 So I'm going to call the meeting to order so the first item is to review and approve the agenda. Well there is some logistics that's number two but I will talk about those I think in a little bit. So do we have any adjustments to the agenda? Does anybody know about adjustments to be made? Jack? There was the one thing that I was thinking we should take off the consent agenda. We can talk about that when we get to the consent agenda. Okay. Okay. And then the other thing it looked like the way the agenda was printed that there were there was redundancy of two items. The USDA item? Yeah. Yeah so there there are two same we have to have a formal public hearing so I had to be warned that way but it's really all one item so. Thank you. Thanks. Okay. Any other changes to the agenda? All right. All right so with that we'll consider the agenda approved. So we are going to move on to general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on any topic that is otherwise not on our agenda. If you have an item or a comment to make on an item that is on our agenda we typically take those up adjacent to that agenda so you you'll have a chance to say that when it becomes when it comes up in the agenda. If you're going to make a comment if you'd say your name where you live and try to keep your comments to two minutes that would be excellent Donna over here is going to help us with timing so she'll hold up something at one minute and at two minutes I'll let you know to stop. And please keep your comments if you do make comments about an agenda item keep them germane to the topic. And I think that is it. That's all I want to say for now. All right. So general business and appearances. Yes. Yeah I just like to make a comment today the city released a statement about an incident related to potential violence at my better schools. First of all I'd like to come in the police department for their swift action in this and taking address. Secondly I think there's been some fair criticism levied as to the timing of our release of information and I'd just like to say you know there's never a good time. The event was the matter was under investigation. There's no evidence of an actual crime being committed. It's not illegal to have guns in your home. There are things that people can say especially not during school hours that may not rise to the level of what Vermont statutes call criminal threat and the matters under active investigation. So finally we decided today that we should release it. I think we could have released it earlier. There was no real reason and if people are upset by that I take responsibility and apologize. You know the school handled it their own way and I'm not going to speak for them but from the city and the police department's and we only want the safety of our kids and the community and you're certainly happy to meet this head on and I suspect we'll have further information released tomorrow. Thank you. I'm going to probably speak a little bit more about that when we get to our item about gun violence the gun violence proclamation which is coming up but other comments. Yes. Yep. Sorry but also we'll take people in person first and then we'll go to folks who are with us digitally. I live in district one on the agenda tonight are discussions of the Vactor dump station the USDA funding for the water resource recovery facility and the water resource recovery facility older update. These three agenda items address the council's strategic goal of improving public health and safety. The primary focus of the facilities phase one upgrade was making the plant a net zero facility thus supporting the city's goal of practicing good environmental stewardship. The focus for the city broadened to include air quality on 11 5 2021 with receipt of a notice of alleged violation of air pollution control regulations from the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation. I think I'm under two minutes. The notice required corrective actions recent concerns over leachate cause the council to pay attention to the health and safety impacts of water discharged from the plant. The phase two order control infrastructure work at the facility will not begin until summer 2023. It will not be completed until fall 2024. I appreciate that the council is attending to the health and safety impacts of the facility on Montpelier residents and I urge the city to fund a short term air quality fix while waiting for the phase two project to be completed. Thank you. Thank you Linda. And we'll talk further about that when we when we get there. Further comments. Yes. I just have a question. Maybe Bill could probably answer. I think it was in the bridge that they're saying that the marijuana dispenser is going to be the first retail sales store in Vermont. Is that true. I read it somewhere. So that's why I'm here to ask is this true. So is what it is. It is true that it's going to be that it is seeking to become a retail sales store. I don't know whether it will be the first in Vermont. It probably will. I think it will be the first in Montpelier. The thing was if it was going to be first I was wondering if we could put a city five percent tax on it and use that you know like you do for restaurants use that to fund the homeless committee instead of putting a four hundred thousand dollar item on the ballot. Is that how you say it. OK. You know how we voted on that. But if we had like a five percent because I'll tell you if that's going to be the first one you're going to get people from all over the state up here buying and if we got it. It's true. If you ever heard of that Eddie Topper beer remember people were coming from out of state for it. You know people from Burlington would be here. You know and if we could get a five percent to fund that you know get everybody else to pay for it instead of the citizens here. I don't know. Can you do that. I can chime in there. I did take the tour of the dispensary and from my understanding you know that there be four maybe there would have the potential of opening as early as right now. Nobody's ready. I think this one may be slated to go July and the rest may not go until October. So it could very well be the first retail dispensary in the state. Now the problem is I like I like how you're thinking. But yeah. But the statute limits us to only collecting what we do currently for the for the use tax which is like one percent. So it's going to bring us to that. So we can't. We can't go above what the state statute allows us to. Unfortunately. But we can lobby for it. Do you have anything further. Anything further. Do I have time. One question. You know how the big talk on the water bills and everything here. I'm just curious how come on your property tax bill. There's also another charge on there for for water. It makes it like five water payments. Not one. Not four. But I don't understand why that's there. We have water bills every quarter. So there's a water and sewer benefit charge as well as a CSO benefit charge. And those were basically due to federal orders that the city was required to comply with. And so those have benefit to all residents whether they are on the water or sewer systems themselves. It's been authorized by the legislature to do this. And it's been in place for even predating me. One of the benefits of it is that non taxable entities such as the state churches and things non profits also pay that. So anybody anybody does that. So it is slightly separate. It's not really a property tax. It's a sewer and water and CSO benefit charge. So does state does the state and non profits also have a water bill four quarter. Yes. They don't. Thank you. Thank you. Yep. Before you sit down. I know most people here know who you are. But would you identify yourself so that people watching can know who you are also. Thomas Moore district three Prospect Street. Thank you. Steve Whitaker Montpelier. So first I'm going to protest the two minute constraint because when it's unfair to the public to have to bring things up two months two years and still have you all not take action on them. And so for me to have to repeat them coming out of my two minutes is grossly unjust. And your two minute limit won't hold up in court. You really discourage public participation while you pretend that you encourage it. It's it's lip service. It's disingenuous and you need to address that. It's not worth taking photos if everybody just passes it by without even taking a look at it. There's lots of photos that would evidence what I bring forward. We've got a fire escape a third or four fire escape that's been blocked by a Christmas tree still in the stand for six months now. You know where is our building inspector. Where's our fire inspector. So this is gone from incompetence to corruption and y'all are complicit in it when you allow these repeated issues of missing public records and lying police officers and stealing police officers to and you don't put them on the agenda for examination. You don't hire professionals to dig into and verify who's telling the truth. You're afraid to expose the lies your city manager dispenses. So you really need to realize that you've crossed the line into corruption. You're running a corrupt little city here and it's it's unfair to all of us. So we two weeks ago I mentioned the trash build up over on the bike path and it's still there. It's worse. The poor people there are spending their beer money to buy garbage bags to try to pick up after themselves and we can't even give them the dignity of having our garbage contractor pick it up. People are defecating over there and urinating. But the defecation is really the hazard. That's a health hazard and it's partially because the city is not enforcing. It's you're looking for my time to be up. It's partially because the city is not enforcing its lease to keep the bathrooms open and or taken over that lease and keep in the bathrooms open consistently. You push things through on the consent agenda like the police contract like the city manager's contract denying the public an opportunity to expose the corruption of Bill Frazier amending his own contract to protect his golden parachute even if he's convicted of a crime. You know and that's just corrupt. You're buying into that corruption. So today we had to we approve the public works contract. Today we had to public employees sitting in an air conditioned truck with an idling watching paint dry. Okay. And how is that with your go with your net zero you know goals. They could have easily if it weren't for that union contract had one person supervised the drying paint while the other two went down and painted another crosswalk. So Steve you're at three minutes now. I'm going to ask you to wrap up your comments. I made public records request that came due yesterday. It's still still did not respond appeals to the head of the agency. This this guy is his sovereign impunity thinks he can just say oh sorry that's on me. I can ignore the law and it's up to you to hold him accountable and or get a professional or an attorney to abide by public records law. Otherwise y'all are scoff loss. Okay. Thank you Steve. Thanks for cutting me off because I know you're so I've I so you're you're done talking. Thank you. You do not need to interrupt me. Steve you are. I'm going to call you out of order for talking back to me and cut talking out of turn. If I if you speak out of order again I'm going to ask you to leave. So let's just be clear. That's your warning. Thank you. With regard to the garbage cleanup I think it's a good point that that shouldn't be left to lie out there. So could we ask the Department of Public Works to look at that. We did and we have and to Mr. Whitaker's credit actually called in earlier today and let us know this would be coming up. They're going to be out there tomorrow to get those and we did get the ones last time. It's just built up again. And with regard to the to the public records request that was just referenced. He's right. We're a day late. I actually wrote to him said I'm sorry we're a day late. It was his request for public record all public records of anyone telling people not to talk to him which we highly likely do not exist at all. However while they just check we've decided to check all through the police department just to make sure some corporal didn't tell some police sergeant. Hey you need to talk to that guy. So we're going the extra mile. I acknowledge it. We're late. Apologize to him. Tell him we get him. I don't know what else we can do. And it's a very fervent request I might add. Anyone else in person. Okay. I know we have a couple of folks with us digitally. We're going to start with Elaine Ball. Go ahead. Hi. Thank you. My name is Elaine Ball. I live in Montpelier and I wanted to bring this up during general business because I haven't had the time to attend a council meeting before now. I moved here in August and since last June I've been planning Montpelier Pride 2022. So I just wanted to bring it to the council's agenda that Montpelier Pride will be taking place not this weekend but the following the first weekend in June and there will be a festival on the State House lawn on Saturday, June 4th from noon to five. We're very, very excited that Toussaint Saint-Negretude will be our emcee for the event and there will be many nonprofits and local government agencies tabling and sharing resources and information with the community. If you'd like to learn more about the events happening all weekend, you can visit pridecenterbt.org and if anyone would like to volunteer, we still need volunteers. You can email me at elaineballbt at gmail.com. Really quick, I also I'll send this in an email but I would love to request that Mayor Anne Watson, if you would be willing, that you could possibly declare the month of June Pride month in the city of Montpelier and that's all I have. Great. Thank you. Just checking the item E on our consent agenda. We will be flying the the Pride flag during the month of June but I would be delighted to declare June Pride month and so let's let's work together to get some like an actual proclamation together and we can have that on the next agenda item or the next the next meeting and it might what's today this is we're at the end of May so that might be in June is that okay right definitely if it's sometime in June that's fine I realize my request is a little late that's okay let's let's make it happen thank you thank you yeah okay we'll go now to Peter Kellman go ahead we cannot hear you yet you're still muted if you want to yes we can hear you now that was tough Peter Kellman Mountain Dew Street Montpelier at the end of last city council meeting during which the council voted 4-2 to remove the Gouerton structure from its main street location and place it in storage a council persons bait and Hyrule both urged that concrete goals actions and self-imposed deadlines be set to address the unmet needs of unhoused members of our community yet I note with sadness and concern that not a single item on tonight's agenda appears to address these needs unless perhaps we'll hear something about them toward the end of the meeting from other business or the city manager's report where city council's report specifically it would be comforting to hear that one the restroom committee which was created last June has at last scheduled a meeting to that lockers have been ordered and a date set for their installation that was approved at the last meeting three that steps have been taken to appropriately publicize the availability of showers at the rec center this was mentioned by counselor bait and that perhaps the arrangements have been made with some charities to make available towels and toiletries fourth that a concrete plan be underway to provide a cool and inviting space in sit in public buildings in particular City Hall including on weekends because we don't know when the heat's going to hit it could hit on weekends and number five that the homelessness task force has met and will soon make concrete recommendations for all sorts of matters and finally that a more but particularly that a more permanent way permanent more permanent ways are to in in being recommended to address the cold weather shelt spring issues and longer term issues related to homelessness I hope we're going to be hearing about these things later in this meeting and in every meeting from now until forever thank you thank you anyone else with us digitally wish to make a comment you can unmute yourself or turn your camera on and wave I'm not seeing anyone so we are gonna move on then alright so we are on to the consent agenda is there a motion regarding the consent agenda Jack go ahead I move that we remove item G from the consent agenda and pass the remainder of the consent agenda and there's a second any further discussion Jack I had one question about item E the pride flag display request I recall there was an issue with the flag poles and whether we can fly a different flag because it's the flagpole at in front of the manager's office is taller than the other one flag policy will actually fly on the flag below the American will take down the city flag and inch fly the pride flag for the month the same that we did with the black lives matter flag for that month and then put the city flag back at the end of the month thanks any other questions or comments on the consent agenda okay see none all in favor please say aye aye and opposed okay and I think it would make sense for us I'd like to take it up just right now if we could so let's take up item G I will ask deputy public works director Kirk Modica to address this Kirk Modica deputy director city engineer department of public works so I explain a little bit about what the back to a dump station is is intended for so the city has a Jenner truck we call it our back to truck we use it to clean the sewer mains in the city and in addition so it uses high pressure water to pull debris out of the sewer main and then it pulls it through a suction tube into the tank of the truck and right now the only way that we have to deal with the waste in that truck is to dump it in a 40 yard roll off at the wastewater plant and then we have to eventually bring that roll off to the landfill once it's full and there's a number of challenges with that often it will spill and this look this roll off is located at the wastewater plant and all the storm system goes into the influence so it's not a water quality issue per se but it is an operational issue and that in order to bring it to the landfill we have to decant the water so any rainwater that comes during you know the cleaning process of the sewer lines that has to be pulled off the top of the dumpster with the vector truck again bled into the wastewater plant until we can get you know as many as much of it solids as we can bring the landfill so the proposal is to construct a concrete concrete walls and a slab with a drain that goes directly into the influence of the pipe so the material or cleaning out of the sewers is essentially domestic wastewater so residential sewage and that's exactly what is in you know in the pipe that comes into the plant so there's no change to the waste stream that is going to be entering the plant as a result of constructing this vector dump station but it would eliminate this roll off which takes you know hours and hours of staff time to manage to decant the water to fill to clean up spills so there's a major operational savings it'll it'll save us a lot of time in order to improve efficiencies with cleaning the sewer mains but in addition to that I feel it will reduce orders from the plant so instead of having this big open tank you know that's full of sewage sitting out in the yard it's going to go any time we clean the pipes it'll then go straight into the plant influence where all the other residential sewage comes get treated immediately and go through the process of the plant so there's an operational benefit savings will be able to clean more sewer lines with less staff time will also be eliminating this you know this this tank full of sewage that kind of sits in the yard and the cost of disposal so no longer we will no longer have to truck and pay because hella and the trucking company to dispose of these solids so it's a lot of benefits to it it's really important to us we've been working on it for about a year and a half so I'd ask that you consider approving that questions the council or the public go ahead yeah if you would come up and use the just wondering what the additional gallons per week would be would you anticipate that are going to go into the waste treatment plant I think it's going to be a relatively low number so we you know we need to clean the sewer pipes regardless we may be able to do a you know an extra you know 50,000 gallons a week because we're more efficient but again this is residential wastewater so it's you know it's the same the same characteristics of the waste that's coming into the plant now and we're eliminating it you know sort of sitting untreated on site so there may be some in small increase because we're more efficient but you'll you're eliminating this open vessel of wastewater on site so Linda if you have more questions if you could ask them all together and then yeah so go ahead in but from here again thank you yes so if I'm understanding they'll be an additional instead of it being outside it's going to go inside the plant which it hasn't done before is that correct or a misunderstanding so the solids will go through the plant which were historically trapped through the to the landfill until they go through the treatment process we still pull the solids out through the treatment plant and they eventually go to the landfill but it'll just be sort of a different path but the liquids have always gone into the plant so there's no additional liquids going into the plant other than you know our efficiency getting a little better and maybe cleaning more sewer lines than we do now because we're under cleaning you know a small increase in liquids potentially but that's a very small amount and a lot of it is water that we use to actually clean the pipes it's not actually wastewater thank you other comments or questions okay is there a motion oh Donna go ahead just related to this there were some other questions that we passed on to you from Linda are we gonna be are you answering those directly to her or is there good is it gonna be brought up later on if not covered now so I have a presentation plan as part of the part of tonight's meeting my thought was I would do it answer those questions at the end of end of that presentation thank you all right is there a motion I'm G the vector pad and and walls proposal okay motion and second further discussion okay all in favor please say aye aye and opposed okay thank you thank you okay so we have a couple of proclamations to make the first item is both related to baseball so we have the budfowler proclamation and the James Lee cat proclamation anyone's here to represent you know the mountaineers with this digitally or in person I want to speak to that I'm not seeing anyone I do think it's probably worth mentioning the budfowler proclamation very cool budfowler was the first black professional ball player in America so very cool and great to be recognizing him and then James Lee cat recognizing him for his support of our hometown team and well-deserved election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame any is there a motion I know we approve both of these resolutions I think it's great thing okay there's motion and a second all in favor please say aye aye and opposed okay the next is a proclamation declaring first Friday in June to be National Gun Violence Awareness Day and when we put this item on the agenda the shooting in Buffalo had happened but the shooting in you've all you had not and it just seems it's just heartbreaking that this is so relevant and I am just even personally frustrated angry about the situation there and and in Buffalo in you've all the end in all of the places that have experienced mass shootings gosh since since they existed and if you are feeling similarly I would encourage you to get in touch with your legislators and let them know that where we're at with gun legislation is not sufficient that we need to have better gun laws in Vermont besides that we're also declaring the first Friday in June June 3rd National Gun Violence Awareness Day and to wear orange to recognize that anything other folks would like to say about that I actually before we do a vote I would actually like to have a moment of silence but but let's if you have comments let's do that now yeah go for it good Connor Casey we're in my gun sense for montage here I'm gonna recuse myself from this vote just because I helped draft the proclamation obviously this was drafted before the like two horrific mass shootings in the last week here and you know I think the information we had today shows that you know Buffalo the supermarket could be shows you know the Rob elementary school that could be that could be any of our schools here in Vermont so it's easy to say like it happens in other place but you know gun violence happens everywhere we have 80 Vermonters a year who lose their lives from gun violence here and you know it's one thing to spike the football if we pass a few good bills or something but it really needs to be a culture change in our gun obsessed country 110 Americans die every day hundreds more are wounded here and I think just you know the thoughts and prayers this proclamation is good but it's not worth the paper it's written on unless we have like meaningful action that backs that up more than we've ever done before here and really like you know every level of government has a part to play you know there's a lot of cowardice being shown in DC right now what we passed was wildly insufficient to the state house this year as far as closing the Charleston loophole and I learned and some of the other gun safety advocates learned was we have in statute what's called the Sportsman's Bill of Rights that pretty much preclude municipalities from passing any ordinances around guns Burlington found us out you know when they tried to expand their extreme risk protection order so a gun sense is going to be doing over the next few months is engaging municipalities to contact the state house and say repeal the Sportsman's Bill of Rights who else has a bill of rights like this that they're immune from having communities pass something that directly impacts their health and safety here so again like I think the best we can do is proclamations like this and I really want to thank mom's demand action the other group in in Vermont who's really taking the lead on this but again the words are meaningless unless we back it up afterwards so thanks very much thank you Steve Whitaker I think that I'm supportive of the proclamation that we need better gun control but let's not lose sight of the fact that we've had one person killed by a bad guy in Montpelier and two people killed by our police and it was an error of our own system of not looking at the dispatch record for a mentally distressed person before we allowed one of our officers to put two fragmentation rounds from a safe distance where he was at no risk of the pellet pistol in his hand so gun violence happens both by the good guys and the bad guys and we have swept it under the rug especially with mayor you're not noticing the public hearing and holding it seventh on the agenda at the following meeting and calling that all the community healing that was needed that was a force hey thank you any further further comment I think from a council and nothing online all right if oh yes learn ahead yeah I mean I I'm really glad this is on the agenda I know it's been a really hard day for me and for many of us and my heart just goes out to these communities these families who are suffering so much our school staff and our children here in Montpelier and across the country I know I held my 11 and 7 year old extra tight I know there are also a lot of great resources on processing this grief talking to children I'm happy to send some to the city I don't know if there's some place to post those but unfortunately because we've been through this so many times there's a lot of you know really helpful resources out there so we'll be happy to to share those in case we can make those available to people in the community and just you know echo that we need federal action we need state action contact your legislators you know we need to grieve but we also need to act and there's so much more we can do to have stronger gun safety legislation so I hope this can at least translate into some better laws to protect more children and more lives across our country thanks yeah I agree I also want to note that the city does have a social worker and so you know as people are processing the last week the last 24 hours if you need to talk with someone that we do have a city social worker who is available to everyone so everyone is welcome to get in touch with our social worker and so if any other further comments if you would I would just like to take just a few moments here in a moment of silence just to remember the the victims from the buffalo and around the country thank you all right is there a motion regarding the proclamation and move we adopt the proclamation for the discussion all in favor please say aye and opposed and you're upstanding yep thank you all right and so now we're moving on to an appointment to the capital complex commission with the application of Tim Center who I do not see online nor do I see here in person with us is there a motion yes Jack I move we appoint Tim center to be the city representative to the capital complex commission okay and second okay there's a motion and a second yes go ahead in all my years at city council I don't remember this coming up and I at one point when I was in public transit was a member on this commission and it was very active at one point and I don't remember any reports from anybody so can you give me some backup background thank you sure so the city has one rep on the capital complex commission the rest are appointed by the governor and for a long time it was someone from the planning commission and then they lost interest so for a very long period of time Paul Carnahan was our representative and then he recently stepped down and then mr. center has stepped up you know typically they were their only real job they're essentially design review for the capital complex our design review doesn't extend into the capital complex district so they perform that function and look over buildings and projects and that kind of thing so I don't know that there would be a report to us per se as much as they react to proposals and things that either BGS puts forward or somebody who owns a home within the district wants to do something you know someone has a few on a home in the district you want to change your report you've got to go to them instead of our design review district so I guess I'm looking at them as one way to help them reduce their parking lots and likewise perhaps to work with us on some issues because that's when I was on who were dealing with the first time before Taylor Street multi-center transportation center was it was going to be dealing with some state parking issues city issues and so it came through that commission so there were was a city state commission that had a slightly different focus so that was specifically to deal with buildings and transportation and parking in the capital complex and there were four representatives from the city and four from the state and I think maybe someone from transit which may have been you can we use this a little bit more like that I'm just trying to have this is established by statute and it really its duties and responsibilities are pretty clear the city state commission at some point expired it was also set up by statute and it expired it was so yeah but the whole one Taylor project did go through that city state commission and was blessed by them and approved by them as well as the city the capital district master plan that we still refer to but it was different than this capital complex I I understand that I'm glad you gave me the two different titles because I forgot what the other one was named I guess I would hope that maybe because I look at parking and I look at bathrooms and I'd like to have a place where we could have it somebody always they're talking about it and inserting it not just going to the buildings administration that's fair enough sure okay thank you for making those two but the an additional one is regional communications I attended one of the meetings of this commission and one of the senators made a point that the capital police communications needed to be integrated in with the regional central Vermont Public Safety communications planning and y'all have subverted that but that's still the the fact that this person all their personal details are blacked out and there's no exemption claimed it makes it hard if he's supposedly representing me on this commission I should be able to reach him so I don't understand why you've blacked out all his contact information on the application but accountability and transparency is key here as is the opportunity to vet this person for their views on public restrooms and and radio communications etc. so to be clear this this commission has nothing to do with any of those thank you as there a motion there is a motion on the table for the discussion and not seeing anyone online okay all in favor please say aye and opposed okay thank you all right so we are up to the USDA grant public hearing so I'm officially open the public hearing but I think I'm also probably inviting Kurt back up to the table I imagine right yes well Kurt's coming up I'll just say that the grant public hearing is a requirement and then for the funding and then we also wanted to provide you a project update as was due and and Ms. Berger had also requested some information so we'll try to address all of those and by we I mean Kurt we'll try to address all of these through their presentation and I'm we're I'm sort of assuming that this is a combination of nine and ten yes on the agenda okay of course your part point if it sees it from over there I will be shocked he usually has it just hit the first bucket Kurt Monica deputy director of public works and this is the public presentation for the Water Resource Recovery Facility Phase 2 project and the East State Street Reconstruction Project this is a requirement for USDA funding that we conduct public hearing and I'm also going to take the opportunity to provide some updates on where we're at with these two projects so I will jump right into it so the items that we'll be covering tonight is the biosolids drying project at the Water Resource Recovery Facility the benefits of the two projects other plant upgrades that are planned preliminary cost estimates an update on the order status of the order control at the plant and an update on where we're at with the East State Street Reconstruction Project so for the biosolids drying when we last when I last spoke with council we were moving in the direction of an indirect hot water belt dryer so belt dryer there's a there's two paths of waste at the plant the first is a liquid stream and the second is a solid stream this is specific to the solid stream so you know we separate the solids from the liquids as they come into the plant both through the pipeline the collection system as well as hauled waste and struck to the plant and the the goal of this the intent of this project is to reduce disposal costs associated with those solids currently they all all the solids from the plant go to landfill so as I mentioned earlier we had we were looking at initially a hot water belt dryer which is basically utilizing methane heating up a hot water loop and then running that hot water through sort of this associate like a pizza oven but it really uses dehumidification to dry the solids and some of the benefits of that process is that you can run it unstaffed and it would utilize the methane through hot water boilers this technology's been around for a long time so it has a proven history and once it goes through this process you have what's called a class A biosolid which which means all the pathogens in the solids have been destroyed the new developments is the update is that our consulting engineer asked if we would be interested in evaluating gasification as an alternative to the hot water belt dryer and this has some you know very exciting benefits the first is that the fuel source actually uses the solids waste material and it burns it and that's kind of what is is used to heat this unit so instead of methane we would use the methane sort of to start the process but once it starts going you're able to actually use the solids for the heating source it has a little bit higher maintenance than the belt dryer but it's still relatively low compared to some other technologies like paralysis which is a something else we took a high-level look at but it does need to have of staffed operations while it's running it's it's relatively new compared to the belt dryer and really sort of the biggest most exciting component of this is that has the ability to destroy PFAS and PFOA down to levels what's classified as what they're classifying as total destruction of two parts per billion which is really kind of the level of which it can be accurately measured and so this product also has a further reduction of solids disposal over the belt dryer and you can use it to create a bio biochar material so it's a another step up from a class A material has a higher value less concerned with environmental impacts this is an overall site layout the red on the left is where either one of these equipment would be installed we would need conveyance conveyors to move the material back to our what call the garage building in order to haul the waste and just kind of high-level economics of these two alternatives there there is maintenance downtime so that first line is when we're not able to operate this this machinery of this equipment you it will be just de-watered so it's just goes to our we call our screw presses and then go to the landfill that's a relatively short downtime that we're anticipating but there is a disposal cost associated with that and then managing the dried byproducts lower slightly lower in the gasification unit supplemental fuel we don't have we don't expect to have a hundred percent available methane to run the belt dryer so we're carrying some cost of oil for that electric electrical demand is about the same for the two units maintenance is higher in the gasification compared to the belt dryer and overall operating costs annually is slightly higher in the gasification unit and then you add in debt service and they're very close and we're still refining this this is a slide from a draft preliminary engineering report from our engineer so I expect these numbers will be even closer once we work through all the details but as you can see in either case we expect that it would be a lower cost compared to solids disposal that we are currently utilizing bringing everything to the landfill but right now look slightly higher cost for the gasification but has a lot more environmental benefits so just to expand on some of the benefits of both of these projects is East State Street and Lee wastewater miles holds drying project allows for a more stabilized disposal cost lower trucking emissions potential beneficial use of the end product as opposed to landfilling at all now we have the potential in PFAS and PFOA destruction and for the East State Street project it addresses probably the largest remaining combined storm and sewer connection that we have in the city so expecting a significant reduction in overflow events from this project of course East State Street includes a full road rebuild so I have a much improved travel conditions the class 2 roadway relatively high traffic and we're also replacing the water and sewer pipes on the State Street so more reliable utilities and East State Street is actually one of the locations we've had a high number of water leaks so in addition we'll be you know reducing you know staff demand for repairs other projects associated with a water resource recovery facility is the secondary clarifiers so under the phase one project we we replaced essentially or upgraded essentially all the equipment except for the secondary clarifiers so that will be included in the phase two critical to meeting our effluent water quality requirements and the other component is order control as mentioned earlier with the city did receive a notice of alleged violation from the air quality division and so we are under order to take corrective action on the orders from the plant so this is a timeline of what we've done to date with regard to order control on November 5th is when we received the notice of alleged violation from the state we they had some very tight timelines and the initial notice so we asked them for extension partly because the characteristics of the orders change seasonally in the summertime we take in a lot more halt waste and so we wanted the opportunity to right size equipment take samples in the summertime when we have you know the high loadings at the plant so that we make sure that we get this the equipment size right following up with that on January 12th we had the manufacturer of our existing order control unit do a site visit to assess that equipment we only have one one unit one piece of equipment on the facility currently that is intended for order control and it is really only it's only connected to the headworks building that's where they're receiving the trucked wastes is received as well as the septage and leachy takes so that's kind of the only areas it currently serves we do expect there's other areas while we do know we have verified in fact that there's other areas in the plant that need to be addressed for order control on January 25th that firm gave us their results in some options for a temporary rehabilitation of the order control unit shortly after that on February 3rd the city asked energy system groups who is our engineer for for the phase one project for some recommendations or assistance in dealing with it's called the blend tank it's where the received waste gets mixed our operators had noticed that when they were working up there above the blend tank that there was a very strong odor coming from where the mixer connects into the tank and we learned that the that that required a special lubricant to seal the space between the mixer and the tank and since then we ever corrected that so it was one short-term measure that has already been implemented so fall and then following the by our proposal we asked our consulting engineer to review the recommendations and provide some feedback they were concerned that the proposal would result in an undersized unit because we didn't have data from the summer months again this was in in February so we put that proposal on hold until we could do additional sampling on March 7th we conducted that additional sampling we did it facility-wide we looked at the dewatering building we looked at the septage tank that wasn't sampled under the biorem proposal and we found that the the septage tank is by far the highest levels of hydrogen sulfide which is the primary contributor to odors which really wasn't identified in that initial round of sampling so it just kind of confirmed that the seasonal impacts are significant in April April 15th Brandon Caldwell provided some alternatives for a skid mounted carbon filter that we could use at the headworks we looked at potentially renting as opposed to purchasing the the issue is with the temporary skid is the media life for this is the sizing you can get for those is very short you know maybe six months at best and then you have to replace the media that media cost is about forty thousand dollars that for each each round of change out as well as you know staff and staff and labor time so we're still evaluating the best alternative we think for for the headworks a biofilter unit is the better option as opposed to a skid mounted charcoal filter we think for the dewatering building the best option is going to be the charcoal skid and in addition we are as a short-term measure we are planning to implement chemical treatment into the septage tank which has those very very high levels of hydrogen sulfide so that's essentially our short-term plan is to currently do chemical addition in the septage tank and we still need so tonight on the consent agenda you just passed our amendment with our consulting engineer to do a full design evaluation right sizing of equipment currently we're not comfortable without doing you know a fair amount of additional engineering with sizing the equipment so there's still more work to do there's more sampling to do air sampling that is before we really feel like we're comfortable moving forward with a purchase or rental equipment and I know that that there's additional questions on this but I will you know open I will go through the questions that I've received from the resident Miss Berger at the end of the presentation and we can if there's follow-up from that can hit some of that time and this is so for East 8 Street we are proposing to break the project into two contracts this is what we were the limits of what we're proposing on contract one if you can see my cursor here this is Main Street State Street on the left out to the bridge where the north branch of the river where it crosses north branch of the river and on the right hand side is East 8 Street so the the goal of the phase one contract is to separate the stormwater out of the sewer system so we get the immediate benefit of the CSO reduction we do we have been informed that we will be receiving a 1.2 million dollar grant through the ARPA not officially received the grant agreement yet but told it's coming and what we expect that this work will be primarily done trenchless which means either boring the pipe underground or hammering the steel sleeve underground my reason for that is that in order to get under all the utilities on Main Street we need to be very very deep and so it's not economical to open cut traditional excavate and install pipe at depths of 12 feet or more one additional component of this project is that that box on State Street is what's called a vortex separator so that will take you know the first one inch storm and separate out the sediment so to improve water quality before it discharges to the river the phase two contract is much bigger it's it spans from the intersection of Main Street all the way up to College Street it's going to include full replacement of all the water and sewer pipes it will allow provide for new sidewalks with new stabilized roadway and we also plan to do some work in the parking lot the connects from Harry Sheridan that's where we're proposing to put the snow melting system in through district heat as well as some additional stormwater retention facilities we are planning to do the design for East State Street both contract one and contract two in house we recently hired a and an engineer from the firm that was doing the initial engineering and that firm has since closed so it seemed like the logical choice for us to move forward in house one last point is that there will be some additional public hearings for how we handle the streetscape competing interests in bike lanes versus trees or additional sidewalks and we'll present some options when we get into final design present that council so just a touch on the schedule right now for the water resource recovery facility expecting to start next summer and with completion in the fall of 2024 we hope to allow for pre-purchase of equipment because there are some very long lead times right now for East State Street we're planning hoping to start this fall on contract one that is very dependent on state review which so far we have not heard any comments back we submitted our preliminary engineering report in March as well as our environmental review documents and have not heard comments so if we're hoping to build that this year but it's but it's unknown for sure at this point and then contract to we hope to start next spring complete and in the fall of 2024 so that's a two-year project some of the challenges we're facing the water resource recovery facilities it's a very complicated high amount of engineering technical engineering required for that with a lot of different disciplines and we're also looking at emerging technologies so we're trying to you know vet out that out the best option of how we move forward USDA funding requires that they review and approve the engineering reports as part of that funding condition American iron and steel requirements need to be met for construction as I mentioned we're seeing really long review times likely because of the amount of money that's being you know put out through the federal government for infrastructure urban soils we we need to classify contaminants in any any project basically within city limits is considered urban soil we need to do testing and then determine how that soil needs to be managed it's not something that we're very familiar with but it's something that we need to address on the East State Street project as I mentioned we're doing in-house design work on East State Street and in July 1st there's new stormwater regulations where anything over half half an acre of disturbed which East State Street falls under will require a stormwater permit it's called an operational permit which sort of stays with the street and improve it excuse me so just a quick note on the funding breakdown the solids project comes out to about 11.6 million dollars with engineering secondary clarifiers is a 1.8 million estimated with engineering and the odor control system is three million so total estimated project cost for the water resource cover facility 16.4 million and for East State Street contract one looking at a 1.2 million dollar construction costs contract to is estimated at six million dollar construction costs we are anticipating some increase due to inflation we'll work through that as as we know more when our construction dates will be so the total for East State Street is currently estimated at seven point two million and a total project for project costs for both that we're asking USDA to fund is 23.6 million and then the funding breakdown for these projects as noted USDA grant loan option is as our primary funding for the design work we are getting subsidies through the state of Vermont clean water state revolving loan fund generally for any any work related to clean water is a 50% subsidy on design we have applied for a pollution control grant for the solids handling related work at the way water resource cover facility I mentioned the 1.2 million dollar anticipated ARPA grant for East State Street and we likely will need to do short-term financing through our local bond bank in order to start the projects so now I get into questions and I can go through if you want to start with general questions first from council and then I can follow up with the written questions you want to do those first okay all right the first question I received was in regard to the factory dump station I believe we've addressed that one move on to the second question it says in the bio REM report page 2 noted that the upstream characteristics changed considerably since the original design and installation of the order control equipment in part due to the high strength or greatest organic waste being received in batches and then it's noted leachate so it is true that the bio REM report noted that the characteristics have changed it's not related to leachate though it's related to the high strength organic waste which is essentially food waste that's being trucked in so grease dairy that sort of waste the original order control unit the media inside it is essentially wood chips and that's really meant for septage treatment not for organic waste food waste so really it's not it's not a good system currently for dealing with the the hauled high strength organic waste and and that is part of our study that we will replace that unit with a much larger unit with a different type of media that can handle that that order treatment question number three is the absorption system by a remus proposing is particularly suited for low concentration applications which we do not have has the system there proposing for us been successfully used elsewhere what are the concentrations in the system and will we potentially need multiple absorption systems so the first question is has it been used successfully elsewhere is that the answer is yes these types of systems are in place and will we need multiple types of treatment that's that's also true we will need we'll need one unit for the headworks and the septage tank and what we call the mixing tank we expect one unit to serve those three areas will need a separate unit for the dewatering building and then we also expect that potentially will be continuing to do chemical treatment in the septage to reduce those hydrogen sulfide levels which would in turn expand the media life question number four are we still receiving leachate from from the CV landfill so it comes from the Coventry landfill and we actually are not currently taking leachate for a couple of reasons it's not related to odors it's related to one primarily is that we had an Ecoli violation at the plant and we decided as staff that until we really can understand why that occurred so back up a little bit first as soon as we received the Ecoli violation we stopped by receiving we stopped accepting leachate and we decided that it was best to wait until really spend some time determining how the leachate is impacting the ultraviolet disinfection system before we allow it to be returned to the plant that's the primary reason the secondary reason is the state of Vermont has just told us that we will be under an ammonia limit under our next discharge permit and we are we have asked our engineer to do a high-level study on how much of the ammonia entering the plant is contributed from leachate so there's two parts that we're looking at is the impact on UV and and the impact of ammonia at the plant so that's in the works but right now we are not receiving leachate question number five well that's that's exactly what we're evaluating for those two limits or if there's changes needed yeah I'm sorry so the the follow-up question was how much leachate are we taking and how much can our existing and upgraded plant safely and effectively handle so before we stopped taking leachate we were taking about a hundred and seventy thousand gallons per week generally we hadn't had issues historically until we got this E. coli violation and so that led us to take a step back and determine you know exactly how that how the leachate is impacting the UV disinfection so I would say that you know that historically we we can you know treat successfully treat leachate but we had this issue and we're taking the time to evaluate you know why that happened question number five is Brown and Caldwell is developing a plan for short-term remediation efforts for order control cities indicated that the cost will be a factor and whether or not the city utilizes these should cost be a factor when negative health and public nuisance impacts are considered and then the follow-up on the vector dump station so I think the most important part is that we it was that when we spend money on solutions that they are effective and so right now we're spending you know a fair amount of money on making and really evaluating the odors so that the Brown and Caldwell contract on tonight's agenda I think was around 83,000 we've spent about 10,000 or so dollars on testing odors so far with more to come so and you know I don't think we've gotten to the point where we really know what the best solution is other than as I mentioned implementing chemical addition to treat the hydrogen sulfide in the septic tank so I will follow with that we do plan to do that short-term measure within the next month so now that we have approved contract with Brown and Caldwell that's the very first thing we're gonna ask them to provide recommendations on is what type of chemical should we use and you know at what rate should it be added to that tank short-term so before so because the upgrade is gonna is a is two years out before it's completed we want to do something now to help you know help resolve the issue as long as you use it and then you'll decide something else it isn't that it's only good for so long correct it's it's more of a immediate action rather than long-term equipment okay the next the next question I had from this morning or it was what is the weekly amount of landfill leachate and local high-strength organic waste from the seven local food processors and haulers that the plant currently receives so as I mentioned earlier it's it was about 170,000 gallons a week of leachate that is currently zero and for the high-strength organic waste it's around 50 to 60,000 gallons per week excuse me but Kurt if you when you get the E. Coley situation resolved will you go be going back to taking the leachate yes we do plan to unless there's a red flag through the engineering evaluation the next question was the cost of carbon is skyrocketing what is the estimated cost of maintenance and replacement of the carbon medium in the vessels or digesters if that ends up being a component of the final design and when do you anticipate that design being finalized so we don't have a perfect number on the media replacement other than we had a proposal on a temporary skid to go to headworks and we did get some high-level cost estimates on replacing media in that in that unit this is that is the carbon unit it's it was estimated that forty thousand dollars every six months the design you know that we don't have an exact schedule on that we're still in preliminary engineering right now that has to be then approved from the funding does the funding agencies we have to develop a final design contract which then has to be approved by the funding agency and before we can start final design in order to get the subsidies but I would say you know early early next year we hope to be into final design and probably you know maybe mid winter hopefully we'll have some solutions but I don't have an exact date for that the next question was the BC team noted incomplete air quality testing from biorem will nationally accepted standards of air quality testing be required by the city are the workers in the plant breathing safe air so first there I did call to call our engineer on this one there is not a nationally accepted air standard at wastewater plants there's best practices there's rules of thumb but there's not a national standard at least that was what our engineer informed me as far as our workers breathing safe air yes a big part of the phase one contract was to improve the air quality within the buildings there's a certain amount of air exchanges you need per hour in order to declassify those areas so that all the equipment doesn't have to be explosion proof and we also put in extensive air monitoring systems in the plant to make sure that they air is safe there and then the last question is an R&D and see DC provided grant funding for treatment plant upgrades this is the same agency that monitoring for the city's compliance with corrective actions they're requiring so the plant meets air quality health and public nuisance standards is this a potential conflict of interest situation and have as the city received a response from DEC on the progress update sent on May 2nd I don't see so the grant we got from ANR for the phase one project was called the pollution control grant they are part of ANR DC but it's a whole separate division and so I you know I don't see a conflict in them I mean they issued the the enforcement action on the city for air quality so I don't see that you know historical grant funding is impacting their actions as far as a response from the state on my update I have not received one but I don't expect to receive one it's it's generally not a back-and-forth it's a city you know reporting on what we've done to date and they logged that us submitting the update you know was part of that violation response requirement and we've we've done that so I wouldn't expect them to be you know partaking in a in a back-and-forth on that and that is all the questions unless there are follow-ups you can ask them all sort of together that would be wonderful go go ahead but if you would come up and use the microphone that would be great thank you speak speak right into the microphone Brown Brown and Caldwell the engineering firm that recommended the gasification process yes they recommended that we look into that and I also should know I forgot to mention that the gasification unit will have its own order control component built in with it either either that or the belt dryer they both would include order control and the only other thing I had was in terms of the air quality standard testing maybe it's not a national standard but there are accepted there's a broad list of air quality tests will you broaden the list of air quality tests that you're doing in the plant because in one of the reports it was there wasn't the information to be able to respond yes absolutely so we have done a quite a broad spectrum of air testing already and there's as more to come now that we have the approved engineering contract and I had one question about the snow removed like will the water from the snow go directly into the river or is there a holding system or for dealing with that water so that has not been designed yet but the intent is trash screening so be it basically this would the snow melting system would consist of a three-sided concrete structure with heating pipes from the Montpayers district heat system running through the concrete to heat it up the city trucks would back up to the snow this melting system and dump into it the trash would to be screened and then the water would be piped into the sewer system so that the chlorides assaults could be treated at the plant thank you I have so many thoughts and I so appreciate all of this information this is I find this stuff fascinating actually and so I have a lot to say but I'm gonna hold off see if there's questions from the council yeah thank you yeah I've got a few questions I'm sure you're shocked thanks for all that information just on the kind of looking at the options between the dryer and the gasification could you just talk a little bit about what the use of the bio solids that would be from the dryer system versus the biochar from the gasification like what could those be used for assuming they'd still would be I would think have some chemical contamination of some kinds in them so just how might they be used as an end product so currently in Vermont I believe class a material can be field applied can be land applied for crops not intended for direct human consumption so they could go on crops for firm firm feed that is likely to change you know expecting some further regulation on class a largely due to the PFAS and PFOA issue but right now it's allowed and the other thing that we've been talking about is potentially using it for topsoil amendment you know for potentially state state projects but again there's the PFAS considerations the biochar is the gasification process actually breaks up the carbon chains of the PFAS and so it's essentially it's it's destroyed as my understanding and in addition to that the you know even the pharmaceuticals are are basically broken up to a point where it's no longer concerned so the biochar could could conceivably be used for any soil amendment including human consumption you know the topsoil all the other things that the class a material could be used for also obviously be available for the biochar biochar has expanded options you can use it for for dye and clothing there's a there's a long list of things I don't have everything available right now but certainly get more information on that thanks I just would definitely be concerned if we were putting bio solids using that for land application I think I mean Maine just banned the application of sludge I imagine Vermont's going in that direction I think putting it on I mean the farms in Maine in particular have seen so much you know these generational farms that are now destroyed because the PFAS levels are so high in the soil and there's nothing they can do about it so us contributing to that in any way seems like a bad way to go I think there are uses of bio solids that can be put on kind of more already contaminated sites or things like I think there could very well be ways to use it that would not kind of contribute to other environmental problems I know you're thinking about that but just just to say it I for the gasification I mean I I'm part of a lot of conversations about the evolving technologies to destroy PFAS there the only thing I've seen and actually just the last couple days was something called plasma gasification which is like the first time that they've actually felt confident that maybe there's this technology that could do it I mean a lot of the traditional gasification which is essentially like incineration right like does not does not necessarily destroy it you know you have to be operating even in the best case scenario if it does it has the system has to be operating perfectly otherwise you're getting byproducts and then if you're you know putting them out they could end up contaminating the community in other ways so I would just be wanting to make sure that that's not going to be you know a possibility with anything we would move forward with I mean one question I had I'm glad to hear temporarily we've stopped taking the leachate I know we you know we've been looking for a while at whether we should continue taking the leachate are there other besides you know we had talked about the revenue implications of that are there other implications on the plant like I know just like the balance of different types of waste you need to take and stuff is tricky like are there other impacts you've seen that we would need to be aware of if council decided in the future to decide not to take leachate for the longer term so the the financial impacts from not accepting leachate is one the revenue that we've charged to take it but the other one is that the increased disposal cost of the solids so right now all of our soil solids go to the landfill and we get a reduced we get essentially half what most places pay for soils disposal so our soils disposal costs would you know essentially double potentially just a couple more is just on the leachate is there an update on what's been happening with the pilot project for the pretreatment of the leachate in case we do start taking it again yep so I did reach out to Ann R and they suggested that Kasell come directly and update council so that is a plan for the next council meeting Kasell is going to join us for that great and I might ask them this too but just my last question has the city been looking at all into and I don't know if this could tie into the project that you were walking through but I know that there was specific money for wastewater treatment facilities to address contamination from chemicals like PFAS in the infrastructure bill so the state got money to install like filtration systems which I would think my failure should be top of the list for Vermont's pot of money if we're going to be this the site of leachate off-taking so is that something that could be is that exploration happening would that fit into what's already being done is that part of this project and I missed it or just any thoughts on how that might be a possibility yeah certainly possibility we it's not currently part of the project it could be added in I did hear from Kasella this week and they've asked the city to co-sponsor a grant application for them to build their pretreatment system on leachate I haven't seen that grant opportunity come out specific to wastewater treatment plants but if you know if you see that please pass it along I have not yet yeah I think it was part of that infrastructure bill that there's not even final guidance on so I'm guessing it will come out in the next year or so but if we're doing this planning and engineering it might be worth some conversations but maybe we can ask Anna about that next time they're in thanks Kirk I don't have a question I just want to express my appreciation for the comprehensive and very detailed presentation so I have a few questions so in terms of the hot water belt dryer versus the drum dryer and gasifier alternative so these I just want to make sure I'm understanding where we're at with that so these are both methods that we are considering that like we wouldn't do both of these things we would do one of the other right correct and and you're at this point am I correct in assuming that you're yours you're still investigating both of them and you don't necessarily have a recommendation for us as to which like one is better at this point or are you recommending the dryer and yeah are you recommending one at this point no okay and okay so also in terms of the funding I'm thinking about the most recent bond that we passed with all of the other potential funding sources that we have available to us you know that you mentioned are those going to I guess basically my question is do you anticipate using the entirety of the bond that we most recently passed to do this or and using the funding in addition to that or does the funding that you talked about potentially eat down the costs below the level of the bond and I mean it's the construction climate is more unpredictable than we've ever seen so it's difficult to say where we're going to land financially I think if our estimates come in where they're at right now and when we actually go to construction I think we would have additional bond capacity unused but I think it's too early to say that for sure at this point okay and do so you you have some engineers looking into both of these options for us right now what is roughly the timeline for coming back to us with a recommendation so that would be prior to final design once we wrap up all the components of the preliminary engineering which you mentioned yeah yeah so you know probably in the late fall maybe yeah okay okay I just also want to add that well okay have have you all been in touch with other gasification plants around the country and how that has worked for them yeah so that's one of you know one of our concerns this is a relatively new technology so there's there are three to follow up on what Laura mentioned there's I didn't know about the plasma one but there are three three that I was aware of there's paralysis which is the first one we looked at had a very high construction cost so that is basically burning the material with an absence of air and there's incineration which is high air with burning material with a lot of oxygen and then there is a gasification which is red low oxygen burning of materials so they're all you know basically incineration but with different mixtures of oxygen going into the system so we we there aren't any active that we're aware of we went to Chris and I the chief operator went to Pennsylvania to meet with another community that is looking at the same process we've also heard that there's gonna be one being built in in Washington state which we if we have time we'd like to go look at that one that one would be constructed you know before we would get to construction I think they're about to start so yeah it's all really really new that's why we need more time to really evaluate that alternative and make sure it's right for us great I just want you to know that I'm very interested in the pyrolysis option I mean I think for just from everything I've heard like the the benefits of biochar is it seems really hopeful and really promising and so I want to recognize that it has its own for me it has its own gravity in terms like I really hopeful that it works but I also know that I need to stay open to the option that it might not be the right choice for us so I just want to say that out loud so that you all can help hold me accountable to that but nonetheless I am really hopeful about pyrolysis about biochar and that option but I trust your analysis when you all come up with anything else you have folks have comments I want to make okay yep go ahead Steve Whitaker that's a lot of topics into one with regard to the phase two it's important keep in mind that phase one was a $16 million that didn't anticipate a phase two now this project has in effect doubled to $32 million and I'm not saying it's not good work or good design or good analysis but it's it's in proportion to where we're neglecting so much other infrastructure in the cities the conditions of our roads and sidewalks and storm drains you know a little kid a person who just got evicted out of the transit center you know fell in the gap in on the bridge on your bike path bridge your multi million dollar bike path bridge fell in ruined her walker because we're not taking care of maintenance it was two years ago that our snow plow damaged the aluminum gap fillers and I was told we last year we were getting steel inserts to fix that but we've lost sight of the basics that make people safe and comfortable in my pillar and we're investing way too much money in these you know engineering space moon shots I note that the bond warning and all the press around the bond warning had already decided a cut a conveyor dryer so now we're I'm told we're not necessarily doing the conveyor dryer we're doing some other technology that may preclude use of the bonded funds without another vote but I also want to question the idea that of using in-house design not to our guys aren't capable of it but it's been effects it might be more cost effective to devote our in-house guys to fixing and designing solutions to all these other failed infrastructure projects that have built up over the decades and and hire out an engineering firm to design our our state East State Street project I understand that it's a nice way to get the state to pay for half of our staff under that match but it seems to be enough money around today to focus on getting caught up on some of this stuff you haven't done this for anybody else this this was an hour long presentation that I have to comment a bunch of topics on so the pyrolysis if that's what you're calling it's iteration is a very imperfect science and the combustion I want to commend Lauren for bringing that up that we could potentially be toying with the idea of spewing PFAS across our into our school children's lungs and across our gardens community gardens Steven you're at three minutes so wrap up your comments please I am the only person you've done that to these are these are comments on a on a different topic and you're imposing the two minutes unfairly on me so and so you're done learn to expect that from you great thank you very much Steven all right and so as anyone else have comments and comments online anyone online have comments okay I'm not seeing any I do want to address one comment that Steven made that the first bond did not anticipate phase two but that's not accurate I believe it did and yeah and so at this point there's no more comments about the bond if I'm not mistaken I'm so I'm going to close the public hearing on that and I think so there's nothing that you need us to do to vote on at this point right okay well thank you so much Kurt thank you very helpful yes just like to thank Linda burger for her really thoughtful questions to I know you know she lives really near the plant very concerned with the odors and appreciate you staying on top of it we're trying to keep you informed in and I know you like to have these conversations with the council that's great but I hope you also know you can ask Kurt or I or anybody any questions at any time we're happy to get back to you so we do appreciate your involvement I agree thank you Linda okay so now we are up to the Elks Club funding item so first of all before we jump into this too much I'd like to introduce Josh Jerome to everybody Josh is our community and development specialist the artist formerly known as Kevin Casey welcome thank you Josh would you want to give us a quick little background yeah sure I've lived in Montpelier for almost the last 20 years and my partner and I have three teenage girls in the school system and have worked in central Vermont in community and economic development for over the last decade so as a lender with community capital Vermont very partnership as their executive director and most recently as a Randolph's director of economic development so happy to be back in my hometown doing what I love to do and working for the city of Montpelier and you guys a lot shorter commute after the meetings absolutely and he has really hit the ground running with us on a bunch of things for this particular issue I don't think you know we haven't planned a presentation when we last talked to you about the unfolding process with the Elks Club project we said we would come back to you with a draft RFP and some suggestions for funding Josh really jumped on it took the lead on the drafting which is why he's here from the funding I think you can see what we recommended here I mean obviously we don't have a lot of money in our budget other than reallocating and I think using the 50,000 that we had in for economic development is not a bad idea just as long as we're clear that we're putting off the economic development strategic plan that we plan to do that so so we're doing that eyes wide open and then the revolt using the revolving fund and or the trust fund as a loan so that as we sold future lots or earn income from the property we would repay it so essentially fronting the money obviously we may need more next year but we'd be able to budget for it more properly as we do the budget but that that was really our thought but we wanted to be sure you had a chance to weigh in or give us any suggestions is still all in draft form and as the key author you want to make sure Josh heard him heard it first hand and and chance to introduce himself thoughts or questions from council for Josh you have something okay okay I oh yes Jack go ahead I approve the draft RFP so we can get this thing moving further discussion was that intended to include the funding recommended funding any other comments yes Carrie yeah thank you for this it's really comprehensive but I'm wondering about the timeline of all of this work and I'm not sure if I missed it in here because they didn't you know yeah there should be a timeline in the RFP I think I think it's dated June and with proposals due back July review done in August and October 1st as this start I mean for from October 1st on there's an 18th month window for planning activities okay great so the deliverables are all expected at the end of that 18 months yes do you expect that they may come in along the way or do you expect that that will all happen at the end of 18 months there might be some pieces of it that are known before the end of the 18 months but a full complete sort of presentation would be due at the end of the 18th yeah any other thoughts or comments nice to meet you welcome I guess my only question was we had the conversation a couple weeks ago with the hub project and like how might that align or not with this I mean the timeline certainly is not what they're hoping to see in terms of being able to move forward which I think this is what it needs to be to be doing the due diligence and planning and community engagement that we want but just curious how worth the city staff is thinking about how we're kind of intersecting with that proposal I'm remaining you know communication with them they understand where we're going they end you know they obviously have what they'd like to see I don't think there's a hard answer for how we're going to handle that once we identify the firm entity that's going to do this work we can talk to them about in my head only you know we have we've talked about recreation open space and housing and you know maybe as those pods are being sorted out of the recreation space was just determined first and then we could evaluate how that was going to look and that was ready to move ahead of some of the others then we could do that if it's not you know we're kind of betwixt in between with them I don't think you know we're not building a plan around them they've got an idea and at some point we'll ask for submittals of ideas and we'll evaluate their idea along with everyone else's but we've made no no commitments to them as far as partnering but we've also we've also you know it's I want to be clear once again is that they had they had pursued this privately and we went to them and said hey we ought to partner with your project to do a rec project and then turned around and and came to be you know the city owning the property and doing these things so you know they they did a lot of legwork to get this going and so we're trying to keep them in the loop but also and being honest about where we're at any other questions yes Carrie good yeah thanks just kind of following up on that a little bit the I want to make sure that it's really clear to all of us that we're not determining ahead of time what kind of uses will be considered or will not be considered and I think that's pretty clear in the RFP but I it's not necessarily always so clear as people are sort of casually talking about it and so I just want to get that out there see that really clearly that maybe there will be recreation as a proposed use maybe there will not be maybe there will be housing maybe there will not be and that that's this process is to answer those questions right that is correct yeah thank you super all right any further thoughts from anybody yes good Peter kept Peter Kalman Montpelier I just have a question because I didn't I didn't see the RFP Bill what did you mean by which for treating which where are you borrowing the money for and a revolving fund manner what what what fund we have a economic community development revolving fund and we think there's enough money in there and we would loan ourselves the money and essentially repay it if they were if it were short we would obviously going through the proper process consider requesting from the housing trust funds part of this is potentially to develop housing with repayment of course but that is that has to be approved through all that's not part of this motion that's a future okay all right so you might want to go to the housing and we'd have to go through the committee and we'd have to come to the city council on all that we're not we can't just read it okay so my other question is if you if we're delaying the economic strategic development plan which I which I think is a good idea but I don't think it's a good idea to continue to refer back to the 2016 plan which I really think is not applicable to today's Montpelier and I I hope will stop referencing that plan and just say there will be a new plan and the new plan will reflect the realities of today thanks the other I'll note that the EDSP was not defined in the Steve Whitaker was not defined in the city manager's cover sheet for this so I'm now trying to understand what how that fit together the 60 $60,000 is going to complete this this feasibility analysis I mean are we getting are we going to end up getting out of this full analysis of whether that railroad track is going to block the traffic volume and make that intersection safe up to state highway standards is that included in here because I haven't had time to process this one copy and I should have owned it to him you know I think we're unsure of at this time that's why I think Bill mentioned that we would might have to seek some additional resources to do that so the 50,000 gives us a starting point of course we haven't been able to receive any proposals or cost systems or anything like that so so yeah to your question I mean we're looking at the full feasibility of the process project that includes any potential obstacles so to the extent that that crossing is an obstacle and we're not sure it is but if it is then obviously that's something I have to be identified and then the part of a future project cost to address along with you know water and sewer line everything else that needs to go into it so it to be clear and by the way the EDSP is mentioned but that's beside the point the we're talking about 50,000 from that and another 100,000 from the housing revolving loan fund so we're talking about 150,000 not just 50 that and you know we're not sure that will be enough but it should be enough through this fiscal year it's pretty extensive project with a lot of design and engineering and analysis needs to be done but we won't know for short till we hear back I guess my question relates to whether or not we're assuming that this this parcel has to accommodate the wreck needs of the city versus if it's not feasible we'll look at others the capital complex commission for instance can look at liquor control moving so their warehouse somewhere else and that's an ideal spot for a rec center you know so I'm just I'm wanting to not carve us so deep in down into this right so we have to drive to get recreation understood part of this is to see if there's a viable project here if there's not we can sell the land hey anyone else in person okay and I am not seeing any hands online but okay go ahead Donna oh I think we have a motion and it's been seconded that's okay so any further discussion on this okay all in favor please say aye aye and opposed okay thank you all right and so we are up to oh you know what yes I say it is 828 and we normally take a break at 830 so I think now is the appropriate time to do that oh 829 all right so we're gonna take a 10 minute break we will be back at 839 all right well we should get started here again is 839 all right so we are jumping back in and jumping back in with an update on the energy oh sorry the energy information ordinance and so this was just to update the council on the work that's been done since the ordinance was approved last year or so and there's a number of things that have been done I guess I'll just talk through this a little bit so mostly looking under the background information on the cover sheet so there was a lot of there was education that was done for real estate agents through professional development and I was told by Ken Jones that he wanted me to relate to you that he is going to continue to do professional development for real estate agents moving forward to help educate them about the tool and so that there's a flyer that's going to be going out in water bills in July as to specifically how to comply like what steps people would need to follow we developed an MOU with the Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships to clarify questions about data ownership that came out up in our previous discussion there's a certification sheet for buyers and sellers to sign off on to certify that the profile has been provided to the buyer and then the remainder of this is really about the enforcement so a sort of standardized non-compliance letter was developed that would go out to folks who are who don't have it posted properly or provided properly and there's a time for folks to rectify that before a ticket is issued and then so the enforcement plan is was specified as well so happy to take any questions about that yes it was voluntary for a period right is what is that period yep so thank you and that's actually why we're talking about this now because it's voluntary through the end of June so starting to be enforced to July 1st yeah yeah so we wanted to make sure that we had this update before then any other thoughts or questions good I know this is one of your vanity projects but the public records law does not allow you to just say you're our contractor you could keep our data that you're requiring by ordinance people to submit data to prove compliance with an ordinance you can't offshore the data like that so it it's real folly to think that you can just you know tell the company that they own our data with because you crafted an MOU so you needed to hear that okay thank you just so the council is aware we did have the MOU reviewed by the city's lawyer any other thoughts or questions yes I want I have one question and then maybe a comment how many people voluntarily did this that's a great question we don't know of anybody who did voluntarily do it we know that people and also posted it to their listing but we know that it can be done okay so the only comment I would make at this time is that it's a good thing that there aren't very many houses for sale right now so that you can get this working so my follow-up is what about new construction how how how was that covered by the ordinance so so somebody builds a new house or kind of minimum whatever there's no history how would this work so are you you're saying that somebody said they built sorry it's built and now it's sold by the builder got you good question is that it yes okay okay great so for the ordinance or for the the profile to work you you can enter bill data but you don't have to it's designed to work bait work based on the assets of the house so that's kind of a fancy way of saying just basically based on the features of the house or the physical attributes of the house that should be sufficient to get a profile and that the bill information is supplemental to that I hope that answers your question but to be fair there are yeah yeah that's yeah I will leave it there to be fair I will be interested in reevaluating this in like another year's time or so to see like how how is it gone what's is it doing what we think it's intended to do so let's keep keep watching it thank you any other comments or questions and let me just check online here not seeing anybody okay and there's no motion I believe that is necessary for this all right so on to the housing task force report and I am welcoming up Holly nickel welcome am I able to show the PowerPoint that I sent I didn't get your PowerPoint did they go Mary said okay did did you all get it is it in the packet yes okay well then I will pull it up from the packet right no worries I just didn't get your PowerPoint sorry about that it's okay is this what you know it looks like this that's it okay so if you share it you can click through it this way so I'll come right back up and share this with this arrow not the dinner yes okay well thank you for giving us the time I'm here to give you some updates on some things that the task force recommended to you a year ago and also to update some of the housing data for the city okay it's not moving so population and household composition this is largely census data from the American Community Survey but as has been the case for a while the median household income in Montpelier is higher than the statewide median we were at seventy thousand dollars versus roughly sixty two thousand statewide as of 2020 we had 8,074 people and almost 3900 households our households are small just 1.9 persons per household and that's actually they that's actually gone down so our households are getting smaller and 24% of the population is over 65 and that has gone up slightly in the past year 20% of the population is under 18 and the median age is 45 55% of our population is female 94% Caucasian and approximately half of our workforce does not live in Montpelier so then we looked at rental housing and 44% of our housing stock is rental and about 14% of Montpelier households pay more than half of their income for housing and that's slightly less very slightly less than the statewide statistic and the census data says that the median grows rent for Montpelier is one thousand one hundred sixty nine dollars which is higher than the statewide median of nine hundred eighty five dollars and in nineteen I'm sorry 2018 the census said our median rent was 992 dollars but when the census looks at rent they ask people what they're paying and that's not what you would have to pay if you went out to rent an apartment in Montpelier so I went on Craigslist and apartments done calm there were very few listings especially for apartments and the median rent was sixteen hundred and twenty five dollars and there only were five apartments listed there were a couple single rooms there was a tiny house and a very small one bedroom apartment that still was was renting for quite a bit Montpelier housing authority reports that their voucher holders are having difficulty finding apartments those are in privately owned buildings because most of the private landlords have no vacancies and all of the Montpelier housing authority owned and managed departments are full except for ones that are in the process of being turned over and ready for someone else we know that our rental vacancy rate is extremely low one of the statistics I saw online was that it's 1.1 percent but I honestly don't know how reliable that that website is and that statistic but it's we definitely have virtually no vacancies and according to the housing authority a lot of our landlords are older and are thinking about selling home ownership I looked at the property transfers between June of 2021 and February 2022 and the median sales price was exactly three hundred thousand dollars that includes condos and they tend to be at the lower end of the market most of those were in the in the two hundreds mostly low two hundreds the average price was three twenty six seven ninety seven but using the median is is is more accurate because that that gives you a better sense it doesn't get distorted by either a very low figure or a very high figure as you know and twenty percent of the sales were condos the rest for single-family homes I then went to the MLS listings and in mid-bay there were 18 listings most of those were under contractor with a sale pending and the median price of the MLS listings for Montpelier was three hundred eighty four thousand dollars according to realtors the length of time that homes stay on the market has decreased by about two-thirds just since 2020 and as you probably know we're now seeing a few homes selling for over a million dollars in Montpelier which just would have been inconceivable a few years ago I just can't believe it during the past 10 years our home values have appreciated nearly 44 percent and unfortunately a household earning a hundred and twenty percent of median which is considered like moderate income can afford a mortgage of approximately two hundred twenty five thousand dollars and that calculation was made before interest rates started going up and before fuel costs started going up so much so if our median list price is 384 and a household of modest means not even low-income can only afford a mortgage of 225 obviously there's a there's a big gap and I think a concern about who's going to be able to afford to live in this city the task force hasn't focused a lot on people without homes but I did go and look at the point in time survey for 2021 that this is Washington County data Montpelier isn't big enough to to be broken out separately but when that survey was done which I believe was January 2021 there were 327 people without permanent homes in Washington County Washington County was the third highest in the state the good news was that nobody was unsheltered who they counted and I think the 2022 survey information should be coming out soon but this is this is the most recent that we have of those 327 people there were 64 children and most of the people 310 of the people were in emergency shelter situations 17 were in transitional housing a third of the people were experiencing homelessness for the first time which sadly means that two-thirds of those people this wasn't their first go round with with being unhoused and 57 households were characterized as chronically homeless all single people know no households with children I I'm not sure how they define chronically homeless but I would expect it's repeated experiences of being without a home and more men are homeless than women in Washington County and then we looked just briefly at short-term rentals and I looked at the Airbnb listings they said there were 227 listings in Montpelier but in reality 39 were actually in Montpelier the rest were in middle sex or East Montpelier surrounded communities most of those listings were apartments or single-family homes there were only four that were rooms in a larger house so it's not a huge number but given our housing situation that's you know 30 35 dwellings that somebody could live in year-round that are being used for short-term rentals and the growth in the housing stock as you know has been extremely slow it's really minuscule and the statewide growth as you can see point zero point six percent is is pretty slow too but we're even below that so here's here's a couple observations from all that obviously Montpelier is becoming less affordable for household of modest means the inventory of for sale homes is very low and most homes are under contract very quickly we know from talking to realtors that there are bidding wars and that when there's a bidding war there's often a sale above the asking price because prices are so high condos are becoming a more desirable option that market I guess was was kind of stagnant for a number of years but with fewer if it's single family homes for sale condos are seen as a decent alternative and so condo prices are rising too some of this is anecdotal but and out of state investors have begun to solicit sales of Montpelier property site unseen I don't know if anyone else has had the experience that I had a couple months ago getting a letter in the mail from an investor from Texas saying do you want to sell and climate refugees have begun to see Montpelier in Vermont is a desirable place in which to move and again I had somebody I was in my front yard I had somebody stop me and ask me questions about Montpelier and when I asked him where he would be moving from he said southern Colorado because of the drought and the fires he was looking for a place with water so it's it's really not hypothetical we're seeing that at least on a certain level we still have many larger homes occupied by one or two people friends who I talked to in my age group many of them talk about downsizing but there's really no place to go so they stay put or we stay put and high construction costs are leading to high sales prices and rents levels that's statewide that's nationwide and high fuel costs are leading to significant increases in the cost of housing Joe Triano from the Housing Authority mentioned that as a very big deal to her landlords and voucher holders and and of course it's having an impact good news is it seems that our development pipeline has expanded and there are a few larger developments proposed and finally the number of unhoused people in Washington County remains high so what are the barriers to new development in Montpelier here just some some thoughts we don't have a lot of large developable parcels of land we have a we have a few but but not many unlike Chittenden County we don't have a lot of private developers looking to develop in Montpelier there's a couple of key developable parcels who are owned by just two people who so far haven't developed them there's a history of neighborhood opposition when something is proposed and then market conditions I think that's a big thing you also that with the transit center project construction costs are the same as Chittenden County but the market rent or the sales price is lower and so it's a disincentive for Chittenden County developers to work in Montpelier because if they work in Chittenden County and and they can either sell or rent for more money and a lot of the development in Montpelier over the past few years has been done by Downstreet Housing and Community Development but they have limited capacity and they are feeling pressured to serve other communities as well they do say they love working in Montpelier the city is a great partner but they can't they can't just work in Montpelier so so a year ago we made a number of recommendations to you and here's a few updates the first one was fund the housing trust fund at a level of 150,000 annually I think it's in it it's it's being funded around 110,000 that's great we'd like to see it at 150 but it's it's definitely I think a strong show of support from the council and the trust fund is used to to help get some of those developments off the ground we also recommended supporting a shared appreciation home ownership pilot for first-time home buyers Downstreet did submit an application to the housing trust fund advisory committee that application was tabled I'm hoping it will come back but given the discrepancy between prices and what people can afford even with a subsidy from the trust fund and the and the lack of inventory I don't I don't know it's still going to be a heavy lift but I think it is a way to get to provide opportunity for some home buyers of modest means who don't have either a lot of savings or family support or or something like that another recommendation was working with the state of Vermont regarding the possibility of making some of the parking lots available maybe with parking on the ground floor and housing above Mary Hooper did work on that she she talked to the powers that be at the state and they said they are interested in exploring that with the city what they told her was right now they're trying to figure out what's happening with the state workforce in terms of how how many people are going to be remote and how many days a week and how much parking they will need and how much office space they will need but they also mentioned to her that maybe some of those state office buildings in the capital complex might be available for an alternative use such as housing as well acquire land and make it available for housing development yay you guys or that's that may happen through the Elks Club work with Vermont College of Fine Arts to determine if their possibilities for housing and some of their underutilized buildings Kevin Casey did have a conversation with those folks again they're trying to figure out their future they're doing strategic planning but didn't didn't slam the door on that and then support programs to reduce homelessness and we also have some additional recommendations one is create a city appointed housing committee talked to you about that a couple weeks ago and that's in process hopefully that will be well publicized and and people who are interested will be able to apply develop housing on the Elks Club property continue the accessory dwelling unit program as as you may know there was a federal grant for that program through the Department of Housing and community development that's just about wrapped up but that is an allowable use for Montpelier's housing trust fund and the beauty of using city money through the housing trust fund is there's a lot less red tape and it would make it a lot easier for people to add accessory dwelling units and and that is a way of adding to the housing stock it's it's incremental but every little bit helps undertaken inventory of potentially developed properties that could accommodate 10 or more units for future land banking opportunities to my knowledge that that's a possibility that but nothing is is in the works on that I think we recommended last time that if a property goes up for a tax sale give first option to purchase to a non-profit some of you pointed out they're virtually no tax sales but should that happen it it it could be an opportunity to to get some housing or make sure that housing is a housing unit is available to a family who needs it this one as part of the reappraisal undertaken inventory of short-term rentals in order to ascertain the extent to which Montpelier may be losing permanent housing I know the renappraisal has started but I really think you know if the appraisers could just be asked to make a note of what what the use of the property is it if that isn't happening already it it would give us the information that we need to know do we have a problem or is it really so miniscule let's let's worry about other things provide more support for housing initiatives through the planning and development department whether through VISTAs consultants or staff I think that the housing situation in Montpelier is so serious and that department is not very large that if there's any way that they can get more person power to work on these issues I think a lot more could be done but there's only there's only so much the the existing staff can do support the Christ Church project so that it becomes viable I do know that that project recently received a last week received a planning grant from Vermont Housing and Conservation Board and they're going to look at a bunch of issues around it I think because even with all the federal and state money the funding environment is so incredibly competitive that whatever the city can do to support that project just will help give it give it a leg up and help it compete because it is a difficult site because it's downtown and involves demolition and and it's always easier to build out in the field but it it could be an important resource educate the public regarding housing issues and encouraged engagement and dialogue regarding new developments maybe this is something that the new housing committee will do but it seems like whenever or almost whenever something is proposed there's a lot of opposition and people need to be heard and need to be listened to and have input but we also I think need to break the the log jam where historically not a whole lot has been built new in part because of neighborhood opposition and developers just going away discouraged and then finally support a bridge solution to house people who are unhoused so those are our recommendations that's what we know about the state of housing and my pillar right now and I'd be happy to take questions if anyone has any thank you so much Polly and thanks for that update on the recommendations that was helpful because it's it's nice to know that there are things that we can that we can do I do have a question for you one of the things that has come up from the planning commission is a discussion around density and I am wondering about if the group has thoughts on lifting density requirements or maximums we didn't really talk about it except to get a report at our last meeting from Mike Miller and he explained his his thinking that other things needed to happen first but we didn't really take a position on it okay because if that comes back up to the council that would be helpful if you all do have an opinion about it other thoughts Lauren go ahead first of all thank you so much the amount of research you've and the committee have been doing is incredible and such a resource and so just thanks for so much work and thought that's gone into that gives us some really good next steps I think my only question was knowing that the state just put huge amounts of money and you know some of the issues you're raising you know for example there's the program that's going to help with covering some construction costs to get at that middle income family and so on like what are there good resources available to you all how well connected are you to all you know we've got this like slug of money that has to be spent really quickly and you know are there ways that we're just making sure that Montpelier can take as full advantage of the federal funds and then the state allocating you know a huge amount to VHCB and other partners and so just curious what your thoughts are on that I think we need a project you know and and maybe the next one in line is Christ Church I don't know but you have to have a project to go after the the funding and so I do think from funder's perspectives Montpelier is considered a good partner you know just like downstreet said because the city's been supportive and with the housing trust fund taxpayer money goes in and projects here like the French blocks and Taylor Street and whatever have been remarkably successful I mean it's really I can't remember one that's that's been turned down but we need a project other Connor go ahead yeah thanks a lot it's Lawrence had really well researched but I think very accessible to and useful information when you're talking to Elks Club development is there any specific type of housing you're proposing like affordable housing or mixed or we need everything you know we haven't had a conversation about that in any detail as a task force I mean if you're asking me personally I think we need a mixture I think we need housing for families we need housing for seniors and not just low-income seniors so people who have big older homes have a place to move to obviously we have a situation with people who don't have houses at all so I think I think we need it all yeah yes first of all thank you was excellent I just want to add on to this last Thursday and Friday I was at meeting a Vermont town and city managers and we heard a presentation from Seth Leonard the from Vermont housing finance and I'm telling you you could take those slides and just put Vermont everywhere it says Montpelier and it was almost the identical presentation about the challenges facing the entire state and you know the data and talking to my colleagues everyone's struggling with the same exact issue the possible exception of Chittenden County but it's the same shortages the same costs the same out of state buyers I mean you name the issues it's coming up everywhere and so it really is a huge challenge you know I think some of ours are a little bit more exaggerated on the other hand we have maybe a little bit more demand but yeah it's really we're not alone in this folks and and it's it's really and so the solutions are very similar but you know the one thing we've heard from people and I've heard the last several years and I think maybe here's that you know if if the public and it's Montpelier or anywhere else if we're not able to invest like buying the helix club or putting in some of the things you know the old model of putting that all on the developer unless you want super high end it just isn't gonna happen because it can't work I mean for those you might be the only one left Don maybe when we were looking at housing at one Taylor Street and it was originally going to be market and and Redstone just came to us as we cannot make this work yeah you know for the costs and everything the only people who can make this work is down street and you know our affordable housing group and that's what we went with so I think it's a huge challenge and as we go forward you know we need to be thinking about how we can invest in housing and the trend you know same with the transitional housing the state's not going to do it all so I urge us all to be you know if we think this is a huge issue which of course it is that we would be willing to participate yeah I mean I was thinking today I mean this the state has invested millions and millions of dollars in affordable housing and you know tens of thousands of units have been built and we still I mean we have we the situation is worse than ever and I guess just it probably if we did nothing and if my pillar had had done nothing and didn't have the trust fund and didn't have you know housing-friendly zoning and it probably would be worse but you know you can't really measure what might have been they quoted he quoted a price of average price in the state of $360,000 per unit to build cost to build wow yeah for an apartment to develop to bring for any housing just a housing unit costs so you know you look at the amount of money they've put in versus and they had an estimated shortage of a few you know how many thousands stick 20,000 or something and you think oh that's attainable and you look at how much money they put in divided by 360 and you're like oh yeah no it's gonna be forever and that's just the state we're putting money in building housing I do want to point out so my husband works for Habitat for Humanity such Vermont his comment was that you know for all the money that's been going into housing from the state a lot of it goes into rentals and home ownership is a way that a lot of Americans build equity and if people don't have access to home ownership then they're being basically denied the main mechanism for building wealth over time and so anyway that you know when I when I think about you know housing that might go out on like the old club else club properly if that's what we do you know I think about condos you know things that are high-efficiency but have a home ownership component to it anyway just thought I'd put that out there yeah I just want to have a one last comment too because I wanted to support what Paulie just said was I asked specifically you know again I was like there's all this money how do you how do you get I said well how do how do the municipalities get it and they said you don't it there doesn't come you have to go through a developer you have to have a project has to be there is not a direct subsidy to you know you have to partner with a housing provider so that was an interesting piece of information yeah yeah go ahead Peter Kelvin yeah Peter Kelvin I worked with Polly on this report and I think it does paint a very clear picture when I moved to Montpelier six years ago it just was not like that the last six years a lot has changed what hasn't changed are two things there's no one answer there are going to have to be a bunch of different answers they're going to have to be answers that have to do with rental and answers that have to do with ownership they're going to have to be answers that have to do with low income missing middle and and the upper reaches as well luckily we don't have to address those those will be addressed but they will play a role for example in the Habitat project if you have lots that can be purchased by people who are going to build five hundred thousand dollar houses that brings money to the project so that you can build low lower-income projects and the same thing could be done at the at the Elks Club so it's going to require some real multi-purpose multi strategies and that's why we need a housing committee Polly did almost a lot research herself you need a committee where you have nine or eleven ten people who are doing that research we're doing working groups like the Entity Montpelier Energy Advisory Committee break down into working groups oops sorry and tackle these different problems come together and see how they can blend so please let's get that committee going we need to get it going right away you asked Polly some questions she can't answer them she's not she's not even sure there's going to be another meeting of the housing task force right they typically take off July there'll be one more meeting at least in June to say goodbye so Bill really got to get that thing going it hasn't been announced it's listed on the website as the City Housing Committee or the Montpelier City you look under H it's not there thank you thank you Peter I recommended months ago six months ago that the homelessness task force be dissolved and merged into the Housing Committee that was before this discussion of this having an officially City Appointed Housing Committee it's still a good idea and just because there's emerge it'll be a emergency housing subcommittee of folks that are looking at the same developable parcels temporary interim use of for instance the Home Farm Road project which should be taken by eminent domain rather than let it be sold to Connor that that's an example that we can't continue but here's the thing about attracting developers our this is where our track record of mismanagement of our infrastructure repairs and our sidewalks and our storm drains the handicap doors at the transit center still don't work the three years later the construction of vinyl in the storm drains along the bike path is still there so basically the mismanagement that's been going on for so long discourages competent builders from coming here because they've seen the way we neglect our own infrastructure so we got some cleaning up to do and I think it'll require new management before we're going to really get the kind of developer partners that that we need to get this job done thank you anyone else and I actually am not in the zoom I don't see anybody else in the zoom yes Jack thanks Holly great report I just wanted to mention for people who may not be aware of it that we've studied a bunch of this stuff already and Polly and I were on a committee back in 2011 looking at barriers to new housing and Polly and I were on it from the housing task course council members Angela Timpone and Nancy Sherman were on it and a bunch of other people and it's on the city's web page and I would I would encourage people who are interested to look at it because it's all the factors are still there and it's 11 years ago so one of the things that I worry about with that one well with the barriers to housing in general is that it feels like the answers that we can build our way out of this problem and we have built more housing but the problem still persists and so I kind of I wonder like how much housing would we need for it to really actually help you know we've we've added I mean even since I've been on the council we've added quite a few units actually in the city and I feel like we knew at one point like how many units had been added what would it take you know and and you know if it's if it's some ghastly number you know well then what what do we do with that like does that mean building up and some places I know that would be very scary for a lot of people in Montpelier but I guess it would be good to know like really what what is an actual solution would look like in that situation yeah Peter I'll invite you up yeah I think the number that we have been banding about was a hundred a year per year ending at what point doing we don't know but that that's just enough but but actually and this is a very good point that it's not just a building up we have some huge houses that are owned by seniors that could be broken up into three or four units we've got places that could take a three or four story apartment unit such as it's being proposed for the by the boves and possibly if the motel came up for for sale something could be put there so there are places that you could do that there are also put there are also ways to get with greater density that's the reason why the density I would say that ultimately the the the the new committee will say we should raise density requirements to allow you know to allow like cluster housing the Isabel circle proposal has cottage housing and then it has lots around it that could be built by private developers for more expensive houses so again lots of different solutions I don't think barriers should be seen as no this we're not going to be able to do this barriers are challenges to be figured out how to solve that problem and the answer is always going to be answers it really will be don't don't get too fixated on any one answer I really think that's important thank you Peter and I see Mike Miller you've got your hand raised go ahead I just just want to go into your question and really for the minutes when we did the math on what we came on minimum obviously I don't know what the number will be but it would have to be at least we need to add at least 240 housing units just to kind of get us out and that doesn't really reflect any any demand that might be you know unmet demand price is to stabilize you need vacancies around five percent and so that would be basically at least 240 units and very likely many more than that so that we've always tried to target that sound like much but it's actually quite difficult I mean that's basically building a transit center every year and you know we've got another number of projects in the pipeline that if we can get them to start to come through we would start to be making some reasonable dense into that number and then seeing where it gets us but again those were just basic number was at least 240 thank you for that I appreciate that I can just follow a little bit too the last time we did the community survey in 2009 the question was posed you and do you support the construction of 500 new housing units over the next was either five or ten years and people overwhelmingly support it so the council at that point had sort of set a 500 goal I think if you take out some of what's been done it's probably not quite 240 I mean it's a little bit more I think those numbers are not totally inconsistent either any other thoughts or comments it's on I go ahead I just haven't thanked you tonight but I really really appreciate it and I think you are our queen of housing and even if you're not on the committee we will come and get you thank you so much for your time and thank you for your interest absolutely well and on a related note the housing trust fund recommendation I feel like that one's pretty straightforward but do you want to explain it from staff I think Mike and or Josh will weigh in if necessary but I mentioned this a little bit last time when we talked about forming the housing committee remind you that the original housing task force was actually a task force made up of providers so it was the housing authority downstream various people that were involved in in provision of housing services so when the housing trust fund was created to help fund projects I think that the trust fund I mean the task force themselves realized hey we shouldn't be the people making recommendations on these projects and so a separate housing trust fund committee was created some of whom overlap with task force members and some who don't and that group really meets generally about once or twice a year to sort of put out the RFP for funding and then review their requests and make a recommendation for the council and it's our recommendation our staff recommendation that that group be disbanded and that be folded into this housing committee and because it won't be a task force per se and if somebody is on it that is a potential applicant they can recuse themselves we do have an ethics policy but that in general it's meant to be a working committee and not only will that streamline things but it allows those people on the committee to get a firsthand look at what the you know what the requests for funding are what the project needs what the costs are and I think it's an educational process as well so and if we just we just really don't need two separate groups if we're gonna if we're gonna fold this so to remind people that haven't gone through it the housing task the trust fund puts out a request they get the funds they make recommendation but still comes to the city council for final approval so and there have been times when the council didn't totally go along with the recommendation but usually they do so they don't have any final authority to make decisions that still rests here so we think it's a good idea to streamline this process obviously they're both of these committees are formed by the council at the will of the council so it's not like you know there's any don't have any legal standing other than your appointment of them jack I support this idea at we discussed this at our housing task force meeting last week and there are really two alternatives that you know I should say that I've served on the housing trust fund advisory committee for years and there are two alternatives that we talked about doing one was to dispense with some kind of committee review and just rely on staff coming to the city council and the council making the decision based on staff's proposals and the other was the proposal we have tonight and my experience on the trust fund advisory committee is that it is it has never been a rubber stamp for for the proposals for the for the people who are coming in with the applications and that we've always been given scrutiny to the ideas talked about ways that the ideas could be made better and before making their final recommendations to the to the council and so I think there's real value to having some kind of committee review by people who have made it their business to become expert in in the field of housing in Montpelier and so for that reason I think we should adopt the recommendation to assign this task to the to the housing committee and dissolve the housing trust fund committee is that a motion that is my motion okay and I'll second it okay further discussion yes Peter Kalman uh I I'm in favor of um doing this but the timing has to be done right I urge you not to dissolve the housing trust fund until the new housing committee is actually operational and is ready to do it I mean I was on the uh CJAC the social and economic justice advisory committee when it started brand new it took us six months from the time we were appointed to really get a committee that was operating what happens if you guys need a recommendation next October I wonder whether the the the the housing committee is going to be ready by next October to take this on so can you just figure out a way to do this so that you get word from the housing committee we're ready and then dissolve it don't dissolve it now because otherwise you may be fine you're having the second option which is staff just making the recommendations okay thank you I just want to recognize that I am letting you speak multiple times because you're on the housing task force this is a separate issue yes but um Donna yes along with the agenda sheet on this it talks about when effective that the effect that the committee would knew committee would be effective once it's there then the other committee will dissolve so it didn't put the date like today on it okay um so um that's okay um so does that need to be stated in the motion what do you think Jack I I'm happy to say that my motion includes that the housing trust fund advisory committee would not be dissolved until the membership of the housing committee is is in place okay and you're okay um further discussion and not seeing anyone online okay all in favor please say aye aye and opposed okay great thank you uh and let's um I'm looking forward to hearing more from the housing committee we're we're at all really looking forward to them existing um all right onto the public records fee policy um shall I turn this over to you Bill uh yeah and maybe I'll kick it right to Cameron if she did most of the heavy lifting on this um this is basically taking the statute for public records and trying to formalize into a policy we get a lot of requests and they come in uh they we have streamlined them by creating a public records request but we're trying to become even more efficient and clear about how they'll be handled and we haven't really um traditionally charged people uh but the the state does allow it to be done and we've had some requests of late that have required a pretty large amount of work to to comply with and that the law allows us to assess fees so that was our intent was to follow the law as we have been and um help defer costs when possible so okay so Bill just stole a lot of my thunder um so council thank you for letting me come speak to you tonight um I'm assistant city manager Cameron Niedermeyer for folks who don't know me um so we put this policy together I worked closely with our attorney um what it really is and it's our recommendation to take a policy that basically mirrors the law the whole policy if you read through it it mirrors the law it hopefully I hope that I did a good job um breaking down what that actually means so it's a little bit more relatable and understandable it shows folks how we would be responding who's responding and where they need to direct their questions to that's our biggest issue as staff honestly is that requests are coming in just two emails to people who might not be in the office to just folks and I think on one hand it's a um a really great sign that people feel comfortable and safe asking questions with staff but it makes it very hard to track and respond to public records so we're hoping that um you know by putting a policy in place that we can very easily point to will help sort of streamline some of those requests coming in the other part of this that might be a little bit more uh heavy on the discussion is it does change sort of the fees schedule slightly it does increase it very slightly from what the state has as their fee schedule I'm hoping you'd be interested in adopting this schedule which is just slightly separate from theirs to where we discussed it as it not as a deterrent but as a realistic understanding of how much paper and equipment costs these days if we're making large printing projects etc most of our requests are not for print so I don't anticipate this being super impactful to folks most people want digital copies because that is the way that most of our data is stored or most of our records are stored is digitally can I ask a question yes sorry uh in that this schedule differs slightly from the state schedule we are allowed to do that yes okay so this is the process of by which uh councils are allowed to make their own fee schedule okay um so the only uh the thing that I I think is important for to communicate to the public is that a lot of the things that we do during the day and we respond to requests are technically us creating records for people we do that I think pretty frequently what it becomes difficult is is when we're compiling and creating data for people that takes a long time and so we are running into that issue as staff it is really eating into our capacity time and thus the really just making it very clear that the law does give us the authority to charge if y'all are not interested into this fee schedule um I would ask that um we do adopt the state's fee schedule if you're not interested in in this one um because I think it is very important that we recognize we do have the ability to do that by state law and that it would be very helpful to have the support from city council to just say hey they have the authority to do this they might could ask um for for funding if the project is is large enough um I also want to make sure that the public understands that if you do ask us to make a record um we will look at it we'll see what it would take and we would let you know beforehand before we did any work if it would cost anything so that we're not putting you out that way is that it um uh yes oh I think that's chief's radio questions yes go ahead carry um so I'm I'm just thinking about the difference between sorry thinking about the difference between providing a copy of a record and um providing access for inspection of records and so it's um am I correct that we are allowed to charge for providing copies of records or making new records but we're not allowed to charge for allowing inspection of records okay correct and where that really comes in is when somebody wants so if it's just taking a digital copy of a record and emailing it there's no cost to produce that uh if a record if someone wants photocopies of a file or wants them you know sent out or cold turned into something else searchable pdfs or something like that that's a that's a record we don't have and so there's a cost to create that and so we would you know seek payment but they're also welcome to look at if they don't want to do that they're welcome to look at the file itself and there's there's no charge for that unless yeah there's no charge for that um it but the real thing is creating the records and that is I think some people you know if a record exists we're required to provide it but sometimes people want us to do some you know I want to know this compared to the you know the some analysis and technically we don't have to do it at all where we try to comply you know if we do it and it takes some time then people need to know it and and we don't want to get into this thing where sometimes we do it sometimes we don't or sometimes we charge and sometimes we don't so we want to be very clear in the policy about that thank you bill jack I think what bill said uh is a very good point I think the people don't always recognize that this is a statute that doesn't allow for production of information it's production of documents and those are two different things I think this is a good thing to to go forward with um I've certainly heard that it can be quite burdensome and divert city employees from other duties to respond to uh to read public records requests I have one question that we may want to address in the in the document and I haven't I haven't read through this that many times so I'm not but I think I'm right about this in the third page um under copies of public records charges it's uh it's permissive except we're otherwise provided by law the custodian may charge and collect the following uh costs and then the costs are listed and um I wonder if we want to have a provision in the policy that says that charges would be applied uniformity and without uniformly and without discrimination with regard to the person who's requesting it or the use for which it's uh being requested because I think we want to be absolutely clear that the city is going to treat everyone who requests copies fairly and uh equally it's a good suggestion Donna just one piece of that you're not even allowed to ask why they want them so would that need to be stated as far as the purpose you mentioned no I don't think so in fact I think we could um that's what I heard you say that yeah I okay I just think that I can imagine you know there there are these web pages that uh that like to collect uh mug shots of people I just post mug shots if anyone is arrested up on the web page because I think you know celebrities people are some people take pleasure in the suffering of others and so they see people who are arrested and they like to do that and so that's a commercial activity and uh and even if it's a commercial activity we don't want to we can't say well we're treating you differently because it's a commercial activity so that might uh be addressed simply by uh changing the word may to shall and um shall without discrimination as to the uh requester something like that we want to play around with the language but that's uh that's my thinking Carrie go ahead yeah I I agree very strongly with that suggestion and um that was sort of my understanding of what this policy was setting out to do was to say this is how we are going to handle public records requests and so I think it might just be a matter of changing may to will or shall and that could be it right there um saying this is what we do this is our policy if you request records this is the fee schedule this is how it works and I would like to I would like to see that so that it's not left to the discretion of whoever's providing the records um Jack do you have a specific place where you could see um may turning into a shell yes on page three under copies of public records line one charges it says the custody custodian may charge and collect I would change the may to shall okay right there and there may not be any other place like that okay just question on that I so I generally get that and understand it do you want to set a minimum like if the fee is like at least a dollar I say that because we often have someone coming in they're looking at a list of card you know an assessor's card they make a single photocopy that's a 10 cent copy and they may not have a dime with them and we you know that it seems you know but I would say maybe if we say for any total accumulated fee above a dollar we shall do that I think gotta be some discretion for a single copy type thing we don't like you said we don't get many of them anymore but we used to and it was you know we'd ask people for dimes and they would just be like I don't have one I'm like there you go take your copy yeah I agree with that you know for for billing for time we have right it doesn't start until 30 minutes right so the first 30 minutes are free and that's in statute yeah and so I would even suggest five dollars or ten dollars rather than a dollar because you know you can think about what makes sense given the volume of the request that you're getting but if you're collecting a lot of dollar bills that may be right more effort than it's worth yeah we're getting I mean we're getting almost no requests these days in that sort of middle the photocopies cd type thing it's very rare but the real request is the amount of time it takes to seek search in fact yeah in many cases now we're actually paying a third party to do the searches because we you know we use our our technical search so and we're not even allowed to necessarily to charge that direct cost so so did we land on you know after after five dollars any other comments from council the only the only hesitation that I have with five dollars if I can have a pushback on that is that some of the things that cost physical money like the cds and stuff it's not like we have a huge stack of these things on hand and we wouldn't be paid to purchase the thing so that's really where that fee came from is me assessing costs of the things and how I would get them if people want it so maybe a dollar sounds great to me because a lot of the the more daily activities are not reaching that threshold but some of the things that would require us to go spend money do hit that threshold so like so you'd be more in favor of a dollar being the threshold I would be so saying something like except we're otherwise provided by law the custodian shall charge and collect the following costs for making a public record for any public record that costs more than a dollar that sounds okay to me yeah um Lauren go ahead yeah thanks um I think overall I like having a policy and I like having it be consistently applied definitely want to air towards you know our values of access these are public records making sure that you know everyone can get what they need I guess two questions I had one was if there are other communities so legally we're allowed to go above and beyond have other communities done this is this consistent with what any other communities are charging for the fee schedule and I was just curious like how many are going beyond 30 minutes is that the right threshold is that where did that number come from as opposed to an hour or some other number it tracks the law so that's actually in statute is the 30 minutes I did not do any benchmarking outside of what our legal representation told me he gave me a few examples of other communities that do charge a little more but they were probably they weren't vermont so and just to weigh in on that the the city's ability to charge fees that still have to reflect real cost you can't just charge a fee because you want to charge a fee so it has to reflect the actual you you you can't mark up on those kinds of things so the fees were attempted to you know a cd cost a dollar that's what it costs you know the average cost loaded for you know 60 dollars an hour for an employee at a dollar a minute with benefits that's a real cost so we can't say I want to charge five dollars a minute because we just want to so the law requires us to make sure that it reflects actual cost so that's what this was meant to look at so we didn't really look you know different communities could have different actual costs okay anything yeah go ahead yeah I mean I don't love if we're the state the city town community and vermont that's the most expensive to access public records in I I mean I understand where this is coming from and I just personally want to air towards access and affordable I mean equity to be like this seems like it could become certain people can access records now and other people can't right so to be clear we are not we're not seeking to to run this up we were trying to reflect actual costs this is your policy and your priority so I mean if you want to go with the state fees I mean we don't have any there's no you know it's fine with us you know we just thought you should see what our estimate of actual cost for these were and I think you had or if you don't want to charge fees I mean that is also your policy decision I want to be clear about that the state allows this and we are getting a lot of them and they are very some of them are very time consuming and distracting and learn to answer your question about how many we're getting right I can say pretty I would say a lot of our leadership team spends a good a percentage of their week responding to public records requests in some variety I don't think all of them rise to the level of actually charging I think we get a few that take a good amount of time and those are the ones that I think a policy are really important for because a lot of the analysis is what they're asking for not the actual records we've never denied anyone ability to come look at things it's taking things out of different databases and combining them and giving that kind of information is what really takes the time and what we would be you know being more consistent about charging for or for example a request that wants to go back two or three years all communications for two or three years so we have to have them all sorted and then the key person usually me or whoever's involved has to then go through all of them to figure out which ones are relevant and which ones aren't sort them do all that see if there's any exemptions we don't usually claim that many and then present so that you know that takes a lot of time and you know a lot of our requests are just I want a copy of a police report for my insurance and those kind of those go really quickly but you know over half I'd say really just come from one place and they're often very long and not very kind of vague so it takes a lot of work any other questions from council okay um comments from the public yeah I think I am uh Steve Whitaker a significant requester of public records that's what happens when you manage things or mismanage things in a manner that requires a lot of accountability and transparency um I was quoted $769 to get copies of videos of the meetings that we were required by law to record during the pandemic I'm not sure you're aware of that but that's that type of storage management operation by the courts have been interpreted to be an incentive to not provide a disincentive to provide records by storing them improperly you know if we've recorded zoom recordings they should be on a hard drive somewhere that you can say here's the link download what you want you know but to to abuse the statute to suggest that I have to pay $700 to watch the meetings where the public business was being done to have a copy of them because I don't have the broadband capability to watch them in real time or stream them the statute explicitly says the requester can inspect or request a copy so there's no distinction there it's what's attempting is saying it's good enough that you get to stream it if you have good enough broadband obviously Mike Miller didn't have good enough broadband tonight um so that's that's a key point also Montpelier is unusual in that we outsource both our it and our legal which increases the cost that you're going to attempt to shoulder on this is too late and too big of an issue to be adopted tonight this is something that you really need to inform the public of how it's going to impact which includes understanding the kind of stuff I'm going to tell you and debating it publicly not just ramming it through like you did yeah shut the yeah um so yeah if you think this is simple enough to adopt uh I'd be happy to pillory it um who's who's two dollars a minute who's who's worth two dollars a minute who gets that besides Bill Frazier that's absurd you know um I've asked recently for the water billing data I was told Sarita can export the data set a database is a record it's not just documents Jack it's a record can be a database so the entire database of the water billing including the legend of what's in what field is a requestable record and it only takes minutes to export but instead they're sending me six different PDFs that you know cannot be imported into a spreadsheet to be analyzed it's a lot of game playing this your staff is basically obstructing transparency into the water billing anomalies that people are complaining about so uh CDs and DVDs flash drives if we're going to adopt this state schedule it should be updated to request to to reflect the current cost of CDs and DVDs at thumb drive three minutes now so if you could wrap up your comments no I just think you're you're prejudicial you know arbitrary and unequal treatment of my comments versus anybody else who spoke tonight is really an insult and again a disqualification from the senate so I don't think that that is accurate thank you for wrapping that up any other comments mayor I just didn't know if you wanted me to address any of that if you would like to yes I do want to make it clear to residents I think that no one is trying to keep anything from folks Mr. Whitaker's request for information if he wanted to see the videos they were he was more than welcome to come and inspect them at any time we gave him ample opportunity to come in and see those records he was asking for a record creation he wanted a database that we don't have and we don't keep because we're not required to so we declined creating a new record unless he wanted to pay for the time but he's able to come and watch videos anytime in city hall if he wants to and that offer still stands so please do not hesitate to reach out if you have any questions about information that you want we can work with anyone to help get you what you need thank you man vicki and lane go ahead if somebody needs something on a cd flash driver whatever media why don't they just bring it themselves bring the cd flash drive whatever media that they wanted on and put it on themselves they can do that if you've got a computer that if somebody is there a computer would there be a computer at city hall if i came down and said i'd like to watch this video would there be a computer there that i could see it on yes we would accommodate that for you vicki also in that case i can download that to my cd yes and leave if it has a cd drive yeah this might not actually accommodate that but yes whatever you know yes i mean bring my bring my own portable cd drive yes okay thanks i i just uh thank you vicki for that that's a good point um i just want to note i have a little bit of hesitancy around people just bringing their own usb drives yeah that's fair that's probably shouldn't stick random usb drives in uh computers yeah yeah so just noting that thank you yep no problem um and maybe if they brought a brand new one still in the package so uh thank you okay uh all right i think that is it um is there a motion this was a tried to sort of write down what you said so hopefully that for any record that costs and then the word changed to shell do you mean like any cumulative that cumulatively costs i like that you guys get to watch me try to spell things is that is that a fair addition no judgment it's not good it'll it'll fix it's fine it's fine uh donna go ahead i'll make the motion that we approve the public record inspection copying transmission policy as edited okay motion and a second further discussion garner yeah i don't know if it needs to be the motion or anything but if we could just maybe like set a time that we were getting updated on you know what we're doing will there be six months or something um i just like to get a snapshot of that case we decide to adjust it again sure yes why don't we do that during budget uh loren yeah i it sounds like we're moving ahead with it as is um so yeah i would very much just an understanding kind of who it's impacting is it creating any barriers for some folks in the community to access records um and kind of how many people are now paying for records like i like the idea of the consistency of shall so that there's not discretion but i could see where some discretion and judgment might sometimes be a valuable tool to have for city staff so i could see that creating some issues it would be helpful to know kind of how it's playing out on the ground okay all right there's been a motion and a second uh any further discussion all in favor please say aye and opposed okay great so we are done with our regular business so we're gonna move on to council reports i am a creature of habit uh donna are you okay to go first i'm just going to say that i'm looking forward to june i'm hoping they'll have steady reasonable weather everybody enjoy themselves yeah we have a holiday coming yeah absolutely carry go ahead um i just wanted to kind of um touch back again on the uh the gun violence issue and the the recent experience that um our our public school system has had and um just that uh in in this particular incident this this um potential threat in uh montpellier school and then there was another one in a different school system a few years ago here in vermont where both were stopped before anything happened because other people who heard things or saw things spoke up and brought it to attention and i just want to thank the folks who have done that and to um ask us all to remember that we need to really be looking out for each other and really be paying attention to each other and really um uh we do need more sensible gun safety laws absolutely we also need a culture that recognizes people's humanity and um connection and uh because there's a much bigger cultural issue that we have that's resulting in this gun violence so that's all yeah thank you connor go ahead that's uh well said and along the same lines um you know i think a lot of people are feeling kind of helpless hopeless um so consents and moms demand to actually be at the farmers market this weekend table in a bit um there are ways we can you know plug people into a way where they feel like they're doing something um rather than just sit back and wait for the next thing to happen they're saying a lot about a quote there's a mother jones quote that uh you know pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living and i think it's pretty applicable to something like this that's that's how we do honor people so thank you and we if anybody wants to join us um this weekend would be great i'm jack i think i'll pass the light great lord um two just thoughts for future agendas um one public restroom was brought up earlier i do wonder about i know we've been having conversations with um you know about could the state partner with us in this and now that the legislature's gone so uh whatever opportunity there um so it would be great i think i'm on that committee happy to meet whatever um so it would be great to just get that going now that we have a better sense of what happened with the state and just in that vein i was wondering about if it's worth inviting our legislators or at least some of them to come give us an update on what past um what kind of the things on our legislative agenda um and speaking to funding opportunities things in the budget that we should be aware of as a city just kind of get that overview we've got some people with a real finger on the pulse of the money in particular um so i was thinking about that and yeah i'll leave it there thanks great okay um i just also want to circle back to the uh issue of gun violence and uh just recognize also that um people are um in i think in our community even in a lot of um pain and just really frustrated and um and looking for some answers right now and i i do hope that people turn uh this uh uh since you know the the feelings that folks are having right now turned into action in terms of getting in touch with legislators um getting educated on the the universe of um kinds of common sense gun safety legislation that can be enacted and just a hope that um that is that's helpful as a way to um to honor the dead so uh with that um i think i will be done um john i'll just mention that a gentleman from the american legion came in today and asked me to sing the national anthem to kick off the memorial day festivities this time around so i will be singing that's great right and bill i just have one quick thing um you may recall at the last meeting we set our summer schedule and we talked about needing a special calling meeting to set the tax rate and we'd um tentatively pencil that in on wednesday the 13th wondering if we could do that sometime on monday the 11th that works best with our schedule it literally should be you know it's a math calculation but you have to vote to set it so it should be very short meeting we'd be calling only or so you said july 11 july 11 yes it's a monday oh instead of the wednesday the 13th if we could do it on monday the 11th that would just um kelly asked if we could do that would help speed up you know it's going to be because of the anyway yes it'll fit our schedules are we thinking like noon it could be whatever time of day works uh we could do it noon we could do it whenever um it really like i said shouldn't take a long period of time we really only need four people but i just we had said potentially the 13th for this and um i just wanted to change it so um how does noon work for folks yeah a lot of thumbs up okay great beautiful um okay beautiful that's all i have okay got that in my calendar um okay i think that is it so without objection we will consider the meeting adjourned 10 11