are a little bit more specific and REC sometimes is kind of again that centerfielder right it's kind of floating all over the place but you know I think a day at the pool will show you that this is where community is happening so I just wanted to make that point here speaking of the pool these are some data points that were shared with the commission just as a seasons summary and also with you through the quarterly update on Safe Healthy Connected so I'm not going to be labor these but I think overall big jump in usage this summer in terms of day use and swimmers there open swim and past sales were up which is really encouraging and exciting to see in year two so and I think I mentioned the program numbers being lower really I feel confident saying hiring your REC director two weeks before the pool opens makes it really hard for programs to launch and run successfully so I think that we will see those numbers bounce back this coming summer with Robin having the luxury of more than two weeks to do all that work so I think this is Andy Lynch I just wanted to quickly ask because I know that we're talking about the budget we're obviously having to talk a little bit about things that have to be trimmed but I just noticed that there were a lot of you know kids at the pool kind of all day every day last year who maybe didn't bring food or probably multiple reasons I was just wondering if there has been any discussion about getting some meals like to the pool for kids that are there as free meals yeah that's a great question so we actually do work with the Wunewski school district and have meals available free meals available on site for kids under 18 so those are there we've got a refrigerator behind the desk and like as kids and families are coming in we're asking if they would like a meal so yeah great great observation and absolutely correct and that's something we try to adjust to by having that available there yeah I also need to give my wife credit for this because she'll be mad at me if I don't so Thrive this one I think you know in a lot of ways speaks for itself again enrollment numbers have jumped a lot since the beginning of COVID but obviously with the first summer of COVID I think being sort of a suppressed programming time I wanted to have that pre-COVID comparative and so we're up about 200% from pre-COVID levels in terms of our summer program so we've seen a big jump and I think a big part of that has been the ability to make that program free for Wunewski residents through our support with Essar so I think that's really told us something that making that program free has really eliminated a significant barrier for some of the participants that we were seeing we averaged about 63 kids per week this summer in program there which our max is 64 so we were basically right up at the cap pretty much every week and Thrive after school we have not actually tapped any Essar funding to support other than a small portion of Claudine's hours over the course of the year that's a program that has for the most part been running sustainably for us in terms of dollars in meeting the staffing costs and programming costs during the course of the school year so Thrive summer is the place where largely because of the length of the day and the amount of staff time that goes into that we've not been able to financially float so I just wanted to make that note that Thrive after school has not been supported and I think you know Thrive is a critical program for working families single family or single parent families you know folks that really need that continuum of care after school again I can say as a working you know two working parent household there are some days that it would be really tricky for us to get there to get our kiddos and I think that is not a unique example I think there's a lot of folks in program that have that as well Do you have compared to the numbers for after school? I could definitely get them I don't have them right at my fingertips but I can definitely get them we are definitely up for sure I can say that confidently but I'll get you the exact numbers Did we remove the fee on that as well? No, no that continues to be fee based but we're seeing higher levels of enrollment than we were pre-COVID Okay, thank you I guess one note there too when I say free we are a state program so any family that is looking for financial support is asked to apply for subsidy as a first step so we families can draw support from the state to cover the costs so we are trying to bring in that outside resource and then backfill where the families are either not eligible or partially eligible for state support the library I think many of you are I know familiar with the library some regular users there I think some exciting data here I've been seeing these data points kind of month to month but it was neat to see it in a continuum so again 725 new library cards since the beginning of July 2021 about 42 a month which for a community of our size is a pretty awesome number average of about 600 visits a month in person and then I think the other thing that I wanted to really highlight here is the reference question piece you know the programs are great the digital and in person circulation is great I think the work that our team does around providing sort of quote-unquote reference support is really phenomenal and you know in talking to them preparing for this report I think that the type and complexity of reference questions that we're getting has really increased over time and Nate was saying that in the past it would have been what's the capital of Kazakhstan or what's the average rent very data specific things which I think in the age of Google is much easier for folks to get and so now these reference questions are more complex I'm a person who's unhoused what resources are available to me I think a great example of this the other day that Kirsten shared was a CCB student who was trying desperately to finish their end of semester work English was not their primary language and Kirsten spent two afternoons one on one supporting that person in the library space to help them achieve their their kind of work for their end of semester stuff that's the type of example where that was multiple hours very hands on support for a patron not hey where's the newest Louis Penny book so reference questions is kind of a funny library term that both of those things would be considered a reference question but anyway I wanted to share that example and then just another kind of shout out so Kirsten has been also taking courses to learn Swahili and just shared with Eileen and our HR manager myself a really cool update on just some of the very early ways that she started to see that manifest building connections with kids that are coming in who have that as a primary language and comically I think it seems like they're concerned about swearing in front of her now in Swahili which is also sort of an unintended benefit of that but just that's the kind of level of investment that these staff are putting into their work because that's not obviously a required thing that we're asking of her yeah yeah hi Ray it's Mary hey Mary I have been working at the library a lot more lately because of us the permanent staff member who was on leave and going back to what you said in regard to the rep department the sort of front line equity and inclusion work I've looked the library to that question too I've seen as you were giving Kirsten's example the kind of help in one on one support that librarians give to members of the community absolutely are what I would call equity inclusion work that's a lot of what goes on there and I put the library in with the rep department as a low place that really does that front line work that's it awesome thank you Mary I totally agree and I know that the library had pop up tables at other events and at the farmers market throughout the year too so making those extra steps to be outside the library walls as well yep and then wanted to just highlight too it's not quite a recent investment but I think it's a recent adjustment that is worthy of note in that we were in the last year Angela our former equity director Yas Gordon worked to update our scholarship procedure to make it more accessible and reduce some barriers and we saw requests triple year over year and that isn't an environment where most of our youth programming at this point is being offered free of charge so I bring that forward to say number one I think there's a clear need in the community for scholarship accessibility number two and you'll see this later as an emerging issue like this is something that I'm keeping an eye on because this demand is going to grow as we revert to some fee based programming and also just wanted to highlight that there's been a lot of questions about fundraising and sort of outside fund seeking we are definitely doing that at the moment are funneling those resources directly into the scholarship fund and are planning in January a more coordinated campaign around sort of preempting the pool pass sales that will start likely in February so you'll see an ask more formally in the community right after the new year there's also a pickleball tournament coming up January 28th which will be a fundraiser for the scholarship pool so I think at the moment that's where we're really focusing our energies around fundraising so just wanted to highlight that as it relates to the scholarship program I just wanted to mention that usually there's a year end vote for donations so it's captured within the tax year yep yep we could definitely try to move that up a little bit for obvious reasons this has been sort of front and center for me but yeah no it's a good thought for sure so those are some recent investments I don't know if there are any other questions before we move on to next year's proposal alright so here it is alright so here it is so a few things that are included in this budget that I wanted to specifically call out so we are proposing to move the senior center program budget into the general fund this is similar to what we've done in recent years for both the thrive program and the recreation program they had been managed previously in special revenue funds outside the general fund and I think what we're finding is that our ability to keep those programs sustainable in terms of dollars in meeting dollars out has been challenged by our ability to charge for programming and so we are proposing to bring the senior center fully into the general fund right now there's a small amount of programming money and staff that are in the general fund and then almost all of our programming budget has been managed outside the general fund we post again not post covid at this iteration of covid are not planning to bring bingo back to the senior center for a host of reasons that was initially stopped because of covid and just obviously not getting large groups of people together but we've seen a significant drop in our volunteer team that had supported that a lot of folks that have aged to a point where they're not going to be available for us some concerns around fraud risk that have been sort of always there as you're handling lots of cash weekend and week out and especially with volunteers and then also some concerns around the state law that limit the amount of time an organization can pay a staff person to run a bingo game and especially with the loss of those volunteers feeling like we're going to have a really hard time not being a foul of that with barb's time if we return to that so that's the primary driver of why this budget is suddenly not sustainable in the past resources that were coming in through bingo were able to support most of the programming costs that were coming out so so pausing there is with bringing the volunteer program back is that something that would be included as part of that or would that be kind of a lower priority so we had not planned to bring bingo back in terms of kind of re-establishing that volunteer group yeah so that was not part of the game plan at the moment any other questions on this one one comment about this before the center became a city function and that's just we'll want to make it clear there's like some reserve funding that came with that right and we'll just want to make it clear to that group that that money stays allocated to see your programming and you'll see that later on when we will do a quick slide on the reserves for the department and that's captured there but thank you for calling that out Christine and then just a clarification because this is what I assume I just want to make sure that it's clear is that it's 11-540 net impact after the offsetting revenue correct yeah correct yep yep alright and then again Christine to your earlier question a number of staff positions that had been funded by ESSER thus far are being proposed to be retained in the general fund moving forward and again in response to the great success, the strong response from the community this was something we felt like was level service that we wanted to continue forward despite the ESSER contract winding down after this coming summer so these are the positions that are currently in the proposed general fund budget that at the moment fiscal year 23 are ESSER funded and in fiscal year 24 would be funded through the general fund so again full-time admin and outreach coordinator the full-time recreation assistant position one library circulation assistant and then a portion of Claudine's time in the children and family manager programs manager role and then there are some small well I shouldn't say there are some increases in the contract and supply lines as well that have come along with ESSER that have been in response to the increased slate of programs so thanks for this rate so what I did want to say is that when we did our budget goal setting my recollection is that as council we settled continuation of ESSER funded programming was not level service and so I want to make sure that this pieces are reflected in the Excel sheet we received for modeling and for being what I want to think about from what you share and I'm sure about the information I'll give you is will we to not continue any of these will it be impacted and I also want to call out because this came up in last week's meeting that the youth intervention position also was partially expanded through ESSER and so when we say that we're reducing the hour reducing that staff position it's back to pre ESSER it's not it's not really interesting that that's a professional level services right Mayor Elaine has a comment yeah so there actually wasn't 100% consensus Mayor on whether or not ESSER positions would be considered level services so this is our recommendation we included some and we cut some so part of cutting some is level services because we didn't see that 10 to 12 well I ultimately decided that 10 to 12 hours to support 1 to 2 people at a time compared to what that money would be paying for supporting recreation programs that would serve more people and serve some sort of level of intervention role for more people that it wasn't worth it so I actually cut the entire position in the recommended budget just to be clear about that do I need to correct and that's the that's the next slide so I don't know if I'm happy to jump to that if that would be a helpful transition to the youth interventionist piece because these are sort of the two big pieces that were and I guess to your point Christine these are sort of the new pieces new and different pieces that I wanted to call out in this budget so to your point these weren't general fund funded they were ESSER funded so in that regard they are new items I mean it's a level service from the last two years but new to the general fund if that makes sense I think considering too that it's noted there's an increase in population and when you ski too so thinking about the needs have expanded and that these positions are trying to account for that in a lot of ways too so it's hard to talk about level service when we have had an increase in population and an increase in diverse needs of our residents as well that these positions are supporting the capacity that we thoughtful about those decisions because we end up here we are reaching the end of this grant period and now there's a lot of we've sort of set an expectation that this is level service when it wasn't to begin with but so we just need to make sure that in this light it's helpful like when we say level service these are actually additions to the general fund and they're going to be increases to the tax rate we just need to be clear about that we don't need to pay a lot of budget May I add I also have that recollection of our budget setting discussion but also when we originally approved these answer positions that was the conversation that the previous council had that this is an expansion of service that isn't expected to persist forever and I think that I agree with your point Councillor Hurd and I also think that that's true across other departments that adding 2.5 FTE is a lot for any department and that those needs impact public safety and municipal infrastructure and housing as well and our community and economic development needs so I think it's I think if we were to put this alongside all the other pieces that we're having to weigh for example ending a grant funded equity director position as well like where is the greatest need positions and I don't disagree that there's need here and it's clear that the impact matched the resources it's actually wonderful to have the experiment of what if we added and what do we get and I think it's been clear that this is not only brought us more of has been done really effectively and I want to applaud that and it's really hard to think about where this reduction needs to come from but it is hard to see this kind of expected we're trying to accept the expectation with the community with our sales that we're going to maintain these positions only during the grant period and we're at the end of the grant period and that's going to be hard so I think it's hard in this case it's hard for any grant funded positions that we add I wonder the community members who've been engaged through these programs who weren't engaged in that initial discussion though so thinking about the equity and inclusion part of it too that we've brought in a lot of folks through these positions to trust the city and to be a part of the city and to be able to receive services and get the support that they need so I feel like that should be considered as well if we're thinking about equity and inclusion is who was included in those who might have been left out in those initial discussions too I think that is a good lens to apply to considering the recommended budget where there are other costs so in terms of you know thinking maybe to your question specifically about potential impact if these went away I can try to work with Elaine to come up with you know a good way to articulate that again some of them are a little tricky like I think of the admin position which has such a broad scope it's going to be a little bit hard to articulate but I think we can definitely do our best to come up with projected impacts of what that would look like okay yep I'll stand I'll stand by mayor if I might say something um given the conversation and comments that we just had I do think it's very important moving forward that if we're creating program that is grant based that does have a certain timeline on it that part of that plan is how are we going to fund this so part of the initial conversation is when the grant ends how are we going to fund this so we get through the end of the grant and it's like oh how are we going to fund this so that part of the conversation and part of the planning is that kind of built up and granted like some of the programs are pilot programs but I still think it doesn't hurt to have that built into where would we pull from this what type of additional tax rate would be needed to continue this if it does achieve the success that we're hoping that it does so that way there's less of a tension when we get to the end of the grant period yep and I think to be clear looking at I mentioned this earlier I think moving or kind of reverting to a more fee based programming model is definitely something we've known was going to be a reality of the sort of post-esser time period for us I think what's tricky and what I'm still trying to wrestle with is I've been frankly flabbergasted by how much of a response we've seen by reducing cost you know I knew that pricing was a barrier in this community and I don't think I had any idea how much of a barrier it was you know Thrive Summer being a great example so I think my sort of over simplified mental model of like oh we'll just you know we'll beef up our scholarship program and we'll get back to fee based programming and everything will be hunky dory I'm really having to flip that construct on my head a bit too and so I think that we are going to have to get creative in terms of how we close that gap because they don't think we're going to be able to do it on the backs of enrollment fees and I don't know that it's either or but it might be a sliding scale it might be a hybrid so I mean as are programs as well as the pool you know now these are all really good questions and I think things certainly things we're wrestling with for sure and so in terms of things that are not included and I guess to your point Kristine this title may be a misnomer because it's things that are not included I guess is how I should say this versus cut in light of that comment about where the source funding was for this but regardless not included in the upcoming budget the youth interventionist position so you know for the most part throughout the year carrying a case load at any time of four to five kids that has definitely ebbed and flowed based on what the complexity of the situation is with anybody we're working with as you can see here the types of interventions that we've provided over time are really varied could be as simple as straightforward as academic support or the need for a weekly mentoring meeting with a kid all the way up to working on pretty complicated truancy interventions with family systems and dynamics that are causing challenges for kids to get to school in one particular case went so far as helping navigate the housing authority system to get a family connected and onboarded into new housing that was a really critical stress point for that child so it really it's one of those positions that's kind of your Swiss Army knife of intervention and it's been really incredible to see the work that's happening here the depth to which it's happening and the way that it's making impacts you know two stories I want to share one so this is going to tie everything kind of together but we had a child come onboard through scholarship into our soccer program unfortunately was having some real challenges behaviorally at soccer Jenny at the time who is the rector rector and the coach brought Francine into the mix we had a meeting with this child kind of tried to work through what was going on worked with that kid to do restorative processes with his teammates supported the coach and our staff in keeping this kid in program this is a child who is now at soccer every week shows up with a smile ready to go and what was really cool is recently he just accomplished an incentive with Francine and his work with her and asked as his gift or whatever at the end to spend a day with her at the library and that was just like like this is amazing so like that's the type of full circle work that I think our department is doing and that I think this position specifically helped facilitate another example is a recently hired Thrive assistant actually who is a senior at Winnieski High School that all started from a conversation on basketball court behind the O'Brien Center where a kid came up and said you know I want to get plugged into something positive I really would love to find work I'm trying to move towards college like help me out and here we are six months later with this person on staff as a city employee working with younger kids and doing a fabulous job so that type of like depth of service and support would not have been there to get that kid from point A to point B in the absence of this position so again I'm happy to answer questions more specifically here but you know I wanted to make sure to really iterate or make a point like this is not a cut we like this is a budgetary move and it's an attempt to get that number down so to be clear this is not a an operational decision that is one we feel great about this is in response to a need to get a budget number lowered and I know that that's the challenge we're all up against but I wanted to make that really clear from our operational perspective that this is a position we see great value in in terms of being able to do really deep meaningful work with community members that need that. Thanks We have a question from a member of the audience Yep. But I did reiterate for anyone who wasn't here last week that these are really her decisions for equality that doesn't go unrecognized so I appreciate it and we are not decision making this evening we are deep-diving to these public budgets for the next couple of meetings and then later in January we'll actually take it away and make public decisions Thanks Mayor I just have a quick question raise it's kind of similar to what the Mayor was asking with those previous like you know in your estimate what do you think would be lost without this program I also can really understand that this is there are no good decisions that could be made right now right but I respect that but I'm also just curious in addition to that you know could you give us some information as the public and you know counsel what are the demographics of the folks that are being served because as you mentioned with taking Elaine's entry fee for grants there was a significant change and that tells you something about the demographics of the city so I'm just curious to be able to share something things right? Yeah of course so I'll start maybe with the youth interventionist position and then back up to the other more programming focused here is I think our ability to really get in and do a deep dive when we are coming upon or connecting with youth that are struggling which we are on a regular basis in our programs you know we again by virtue of the number of kids we're serving and the variety of ways that you know we are serving them we are seeing things in the community and are I think in the absence of the youth interventionist position down a really important resource in terms of being able to help those kids and families navigate complex systems move to get the supports that they need and provide that sort of ongoing case management you know it's again it's four to five kids at any given time so far in the last year or so it's been about 34 different individuals so I guess what's lost there again is our ability to sort of really get in and support engagement participation continued involvement and help again navigate some of these complicated systems that families are then left to navigate on their own I will say we definitely if this position goes away we'll be thinking about how to try to build partnerships to allow us to have sort of referral relationships with agencies that do similar work you know a spectrum center point Howard center so I do think that some work will have to happen there so that we continue to have a place to send referrals but I think you lose that when you ski touch you lose that localness and that sort of familiarity that again I think those stories about the kid that went from soccer to incentive day at the library like those are going to be fewer and farther between is what I would say and in terms of the support positions for programming you know so the another point is that those 34 that caseload of 34 people in the last year that was or since the beginning of fiscal year 2022 that's at 28 hours a week so we can't we don't have 28 hours a week after us or grant and it would be 10 to 12 hours a week so what we what we would be losing from cutting the position altogether as I've recommended with great dislike is that is 10 to 12 hours worth of caseload in f1 24 yeah I think the consensus there was you know more or less one or two clients at a time and hiring for that position becomes really challenging and unfortunately the work the work requires a degree of flexibility that 10 to 12 hours a week I'm not sure supports you know you've got to be ready to meet clients when when they're ready where they're ready and if you're trying to do this as a side hustle I think it's really um it's a challenging hire for sure um not impossible but difficult and anything on the programming side so one thing I think and and this is some work that we need to do internally as a department we don't currently track demographic demographic data when we're doing registration and that was a conscious choice initially as a means of reducing perceived barriers to enrollment um where it has left us unfortunately isn't in the app with an absence of that data so I want to do some work with some thought partners around that and figure out some some ways that we can start to track that inform more formally what I can say informally and this is being a resident having kids in the school having been around the block for a little bit the the diversity of participants in our programs under Essar has ballooned we are seeing tons of new American kids um tons of families for whom English is not a primary language ton of kids that we weren't seeing before enrolled we were seeing them a lot in the community but we were not seeing them engaging and enrolling in formal programming and so this these changes in these updates the reduction of that fee has really allowed us to do work directly with a lot more kids um and that's been awesome so I think that you know anti to your question I think is something that would be lost to a to a degree with some of these positions going away you know it's scalable to a point but I think our ability to do that work would be diminished all right um so again I think this this will be a similar song here um we are proposing the reduction of one of our two AmeriCorps positions um typically given that those positions are working towards a set number of hours and have a degree of administrative work through AmeriCorps that is required we're estimating it's about 30 hours of service time to residents per week that would be lost um and that represents about 21% of our REC team staff hours in a given week um I think back to the earlier pointer on program planning it's it's hard to say that's going to be a straight line reduction of 20% of programs because I do think that we will try to get creative build partnerships, find ways to supplement but the reality is that when you take away staff doing direct service work there will be a reduction in direct service programming I think that's just a reality it's again it's a little hard for me to say directly like these are the programs that are going away or this percentage of our programming will be going away but as best as we can estimate I would say about roughly 20% of our programming capacity would be lost with the reduction of this position so it's also been shared just to jump in that it's getting more and more challenging to find AmeriCorps positions so in theory like the amount of I mean how much labor hours you're going into attracting, training and that's 12 month positions so you're doing that same amount of recruitment orientation year over year so is there an estimate of how many staff hours might be saved by not recruiting going to the recruiting orientation process? That's a great question so one of the requirements of AmeriCorps and something that we structure and departmentally is an hour a week of direct supervision time so I think obviously up front there's more kind of training, hand holding support that's needed over time that diminishes as folks get more comfortable, learn the ropes, learn the communities but I think that hour or week of supervision time is a pretty safe estimate of savings of staff time over the course of the year Up front I will say it really depends quite honestly on the person coming in we've had years with AmeriCorps members coming in from the local community who know the area, have housing have worked in some cases in neighboring schools the amount of upfront work there is way different than somebody who's moving here from out of state trying to find housing, trying to figure out the community and the culture, trying to build connections with people so I don't know probably a couple additional hours a week up front for the first three months maybe so it's I think it's worth I think the amount of invested time is worth the outcome at the end I think we net positive is what I would say but I think your point is well taken that there's some training time and not necessarily trying to make a point just trying to give a gauge on what hours of yours or others does that free up that could be applied to leadership teams working 60, 70 hours a week during peak season and it doesn't not having any sense for that that gives the gauge I think fortunately and unfortunately to your question by and large we're bringing AmeriCorps members on in the fall and so they're kind of coming on as the summer is winding down so by the time our busy season hits the next year theoretically they're at their most functional point and so I think it's the timing hasn't been bad in terms of a typical recruiting cycle this year has been really I've been it's terrifying to say this out loud this is my 18th year supervising AmeriCorps members this is hands down the worst recruitment year I've ever seen we finally now have two offers out and I think we're both going to stick for folks to begin in January but typically by now our AmeriCorps members have three to four months of service time under their belt so it's a really weird recruitment environment for AmeriCorps I don't know how much of that is a blip how much of that will adjust we're seeing them make some adjustments to living stipends that they're paying out which I think is part of the issue with recruitment right now but so I guess to your question though the busiest times for us are not the times when we're putting in the most labor around training and I think the flip side of that is if we lose those direct service hours in the summer then suddenly I'm checking people out at the pool desk a lot more Robin is in camp every day all day so we really go into defensive staffing where our leadership staff are on the front lines and again everything gets deferred for three months thank you I asked kind of going off of that and apologies is going back a little bit but how much of your say your and Robin's time is saved by having an admin and outreach coordinator by having someone who's able to update the website and able to help register and able to do all of that heavy lifting so you don't have to it's significant I mean I think if you lump and again this is not something we've done a formal like desktop audit of so I just want to like this is me speculating a little bit but if you lump you know outreach so thinking about website management calendar and when I say calendar I mean out facing calendars not internal calendars coordination of space use van use supply purchasing help with registration which again dependent on the family can be pretty hands on process I would say easily a day a week if not more between the two of us is is saved again again unfortunately those tend to be the tasks that get pushed to the end of the list at the end of the day and so then suddenly it's been three weeks and we haven't put anything out on social media website is out of date I think there's things that as Zara gets more and more comfortable with those systems we're seeing improved efficiency and service and then that's allowing for Robin and I to do more of the high level work in a given week thank you yeah that's very helpful alright and then the last thing I just want to highlight here it's a small number but I think it bears calling out is the proposed budget is a level funding budget for books and materials for the library and that represents a reduction from the requested budget by the department of about $1700 that increase came from the fact that about a third of our circulated materials now are digital and the cost for those digital materials is about on average about 30% higher than print materials and so that's where that $1700 number came from a couple things I think worth noting here you know digital materials unlike a book you know when you buy a book barring somebody taking it and not bringing it back it's yours for as long as you want to circulate it digital materials and it varies but have renewal requirements and so there's sort of a compounding effect here where we're going to want to have a digital copy of Harry Potter probably forever right like those are books that we know are going to continue to get checked out over and over and over and over again so every two years now we're having to go back and renew those digital licenses for that material and the new material that comes on to keep the collection current and you know fresh and relevant for patrons is getting kind of added on top so there's definitely a lot of weeding that happens you know and Kirsten do a ton of work around looking at what's the community responding to where can we go you know through interlibrary loan for things but the cost of library materials I guess my point is kind of continuing to grow as we see a higher and higher percentage of digital content being circulated versus print material so again not a huge number but I think wanted to call it out I mean that's so outside of control it goes into copyright logged which is unfortunately really weighed against library services yep so I'm going to pause here before I get to the numbers slide and to see if there are any questions Kristine thank you for continuing to keep an eye on the digital space okay onward so again numbers come this is just a slide I wanted to put up quickly these are items that weren't included they were things that were in the stretch budget but are not in the proposed budget and I share those because partially they were shared during the lanes and I wanted to just highlight the pieces of that that impact our operations and that are not being funded or not proposed to be funded and to see if folks had any questions about any of these as excluded items if not what's that I do have a number of things I'm going to try and minimize some of my questions because I know I can get into more details with staff in a little bit of time so things that may be of the most interest are the O'Brien Center so right now the conversation has primarily been around space and rent for the library but we utilize more than that so what is the stretch budget considering the additional space yes so Angela I'm going to tap you in here in a second so it includes the community service department office space as well I think the stretch budget includes the gym and maybe more square footage that's correct, the stretch budget was to expand beyond the footprint that we currently utilize so within the net of expenses for the O'Brien Community Center when we take it in rents we could cover rent for our existing spaces at a number that have been discussed with CHD previously and is there a point at which other than the library renting out that space well I guess that wouldn't really work but nevermind, I answered my question so thank you that was a good context because I had originally had it in my head that we were only really considering the library so thank you for the detail there any other ones I see there's a hand online but I so wanted to quickly ask I see on here and this is definitely something that I feel like has come up in our ARPA discussions is something that's very needed I was just wondering if there have been like any specific thoughts thinking about English language learning for adults or if it's just if we had the budget we would find a way to make it work so that I've been talking to a lot of potential partners the school district, St. Mike's VESAC Vermont Student Assistance Corporation Vermont Community Foundation USCRI ALB Mercy Connections Vermont Adult Learning and it wasn't just me so St. Mike's had a student team working on trying to do a needs assessment and they also talked to some of these partners some with me some without me so what we're coming around to is the need for those of you who are in the listening sessions around ARPA heard with our our multi-cultural liaison partners at the school there is a need for more intensive English classes to get to proficiency which would also mean that probably people need like a stipend or I've been thinking about it like basic income in order to be able to spend more time learning English so obviously we don't have space to spare in our budget for this I would say so there's a couple ways I've been thinking about this potentially the working community's challenge I'd like to pitch it to the core team as something for the work plan there is some money there when I talked to Vermont Student Assistance Corporation they thought it would be easy to fundraise for if we were working with an existing employer because Department of Labor has a lot of workforce development funds what would be harder and what I'm more interested in frankly is I mean that's good and important and good and we have a lot of talent in our new American community which is locked up behind having to work for someone so why couldn't they start a business on their own it's harder to fundraise for that but VSAC hasn't said it's impossible yet so we've got a next meeting lined up with them to hopefully explore that so there is nothing in the recommended budget for that program we would have to find money for that thank you and I'll just take this opportunity so it's probably confusing to many people that we were talking about a large budget with no money attached to and not in the budget anywhere recommended or otherwise the reason why I chose to include these items is because we recognize as staff that the community has asked for progress on a lot of items that are reflected in the master plan that we are not making much progress on we are making progress to be clear staff has been working hard as you can hopefully see what we think that we could do if we had more money and so we wanted to give you a flavor of some of those ideas for a future context and context for this year's budget as well so that's why we've proposed them without any dollar amounts attached to them for context I think there was still a hand raised that would be great okay thank you so much just to be clear stretch budget items are things that if able to would be great to have but at this point is not in the budget is that correct? okay awesome awesome thank you so much alright so onto the numbers so this is the community services department roll up for council looking at a proposed budget of $1,180,000 $5.99 and $0.89 thank you Angela for that level of detail overall for our department it represents a 3.1% increase over the fiscal year 23 budget staffing and benefits which represents about 83% of our budget as proposed here year over year is about a 1% it's 1.01% increase as proposed so I think that that is really important about that that is our biggest ticket item and we have made a strong effort here to keep those numbers year over year in check and then just a few pieces so the specialty supplies as a percentage you see a pretty big jump that's mostly driven by the senior center program budget coming into the general fund and then on the contract and professional services side not a huge number but the increase there is driven increase cost for custodial for some of the library databases and some funding carried for lifeguard training so happy to answer any questions on the numbers here can you just mention about the line item for vehicles equipment budget in 22 was $8,600 the actual was $3,500 so we have 15 passenger vehicle that was the words of our fleet manager dubbed unsafe at all speeds so that has been moved on through auction and we're in the process right now I have quotes in hand and hoping to make a purchase in the next week or two for a new 15 passenger vehicle in the interim for ESSER programming we've been renting two minivans which has been covered by ESSER so the cost there's revenue to cover the cost but as an expense number has been a very high impact for us so would that passenger vehicle come out of capital? correct yeah and it's budgeted in the current year capital so that number will come back down to a more stabilized level for next year from here it looks like we're underfunding yeah exactly yeah yeah and so I do think current year actuals too just to be clear these actual numbers go from pretty early in the fiscal year so that actual for fiscal year 23 again is probably going to look pretty high but there's offsetting revenue through ESSER and again once we get that purchase vehicle on board we can stop renting minivans and that will be a lot cheaper so I just want to call this out because last meeting you know there was a lot of talk about how our budget is a normal document and values and what we are seeing in this proposed budget is a doubling in size of community services FY22 so this is showing like real investment in that part of our services community and I want to make sure that we carry that message forward because this is what we move forward and you'll see that that increase started in FY23 FY23 was the first year where we budgeted for ESSER in both the revenue and expense side because ESSER did not start until after the start of FY22 so the increase year over year is related to ESSER thank you for those points alright if there's not more questions here I'll move on you know want to call out and again mention this earlier but we as a department are trying really hard to offset these expenses so from a leverage funds perspective on the left that chart is a list of grants from FY22 that our department secured in support of our work you know you'll see a lot of small numbers here and that is sort of the nature of the beast a little bit when you're dealing with human service grants but again just wanted to reflect that we are out there trying to get grants trying to support the work outside the general fund where we can and also that point at the bottom I think again for FY22 which is the last year we have closed about 37% of our budget was offset by either grants coming in or program fees so I think just want to make the point that we are really out there as a team seeking outside resources beyond taxes to support our work I just think that's important context I have a question there do we already have any programs where we talk about regional dispatch and leveraging resources within the county are we leveraging any other neighboring municipal services so we, I guess what I would say there is, so I'm a member of the VRPA executive board now at the state level so there's a lot of work there happening to start to figure out shared training across rec departments regionally because right now as a for instance you know every spring I'm training lifeguards Ali and Essex is training lifeguards Brad and Essex Junction is training lifeguards so trying to find a way to consolidate some of those for efficiency is definitely one thing we're looking at and then we definitely work with and talk to our neighbors a lot and more I would say for us it's like if Burlington is running a killer this is not an example it's real but like youth football program we're probably not going to try to go and try to compete with that because we'd be better to partner and send our kids there so we definitely are looking at those types of program partnerships but not in the same sort of shared service scale that I think like a regional dispatch would be but yeah we're definitely plugged into the region as it's able to be plugged into at this point because it almost seems like you know not for f.23 but there could be a model that VRPA could look into where there's bridging some shared programming if you agree to be part of the partnership then there's some of those rates are there yeah savings not something to look at for sure any other questions on the outside funding piece here can I ask a question about revenue so I haven't gotten a clear sense of which programming you envision going back to fee based and at what level and could you just speak a little bit to where this like the rough outlines the $297K in revenue comes from yep so and Angela you can help me if I miss be care but as I'm remembering there's about 184 of that, 184,000 of that which comes through THRIVE and so we are projecting a return to fees for THRIVE in totality but with this I think a concerted effort for summer to create a really robust scholarship program so then we were carrying I believe about 16 for recreation programs and I'm looking at the screen at you Angela in case that number is off and then the rest is I think there's about 80,000 in pool fees as well so passes season passes and day passes so I think those three chunks are kind of the primary driver of that 297 number okay thank you and that's inclusive of the pool and programming as well for like swim lessons and things like that we have I think about 70,000 budgeted for day passes and season passes and the rest of it is rental and lessons thank you Angela alright this is just frankly a personal exercise but I just like to make sure we're keeping an even keel here and so of the 13% of the general fund that the community services budget represents on the left is the sort of breakdown interdepartmentally of what's what so again I think a pretty nice mix here of budget going into each of our areas of work again mentioned earlier Christine this reserve fund for the department so these are vestiges of when program special revenue budgets existed for a lot of our programming so these this bottom line number is what we track within our accounting that 56,000 but because like Christine mentioned some of these funds had some strings attached we also track them independently so for instance the library funding that's there about a I think it's about 8,000 8800 of that that's still on the books was from a bequest that was made a number of years ago by a community member that passed away so we're tracking that separately and that's earmarked for the library and then the senior center funding again we've tracked separately in deference to funds that came on board when we took the senior center on as a city program officially probably about 8 years ago now I think it was that we did not so and then the community services one up front just because that number is ugly and I just want to mention what it is so that's we used to run our creation department through a special revenue fund it never cash flowed and so that's where that big negative number comes from so for years the special revenue funds with the exception of the senior center in the library that were flowing positively were essentially supplementing that that line item so that's where that big negative number comes from I don't know Angela if I did a adequate job of explaining the financial side of it but that's fine and there are internal things that we can do to cover that deficit we've discussed internally covering it with fraud balances and the youth programming but we have not made definitive action on those things yet but long story short there's about 56,000 in reserves that are there for community services and those are kind of being held for those rainy day kind of opportunities that come up that might require match for instance for a grant or you know something happens dramatically within our landscape and we need to kind of plug a gap so it's kind of our backup fund for community services a little bit and then the the remaining special revenue fund is the community garden this one has historically in my 10 years been really reliably self-sustaining you will see a negative number at the bottom unfortunately last year someone help themselves to our greenhouse heater over the course of the winter and so when we went in the spring to turn it on it was not there and so we had to replace that to the tune of about $3,000 so that was an unanticipated expense within this budget that over time will net positive in this program and rebuild that that balance but I just wanted to acknowledge that's why that number plunged into the negative so badly that was an unfortunate discovery and then finally just some emerging issues again I think we've spoken about a few of these or most of these but obviously potential changes at the O'Brien Community Center and I think similarly the St. Stevens and Winooski Senior Center properties and just kind of having some uncertainty about what's happening there for city functionality is something we're definitely working on and spending quite a bit of time on right now our return to Phoebe's programming and anticipated challenges there around need for support for scholarships and then continue to make progress on the Parks and Open Space Plan in the absence of a formal Parks Capital Budget that is a tricky one you will see momentarily that we are trying to go find some grants to do these little things here and there to kind of move the needle but that's something that I think is going to continue to be an issue for us over time to try to continue to make progress there and that is it I want to thank everybody for the attention and the time and the community for the ongoing support of our work it is truly a privilege and a pleasure to work here for this city and for this community and yeah hopefully they answered questions but if there are any lingering ones happy to do that now or as they pop into your brain over the next couple weeks Yes Mayor, I'd like to add just kind of come back to one point that or thinking about the positions and the question that you had asked and how to frame that for a future conversation I think Ray you really touched on the we saw some of the core programs that you feel like in retrenchment like these are the ones that you want to deliver on because it's a rock like a foundation of the community services offerings in the past and I think in thinking about what it means to lose one or more of those other positions like at what point you retrench so far you can't even deliver the core programs and I think that goes to your comment Elaine about not ending up with you and Robin doing 60 to 80 hours a week in the summer how do we get to right sized for what we were delivering before so that's what I would be interested in is how those reductions would cross to core program delivery pre-ester and also building up what you learned and developed through Esther that's not to say we can't change or adapt but I think that would be the way I'd like to see some of that information framed its relationship to what we were offering before Esther scaled up the department and then how we would still maintain that at a more rational fun staffing level if that makes sense I think it does so for Angela on page 37 of the binder that you gave us there's a light item under the senior center expenses for food supplies and there's nothing there for FY 22 or 23 for FY 24 it's indicated 17,800 yeah so that is something that moved from the fund 400 budget over into the general fund it is level funded for prior fiscal years that is currently how we pay for the more than a meal program could I encourage light item detailed questions to be held from our staff versus public meeting however I felt like this was significant enough because it was related to food and food insecurity so that is why I raised it during this meeting sure sure thing so I wanted to respond to a counselor heard grant writer idea to the extent that I've got some information today so first I'll note that whether a grant covers a position or program expenses it's still not guaranteed in the future as we were discussing today so if you want stable services you really do need stable revenue generally that's property taxes in this case we're lucky we actually have local options taxes as well community services grants often do require new programming and also don't tend to raise a lot of money as Ray was just describing so to me that would be back to needing staff capacity to implement so grant support for that department would necessarily play out the way we'd want which would be increased capacity basically for public works and economic development some grant work we could contract out so it might be a minimal staff lift so it might make more sense some of the time for that it does depend however overall we came up with a limited list of services that would make sense for Winooski to have grant writing support for one example is charging stations we would need extra capacity to apply for an electric vehicle charging station grant so grant support grant writing support for that would be though would be better suited to a contracted service as opposed to an ongoing paid staff position because we just didn't come up with a lot of examples that we could just contract out the work and it would be fine so Councillor Oakley gathered a bunch of feedback from residents there was a few comments about basically you know around confusion confusion around the budget process how and when to engage why your voice matters if you aren't close to the work and don't have enough insight to direct priorities I'm glad you asked this question I'm glad Councillor Oakley had raised this opportunity to discuss that so there's three types of responses to that question generally first staff council I'd say commission members as well we always welcome resident feedback anytime of year on what's important to you and what you think Winooski should be doing as I mentioned briefly in my presentation last week that's really the big role role for the community is to set vision so just telling us what's important to you is a way to give us feedback on the budget once we get to that I have been trying myself to meet everyone and I know council stepped up you know restarted back in their community engagement processes so we're trying to get out there as leadership to meet with folks we're especially trying to meet with folks that traditionally have been marginalized so please feel free to reach out at any point don't feel like you need to have the perfect type of feedback just engage with us so we can start to understand what's important to you and I want to appreciate that a couple people that provided public comment last week did reach out to me specifically to ask to review our priorities and even the budget potentially and we are grateful for that you can reach me at EWANG at WinooskiBT.gov Paul if I could trouble you to pop that in the chat as well as the phone number second at the same time anyone who really wants to dig in as I started allude to on why we are or are not recommending a specific position, cost what have you you're welcome to set up a meeting especially with me in the finance director we can review those with you so that you understand more clearly on the specifics if that's where your interest is and it's up to council whether they would want to offer that level of detail as well again you can set up meetings with staff by emailing budget at WinooskiBT.gov Paul please again or that same phone number and third we recognize that we could do a better job of engaging the public earlier in the budget process so it doesn't feel like it's such a done deal by the time we get to these meetings this was my first year through this budget process so I wanted to see as the manager what's been done in the past before I went about trying to propose anything really really new or different or disruptive next year we are hoping to provide earlier engagement opportunities we'll see how that works out but that said don't feel like you have to wait for us to figure that out to offer those opportunities reach out to us and I recognize that it's staff job to provide opportunities to make sure that people understand that yes this is you're definitely welcome to raise your voice another question that came up from the public if the tax rate increases per month or for the year the tax rate increases are for the year the property taxes are billed quarterly so you would be seeing the impact to your pocketbook quarterly apply have the non property tax revenues gone down those have decreased by a total of $317,965 I'm sorry $317,965 there's three reasons there's the loss of ESR funding as we've been discussing today reduction from the working community challenge grant for FY24 and that's because if we don't fill the equity director position we're assuming we can't provide the programming that would draw down enough programming to draw down the full amount of that grant and then finally the last year council approved the use of just hover over $88,000 and fund balance to net the O'Brien Community Center to zero impact on the tax rate so since we weren't able to fill the vacancy left by North End Studios and the future of the building was uncertain that shows that it looks like a revenue even though it's fund balance it's money that the city already has that use of fund balance is not continued in FY24 in preparation for the city having to pay rent on the space which would then need to be covered by taxes and then some of these decreases were offset in revenue were offset by anticipated normal operating revenues there was a question on how much will you ski businesses pay into a new ski infrastructure it's hard to break down exactly the share their share for infrastructure but there's a lot of numbers and I can share that if you're interested but it comes down to they actually pay more proportionately in taxes than homeowners do and that's those are the yeah when we implemented local options tax that was part of that that entire conversation was that those taxes should support infrastructure and then that's another way that businesses and residents should be thank you so I'll I'll pause it there there's other questions that I'm answering directly with council to email these are the ones that I thought may be more interested more folks will be interested in so I'll review them here thank you I just want to say thank you Ray for taking the time with us and going into the detail and work that you department are doing so thank you very much two grants well I'm going to pause you there though Ray I would like to call if I could recess give us a little break before we get into the rest of the agenda I've got 826 so 831 we are on to I'll be this is all for discussion or approval about the agency of national resources and recreational trails program Ray are you still with us I am still here so I think hopefully a fairly straightforward project scope we're looking at doing both trailhead and on-trail signage improvements in a number of our city parks where we have recreational trails and looking to apply for funds to support that there's about a 20% match not about there is a 20% match for this that can come either through in kind or cash and so the cash requirements could be covered through the current parks capital reserve fund should we be awarded the grant so I don't have to answer any questions folks might have I just want to start by disclosing a potential perceived conflict conflict of interest in this item I am an employee of the agency of natural resources however do not have any role in reviewing awarding decision or making awarding decisions on this grant program so I don't believe I actually have a personal financial conflict of interest and I'll continue to vote on this unless anyone has any questions or concerns any questions from members of the public someone might want to make a motion to approve the A&R recreational trails program application so moved second I motion carries I am C Department of Education 20th Century Community Learning Center grant yeah so we are up for our third renewal in my time here for the five-year block grant from the agency of ed for 21 C this is a grant that's carried through the school district but of which we are a sub grantee and a co-writer so our we essentially bring match to the project to allow us to draw down as a community more funds from agency of ed so our our drawdown would be up to 26,000 and then we are required to do a one-to-one match there which we typically cover through existing expenses related to the Thrive program and then the Thrive attendances can allocated towards this grant as part of their reporting and counseling yeah yeah we can grab a motion to approve the second motion by Jen second by Aurora all those in favor please say aye aye motion carries thank you thank you so we are on to item D this is after a discussion for approval of COVID-19 recovery health profit grants program potential second round of funding sure just in brief at your November 7th meeting you discussed whether to open a second round of non-profit funding you asked for this item back on your agenda once you had a clear picture of the fiscal year 24 proposed budget discussion potentially funding another round of grants potentially to the team of $30,000 which was not spent and initially allocated to the business grant program but no longer is available to our reserves so the estimate is if we just cancel a lot to open a second round of funding for this or just not do that I'm happy to start go ahead my preference in looking at stretch budget items line scraping being one of them traffic calming we don't have a budget funding source for that to me those would take priority over reallocating money towards a non-profit grant at this time yeah I also wanted to add I think you brought this to my attention originally the state the state legislature appropriated $40 million of their urban funding for community recovery revitalization program that is open to businesses and non-profits as well so there's other new capacity out there too I'm supportive of not adding additional funding to the non-profit program at this point I should share I was going to say I don't know if this would take up too much staff time but would there be a possibility of then promoting what the state has is information about that community recovery program just boosting it just pushing information out wouldn't take that much yeah I shared it on my like social which is not the same reach and it has a long I shared too late for staff Thomas he did send me some notes on a couple of items he said he would be open to another funding round but less than $20,000 but it sounds like he may be do not wish to take action with this any questions or comments from members of the public? there's no one else in the room at this point oh good to know thank you okay Christine before you move on would you like to ask for a vote to continue and then with the expectation that it would be voted down to provide clear direction in a recorded motion? okay because we have to vote in a positive so I would meditate a motion to approve a second round of funding sorry point of order you want to have a motion where no one votes the A? actually but this would also work like if nobody makes the motion then that's in the record as well was there well there was a motion could someone make a motion and then if it doesn't get second it's done in 5 seconds alright I'll move that we approve a second round of funding at $30,000 for the COVID-19 recovery non-profit grant program the motion might change you're a member of the school so let's move on to item E also one for discussion approval of the approval of the site procedure so again at your November 7th meeting you discussed conditions or restrictions for political signs and public rights of way that staff would apply in managing political signs and rights of way in the future you agreed to postpone a decision to a later date to give candidates at that time since they were running for the next day time to provide input I actually have not received any additional input since then but you did receive some at that time which is summarized in your packet one of our previous mayors Michael Bryan about sorry I heard the stuff what he had shared was that posting in any public rights of way was primitive it is primitively but that historically the weekend before there was no enforcement so essentially it was you can't do it at all the weekend before the election so I don't know I would look to staff how they feel about this first but I would say that would be an easier approach to this than having staff try to regulate for numbers and distances and that sort of thing that's true downstairs thoughts on the approach I might need the refresh of my memory from November I think it's it's where it becomes a nuisance to the community I think after the election and if there's a burden to city staff to clean up the signs to me like if there's any impact to our waterways or our landscape trees, parks, things like that like if it should warrant some type of fee or fine you're not picking up your signs after the fact to whomever they belong to again that takes some degree of enforcement so there's city staff time that could go into it but it could create a mechanism at least for the option to implement right so currently we have that authority provided by ordinance it's my understanding from the past city managers we haven't chosen to enforce that generally we'll remove the day after store them here so that some people are running perennially so they could pick it up for a future year and then at the end of about a week then we dispose of them altogether so if there was what I would deem as the manager nuisance amount and they don't pick it up I might assess a fee and that's allowed in the fee chapter so for further clarification I feel like some of the interest in the matter came up because of the signs in the circle the weekend before the election which would have been was that a full two weekends before the election was the halloween event that we had those signs so there was a what one may describe as a nuisance for the party that was further than the weekend before however there is still the possibility that the weekend before could halloween but the other issue was signs in public rights of way in public property which implies which implies that those are created so I'd be willing to I'd be comfortable with allowing for signs in the public right of way in the weekend before but for the center circle the public right of way in the center of the like along the fencing yeah along the fencing of forwardery park well and I feel like we should I would support just excluding them in any city apartment and that would include liberty okay yeah that's so we do have a question in the audience are there other comments from council I will share also comfortable with allowing them in rights of way during a defined window period defined period of time to create predictability for candidates and to create predictability for staff about what they're supposed to do I think it's a reasonable policy decision to formalize I would not want to see them in parks and I think there could be I also would encourage the staff to have a I would think that we should have a clause that allows staff to remove it if it conflicts with another community interest so if there is like an event that is going to be run by the city and it's going to be complicated by signs like that should I don't want you to have to not remove signs because and then not be able to hold a parade or whatever it is like I can coming up with bad examples but that might be worth considering to that the city could choose to remove signs during that window for other reasons if it serves a community interest something else to consider I think one thing to then is we haven't here signs for nonprofits may be approved by the city manager and I feel like is that then it's would we see that as a separate procedure because then I see things that's getting very complicated because then can nonprofit signs where can they be does it see as endorsements sometimes nonprofits are promoting specific things that are on a ballot how does that all balance out to so I think I agree with the no advertising for any businesses is prohibited but I see kind of some not quite sure how to handle the nonprofits in the various ways that might appear yeah I could see a not in parks sort of a thing and you know I could I feel like there's enough well at least for me there's enough direction provided in this conversation assuming that it continues in a motion that I could exercise some discretion and then build up a body of practices that could then be communicated consistently over subsequent years sounds good because some of them are like their sports teams I mean it would be good to have visibility for those because they're opportunities for the community or you know other recreation programs like there was the Vermont Symphony Orchestra had you know signs out this year and we had to take them out which seemed a little you know too bad but right if you're endorsing if you're endorsing a particular item on the ballot then that's linked to an election and so then it could be treated more like campaigning and yeah so I could see being able to develop some consistency as long as you entrusted that discretion to the manager sounds good I just had a question about the signs so the first question is do typically around the circle like prior to the weekend before an election first of all is this applied at any election the second question is before that weekend do you like does an entity need to get a permit out of the impression that that was kind of part of being able to sign on the circle before the weekend before an election was acquiring a permit and just to plug that I really enjoy seeing the signs around the circle even though this past one maybe I saw more ones that perhaps I didn't support but I enjoy seeing all the signs around the circle as it encourages to participate in the election but yeah any of these two questions would be helpful, thanks so the current ordinance does require people to request permission and but that hasn't been followed in many years of a certain practice so it's understandable that people just didn't realize that was even required I mean I've forgotten the second question just that this applies to like the weekend before an election does that apply only to like a November election or does that apply to all elections so currently the prohibition is is absolute it's not allowed at all so what their council will be discussing now is potentially a time period thank you so much I'm ready for the city manager to approve nonprofit signs however and and to also remove from an approved area if there's a conflict with a new city event the question that remains is do what is the time interval preceding the election that we are comfortable with and do we want to delineate what's in the cover sheet here no more than one sign within 15 million each other in color right away or just being able to sit down the weekend before it's kind of free for all but that will seem hard I know one thing that came up last time and I feel a little bit more comfortable with it if we're thinking about kind of eliminating city parks is what the state road rules were which were the no more than two weeks prior to an election and I think I appreciate both being a way of free expression for campaigns but I also worry sometimes that campaigns with more funds are able to then get out more signs and that can lead to its own inequity too so I think that's something I have in mind too with kind of this conversation but I wonder if tying it to something that is already in place say with the state roads might make it feel more comfortable to folks as well yeah so then you can't don't have to like is this the state road, is this the city road how do we want to balance that so right now the procedure is two weeks no more than two weeks prior is that different from the state roads that is the state I understand do you have the statements in writing or do they have any explicit about like number of signs no I just I have I think what was referenced on November 7th so I don't and I'm sure it's just a it's very difficult to manage for that when you have lots and lots of miles of road staff suggestion of that I appreciate the mayor trying to look out for her staff capacity and management of you know is this 50 feet or not staff felt that this what was proposed here which would mean that we would only be acting if there was a complaint not that they have to go out and measure every day you know anytime one pops up but if there was a complaint then we would have a very clear metric on a block to block basis of what our action was weighing that idea of like campaigns with more money could put out more signs and is that really what we're trying to do here so it was a balance of those two things of manageability for staff and also trying to allow the point of the advertising to function which is awareness of the public of candidates and issues about the right of lay enforcement and I think this is a blessing too you know there's a lot of folks whose front yard actually has been in the right of way and when we give guidance to candidates saying you can't post in the right of way until you know before the election um like it's only now that we'll show you that but I wonder if it is fair to say if you're behind the sidewalk that is acceptable that's your front yard in front of the sidewalk not acceptable um that's a good generalization but I would want to make sure that um public works and planning is only generated the map as guidance so that I wasn't putting you know getting someone in trouble by mistake there's also the challenge for roads that don't have sidewalks correct well for ones that have perhaps if the yard is touching your house that would create an interruption with public I could say signs may be placed between the sidewalk and the street so I'm saying no I think that's the delineation because between the sidewalk and the street you left the person's front yard that would be the condition signs may be placed between the sidewalk and the street which would eliminate the no sidewalk zones which applies house endorsement so you can only put signs in the green belt like that would be the effect of that right is that what does that solve the issue I'm saying that's not allowed except during this period this like two and period before when we're saying it's fine in the right way we don't have to address this now I just know that's been a point of confusion and where a person will only put a sign in their yard but they can wait to be in their yard and then it was removed because it was technically in the right way but it is a continuum so it sounds like and they are just pausing so the first bullet I just want to make sure there's clarity on campaign signs related to matters or candidates on the ballot so that would have been a problem for me this last election because I was a writing candidate for a matter on the ballot right could you for candidates on the ballot so I think you could we could change this to candidates for matters on the ballot that would help thank you thank you so it sounds like there could be a motion to public rights in a way for campaign signs related to candidates or two matters on the ballot written more than two weeks prior to an election and more than one day after an election signs for non-profits may be approved by the city manager any advertising for businesses is prohibited there should not be more than one sign from the same end of your campaign with the 50 fees etc within this bullet no signs are allowed in city parks without approval from the manager signs may be removed from the public right away if there is a conflict with the community event there these conditions may be removed by city staff and we would operate in a conflict of reacting to complaints versus proactively having staff go measure and make sure that signs are within these parameters with some nice emotion that has our sign policy procedure please thank you so moved I just had a question sorry I will happily second the motion but can we have discussion afterwards I just want to verify just because I was looking at the Vermont Secretary of State rules that town officials cannot summarily remove signs that violate local ordinances does our signed ordinance provide for the removal that was the question okay so motion 5 aye motion curious Elaine did you get all that I think so and if not we've got the recording great okay let's move on to item F this is on for discussion so housing goal update so we've made progress on some of our must-dos the policy work support is a little delayed the recommended items we have not made any progress on and new ideas are a mixed bag so as Deputy Mayor Duncan mentioned earlier the public building registry ordinance work is finally underway staff presented proposed changes for Chapter 17 the public building registry which really is the primary way that the city helps support quality safe housing for our community staff presented the proposed changes for that chapter to the housing commission on December 8th the housing commission was generally supportive of the proposed changes during their January meeting they'll discuss further those changes anything else residual from Chapter 17 and then as Councillor Duncan mentioned start reviewing staff proposed changes to Chapter 9 housing which have to do enforcement once there's a violation found so that is a significant piece that has been on the to-do list for some time and staff is relieved that we're finally able to make some progress there the other items are would be advancing more quickly if we had the housing initiative director position as I mentioned last week I decided to pause that once it became evident that I would be recommending a reduction in hours to make sure that we knew what we were advertising and the reappraisal which has nothing to do with the housing initiative director is going as planned the assessors assessor team is making progress on schedule and there'll be complaints so far find out when you will be next some of the recommended items would are definitely suffering from a lack of housing initiative director in terms of tenant and landlord connections and other ways that we might be able to promote findings from the equity audit that have to do with housing I recently hosted staff of the community so they have programs for housing supports for tenant and landlord education and having follow-up conversations with them about how to get them connected to groups and community so we can still make some headway on that with lack of even though there's a lack of staff I also wanted to say about the planning post-city housing summit we discussed this at the commission chairs meeting for leader this year and it was clear to me that there wasn't a strong vision or or that effort and I don't know my feeling coming out of that conversation is that this action should have been removed from our list I don't know if others will say I think I'd push back against that from the meetings I've had where I was discussed in the safe healthy connected people as well as the combined meeting with the safe healthy connected people and housing commission if Jim would agree but I think there is definitely an interest to explore I could agree that maybe there isn't a strong vision and that is probably due to the fact that we don't have you know housing currently that position is not filled so we don't have that kind of dedicated staff support or expertise but I definitely think there was an interest in something of this nature to have a conversation about the issue due to the fact that it is affecting so many residents and my recollection of that item is that it came up the idea of having a summit came up at a particular time with particular staff resources and when the equity director departed and Heather departed we did not have the staff to drive that agenda and it was clear that the commission chairs did it seemed clear to me the commission chairs didn't feel they could drive it from their seat so I think it is a staff capacity issue that then made it less relevant because there were other things that were going to be done specific to housing we had the equity audit we had this long standing need for dealing with housing ordinances and I personally felt that we made the right decision to move away from prioritizing the housing summit at this time because we didn't have the staff and we didn't have the exact need and we had some things we could do to make headway on those needs without doing a summit so I think when we talked about it our policies and priorities I remember it was still potentially of interest down the road but very much a like if there's, if the conversations with the community involving the nature of staff and commissions leads to that being advantageous that still might be worth revisiting but I don't think it's a thing that we need to be like getting to because I don't, we don't have a vision for it and I don't think we have a use for it right now that would be respectful of the time community members would be put into something like that. So the one other thing that I'll elaborate on from the memo that I provided in the packet and it is available online Paul if you could post a link to that thank you. I'm a son program so opportunity's credit union manages this program for the city I met with them recently and they suggested the city explorer and interest rate buy down grant program in lieu of the current down payment assistance program which is mostly alone. So the reasons include A there's now a lot of down payment assistance programs available from other lenders and a five thousand dollar loan with only up to one of that as a grant for qualified applicants is not really enough to help right now in an environment where interest rates have really grown in the passed down payments might have been the big barrier now currently it's interest rates and to that end see you know interest rates are the current barrier. So the housing commission is interested in discussing that further so at some point council might see that as a proposed program change. Where opportunities will be discussing with that that proposal with housing commission at a future meeting. And that's all I had on the housing update. If there's any questions. That was just gonna be my question is that does sound the interest buy down sounds really interesting and if there doesn't sound like there's anything needed from council at that time at this time. At this time correct yeah. Okay. The housing commission needs to dig into some of the details more before we would have something strategic to say to you all. I do want to say that I recently reviewed the housing trust fund single family homeowner incentive that we that was designed and I think there's a there was years and years of work that was put into it and an immense number of meetings community housing staff city staff members of the community and just it's one of those things where you look at it with fresh eyes and you're like who's how like at this point it feels like there's such a demand there's such a need and yet the utilization of the program is so low so that to me that indicates there are barriers to access to to the intent and that there's ample opportunity for improvement. So I just want to advocate that I also very much support some changes and in the near future as one of our near term priorities for the housing commission and hopefully for city staff to navigate hopefully we're able to get some support from partners and it doesn't take too long to make some positive changes that are you know within the realm of comfort in that it doesn't it bronze up our our degree of comfort with some more risk but at the same time it doesn't you know put us at any degree of concern with our legal counsel I guess but I wanted to mention that I've I've already mentioned that to the mayor. Another housing element that I do comment on yeah of course okay so I I took one call so it's just anecdotal at this point but it'll be interesting now that we're publicizing my name more broadly as the contact for this if I'll have more opportunities for these conversations also I think opportunities is probably getting some of that direct feedback as well so when problem comes he can talk to those the anecdotal the anecdote that I have is I went through the whole program they're like oh great great oh it's alone I'm not doing this and I said well why is that and he's the the person said that it's so expensive to do these improvements now it they just can't afford it you know I'm not saying that's literally the case but they're they're just not interested in alone because it's already it's just not quite enough help and the whole thing is they're looking to producer cost as much as possible materials cost a lot so to your point about balancing risk the other piece of it is like are we what where's the sweet spot between enabling more activity in the community without completely depleting the fund because we're not feeding money into it right now that's noted as a stretch budget item I referred to the last week there's no way to replenish that fund which is why it's designed mostly as a loan program right now I think it's important to remember to recognize that this has been a tiered rollout where down payment assistance has received the most attention and advertising for the longest period of time housing improvement has really been advertised to selective it's been advertised primarily through the building registry as I understand it the public building registry and not broadly advertised and then we haven't been advertising the core loans that was for even less time so as I remember our progression of rollout and the lane please correct me if I've got any of this wrong but we started with the DP with the down payment assistance program we then started out promoting the hip through the housing improvement part through our existing connections with landlords and then we started talking more broadly about the construction rehabilitation grants which were larger pockets of money so I just don't feel that we've had a lot of time to evaluate like the success and it might be anecdotal that people are looking at say it's a lot I'm not going to do it's not high enough value and the solution is just up the total loan amount potentially could be enough or material cost comes down in six months and it also becomes feasible so I think there's that aspect to it like what do we actually promoted and we have the housing commission agree with the recommendation of staff to not do like a full-throated all the time everywhere promotion of all three programs are really seeking to target promotion of these different programs to partners and I so I think like that's got we have to wait that too as we see whether this is performing or not in the short the short three months that it's been kind of publicly noticed yeah I'm not sure if the timing was that deliberate but I think functionally that is close enough to what happened it seemed deliberate when I looked at it back in time maybe it was just the way it happened I can't remember also in housing I do want to emphasize a program that was just announced to the media this week is the weatherization repayment assistance program which we've managed by the Vermont Housing Finance Agency basically allows for weatherization of renter occupied homes and ensuring that the reducing the barrier that often comes up where a renter might want to make some energy efficiency improvements but the requirement of access to the incentive programs is by having the landlord basically pursue those opportunities themselves so this is just one more recent opportunity to reduce barriers to access for weatherization programs so certainly encourage the Housing Commission to look into that and for our state staff to look into opportunities to promote it as well absolutely I was expecting you to tell us about it I didn't disappoint yes so you approve post plan to be a 40 hour per week position at your November 7th meeting a lot of things happen that meeting with 10 of the hours paid from the general fund and 30 from the community development fund not to be confused with the community services department staff posted this position and received a few applications then as I've been mentioning the FY 24 budget picture became clear and I thought oh we're gonna have to try and find cuts anywhere we can especially from currently unfilled positions some exception exceptions anyway so we we take had taken the job posting down so we're proposing this and wanted to formalize it here at least even though you haven't made decisions if you're ready to allow this posting then we could fill it earlier if it turns out that you want to increase the hours that could complicate matters so I recognize this is an awkward ask but that's the balance of the situation we could wait until you know March or January to post and obviously there's some challenges to that and I'll mention that the Housing Commission was consulted about the change Jim can chime in if he disagrees with my summary here that you know they felt it was certainly better than what they've got now which is nobody dedicated of course they're not thrilled about it but it would be worth doing at 30 had some concerns about it being attractive there was some back and forth about that we could do it in the next meeting we could do it after we have our final budget discussion because if we agree with this now I think we're committing to in our final budget decisions same as they are positions have you received comments from Councilor Renner on this I had a question about the Delta for this cost in the budget worksheet that we got it was a $27,000 saved to take 10 hours down which makes this almost $130,000 position if you scale up but it's fully benefited at 30 or 40 so I'm kind of struggling with how that 10 hours is worth $27,000 Angela if you would please it's not just the 10 hours it's one quarter of the entire position and benefits included were assigned to the general fund so the benefits that would be incurred still at 30 hours would ship to the community development so we only need for benefits that are fixed in nature which is health insurance everything else is salary based so it's one quarter of the benefits in one quarter of the salary that's correct it's allocated out using an auto labor distribution in our payroll system so 25% of all pay and deductions get allocated to the general fund right now so the number in that cut sheet is representative of 25% of the total position benefits included and what was the what's the our what's the annual salary rate for this position as posted I'm not certain what they're posting I can tell you what is included in the budget for FY24 that would be at 30 though so I think what we had in the last so what's in the document for tonight said grade 5 at 28 83 so with the decrease in hours are you also decreasing I guess minimum qualifications so couple things I did this without the benefit Angela so it could be wrong the other thing is this is FY23 so it that hopefully I did it right and it's because the difference is because this is FY23 and Angela just reported FY24 gotcha yeah FY23 grade 5 step one is 283 per our non union personnel policy that was approved by council be generally higher so they meaning the bare minimum qualifications for a position at a step one if they have additional experience or education that applies to the position we can increase them up to a grade 5 which is water step 5 which is why I budgeted for a step 6 next year we hire that position this year before April it would be eligible for a step increase next fiscal year gotcha okay thank you that makes sense there's an any hand waving when it comes to Angela all backed up thanks for going into that detail Angela it was a question that had come out that the come up at the housing commission about what the cost of that was and what we were saving so I appreciate being able to walk through it with you yeah and if we do have an applicant that fits our needs that doesn't need to come in a higher grade that could be a savings to the budget next fiscal year but we don't want a budget or something less than the most of you can send that way I feel reluctant to make this decision now I mean I feel like we should commit to a 40-hour work 40-hour position and even if it's just for a year we just decided not to spend $30,000 in our reserve funds I know that's not the right way to think about it but this is an investment that our community has been waiting for for a while and the housing commission and the paraphrase has been struggling for most of a year and we see that we can't get work done that we all agree is a priority so it's hard to imagine that changing and I think that providing a high quality director position at 40 hours a week is appropriate I don't I don't know that we will get the same quality of candidate at 30 hours a week maybe we'll find that person who just that's a good amount of pay and the extra flexibility in time but this is a position that has a lot to do now and probably will still have a lot to do in two years I I have a hard time imagining that we couldn't use that time or yeah I don't know it feels like a decision that we could wait for but I think we should either just move forward at 30 or move forward at 40 and commit to that my opinion hi I would be willing to move forward at 30 and I would actually ask I don't know do you have anything anecdotally to share Angela but in my time it seems like there have been a number of positions of positions that have started in the 30 range and then eventually worked up to 40 and that has been successful keeping people yeah and that's a much easier lift than going from say a 28 hour a week position up to a benefited position it's that jump to that that's really been the major hurdle adding in a couple of hours every year is incrementally a way that we could potentially increase to 40 hours over time as much more affordable and absorbable within the tax rate increase that's still affordable to this community my concern about advertising locking locking the community into a 40 hour position right now is that if you look at the cut and add sheet I'm not saying it's gonna stay that way but absent any other consensus from council at this time we could be committing the community to a disproportionate tax rate increase in FY 25 because there's no there's not a lot of room left over in tiff to pay for so it's like we could absolutely make a case each of us for all those things that we're cutting them there they don't make sense so just want to remind folks about the tax potential tax complications next year yeah I wouldn't be comfortable is there a reason 32 wasn't considered that would be four days well we're trying to get to 5% tax rate increase also 10 hours were included in the general fund having a split where only two hours falls in the general fund it's a little harder on this it's an awkward recording 10 hours before you is there any is there any point in time where the city has voted down a tax proposal well in the last 10 years the increases have been 2.17% so I don't know that that's not the recent past so I've been with the city 17 years and I know not since I've been the city has the budget okay so there's low risk of putting this in the next budget hiring for a position that may not be approved in the budget what's the highest tax rate increase in your tenure Angela was sold to the public on those those items coming on board I just wanted to have a baseline absolutely what a reference yeah well I think if that's a choice between 30 hours a week and nothing I think we need to move forward with 30 hours a week personally I think we need to have something I don't think we can wait too much and that's nice I could see anyone who wants to argue argue back up to 40 well move that we approve this position description at 30 hours a week as described sorry I'm trying to organize all these thoughts and it does seem very uncomfortable to have to do this now on the flip side I agree that this is urgent and we kind of needed it like a year ago so the sooner we can get someone in there the better however it I'm worried that we're going to spend time and money trying to recruit for a position that we can't fill and I do appreciate that this is a benefits eligible position which makes it more interesting is there a chance I don't know I'm trying to think if we made the decision tonight when could it be posted I would think tomorrow okay because we've already been advertising would just be changing the hours I don't know how many people look for jobs around this time of year I mean I'm just thinking about like what would be the cost of not posting it now yeah it's it's that much more time because it is going to take it you know a month or two to actually get someone in at a minimum so mayor on a second yes yes so very exciting gosh what do I have here so the housing voted to recommend you approve this loan they are not eligible for any portion of this as a grant they meet all the criteria I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have about this second-ever down payment assistance application the first one that is still live because the first one was withdrawn legislative priorities memo I think we discussed this two minutes ago I have in red changes in response to the conversation we had last meeting so I added in we talked about not wanting the rental registry support to be a priority necessarily because we don't need it you know we have an industry but we would like to support it for others so I am language about it here connected to priorities we wanted to add more content related to substance use disorder most of this language came from all of this language came from my meeting with the mayor's coalition and I just realized this last thing I was also supposed to include a statement about supporting the legislative study on safe injection sites I didn't like it to put that in here so I can't have that happen with that at the bottom of page two these are edits we actually talked about in the meeting and that's it so if this meets what we discussed previously I think you do I see studies say yeah so I think I think that's good I did that receive one comment that it sounds like they might be alternative term being used as overdose prevention sites so sounds like either or would work include both I'm not sure but that's the only thing I had there's a member in the community that has their handrails I do have a few issues around the substance use disorder and to bring this back just for context I also feel reserved and providing comment as I'm not a resident and to raise all back to the new interventionist position that was discussed previously and urge you to consider the connection with prevention in both presenting your legislative priorities and in taking about the new interventionist position which is funding of that role is a substance use disorder intervention itself it's on the prevention side obviously but that's maybe something that in this legislative memo you could be encouraged potentially encourage the agency of education where I'm not sure who to include that kind of position in schools and communities based on some considerations I would guess mostly we know the income is a really significant predictor of development of substance use disorders it's also a predictor of ACEs adverse childhood experiences which are predictors of substance use disorders in the first CDC recommended strategy minimize ACEs this didn't increase household economic stability and would be recommending this kind of decision based on income considerations or wealth considerations I did have another point two more points one which is that we know candidates has a negative mental health impact on the population and when I say that I really don't mean on individual folks but the population of large when we look at large studies we see the development of hiding the anxiety of new disorders especially my analysis and young adults so under 25 and I would encourage legislators to engage with the CCB the campus control board to model public health impacts of cannabis retail density limits so that would be a little more consideration and lastly on substance use disorders I encourage legislators to consider statewide pilot water testing so what substances are wastewater in what that's something that Brompton have been doing for a little while and a few of us obviously had wastewater pilot says part of COVID-19 intervention but it might be something that you know the state could gather a lot of real-time data from on the topic that is often so it's hard to gather accurate serving kind of do that I believe that substance and people are using them to what degree so those are my recommendations and have me to respond to any questions about those could you go back to what were you saying about the cannabis what did you want legislators to engage the CCB on to consider a retail density limit that means having a certain number of retailers per population and that's important particularly for Brompton or Newsy because we currently are and will continue to be overexposed to gather this compared to other places in the state just by the nature of the population where the economic capital was concentrated in the state and that we know for other prevention science has an impact on especially youth initiation of a product but it also has an impact of you know adults trying to not use a quid or state of recovery and all of that I break back I think this is all important in relation to substance use disorders because there's so much poly use poly substance use and things can get on quickly in terms of treatment in terms of you know substances interacting with each other that may not be specifically in consideration of cannabis but it is sadly something that we can see in autopsy reports of overdoses in our region recently with the THC levels so I'm just starting that out there's one among many public health interventions that could be considered for mitigating cannabis impact but maybe having to talk to you maybe outside the public meeting about other potential strategies to consider Yeah, thank you for sharing all that I will say and I'm putting it in this video if you can correct me if I'm wrong here but from what I recall so we have one retail cannabis establishment in Newsy from what I recall because they can't operate in a building that has like a federally backed mortgage that business owner had a really actually a really self-tied location where you see where they put it and so I do think there's one with our properties are you know they're not state-owned or the state-owned business building that is owned outweighed Right, right Yeah, I'm just going to say I think we probably don't have as much of a concern here but I can see how that would be a general, like how this could be a general part of that Sure, and it may also in terms of the economic after the years or the state at large of you know how to evenly distribute this tax dollars and this impact across the state and so if there was something like a density limit which is by population you know to have the same impact across, they would have an equitable impact across towns and municipalities but again happy to talk more about that offline and thank you for sharing this panel I see Andy's hand is raising it too Thanks, I was also curious to hear more about the cannabis tax that you were just talking about Okay, so I'm sorry, go ahead I just also wanted to thank you for sharing this I really appreciate the part about the placement and housing instability, number one, that's great and I just appreciate it, so thank you Thanks So we had an item on here that I removed in last year legislative session in the last two years There was a lot of advocacy from interviews, so the state collects like 14% of the size tax on retail cannabis that they do not cost you that much Or advocacy, that's, you know, I don't know If they're giving us anything it's like more than 2% and there was advocacy and then they don't want to say zero There was advocacy from many towns and the leadership of the towns to try to get a bigger share of that to put towards local prevention and proactively efforts But it, over the last two years it didn't go anywhere in the legislature It doesn't seem to be interesting enough and since other towns aren't pushing for that we didn't see value in keeping that on our top priorities list because it really won't be voiced as important as almost everything that could happen Gotcha, okay, that makes a lot of sense I do hope that that ever changes as I would really hope it would for municipalities because as we're just talking about with the budget, it would be great to have some more tax revenue coming in from cannabis industries that are going to be blooming here and doing really well, so thanks for explaining that, I appreciate it We have a lot of thoughts from council questions Mary-Anne, I will reach out to you at some point but also we don't need to get a subject anywhere and we're going to get this out to our legislators before the holiday So do I have a question to approve this document as is would one change the word save injection sites over those prevention sites? Sorry Mary, this isn't done for approval so I don't think we can vote on it What? Oh no, did I not? It does not say that I'm the agenda My apologies You could do it by consensus and then have a formal vote next time so that you could still share it with understanding that will be approved Is there, particularly, which I need to follow for consensus? You could just ask each member individually There's not actually a procedure for that I mean you are our voice and I think this is reflecting the changes that were previously discussed and has been warned So there's the one change of wording that doesn't seem particularly substantive It's a good change but it's not substantively different I think I'm fine with you as the voice of the council going forward without a motion Agreed Thank you Thank you So that brings us to item J, the appointment of Jim as our airport commissioner Yes, so at your last meeting you discussed wanting a member of council to represent the city on the Burlington Airport Commission But the meeting time didn't work for most of you because it's during regular work hours Vice Mayor James Duncan offered to serve for a couple of months until hopefully a different solution could be found Meaning some ideas that were floated were perhaps the airport commission could change its meeting time Or if the Wunuski representative rotated among council members I'm recalling the mayor said that you would try to get more information from the airport director about meeting times If the time of day doesn't change you might discuss the second idea or direct staff to advertise for a community member This is in addition to appointing Vice Mayor Duncan tonight Yeah, so I can reach out to the commission chair and each director and share with them our challenges I haven't heard back yet the potential to do the type change And so we can't wait, Jim, for now, so that we have representation there We know that we'll be off come county grade, so this is a two-month appointment, right? And when we have more information we can decide if we want to appoint a different member of council If we can do that or we need to do that Any questions? I just want to thank Eric for continuing to attend I wasn't able to attend the meeting on Wednesday last week following our meeting So I'm appreciative of continuing to stay informed of that on behalf of the city of what's happening there I have a motion to appoint Jim Duncan as our airport commissioner So moved Second Motion by Brandon, second by Aurora All those in favor please say aye Aye Aye I don't know, Jamie, for the other hand Can I vote? I don't know But I said aye as well, so no more views That brings us to the end of this evening's agenda Do I have a motion to adjourn? So moved Second Motion by Jim, second by Bryn All those in favor please say aye Aye Aye Motion carries Thank you Good morning