 This conference will now be recorded. We already everybody here. Can everybody hear me okay? Great. So welcome everybody to tonight's city council meeting for South Burlington on April 15th, 2024 today is tax day. Your state and federal taxes do have to be filed by midnight tonight. Thank you. We'll start the agenda with item number one, which is Pledge of Allegiance. And Lori Lee, lead us please to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic. United States of America. One nation in the republic which stands indivisible with liberty, justice, freedom, liberty, justice for all. Thank you. Item number two, instructions on exiting the building in case of emergency. Good evening. Thank you all for joining us in the room. If there is an emergency in this room, you can go out on the right or left to the rear of the auditorium on the other side and then turn right or left to get outside. For those participating remotely, thank you also for joining us. If you would like to make a comment during any item on our agenda, please turn your camera on and the council or if the chair will call on you. Or you can indicate you'd like to speak in the chat and I will ask the chair to call on you other than that we are not monitoring the chat for content. Item number three, agenda review. Do the counselors have any additions, deletions or changes in the order of agenda items tonight? And just making note that counselor Chalnyk is remote, but he's online, as you can see. So no changes. All right. I'm sorry. Sandy Dooley, you wanna make a comment? I have a question. It's about agenda item 12 relating to the common roots request. I'm used to seeing something at the beginning that like would might be receive the request or discuss the request or consider and possibly approve the request, but no language like that is included in this agenda item. Now I'm not asking you not to have it on the agenda, but my understanding is that public notice requirements would preclude you from taking any action on this request because you don't have any language here that would indicate that might happen. Is that correct? There will be no action taken on this tonight. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions about the agenda items? And now item number four, comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. Who would like to go first? There we go. Ryan Doyle speaking. I've brought up at past meetings where things are marked differently on the website or there isn't a similar kind of marking on it. I noticed the arts committee vacancy position has been noting its due date since it was posted, whereas the others didn't note it within those paragraphs. It was noted somewhere else on the page. So unfortunately I didn't apply to the planning commission because the planning commission paragraph didn't have it in there like the arts committee did. And I've been waiting for Paul to get back to me about some LDR information before writing my application. So I'm just now formally applying to the planning commission for tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Hunt, is it first name Hunter or last name Hunter? First name Hunter, can you hear me? Yes. And Mr. Hunter, can you tell us your last name and where you live? Yeah. The last name is hard. I live off of Kennedy drive in Twin Oaks. Okay. And I just had a comment about Kennedy drive. I'm not sure if this is the right place to make it, but I know that the crosswalk was installed there at the bottom of Kennedy down from the high school. And I think that's a great improvement. And I just wonder if there's any other things in the pipeline in terms of traffic calming measures. I'm thinking specifically of a possibly a speed hump or a speed table in that same area, just because cars and other vehicles tend to go quite a bit faster than the speed limit in that area. Thank you. This is a public comment, not on the agenda tonight. So, but we can take this and talk about this maybe later and get back to you if that's okay. Yeah, that's great. Thanks. Anyway, we'll talk to you later about this, okay? Okay. Who's next? Was there somebody else online who wanted to, oh, Robin's there, but Robin, you're just watching and you got your camera on. But you didn't want to speak, right? Okay. When you find the button, you can turn your camera off until it's time, all right? Okay. So, from the audience, please. And when you come up, make sure the green light is bright on the microphone and tell us who you are and where you live. Is it bright green? Is the, my bright green? Oh, now it's bright green. There you go. We're good. Giovanna Garino from Stone Hedge, South Burlington. I have grave concerns about the pickleball courts. I want to say, first of all, I'm sure intentions were good. I know there was a core group of people for the past 10 years. They're my neighbors. I like them. They respectfully played for the past 10 years, a few hours a day, should have stopped right there. Pickleball is a psychologically torturous noise and we've all been forced to listen to it since it opened. None of us had a vote. This was an in-house committee making decisions based on a core group of people who desired it. I get it. I get why four courts were made out of one, but you took a tennis court away from tennis players, you gave it to pickleball players, and then you advertised this all over the internet, free pickleball at Samansky Park. Everybody came, traffic from everywhere, which I'm gonna let Michael handle. My concern is the damage of the quality of my life. I added up the hours, 105 hours a week, 420 hours a month, 3,780 hours in the period that that court is open. We listened to, it's horrible. It shouldn't be there, and I will advocate for it to go. I'll stand up legally for it to go. I have an autistic child that lives with me, who's 10. He has rights not to be harassed. This noise is very harassing. It upsets him. It's not safe walking, tuned from school because of cars being clocked at 40 miles an hour. He does not have a sense of cause and effect to get out of the way of a speeding car. And it happens twice a day when we have to walk there. I've almost been hit by a driver riding my bike, who didn't look, was backing out, rushing off, and I yelled, hey, and she followed me, rolled her windows down and swore at me for about three minutes. That's a peaceful neighborhood going up in flames here. And it's a tragedy waiting to happen with all of the children. It wasn't designed for that kind of traffic that goes five blocks down both sides. It's 15 hours a day, it's seven days a week. I saw the nets go up in March. I saw last fall, they came down just before Thanksgiving. Nine months out of my 12 month year, I can't open my windows, I can't sit on my deck, I cannot garden because I hear the incessant, torturous noise of pickleball. People have left their dogs barking in the car while they play. That's the only time I ever spoke. I went to the court and said, whoever dog is in distress, you need to take that dog home. Two cars, two dogs, one car barking. More noise. The hurrays, the yahoo's that, you know, telling the children to get off the court because it's for the adults, you have to sign up. That's gonna be spoken about. I know two neighbors that that happened to. It's the wrong place for pickleball. It wasn't researched. There wasn't any thought process for parking. The noise wasn't researched. I have done my homework. I read all the city council notes from 2020 over the weekend. I know where it started. I know who the people are. Good people, good intentions, wrong spot. It's gotta go. It should be at Dorset Park where there's parking, athletic noise, and plenty of room. Thank you. And I do have one other thing. It was suggested that we do a petition but that puts the onus of resolve on the victims of a decision made by the city. And the onus of resolve is on the city. Thank you. Thank you. I just wanna share with the counselors. Jamal also gave you a handout which is under your agenda today. Hi, how you doing? I'm just gonna echo some of the sentiments that- Could you repeat your name slower for me? Mike Gratz, G-R-A-T-Z. G-R-A-T-T? G-R-A-T-Z. T-Z, Gratz. Yep. So just want a couple minutes of your all's time here. So my name is Mike Gratz and my family and me have lived on the corner of Yandell Drive and Andrews for over 10 years. This is my first time engaging in a civic matter as a member of South Burlington. I believe that by not advocating for or speaking up against the issue of the pickleball courts at Samansky, it'll continue to be at the expense and safety of my family, my neighbors and the dozen or so preschool to middle aged, middle school aged kids who live within a one block radius of the park. It's unfortunate that in a few short years the safety and serenity the neighborhood once provided has been completely destroyed following the city's decision to modify one of the park's tennis courts into four pickleball courts. I don't think anyone could have foreseen the issues, concern and disruption they would have brought. It's important to note that I don't blame the parks and rec department for their efforts to elevate the park by adding a popular engaging activity that can be enjoyed by people of all ages. At this point in time though, I do look to the city council to engage in swift action to rectify the safety concerns that the neighborhood is subject to and a victim of on a daily basis from April to November, all resulting from the creation of the pickleball courts. It's also necessary to preface with my acknowledgement of your awareness of this ongoing issue and my intent is not to bring it to light but to give you a firsthand account of the situation and the issues it's causing. First and foremost, there's an obvious parking issue that's been created with the popularity of the courts. The limited number of spots cannot fit anywhere close to the number of cars the courts attract and the parking lot can accommodate only roughly six to eight cars. If just the pickleball courts are filled that's at least 16 cars, not to mention people who would like to use the park for basketball or the playground. The lack of parking causes the entire area around the park for a three to four block radius and even on the side of Stonehenge to become a free-for-all parking lot for the players. Noting the amount of cars that are parked on Andrus and Yandow, it's safe to assume the courts are 100% not being utilized by members of the neighborhood and based on the number of visible Shelburne and Charlottetown beach stickers, they're not from South Burlington either. The cars are parked on both sides of the street and in many instances the parking jobs are at many times quite haphazard and frankly pathetic. Cars park three to four feet from the curb, cars parked on severe angles and even cars literally blocking driveways. The congestion is so bad I have even witnessed South Burlington Public Works and the Porta John trucks unable to access and thus service the park. The scope of the street parking issue causes anyone walking or biking in the vicinity to have to do so in the roadway. I would also like to highlight that the streets leading into the park are already highly trafficked arteries for the children of Orchard who live in Laurel Hill and Stonehenge, bike commuters, runners and walkers who utilize its connection to the rec path. The parking issue is exacerbated by the high rates of speed in which cars consistently fly through the neighborhood. Cars, trucks, SUVs and trucks are racing down Andrus and Laurel Hill to get to the park and one would have to assume that these individuals are in the mindset that getting on a court to play a game supersedes not only the posted speed limit but any rational concern for anyone but themselves and their own activities. As Giovanna mentioned, this mentality is perpetuated by pickleball websites that literally offer sign up times in the ability to schedule reservations to block spots to play at these courts all when SB parks and rec have clearly noted the courts are first come first serve. It is my request that you reach out to these community groups and immediately ask them to revise their websites. Almost done. It's unfortunately become the job of myself and my neighbors to install signs on our lawns and even stand in our driveways monitoring for cars, motioning for cars to slow down on the weekends. To our disbelief, to our disbelief, this has become met with an incredible amount of volatile and aggressive language and even hand gestures. I was even told by a luxury SUV driver with Florida plates who slowed down at our house only to roll his window down and tell me it's not his expletive fault that you chose to live next to such a beautiful park. You people need to stop being such expletive babies about this. The icing on the cake was my seven year old was standing next to me. So it's beyond apparent that the sentiment is that we happen to live next to a pickleball court, not that the pickleball court is located where we live. The level of tolerance for inclusion of others using the courts is also an issue. Several times, my children have been playing pickleball with their friends and are forced off by the older players saying these courts aren't for kids, they're for grownups only. This of course is not the case, though as everyone can imagine, it's a bit intimidating as a child being surrounded by individuals their grandparents age, telling them they're not allowed to play and need to leave. I can say it was certainly uncomfortable for me to go up to a group and command the attention of 20 plus strangers and remind them that the courts are in fact open and free for anyone of any age to use. I can say with full confidence and sadness that there will be a severe if not fatal accident in the near future. If nothing is to be done about the complete absence of governance and enforcement surrounding the entitlement and lack of compassion that the pickleball community has for the people who live in the neighborhood. This is all notwithstanding the efforts of concerned neighbors posting signs, Parks and Recs leaving a speed trailer on the street for weeks and Parks and Recs installing a sandwich board at the entrance of the park, reminding the players of the rules and that this is in fact a neighborhood where people live. I would welcome anyone here to come to Samansky on a nice day during the week after work or on the weekend and witness firsthand the parking and speed concerns I've brought to your attention. Perhaps the city needs to look into parking passes or even additional designated parking or explore ways to limit the amount of non-South Burlington residents the court draw. It's unfortunate that a group of individuals has engaged in such a hostile takeover of a once peaceful and quiet park in a small corner of the neighborhood. It's unfortunate that the citizens of Orchard, Laurel Hill and the South Burlington community cannot enjoy the park and these courts as Parks and Rec intended. And it is unfortunate that after several years of bringing this to the attention of the leaders of the community, nothing has changed. To be honest from my point of view, it would be unfortunate if the only solution was for the courts to go away. But there needs to be something that happens immediately to address the dire safety issue that these courts have created and the park needs to be reclaimed as a place to be enjoyed and used in the way it was before. In closing, I urge the city to not allow this issue to get mired in politics, process and procedure. There is no need for a petition or an inquiry. Action and resolution are all that is needed and they are needed as soon as possible. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else wanna speak on this subject? Thank you. Any other speakers about the Pickleball Courts, Shermansky? Any other? So let me just say I hear you, this is the first time I've ever heard about this issue. And I think the council probably is the first time they've heard about it too, most of them. So I'll come pay a visit this weekend if it's nice, not raining, right? Cause I'd like to go visit and see for myself. And so I'll make an effort for that, right? Oh, okay, yeah, I'll just ride my bike down there, yeah. Thank you. And so this is not on the agenda tonight, so we can't discuss this really, cause we had a full agenda, so. But thank you for your information. Tim, could I ask a question? We do have a presentation from Park and Recs tonight, so we'll have an opportunity to hear more about generally speaking. But it does sound like it might be a reasonable request to consider adding the topic to a future agenda. Oh, absolutely, yeah, yeah, I agree. Thanks. Any other items tonight? Please come forward and make sure that green light is on and tell us your name and where you live. Thank you, yeah. My name is Andrew Subin, that's S-U-B-I-N. I actually live in 17 Ledge Road in Burlington. I'm general counsel for a cannabis cultivation company based in Middlebury. And I wanted to address the council this evening to ask you to allow me to, in a future date, make a presentation to the council about retail cannabis in South Burlington. As you know, I think as you probably know, retail cannabis requires a vote of the voters, which would have to be at a special election or on town meeting day. But I think that the people of South Burlington ought to have a vote on whether there should be retail cannabis allowed in South Burlington. And I would very much appreciate an opportunity to be placed on the agenda and present to the board the reasons why I think we should have a vote on retail cannabis in South Burlington. Great, thank you very much. Anybody else? Oh, Mr. Brzee, make sure that mic is on. It was left on, I always forget. Lou Brzee, I live on Cranwell Avenue in South Burlington, been here for a long time. The last council meeting, there was a presentation on bike paths. And in particular, the discussion was closing the gaps. And that's an appropriate thing to do. And in particular, we've got active projects to close some of the gaps. Sitting there and listening to the discussion, I was reminded that closing the gaps comes up all the time. It started out 20 years ago when I was on the committee. And every committee has worked that issue for years. What I wanted to show you was a map that's up on the screen right now. And it's important that we not only worry about what we need to do in the future, but celebrate what we have already. And as you can see, the green lines are the shared use paths that exist. That's not the only place you can ride a bike. There are bike lanes and streets in addition to that. And the yellow lines are the, I think the projects that were discussed two weeks ago. But every once in a while, we ought to just step back and celebrate the 20 years of progress that the city's made. That's all I wanted to say. Thank you very much. There's just a little bit of yellow on there. But it's coming, it's coming. No other public comment tonight before? Okay. Thank you. Moving on to item five, which is councilor's announcements and reports on committee assignments. And finally, the city managers report afterwards. Mr. councilor Smith, would you like to say something? I'll go first. And on the 10th, I was at the Parks and Recreation and Parks Committee meeting and Giovanna and Mike both presented on the pickleball issue. So I have heard about it before. Okay. And so they stole my thunder on that. I don't need to say much more. I had suggested a petition and I totally understand the perspective that that's putting the onus on them, but it was brought up under the context of being able to show the level of concern that exists in the community. So that's that piece. We talked about Hubbard Park and the paving of Hubbard Park. There were some concerns of the neighbors about the south end of the path being shifted so that it's moved away from some neighbor's properties. And that was discussed and a question was raised about when that path would be actually done and it's on schedule for construction in 2025. So that is it for the Parks and Rec. I also attended a natural resource and conservation committee meeting. And oops, I'm on one second. Too many things. There we go. And there's a presentation that's gonna be happening tonight on open space and parks. There was a discussion about the land development regulations that the council committee was trying to get put forward for tree preservation in the LDRs. That has been put on hold by the planning commission staff as they're working on the Act 100 changes to our LDRs. But it is coming up. There was a back and forth concern about whether the NRCC's proposal was actually going to be presented to the planning commissioners. And I spoke with Paul about it today. And when that gets on the agenda it will be passed on to the commissioners so they can review it at the appropriate time. The NRCC is looking for someone to lead a presentation or discussion about environmental justice. And if there's any feedback for them on that that would be helpful. And lastly, on April 24th there is going to be a wildlife safety event outside the library at City Hall in the evening which is going to need some advertising and public awareness. So they were looking for help on that. And the NRCC voted to approve their support of this event which is going to happen on the 24th. And that's what I have. Thank you. Mike? Yes, also on the 10th I attended the bike and pedestrian or pedestrian bike committee. It was the first time I sat in on this group now that I'm the liaison to it. And I was really impressed that they seemed to be addressing something that we've talked about is sort of a broad view. Though it says bike and pedestrian they were very focused also on aligning it with other transportation and creating a holistic approach which I think is should be the goal of all our committees to look across the range of where there is overlap. They, we had to read out on one of the surveys they're doing on which is the walkability and it's the perception of walkability from neighborhood to neighborhood, which again, I think also applauded the committee on its effort to be sort of very inclusive and seeing how things appear depending on where you live in the city. What came out of the initial findings and it's still a work in progress was that the issue of walkability for the most part in terms of when people choose to walk in our city is primary for recreation. So in our aspirations to become a more walkable city in terms of walking as a choice of taking care of whether it's errands, whether it's taking care of stuff is still seemingly a secondary factor in terms of when people choose to walk. But I also thought it was very good that in this survey they're doing and in a follow-up survey they will be doing on the mobility issues in general in the city. They basically acknowledged that when they do their surveys and this particular survey had 179. So they acknowledged that it is a very small sampling of the city and this is a challenge I think we've all talked about is how do we get broader sampling and this doesn't apply just to these surveys but also we found out with the election in terms of turnout. But they also I think were very proactive in the sense of when they do do this survey if they see that a particular neighborhood of the city is not represented they will actively reach out to basically connect and try to find information. So I think that I was really impressed by their desire to be attentive to the entire city to basically weigh the different perceptions that exist in the city and to move forward on that. They underscored that they had already taken action especially as it comes to the sort of chamberland neighborhood underscoring the city had done three I believe crosswalks along Williston Road. But again, they said their perception was that people don't always acknowledge or at least not acknowledge don't see the impact and again, what kept coming up in discussion is the importance of communicating effectively with the committee. We also had a briefing again showing their holistic approach to the issue of transit and transportation and mobility within our city. They had an update from the safe route to schools but I know that's what Andrew is also perhaps Andrew will be giving an update on the safe route to schools but I was very impressed with the group of people and their effort to be reflective of the interests writ large in our city. Thank you. Andrew, can you hear us? Yeah, hi, Tim. I can hear you. Can you hear me? Thank you. Yeah, so thank you. So I can did an energy committee meeting and Mike, you were there as well. But you're the one that's on, so I'll let you speak. Yes, of course, thank you. So we had a further discussion about possibly enhancing our regulations about EV charging infrastructure and we received a really nice presentation from Run On Climate with great pertinent information on the relative costs of installing EV charging infrastructure, very new construction versus as a retrofit and that information will kind of be summarized and synthesized and provide further to the planning commission as it considers the proposal from the energy committee. And then Lou, who just spoke, who recently gave a presentation on the very thing that the city is doing in terms of reducing human-disabled greenhouse gas footprint. Lots of things discussed. The highlights for me are the three new heat pumps on the DPW building to significantly reduce the natural gas currently used by the building, I think it's natural gas, along with new EV charging stations that will be at that facility, that will be available both for municipal staff, municipal vehicles and the public. So that's really terrific, I'm excited about that. Mike, we haven't had a new task force meeting since the last city council meeting, so no real update, but the task force is right now working on crossing guards and learning about how other municipalities employ, retain, train crossing guards and learning about kind of best practice policies for where crossing guards should go. And that's gonna be a topic of the next few meetings as we kind of drill down on that question. Then I also attended along with Tim, Lori, I think some others, maybe the Tesla grand opening. It was a terrific event and very excited for that facility to hopefully make a difference in furthering electrification of precipitation in the city. Thank you. Elizabeth? Thank you. I attended two school board meetings and Chris Trombly was named to fill the open position that was vacated by Alex McHenry, the balance of that. There was quite a bit of discussion on dates and processes for another vote on the school board budget and the discussion centered around the possibility of having up to two votes if needed till July 1st. My understanding is there may be some limitations of being able to do that, execute that. And so I think that's an open issue. I will be sitting in on this Wednesday's meeting. Oh, there's Tim. I'll report out for you. And there was a fair amount of discussion or input by community members, largely around an interest in maintaining a couple of key programs that I think families have had their students benefit from. In the meantime, the Essex-Westford school budget failed last week, a school budget in Rutland failed on a second vote as well. So there is a fair amount of activity going on around the state with getting school budgets passed. And I think the city council is aware of those challenges and I hope we will continue to support our school district at the Montpelier level in really helping with solutions there. The current audit in the meantime has identified a surplus of a little in excess of $700,000. I don't know if that can be applied to this coming year's budget or if that has to wait two years or not, but that is out on the table. So a lot of activity going on at the school district. I did attend the library trustees board meeting. I won't steal any of Jennifer's thunder, but it was good to be caught up to speed on some of the activities going on in the library and some of the challenges too. I joined Lori and Andrew at the Tesla opening. I have reached out to a couple of the schools as a possible community engagement vehicle for some of those discussions we had as a council about community engagement on weekends or a Saturday. So I'm waiting to hear back on availability of a couple of the schools, notably Chamberlain and Orchard for those. And then just want to put a plug in for the affordable housing committee has a presentation this Thursday in the library. It's co-sponsored with the library and AARP Thursday, seven to eight on ADUs or affordable dwelling units. And is it right for you? So encourage anyone who's thinking about it or doesn't know about it and is considering some addition to their home or property that might be an income producing vehicle and provide additional affordable housing in the city to attend that for more information. Thank you, Elizabeth. So immediately prior to this meeting two weeks ago, we were most of us read at a BCA meeting in preparation for the vote that occurred the following Thursday, right on the fourth. So I also like the other counselors worked that election which was the school budget vote which consequently failed. I've adopted a new moniker now which is city councilor scissor hands because I've done two grand openings. If you remember Peter Frane named Jim Douglas as governor scissors hands because he went to every ribbon cutting. So now I've gone to two. I did the grand opening for the Shaw's on Shubburn Road because they redid their entire produce section, the seafood section, the bakery section and they put a lot of work and effort into it. And so I said a few words there recounting the history of that area and that building and the businesses around it. And then I handed it over to Victor Atrencia who was the general manager. I attended this wonderful thing that happened in front of city hall and inside the library and inside the halls of city hall which was Illuminate Vermont last Friday and Saturday. I volunteered on Friday night and I came with my family on Saturday. It was a really great time. And then I applaud all the hard work from the city and Alana and the organization and Rec and Parks. I was just really thankful that we had we had about the same weather that we had in December of 2022 when it first happened. We had snow and some drizzle at about the same temperature even though it's April but then bang on Monday we all got to see the eclipse which was incredible because it cleared up and it was really nice and warm. I also went to the Tesla Grand Opening and Councillor Chalnet got to say a few words. I arrived literally seconds before they had the scissors to cut the ribbon. If you watch my NBC five you actually see me cutting the ribbon but I was able to say a few words first about the commercial activities on Shelburne Road the zoning that had to change for their use and some of the history of the buildings around there including the Hanna Ferds moving back and forth and stuff like that. I attended the funeral service at the Baptist Church for Sarah Dopp on Friday which was a really wonderful wonderful service with great choir music and they have a wonderful pipe organ there and their organist played a fugue by Bach at the end. Really nice tribute to Sarah. I attended the Common Area for Dogs meeting with Lisa and Betty and learned about some of the results of the on leash survey that they conducted and the ongoing work to summarize that and also Adam presented some information about the progress of the Feral Dog Park Project and some grading issues and fence and stuff like that. I had some sad news. If you didn't know Bob Nowak passed away last week his visiting hours will be tomorrow at Reedy's on Shelburne Road from 4 p.m. till 7 p.m. If you check the free press today, you'll see the full obituary. Bob was married to Pat Nowak. Pat Nowak was a counselor from back in the mid 2010s up until about 2018 when she passed away and that's when Dave Kaufman filled in for her after she left and that's all I have tonight. So I just have three relatively quick things I just wanna sincerely thank the community for really wonderful Illuminate Vermont event and Eclipse event. This was a really heavy lift from staff from community development, recreation and parks, the library, public works to pull off Illuminate Vermont and then go right into an emergency operation center planning for the Eclipse. So I was really thrilled and heart warned that the community was so peaceful during those events and really celebratory and connecting with one another was really wonderful a couple of days in South Burlington. I want to thank the community for that and thank all the staff who really stepped up and worked really hard over a few short days. Want to share with the council and the community that on your FY24 policies and strategies work plan is modernizing many of our communications channels including our website. We have signed a contract for a new municipal website. It will take about five to eight months to do the full build out of that and migration of data over but will hopefully be much more oriented to how residents interact with government rather than how government pushes information out to residents. So more to come on that, it's not imminent but we, Andy is working really hard to move that forward right now. And then finally mark your calendars for May 30th. There'll be much more public outreach about this in the weeks to come but that is the day where Wagner Hotchins will come and present the evening where they will come and present their initial review of options for a city center village green and we'll do a community walking tour of that effort and have a community discussion about what folks want to see in a city center green. So it will be in the evening so probably the walk between four and six and then the meeting after that but Alana will, Alana is at the American Planning Association Conference this week and we'll push out that information when she is back. That's all I had, thanks. Thank you very much. Just one final word. The day of the eclipse, I stayed home from work because we were urging not to travel if we didn't have to and I worked remotely but I got at my bike and I rode from my house at Saturn Mill all the way down through Overlick Park, Hubbard Park through Farrell Park down to Oakledge, the back door and I rode all through Oakledge all the way down to Waterfront Park and got there about two o'clock and was able to hang around and the eclipse was an amazing experience for a lot of people just because everybody was together to watch this one astronomical thing happen that lasted really for about 10 minutes or so and but I've never seen that many people in the daytime in those parks. I mean, all along Blanchard Beach at Oakledge was just packed on both sides and then the full playground park area and the pavilion area at Oakledge coming back up all through Farrell. Overlick Park was packed. They had to block it off so nobody else could get in. Hubbard was blocked because they had one more car. There was a car parked on Nolan Farm Road. There were two teenage girls. They were sitting in their trunk getting ready to watch it and it was just, it was a really joyous event and I went back to my neighborhood and sat with some neighbors and got a camera out and tried to take a few pictures. I didn't know what I was doing and I didn't have the correct filters but I just felt like it was a really special event for a lot of people and it was unfortunate that they took 12 hours to get home if you came from out of state. I personally know a friend in Colchester whose daughter came from Southbury, Connecticut. It took her 12 hours to get back there. It was six hours to get from Burlington to 91 at the end of 89 and then it was another like six or seven hours to get back there. So probably could have organized that better. Not a great day for electric vehicles either probably. There were too many cars trying to get recharged where there were a few charging stations and then on the way home, they may have run out. So anyway, that's all. Item number six, which is the consent agenda. We have the disbursements, item A, the minutes for March 7th, which is item B and finally an application for a 2024 library summer programming grant to purchase materials, which is item C. Can I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. Second. We have a motion and a second. Is there any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. It looks like it's unanimous. Thank you. And now we're gonna move on to item seven, which is consider applicants to the Planning Commission, which has one vacancy, the Economic Development Committee, which has two vacancies and the Public Art Committee, which also has two vacancies. So we have a number of applicants here. They're probably in the house or they're online. We have their applications as well. Is there a particular order that we wanna follow or? So it's up to the council. I know there's been some discussion about how we do this process and maybe to do just a teeny bit of table setting. As council knows, and probably some of the community knows, there is a conversation underway about how the committees are structured moving forward to best align to the city plan. So some of the committee appointments in the spring may change. We decided to move these three batches of vacancies forward now because one Planning Commission is a regulatory body that will not change. And with Laurie joining us at the council table, need to fill his seat on the Planning Commission. To the Economic Development Committee and the Public Art Committee, both are having a hard time making quorum with their vacancies. So we want to move those forward. So historically in the past, you spent about five to eight minutes with each candidate. You've asked them questions about explaining their interest in an appointment. What do they want to accomplish with service and how do they work as a group? That's just the council's past practice. You can do it another way if you'd like. For this part of the agenda, you are hearing from the candidates. At the end of your meeting, you will have the option if you would so choose to go into executive session to talk about the appointments. You can make a recommendation later in the evening. And I would recommend Planning Commission first and then EDC and then ART. But it's... We're gonna just go in order of these applications by committee. So the first person up would be Colin Lawrence. Is Colin in the house? Come on down and take a seat at the table and make sure that the microphone when you push the button has a bright green light. So we have some basic questions we can ask or you can just introduce yourself and tell us a few things. I think we've all read your application. Yeah. Yeah, Sam. Yeah, my name is Colin Lawrence. I live over on Bacon Street down by the Big New Shells opening all the fuck, that's fun. Yeah, and I moved here about a couple of years ago. I'm like a transportation engineer kind of by training I'm a new law traffic simulation, that kind of stuff is sort of professional background and through that area is sort of how I got more interested in planning sort of the impact the kind of urban environment makes on designing efficient transportation systems. That's sort of where my kind of interest in this comes in and yeah, just trying to make better walkable more easy to get around with or without car kind of type communities and of course the housing crisis is something that's, I'm sure in everyone's minds here and it's sort of underscoring the need for solutions in that area. So I have some basic questions here I'm gonna ask him but when I'm done, the rest of the council can obviously ask different questions if they'd like, okay. So have you attended any planning commission meetings yet? Yeah, I've attended a couple of them, yeah. Yeah, there was a, remember I was coming for a couple of those with all the back and forth on the Tesla Resilient with it, I thought that was kind of fun how that was going down. Yeah, I'm going to every one of them but I have just had a couple of them, yeah. Okay. And so you're aware of the time commitment involved? Yeah, it's every other Tuesday, right? Yeah. So twice a month. Twice a month, whatever. Right. About that. Good. And so you can make that commitment at those times? Yeah, definitely. Okay. And how do you work in a group of people like that? Have you had experience on other volunteer committees before? No, I haven't, I'm volunteer committees per se. No, I've done plenty of projects of work, of course. So there's definitely a lot of, trying to find consensus on things. It's definitely a, cannot be a unilateral decision on any of this. And yeah, it's any kind of decision making you got to figure out what are people hung up on and then understanding why are, and there's a discrimination in them, listen to them, and then I'll get convinced or they can convince how are those going to work? And, but yes, I've not been in a volunteer committee before. No, no. What kind of skills that are unique that you think you bring to this position? Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of that is coming from my, would say my background in transportation engineering is just sort of under, I really have, I really tend to think things a lot in terms of like a network idea of like, how things move to, like how people move around, not just on vehicles, which I know is a problem I trade with folks in vehicles, but just how people move around and such. And just very kind of, when I'm seeing something looking like, okay, like what are the densities here? How is that gonna affect this area? How many more people are we adding this spot? How was, what's that gonna change the community feel? Like for example, are we adding enough density to this area to actually support say, like, you know, mixed use development for people walking distance? So I think that would probably be the kind of, at least the mindset. I will say I'm not exactly sure how relevant this is gonna be, but I'm also pretty comfortable just doing like analysis isn't like GIS software types and stuff like, not to say that I'm, I'm, you know, I've met, you know, talk to Paul and talk tomorrow on the other, I'm not saying of those stuff that they wouldn't be able to do, but they're short on time or something. There's like basic geospatial analysis to like, look on what the impact of a particular change might be. That's just, you know, kind of assist on the weekends. Just, you know, it's kind of fun little projects. Yeah. What kind of use do you make of, you live at Bacon Street Lofts. So that's in a pretty large dense area, including the O'Dell apartments that he plays east of common one and two, right? And Maidstone and Olympiad and a couple other buildings there. And there's a brand new building that's coming up in front of you. Yeah, yeah. I'm watching every day. That's the old Kegel sit-go. You're on top of the old Seaway car wash. Yeah, I heard yes. It's ancient history, but do you appreciate the fact that that's mixed used and then you can just, you can walk pretty much to any business or. Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I know it's great. If I forget, I forgot cinnamon, if I'm were cinnamon, I just walked over to Shaw's and it's got it in like two minutes. I wish more people had that. Yeah, no, I mean, that's partly why I ended up there is that part of it was that once you place yourself to get into due to the aforementioned housing problems. But yeah, I really do like being able to walk around whenever I possibly can. I always walk into Farrell Park and stuff like that, trying to get as much shopping as I can on foot. Partly that is I was attending a study, a meeting over with Burlington about improvements to the Shelburne Road home ab intersection because that's across a lot on foot a lot and I really do not like that experience. Yeah, but I really loved living in that kind of place where we're all off amenities and walking distance and I want to try to see how can we get more people within the city to be able to get these benefits that I currently have. I see a lot of the cool master plans and puds with all that stuff going behind like Shelburne Road between Sheridan Bay and Shelburne Road. I think that's a lot of really cool projects and the pipeline there and yeah. Councilor, questions? I was wondering as your sense of the city, I mean, so at the end of the day, this is about the whole city. You've talked very much and very positively about the neighborhood you live in. Do you have a sense of the other parts of the city and how you see, as you said, your goals or your ambition would be to expand the opportunities that you find yourself having to other parts of the city where people live? I mean, yeah, so of course, not the entire, I'm not saying we need to put apartment buildings on every single square inch of this city. I mean, I think the city has done a really good job of what's it called of really trying to focus on conservation as well. I really am a fan of infill development and keeping them more wild and quiet places wild. So I guess I'm more thinking in terms of, like I friends down on Kennedy, when they are in a pretty dense area and but they was complaining they have to get in the car and drive basically anywhere because there aren't that many amenities in their community of city, even though it is a pretty high density area. So I think I more mean is in that like the areas that already have some density, like, yeah, we don't, I'm not saying, you know, put up, you know, a supermarket in the middle of the Southeast Quad or something, like, yeah, conservation is absolutely important too. I'm more just, I'm, yeah, like, we've got a lot of dense corridors. Like first, you have a lot of like, you'll have like condos off Shelburne Road. They're sort of connected from disconnected from all the other menus on Shelburne Roads. There's no like bike path back there or any kind of sidewalks. So you might have someone that like lives a half mile from the Hanifers on Shelburne Road in a big condo, but he still got to get in the car and drive because there's no good connection there. And those kind of how we can best enable that through legislation is something I'm very interested in. Yeah, it's answering the question. Yes, yes you do. Thank you. Thank you. I just have a quick question. What motivated you to choose South Burlington as your home? The honest answer, yeah, I mean, I wanted a place like a kind of mid-sized city. So I grew up in a town of, I spent similar size, about 20,000 outside of Portland. Like Portland Main, sorry, the, I never know when it's specified or not, but yeah, so like, you know, I really loved Portland Main growing up. It's a great place to be. And you know, the kind of greater Burlington area is I want to be far from home and not too close to home. And I, I knew I visited Burlington a few times. I went to Middlemore College back in the day. So I sort of visited a few times like, oh, it's like Portland, but not Portland. So that's basically how I end up here. And I like South Burlington is sort of like a really nice stench where it's a bit less hectic than downtown Burlington, you know. Andrew, do you have any questions? Yeah, I do. Thank you, Tom. I'm wondering if you have any familiarity with our land development regulations, the LDR, as I know you spoke or you wrote in your application, you know, about a few opportunities you see for the city. But do you, I'm wondering if you have looked at the LDR, are there particular things that you'd like to change or particular things you'd like to work on or particular opportunities in the LDRs that you see? So it's a good question. I probably should prepare to answer that slightly better. But yeah, I mean, there is, I mean, I read, I have read through a lot of that at some point, but it's been a while, there's a lot of information in there. In terms of specific reforms, there's not any super, super like, oh my gosh, that just absolutely needs to be changed. I mean, I guess one thing that I have particular interest in a fair amount is the idea of parking maximums and stuff like that. I've seen a lot how Burlington has influenced that. Like I'm seeing, I perhaps noticed that most of this because I had observed firsthand, like seeing a new development neighborhood and there's a bit of a glut of parking in that area, if you were to ask the opinion of someone who looks at that during peak periods and those lots are not even close to full. It has stuff like parking, parking, what's it called? Parking requirements, like parking minimums, I've known them, the max, like there's a minimums versus maximums. I know that Burlington's been a lot, if they've been doing a lot of work on the park, having to change the maximums. And stuff like, what is, where are these height limits coming from, stuff like that, like are these kind of like, is this number we want? Are things changing? Like, you've saw in the buildings, think you want, think you don't want. Density requirements, there are, there's nothing too, too bad, or sometimes I was looking at a high density neighborhood and it's, I'm not exactly sure, like why is this number like 20 units break, or should it be 18? Should it be 22? Like, where do we pick that number from? Was it with this kind of, because it's around number, is it the right number? And stuff like that. And I know one specific thing I didn't mention in particular is I really like, stuff like setbacks of roads, or something that really does interest me a lot. Not to say that I like was looking at the setbacks requirements, like, oh my God, that's so bad, but you know, just how setback requirements inform how people can treat a street, how they drive on the street, how it makes sense of space, if you're on this, you void. So stuff like, you know, trying to, what can we do to best enable that? But I mean, I've not exactly memorized every figure from the hell yard, down the head. So. That's a really great, thorough answer. Just one follow-up, the, I know that the planning commission also in the next, you know, in the Siebel future is going to be discussing transportation demand management. And is that, is that something you're familiar with? Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's trying to, yeah, I mean, it's definitely, it's a big discussion within transmission years, because there's sort of been this huge shift in, you know, in the latter half of the 20th century, trying to maximize as much VMT as possible, vehicle miles traveled, to try to get people moving as much as possible as the network for success, versus now there's the whole shift to like, trying to reduce number of miles for climate reasons, for livability reasons. And yeah, that's, that's super cool stuff and how we can, you know, encourage better transportation demand management. I know one pretty good thing I saw that really concerns me is there's a lot of emphasis on like, trying to give alternative options, like with the, like for example, the public transit, where at the same time I'm noticing that green mountain transit is like threatening massive service cuts that don't get more money. And that's something I wonder, like in terms of transportation demand management, are there ways that we could leverage that as a potential funding source for green mountain transit? I don't commit that. I'm just seeing headlines and wondering if that's a potential avenue we could explore. Yeah. Do you have any questions for us? Thank you. One very basic one, what is the Terminus appointment? I wasn't, I wasn't along with people here on that. So that is actually something the council will talk about later on. So the continuation of Lori's appointment is I think for the remainder of this year. So only for two more months, but then there'll be a vacancy in June. So this council could appoint for that interim position or appoint for the entire next term. Okay, thanks. Yeah, I'm just not dealing by your way. I was just curious. Yeah, I think I don't mind other questions. Great. Thanks for applying, Colin. Thank you. Next would be Helen Realy. Does anybody know Helen Realy? Is she here? She looks familiar. Get to ask her these questions. It looks very fine out here. Are you now or have you ever been a city counselor for the city of South Burlington? Yes, I have been. Disregard all that. All right. So Ms. Realy, what's your interest in this position? Well, I was interested, you know, all of a sudden I had a lot of free time. No, I was being facetious. I'm interested because I'm certainly familiar with both our city plan and the goals and visions, I guess, for the community. And I think it's really important that the planning commission have, I thought it would be helpful to have someone really familiar with those plans and their activities to kind of complete some of the work that they have been doing in the last couple of years. You know, currently they're looking at changes that we need to make to align with the new housing regulations on the state level. I think there's lots of possibilities in terms of how we redevelop or revitalize different areas in the community. I would bring to the table a real commitment to find kind of a balance between development and open space and work to make sure that our land use development regulations can achieve those ends. So I think there's a continuity that might be helpful. Are you aware of the time commitment for this? I am indeed. Do you have the time? I do now. OK, good. And tell us about the skills that you could bring to this job, this position. Well, I think I bring probably about 30 years of effectively working in small groups, getting to yes, listening carefully and thoughtfully, obtaining new information that would inform decision making. And I think I have a track record of good collaboration and working with smaller groups of people as well as kind of listening to the public and hearing that kind of information and input. Does the council have questions? Mike? Helen, I was wondering, now that you've stepped back and had a time to reflect on things, I think I've always found that when I've moved on from a job, you look back and you value what you do. But sometimes you see new opportunities. And as you said, you're talking about joining and ensuring continuity. But I was just a curiosity in stepping back and having time to sort of read a little bit as abroad and the other insights, as you said, to these agendas that are these priorities that you see that are in front of the planning zone. Well, I haven't stepped back for too long. So I haven't had a huge amount of time to think about it. But it was a liaison to the planning commission. And my husband was on the planning commission for a while, and I think the work that they do is very, very important to articulate and put into structure or process some of the policies, obviously not, that the council embarks upon. And I think there's still work to be done. I think we need to really, as I said, really think about how we can enhance and develop and partner with the private sector to really think about all the parking lots that we have that are empty, some of the industrial or commercial spaces that aren't being used. And I think the planning commission will have a part in that conversation. And that's something I feel very strongly about. There's still lots to do. You're never done. And this seems to be sort of a smaller slice of the pie to look at that I'm interested in and committed to. Elizabeth, any questions? Well, first off, it's very strange seeing you from this side of the tail. I guess that works both ways. I do have a question. One of the things that I learned starting to sit in the Affordable Housing Committee meetings, who will have some vacancies as well coming up, is really the opportunity for the council to evaluate committee selection criteria. And one of the questions that either came from the Affordable Housing Committee or came up in my thought process in identifying what some of that criteria might be would be feedback from committee members on where the gaps may be in representation on the committee. So I'm curious, based on, you probably were involved in appointing most of the current planning commission, and I'm sure Lori left some gaps moving on to the council. But from your perspective, where are there gaps in experiences or professional competencies or geographic representation, whatever you might identify in gaps with the planning commission now? I don't believe there's too many geographical gaps. So I think that the planning commission, if you better represent your neighborhood, many of the neighborhoods are represented on the planning commission. So I think that's helpful. I suppose all of our committees could use a younger demographic, and I clearly don't bring that. But I also have the time and interest, and that's important too. And a certain historical continuity, I guess, of staying with something for a while. You know, I am very impressed with the current planning commission. I think they ask a lot of the right questions. I think there's business interests and all different kinds of interests that are part of that commission. So there's some expertise that's really important. I'm not sure I bring any formal expertise in terms of, I think, the candidate before me had a lot of experiences or training that would be really helpful. And so that's always good to look for. But I think it's pretty well balanced. There's a couple women, there's men. So that seems to have a balance just that youth is not there. Andrew, do you have any questions? I guess he doesn't know what. Here he comes. No, no, I don't. Thank you for applying, Helen. Thank you. Must be interesting to be here. Yeah, it's a little weird. But you've been very nice. Your questions have been nice. Do you have any questions for us? No. No, I don't. Other than, you know, just because I was a former counselor, I don't think that's necessarily is the reason to appoint me. I think, as Elizabeth was suggesting, that kind of balance of skill sets. So I would not, I guess I'll just put it on the table. I would not be offended if you decided that someone else had the skills that were missing, that were important. So I don't come at this thinking it's an entitlement and an automatic. I just saw an opening and I have real interest. And I thought I could bring some experience and knowledge to the table that would be helpful. Thank you. I appreciate that. Great. We're going to move on to the next person now. Cruising along. Luke Bresetti. Did I pronounce the last name correctly? Close enough. Bresetti. Darn it. The double C, is that? Double C to the Italian, double C. You got me following her, huh? Tough position. Luke, you're also applying for the position on the Planning Commission, right? Yes. You want to tell us about yourself a little bit? Sure, yes. So my name is Luke Bresetti. I am a South Burlington resident. I live in the Old Richard Park development off Shelburne Road. I've lived there since about 2020. I guess I'm currently a PhD student at UVM. Prior to that, I worked in regional planning for a little bit at the Northwest Regional Planning Commission in St. Albans. So I have some prior planning experience. We're on the regional scale. Worked on land use, water quality, and some transportation stuff there, which is a different scale than this. But I guess I would say that I bring a combination of big picture and little picture, if that makes sense, some pragmatism mixed with understanding that kind of planning is about short, medium, and long-term visioning for the future. And that's something I would like to be a part of in my community, if you guys deem that I have the experience and knowledge relevant for the position. And you worked on the Northwest RPC for two years? I did, yeah. What were some of the challenges there? That's a good question. Well, I think that one of the challenges, like with a lot of jobs, is getting siloed into focusing on one specific thing. So I could see sometimes there's someone appointed to, there's people who are working on the water quality and natural resource things, people working on transportation, people working on economic development. And oftentimes, especially I was working there during COVID, so people often don't talk as much as they should and interface, besides the executive council meetings and things like that. I think communication, now that was as a staff position, so a volunteer planning commission is different. But yeah, I think communication and also just kind of being aware of, and I think this is really relevant to South Burlington, like being aware of what's going on outside of your city. So there's a tendency, we're trying to do the best thing for the residents of South Burlington, but often what's best for the residents of South Burlington is what's best for the residents of the Greater Burlington area as well. And so I think being aware that people who live in South Burlington are being aware of working outside of the city boundaries and having kind of that greater approach, I think is important. Have you had a chance to look through the land development regulations themselves and take a peek at them? I haven't. So I think that's probably one of the areas that I would lag behind some of the other candidates is experience working directly in the town and working directly on these issues. But I'm a fast learner and a good listener, so hopefully I'd be able to make up that ground. It's a fascinating document, really, it's fun reading. I have had a chance to look through the city plan and some of that. OK, you've read the city plan, right? Yeah, I mean, maybe not to the T, but I have looked through the city plan and read some of that. Are you aware of the time commitment that's involved? Yeah, so I'm aware of the time commitment of the meetings. And I guess I had a follow-up question on the time commitment outside of the meetings. So any sort of subcommittees or preparation for the meetings and what that might entail would be useful. To hear you, Mr. Smith, can you answer that? No subcommittees that you need to be involved in. But there's a lot of homework. Yeah. There's a lot of homework. You get a package the Thursday or Friday before the meeting, which is not very long to review, often upwards of 100 pages of documentation that are related to the topic that you're covering. And the LDRs will become your friend if you're on the commission. Cool. Very exciting document. Thanks for the info. I appreciate it. Have you attended any of the meetings at all? I have not, no. And in a group, what kind of dynamic do you bring when you're working with a group of people like that? Yeah, I think I will work well with others. I'm a social scientist now, so I spend a lot of time thinking about how to work with others and often working with others. I've done some teaching, too, which is a dynamic that involves being willing to listen to people and having the humility to not step over people and also be assertive. So I think I bring good people skills and good working with others skills. Other counselors have questions? It's just real quick. Thank you, Luc. So I know you said that you hadn't read or not familiar with the LDRs. But I'm just wondering if you have kind of some familiarity with zoning in the city, zoning in different areas. And if so, do you have thoughts about how things are working or what things you might want to work on or change? Yeah, I think I do have general familiarity with how zoning regulations work in Vermont just from my time working at the Regional Planning Commission setting. Specific to South Burlington, I don't have a ton of experience with other than the maps I've seen in the city plan of the way the zoning is laid out currently. I generally do believe in kind of, I don't know if anyone's ever read donut economics, but the donut view of how to approach things of the importance of developing enough and providing services and housing that meets the needs of people without kind of exceeding the limits of your resources and your planet, but in the case of climate resilience, but also smaller scale like preserving open space and recreation and things like that. And kind of being in that Goldilocks sweet spot of development and conservation. So I do kind of ascribe to that principle, I would say in general. Do you think South Burlington is nearing that limit or we've got a lot more to go? I think from what I know of South Burlington and my experience living in the city and recreating in the city and walking, and I think that South Burlington is doing a really good job kind of navigating that. And I'd be happy to be part of kind of the future visioning for the city, like I said, of the short medium and long, sorry, short medium and long-term implications of planning for the city. Elizabeth, did you have any questions? Just a quick question. In your regional planning experience, can you give me an example that you were specifically proud of a certain accomplishment or a contribution you made to a decision or a project in particular? So I guess one thing that I'm proud of that might be kind of different from what I would do in a municipal setting was I worked on a project with the US Fish and Wildlife Service that ended up resulting in a decent amount of funding for Culverton Bridge replacements throughout Franklin County. And I guess part of why I'm proud of that is because that wasn't something that anyone at the Planning Commission was doing prior to that, so that was something that I sought out. The cooperative agreement worked with Fish and Wildlife on that, worked for some other grants that would allow us to replace road crossings for things like wildlife passage and water quality and then found the projects and hired the contractors and did kind of all the project management to get us there. So that was rewarding to take something all the way from conception of an idea and not really having any funding or just kind of having a feeling that something was needed and then actually getting it implemented. So yeah, I think that was something I was proud of. Thanks very much for applying. I appreciate it. So glad to see so much interest. Luke, you mentioned finding that balance in terms of being able to resource the development but the development not to sort of ruin what's trying to be achieved. Could you flush that out a little bit more in how the planning zone and your understanding what the role of the planning zone is in helping find that balance that you articulated so well? Yeah, so again, I want to reiterate kind of in the same vein of what Helen said that there are certain things that I would not be offended if, with the level of experience I have, I was not the person selected this position. But generally in simple terms, I think it's important to develop in the areas that are already fairly dense and to, I think, affordable housing is very important in our city right now and continuing to increase that stock is really important while also kind of conserving in places that have more open space now. So kind of taking the, and I guess I would also say in areas that are currently mixed use being really careful and cognizant of the way that you develop and not being averse to development because something is mixed use. So I think it's important where we are now that we aren't, even as someone who is very conservation minded, not being overly conservation minded, given kind of the growth of our city. So I hope that somewhat answers your question. Thanks. Do you have any questions for us? Other than the question I already asked, I don't think I have anything at the moment. OK, great. Well, thanks for your application, all right, and we will be in touch. And we probably will try to make a decision tonight, right? So I think we're going to probably do that tonight, right? OK. And so either way, everybody gets notified whether they are appointed or not. Great. Thanks, counselors. Appreciate it. You're coming. Britschetti, Luke Britschetti. Next is we have a dual application for Planning Commission and the Economic Development Committee for Megan Tetter. Megan is online. I see an MT. You're muted. There's your camera. Hi, Megan. Yes, thank you. Hello. Hi, guys. Thank you. This has been really enjoyable, even just listening to everyone's experience on this call. My name is Megan. And I will just disclose I just bought a house in South Burlington. So I have only been a resident for a little over a month. Technically, I've been living in this area for over six years. And I work in affordable housing. That's really my passion. And I come from an environmental science background. I actually read the city plan before I moved here just because I am dirty like that. And I really enjoy what I read in terms of balancing climate change and also a lot of DEI factors that I find really important. So thanks for having me today. Do you have a preference? Is Planning Commission your first choice? And EDC's your second? I honestly, I went in thinking it was going to be the Planning Commission. But as I did my research walking into this space, I think I might be a better fit for the Economic Development Commission given my background. And also my capacity, I work full time. And I also go to school. And just how you guys answered the last question with all the extra homework pieces, I want to be really transparent and honest about my own capacity to pour over those types of technical documents in addition to what I'm kind of juggling. The Economic Committee meets once a month. And it's usually at 5 p.m. until about 7 p.m. Is that OK for you? That would work? Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's totally reasonable. Yeah. And you can attend remote or come to City Hall either way. They do this kind of remote. Yeah. And if you've only been here a month, you probably haven't had a chance to attend the meeting yet, right? And then meeting? No. That makes sense. What skills do you think you would bring to that committee? Yeah, so I've done a lot of community organizing work. So I know Jesse from Champlain Housing Trust, I had worked there for several years during resident engagement work. And so I am really familiar with different areas of South Burlington. As you kind of talked about some of the apartments, I have been in those communities talking to residents. They do really vary. Like I think about Dorset Commons versus Odell, versus where I live now with the co-op next to me, all very different. And I think one of the benefits to me being in this space is that I have worked with a variety of different backgrounds and different types of people and done more of that grassroots organizing. I did a lot of community building type events. And in my current position, I work for Evernorth. And so I'm able to kind of expand on that and do it on a greater scale. What is Evernorth doing? Yeah, so Evernorth used to be housing Vermont, if you're familiar with that. So we are a low income tax credit syndicator and investor. And in Vermont, we develop and co-own properties. So we also work in New Hampshire and Maine, but we're most involved in Vermont. And so it's kind of nice to be more deeply connected to the communities here. I think that's one of the things I wanted to hold on to. So I kind of transitioned into my new role. And I do, I focus on kind of like technical support for resident services in affordable housing communities, trying to just bring resources and help staff meet the increasing needs of our residents. So that's, yeah, where I'm at currently. Counselors have questions? Mike? Mike has been on that committee. Yes, I was wondering, and the main task of that committee which is focusing in on is developing a strategic economic development plan. So in that way, you obviously have very, very extensive background in affordable housing and clearly a passion for it. So if you try to broaden it out, as you said, do you have a broader perspective on economic strategic development in general? What are sort of the factors that you think are important for the committee to consider as it goes forward in that way? Yeah, I think I will admit, obviously I have a very focused passion and understanding and kind of looking at housing. But as I was looking at some of the details and I really appreciate and think we need to move more towards these mixed use neighborhoods, I think that's really where you get the quality of life that you want and that it also balances the needs for economic development and the needs for residents to have stability. So thinking about how the desire to have, I think it's like commercial, I'm gonna write down the term, I think it was commercial usage for limited neighborhood. So really thinking about what that commercial usage is and how it kind of helps build the neighborhood into a thriving community that meets the diverse needs. I think that's where I can see supporting South Burlington in this committee. And I did look up just a few of the things that you guys had been doing and some of them did look like event focused, like it had a component of that. I think that I can be really strong in that area, but I am a self-starter and I'd love to learn more too through this engagement. Yeah, Mike, I've been the liaison, I was the liaison for that committee and a time and time again, the theme would come up about businesses wanting to expand, but they are having trouble getting employees to live nearby because housing is such a challenge, especially workforce housing, right? And the challenge of beta, for example, wanting to hire 600 people over the next number of years, and on logic as well, and the difficulty finding places for those people to live that are gonna be hired. So your perspective sounds interesting for an economic development committee. So do you have any questions for us? I don't think I do. I just, yeah, appreciate your time and look forward to hearing from you all and participating more in this community now. Elizabeth, did you have anything? I guess I should ask Megan because I did, in one of my reports earlier, I sit as the counsel liaison on the Affordable Housing Committee, and I certainly don't wanna pigeonhole anyone and wanna give people an opportunity to volunteer where they have interests, but your background certainly is relevant to the Affordable Housing Committee as well. Would you be open to considering that at the same time or as well? Yeah, I didn't know that that would be, and I didn't see that as an opportunity before. I'm just, I'm really, I do value civic engagement. I'm only 31, but I wanna show up and stand by my values and be in these spaces. And I think that would be a really great option if it's available. Great, thank you, I appreciate it. Those appointments would be processed in the summertime, we're closer to June, June? Well, it depends how you, decisions the council makes in the future about the committees, but yes, June or July. Right, okay. Yeah, so this summer, Megan, there will be some churn going on with placements of people on those committees. So there's an opportunity there, okay. Andrew, you had a question? Yeah, I will, I'm fine. Yeah, I think again, so clearly you've articulated the link between ensuring that folks have a place to live that's affordable and thriving businesses and so forth, and it's a very important link. I wonder if you have other thoughts on, you know, what policies the economic development committee might suggest, what things the city might do to support our existing businesses and to attract new businesses so our commercial sector can thrive. That's a good question. Policies I would recommend. I can't help but go back to housing just because that's my focus, but I do think that the workforce housing initiative is really important. I know in Evernorth we've been able to do some interesting things with hospitals and other things to try to develop those opportunities. I think that's critical. I think, I mean, yeah, jobs and housing are two, and you know, you need one and the other, they kind of feed each other. I think about our homelessness crisis a lot and how once you get out of it, it's really difficult to get back into the economic system that we have. And so maybe that's even thinking about how to engage people that have been kind of stuck out of the system at some point and how we can bring them back in to meet the needs that we're seeing in terms of workforce. Thank you. Megan, thanks for applying. We'll be in touch, all right, after tonight. Great, thank you. You can stay on the meeting if you want or whatever you want to do and. I appreciate it. And there's an economic development meeting tomorrow, right? Or no, yeah, tomorrow night at five o'clock. Great, thank you. We're gonna turn our attentions now to, we'll continue with economic development, right? Because we have two more. Is Christopher Kerrigan in the house? Come on down. Good evening. My name is Christopher Mark Kerrigan and I live in Summer Woods Condo Association over by the airport. I've been a resident since 2009. I was raised and born in Vermont as well. And I recently joined the University of Vermont and working in strategic partnerships for the professional and continuing education division, which is PACE. Prior to that, because I only started two months ago, I worked as the vice president of business development for the statewide Vermont Chamber of Commerce. And for 16 years, I served as a lobbyist and worked on manufacturing and energy and transportation issues. So I'm very knowledgeable about supportive tax policy and getting some really impressive tax exemptions over the finishing line, which I think we could definitely use for business recruitment. Getting back to a question which was just asked about what could we use to recruit more businesses to South Burlington. So in addition to tax policy, there's also funding resources at the state level that we can leverage as well. But in addition to serving as a lobbyist, I also managed the Vermont Aerospace and Aviation Association, worked very closely with beta technologies. Also built the Vermont Quebec Aerospace Trade Quarter, which we extended to Connecticut and then we expanded to Ontario. So spent a lot of time transforming Vermont into a supply chain hub. And I was really happy to read through the comments on the, from the Economic Development Committee regarding the city plan and the work to transform South Burlington into a supply chain hub. So I think that's a really great opportunity. And I also worked on managing the manufacturing division and of course worked on membership and events. And I was very interested in this position and I'm very glad to be here this evening. Who were you a lobbyist for? The statewide Vermont Chamber of Commerce. Yeah, we had a four person lobbying teams. I was the go-to lobbyist for manufacturing energy and transportation issues. Have you had a chance to attend any of the meetings? I have not, but I read through the comments on the city plan by the Economic Development Committee. Have you seen any of the minutes from the previous meetings at all? I have not. You were sitting with Mr. Bailey. Are you a friend of Mr. Bailey's? I was just sitting right next to him and he actually encouraged that I run for the position or applied position. You live in the same neighborhood? That's true. That's true. Yes, thank you. So it sounds like you have an extensive background so I'm not gonna ask you what skills you bring to that position, right. What would you hope to accomplish in that committee? I would love to share my passion for economic development and knowledge of recruitment, you know, and the opportunities, for example, to recruit what we call foreign direct investment opportunities, those Quebec companies that are looking for a Vermont slash US footprint in order to do business in the US, I think given our proximity to the Canadian border, there's real opportunity and I can bring a lot of contacts and understanding of the Quebec market to this role. Again, the understanding of supportive tax policy and all the funding resources because I think there's an opportunity as part of the strategic economic development plan to create like a value proposition sheet, a reason why businesses should relocate or establish themselves in South Burlington. I'm very passionate about all the development that's happening in and around the Burlington International Airport. When Senator Leahy, for example, brought back earmarks, I jumped on that opportunity and I was the one who wrote the $10 million earmark application for that for the brand new Burlington Technical Center and workforce is gonna be so important because we're gonna be able to, with that new school, recruit out-of-state students and really train them as the next generation of maintenance repair and overhaul technicians and then hopefully keep them here in Vermont and then source them to our aerospace manufacturers throughout the state, including Beta. So how do we balance this potential growth, right, with then the influx of students and demand for services at the schools with then the need for extra housing and we're constrained, right? Well, there's, you know, you've got a lot of variables to consider. So, you know, on the workforce front, and this is one of the reasons I went back to work for my alma mater, the University of Vermont, is to really help our manufacturers and employers on upskilling their workforce. We have a severe workforce labor shortage. People are just not having enough kids. So we need to, as Frank Chaffee with GBI says, the first rule of economic development is to protect and grow what you already have and that can apply to workforce as well. So we need to upskill our current workforce. And then at the same time on the housing front, we do need Act 250 reform. You know, we need reform when it comes to zoning and permitting and we need to be building more affordable housing, especially for the middle, missing middle, especially in downtown areas. And so it's a balancing act, you know, between the business and environment as well. But there's a lot to consider. And the labor issue is really important, right? Because I have a feeling that there's this whole segment of high school seniors, juniors and seniors that are exiting and I don't know if they're being employed to their full potential. They're not being trained to their potential. They're not participating as deeply as they could in the workforce. And I don't know what the answer to that is. I don't know whose responsibility that is per se, right? If we're doing enough. Well, yeah, part of the answer is, you know, dual enrollments and, you know, engaging the high school students and on programming at the college and university level so that they can get credits and hit the ground running and getting their interest. And then when they're at the college or university level, making them aware, right? Of what opportunities exist right here in Vermont so that we can source them back, right? To the employers and, you know, the other population that I worked closely with are the military retirees. We're seeing a mass exodus of them leave in the state to go to Tennessee and Kentucky. And part of the reason is because there are pensions we're getting taxed. So back in 2022, I was successful in lobbying and testifying and getting across the finish line, a partial military retiree pension tax exemption. So it's partial, it's, you know, it's better than nothing but we can do a much better job and at least because when those people retire, they're between the ages of 38 and 42. They still have a second career ahead of them. So let's do a better job of retaining and they already have housing, you know, so. Thank you. Questions from other county counselors? I had a quick question about balancing economic development and growth management. And it touches on what Tim was talking about, about our schools, our housing, our infrastructure, et cetera. And what sort of vision you hold for South Burlington and its ability to balance growth and economic development? I definitely want to see a balanced approach. We can do both without one at the expense of the other. And we can do smart growth. And I think it's important to fish where the fish are and see which industries, you know, are going to be the industries of tomorrow. So what Global Foundries is doing with the University of Vermont on the tech hub and combining that with the CHIPS Act and really onshore and strengthening our semiconductor supply chain is so strategic. So being strategic about the industries that are going to be growing in the future and then aligning that strategic economic development plan with those growth industries, but in a smart way. Along that line, just to develop that a little bit more. I mean, one of the challenges, obviously, as we saw in just passing the city budget, it was just by 2%. So there's obviously a certain fatigue on residential property tax, understandably. In a strategic economic development plan, is that an avenue towards helping the city grow its revenue base with perhaps avoiding having to put additional burdens if we continue to expand our services or pursue some aspirations we have? So is the adequate development of plan a document that would help drive this and still align itself with a lot of the objectives that we have in terms of clean energy? If you've mentioned the tech hub, tech hub has talked about itself about knowledge-based economy. So how do you see this document helping us manage these? You said you don't have to be competing. It can actually be complementary. So if you could just push that out a little bit more. Yeah, I think if we are strategic understanding where the high growth industries are going to be, and then if we are able to recruit the betas, the dynapowers, the on-logics of the world, we're going to be increasing our tax base, which will then, in return, help to pay for the services that you're talking about. So it all comes down to increase the tax base in a responsible way that also protects the environment that provides revenue for all the services that we want to need. Elizabeth? Yeah, I'm interested in your experience and maybe observations in the manufacturing sector. What, from your perspective, and you've mentioned a few of the initiatives that are certainly emerging and of interest, can you just speak to the trends and clean and green manufacturing? The trends, definitely, I worked in aerospace aviation, and there's definitely a trend towards electrification. There's also a trend towards the adoption of biofuels and even e-fuel. And all of these new alternative modes of transportation are going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which is what we want to work towards. So those are the trends that I see that I worked closely with. And then other trends in manufacturing that they're grappling with are workforce and housing. And they go hand in hand. And there is an incredible attrition rate right now with employee turnover. So I've worked with manufacturers, large manufacturers, that have hired 232 employees in five to six months but then lose 200 for a net 32. And that's not sustainable. And there's many reasons for that. But those are the challenges that manufacturing is dealing with right now. I'm familiar with those numbers, too. Yeah. I might know some of that. Andrew, did you want to ask a question? Yeah, thanks, Tim, and thanks, Chris. I have two questions. One, Chris, you mentioned in your opening that you thought the city perhaps could use some tax policy lovers to help businesses and attract businesses. Can you hear me? I didn't catch the first part, I'm sorry. So I think you mentioned in your opening that you thought the city could use some tax policy lovers to attract businesses or to help existing businesses. And wondering what levers do you see the city having in the tax space that we could utilize? Well, you can utilize and leverage the tax exemptions that we already have. And so I worked extensively on and was instrumental in getting across the finish line, for example, the expansion of the manufacturing tax exemption. And that essentially makes use tax exempt all of the parts equipped in the machinery between raw materials and finished goods and all of the ancillary processes related to an integrated manufacturing operation as tax exempt as well as some after-initial processes, such as testing, quality assurance, and packaging. We got that over the finish line in 2022, effective July 1st, 2022. That is saving our manufacturers, for example, money so that they can reinvest in workforce recruitment and retention, new equipment and machinery, et cetera. Makes us competitive with the 33 other states that have similar tax exemptions in place. And you know, it's funny when I work with companies and I share that information, including the explainer chart from the Department of Taxes which I worked closely with on that, their CFOs don't even know anything about it. So it's an awareness, it's an educational opportunity. There's the military pension tax exemption. There's the 6% aviation sales tax exemption on the maintenance repair and overhaul of parts, equipment, and machinery for both commercial and private aircraft that I got made permanent in 2018. So there's a lot of tax policy that we've already got in place that we can really package and market promote and recruit businesses to South Burlington. And then on the funding and the resources, we've got the Vermont Employment Growth Incentive which is cash performance for payroll growth. There is the Vermont Training Program which will cover up to 50% of your training costs. We've got other resources, there's other funding mechanisms too that are available. We just need to package it right. As part of this economic development plan and strategy for South Burlington and then go to market. But first of all, what's the plan? So Chris, with your commission, if I can just paraphrase. So it's not so much that we as municipal leaders can implement tax policy which may attract folks here. But what you're describing is educating businesses about the tax efficiencies they can gain from being in Vermont and with that education, hoping they'll locate to South Burlington. Yes. Yep, again, opportunity to create like a value proposition sheet, and these are all the benefits of doing business in South Burlington. So, and I have a second question. You may know, and you touched on this a little bit that we have a climate action plan with really ambitious targets for greenhouse gas reductions, mission reductions. I'm wondering if you have a view on, and we may consider in the future, regulations on commercial enterprises that require certain emission reductions, like maybe require heat pumps, or we've required solar on commercial buildings and things like that. I wonder if you have a view on that intersection, regulations on the one hand that may cost businesses money versus meeting our climate action targets. Well, I think there's gonna have to be some, well, first of all, you know, especially from a residence perspective, I would like to know what the plan is and what the transition and what the migration plan is gonna be in order to reach those goals. So that's what I would wanna bring to the table for both residents and for businesses, commercial. So here are the goals. This is what we need to do, but what's the plan to get there? And what is that going to involve? Yeah, I guess that's what we're all in the throes of trying to develop. Yeah, I mean, I live in a condo association, so I'm not educated on, you know, what can I do, for example, regarding heat pumps, you know, what's possible, what's not possible. So I just, you know, I love what's the plan because I think that is applicable in so many instances. Sure, and I guess my hope would be that, you know, the economic development committees, as well as all the other city committees and the council would all be helping to develop that plan, right, to further that plan. And I take it that's something that you, you know, is that something that you would see yourself being involved in? Oh, definitely. I mean, yeah, I mean, it's a collaborative effort. And then, you know, then you need to get public buy-in, right, and on what the challenge is. I'm a marketing guy. So what is the challenge slash solution? What is the challenge slash opportunity? What is the solution? What are the benefits to that solution? And then, you know, where are we today? Where do we want to be? And then how do we get there? Thank you. Do you have any questions for us? I do. So I realized that the airport, the Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport reports to the city of Burlington. And given all of the economic development opportunity in and around the airport, is there any, any synergy or collaboration between the South Burlington City Council, the committees and the city of Burlington regarding all of the development that's happening around the airport? So there's an airport commission and we have a seat on it. Okay, great. Yeah, and that is taken right now. So, and you know that it meets once a month, five to seven p.m., right? Yes, now. Okay, great. So I think that's all we, all the questions we have for you, but thanks for coming tonight. Thank you very much. Thank you. And we'll be in touch. Next applicant, Rebecca Killian. Rebecca's online. I am, hi. Hi there. Thank you so much for having me. I'm sorry. We can see you. Can you hear me? Yeah, we can hear you too. Yes, how are you? Great, yes. Thank you so much for having me. I'm sorry I couldn't join you in person this evening, but I really appreciate your time. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background and why you're in South Burlington and why you're interested in this position? Yeah, I'm a lifelong Vermonter. I grew up in, I'm sorry, I'm getting distracted by how dark it is here, so I'm gonna face the light. It's better, yeah, you have some light on your face. That's better. Thank you. I'm not just a shadow looking at you, I'm sorry about that. I grew up in Montpelier and I've been here my whole life. I went to UVM and then after UVM, I graduated and stayed in the Chinning County area and eventually settled in South Burlington about five years ago with my partner and I've really enjoyed my time here. I'm super interested in figuring out ways where I can get more involved with the community and I saw the committee positions pop up and specifically the Economic Development Committee felt like it would match for my skills. I spent the past three years working for Vermont's Women's Business Center, so specifically in the entrepreneurial space providing technical assistance and connecting small businesses here in Vermont to resources in the state for them to start and grow their businesses. So I've seen firsthand how access to entrepreneurial education and investment and education around that can really lead to economic freedom and empowerment for folks here in Vermont. Specifically, I worked mostly with women but just watching people start and grow their businesses here in the state has showed me how important that is to Vermont's economy. We did a lot of research and impact reporting there and found out through that work that businesses that are local and small here tend to keep their dollars more local and invest in other businesses and work with them more often than if we're trying to invest in some of those larger businesses. So specifically really interested in learning how maybe that experience could align with the committee and with South Burlington and have a lot of really great connections in that space. Thank you. Would this be the first time you've applied for a committee? Yes. Okay, and are you aware of the time commitment? It's once a month from five to seven p.m.? I am, yes. Okay. I'm gonna switch things around and go in opposite direction this time for once, okay? And I'm gonna start with Elizabeth if she has some questions. I'm curious in your work, Rebecca, what are some of the women's businesses that you've supported? Yeah, a lot of them. So specifically in South Burlington, I can't actually name them just due to confidentiality with those folks that I can talk about the industries a little bit. So specifically here in South Burlington, I've worked with somebody who has started a jewelry business and started out fairly small and now runs a very large operation and is extremely successful and started online mainly with Etsy but now is traveling across the state in New England and selling in multiple retail stores throughout the state and creating sort of that just lasting economic impact for the whole chain through the state and the whole region really, New England. Also worked with a lot of food and beverage companies here in South Burlington and helped folks really start from nothing, build their business plans and provide that technical assistance to help them prepare to ask for capital and seek out commercial lending options which is a huge part of that process in an area where I could see some areas of opportunity. So really just worked across every industry and have worked from businesses as small as one person just working out of their home to employing up to 50 employees and doing a lot of business. Hey, Andrew, do you have any questions? Yes, yes, one second. Oops, we lost his video, here it is. No, no, I'm here, I'm here, thanks, yeah. Yes, thanks Rebecca. So yeah, so you clearly have deep experience in promoting small businesses and jobs. I mean, how you bring that experience particularly to bear on the policies setting and the things that the economic development community are gonna recommend to the city council to do in the city, to attract businesses, attract small businesses, like what, how do you apply those skills to this position, I guess? How do you see that happening? Yeah, that's a great question. And something I'd love to just explore more throughout just this engagement if that seemed like it was a good fit. But you know, off the top of my head in some areas of opportunity and areas of success that I've seen in other parts of the state that I've worked with is specifically, I think here in South Burlington, something that I see that's missing and maybe is starting to emerge. I went to a few events last year at the library for women in business and those were very successful. But I think, thinking about how we can create maybe a more concerted effort for our business community here in Vermont, I think about places like Brattleboro or Montpelier or even Burlington. And while those areas do have, you know, a more concentrated downtown, I do think there's an area here in South Burlington to think about how we can engage better with our small business community through maybe something akin to, you know, downtown Brattleboro Alliance or Montpelier or Live or things like that. And so that's where my head goes initially and, you know, how can we create a system and a policy that better aligns our businesses and gives them a voice, you know, at the policy level here in the city. Okay, thank you. Mike, do you have any questions? I do. Rebecca, thank you so, sorry. Rebecca, thank you so much for applying. It's really just great applicants this evening. It's wonderful. Could you maybe share with me, I'm trying to be consistent in the questions that I'm asking every applicant. What is the primary goal of the Economic Development Committee is to create this economic development strategy? This has been the objective for the last six years. What do you see that as a tool, as an instrument? How, with this development strategy, how is it used as a tool by the city across all those various areas of focus as you see it? Yeah, another great question. I think that that strategy that is being created for the city really is an opportunity to create some alignment across those different areas. All of these things don't exist in a vacuum, they're not siloed, they all intersect with each other. And so, you know, thinking about that strategic development plan, how do all of those interacting and overlapping components that have their own needs and their own polls in different directions, how can we find a way to make them work together and talk to each other? And through that strategy, I think there's a real area of opportunity to instead of just create policies in one area to think about how these policies could potentially affect or impact other areas. And so, the strategic development or the strategic plan that it's being worked on and will hopefully provide a lens with some of that work already fleshed out, so that when we're considering policies or considering, you know, creating new programs or X, Y, or Z, that strategic plan will sort of already have thought through some of those more, I can't come up with the word, but those deeper details and, you know, that impact conversation about how this is gonna affect all of these different areas that don't exist in silos, but we often talk about in those silos. Thank you. Laurie? Just quickly, I'll ask, do you have a particular passion or interest or focus that you wanna bring to the Economic Development and Committee and something that you're hoping to champion as a member? Yeah, I think, obviously, you know, my work and what I've been doing in my professional life has led me to have a real passion for small business and supporting small business. And so I think one of the programs that I worked on and that I'm most proud of was a partnership between the Women's Business Center and Vermont's Reach Up program. And so it was providing business education to the women who are going through that program and participating in that program. And while that's at a state level and a little bit more fleshed out than maybe what could happen at a more local level, I think kind of thinking through what partnerships and how we can look at these sort of partnerships that wouldn't be so obvious and how those can bring new business and small business into the city to create economic freedom and a stronger sort of economy here in the city for everybody. Great, thank you. Great answer. Becky, you prefer to be called Becky? That's, yeah, Rebecca or Becky is totally fine. Do you have any questions for us? I don't have any questions specific, you know, to what we've talked about tonight, but similar to what somebody asked earlier about the planning commission, I'd love to know what the time commitment looks like outside of the meetings for the Economic Development Committee. Is it what that looks like? Is there one? Did I hear what the time commitment was outside the meeting? Oh yeah, so it's not as heavy as other committees. You know, there isn't a lot of preparation, like a large packet to go through before the meeting. But as the Economic Development Growth Plan develops, right, there could be a little bit of extra work on top of that. So does that answer your question? Yes, it does. I'll say one other thing about that, which is depending on how engaged you are, you can have as much extracurricular work as you want. That's true. There's no limit to how much time you can put in. That's great. Becky, thanks for applying. I appreciate it very much. We'll be in touch, okay? Thank you. We're gonna do another interview with Betty Barnes, and then we're gonna try and have a quick break, I think, and maybe probably reassess the agenda, because we're behind by quite a bit. So is Betty online? Hi, Betty. Hi. You are applying for the Public Art Committee. Yes, I am. And you work for PCC? I do. I know a little bit about PCC. They're three positions open right now that they keep advertising for. There are. We're happy to accept them. One of them's a CEO, right? Or... Yeah, there is a CEO. Have you applied to be CEO yet? I have not applied to be CFO, no. You want to tell us a little bit? I'm very happy to have a PCC. I'm already impressed because I see a sewing machine behind you. Yes. Not able to blur my background on Teams, so you get to see my studio space in the fall. Go ahead, tell us about yourself. So I have lived in Vermont since 2005. I just moved up to South Burlington three years ago to start working for PCC in Wintersky. And I live on Joy Drive. I also volunteer with the Chittenden Asylum Seekers Assistance Network with their April Arts for Asylum Seekers fundraising team. So all this month we've been doing a fundraiser for Cassin getting local artists to share virtually their talents and their work to sponsors for a contribution to Cassin who helps with folks who are in the asylum process in Vermont. I also create my own works of art and then I do some writing. So that's my artistic. It's a really great resume. My current art. Thank you. Thank you. Have you had a chance to talk to anybody on the committee or maybe remotely attend any meetings yet? I have not and I have not attended a meeting. I have often enjoyed the gallery space over at the city hall and the library. So I do get over there to see the gallery shows regularly but I haven't actually attended a meeting. Okay. And you know they meet, I think it's once a month, right? Yeah. Right, the third Tuesday of every month. From about 6 p.m. till 7.30, something like that, yeah. I'm the liaison for that committee so I go to it fairly often. And they have some projects in the works. Have you heard about the project that's going into J.C. Park? Have you had a chance to? I have not heard about that project. Then yeah, it's pretty cool piece of art that's been developed that has to be installed there. It's colorful and translucent and I think there's something on the city website about it, right? Yeah. Do the counselors have any questions for Betty? Mike has a question. Hi, Betty. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for applying, you know, public art can really be transformational and you appreciated your comments about your views on the public art that you saw displayed here in city hall. But not everyone always sees the benefit of public art. There's always a cost every time. There's always a cost question. So obviously you clearly have a passion for this. How would you sell the virtues of public art and why all elements of the community should see this as something that adds to our collective life? More. So I think public art plays a vital role in shaping the cultural identity of a place and also helping connect communities and helping communities grow. So I think when you find a balance between the art that actually represents the people in the community, it really has a way of enhancing the community that you live in and making you feel tied to that community. So we talked, I've heard a lot tonight about housing and economic development and I think that art certainly plays a role in that shaping of the community but in the same ways that economic development and sorry, it's late. The economic development and planning, shape the community, art can also be a force in creating that community space and creating belonging among community members. Great, thank you. Laurie. Andrew, any questions? Where did he go? There he is. Here, no, Tim, thanks. Thank you. And you already asked a question. I don't have a question. You don't have a question, okay. Betty, thank you so much for your application. I really appreciate your background. You're an analytical background as well as your creative sides, right? So we're probably gonna make a decision tonight and we will be in touch. All right. Do you have any questions for us? What is the term for the position? Is it a three year position? Yes. That's a yes. Okay, all right, thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. So now it's 8.36, we're gonna take a five. Oh, Mr. Doyle, I don't have an application for you on the table, but I don't have a formal application that says what you wanna, what you're applying for. Planning commission. Planning commission. Can we wait until the summertime when we go through another round of applications? Because you should have had this submitted to the city manager's office prior to the day. Like I said, the posting about the due dates wasn't consistent. Well, the thing is, is that all these people somehow found out about it and yours isn't in here. So. It's fantastic. I have submitted these in the past. Okay. I don't have it in front of me. If it's not in front of me, I don't wanna interview you until another day when you have an application in front of me that meets the deadline. Is it okay? That's not okay with me, but you set the rules. Okay. We're gonna take a break now for five minutes. Thank you. We'll be back. No, yeah, well, I think I've been disturbed. So we'll, oh, is he just leaving? Okay. We can start without him. We don't need him. All right, so we're gonna call back into a session the city council meeting for April 15th, 2024. Because we are behind in our agenda tonight, we're thinking of moving a couple of items around a little bit. Item number 10 is consider the naming of Overlook Park. And I'd like to move that up to next, right? So I think we'll jump down to item number 10 now. And Adam Math from Reckon Parks is gonna be here to talk about the naming of Overlook Park. So can I just do a few sentences at a table setting here? So we are not asking for any action on this tonight. This is a conversation we started with a prior council. There are members of the Underwood family here in the audience that you may wanna hear from and Adam will do a really high level overview of the history. Yep, so I just wanted to kind of go over today a little bit of the background and then also some history which the Underwood and Weaver family has provided us both on that location and their family history there. So to go back in December, right after I started up here, Jesse and I met with Patricia Weaver and family regarding the Hubbard Park location. And then through that, we began to look at well, the naming of Hubbard Park and the situation that arose from that. So through that conversation with the Underwood family, they also had the Overlook Park property as well within their family. So that conversation led to looking at changing the naming of Overlook Park to honor the Underwood family. Today, I just wanted to kind of go through a little bit of their history there as well as I do have some photos from their farm that was on the Overlook Park, which I'll share with you guys here today. But the Underwood history on the land at Overlook Park, it goes back to 1921. The Nolan family purchased the 260 acre farm known as Lakeview Farm, which occupies where Overlook Park is today. In 1955, Marie Nolan married Richard Underwood who built their first home just off of Overlook Park where they lived until 1998 and 2009 respectively. Not only is that location within their family history, but the Underwoods also have a lot of history within the city of South Burlington as well. Richard Underwood began his career within the city as a lister and then a city assessor where he remained for 29 years as a public servant. Continuing on with the history of that location, their family barn, which I have some photos here for you, which I'll just share with you guys. So Patricia met with me in possibly, I think it was the January timeframe and shared those photographs, which actually show Overlook location and where their family barn was located on them. So there's a handful of different photos there. But unfortunately, the barn itself burned down in 1977, which is following that, the family entered into an agreement to sell what is now Overlook Park to the city of South Burlington. And that process carried on, the family continued to sell parcels in that 260 acre farm location, which is now a pinnacle for sisters, Nolan Farm Drive and Overlook Drive. And due to this history, as well as the Underwood family history within the city of South Burlington, I would recommend that we look to review and consider changing the name of Overlook Park to honor the Underwood family and Richard Underwood. Thank you. You know, it's amazing how ignorant I am of long-term history of the city, right? And sequences of ownership and the original big farms. My wife's family, Mackenzie's own, her mother owned most of the land around the Blue Mall, right? And her father, the O'Brien's own the farm down at the corner of Dorset and Barstow. But there's a lot of other land I don't know a lot about, which is really, so it's really fascinating to see this and those pictures. Just a quick story, I used to live in the Eastwoods neighborhood, right? And back probably 10, 15 years ago, I bumped into a guy, a much older gentleman who's probably in his mid-70s. And he was talking to me that he and his family moved to, you know, I think it was, it's like Proctor Avenue back in the 50s because they wanted to move out to the country from Burlington. They didn't like being in town. And I was like going, the country. He goes, well, that's what this was back then, right? So it's really, these are great photos. And yeah, so you don't need action from us tonight, but did the underwis want to come talk to us? Please come down. Thanks for sticking. So it's not that late yet, but it will be. And Adam's done a very good job. I just kind of want to tell it from the family. Sure, please. Yeah. Like I said, I will keep my comments brief. Most of you don't know me. Can you tell us your name? Sorry, Patricia Weaver. Most of you don't know me, the Underwood name or why I chose to tell our story. My name is Patricia Weaver and I am the daughter of Richard and Marie Underwood. My family roots on Spear Street go back to the 1920s when my grandfather, John Nolan, purchased 260 acres. And for the next 40 years ran a successful farming operation. Our family, including my mother, her sister, my three siblings, myself and my cousins were all born and raised on Spear Street, growing up in the homes that were part of the farm. Some of you in attendance tonight may live in homes that were built on the farm. My father, Richard Underwood, became part of the Nolan farm in the 1950s after coming to Vermont to attend St. Michael's College, meeting and marrying my mother. He worked on the farm for 15 years before taking a job with South Burlington and soon after was named city assessor where he remained a dedicated public servant for 29 years until his passing in 1998. After my mother died in 2009, the family home on Spear Street and the last remaining 60 acres of the farm that my family refers to as the Noel were left to me and my siblings. As I mentioned in the other paper article covering our story, the family's intent was to develop the parcel. When we realized that wasn't going to be feasible because of environmental and zoning restrictions, we approached the city with the offer to sell. The sale of the land closed in March 2013, including a 0% mortgage we agreed to hold for the city to help finance the purchase. Our only request was that the parcel and the future park be named in honor of my father for as many years of dedication and hard work with the city and on the farm. Following the sale, I continued to communicate with various city staff requesting a timeline regarding the official naming of Underwood Park. When I learned in 2022 from a third party that the city had taken a different direction in naming the land and without any communication with the family, it felt disrespectful. Hence why I'm standing in front of you tonight telling our story. The family's preference is that the city honor our original agreement by renaming the Noel but that seems unlikely. Our second choice is to rename Overlook Park to include the Underwood name. Overlook is a three-acre parcel that was part of the original farm where the barn stood for over 70 years and would be an appropriate site where the family name be recognized. Thank you for your time. Thank you very, very much. I appreciate that. I have a question for you. And I appreciate you coming in front of us and talking about this and I heard you say your preference would be to have the Noel property named for your dad. The naming of Overlook Park, does that meet your goal? Honestly. Mary? I mean, I worked for, you know, the city of South Burlington for Tom Hubbard. I know Tom Hubbard. He was a pallbearer at my father's funeral. Were we disappointed and felt disrespected when it happened? And I know nobody here was, I believe, as part of that. So I understand that. But the original was we asked for the Noel, what we called the Noel. So that was our first request. But I'm going to ask for what I think I can get and not end up with nothing honoring my father. So I think that is where we stand. Mary, do you feel differently? My other sibling is here. I have two other siblings, but they're not here tonight. I understand. And I was asking that question because it's important to me that you feel whole when we're done with the process. And if this really does that, that's fabulous. And if it doesn't, I think it's important that we work on that. I just want to put that out as much as possible. And I know this isn't getting, I know you are going to discuss this. So I know that that is, but we would be open to either. Thank you very much. Andrew, do you have any comments? Well, I just want to say thank you for coming. And when I read the article in the other paper, I too was, I had several feelings that you've expressed. It seemed like something that was unfortunate. And I'm probably one of those homes that lived on the 208 that now exists on the 260 acre farm. So certainly appreciated areas, it's a beautiful area. I would personally love to learn more about the history of the area. I know when I walk in the woods behind my house, there's a lot of barbed wire. And if you know, I'd love to know like what the operations were there, what went on it. At some point it just fascinates me the things you discover in the woods and wonder what the history is. Yeah, well, you can, you can, I know you can't see these pictures, but you'll probably find these pictures very interesting because there was nothing there but the farm, so. Yeah, yeah, thank you. Thank you. Elizabeth, do you have any comments? I don't have a specific question on this matter, but when it came before us, I did ask the question whether or not we have a policy on naming. And I think it may be important for the council to consider when we're looking at buildings and parks and other areas that we consider entertaining a policy around naming. And then the second part of the question is, do we have a repository of all of the names that we have currently given our parks and other areas and an understanding of the history there? That's actually a question. I would share Elizabeth's views and I believe Lori's, I think, if we did have a policy. Again, I was not here for the history of the past and not blaming everyone, but I think we're all sort of touched by the situation and there's some sort of logic to your initial request. So perhaps creating a policy is a benefit that will come out of that that will maybe not push you fully whole unless there is a way to go in the direction that the Lori signaled, but it will create sort of a more predictable pathway for the future. So thank you in that case for also bringing this to our attention. I support having this resolution on a future agenda. Okay. Very near future agenda, okay? Thank you for your time. You're welcome. Thanks for coming. Thanks for staying. Thanks for the part. Sure. So now we want to go back to the orientation. Yeah, let's go back to eight and start with library. We're going to go back to eight. Am I clicking for you or are you? Yes, I guess so. Oh, well, I need it unless you want to give me a clicker. So this is the orientation of community services, recreation parks and library with Adam math, Jennifer Murray and Stacy Pate. I am the chair of the library board of trustees. It's coming. So good evening. I'm Jennifer Murray. I'm the library director. And I look forward to sharing some information about the library with you all. And I am here with Stacy who is the chair of the board of trustees tonight. The start. So the library itself, you know, is the building is new. The institution is quite old. And you can see on the sheet what our mission and values are. The mission was developed with the staff and the trustees. And we will be, I think that and the strategic plan are developed have been developed internally because we were doing a lot of asking things of the public at the time that that was being designed. So we decided to just use internal resources for that for the next time around. We'll be including the public. And I wanted to mention, excuse me, that if you're interested on the library's website under the board of trustees, there's also a strategic plan for the library which is developed in the same way. This is the library staffing chart. You can see at the top that there I am between two strong people and organizations. By statute, the board of trustees is a governing body. So I'm accountable to the board of trustees and I'm also accountable to the city management, city manager. So we have 22 people when we are fully staffed. So there's a lot of people run in the library because the library's very busy. This slide shows some successes from 2023. And I wanna add that one thing that's missing are our online resources. So that's something else for you to know about that through the webpage, you can get to Consumer Reports, eBooks and eAudioBooks, Mangle Languages, Canopy for Watching Movies, and Informational Databases. And then while this says FY23, this is actually a month in review for 2024. Again, just some bits of information for you to understand the numbers of people that we are seeing and helping in the building, number of programs and attendees. The figures here suggest that FY24 will be another year of growth for the library. And I think that's really important because certainly through the years, you hear people saying, well, we don't really need libraries, we don't really need books, it's all gonna go online. That's not what we're finding and I don't think it's what's happening around across the country. In part, it's because we not only are doing books and movies and that kind of thing, but also because we are a hub of the community. So we're a welcoming place for people to come and to be and to study and to talk and to have quiet time and to learn. And so it's a bigger picture than it was when I was going to libraries after school every day when I was a kid. And then the next slide is about emerging issues and they're a little small, I'm seeing now. So the first one has to do with the number of people in South Burlington and that even just within walking distance here when all these buildings are complete, where they're expecting 1,000 more people to be within walking distance. So that's 1,000 more library cards and services to that many more people. So that's something that is an emerging issue because we're gonna be needing to serve them whether that means we need to have more staff in order to have more services simultaneously and or more hours, but that's an issue for us that we're aware of. The next one is about being that welcoming organization that we say that we wanna be in our strategic plan and that's ongoing, it's a learning process for us and we also try to share it with other city departments kind of what our experience is and how to make that diversity and inclusion and equity a part of our everyday in the library. Then we have this beautiful room, which is, they've got it down to a science how to do your meeting, but when we have people coming in from the outside who wanna use this for song and dance, we find that we don't have the expertise internally that we would need, so that's gonna be an ongoing issue that we're gonna try to resolve in a creative way. Collections, so collections are gonna be changing, you might remember VHS tapes, so we don't carry those anymore, I know, I know, but we do still carry DVDs and books on CD and that's over the next years, we will have to be looking at that and see are we gonna keep doing that. Don't do it, that is the best DVD collection I've ever seen in my life. Well, the person who selects for that will be so happy to hear that. Where is a DVD player anymore? We have one you can check out in our library of things, so you can still watch them, but that's an ongoing issue for the profession. And then, but as I said earlier, that paper books are still popular, there is still a growing interest in people reading, particularly if they're reading for entertainment. If they're doing a research paper, they tend to go to the computer first and that's where we have some of those informational databases so that people have a place to go that is trustworthy for information, but for young people, older people, everyone in the middle seems to be moving more towards, yep, we really prefer books for our entertainment and fiction. And then finally, the library in its welcoming mode, it means that we are aware that in Vermont, as in the country, that there are people who are having all kinds of things going on in their lives that we don't know anything about until they come into the library and either need our help or just need a place to be and would rather not have our help. And that's also something that across the board and libraries is an emerging issue for sure. Some of you have met the social work intern that we have this year, whose time is coming to a close and that was a great experiment and we hope to do it again next year. We will be keeping an eye on Fletcher Free because the next starting around now, they have a part-time social worker from the Howard Center that's gonna be embedded at the library and we'll see how that works for them. We might not be there yet, but that's, we're trying to keep our eyes open for how are we gonna best help everyone that comes to the library that wants to be there. And then the last slide is just a picture of us and we hope that you use the library, that you come in often, you can find me on the second floor and I'm also happy to answer questions tonight. That's a great picture. I had a quick question. Are you currently able to handle the at need residents that come into the library needing services that aren't typical library services or is that growing beyond your capacity at this point? Whether it's the homelessness or- Yeah, I hear what you're asking. I'm just trying to think about what the answer is. I think that we are doing a good job at maintaining safe spaces for people while also creating boundaries where we need to and it has an emotional toll on staff because it's not part of what we were trying to do. It's not part of what we thought we were getting into when we entered the field, but we do as much training as we can find or think of to help everybody get to a place of, well, recently we had a training that kind of helped us to distinguish between when something feels uncomfortable and just because you feel uncomfortable doesn't mean you're not safe. So that kind of work is what we're doing so that staff can be okay and that the public can be okay while they're in the building. I don't think we are at capacity with that, but there are some people that would, I'm sure, feel differently from me. I hope that as the need grows, you ask for help before you need it. Thank you, I'll keep that in mind. Anything else? Any questions? Just a quick one, Jennifer, you mentioned as city center populations growing, the hours would need to change. I understand all your other, the services and the staff and the competencies. I didn't understand why hours might need to change. I don't know for sure that hours are gonna need to change, but what I've seen happen in other places that I've worked is that if the public gets to a place where they are saying, wait a second, my old library, we were open until midnight and we need you to be open until midnight that there can be kind of a surge of interest in having that study space available for longer or the ability to go in and get your books after your shift that ends later than 7 p.m. So it's more a matter of being aware that that might be an issue. I would think that, so we used to be open later when I first got here and we were in the high school and there nobody came. So we backed off on that. I think that our first need is going to be the having enough people to have simultaneous things going on at once, but we have to be aware of what might be happening. Thanks. Oh yeah, go ahead. The other thing that I wanted to add is the housing that's right next to the library is now UVM and Medical Center. So there's going to be postdocs and graduate students and medical students, nursing students that may enjoy the library later in the evening and it's a lot closer here than heading on to campus. So that could be another reason for later hours. But if I could follow up, because I was actually, I was going to follow up on the question just from personal experience when I was a graduate student. I had the same thing. I lived closer to the public library than to getting back on campus. So it was just easier to go and have dinner and then go library or even during the day because classes or whatever. Is that going to be a challenge because I was at the library today. Checked out a book today. I've used I think every service that you have there, interlibrary loans, it's all fantastic. But I remember when I came here today, the park, I couldn't find a parking space. It was already packed. It was the middle of the day, it was packed. So assumably those people have parking on the back, but there'll be just more people. And so the library will increase and become full for people who I assume what I did, which is quite understandable study because I want a quiet place. Given the numbers that's going to come on board, which is up to a five, six, 100, do you envision that as a challenge and how would we manage that challenge? Is the solution switching the hours or is that what you're sort of intimating? There are a lot of different branches to what might happen. One of the things that at certain times of day or times of week that we already know is that people might want a study room or a meeting room and it's already busy. And so our rules when we started, we tried to make it user-friendly as possible. And so some of those policies might have to change to be a little less easygoing if we are trying to fit as many people as we can in a day. So study rooms right now, we ask people to stay for no more than three hours. We might change that to two hours and then have a wider array of people having a chance to use it. So there's that kind of internal thing. And certainly if we're open for more hours, it means that we have that many more spaces for someone to use if it's at the right time of day or night for someone to want to use it. I think we're just gonna have to get used to being bigger. One of the things that I've been, I mean, to busier, not bigger. We are as big as we're gonna be busier. But one of the things that I hoped for and have been very happy to see is that people share, they already share. So we have the community room in the digital lab. And if nobody has reserved them for a group meeting, then it's open for individuals or groups to study. And most of the time you'll see at least four different groups or pairs or singles in those rooms doing their own thing in a corner. And somebody might even be talking on the phone and still these other people are still in there doing their own thing. So it might just be that those rooms get a little fuller when these things happen. And as you're talking about parking, I think that's something that was brought up when the building was being built. And this is supposed to be a very nice walkable, bikeable, bussable building. And right now we're still working on accessibility because the drop-off for the city bus is actually in front of Barnes & Noble. So people with access issues may be driving their cars because it's harder to get the steps to here at the library. And I know that's something that has been an ongoing conversation and hopefully we'll continue with that because the more we can convince people to find alternate ways to get here, the less need of parking that we'll have. How many movies can I watch on Canopy per month? So the Canopy, the Canopy service has changed a little bit. So you have, I think, three different categories that are topical and you can watch as many as you want of those. And then they have a point system now that you can watch the ones that are not within those categories. So I cannot answer that question in a clear fashion. I'm sorry. But we are, I think FY24's budget has a little more money in it for Canopy because we have to step into that. Because we don't have enough streaming services, so one more is really great. Well, it's really good for people who can't afford the streaming services, right? That's the key. We're all, we're supposed to be about accessibility. I know it's Friday because I get an email from Canopy on Friday, go, oh, what have they got? Oh, look at these great movies that I never get to it. So anyway, it's good service. Well, great, well, thank you for coming. Tim, just a point, yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Hey, thanks. Hey, Jennifer, do you have a sense of the portion of the library of users, users that are, you know, South Burlington residents versus, you know, in the wider region? I do, I'm sure I do. So in this year, FY24 so far, 84% are South Burlington residents, 11% are home card residents. So those are the libraries in Chittenden County that we have a relationship with where they can come and bring their card from their library to us. And then under 6% are non-residents who are paying a fee. And maybe a follow-up, when we allocate, as you were saying, the community with other rooms, is there a preference for South Burlington residents or could anyone book those rooms? So we did not choose when we first opened to make that distinction, but that is certainly something that might come about in the future when we're trying to accommodate more and more people. Okay, thanks. And a very quick note that we had several people from out of town at Illuminate who stopped by to see us, including a lovely woman from Brazil. So far-reaching and it was fantastic. So stop by and see, we'll have a showcase of people that came to Illuminate to talk about why they love their libraries. And you had some great music on the first floor too. Yeah, during the Illuminate, yeah. Well, thank you. Can I add one more thing? Sure, please. So part of these orientations to give you all a kind of foundation of what our operations are. So as things come to you in the future, you have some familiarity. So one of the things that Stacy and Jennifer and I have been talking about for a couple of months is that you saw on the org chart, Jennifer's kind of squeezed by city administration and the trustees. I think it's in a loving way. I think Stacy and I are really embracing- It's totally loving, it's totally loving, I agree. But I think we have a really strong, the library trustees do have some statutory authority that's independent of council. We have a really strong history established right now of mutually supporting one another through a memorandum of understanding. That MOU needs to be updated. So that is something that you are likely to see in the next year. And I think we have a lot of good foundation built about how we do that in collaboration. But that's an emerging issue you are likely to see in the next year. Thanks for adding that. Just a quick follow-up or clarification of that. What are these authorities of the trustee over? What I'd always assumed was the city's public library. Just understanding, and are there, in that matter, any other organizations or entities within our city, public administration, that also have some external reporting requirements or to always be conscious of? Do you want to answer the library trustee authority? I would refer you to the library webpage again about us trustees. And that's where the current MOU exists and that we'll outline. But that is definitely out of date. And so I'm glad that this conversation is going to be happening. There's also something before the legislature now that clarifies some of that as well. So I think in high level bite size, the library trustees set the policy of the library. So how it operates, how they select books, how they keep books on the shelf, how they treat folks who come in and out of the library. All of the operations of the library sit with the trustees. The fiduciary of the library, while recommended by the trustees, still goes through the council process. So the employees of the library are still city employees. They're under our policy. They are admin of their personnel policies, their payroll policies there is all administered through the city. So the MOU really speaks to that financial relationship while the policy sits with the trustees. You still have to approve the budget. You still bring it to the voters, all of that. The other example that you heard about at the last meeting is Champlain Water District. And so we'll try and remember to tease those out as they happen. And I look forward to you in the next couple of months finding time to say hello to each of you and talk about how we can partner together. That would be amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Great, thank you. Thank you. Item number nine briefing on the kickoff of the parks and open space master plans with Adam Math and Silken Kirschner. So I think Adam and Silken are gonna come down. I think Adam is going to walk through his orientation presentation very quickly, recreation and parks. But we're gonna sort of combine eight and nine as it relates to recreation and parks because the parks and open space master plan which Silken is here for is a big effort of recreation and parks at the moment. But I think Adam, if you want to start with your orientation, that would be great. Oh, I need to give you. I think I'm SB City that jumped on. There you go. That work? Perfect, so I will jump in here and give kind of a rundown background on recreation and parks for you guys. So here is the team that we have. We're a five person team. I'm the director. Rebecca is our senior adult recreation specialist. So she actually started right around the time that City Hall opened up here with regards to the senior center. So she handles all of our programming that you see down the hall. Travis Ladd is our operations and event specialist. So handles a lot of our larger event planning and organizing was very instrumental in illuminate Vermont as well as the SB night outs that you see at Veterans Park. And then we also have two recreation specialists, Brett Leonard, as well as Kate Lickety. So they oversee our youth programming. A lot of times when you think of recreation departments you're thinking of youth basketball, youth soccer, lacrosse, baseball, et cetera, as well as they all play unique role in different events which we're doing throughout the course of the year. I threw on their our general mission statement as far as who we are. At the end of the day, we play a unique role and our thread in the fabric of the community basically bringing all different demographics together. Whether you're living in different portions of the city or different ages, we're able to blend everyone and also play a unique role when it comes to welcoming new residents as South Burlington continues to grow. The recreation departments are gonna play a very important role to make people feel like a part of the community through being a part of our events or our programming. Here's a quick rundown of the different parks that we have in South Burlington. When it comes to, I'll briefly kind of hit what is at the different locations listed in front of you here. And then you also have a map showing where within South Burlington, these parks are located. So Baycrest Park has a playground as well as an open green space. The city center park is right down the street. It has a natural playground there. Farrell Park has a dog park, a playground, a little league field, two of them, upper and lower as well as a soccer field. JC Park is home to our softball field. It's also where youth football and youth rugby play during the fall. We also have a basketball court and a playground there. Overlook we were just talking about has the scenic viewpoint. Red Rocks is our beach as well as it has walking trails located there. Samansky Park, which we discussed earlier has tennis, pickleball, basketball and our playgrounds. Hubbard Rec is our walking trails. Veterans Memorial is where 90% of our programming takes place. We have two little league fields, one larger baseball field, as well as multiple soccer lacrosse fields there. And then Wheeler Homestead and Nature Park is the walking trails as well as our larger dog park that we have. Recreation, so we really kind of have two different arms when it comes to engaging residents within South Burlington. We have our programming, which I listed out here for you. And then we also have our events. So we cover literally all ages when it comes to our programming. So all the way down from youth types and Kinderbrow sports up to our senior center falls under the recreation department. So just kind of briefly highlighting a few of the different programs we do for the different ages within our senior center. We do weekly lunches through age well. So every Wednesday and Friday we do lunches for seniors. We do active activities for our seniors in the senior center as well as social activities for them. So the senior center is programmed every day from eight 30 to four o'clock. Adults is one area which we are actively looking to grow in when it comes to the programming side of things. Expanding programming like paint nights, cornhole tournaments, our community gardens, et cetera. And then the youth side of things is what everyone thinks of when they think of recreation departments, basketball, lacrosse, soccer, baseball. What is unique about us is schools out, overseas the summer camps. So we offer summer camps not for the entire summer timeframe but we offer specialized week summer camps. So during the summer we'll have a baseball camp and archery camp, pottery camp, robotics camp, sailing camp, et cetera. But we don't offer options for kids from the beginning of the summer through the end. It's all one-off week camps which we offer. Jumping to our events, there's a few of them that I'll kind of highlight and share with you which we'll also kind of go back to the next slide when it comes to the barriers to participation which some of these will kind of hit and develop on. So new events for 2024. We're rolling out a family series. So every month we've been doing a free family style event. So as our recreation department without an indoor rec facility, we become very seasonal heavy which in the past, during the October through March timeframe, there weren't a ton of events that we were doing for families. So we're trying to roll out one family event. We've done bingo, paint nights. We just did trivia the other day to engage families all year round, whether it's doing stuff here in the senior center, utilizing the schools or also the U-Mall has given us some space to utilize there as well. Recreation on the go is a new program for the upcoming year. We're actually gonna be taking our recreation to underrepresented or geographically isolated areas in the community instead of them coming to us. We're gonna be setting up our mobile trailer and we'll be going to them and bringing our recreation games as well as doing a free community barbecue at those. So we have six of those lined up for the summer timeframe. The July fitness series is going to be free programming in our parks during the entire month of July. So every day during July from the first through the 31st, we're gonna have a different fitness program, rotating throughout our parks. So regardless of where you live, there'll be an opportunity for a walkable location to get to and there'll be no cost associated with it. So programming from yoga, Tai Chi Pilates, full body workouts as well as dance class, those will be rotated, rotating in the area. And then the last one that I wanted to talk about is our park hop bruise. It's gonna be a new program in the fall to engage a younger demographic, your young adults who aren't currently really participating in our rec programs, as well as highlighting different parks in our community. So what we're gonna be doing every Thursday in the September is rotating in different parks throughout South Burlington and doing a traveling beer garden and a pop-up location to hopefully engage a new demographic on that side of things. This may be hit with your city manager. Some emerging issues that we have, and kind of before I jump into these, there's really three different barriers when it comes to participation in recreation, programming and events. The first is transportation. So a lot of our programming happens at Veterans Park. It's not on the bus line. So it's difficult for families to get to. The second is cost. And then the third is also our lack of an indoor facility and becoming a seasonal recreation department. So emerging issues, obviously kind of hitting off of what Jennifer was mentioning as well. City plan goal number 48 is to expand our reach to 40% of South Burlington population as the South Burlington continues to grow. In order to do this, we'll need increased funding as well as staffing. We are a very small recreation department staff compared to other recreation departments in the area. Indoor programmable space have already hit on that, but the key to that is during the winter months, we lack schedule and control. So we do have access to the schools, but as you all know, the schools are utilized during the day as well as post school with their extracurricular activities. So by the time we get access, it's well into the evening. So it's not realistic for young families to come out. The park master plan, which we'll touch on here is an emerging issue in the fact that what that park master plan ends up saying we're gonna be looking for the resources provided to implement those goals and objectives. And then also making sure that we're providing to everyone and recreation will change for what South Burlington needs as more and more families are going to multi-family housing and they won't have their typical backyard or front yard to plan. They're gonna be relying on the recreation department in a different way than we have been relied on in the past. That was really quickly in my presentation. Was that the last slide? Yep. So that's the last of the orientation. Do you want us to go right into parts of master plan? Unless the council has any comments or questions. So a few, while you guys pull up your presentation, oh, you need access, Silicon, do you wanna? Okay, yep. I have to rejoin. Can I save some laptop batteries? So the reason we wanted to bring you this briefing tonight is that over the last year or two, there has been a conversation at recreation and parks about doing a parks master plan and then also a conversation at NRCC about doing an open space master plan and having them be separate documents. As staff was putting this together, we really saw an advantage of having those two conversations being two halves of a whole and thinking about our public spaces much more broadly. You were talking earlier about what's happening in our library as folks are using our public spaces in new and unique ways. The same could be said across all of our parks and open spaces about that. So because this is a shifted approach from how the council had previously thought about these two documents, we wanted to be sure that you all were fully briefed as we go into issuing an RFP for our consultant to help the community walk through these efforts. So there's no action for you all tonight other than making you champions of this effort and providing you an opportunity to ask any questions you may have about it. And Silken and Adam have put together a great, quite detailed presentation for you. So Silken's gonna fly here. Really fast. Hi guys, nice to meet you all. I'm Silken Kirschner. I'm the transportation and open spaces project manager working over in the DPW building. It's great to meet you all. Dean, Silken, are you Bright Green? Is your my daughter? Bright Green, yes. Can you live to locals? Yes, I can be louder. So why do we need a master plan at all? Master plans were explicitly requested under the recreation and environmental actions of the city plan under actions 39 and 87. The master plan will address many of the goals which were listed out on the recreation side of things. Some of the major ones are goal 54, 57, 60 and 61. And then on the environmental goals, it's gonna be 34, 35, 36, 37 and 40 from the city plan. So in getting started, we kind of developed these key questions that are pillars for each plan to address. I'll hit on a few of these here. I'm not gonna read through all of them exactly for you but in the end the key questions are looking at the parks and identifying needs and resources for the future demographic changes which we've been discussing consistently here tonight. A guide for redevelopment of our parks and our programming. A guide for adoption of private parks which currently we don't have in place as well as a guide for privately developed Rec and Park areas to maximize the resources and facilities that are giving us. And under the open space side of things, we'd like to create a guide for future conservation. We want to create true linkages for habitat blocks. We want to identify how open spaces can be utilized and balance our open space with active recreation. So why combine the parks and open spaces into one master plan? We basically came up with this Venn diagram of what consists of the two plans and what is active recreation, passive recreation and true conservation. When it comes to the funding side of things. So within the CIP for fiscal year 25, we have $75,000 allocated through ARPA funds as well as a placeholder in fiscal year 26 for another 75 in ARPA funds for this project. Under this diagram, you'll see that we have defined two different kinds of open space developed and undeveloped, developed obviously falling under the parks and more programming side and undeveloped being conservation areas and natural passive recreation areas. So we are currently in step one of kickoff. We have established a timeline in the project process. Adam and I are the contacts. We've found our funding and we're here presenting to you guys getting ready to get a consultant on board to move forward. We're in the process of identifying key stakeholders and participants determining who needs to be heard and how several of our committees have been very helpful and engaged in this so far, the NRCC Rec and Parks Committee, bike and pet advisory committee as well as the committee on common areas for docs. We really want to engage underrepresented groups like that youths and elderly and a main point of this step one is understanding where we're going with these two master plans. Understanding the context for long range planning is super important obviously if we're creating a master plan. So what do we want to accomplish? Which led us to our key questions. What are the goals, objectives, metrics for success which we lightly outline here and leave room for a consultant's interpretation as well. This is our timeline. You'll see here we're on this third dot where we're presenting the next step is to engage a consultant to write the actual master plans, step two will be listening and learning. So a lot of outreach, canvassing, step three evaluation of existing spaces that we have and what we are in need of. Step four, options and goals and then five is really bringing that all together in a written master plan. Step two is listening and learning. So this outreach should be fun and engaging. We're trying to cast a really wide net maximize all of that input that we're gonna get which is also another piece of why we wanted to combine parks and open spaces together. If we're trying to limit the feedback we get to a developed park or just a undeveloped passive recreation area or conservation area it's gonna be hard to limit people and say only talk about these two specific things. So I feel like casting this really wide net will help us get the most out of this community engagement phase. That leads us to step three evaluating capacity and identifying needs. We're gonna start with the inventory and assessment. The NRCC has really helped us with a strong prototype of this existing conditions assessment but we wanna assess more than just quantity and type. We're gonna go into usage patterns, what's working well, what do we see fully utilized and what might the community not be fully utilizing or interested in. This is where we'll enter in with GIS mapping to enhance this existing inventory and be able to visualize it spatially. We're gonna create and define spatial characteristics of parks, open spaces and trails and see those linkages in real time, see that accessibility to parks within every neighborhood. We'll do a second iteration of site visits to really drill down on the problems and positives that we're experiencing. We'll meet with facility and program managers to get their intake and all of this will be consolidated into a comprehensive assessment of existing conditions. And the next piece of that is we want to make sure that the plans we already have in place are working with these master plans and vice versa. So going through any existing plans such as individual parks plans, rec programming, city plans, comprehensive plan, active transportation plan, et cetera. We're gonna extract those common policy elements to not duplicate the work and make sure all of our guidance is on the same page. And the last piece of this step three will be a needs analysis and establish a baseline. This is the really important piece where we help a consultant answer the question what does our community need in a data-driven way? This will use metrics such as acres of park per capita, facilities per capita, walkability, distance to parks and open spaces, et cetera. And this will create a gap analysis specifically using that GIS mapping to spatially visualize where the most equitable access to parks is. Step four, exploring options and defining goals. We're gonna do a recreational market assessment. So what can we achieve? What do we want to obtain? Using that gap analysis that tells us where we may be able to offer more parks or open space type programming or access, then we can overlay that with it's map nine from the city plan that has future land use goals in mind. So using all that together, it'll help us hone in on exact areas where maybe we hadn't thought about putting a park or open space before, but it would greatly serve X number of people, et cetera. So this will explore recreational trends and how they interface with the rec environment in South Burlington. We can provide case studies from recent projects. At this stage, there's gonna be a phase A and B approach where parks kind of comes first and then it'll be a rinse and repeat with open spaces in terms of coming up with those recommendations and finalizing a written plan. So instead of trying to split off into two directions at the same time, we will start step four and follow through with parks and then rinse and repeat for open spaces. Silicon, can I jump for a sec? I think this area of the plan, while it is processing and for council discussion in the future is where our comments from earlier tonight might fit in. As we think about where we wanna see active recreation that is going to fit in a neighborhood differently than other open spaces or recreation areas in the city, we can start weighing those things against each other. So if we know we wanna see these kinds of active recreation amenities in the city and we know we have this amount of public space in the city, how do we match those up in a way that is best for kind of neighborhood development and community development? And that brings us to formalizing our recommendations for phase A, again, that's gonna be parks first. So that's gonna be exploring new park opportunities. Where can we get a new park? Where can we retrofit existing parks? Would a ball field maybe serve the community better as a playground, those types of conversations? And important to note, this is also where we would identify opportunities for public private sector collaboration and interplay with the community and nonprofits and educational institutions. Formalizing recommendations for open spaces is gonna be where we provide upgrades for new linkages and trails within natural corridors, evaluate current stewardship or objectives and efforts and provide recommendations for improvements. Meaning, is there an invasive species management plan we could recommend for privately conserved parcels that would help that kind of land management practice and prepare specific recommendations for each open space within the city. The end of step four is develop actions, priorities and phasing so we can start looking at where do we have the budget to immediately serve a certain area or neighborhood based on that gap analysis and market assessment and where can we use some long range planning and allocate funds appropriately to get to where we ultimately want to go. And step five, we'll be creating the actual physical master plan and bringing it all together into a visually compelling and usable guidebook. This will use map and graphics to help tell the story and we will work collaboratively to communicate the plan amongst all stakeholders, groups, committees, city newsletters, online, face-to-face, however we can get the message out there, we will. Obviously, no good plan is complete without coordination with the active transportation plan, the climate action plan and the city plan. We want to focus on those four pillars of climate resiliency, being inclusive, fair and just, being people oriented, thoughtful and a sustainable built environment as well as collaborative and engaged. Any questions? I flew through that so I understand if there are questions or kind of need a second to sit with it. I'm exhausted. I do have one question that's going back to step two. No, step three, you're talking about creating spatial characteristics of parks, open spaces and trails, et cetera. And then the last slide was coordination. I hope that when this section is being done that it'll also incorporate the bike-ped trail network system and how it incorporates with the parks so that they can be seen as a whole. Yeah, of course that would be a layer we give to the consultant as well to help with this mapping and that would show the connectivity between different types of recreation, either the passive or the active spaces. And the only other thing I can say is great presentation, but I think I've probably only got about 10% of it at this point and I don't know if there's an opportunity to have a little more in-depth exploration into the overall presentation. Yeah, totally understand. I wish I could have had more time with you tonight to really dig in. Thank you. There's a member of the public that wants to comment. Dan, are you on? Dan, I'll break through. Can you hear me? Can you hear me okay? Yep. All right, thanks. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Dan Albrecht resident. There's a couple of comments I noticed, I don't really need responses, but I noticed the issue of being reliant on the schools. So I would encourage this study as I go forward to address in some way the potential use of buildings. We did it for the police department and the interim thing. We lost the opportunity to have a community senator in the Hanifords building because of a lack of community action. So that's, we know we talk about indoor programming, which is many times a year. We're not gonna get on this new school or new space. So try to think about creative ways like the mall or other things where leasing space, the library was in there, of course, for a while. Secondly, as noted in the comprehensive plan, much of the future growth already occurring and also in the future growth that's coming is in the Shelburne Road Corridor and the city center in Ballistan Road Corridor. So I would encourage an emphasis on that to creating community and keeping that in regard. Third, in relation to those same corridors and a couple of blocks away from me over a fair old street area, we have, and then of course, over by the Lowe's and now we have lots of affordable housing groups and at least I haven't seen much dedicated outreach to that community. You've got a car, yeah, you can get the doors. You get the Memorial Park and other parks, but as I've known, we have a lot of apartment dwellers, they've already been around for quite a while and their needs are not being addressed and we're gonna have more and more apartment dwellers. So I'll just keep that in mind. The only question I would have is what's the best way if people wanna get more formally involved or get on a mailing list to keep track of this effort or serve on a task force or sub-work group. So thank you. Yeah, as far as staying involved, you're welcome to email me at escurchner at southburlington.gov. I apologize, I don't have my email written in this presentation, but I certainly can add it and maybe get this posted online somewhere. And Dan, just don't forget that, I know where you live and I know that Farrell Park is very accessible to you both down behind Vermont Gas and also because of the bike path as well that travels up around to back to UVM. So there's- Yeah, so the west side as the comprehensive plan pointing out, the whole west side of Shelburne Road is ignored. So in terms of newer parks, things like that. So just something to keep in mind if that's where the growth is going and I can see it happening right here up and down Shelburne Road then we need to have the community assets to serve that community. So I would love to see creative things I've said in the same two empty lots year after year next to Lowe's and Hannahford's just sitting there year after year and I was like, man, kids should be playing soccer. We should have a community garden there but it's not been happening. But anyway, hopefully with new leadership and the recreation and parks department things will change. Thanks. Think again. Any other comments? I had a question, one question, one observation. Have the ARPA funds already been allocated to the consultant to develop this master plan? Yes. That was a previous council action. Okay, I just wanna clarify that. And then the more of an observation when you put the two interlocking circles that was a helpful way for me to sort of see the overlap. I actually see a third circle and you've alluded to it and the data you're gonna collect but it may be impactful when you choose to present it and when you collect it but it's really housing, housing density and demographics because that's really what you're intending to address with any recommendations but I see that third circle being a governor for the other two as well. Yeah, thank you. Can I clarify my answer quickly? So for the consultant, we've identified all the funds. We have those in place. That does not include implementing this master plan. So one of the points that they make the slides is that the master plan is going to result in new capital projects that are not currently in the CIP. So just want to clarify two different funding's need in the future. And that leads to my question. In my correct understanding that the parks and open space planning, I commend you for like strongly support looking at it together. There, as you pointed out, there's so many overlapping aspects and it's about again maximizing resources and trying to hit as many different sort of interest groups in our community as possible in the most equitable way, including an access. But in my correct understanding, based on what you just said, Jesse, is that there would be no movements or advancements, let's say, on open space or on parks until we have this master plan as a guide that aligns the resource limits and prioritizes them. Or is this something that goes in parallel to one off or a decision? I'm trying to understand how master plans sort of suggests everything's on hold until we have a sort of integrated vision on how to pursue this. Is that correct understanding? So, I don't correct me here. So I would not say everything else is on hold. Right, correct. I think that this is a, we're doing them in parallel. So we have pennies for paths projects that you heard about last time that are continuing on. We have field maintenance projects as part of the CIP that are continuing on kind of ensuring that we're doing the preventative maintenance and maintaining our current public facilities. But it's about, with exception of, just trying to understand. We're not building a new. Exactly, with exception of maintaining for a new park. There's no plan for a new park. And maximizing possibilities within these facilities. And as you said, the continuation with the pennies for paths. And there's, I understand some additional money from the city itself besides the benefit of the past to try to flush out these networks which hopefully will create this integration. Exactly. Nothing new would be taken on in terms of new parks as Dan was suggesting in this community or that community until this master plan is done. The only new effort is the village green efforts. And then maintaining our parks. But Adam, you're closer to the CIP, the Recreation Park CIP tonight. Yeah, I mean, as far as the CIP over the next couple of years, it's more heavily geared towards like maintenance and facility projects like that when it comes to redoing drainage at Veterans Park. Implementing a new soccer field at Veterans Park. Not so much like, hey, we should be redoing this park and turning it into something else. That type of stuff I would say we should be on hold for. Just two other questions if you can give me the time. Is in terms of one of the things you talked about is the weather and obviously the fields are always the question. Is part of this will be the question of artificial turf at any of the fields? I was just wondering. We just kind of spoke about this today. Sorry? We just kind of spoke about this earlier today which is why I started to look it up. I have this one question. And the other one is maybe I didn't hear Dan correctly. Maybe I did. So I'd give him kudos. In terms of creative thinking, was there talk about looking at perhaps school, future school construction and future recreational facilities construction and some sort of fusion of so-called school funds and city funds is that creative thinking which- I don't know about the funds between the two but we are looking at neighboring municipalities and what they have for parks and habitat linkages et cetera where we would be looking to link with them as well like not ending abruptly at our South Burlington boundaries considering those folks who might live on the edge of South Burlington and be able to walk to a Shelburner Burlington park. So I do know that from a geospatial standpoint we are considering looking around us as well. And again, I heard, we welcome the comment that you shared with us, Jesse, that you had the chance of meeting the new mayor of Burlington and she expressed a strong desire to look at economies of scale's collaboration. Is there any precedent in the greater Burlington area of shared use or shared access to recreational or is that to Dario and Cognito? I can offer one small example of like Burlington bike paths. We are actively trying to link where their bike path intersects with some of our infrastructure and create a smooth transition. So it's not like, oh, you hit the edge of Burlington now you're on your own, there's no more bike path. So definitely looking at that continuity between the two. So one of the things we did not highlight in the recreation and parks orientation and to your question, point earlier, sorry Elizabeth, I feel like I'm not looking at you. Your question earlier about other governmental or going to say other linkages. So Winooski Valley Parks District is its own separate municipality within South Burlington and the region and they maintain quite a bit of acreage in South Burlington in open space that they control and manage. So I think that that is another thing that we should work into this effort over time. That is the regional park system, if you will, that's layered on top of municipal open space and natural areas. And those Winooski Valley parcels are included in the NRCC's draft inventory that we have to create a full picture of all types of open spaces. I know that in their inventory we also include school parks and things like that. So it really encompasses whatever kind of open space you could feasibly walk to not just what is owned by South Burlington or what is managed by South Burlington. Another example is the CCRPC sponsor's study or scoping amount of scoping work last or two summers ago to look at the connectivity from the bike paths that across Shelburne Road that go down to Queen City Park because those paths are not in very good shape and they want to develop something new on Queen City Park Road. So because it's connectivity, they administered that scoping study and it came out really well. So thank you very much. I'm talking about connecting to you. I got one more quick question. Make it quick. I'll try to make it quick. So this has given us a really good overview of the process. What are the touch points through this process where it'll be coming back to us so that we have the opportunity to have input along the way rather than just be given a final product that we might have wanted to have been put along the way. So how many touch points are there gonna be through this process for input from the council? I don't have an exact number on touch points but the entire steps two and three are focused on public outreach and canvassing what we have and how that's working and making its way through our community. So I think all through those two phases and four and five is really just finalizing recommendations and writing the actual master plan. So I envision steps two and three being time wise, the longest. But I don't have an exact number on instances yet because we're gonna work with the consultant to play off of some like parks programming we might already have or existing committee meetings that we're able to get interest in or visiting different areas, et cetera all kinds of different outreach and that's part of this process is identifying what outreach would get us that widest cast net. If that makes sense. And who makes the decision on the selection of the consultant? We would be writing RFPs and sending that out and then making a joint decision on the consultant selected. And because of the scale of this consultant of this contract it's likely it would come back to council for final approval. That's what I was asking. And part of, you know we're trying to, Silk and Adam have done a great job kind of outlining a process here and we're trying to walk that balance between dictating a process to a consultant and using the expertise a consultant will bring to this process. And I think part of that question as Silk and just suggested is for master plans that have been very successful not only as community development plans but also implementation plans in the future not just plans that sit on this shelf what is that level of engagement with the council? How do we bring you in as participants and champions in a community process? And at what point do we bring you in as kind of decision makers of final policy? So we're hoping to get some feedback from them also on that touch point number. Great, thank you. Thank you. I have just two quick things. So still came with when we talk about stewardship of open spaces you mentioned say invasive species management which is terrific. I'm wondering whether that would also encompass say reforestation of thinking of the wet areas on urban natural area which were probably at some point bordered by cotton woods or other trees that thrive in those wet areas. And so would stewardship kind of encompass that? Yeah, so that would kind of depend on the ownership status of the parcel. So there are a lot of open space parcels that are owned and managed by South Burlington and there are a lot that are privately owned or owned by organizations such as Winooski Valley Parks District and that would kind of fall toward where their management lies and what becomes a recommendation and what becomes more than a recommendation based on what we are able to manage from a city standpoint and what we have resources for. Sure, sure, but I guess it would be a consideration. Yes. And second question for Adam just going back to the very beginning of the Council meeting today is there any precedent in Vermont for limiting a space say a pickle court to see residents or is that something that's not done? Not that I'm aware of as far as a precedent. I mean, that would be incredibly challenging to do. I'm not sure how you would do that but there hasn't been anything that I've seen that would like limit a public park to certain individuals. Okay, thanks. We have a public comment but it's gotta be really quick. I was just saying on that last point you just have to come up and identify yourself real quick. Linda Norris is on it. I was just saying President doesn't Shelburton do that with their beach or paramount with their strict access to residents only? They do. Yeah, not saying we should go that path and just saying that as a precedent. That annoys me a little bit. Linda, did you want to say something? Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you for the focus on the parks and open spaces. This is in my mind after living here 29 years and having kids go through the school system in all and every kind of sports. And I'm a part geek in every one of our parks every week. We really need to keep upgrading and maintaining the parks. We have a great system but it needs to grow with the growth we've had in our city. And that's the outdoor space. And then there's the indoor piece of it that Adam is a great hire and silk into it. It's wonderful that they are here to help spearhead this because I had trouble when Tom Hubbard was the recreation director and I'd have to get space for coaching basketball and indoor soccer and all these other recreation things that we have not increased the footprint of the gym space that we've had. And we're the second largest city in the state and we really need to go expand some of that. While we have the senior center as you can see that that's already at capacity and we're using them all and we're trying to do whatever we can but we really need to focus on figuring out whether we're gonna do an indoor rec center and some of all of this is a long-term thing and also please tactically make sure that we support Adam and his team on getting the maintenance and the upgrades for the fields and the water and the dog park at Farrell needing work or is it that the right thing for it? But when we build and upgrade these parks like we did with Samanski it took us about five years to get that one approved and done you guys. And Andrew you can see too because I see you out there playing pickleball it is packed there now all the time. We sure could use more pickleball space but I'm not gonna complain it's been a wonderful park and the basketball people that are playing there now are much higher visits than they had before same with tennis but pickleball has really taken that park over. So if you renovate a park and make it look good update the Farrell parks with the baseball and whatever we need to put that focus on it for us so the kids really deserve it and I hope we can get it done. Thank you. Thank you. Barb did you wanna say something? Just a quick comment Tim. Linda mentioned the word that I was looking for I was trying to listen but I'm having to do it on my phone. And so I'm not sure if I missed it but did anybody mention the word dog or dog park in that presentation? Yes. I hope they are not included as a prime stakeholder in this. Thank you I just I listening on my phone isn't as easy as on the computer so I just wanted to make sure that wasn't lost. Thank you so much. Of course. Thank you Barb. All right. Thank you very much for your presentation. Thanks. We're gonna move on to item number 11 which is receive the Chittenden Solid Waste District proposed FY 25 budget with Sarah Reeves the executive director. Good evening Sarah and Paul. And Allison. Good evening. And Allison and we also have oh you're very welcome though. Thank you. Appreciate the time and the slot on the agenda. We also have Jen Holiday from CSWD as well. And if Jen could be given permission to share for screen I've been having intermittent connectivity issues. So if I flip out, Jen could jump in and take over the brief presentation. And I will be going as she's getting that permission. So again my name is Sarah Reeves. I'm the executive director for the Chittenden Solid Waste District. CSWD is an 18 member municipality charged with managing the waste generated by residents, businesses, institutions, schools and visitors to Chittenden County. And we do that through a variety of services. Sarah I need permission to share my screen and my camera's not working but I should be able to share my screen if they give me permission. Sorry I made Sarah the presenter. Sorry about that, Jesse. Jen you should be okay. Okay. Is it? Yes, thank you. Yep. So I usually start out with the presentations with a brief showing of who we are. And on this slide I focus in on the pie chart. This is where we generated our revenue in fiscal 23 and you can see there are three main buckets, user fees or tip fees. Those are the fees that our customers paid directly to us to handle the waste that they're bringing to us to manage. Solid waste management fee, that's where that acronym is there and that is the fee that is charged to haulers when they bring trash for disposal at Coventry and Anthem. And the material and product sales. So the revenue generated from the sale of compost, topsoil, local color paint and recyclable. And I've also been asked in the past to let everyone know how we're doing. And this is also from fiscal 23 and I focus over on my column number three and that shows the amount of material that was generated in Chittenden County that was sent directly to the landfill for disposal. I know that just about 120,000 tons, just about half of that actually could have been further diverted into either recycling or compost or special materials like batteries and electronics or into construction demolition debris. So that's where we focus a lot of our attention is on making sure that material is being disposed that could be diverted, is diverted. And also I'm not generating that material in the first place from our own possible. Next slide. So for our fiscal 25 budget beginning in July one, we're expecting or budgeting revenue just under $16 million. And again, you see those three buckets. We're looking at in the bulk of our revenue coming from those user fees, then a small wedge from solid waste management and that sale of materials wedge tends to fluctuate up and down because that is mainly made up of revenue from the materials recycling facility. Next please. Similarly, our price of expenses. This is new this year. I wonder where the bulk of our expenses go and should that be a surprise to anyone in the council that a large, large chunk of our expenses are dedicated to payroll wages and benefits but also a very large chunk is dedicated to materials management. And that is specifically the money that we pay to others to move our materials either to disposal to the market. So really paying our money to haulers to work for us. But also a big chunk of that expense is the contract that we have with CASEA to operate our materials recycling facility. Next please. So on this bottom line this year is different from any other budget that I brought to you my eight years of being with CSWD in that we are budgeting a short file and I'm gonna show you how we're going to address that. Next please. And there are a couple of items here on this fiscal 20, 40, 25 comparison. You'll see that our revenue expectation is very low. It's just about flat on the year over here. And you'll see a very large percentage wise increase on that equipment and fleet number. Fully half of that number is going to be dedicated to the existing materials recycling facility because she's an old gal and she is aging out and she's at the end of her life and it's meeting a lot of upheat just to keep it going. So to manage that shortfall, we would, again if everything in the budget goes exactly to the penny as we are planning, we would draw that down from something from the undesirated reserve which is basically our rainy day fund. However, in each budget we always conservatively under budget and over budget certain items. So we are tend to under budget the revenue from materials recycling facility. And in fact, our finance committee which Paul Stabler is the chair of this year, the committee felt that we were too conservative. So they asked us to revise our estimations upwards slightly, which we did but it's still fairly conservative. We're over budgeting as we tend to do on things like wages and benefits. We are asking for four to five additional positions in this year's budget. And whenever we budget for new positions we always budget at a full family benefit for example and we don't know who we're hiring and we don't know the situation. So that is something that we always end up coming in under our budgeted expense, but we have to budget this way. And one of the areas that we would like to actually fully expend, which we don't is on the community cleanup fee. So we want to be able to utilize that. The one of the big changes here this year is an increase to the solar waste management fee. And this is the fee again that is charged to haulers either at the transportation in Charleston or if a direct haul up to Caledry for trash in the landfill. It is currently $27 a ton. We are budgeting $30 a ton in this next budget. And it's the first increase that we've made to this fee since fiscal 13. And so the bulk of the increase to the solar waste management fee is going to be designated for the closed landfill reserve. And we'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment. When we mapped out to the impact for households if we were to spread out the increase over all the households in Chippin County, the impact was less than 30 cents per month. So one of the things that we realized too though is that our drop-off customers really had the opportunity to be able to mitigate their exposure to that increase by doing more waste prevention, more waste reduction. They can truly have an impact on how much of that fee they, additional fee that they pay because that fee is incorporated into the price of the balance. Next piece. The other fee that we're increasing in this year's budget is at the materials recycling facility. We currently are charging $85 per ton. We're implementing a modest increase to $90 per ton. This will bring us closer to the regional average, being between 90 and 120. And the region we're referring to is Northeast and Northern New York. All of the increase in the expenses are related to having to manage, maintain, and keep up this existing old mark. We had tended to be out of this mark by this point. We wanted to have built it a couple of years ago. Code through a massive might be mentioned to that. So we are trying to hold this old yall together and it's getting more and more expensive every year. Luckily, we think this would only be another a year or two of these expenses. And then we'll decommission this facility and this particular expense goes away. Next piece. Some good news. There is no to fee being increased being proposed for the organic recycling facility. We will remain at $70 per ton. We are looking to budget slightly our in brown town spoke below last year, but we are always looking for additional material to come into our facility. The same with the materials recycling facility. We did increase our pricing on our compost products. We found that we were in the bottom level of comparable products in Jimming County in the region. So we brought ourselves up to the midway. So we're still in the middle of the pack regarding pricing and sales have been strong. We will be implementing a new contamination policy as of July one pending a board vote this month. And that is to help give ourselves another tool in the toolbox, give our haulers another tool in the toolbox to be able to address ongoing contamination issues that we're seeing in the inbound food scraps. And that's something that has been asked for for a while. We've been working with haulers for over a year on this and it mirrors the existing policy that we have in place for the market. Next piece. More good news. There will be no increases to bad prices at the drop off centers. And we've added an extra large bag as well, which is new this year. The budget does reflect additional hours, both in Milton and in Burlington. We're looking to expand services to add trash back to the Burlington drop off center hopefully by the end of this current fiscal year. So those changes are reflected in the School 25 budget. And everywhere we'll have the Tuesday to Saturday schedule with the exception of Hinesburg daily at this point around two days, but everyone including Burlington will have that Tuesday to Saturday schedule. And when Burlington is online, everywhere we'll be taking credit cards. Next piece. Just a couple brief looks at some of the capital projects. The new Murph being the largest one, we'll be bringing a recommendation for construction contract award to the board in May. And of course my fingers in May won't be any later in June. Ideally we'll be breaking down, breaking down, breaking ground on the new facility in the late summer, early September. And we hope to be up and running about a year or a little bit more maybe after that. So my goal when we're pushing our folks hard is to get that new facility accepting material by September calendar 25, total calendar 25 at the very latest, which is very, very exciting. And as far as our reserve funds, all of the funds other than our landfill post closure fund are adequately funded. The landfill post closure fund is not surprising that it would be underfunded at this point in its existence. We are in year 28, 29 of a 30 year closure period. So it is expected that at this point in that closure period, the fund would have been broken. However, what is not been expected and could not have been foreseen was the need to potential need to be managing PFOS in the leachate that it produced through the landfill. The EPA just came out this week last week with a new rule for tackling PFOS in drinking water. And that will eventually have some effect on wastewater and on potentially on leachate. So we don't know how much that's going to cost. So the increase to this always now can be the bulk of that revenue will be used to beef up this particular reserve fund so that we can have enough funding in there to be able to properly mitigate manage that leachate depending on what the EPA or ANR tells us we need to do next week. And every year, as always, I ask our members cities and towns to please consider our budget for adoption. We do require each of our members families to vote on our budget as part of the charter and everyone gets one vote. So that is the end of my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. I have a question, Sarah. Why are the prices depressed for recyclables? It is supply and demand. So there's a lot of supply of certain materials and the demand for recycled content, those in cycles. There is interesting the demand for recycled content for plastics or PET water bottles is fairly high however, getting it to market can be tricky. And it kind of comes and goes in waves. So as larger producers, manufacturers, makers of the materials, without new sustainability reports, there's a surge of only need to source on sale of oil running with the price of crude oil. So if oil pricing is low, then you're not going to get a lot of recycled material, recycled content into your products and that's how you do. We have seen a nice rebound, which is why you're like being conservative, but I think we can hedge our bets on fiber products, which is great because we, of the material that comes into our facility, about 73, 74, 75% of it are cardboard and paper. So we want a nice strong regional fiber market to be able to continue to send our material to and again, it's commodities, right? It's, you know, a lot of it is outside of our control and we just do the best we can to reduce the quince material possible and we keep moving everything. Everything goes to market comes in. Thanks. Any questions from council? I had submitted a question. I don't know if you're prepared to answer it, but I just kind of wondered what the year over year impact was to South Burlington residents or businesses if you had an estimate and aggregate based on last year's utilization. It's a great question and I wish I could answer that for you and I'll tell you why it's difficult. It's because of the way that we, as in Vermont collect trash. We don't have specific to South Burlington your exact numbers of exactly how much your city produces. So we have no way to know which tons of 300,000 tons that were generated in Chenning County are specific to South Burlington. Part of the problem is the, you know, trash trucks cross lines all the time, routes cross lines all the time. So there's no way to have a dedicated number of South Burlington trash unless there was consolidated collection and you knew specifically that each trash truck that was collecting within your city was only collecting from your city. That way we would know exactly how much South Burlingtonians were producing and could do those projections. So the impact that I showed in the presentation was spread out across all households in Chenning County. So you could extrapolate from there with the number of households in South Burlington and do the math that way. Without those dedicated collection routes, there's really no way to peace out exactly what is South Burlington material. So thanks for the presentation. I mean, just one question. You were gonna say something. Yeah, just a question, sorry. I was waiting for you to say something. Thank you. Paul, we're getting a lot of feedback from you. So I'm the one muting you. If you could just unmute when you wanna talk, that would be great, thanks. In terms of the voting, I would say that every municipality has one vote. Does there have to be a consensus on passing the budget or just a straight majority? There does not have to be a consensus. It just is a majority of the members on the legislative body. And when we reach 10 of our 18 communities voting in the affirmative, then our budget is considered adopted. Okay, thank you. And since I've been through a few of these presentations, I just want to lament again the fact that we shipped 60,000 tons of something rather to coventry when it should not have gone in the first place because it wasn't properly sorted into recyclables and organics and whatnot. So please, everybody, do your recycling and your separation of your organics at home and properly bring it to Patch and Road, all right? If you find restaurants are not properly sorting out their organics, let them know that you wish that they sorted out their organics. It's supposedly the law, right? It is the law and you can also quietly let us know if you like as well. We do have a very active outreach and education team. We have someone who is dedicated to businesses and she'll be happy to approach folks and offer some assistance. We prefer to go the outreach and education route before we go to compliance, but we do have a compliance sector as well. So if you're interested in climate change and greenhouse gases, trucking 60,000 tons of refuse up to coventry for no good reason is not good for the environment. Not good, but anyway. Any other comments? Andrew, I guess not. No, thank you. So thank you, Paul Shaver wanted to speak. Paul, you can unmute. Yeah. I apologize if my mic's got noise. I don't know what's happening, but I just wanted to say express my appreciation for Sarah and staff. I believe this is a very responsible budget. It's realistic. It's conservative, which our budgets always are. Never seen us go wildly out of budget. So I feel very confident in it and I really appreciate what staff has done. I also just want to mention, of course, we're the increases you're seeing, of course, probably no surprise. We're being impacted by inflationary pressures as is every other organization around. So hence the reason for some of the cost increases and all. But again, I do believe this is conservative and reasonable and not the increases are not too onerous at this point in time. And then lastly, I just want to give a shout out to Allison. Allison's been a great alternate for me. I've been on the board a long time and she's among the top in terms of attendance and paying attention to all the issues and what we're doing. And I think it was a great decision to appoint her. So I just want to give that shout out. She's she's doing a great job. So and lastly, just thank you to all on the city council and all I know how much work you put in. This is not easy. So thank you. We love talking trash. All right, well, thank you very much for the presentation. Everybody take care. We're going to move on to a breeze. No, but to oh, we have to do that. Does it say it doesn't not say does not say. Well, I think we should probably have a motion to accept the budget that proposed CSWD budget for FY 25. So moved. We need specific language. So moved. I'll second that. We have a motion and a second. Is there any other discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. It's unanimous. Now, thank you very much. Thank you. All right, we're on to 10 30. It's been two hours since we had our last break. Does anybody need a quick break or can you keep going? You're going all right. So item 12, which is a request from Common Roots for a $400,000 allocation of ARPA funds to acquire property at Spear Street and Allen Road. Just as a reminder, as the team is coming up, this is a request to receive a request only with no action recommended tonight. And tonight we have Robin Jeffers and Jeff Culkin. Jeff Culkin. Can you pull the mics closer to you please and just make it easier to hear? Green light. Can you hear me now? Hi, thanks for having us and for staying up so late. We're here from Common Roots and we are making a request for ARPA funds for the Common Roots, which is a 501c3 nonprofit in South Burlington. And their primary focus is food equity, food access and growing food organically here in our city. And can our slides be brought up? Please. Thank you. So this image right here is Common Roots Farm. It's located within the South Village neighborhood in South Burlington. It's at the corner of Allen Road East in Spear Street. It's a 12 acre farm. To my knowledge, it's the only existing operating food producing farm in South Burlington. Bread and butter does raise cattle on some acreage. They form an aquare farm in South Burlington. But I double checked this tonight. This is our only farm. With the word fortunate that they're growing organic food on these acres. And as you can see, it's quite beautiful as well. Advance to the next page. So Common Roots is working on growing sustainable, equitable, local food system. So all the food they grow is organic and primarily it gets sold at a retail farm stand that's onsite and then goes out to three food shelves. They are one of the primary producers at the South Burlington food shelf. They bring literally a farm stand to the food shelf three times a week when the food shelf is open. And they literally operate it as a farm stand. So they don't parcel out food. Anybody shopping at the food shelf has a shopping experience. They're able to pick out the vegetables that they like, the produce that they like. They're able to do tastings. They're able to get recipes. It's the same as if they were in the farm stand onsite at the farm. But free of charge. So there's always a nutrition person there along with someone from the farm able to explain what the food is, how to cook it, how to eat it, what are the nutritional benefits of the food, et cetera. We also are a tenant of the Wheeler House in South Burlington and we have a culinary kitchen there and our chef makes food with the food from the farm so that we have no waste and he actually makes delicious food from that food. So soups, casseroles and things like that are also brought to the food shelf in season. And if you wanna move ahead to the next page. Thank you. So common roots, they're a nonprofit and we're currently looking at some challenges. Vermont is losing 15 to 20% of its farm annually. That's from the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources last year. So that's kind of shocking. And that means Vermont itself is in danger of losing all of its small scale farms in the next 10 years. And then another fact that we picked up is that 41 million people, this is national, died last year from preventable chronic diseases. And the good news is that eating the right foods can prevent and even reverse the most major illnesses of our time. And this is something where common roots is right at the core of its mission. It truly believes that organic healthy food and access to that food and equitable access to that food really matters in a community's health and well-being. Market development, we currently have a seasonal market at the farm stand. A seasonal market at the farm stand. We seasonally have, I'm tired. We have a farm stand on the farm. It is in a shed, it's a beautiful shed. And it's been eclipsed recently by development. It's very hard to see. We can't heat it, it doesn't have running water. So it's very limited. So our plan is to develop a year-round market in a new location on the corner of Allen Road and Spear Street. And that's what we're here to talk about. So that's one of our challenges is having a seasonal small farm stand when we plan on having a year-round market. Workforce instability is another challenge we're facing. As we've heard earlier here tonight, workforce housing is a challenge. And then just in the food system itself, wages for workforce, which on a farm are determined by the sales of food, tend to be very low. Food is not generally a high-profit item. If you wanna go to the next slide. So the solution that we've identified is to purchase the lot, which is right at the very corner of Spear Street and Allen Road East. It's a little orange square on your map drawing. And that is surrounded by the farm itself. Thank you. And so that lot is specifically disowned for a food hub, retail food, childcare and personal instruction. And that's our intention is to build that on that lot. And with this opportunity, we believe that we can expand our sales engine and that that will bring us the sustainability that we're looking for, both in increasing the money incoming into common roots so that it can sustain its public programs and also to help us bring up more equitable wages for our staff. Our goal for the market is to sell what common roots grows. In addition to that, bring in products from all the other area, local farms and artisans. And some of those products would then have a higher margin other than just produce. And that would help us to also work our sustainability into a higher profitability market and moving over. So our current financial snapshot, 50% of our income comes from five enterprises that common roots does in the far left column. It's our retail farm market. That's our seasonal farm stand currently. We do farm fresh meals and pantry to go. And that's what I alluded to earlier. It's what our chef makes from our food that we grow flatbread Fridays at the Wheeler house. People might be familiar with that, but we make pizzas in the outdoor pizza oven every Friday. And farm to fork Tuesdays is again, food from our farm made into meals that are also available for sale at Wheeler house on Tuesdays and Wheeler house events. We can do catered events at Wheeler house. We also do events on the farm. And then another 50% of our income comes from philanthropy. So it's primarily gifts from donors, local businesses and local foundations. We do receive a few grants from NCRS and the USDA. And then what common roots provides free of charge is farm to school education. So from pre-K through eighth grade, common roots is in South Burlington schools teaching kids about nutritious food that goes with tastings, it goes with recipes. They make it fun. Last week was flaxseed and beet pancakes. Little half dollar sized pancakes they got to dip in maple syrup and they were pink, yes, from the beets but kids absolutely loved them. And that is one of the ways which we're teaching kids the benefits of eating well and having it be fun and healthy, but it's a great time for them too. Farm to go is a program where kids come to Wheeler house after school, it's an after school program for middle schoolers and they actually make a meal again from the food that we grow. They get the recipe from it and they actually leave with a portioned meal that they will have made that would feed their entire family and they take it home. And then the three food shelves that we support are the, as I mentioned, the South Burlington food shelf. We also support Chittenden feeding Chittenden and the Ebnaki food shelf. Gatherings on the land, our summer camps and other programs where we invite people to come and learn about land stewardship on the land. And then the fourth column is just where we're truly grateful for all of the help that we get from the community currently through sponsorships, volunteers and kind gifts that help common roots stay in business. Go ahead. So putting it all together, we really feel that we need this step to for our sustainability. 50% philanthropy isn't something that you can rely on forever, practically. Right now we're very grateful for all of the gifts and the donations that we do have, but common roots believes that the public service that we provide the city is in alignment with what the city's identified in its plans and its equity planning. So food access and food equity. And so in the interest of moving that initiative forward, we're asking for the city to allocate 400,000 in ARPA funds, which is the purchase price of the land that that development, that that lot requires for development. Here, this also talks about our capacity funding, which we are not asking for. We are consulting philanthropy for that and outreach to donors. And then we're talking about our next phases. So we'd actually be looking at construction in 2026 and at conducting a capital campaign in number, in phase three. And advancing to the end, essentially, in short, we are very much dedicated to the city of South Burlington. We're very dedicated to food education. We're dedicated to the food access and food equity. We want everyone who wants to be able to have good food to be able to have access to that food. We're dedicated to growing it and sharing it. And we're hoping that the city can support us with this request. I also, we attached our entire business plan here. I don't know at this hour that you need or want to go through it. I'm happy to answer any questions. If people have that, otherwise, we can keep it right here. Questions? Elizabeth? Nothing specific. Thank you for the presentation. And I've been to the shed many times on my bike. And it's a construction that was more bothersome than going to the shed. But I did, I know we're going to have conversations about allocation of ARPA and surplus funds going forward. So from my standpoint, it's really just a question of where does this request fall within the priorities? That other things that may come in front of the council. So this was a great background and I appreciated the business plan. The one question I have is in the business plan, is there, do you see a path to self funding at some point? We do, we see our business plan shows that we would have a profit the first year and that's including having a mortgage. So certainly by the time our mortgage would be paid off, we see that we could be sustainable going forward. It will require that we have some, continue to need some philanthropy for some time as we edge forward. We should be showing, the market itself should be showing, the market, the culinary kitchen and the eatery should be showing a profit. And then I forgot to put an emphasis on, we had childcare, I left that out. We're planning a food market culinary kitchen and eatery to be, it'll be a two level building on the upstairs and the lower level would be childcare and that that childcare would also be self-sustaining from day one. Abe, Robin, it's good to see you again. I know that we probably don't have time to go through the full business plan, but can you just kind of summarize in the aggregate how much funding you think we'll need to complete this vision really from beginning to end, from a personal end to design, building it out. And of that amount, how much do you feel you've kind of secured at this point? I think we've secured 15 to 25% of what we would need to build the building without actually having even started a true capital campaign. At this point, we've been reaching out to donors for our capacity level funding for this level the level that we're at. We believe that the whole project honestly is probably about a $4 million building that would be $4 million for if we were to include the land. We have in kind commitments from people in the development world who are helping us with some of our planning, our permitting. We have commitments on some scope of the actual construction of the project and with partnership with a childcare that would cover a significant portion. We are currently in a RFP process for an owner operator of the childcare level. So that would be self-sustaining for half of the building. So do the commitments, are those part of the amounts that you described to secure the 20% to 25%? Is that including the commitments you described? Yes, it is. You're welcome. Could I ask you to clarify a little bit more on the childcare? So that would be, because that is part of setting off the cost, as I understand it you mentioned in terms of the building, that's a private entity which is not affiliated with common roots. And so this would be a big process to, or in terms of how you bring on the childcare in terms of a competitive process because there is a public fund if we were to provide funds here. Yes, it would be a competitive RFP process. We're looking for an owner operator who has a track record. We're currently in a conversation with two applicants who are, each already have two childcare facilities and they're interested in expanding. And their facilities are expanding? They are currently not in South Burlington. They're currently in periphery towns and would like to be in South Burlington. I have a question. So if this were built, how would this affect operations at Wheeler that you have today? We, Wheeler House would continue to have events on the land there and catering of events and the pizza oven events. Our Tuesday, the farm to fork would probably move over to the new location but could also still be available at Wheeler House because there are people who have dedicated muting up and down. So would the kitchen move over to? No, we intend to keep, have two kitchens. So the kitchen that Wheeler would remain. Yeah, but meals would be served over there or shipped over there? There would be a kitchen in the new facility. So probably both would be used because there would also be food being made. We plan on having sandwiches and soups and things like that at the new location. So it's hard to explain. Essentially, they would both be used. We have no intention of giving up or not using the Wheeler kitchen because the Wheeler kitchen, honestly, it's used, I wouldn't say 24 seven, but most waking hours that kitchen is in use. If it's not in use in food production, it's in use for educating chefs. It's in use for interns or it's for making the pantry items in the food to go. So for example, all the tomatoes get turned into ketchup or tomato sauce. Ongoing, we have no waste from the food that we produce on our farm. So seasonally all year long, food is being produced there. So recently, chef is making pesto because we're already taking greens off the farm. And the food, it takes like two one or two days to prepare all the food for Farm to Fork Tuesdays. And then they roll over into prepping food for the next event and the catered events. So I've honestly never, I'm there most days, I have never seen the kitchen, not fully busy. You know the questions? So like Elizabeth said, at a future date, we're gonna have to have an agenda item to go over all the, there's a certain amount of money left that has not been allocated, that has to be allocated by the end of the year. And so we will fold in your request as well. Thank you, we very much appreciate it. Question from the audience. You wanna come up and talk and give us your name? We all know who you are, but say it anyway. Is that a page each for us or is it all five pages? I'm at Sandy Julie and I live on East Terrace and I've lived there for about 50 years. These comments are about the common routes request for $400,000 in ARPA funds to purchase 1.3 acre lot at the corner of Spear Street and Allen Road in South Burlington. Let me make clear that I am a strong supporter of common routes programming in our schools and their participation in three local food shelves. Every year for several years, I have provided financial support to common routes. After reading common routes request for $400,000 for purchase of this small parcel, my first thoughts were as follows. I recall that increasing affordability for city residents who are under stress due to the high cost of living here was a universal goal in the platforms of candidates seeking election to the city council this year. I recalled that during election forums, several of the candidates mentioned that, well, campaigning door to door, many residents shared the struggles they have in making ends meet due to the high cost of living in South Burlington. Residents also mentioned to candidates that they don't feel represented in the work of city government. My additional thoughts are a product of having viewed Besso Bryan's new documentary just getting by this past Friday. And many Vermonters share how not having enough money to meet basic needs affects their lives and the lives of their children. Food insecurity is a major theme in the film. While being unhoused is also featured not being able to afford enough food and the resulting needs to rely on food shelves and our soup kitchens are also recurrent themes. Several of the folks who talked about food insecurity were not unhoused. It is fairly well known that food insecurity in Vermont goes well beyond our unhoused neighbors. I am grateful to Besso Bryan for making this film for many reasons. Perhaps the strongest impact comes from my recognition of how easy it is to be separate from folks whose circumstances are so difficult and so different from mine. And as a result, my having only a minimal awareness of their struggles. So I come back to those campaign promises about working to increase affordability in South Burlington and I ask myself, how would the cities granting $400,000 in common routes for their intended purpose bring about an increase in affordability for our residents who struggled to make ends meet are so challenging. Other than the possibility of being able to provide more locally grown and healthy food to area food shelves than is now provided, I cannot identify any outcome of providing this grant that would have a positive impact on the affordability needs of our most stressed residents. The beneficiaries of the establishment of a retail food market open year round at this location to appear to be high income households living nearby or other high income households who pass by this location as they commute to and from work. I cite the following quotes from the narrative accompanying common routes request in support of this conclusion. Quote, the profile of the computers on the street are typically those with substantially higher incomes in our county traveling to and from Burlington, South Burlington, Shelburne and Charlotte on an access of higher income households and neighborhoods and away from public transportation. From common, this is taken from the common routes for market 2.0 business plan page two even though it's not paginated but it's in the package paragraph one. The second quote is the spear street route has commuters of highest income based upon median incomes of communities in the travel zone. And this is from common routes for market 2.0 business plan page three paragraph one. I wonder what percentage of annual farm stand revenues come from three squares Vermont benefits excluding any purchases of food shelf outreach activities. Although I think I learned that there's no cost to what's at the food shelves. I do not oppose common routes plan to purchase this three acre lot and construct a building that would include a year round retail farm market and other programming. I do oppose having the city provide a grant of 400,000 to common routes to assist in the purchase of this parcel. And thus I ask each city councilor to vote no on such a motion. As an alternative and a demonstration of the city council's commitment to addressing the affordability challenge, I suggest this council task the city manager with issuing a request for proposals for plans that detail how the city might invest $500,000 in our funds to decrease food insecurity among city residents or for some other effort of the council's choosing that would address the affordability challenge. And since I now know you're looking at things for the ARPA funds, I would strongly encourage you to arrange a showing of Bessel Bryant's film just getting by for South Burlington because it's remarkably informative. So, and obviously I think you can see it affected me a lot. Thank you. Thank you, Sandy. Any other comments? Yes. Mr. Siminoe, come on down. And I was just gonna say, Sandy, that all of Bessel Bryant's films are amazing. Identify yourself, please. Good evening, Mike Siminoe, South Burlington city resident. And I hate to not be aligned with anything that common roots would be investing their time in to attempt to accomplish. And I also support them financially and their mission. And so my position here is no knock on that. But I don't wanna get into the nuances of the ARPA program and where the money's supposed to be sent and whether we send it out to not-for-profits here and there or whether the programs and services that are funded by it should be channeled through the city at the request of, you know, committees or what have you. So not that, but I've expressed concerns before about when we have resources that we attempt to explore for ways to leverage those resources, use them more than once if we can. And so the idea here of, you know, having 400 grand and if you were gonna consider sending it out the door, saying goodbye to it, never to see it again, it being a one and done kind of a deal with that 400 grand when instead there may be opportunities for those resources to be the foundation of a larger deal or an acquisition by the city where an asset might be acquired. And, you know, as we do in a couple of other instances with common roots already, we have lease arrangements with them on terms that are pretty attractive that play a great deal in the affordability for common roots to continue operating their programs. So again, without the nuances of NARPA and, you know, what the council should respond to, I would just say that I would hate to see 400 grand go out the door without our looking at, you know, an opportunity for, you know, whether we make the investment and lease it, whether that money can be leveraged for something, that's where I'm coming from with my comments this evening. And thank you. Thank you, Mike. Any other comments? Anybody in the public? Anybody online? Well, it's now almost 11 o'clock. Oh, yes. Can I just respond? Yes. Common Roots feeds 400 people a week through at the food shelf. Yeah. As far as Mike's comment about Common Roots does lease currently from the city of the Wheeler Homestead and Hubbard Park, I couldn't speak for our board, but if the city wanted to own the land, I think that that would be a good idea or we'd be happy to own it too. Well, it's 11 o'clock. We still have more things to do. So, but thank you for coming and presenting. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having me. Tim, do we need a motion to receive the, do we have to make a motion to receive that? Oh, it's just a request. So now we're on to item 13, which is convene as the South Brennan Liquor Control Commission to consider CVS pharmacy, Shaw's beer and wine and tobacco, that's a tobacco license. So we need to convene. Can I have a motion to convene as the liquor commission? Motion to convene. Move a second. Second. The motion's second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. It's unanimous. So now we are convene as liquor control commission and we need to approve the CVS pharmacy, second-class license, Shaw's beer and wine, second-class license, tobacco license and tobacco substitute endorsement, whatever that is, I'll take it as I see it. So I did attach a little fact sheet to this agenda item and a tobacco substitute endorsement is needed for businesses with a tobacco license to sell any e-cigarette products or paraffin alia. Oh, vapors. So businesses not need to sell tobacco products but must have a license to receive the endorsement. Thank you. Can I have a motion to approve these licenses? Can I have a motion to approve these licenses? Is no one gonna move to approve them? Is somebody playing a joke on me right now? You go to stay here all night until we approve these licenses? Andrew? Sure, I'll move. I understand why people hasn't it. Can we have a motion? Can we have a second? After we get a second. You have a reluctant second. Okay. So now we have a motion to second. Is there a discussion? These all license that are being renewed in every instance. I think, no, I think, I mean, speaking for myself, what you're seeing is some hesitancy around all of the recent press, around the health impacts and the concerns around vaping in general. But this particular business is not unique in their retail sales of that. So I don't wanna single anyone out. Thank you. So are you ready for the vote? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Mike? Aye. Okay, so it's unanimous. All right, thank you. A motion to come out of liquor control commission? So moved. Seconded. And we have a second. Mike's seconded. So we have a motion to second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Aye. Well, thank you, Andrew. So we're out of liquor control. We're at other business. Does anybody have any other business tonight? No. Okay. We are going to go into executive session to make decisions about these committee appointments. I move that the city council and turn to executive session under 1v.s.a.31.3. A parentheses three, for the purpose of discussing the appointment of public officers of the planning commission, economic development committee and public arts committee, inviting Jesse Baker into the session with the council for the discussion. I second. We have a motion and a second, a discussion. I will say that after we go into executive session, we will vote and then we will not appoint. So if you want to make, you don't vote in executive session. So if you want to make a series of recommendations tonight, what I would suggest is that you make recommendations, give me authority to inform the candidates, but then you officially approve those appointments and your consent agenda at your next meeting. That sounds fine. So we will be coming back after executive session. Great. So, all ready for the vote? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. It's unanimous again. Aye. We are now in executive session. Whoever has to leave, leave. Yeah.