 All right. So I will call the meeting to order. John, if you're trying to talk to me, you're muted. So. No, okay. To get started, I was talking a little bit about meeting logistics. Anyone who's joining remotely, please change your name display to your first and last name so all of us can know who's who's talking to us. When you speak, please begin by stating your name and where you live. We ask you to keep your comments to questions to under three minutes. Anyone who wishes to speak must be called on by the mayor. And anyone who speaks out of turn or discusses non germane topics goes on too long, maybe asked to stop. And as always, we will have the assistance of counselor bait to keep track of the time. And she's got her signs. Excellent. And I think the yellow sign means you have one minute left and red sign means you are out of time and you must stop talking. All right. Next item on the agenda is to. First item is to approve the agenda. Any changes to the agenda. I'm not hearing any. Okay. I just had the one question I brought up this morning about plan purchase. Yep, we will, we'll get to that. When we come to the consent agenda. Okay. Next item on the agenda is general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public. To address the council on anything. That any topic that's not on the agenda. And as always, we ask that. That you keep your comments to three minutes. Please either. Physically raise your hand or indicate. On your zoom connection. That you be recognized. Bill, are you raising your hand or not? Well, just Mr. Mayor, I wanted to remind you that because it's a remote meeting that all members of the council should identify themselves. Excellent. Thank you. I glad you caught that. So I'll start Jack McCullough, mayor, and I'll just go down the room the way we. People. Sit. So starting with Palin Cohen. I paying colon district two. Lauren Hurrell, sorry. Lauren Hurrell district one. Tim. In any district three. Sal. And you're muted. Sal Alfonno district two. Kerry. Kerry Brown district three. And Donna. Donna Bate district one. Okay. Thank you. Now. Is anyone. Asking to be recognized for general business and appearances. I'm not seeing. Any hands raised. Okay. Seeing none will move on. To the consent agenda. And before we take up the consent agenda. We have a couple of questions raised regarding item D. Landed acquisition to be added to Berlin pond. So we will take that off the consent agenda. And then. Are there any other items that should be taken off the consent agenda? Okay. Chair would entertain a motion. Donna. I make a motion that we accept the consent agenda with D removed. Okay. All right. And it's moved and seconded all those in favor. Any discussion. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed. Okay. The consent agenda with the exception of item D. Is approved. So now Bill, do you want to. Give us a little bit about item D. And then we'll move on to item D. And then we'll move on to item D. And then we'll move on to item D. Maybe two now we were approached by a group. In seeking to conserve land in Berlin pond, knowing the city has an interest in. Purchasing land for water, shed safety and protection. About acquiring four parcels. The city council agreed to this and agreed to put in a maximum of $80,000. And then we'll move on to item D. And then we'll move on to item D. With that $80,000, the remainder was to be raised through grants, et cetera. So this is the rest of that purchase. It's being raised through VHCB and Vermont land trust and other funds. And it's gone through all the processes they've checked in, I think with the council, a couple of times with the conservation easement, et cetera. And this is the last approval, the formal approval we have to give and authorize the mayor to sign all the documents that are prepared to sign. We've actually received the money from VHCB already to the city. So we can then cut the check tomorrow. So that's basically where the city is not putting any money into this particular purchase. We, this was our, we've already paid our match to all of this. And this will complete this project, which has been going for a couple of years. Okay. Anyone have any questions? Donna and then care. Not a question. I just salute that we finally completed it. It was a goal and we did it and that we again had wonderful grant money, other organizations supporting this. So I thank the staff for executing it. Carrie. Yeah. Yeah, I, I think this is fantastic. Thank you. And I was not around for the beginning of this process. So I appreciate the update. I think it's always helpful to include all of this info, all the updating information and then the past history. And at every step of the way, even though it seems like, yes, the city council did this and they did this and they did this. And I appreciate that. Just, you know, I completely agree with that. And, you know, we got questions from two other council members today. And I, I feel badly about that. We actually got all these documents, right? On Friday. And it was like, we got to do them in the closings Thursday. And we were rushing just to get the material on the agenda. And of course we had everything else going on. And I meant to send out a, the backup information this week. And to be honest, I never, I forgot it. This is totally on me until Tim and then Sal asked today, like, what's going on with this? I'm like, yep, that's, that's right. You would know that. So I, I am sorry and happy to provide the explanation. I still would like it at some point. I don't know. It sounds like a good thing, but to be honest, I appreciate the previous council approved it, but if we have to give final approval tonight, we should be in for the information so we can make decisions. Do these approvals. Yep. I agree. Doesn't feel great. Okay. We would now sell. Are there, is there anywhere where the, where these parcels are mapped so we can just see, see where they are just in case where, where would we go to find that? Yeah, we'll send you everything tomorrow. We'll give you all the, you know, Tim's right, we'll send you all the backup info tomorrow. Great. Thank you. You should have that. Absolutely. Okay. Any other questions or discussion. And I'll also open it up to the public. I'm not seeing any hands raised in the public. So I would entertain entertain a motion to approve item D. I'd make a motion to approve item D land acquisition. Okay. Okay. Moved and seconded. Any further discussion. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed. I'd like to abstain because I really don't have the information. Okay. Do you think that this recalls for a roll call because with an extension bill. I don't know. It's always safer to do it. Yeah. Why don't we do it. Bates. I. Brown. Aye. Alfano. Aye. Heaney abstain. Cone. Aye. Aye. Okay. Great. We are set on that. And we can move on to title or item six. The city property tax rate. This is pretty straightforward. You have the calculation in front of you. This is based on approved budgets. The approved. The new grant list. And the education tax rate. I think that's a good point. I think that this is really what we have to do to approve the tax rate. You know, we do have still some grievances to go. And I think probably more significantly. I'm sure there will be some abatement applications. But we can't. I don't think we're allowed to. Sort of increase the tax rate to cover abatement. So I think we need to plan on. Some shortfall and tax revenue this year. And I know we have at least one major. And I think that we have a significant impact on the tax bills. That could be a good point. And I think that would be a good point. The assessment. And may be a little bit all the way to the state or to court. So. National life. So. That could have a significant impact. But at this point, this is the grand list that was filed as of now. And this is the approved budgets. So it's really a math calculation. And we can't send out the tax bills until we vote. Correct. Any. Questions from the members of the council. Council. Probably. Go ahead. We should probably move approval for discussion purposes. Okay. I'll make the motion. Second. All right. Now. Any discussion. Couple of quick questions, Bill, if it's all right. Sure. So just kind of toward the end in June, there was a few. Soft comments about you were managing. Expenses as we've moved toward the end of the year. And it sounded a little. I guess we get with the flood and everything that's happened in the last 40 days or so. How did we end up 2023? Were we. Even in the whole, it sounded like. We're definitely in the hole. We don't have a final number yet, Sarah. Turn this right over to the finance director. Okay. Okay. With the flood, we had to relocate finance. So we really are about a month behind where we had hoped to be on reconciling. There's still a significant amount of adjustments left to be made. To the books. I do expect it will be a deficit. That was in excess of the amount that was presented in the May budget actual at the end of May, it was 408,000. And the expectation is that it will be in excess of that. I just don't know exactly what that number looks like yet without some significant work to reconcile the books. And we also have delayed the audit. We next week would normally be doing the audit. But with the flood, we just wouldn't be ready. So our plan is to have field work in November now. Also want to clarify one thing. Because. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Tim asked, and I use the term in the whole. That it's a bud, the budget shortfall for the last year. Would be. That would be the deficit, that budget deficit, but there was there's official reserve. Above that. To cover that. So the city is not. In the whole, so to speak. But. So just make sure that those are, you know, there's an annual budget deficit. So that's what we're going to do. So. So our general fund ballot reserve will go down as a result of last year's budget. And then this year. You've heard me say this and I've written it, but just again, to say it. You know, we will get tax abatements, which will reduce the tax revenue. With the tax rate we're about to set. And we're not getting, you know, parking. And we're not getting. We are not in a robust shape this year. So we have put a pretty hard hiring freeze on in real essential purchases, at least until we get a better handle on insurance and FEMA reimbursements and all of those kinds of things. Because our outflow is obviously all toward flood recovery right now. Okay. Anything else? And did you have another. Question or comment, or is that good for you? I guess mainly the question was the flood was, I guess it's just too early to know the numbers. Yeah. We'll work it on that. You know, obviously our own specific damages as well as. On city wide. You know, for non, you know, this estimates of private damage as well. We are meeting with FEMA next week or go over that a little bit when we get to that agenda item, but. And start putting that together. So we hope to have a little bit more. And then we'll get to that. And then we'll get to that. And then we'll get to that until we, we know we have, for example, significant damage here in city hall, but we haven't priced out. What it's going to cost us yet. So we can guess what got hurt, but we don't know what the replacement is going to be. Probably like a lot of people. You have any other questions or comments from members of the council. Yes, Sal. And you are muted. I don't know what happens if the tax rate turns out to be sufficient. We have a revenue shortfall. That we discover, you know, sometimes in the next few months. Great question. We have to adjust our budget. Basically. You know, or, and, or continue trying from reserves. But, you know, we don't, we'd rather not do that. So, you know, the, the best example I can give you the most recent. Example we had to do that was during COVID, not that long ago. And so we went through and we, you know, canceled a lot of projects and we cancel a lot of programs. And in that particular instance, we had a benefit, not that COVID was a benefit to anybody, but we had a benefit that this federal government and state government allowed. And so we were able to do that. And so we were able to do that. And so they added the amount of unemployment. To people, they, they put a amount of payment on top of it. And, and they made an exception that you could put people on unemployment, but still keep their benefits normally and not allowed to do that. So we were able to furlough. I think up to 25% of our workforce. For fairly significant time. And they were making about the same. And so we were able to do that. And so we were able to do that. And so we were able to put people on unemployment is still keeping their benefits. So that allowed us to. Not have to make payroll payments. We don't, we don't have that opportunity this time. So. It's a, it's a. It's a little bit of a different ball game. So we're, we're watching things pretty closely. And so. You know, hiring freezes are imperfect because they're random. They're not strategic, right? They're not like, this is where we want to make reductions, but. It's not filling taking positions and then taking it from there. We're hopeful we won't have to do layoffs, but that obviously could be something. Anybody else. And any comments or questions from members of the public. And I'm not seeing any, Kim, were you raising your hand again? They don't want to overlook anyone who wants to be heard. Okay. Are we ready for a vote? It's been. Moved and seconded. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Already. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Hi. Hi. Any opposed. Okay. Thank you. Now we can move on to flood recovery discussion. Thank you, Mr. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. We don't have, you know, a real set agenda here, but we do have an outline. We thought it was important. You know, it's been a lot. It's been a lot of work. So some of the things we wanted to talk about in whatever order you're interested in was, you know, if the council wants to debrief at all from the community, the last two community meetings. It was a good time to do that. Our team did this morning. We wanted to provide an update on city activity, sort of from the flood to now, or at least a high level update. In part to maybe address some of the perhaps misunderstandings that have come out about things the city did or didn't do. So we're going to do that. And then we're going to do that. And then we're going to provide an update on city hall, not that there's anything concrete, but just where we're at. Talk about downtown to the extent that we can, what we know about FEMA. I think we've, there's been questions about the home. Bioprogram and what that is. So Mike, I think is prepared to provide some information on that. And again, provides more clarity on the background of the flood hazard and what we're going to do. And then we're going to do that. And then we're going to do some of the city committee work. Just because of the staff. Allocation to that. And whether it makes sense to, you know, to suspend some of them or not. We wanted to ask that question. And then of course, anything else than anybody else wanted to ask or talk about. When you're really out of the flood. It's obviously our biggest issue. We will need to get back to some other agenda items. You know, soon, but we thought. We're going to get back to some other agenda items. And then we're going to get back to some other agenda items. And then we're going to get really devote tonight to that topic. Maybe come September. Start. Putting on other things on the agenda. So that's who we're at. Does anybody have anything else they want to add or anything they'd like to talk about first, if not, we'll just. I don't have a particular order in mind. Yeah. Not to talk about first, but I want to add just the general topic of communications from the city. And getting information out. So we're going to talk about this ongoing issue of, of people's requirements to move their utilities up from their basement onto their first floor. Yeah. So that is so, so the communications. We certainly happen. Happy to talk about that. And part of our summary was to go over at least what we did or didn't do. And answer any questions and figure out how we can improve those in whatever people want to talk about. So that's one of the topics we were going to talk about. So I think we'll be happy to talk about that as well. I know a lot of people have that on their mind. Well, perhaps the first thing we should do that. I'm just looking off the list. I jot down here is if people want to. Talk about the two fabulous community meetings we had so far, huge turnout, a lot of engagement. A lot of good ideas coming forward one, at least one more to go. Any reactions, any thoughts? I know our team. We spent a good hour or so on it this morning. Before we got into other things. So. We all want to have a conversation, whether include our staff or not, but how, if I think it's important to acknowledge that they happened and. What we've taken from them so far. Lauren, it looks like you're raising your hand. Yeah. I mean, I, I was just going to. Echo. I mean, it's been so impressive and exciting to see so many people come out. I mean, the attendance has been really incredible. And even just people putting ideas and thoughts into the padlet and other tools. And so I think that's great. I mean, there were a ton of ideas. I heard that, you know, some that would make sense for the city to look into some that other entities would probably make more sense as the venue. And I'm definitely happy to. If it's helpful, I mean, I know that the city staff is kind of sifting through this too. It sounds like, but trying to do some of that sorting of like, which things. Make sense as like a package of things that seem realistic knowing that we're in this, you know, both. Time and budget shortfall moment, but also like, what are the things that the city could move forward with potentially that we could consider? And what are things that it probably makes more sense as like a state policy thing or maybe a nonprofit or something might want to pick up and run with. So just wanted to. Offer. I'm happy to help do some of that thinking if that's useful for the city. I echo, I will echo Lauren and they were very good meetings. So I have done that both. And I was with the supporting downtown group last night. And some of the ideas might need to hire new staff. Or using current staff in different things. So my question would be a city is city ready. To fulfill the action items coming from this meetings. I think we have one more meeting is coming right. So will it be enough resource. To get in coming from city to. Complete all the requests. To answer that question. There's a couple of ways to answer that question. Number one is we do need to see what the requests are and who the most appropriate group is. I think some. You know, engineering or some of those things may be better for the Army Corps of Engineers state government. So I think a lot of the ideas, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I think we're already doing people may not realize it. So it might be either just communicating that we're doing it or. Improving how we're doing it. So it's clear. What's happening. There are a couple of things. There are some. There's some recovery work that is actually covered by FEMA. And we're, we're actually meeting with them about that. This week to make sure we can cover that. I think that we're going to be able to do some more. You know, I don't know if that would waterbury, but what they did after Irene and kind of the scope of work. That they did. And then. We may have to look at. Some other funding water. I know water, it's rebuilt water very group actually got funded by other sources grants. And I think, you know, maybe that the mob pillar foundation would be willing to put some money in, just get that started. I think it would be a good idea to do that. I think it would be a good idea to take from a depleted city budget. But still find the resources to do that work. So it really depends, I think on. On what the work is. And you know, some of it isn't also going to all get done. Immediately, especially some of the more structural things. We would then start budgeting for those. In. Time. And some of the more immediate things were already on. And some are female. No, Carrie. And then sell. Yeah, so I think one of the things that has really struck me about both of these community meetings is the emphasis on. The idea of democracy as being something that's really within the hands of the people. And so. That's. Excuse me, to me and that. Many of the problems that we face are not going to be solved by the city. You know, the capital C city. So I think that. Those of us who are living in the city have to do a lot of this work. And so there may be some things that we're going to rely on city government to do. But that. I'm hoping that we can try to keep the emphasis off of. We have this big problem in the city needs to solve it. So the city has to figure it out. Because that's not, that's not practical. We don't. We don't have to do that. We don't have to do that. We don't have to do that. So the finances to be able to solve a lot of these problems. We have to use our influence to try to get money from the state and from the federal government, but also to do the work. In, in other ways and other sort of, you know, grassroots democracy way. So I don't want the city staff to feel like. If we're identifying problems. We are expecting you to solve all of them. And so we need to be really careful about that. And to be able to say, like, they're. If we're talking about how to manage the, the watershed that. You know, we can't do that at the city level. But we may be able to have some say in how that is done. And so we need to be just really clear about that. Thanks. Sal. Well, I was looking for, I didn't know when I might bring this up, but it seems that maybe this is the most appropriate time. Given Pellin's question. But, you know, when I was preparing for some of the meetings and just. Researching, you know, flood. Mitigation and resources. And so we need to be really clear about that. Thanks, Sal. Well, I was looking for it. I didn't know when I might bring this up, but it seems that maybe this is the most appropriate time. And so I was looking for it. And so I was looking for it. And so I was looking for it. And so I was looking for it. Mitigation and resources. I came up. Across a report that was. Prepared in 2015 called the Vermont economic. Resiliency initiative put together by. A group. Assembled by the Vermont department of housing and. And community development. I mentioned it last night of the infrastructure group. And I, I think I was the only one in the room. I'd ever heard it. I guess what I'm wondering is. A lot of what we're doing now seems to have been done after Irene. I mean, not, not precisely, of course, but. A lot of work seems to have been put into. This report. Run 750 pages roughly. There's a lot in there about river management. A lot of the topics we were discussing last night. And I'm just want to make sure that we're. You know, we're in a position to rely on. Work that's gone before and not duplicating effort. Given that we have, you know, limited resources. Does anyone. I know the report that I'm talking about. And remember, I mean, I, I didn't, I chanced upon it. So I know nothing about it. Except since, you know, since I've. Found it. I've been. I haven't read it all, but I've got a lot of. We heard it. We were talking about it this morning at our report. We haven't read it all either, but we are aware that it exists. So. That's all I wanted to just make sure we knew it was there and see if what's of value. In there, it's a, it might be a starting place for some things. Yeah, that's good to know about. I wasn't aware of it myself, even though. I was here for all, for all these previous floods. Many of them. Not 1927. No matter what some people think. Yeah. Yeah. So it came out of the Vermont. Commerce and community development department. Issue did. Carrie. Yeah, so this is making me think about the idea that. There's a lot of information out there. A lot of, a lot of work has been done previously. This is not the first flood that Montpelier has had. It's not the first flood that Vermont has had. And so I'm kind of introducing a new topic here, but. In the first week or so after this flood happened, there were a few things that popped up for me that, that I thought, boy, it would be great if the state had been able to provide this information. Or if we had known this before, if we had a checklist or something, because we've gone through a version of this before. And we shouldn't have to reinvent this or relearn it every single time. And so I would love for. I don't know if this is a city council activity or if this is a staff activity or maybe both, but to be able to provide some kind of formal input to the state. To say this is what we would appreciate next time. We would like to know. That FEMA requires us to separate our, our refuse. And we would like to have a better understanding of what's going on with the dams or, you know, whatever it is. And, and to try to, to, to come up with a letter or some kind of formal input that says this would be really helpful for us to know next time. Because it feels like we're kind of making this up. From scratch, not all of it. I mean, you know, the city staff knew what they were doing. They knew what needed to be done. They went out and they did it. But as far as the public was concerned, there was some information that we could have gotten from. And I think that's a great point. I think that's a great point. I think that's a great point. Expertise that we, we shouldn't be expected for city staff to have that was, you know, at a higher level from that. And I think we could give some input to the state to say next time this is what we would like to have. I think that's a great point. I think that one of the things that we've heard, we heard really at the very beginning was. You know, you know, you don't want people to be wasting their time, effort and money on, on something that. Is going to have to be redone. Just as one example. Donna. Well, I was thinking we could, along those lines, what Sal and Terry shared that we could actually, you know, give ourselves homework to study this from our economic. Rejudgency initiative. And other reports that we share among ourselves, things that we found. And yes, we can tell the state. Much more after we studied these things, what was really available, but not in one place. And that we need to have, like they said, emergency, like Bill, you have your regular emergency preparedness trainings and scenarios. And we need to do that with our community. We need to have community meetings around this and trainings. That we're now really going to be much more proactive. Trying to educate and make people aware and ourselves, of course, but to share it. Maybe some workshops around that. I can just share that we spend a good two hours as a leadership team this morning. You know, debriefing what went right, what went wrong. What, what we thought we did well, what we could have done better. What. What we didn't know. You know, with the idea of, you know, for us to create our own after action reports here with the council public, of course. But also it included those kinds of. Things like what would it be, you know, what is it that would be good to know. And, you know, if nothing or harder reach those. I mean, we did rely on the state. EOC. Because that's what we're supposed to do in emergencies. And, you know, I don't want to bash them. This was a statewide emergency. This wasn't just a mock. So, you know, they were. They were triaging us with everybody else, but there were some, you know, some delays in getting information out and unclear information. And some of it is, you know, as far as I could tell, it's unclear even from the subsequent agencies. You know, I found even dealing with FEMA. You know, we haven't always gotten. Consisting the answers, depending on who we're speaking with with FEMA. So I think, you know, we, a city have always been reluctant to speak and say, this is what FEMA allows. Because it may not be depending on, you know, so we've always tried to say, well, here's how you get. You know, here's how you get to these things. And that puts us in a weird position. So I think people expect us to know these answers. So we are trying to. Put a summary of that. I see Evelyn's on there. Did you want to add to that? Yeah, I just wanted to, to echo just basically everything that Bill says is that the FEMA regulations regarding communication are extremely strict. And when I was sitting in on the debris, the first debris consultation meeting that we had with the FEMA contractors, our eligibility, whether or not we received funding came down to whether or not we use the correct word or verb tense. And it is, it was extremely strict. So the communication that we were putting out was heavily weighted by that. Basically everything that came out during the flood after we had made contact with FEMA had to be put in, basically put in front of their eyes before we could send it out because it, it, they had explained that it would, it would be part of the audit in a couple of years and we have no idea who is going to be looking at that and in what context are they going to be to look, looking at it. So for instance, a Facebook post could have meant the difference between us getting reimbursement or not. So just as we, as we look back and say like, what have we, could have we done different? You know, this was obviously a learning experience for all of us and just, you know, knowing that ahead of time, going into the next disaster, like it's still going to be sort of a tempered process. But as, as we look, you know, as we look back, I think it's just important to realize that there were severe restrictions in what we were able to say and when, when we were able to say it. So that must have delayed some of the communications that went out by several days. In some year, right, in things concerning FEMA, you know, just a good example is FEMA, FEMA will cover debris removal, but not trash or garbage removal. So we, you know, once we learned that we had to be extremely careful that any time we were referred to it at any time in any public way was that we were talking about debris removal because so, and they would, they object to this, if you tell people that they could put their trash out, you could be ineligible. So there's just those kinds of things that, you know, you start these emergencies and you're on your own a little bit and start doing what you need to do. And then they come in and kind of say, well, okay. And they do give you a little bit of a pass for the first couple of days. Like, okay, you just did what you needed to do. But then like, okay, here's how this rolls. I mean, not, not every single bit of communication, but certainly things about anything to do with what might be recoverable. We have to be really careful. And Carrie, I see you have your hand up again. Yeah, I really appreciate that information. And I'm so sympathetic to you having to manage that. And I'm, I'm wondering if you're thinking about kind of coming up with sort of a guide guidelines or handbook or, you know, how to handle this next time so that you know that. So you don't have to, if it's not the, the people who are currently here on staff, maybe it's totally different people. So they don't have to learn that again. They can just know that that's what we have to do. And so to be able to not have to take a few days to figure that out, but to be able to just say, okay, from right off we have to use the word debris. We cannot use the word trash. I'm hoping that you'll have that written down somewhere and recorded and maybe in some procedures and manual. I don't know how you do things, but I think that would be very, very helpful. So we use those exact words this morning about meeting to create a handbook and that, you know, everyone, but Bob and I would be gone for the next one. Bob and I would still be here. But that would be different people. So, you know, we, we, yeah, that, that was carry. It was like you were in our meeting this morning. I promise I did not actually have any information to that. I didn't need to reply that you did. Yes, chief. Yeah, I just want to pass. I got an invite this afternoon from the national weather service. Inviting me to come on board. They're because of the climate changes so rapidly changing. They're now looking at how we're going to respond to these things and how we're going to get the messages out. So I agreed to join that committee and. I think it's important to point out that climate change is so rapidly changing and these type of events are coming and they're coming more rapidly that where we're trying to figure out a way to get this message out. Lauren. Yeah, thanks. This is all great. And I'm so glad that we've got the, the feedback being captured from the city. I mean, I think there's probably a lot of things that have come out in the public process that we could kind of capture. Like one thing that's just on my mind is like, as an example is the businesses have said, you know, and it was somebody had kind of mentioned this a couple of minutes ago, but like the feedback from the department of health about how to be dealing with climate change. I mean, I think there's probably a lot of things that have come out in the public process that we could kind of capture. So I think that the feedback from the department of health about how to be dealing with, you know, some of like the toxics and different products and that they basically were just kept getting pointed to a website that seemed really insufficient and that nobody from department of health was like available to talk to business owners like they were calling. So I think like the feedback of like a more hands on approach from the department of health could have been helpful or better like more fleshed out resources with more examples or something. So I think capturing some of that, you know, some of the feedback from the department of health, you know, some of the feedback that you're experienced could also be helpful in it coming from the city instead of putting the onus on, you know, an individual business owner who wouldn't even know where to give that feedback, probably. And I imagine that homeowners probably have some similar feedback. So maybe there's like state examples of, you know, room for improvement and, you know, some federal examples and then the city, our own kind of internal look at with feedback from the department of health. So I think that's a lot of feedback about, you know, we've been, the business community has been meeting every Monday. And, you know, we've been going, we've had city presence at all of them, including our building inspector. And that is high on the list. So we've got that as something that we need to feedback on, you know, one of the things that I think happened was. And again, I'm sure, you know, you're in this emergency and people are reacting and they're trying to do the best they can. And, you know, I think we did, we did do a lot of things well, but one of them was to have, you know, chief gallons called the department of public safety and said, you know, we need inspectors. So really the first day. That it was dry down there downtown. We had our building inspector plus, you know, seven other state or maybe it was eight state inspectors on senior mob pillar and going through buildings and doing quick checks of electrical systems and all those kind of things. And I think, again, through no one's fault of their own, but basically they were checking to make sure the buildings were safe to be in, but people were, you know, a building inspector says, Hey, you're good to go. You know, you're all set. You can go back in. I think people then interpreted that as okay, I just need to clean up and reopen. And so there was a fair amount of effort of people who did that and, you know, a couple of businesses almost got to the point of being put back together. And then additional information came like if the floodwaters hit your floor or your walls, anything that was hit with the floodwater has to go. And so, you know, while we had great, we had great volunteer efforts, some of it was maybe a little bit wasted because people cleaned out space that was just going to get ripped out anyway. So I think learning more about that and just at least us putting that in our notes that if you have first floor flood, first floor flooding, you know, be sure to know whether you need to rip it out before you make any, any kind of things. And those were things that we learned from the Department of Health later. The Department of Health did come to one of the, one of those business meetings and answered a lot of questions and heard a lot of that feedback from our businesses. And I think, you know, it's, it's different for, even for restaurants and for other places. So I think there's, and really the answer for department health is we don't have a boilerplate. We have to go into every business and see what happened in your situation, you know, is your cooler okay, or did it get stuff in the insulin, you know? So it was helpful to know that, but I don't think it was helpful for people in us knowing, hey, you know, floodwater washed up against my cooler. Does it have to go or not? So, you know, it's a definite maybe we have to come and look at it and tell you. So, but again, having a guide for people to know that even that's a process that that happens and that you've got to get that sign off before you can do anything, I think would be helpful and it would have, we would have been better able to communicate that to people. Carrie. Yeah, I appreciate that's a great example. And if there were a way to, I mean, maybe we could put together something in advance of the next flood. So we decide there's going to be another flood like this. And so we get information out to people. And sort of short of that option B is whatever we know from now, we get out to people within the first 24 hours or so after it happens. And so similarly, this, you know, the flood hazard regulations that we have about moving things out of our basements. You proactively let people know about that before there's a flood. And then also when there is a flood to within the first 24 hours, sorry, my cat within the first 24 hours, reach out to those people and we, you know, just have a list set up in the word. So you just, you know, send out a letter to them. Everybody that says or an email if you've got emails that says you before you do any work, you're going to need to know that you have to do this. Because we can't expect. Businesses and residents to know all of those details ahead of time. Now going forward, people are going to know a lot because we're learning a lot through all of this, but that's one of those services that the city can provide is to. Get that information out ahead of time and then also. Both ahead of time and then also in that moment of the emergency to say, okay, we're leaving the requirements for permits, but you should know that to get a permit, you're going to need to move everything out of the basement or whatever it is. So completely agree with that. And I'd say a couple of, a couple of things just practical matter. And again, these are, these are not reasons not to do well. They're obstacles, not reasons not to do it. So for one example, the mail was down. So we didn't have any mail for a few days. So sending out letters. And, and, you know, we've had a few people saying, you know, we've got some feedback from people saying, you know, you should just send emails to everybody. Well, you know, unless we don't have everybody's email, we have an alert systems and we actually, you know, I think we're about 400 people signed up. And so the more we can get people to be on our email list, the more we can get that kind of stuff up quickly. So yes, it may even be door to door. The other thing that happens and I, I, I don't want, this is not meant to be complacent or anything, but. You know, you're right. Caring people know now, but in five years from now or 10 years from now, they may know or they may forget or somebody else may own their home. And so I guess part of the question is how do you get these things like as part of, say, you know, people being notified of this. I know Mike's on and he can maybe explain it better. But I think, you know, letters were sent to everybody. I mean, we all get letters and send them aside and don't think about it again. So, you know, I think those are all challenges. How do you keep these things in people's minds? And to the extent that we have advanced notice that something's coming, getting that information up ahead of time is great. If it's a nice jam flood or something. You know, we have the kind of notice that we had with this one. Just on that topic before I go back to Carrie and then Tim. One of my brothers lives in Virginia Beach and because they're so close to the Naval base, every home in the, in the city has a noise rating. Based on their location and their distance from the, from where the jets are taking off. And, and so anyone who buys a house in Virginia Beach knows where they are and what noise they're exposed to. And we, we know what all the properties are in the flood zone. So we could have special information that anyone who buys a house in the floods, a flood zone could get when they, at the time of that transaction. Just, just as a thought. So Carrie. But that's pretty much exactly what I was going to say. If we could build it in the process when you buy a house. That's in, in those, whatever it is. And maybe it's not just this, this, this, this, this, this, in those, in those areas. Whatever it is. And maybe it's not just this particular zone. I mean, that's what I'm concerned with because that affects me personally. And that's what's going on right now, but maybe there are other zoning regulations or other things that people have to be compliant with when you buy the house. That's part of what you have to sign onto when you buy it. And then also when possible, letting people know in the aftermath of emergency. Right. Tim. Yeah, I, yeah, the, I think the advanced notice in some ways was better for this storm than some previous ones. I know we didn't have one tenant lose a car, which is pretty impressive for an event like this. In the past with some of our properties we've had numbers of tenants lose their vehicles. You know, when the actual events happening, I'm sure it's not that far back. We all remember, I mean, you're out there in your mud boots and running pumps and you're not looking at emails and you're not getting letters. That's just not real. I think ultimately days after you'll start to get those communications but it's not going to happen during the event. My only other point is every event and I flipped through a few to but not 1927 was different, you know, they're all distinctly different and different things happen so it is always a challenge to try to accommodate what's in front of you at the moment and deal with the best you can. It seems one thing I found with this one that's really so interesting compared to 92, which is the most similar event I can remember to this one is, I think our expectations are all very different now. And people's concern about mold and health issues and really good solid concerns. I got to tell you in 92. A lot of that stuff that came out of these basements was there in 92. It's not funny, but I think, you know, our standards are different or dealing with it better and I think a lot of people deserve credit for that. So that's also thanks. I have a question for Tim while we still get the mic in your other hat. So when you when you as a realtor when you're selling a house that's in the designer new district or the floodplain or something like that do you what what is conveyed to buyers. Well, it's disclosed it's on the form that it's in the floodplain design review isn't as often but we do make a point of discussing that. Of course, if they're getting a mortgage, the bank will require a flood review flood status and probably require that they buy flood insurance to get to obtain the loan. Thanks. Evelyn. Yeah, I just wanted to say, Carrie you are singing my communications tune. One of the projects that was part of the conversation I had with the department heads early on when I started last year. It's something that Marty Lagerstead of the SS start brought up in our conversation and I've talked about it a couple of times after that but is putting together a month clear operators manual basically and that you would get as a if you purchased a new home, or if you moved to the city. And it would have that type of information like here's what you need to know in case of an emergency here's where you can find information from the city. Here's who you can contact about X, Y and Z. I just wanted to let you know that I am that is one of the things that I am slowly adding to as I as these things happen basically every time something pops up and I'm like oh that should go in the operators manual. I dump it in that folder and so it is in it is in the works and I just wanted to let you know that that's something that has been on on my radar. Well, I'm just sitting here listening to this and thinking, you know, I'm not very good at mucking out basements, but I can muck out information pretty good so I'm thinking about what Donna was saying earlier. I'm, I'd be happy and maybe everyone should talk with you directly about the kind of thing you're putting together I love the idea of a manual that sort of in plain English, for you know the average person. And I spent 30 years writing technical manuals so it's the kind of thing that you know I can put some time into I don't have a day job I do have grandchildren but anyway, I'm offering myself as a resource there. If there's anywhere I can help. Don't hesitate to ask and I'll try to arrange a meeting next week so maybe we can get down to details on that. That's great. Thank you. We will take you up on that. Tim. A quick thought after I got off and everyone's comment was, you know, one group we haven't mentioned we're talking about homeowners and property owners but tenants were in this area were really heavily impacted to and there's really no focus for how to communicate with tenants and people who rent spaces and businesses or their, you know, apartments where they live. And I think probably when I'm gathering from our tenants very very few carry any kind of insurance for this kind of situations. That's definitely been a challenge, you know, I think for this flood and we're working with the business system, you know, make changes for the next one but my pillow live has a pretty robust list of, you know, the business tenants, the vast majority of them. And so the most efficient way for us to communicate was to send our communications to them to Katie, and she just forwarded to her list boom. And, and you know, in some regards that's more efficient than us, you know, maintaining a separate list because as businesses change you know we might. She might catch a change and we don't and those kind of things is almost better to have one list, but we are we are talking to the businesses about how that works best, but tenants have all you know it's always been. You know, we try to send stuff to building owners and, you know, some of them like you are in town and others aren't and, you know, how to contact tenants is always a thing maybe you know we could try to set up a tenant, something where somebody can sign up as a tenant to get tenant information we have that capacity now with our outreach system so something to think about. That has for as long as I've been here that's been missing like how do you hit the tenants and sometimes you know if it's a notice of something we just go put it on the front door of the building but someone tears it down or you know whatever so. Yeah, that's a great point. So, and you're muted. I forgot to lower my hand. Yeah. Okay, okay. Yeah, one of the things about residential issues that that someone mentioned to me last night, Lige slagal from waterbury is that there were something like 485 FEMA claims from residential property owners and FEMA maybe looking for some coordinated effort from the city to pursue to get as much as as we can for those people so I'll just flag that bill and maybe you and I can talk about in our meeting that next week to, to make sure that we're doing everything that needs to be done to do that. Thank you. I just want to mention one more thing about follow up. Okay. Yeah, go ahead, Terry. Yeah, I just wanted to follow up on what you said about the individual assistance and I don't know what you're referring to but I'm hoping that you'll connect and figure that out but that there are a lot of people in on failure who are who are not actually being helped by FEMA like the individual assistance is not sufficient to cover a lot of people's needs. It may help it may cover the cost of replacing a furnace but it's not going to cover the cost of bringing the furnace out of the basement onto the first floor, which is what people are all needing to do. And then there are also a number of people, lower income people in Montpelier who may have received FEMA in assistance during Irene. And that was can the future FEMA assistance was conditional on maintaining flood insurance flood insurance is pretty expensive. And so if you have the option to get flood insurance and your low income you might not be able to afford it and you might not get it and so with I know for for with certainty that there are people in Montpelier who got FEMA assistance during Irene, didn't maintain flood insurance, have much more damage now, and are not eligible for FEMA assistance, they have no flood insurance, and they have no FEMA assistance and so there isn't, there's nothing left. And there may be other sources that come in the future but I just think it's important to keep that in the public awareness and to make sure that we are all that we all know about that. And two things I'd like to mention what they're not really related so to this point. It was last Friday, Kelly and I met with folks at the FEMA disaster recovery center and it was great to see you know if you need to go there, they've got everything. All their agencies now are set up in one place at Vermont College was the one stop shopping you could walk in so that part is good. While we were there we were talking to them and they were describing their services and I asked that question I said you know, if people have a damage to furnace, and they now need to raise it. So first damage first yes we cover course you know that's that's part of their flood damage and I said okay well if they have to raise it. Due to a regulation not just because they want to but the city saying you have to. And so they said well wait a minute so they got you know, two other people from different desks, but you know, explain this again. So I went through the whole thing, and I'm not making this up I went through the whole thing and I said so here's the question blah blah blah, and there were three people in front of me and at the same time, one said yes once and no one said maybe. That this could be covered. And I just said, here's the thing folks. Everyone who comes in your door is going to ask you that question. So you need to have your answer for this one way or the other, you know I don't. I mean, I hope that it's will cover it but whatever it is, you need to have your answer. And you need it so then Kelly asked, well can people get reimbursed. If they make their repairs now. Can they get money they have to wait and again it was well, maybe depending well and again we said, look, it's. This is Vermont it might be a gorgeous day which was that day in August, but in six weeks people are going to be needing their furnace. So this is not a, we can take two months to process all of this this is important and people are going to need this so they heard it, I don't know what they've come up with but that was that was a somewhat. I understand when you're coming from Kerry because we were left. You know we walked out of there like that was that wasn't good. And you get left in and people say well what's FEMA doing. Go to the disaster recovery center and find out because I'm not. I got yes no maybe. Yeah, Kerry. Yeah, I am so frustrated on your behalf and all of the rest of our behalf about that so we're frustrated for the building owners honestly. I mean, so, so I'm personally in this position of we have no heat in our house right now, and it's, it was really cold this morning when I woke up it was like 52 degrees and and we don't know we're going to do yet we can't figure it out. So I guess I just want to, I think there's a there's FEMA is going to do what they're going to do. And maybe we can provide input and say, you should actually figure out if you know the answer to this question you should try to answer it. I just want to encourage you, I don't know what the city can do. But if there is anything that the city can do to help provide financial assistance for people to be able to move their utilities out of their basements it's just our utilities, you know because maybe FEMA and flood insurance can cover the cost of replacing or fixing utilities but neither one of those are going to cover the cost of bringing them up to the first floor above the design flood elevation. So, I know you don't have an answer for this right now. Yeah, but I want us to put it on a list of things that we need to figure out if we're going to require people to move their utilities out of their basement we have to think about the financial impact on them we have to think about ways that we can support that financially because most people, most homeowners most renters most businesses. That's not an expense that they can just take on. And so, and not saying is there the city's responsibility to take on that expense but we should think about if we're going to make that requirement we should think about how we can support people financially to be able to do it. Yep. Yeah, so. Maybe someone in the city has better information than I do but my guess is that the cost of doing that, like, moving an electric panel up and a furnace up is going to be between $6 and $10,000 anyway. Maybe more depending on a lot of things. So it's, it's not chump change but it's yeah so care is pointing out. Yeah I haven't you know I haven't priced. I know what it what it takes to move a panel. So, it's, it's a bunch of money. And I agree if there's whatever we can do is going to be a huge help to, I mean it makes it certainly makes sense to do it because the next time to be less less work to do, but we, you know anything we can do to help people afford it. Lauren. Yeah, thanks. I think we mentioned it before but it's getting more details. There's, they just announced like efficiency Vermont, it's now $36 million to help homeowner homeowners renters and businesses. It looks like it's most it's grants which is great so you're not taking on a loan or something. And it's like mostly replacing equipment but it does have money for electric panel upgrades and a whole range of things and so, you know, at a minimum if the city, however we're communicating with people is like promoting that and letting people know it's not available until starting September 5, but if people know it's coming it looks like they're trying to figure out how they could do even like reimbursements if people are locking stuff in. And like, we definitely want to be like people know that that's available and I mean maybe there's some partnership the city could do you know, Peter walk. Wonderful Montpelier resident is the head of efficiency Vermont maybe there's something we could brainstorm about, you know, how the city can partner on that or promote it in some way to just make it as affordable and feasible for everyone is able to to do these. These installations. That's a great idea. Do you know if that would cover, you know, oil furnace relocations or that require, you know, changing fuel sources. It's things that are efficiency Vermont so it is it does include like energy star rated I'm just looking at a news article. You know, you could boilers and furnaces but also like pellets stoves heat pumps so it's a whole, it's a range of technologies and it's basically you know you'd be looking at like things that are efficiency for my eligible so you would be improving your efficiency probably, which over time should lower your heating costs. If you're upgrading but but it's a range of technologies is not just like specific types of heating sources it looks like it's pretty broadly defined. So those are grants some of those are 0% loans. So, we got as a bunch of different sciences and stuff yeah. We can talk to Peter and get more clarification from that I'm on that I'm sure. I want to think about exactly where we are in this conversation. Well we're we're sort of, we've rolled into the sort of flood hazard mitigation, we're moving things up. I wanted to say one thing I see Mike's on so I want to let him get into that, but just hopefully to just wrap up the communication piece and I we've got a lot of good suggestions I just want to make sure that we say this publicly because I think it has been lost. We have if you haven't been to the city's website we now have this call, you know, this portal communications portal, the news and city. If you go in there it's got four projects right now one of them is the flood and you click on the flood thing. It's got, you can see every communication that the city sent out related to the flood. So, if there's any question about what the city did communicate and when they communicated. It's all there. And it starts on July, July nine, which was the Sunday flood didn't happen to Monday night. It starts with information going out on Sunday, alerting people about the danger. And then because so there are 22 communications before we actually had flooding. So, when people talk about the city didn't get out advance information that's just factually wrong. Now we can figure out better ways to make sure people are getting but these went out to many of them went out to the wrong alert. Many of them went out through our normal channels, but people could see every bit of communication that went out so I just want to say that before we went off of that that it's all available to look at. And there was a fair amount of communications pre flood. I know we've heard from people that the city never said anything and that's just really not true. So, though before we get to Mike for one thing I think see well at this hand up and I want to call on her but I also want to wrap up because we're we started this conversation by talking about the community forums and where things are going with those. They were very good. It was very good to see such a large turnout. There's another one coming up and last night, as we're informally debriefing, I talked to Paul Costello who's managing this. There's a process for us about having Paul and me and you and and probably Katie sit down probably sometime next week to talk about what how we're how we're going from here and and so people can know that we're, we're going to be the city government is going to be engaging with this community forum process to keep things moving and seeing everything we can do in a constructive way. And I just ran into a neighbor of mine. This evening on my way home and he was wondering if, if we'd be providing childcare I think we had childcare for the first one. I don't think there was childcare for last night. But it is something we should look into. Because that's an impediment to some people getting out to events in person, and particularly because the next one is going to be after school starts. And so, families with kids are are busy. If we can get childcare that would be helpful. Hi, hi. Good evening. I just have a quick question. What services are in place in Montpelier for communicating to non English speaking or reading people in our community. I did with a couple of families family a couple of weeks ago. They had no idea what to do. Because I don't see English. And I'm sure that some other community was a problem. So I'm wondering what is in behalf of this. That's a great question. And it's definitely not our strongest area. We, you know, most of our direct communication all goes out in English. I will say that on this new platform and maybe Evelyn can help me out here. The new platforms and city that we have on the website can translate into 59 languages or something like that. 27 27. 27 languages. So, and if we know for sure that there are some in particular that we use, but you write the emergency. That is something that we've been talking about how we can get those out more efficiently and, you know, even having a sense of what languages are spoken in the community would be helpful so thank you for bringing that up. You know, that's going to be something that's just going to be going to increase over the years, hopefully as we become more diverse. Yeah, thank you for asking that question. I really appreciate that. I think this is this is one of those things that municipalities. It's, it's a little too much to ask individual municipalities to be able to handle all of this. And so, fortunately, we have at the state level we have an office of racial equity. And this was one of the questions that I asked that office at the beginning of this was. So I got an answer that there are a series of videos in various languages to help people with preparation for a flood. It didn't seem totally sufficient it wasn't really good enough. I think this is the one of the things that we can add to our list that we need to say to the state that the entire state has lots of non English speakers in it, and none of the individual municipalities are going to have the resources to be able to provide proactively addressing and anticipating the needs of non English speakers, but the state might maybe able to do that and the state is actually working on that really hard and so I just want to add this to the list of things that we need to tell the state that we're going to need to have information provided in various languages we're going to need to have translation services available to have interpretation services available and we need to have a number to call or a place to go. When we have something pop up unexpectedly so that we can get that information so we can get the translation so we can get things in different languages and provide it to those non English speakers in my failure. We need to get it up to people before the crisis happens. Right. Okay. So I think Mike popped on when we were talking about the, the furnaces moving impossible financial assistance and things like that Mike, was that just by accident that you popped on or were you ready to make a go of it here. Yeah, I didn't know if this was going to lead to questions I just want to let you know I was here wasn't just my, my, my name. But yeah, we have been working. There was a lot of comments a lot of stuff if there's anything I missed just, you know, ask, ask me whatever questions you want to. I'm Mike Miller planning director for the city. And so my office is responsible for all the permitting and the inspections that happen so the zoning the river hazard regulations. The building inspectors in my office as well as Josh Jerome does the community development so that is the grant side of things so Josh and I have been primarily focusing on exploring those grant sides of things and it has been as equally, well maybe not as equally challenging as the residents have had with FEMA but it's been very challenging for us as well. We have been, you know, the rules were put in effect in 2018 for elevating utilities and it was really done for one big reason and that is under the old zoning and under most zoning in the country. A historic building is completely exempt from having to meet any of the flood requirements. So what happens is over time they flood they get put back they flood they get put back they flood they get put back. And that. So when, when the NFIP the national flood insurance program was created in 1968 the expectation was that over time, buildings would keep getting improved insurance rates would drop because buildings would become compliant. The issue is that there's one group of buildings that became compliant because they've been destroyed and another group of ones that have been continued to get fixed. So now insurance rates are going up rapidly anyone who has flood insurance knows they've been going up tremendously over the past 10 years because the national flood insurance insurance program is insolvent and they need more money. So they raised that for premium so this is going to continue to be an issue and one thing we wanted to focus on when we made recommendations in 2018 now this was a huge zoning update so not everything got talked about in detail but the main point of the change in 2018 about utilities was to address safety. And Bob mentioned this morning in our meeting that after the 1992 flood there were two fires that were the result of water into electrical systems. And then afterwards they resulted in structure fires. So we really don't water and electricity don't mix. We had a number of issues where people could either potentially been electrocuted or there've been, you know, issues in other parts of the country. You go down into your basement and you've got electrical panel that submerged. So really that's that is number one primarily a health and safety concern we understand it's going to cost money but that one had to go up. And then the other second piece is the furnaces and that really comes down to our two of our three biggest floods happened in November and March, and we've had close calls with other ice jams. And ice jam in the winter is really, you know, going to flood a lot of furnaces. And so the goal was to move them out so since 2018. We have had a number of people come in for permits to replace furnaces, and they were required to elevate them and they moved them to their first floor, or they put in heat pumps and they put them on the exterior of their buildings. All of the elevated utilities. We did not have anyone who had an elevated utility that got them damaged in this flood. There were some people who elevated their utilities in 1992, even though they didn't have to. And they came back and told us how thankful they were the fact that they still had electricity and didn't have any issues. So it really is a health and safety and it was, it's, it's a good policy objective for us to have understanding that there is going to be a cost associated with that. That's kind of a separate piece. So I look at it as, you know, what do we want to do and then figure out how we're going to get there. And, you know, as you know, in the non flood times, people come in, they get permits they figure it out and they build it into their project that they're already working on. So major floods present a unique situation because we now have we there are 375 buildings in our flood hazard area. Not every one of them had basement flooding but probably 350 of them did. So that's a lot of things in the basement that got flooded. And so there's going to be a lot of demand to try to move these things up. We've already said, the requirement to complete this is December of next year. So we know there's going to take time for people to get there. We're going to work with people. We are also Josh and I looking for money. And when we went to Vermont emergency management and tried to talk to them about the grant programs. Some of the funding mechanisms don't work. For example, if we want to get FEMA funds to help raise the utilities, we can do that. But you can't fix only part of a building. So if we give you money to elevate your utility, you also must elevate your house and fill in your basement. They won't partially fix your house. You either go all the way or you don't. Now your insurance money will tell you the exact opposite. But the HMGP money and the FMA money and these other sources that we're looking at are telling us, you know, so your insurance says, we'll give you the money to put it back. And we say, okay, well, we want money to help them elevate it. Well, we can give you money to elevate it. But you'll also have to elevate everything else and fill in the basement. So obviously that source of funding doesn't work. So we are continuing in our office to make phone calls make these connections to try to go and get different sources of funding. We're trying to look at perhaps lovely timers on our lights are us maybe USDA or some of those types of funding those would be more loans. But we have in the past, the city has done a number of grant programs in the past, it works well for smaller amounts of money to loan money at a 0%. So let's say I don't I don't know what your costs were carry, but maybe it's 15 or $20,000. We loan you $15 or $20,000 at 0% we put it as a mortgage on your property you don't have to pay us we don't have to track it as the city as a monthly payment. When you sell your house, we get that money back. And it's it's one way that we do a lot of our housing programs in that way to help homeowners we used to have a home preservation housing preservation grant program that worked in that way. I can't afford to fix my roof great we'll give you 10 grand replace your roof will put a mortgage on your property pay us when you sell your house we used to have a program that did that. So we could come up with a program like that again does it doesn't force people but for people who can't afford it. It's an option for a way that it goes on as a mortgage, but we're still looking at all possibilities to see if we can get funding but it has been hard. And it's. I guess I'll leave it at that when we get to the, to the buyouts and the substantial damage homes I'll also have another set of examples that kind of go into the same same bucket of things of municipalities talking to FEMA and what they can help us with so I'll leave it at that and take more questions on the elevation of utilities. And then we'll go because I think your question will be relevant. Yeah, thank you Mike I really appreciate all that is really helpful to hear that update I think that this is the kind of information that would be great for all of us who are dealing with this right now to be hearing not through this particular venue because you know very few people are listening to this right now, but individual communication a letter sent to all of us who live in these zones saying here's what we're working on. We don't have some of the possibilities we don't know about them yet but I mean we're, you know, I, my family is in a position where we, we're not. We have resources, compared to a lot of people and yet we are still completely overwhelmed, and don't know how we're going to manage all this people who have less than we do literally can't even think about it. And so to know that, oh there's a possibility for funding for maybe coming down the road or there's this that you might be able to apply for would be so so helpful to know about that and, and then to go back to something we were talking about before where we're talking about kind of what happens next time to have all the information available next time. So to make sure that people aren't taken by surprise that these are the requirements that they're going to be facing to make sure that people know that. So the, so the funding sources that you're exploring now. Once you have those set up to make sure that there's, you know, a list of those things and that people can know and that it's on the website so I can just go on the Montpelier website and I can see what resources are available to me as someone who lives in a flood risk part of Montpelier and I'm not really interested in having my house bought out by the federal government and demolished, because that would mean I have to leave Montpelier and I don't want to do that. So what are my other options it would be great to be able to have information like that on the website so I'm just saying add that to your list of things to put there in the future and to proactively communicate to people even if you don't have all the answers. Put in a letter and send it out to people or put it in the email or put it on front porch forum, so that we know these are the kinds of things that are being explored. Thanks Gary, Tim. Mike also the question we've talked about single home programs, do you know of any that are available for people that have multi family properties, or commercial properties. Yeah, we're looking we're looking at the whole, the whole gambit because we know the, the one. And I did send to Bill and I think he sent out a little bit of what I see as the little bit of the plan for where I think we should try to go for the city for resiliency and a lot of the downtown ones are the block style buildings to commercial ones that are downtown that downtown, those are really going to need to be flood group, most likely, we did get some positive news from Vermont emergency management, they're willing to, they're going to do the grant application for us for what's called a scoping block study. And that's going to look at each individual building. If we get funded each individual building would get an assessment that would go through and say okay what you know what do we have to do to, you know, city hall, you know, what do we have to do to where what do we have to do. Yep. Yeah, he any block yeah whatever whatever it is, they would go building by building and do an evaluation that would say, here are the flood proofing things that would need to happen because you know, obviously you look across the city hall, you can't jack up all those connected block buildings that's just not realistic. So we're going to have to look at things like floodgates and other other ways of seeing how does the water get in and how can we prevent it from getting in. And the example I used for anyone who isn't aware. The best example that we have a floodgates is the old Chittenden bank building now the MNT bank that's over on State Street. That building if you look carefully at the front and the back door you will see the floodgate channels. And when it floods when there's a prediction of flooding they come in they drop the gates in and they lock them down. And no water got in there was only a little bit of water they just had to dry out the carpets right next to the doors were a little bit of water seeped in, and they were ready to go ready to open. So these floodgates there are these technologies that work, but we have to individually have to individually tailored for each building because a wood frame building and a brick building are going to react differently to those flood flood waters. So that's that doesn't give you an answer right now, but at least we have somebody who's looking who would be looking at flood proofing. But that doesn't that doesn't answer necessarily the question of what do we do about the furnaces will be trying to hook on to district heat. We have said in the office. December of next year, we recognize in certain instances we're going to be pushing that forward. Now FEMA has told us, we're only allowed to give six month temporary way, you know, permits you can't let them go more than six months we just said, that's just not realistic. So it's got to be at least a year, and we'll put it to December of next year and if we get the December of next year and you know, as long as we're all making, you know, positive effort to continue to to make resolution to the problem. Then that's what we'll do, you know, we'll put another extension on it. And, you know, my staff will, you know, take the whatever abuse for for giving that waiver on that. Now it isn't a requirement of the NFIP so they can only beat us up so much. It is a city requirement to move it up, but we do. We do take it seriously we do want to go and get these all these up because we do want to have eventually at some point that when these floods happen. We aren't getting these things flooded because they're not there anymore. And that's that's kind of the goal. Mike, what does a person do. So, you know it's good if we can get extensions but does someone have to pay to sort of get their thing working now and then then move it. It's all. So it's the best thing you can do is if you have any questions email audra brown a brown at Montpelier hyphen vt.org she can give you all of the answers because some in some cases we we have conversations with people are like I can't believe I've got to move it up. I just want to fix it. It's like well if it can be fixed. It can be fixed in place if it needs to be replaced it must be moved upstairs so there's you know there are a lot of subtle differences. And the best thing on any project. I don't care if you if you're thinking about building a deck or if you're looking at replacing your windows. You know if you call us or email us we will give you a free reply that will say yep me need a permit, or no you don't. We much rather see people email us with questions like that of do I do I need to get a permit how would this work. Can I get an extension. Then we would say yeah we would you know we would work with you and in some cases it might be. I would need to do X amount of work in order to make this work on the second floor. Maybe we put a new gas boiler in the basement that's eventually going to get moved to the first floor, because the big oil furnace won't work anymore, but we're going to switch over to an LP, because it's smaller. We can't move it to the first floor yet, but we'll work on that next year. Great. Well, we're here to go and work out how this is going to happen. It's just a matter of emailing Audra and she will get you back and writing and the big thing about emailing is, we get lots and lots and lots and lots of requests. And so we're never going to remember every single person situation so when we get emails we get a record of it, and you get a record of it so you have something to refer back to afterwards and that's why we really prefer people to email, because it helps us to be able to get information out and you can review it and if you've got another question that comes back to us we can re-review what we wrote you earlier to go through and say, oh, that's right, this is that situation that we had to resolve. So emails the best, ask any questions, that's why we're here. We don't charge anything to answer any questions so it's free. I can ask you this offline but do you have any sense of how many homes are actually have to replace vertices. I don't have that number yet we've been trying to work on on getting more of that information more of the numbers more of the stuff because we need to apply for grants that's our thing we want to be able to apply for grants we need the information. We sent out a couple of requests and we didn't get much back on what people were charging for stuff or the costs because we need to know how many people were damaged and what is the average cost to move up a furnace. And then you multiply those two numbers and you get how much money we would need to apply for for a grant so we need we do need that number and if people have it. We have estimates of how many people got their basements flooded, but we don't know definitively how many of those could be repaired. How many of them could be replaced because somebody's basement may flood because they didn't have a backflow preventer on their sewer so their basement flooded but their neighbors didn't. So I can't make an assumption because you know Carrie's basement flooded that meant her neighbor's basement flooded may not necessarily be the case in some instances. In some cases we can know pretty clearly everybody on Elm Street from spring down. They got water into their first floors, so they got completely flooded, so we can make certain assumptions but we can't in other places. Yeah. It's a lot of people and it's not that many people. I think you could, you could start making the phone calls, you could start going door to door. One of the things in the group that I was part of in the meeting last night we were talking about financing and the need to get a good understanding of what the damage actually is and we know which neighborhoods were affected. I think I have seen some of the sort of the calls to let us know what kind of damage you sustained and I, and it. That's not a lot of people aren't going to respond to that, but if you were to simply ask a lot of people did you lose your furnace. People tell you yes or no and I don't think it should be that hard to find out if that's something that you that you need in order to apply for grant money. The other thing is to let people know those of us who are right now having people come to our house to give us estimates on how much it's going to cost to get our furnace replaced will be great to know that there might be some source of funding for that. And so it's all part of the same communication task and so I guess I just encourage you to, to not just sort of put out there. Tell us what kind of damage you sustained, but to actually go and ask people. I mean we know the neighborhoods where we're flooding happened I can tell you. I mean if you want me to canvas the people on St. Paul Street, I can do that. And maybe there are other city counselors or other city staff, they can do similar kind of work it's it's not that mysterious and I think it's really important to understand. I bet we would all go door to door that's all the members of the council would go door to door if that's what it took just with it with a survey instrument to say. Yeah. Lauren. Yeah, I don't at all. This is a really important discussion I did just get a note from a may who is our next agenda item that she can only be on for 10 more minutes so I just wanted to know if I know that we're just we're having this discussion if we were going to move on to another topic in a minute maybe we could put that on pause and come back to it. So we could hear from a may briefly when it's when it's the right moment but just wanted to let folks know she's just got 10 more minutes as the kind of one of the lead organizers of that event that we're going to have to make a decision about tonight. Okay, why not. This might be a good time to suspend this discussion and come back to it. Thanks Lauren. We have under, we have our next item is other business and and the only other business that I'm aware of that we need to talk about tonight is a proposal to do. We have a benefit concert up at the country club road property and build you want to kick it off or start right with a man. Well I can just give you the big broad overview obviously we had this event, everyone, the flood event. We're trying to provide support in whatever ways possible, and I'm a and her group are trying to come up with a benefit concert to raise funds for flood relief and as the conversation we're having indicates those funds are definitely needed so I think people want a successful event. That is proposed to be at the Elks Club which of course we've never held that sort of event there and so city officials we want every and I believe event organizers everyone wants a successful event. And we're trying to work through this at a pretty short time frame. Additionally, we were hearing reports of a larger event and so anyway, I'll let her explain her event. You've received I think copies of the correspondence so you know, some of the issues at hand. And we're looking for some direction again we don't even really have a permit process for the use of this property because it's new to us and I think it's really just us granting permission for it to be used under whatever condition so I think I outlined that as you can prove it you can deny it you can approve you can say, get it all worked out and come back to us you can say we'll approve it conditionally and let the manager sign off if anything satisfy you can do those are kind of your range of choices. But more, you should hear from her because they've got a great idea. Well, thank you. Hi everybody this is a green hopefully you can hear me okay. Actually over in Maine this evening. Yeah, so hopefully you've had a chance to look at the proposal that was sent a few weeks ago that really breaks down who all is involved. What we're proposing is Saturday, September 9 at the old else club. We're looking at event hours of three to seven. So this is a massive collaboration really between the state of Vermont. My production company, another production company Montpelier alive, very partnership and very development to raise money to, you know, give to the Montpelier strong fund and also the very community relief fund. And really be for those two funds. So it's really nice collaboration. It's been, as I said a few weeks in the making, we do have a final bill of musicians who everyone, everyone involved is donating their time to try to put this together so the bill would be. We have the Ray Vega quintet. Dwight Nicole and then Dave Keller looking at MC. The proposal breaks out the details around the fundraiser. It will be ticketed, you know, should this be approved. We've we've got a ticketing platform lined up through seven days to sell tickets. We are as of today actually as of yesterday, Katie, and I decided that we would not be inviting or having any alcohol vendors on site, which takes turns it into a completely different component. Certainly makes it a lot easier and lots of different ways, as I'm sure you all know so we will not be inviting alcohol vendors on site, but we are expecting to have two to four food vendors there. We will be contracting with Green Mountain concert services to provide us with security detail, and also assist with checking people in, you know, scanning their tickets and making sure they've paid. Portalettes that's also another contracted services, and then certainly last but not least is the sound and stage, which will be contracted by Magnum PA. The thought through over the past couple of weeks by email leading up to this meeting is ensuring that all emergency services needed are there on on site and so I think, I think the biggest, the way I see it sort of the biggest ask is, you know, what's going to help from the Montpelier Police Department, of course, and, and from the fire to have presence on site for that feedback we received was, it may be wise to actually contact Washington County Sheriff to help assist with traffic off of route to up to the site itself as as I'm sure you all know where the site is. You know, it's a it's a two way road, but we want to make sure that traffic is is coming off cleanly and going back on cleanly. We will have a pool large army of volunteers helping with parking. Our intent with parking is to use the the lots that are allowed. And then if there's any overflow needed depending on the number of tickets we sell. Our proposal would be to park up off of any area where the schools or the rec department are using the fields. I think at this date, you know, we're looking at August 23 now. You know, so we're, you know, basically, little over two weeks out here. So, you know, should should we go on sale let's take it sometime later this week. I don't expect it to be wonderful if we got tickets sales over 500 but I don't expect we're going to have more than 500 people in attendance at this late date with it. And let's see, what else, what else have I not covered we are staging for a, another on site meeting this Friday at two. And certainly I think a great way to kind of hammer through, you know, the, the proposal here online via zoom and things by email and whatnot would be to finalize it in person. I don't think there's going to be an event anyway in terms of finalizing the actual event site map, which would really, you know, provide a visual for everybody as to, you know, where the stage is going to be where the parking is going to be where the food vendors are going to be the in the out, you know, where, you know, emergency services would be would be parked or stationed that kind of thing so I'm just trying to see here I'm just scanning this quickly to see if there's anything I've missed. And I'm sure I was reviewing everything I think one last piece, which is in the proposal as well as that the, the gentleman doing the sound and the stage will be bringing in the generator so we will not be obviously pulling any electricity from from the old building there but all the power would be coming from his generator so we've secured that and I guess that that would be that would be my proposal in a nutshell hopefully I've covered everything and I'm, I'm, I'm completely open to whatever questions concerns and appreciate, appreciate the opportunity to present this to you. Thanks so many. I think I would love to see this happen. And I want to make sure we get everything addressed so that we can make it happen. I see you I want to start with members of the council but I'm not ignoring you. Gary. Thank you. This sounds like a great event. I really appreciate you pulling together something that's going to benefit the community and it's fantastic thank you. I have two questions. One is when I look at who the beneficiaries are this it looks like it's, it's really businesses, who are the beneficiaries, and I am, I'm going to keep beating the drum for the homeowners the renters and the residents of Montpelier who are. I think there's a common misperception that FEMA has all of us covered and it really does not. So I'm wondering if there's, if there's any thought to benefiting just individual people not businesses. Well, I just give you my second question that you can answer both of them and I'll shut up. My second question is, I see reference to this being the governor's benefit for the flood relief and I want to know what role the governor has in this. Sure. So. No, no, thank you. I actually meant to cover that I believe it's mentioned in the proposal. So I'll start start with your second question. So, one of the event organizers is Connor Kennedy, and he is liaisoning with different members of the Congresswoman's and the senator and the governor's office actually have representatives there speaking throughout the day. So another component of the event is they'll be an emcee and in between set breaks. He will be providing either representatives or either the congresswoman and varying senators themselves coming and potentially even the governor to speak so to answer that question. So that's that piece. The second, your first question. I, one of my hats that I wear as I'm the executive director of barrier area development we launched the berry community relief fund around the same time that you guys were reinvigorating and relaunching the strong fund. I don't know the details of the strong fund. I can tell you the berry community relief fund is for residents and businesses. The money that go into that fund are granted out to residents and businesses so I don't know what Montpelier wants to and I can't speak to any of that I can just address from that, you know from that hat on my head if you will. The partnership the collaboration when Katie and I first started talking about it just sort of a no brainer like let's help these two communities we work in and do this thing will feel good for the community after all this and come together and it just made a ton of sense to do it in our capital and but you know when it comes to other areas you may want to how you I can't speak to that piece I can only address the the berry community relief fund piece. Thanks. Any questions other questions or comments from members of the council. At this point. Jump right to you. How much will you be charging for tickets and what's your contingency plan in case of raid. Great. Identify yourself before we that went from Montpelier resident. Oh, great questions. So the ticket sales will be 35 for adults and 12 for children 12 and under. And the stage is covered by a tent and we're securing a large tent to put actually in front of the stage. So that if it does rain, there will be places for people to stand. So that's that's also a part of the, the the event. Thanks. Any other questions from members of the council or maybe go back to to bill. Oh, chief gallons. Yes, thank you. I appreciate your efforts and I plan. I think there's a meeting there to Friday at two, which I plan to. Yeah, and I plan to attend that meeting but a couple of questions. There's going to be a limit of tickets sold. Will we will you limit the amount of people up there. Obviously we have some big concerns. There's one way in and one way out of that venue. There's one narrow road that gets in and out. So that's one question I have. And I'll give you my second question. I know that there's going to be no vendors selling alcohol. So will your security staff be checking for alcohol coming in? Similar. I know you're, you're, you're from with Barry. Similar to like at Thunder Road where every bag coming in is checked for alcohol. Yeah, yeah, so great questions. So in terms of the ticket limit. I apologize for coming back with a question, but I'm not familiar with Montpelier's, you know, event tiers in terms of venue site and how many per, you know, based upon the venue site. But, you know, we were initially talking about a much larger crowd up there a few weeks back, given some potential musicians that could have been on the bill that changed. The time has passed. And I think realistically doing events for years myself, you know, if we're looking at two weeks out, like I said earlier, if we sell 500 tickets that'll be wonderful. So hopefully that answers your first question. I don't expect there to be more than 500 people coming and going from that from that one in and in and out entrance. So in terms of the alcohol check, yes. So at the entrance, Queen Mountain Concert Service is one of their contracted jobs will be to yes check backs and they'll have their little scanners there they'll be scanning people's tickets on their phones some people have printed out copies and and you know they'll be a check of the bag. That you know I'd like you would go to any event and you see them, them they're doing that so hopefully that answers your, your second question was there a third as well chief. And I'm sorry, I should have let you know I was I'm the fire chief. So, I apologize for that but I will be there. I will be there on Friday at two o'clock so. Okay. Great that's fantastic and I don't know is is is the PD chief is able to join us as well or is I'm not sure if he's on here. The deputy is. Okay, sorry. Well, I also see Kevin Malone. Can we let Deputy Chief Malone. Yeah, please, please do. Yes. So I want to echo chief gallons concerns I'm sorry, Kevin Malone with them up here please. The one of the major concerns is the one way and one way out. I don't want to beat that drum too loudly but if an emergency arises, and people are evacuating that area quickly. So I don't think that's going to be our time sending emergency personnel up. And then my next question would be. It sounds like you're asking for all of like my pillar emergency services and this is benefiting both Barry and my pillar, has Barry been asked to, to match what, what my pillars bring into the table. No, but we certainly can. Given where it's where it's being proposed to be held. I don't know what your requirements are in terms of number of vehicles number of emergency vehicles for something like this. You know, would you, you know, at the road, are you envisioning, you know, one one officer flagging cars in and out. I mean I've been up there a bunch of times, and I do completely here and want to completely validate your concern I've run events for years and the last thing you want is any kind of emergency situation where cars can't get. You know when you're trying to send something up and you can't, you can't get in. You know as in any emergency situation cars would be needing to pull off that's what people do and there's an ambulance or what not going through. You know we're going to have Green Mountain concert services part of their detail is to be up and down that road as well. And we're going to be mapping this all out on Friday as well so that they will be there they cannot, given their insurance or liability I'm not quite sure what it is but they can actually be on the road flagging. They do have a flagging company they work with. And so that is something we could look into certainly if you'd like, and, you know, have additional flagging additional flagging operation out there at the road. But I guess I wasn't imagining, but please tell me what what's best, more than one ambulance on site just to be there, or and one more than one or two, you know, cruisers. But, you know, if we want to have that be a combination of both, you know, the city of Montpelier and the city of Barry and the town of Barry, I'm happy to make that outreach to Barry town and city. If that's if that's what's preferred. Well, my, my concern is, is, you know, as you can imagine earlier in our discussions, our budgets are are being pretty well scrutinized. And I get that this event is happening in Montpelier, but the benefit of this event is going community, you know, community lines. It would be certainly easier for our department to absorb a smaller cost than it would be to to fund additional overtime. And, and then I'll, I'll the proceeds go to other communities as well. You know, if I think, you know, to put it plainly I think they should have some skin in this game too. Sure. No, I appreciate this feedback and I think that's a very completely reasonable request. You know, I guess I need you to tell me, you know, with this event as we're describing it with a number of people were kind of expecting, you know, would you normally have two cruises on site and if that's the case, you know, would we would be, would we want one from Barry and one from you know, are we wanting more than one ambulance probably not and we were, you know, thinking I don't do need to have a fire truck there is a more they're going to be kind of, you know, I can't speak for the fire department, but a crowd of 500 or even if I got to 1000 would overwhelm one officer and one cruiser and in a hurry. You know, I, you know, typically when we get to a large crowd, we call the state police we have, you know, in place for, you know, for a mass incident so, and I don't, I don't know that that's, we've really had the time to flush it out I don't, I haven't seen a safety plan so this all seems pretty quick. Can I jump in here and I know we have to count some members of their hands up but I wanted to respond to a question you've had a couple times in May and that is, this is all uncharted territory for us at this site. So, you know, we don't know what to expect there either we haven't never had an event like that we've, you know, we, I think have a good sense of how things work on the State House lawn we have a good sense for how things work at from our college lawn, even if our lives do good fest which is huge. You know, it's on their property they take a lot of responsibility for it and not that you're not taking responsibility but, you know, we, we know what we need and we, we plan, you know, for a year and advanced to make sure we have the resources. We're in a little bit in the dark to as far as the tears because this is, you know, it's a site that could hold the land itself could hold a lot of people the cars, the traffic and stuff can't but the potential for people there. Without some sort of limit or you know is it's tough to predict that you know. So, I'm, you're asking us like what are our expectations and what I think what what you're hearing for us is not that we don't want this to be successful is that we really don't know what's happening. At this site because it's it's brand new. And I completely understand and I think the whole, the whole thing is a is a huge great example of, you know, collaboration and teamwork and and trying to create something for our communities. And I think all these questions are wonderful. I, I am more than happy to, I think, if I can get a gauge, because I'm not. You know, back to back to you chief I like I'm not. I'm sorry officer I forgot your last name but I don't know like a crowd of 1000 people would you normally have, you know, three police officers there for police officers there because we can certainly call the sheriff's office, you know, in Washington County, and there's no discussion with them if you would normally bring them in or we're happy to collaborate with that piece. If you, you know, want Barry involved, absolutely, I can't see why they wouldn't be able to send one or two and absolutely share the cost share the cost of, you know, that that over time as you said, with another with, you know, with the other community benefiting from this so I would strongly suggest whoever can possibly come to this site visit on Friday be there. Some of the, some of the stuff really could I think be more easily talked through in person on the, on the grounds itself. Really mapping things out and our plan was to meet there anyway and finalize what the event map would look like and where everything would be going. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah, I may if you could. It would be great if you could send out ahead of time maybe tomorrow. Just a layout map of what you're planning of where vendors are going to be where the stage is going to be. So we could take a look at that. And it doesn't have to be anything elaborate just a simple piece of, you know, one, a napkin, lay it out so so we can get an idea of what's going to happen. So we can start thinking about how we're going to protect those folks who are coming to the event. We're going to be sitting on the lawn. So we have an idea where they're at so we can start thinking about that. Do we need to bring in barricades what do we need to do to protect folks. So if you could do that. I had a Friday that would be really, really good. Thank you. Okay, looking back to council members carry. Yeah, thank you. So this, this kind of the discussion that's happening right now, this level of detail and going back and forth with the police department, the fire department this feels like the kind of thing that city council should not be dealing with this is not our business. And so, I am not sure what we're being asked for from here it seems like you're all are working at your plans in a city council meeting which I'm not super comfortable with. We need to take kind of the higher level of you so what do you need from city council tonight. If I can I can respond to that carry. Basically, you need permission to use the site. Because it's the city owns the site. It's not normally a public vendor now in in, you know, everyone's got good intentions here normally that there would be a much longer lead time. And all of this would have been worked out and you would have gotten a request for site and we would have all signed off on it. And it would have described how it was all going to go and you just would have said yes or no. And I think that we were trying to get there honestly, before this meeting we just weren't able to put it all together so that's where you're at. And I think that's where I mean you all have to figure out what you want to do with that. Thanks bill salve and Donna. I had a similar concern I would just add to it that with with just 500 people anticipated I just wonder if it if it makes sense as an event I mean if you're talking about 2000 people the revenue versus cost makes seems to make sense I wonder. I don't have any numbers in front of me I imagine that would be part of your planning. It strikes me that at 500 people it. It's a lot of effort. I mean it make it will make people feel good and we all need that but I don't know that the revenue side is, you know, is promising. Well we've raised sponsorships to pay for all the contracted services so every ticket sold will be going to the two funds. So obviously until we know what the total number of tickets are I don't know what that dollar figure will be. But certainly of course you know the you know these things as we all know these types of events. I just want to add that we're at a 6 months plus to plan properly. So this is we're coming out from a different angle for a different purpose and I guess maybe a different mission. Thanks, Donna. Well, I think that I would I would I am making a motion that the council approved their use of the property, as long as our public safety personnel and city manager can sign off on it. And that's where they should just deal with their details. But I would like to have support for the motion to let them advance and see if they can work out all the details. That's why I'm making the motion to approve use of the property. Second. OK, there's a second and Lauren, by coincidence, you just had your hand up next. I did. And I was I was going in the same direction, I think. I mean, I'm so grateful for the team pulling this together. It is short notice because it is a benefit trying to react to a crisis. And I think, you know, normally when there is more time and all of the teas are crossed and eyes are dotted, then we would be really differential to our city staff on, you know, is everything going to be safe for the community? Can, you know, are all the logistics worked out? And so I would I just think that Donna's motion that we're approving use of the land, you know, with Bill giving final approval to that all of our kind of safety departments and everything have signed off on the final plan with the organizers of the events. I like hearing that. One of the things that I like that I think we should be clear on if we adopt this resolution or this motion is that, you know, who wants to say no, we don't we're not going to approve this positive event that's going to make people happy and is going to raise some thousands of dollars for flood relief. But I think we need to be clear that if the public safety and our city manager do not think it's a safe thing, then as a council, we're fully endorsing their decision because we repose our trust in them. Month in and month out. And so nobody but us on the council should feel like they're being heavy if if we can't get to a plan that can be approved. Is there any other up, Helen? Yeah, thank you. With former events, we used to have more detailed information to approve. So this one, I don't feel comfortable say yes or no, because we don't have all the details. And during the presentation and it was mentioned that usually it takes like six months to plan this kind of events and we have not that long time. So I will go with the group decision, but I have some concerns that it is a little bit immature, I think, for the council to say yes or no, without knowing all the details. Thank you. Thanks, Chief. Yeah, I mean, we are going to want definitely on Friday, if not before, a plan for the day of the event. If, you know, if we get to a point where we're at and we'll have to decide and I'll have to speak with the city manager, a certain number of people in the parking lot is full and the grass is covered. How are we going to stop people from coming in? Is there, you know, I could foresee this, you know, you know, we had 300 people of 350 people at the state house last night. How many, you know, we're going to get to a point where this could overwhelm us, overwhelm public safety, overwhelm the parking lot, overwhelm the driveway. Well, I'm going to want to see a plan from you to when do we stop people coming into this? I think we simply propose a ticket cap and and we, you know, all the tickets go on sale online, we put a cap on it. And so I think that cap number can probably be decided by Friday with a site visit, certainly with with the police, with yourself, with anyone needing, needing to make the safety plan final. You know, you go up there if you decide 500 is I think we need to see it. And we can cap that certainly and and sales and and we're not selling at the door. There's no selling at the door. So scanning happens lower down. And that would be a part of the logistics we need to figure out. But we can cap that. And I completely hear where you're coming from. The last thing I think any of the organizers want is this sprawling thing up the golf course with cars everywhere. We're not envisioning that. And, you know, it's a celebration with, you know, people at the gubernatorial level talking about experience and, you know, musicians singing and people eating food and families getting together. And let's keep it manageable. Let's absolutely keep it safe and something that everybody has a wonderful time at. For sure, for sure. Yeah, so I will definitely get you a sketch of the map and then we can finalize that on Friday, I think, but I can send you what's going to be, you know, just a PDF of the map later tomorrow. Hey, thank you. OK, any other discussion before we move to vote on the motion? Pailin. Yeah, one more thing. Why don't we use other places we know very well? Why does it have to be on the country club or land? Because we know other places, right? So we are sure what we could do. So why are we discussing the specific land? I that was proposed initially several weeks back, given the layout in the space, national life is not available. That was already exhausted. And discussions relative to using the state house lawn haven't really come into the picture, given the amount of work happening in that location currently, of course, with with with the recovery. So hopefully hopefully that answers your question. But in terms of Montpelier, those were kind of the three areas where it seemed like, OK, we could do this and have people, you know, and park people safely, etc. We wanted and it was almost immediate decision from the very beginning that this should be done in the capital, you know, but to benefit both Barry and Montpelier. There are certainly places in Barry. Barry is not the capital. Montpelier is the capital. So that's sort of that was the reasoning. Yeah, thank you. Thanks. Are we ready to vote? If so, all those signify by saying in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? No. OK, we'll have a roll call. Bate. Yes. Brown. Aye. Alphano. No. No. Tim, you're still here. Yeah, I'm still here. Oh, I said yes. OK, sorry, I didn't hear you. I was too soft, sorry. Cohn. No. And Hurl. Yes. OK, so the vote is four to three reported to and and it passes. And thank you for coming to us with this and I wish you good luck with your with your planning and negotiation or discussions with the with city officials on Friday. And thank you for the opportunity to present. And I look forward to meeting with everybody on Friday. Thank you. Thanks for coming by now. Bye bye. Can I just say a word before you leave? Oh, certainly. If for some reason it doesn't work out, then maybe you can do it at another time. So just keep that in consideration, please. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. OK, thank you. Now we are we're at eight forty. We usually take our break at eight thirty. And so we don't have much left on our agenda. Should we take a break and then get back to it or just a power through? We can continue. How much are people going to talk through? Sometimes we can be really lengthy at the end of our meeting. Let's take our break through it. Let's go. OK. Well, the question really is the biggest question in my mind is how much more do we have to cut cut back to the flood recovery discussion? And if we have more to talk about there, because that's what's going to take up the time. And we're Mike, we had you talking and I don't know if we have it. If you had anything more that you were planning on covering? Yeah, I did want to comment briefly on there had been some discussion of the buyouts and some of the work. Really, what I have been focused on for most of the past six weeks. And I did want to just kind of brief the council on that. So I'll try to keep it try to keep it brief. So a lot of the efforts that I took while Josh has been doing a lot of the grant research was to try to address those most heavily impacted by this flood. So our we have one requirement that we have to do as a part of the planning and the permits. And that's to do what is called a substantial determination estimation. And so that's one part of it. And it's related to this. So what we need to do is to look for properties that have been substantially damaged, more than 50 percent of the building has been damaged as a result of the flood. Those 50 percent of the building value, if your building is worth two hundred thousand dollars, did you get more than a hundred thousand dollars in damage? And so we needed to identify those buildings. Again, as I mentioned earlier, historic properties are exempt from a number of things, including this. So we were looking for things that didn't qualify as historic. They may be old, but if they're not on the historic register, they're not historic. So we had to look through the properties that were had water into their first floor. That's pretty much if you got water in your basement, you're not substantially damaged. If you got water into your first floor, then you are potentially substantially damaged. So we had to go out and evaluate the three hundred and seventy five properties. And that's what we did. We we went through, did a review, eliminated all the historic properties. And we went to the remaining one hundred properties that are not historic. And we had to do an evaluation of each and every one of those buildings. And we narrowed the list down and we started working with folks. And these were the most heavily damaged folks. So we created a list. There were maybe 10, 10 or so properties that fit that bill of substantially damaged. Now, what's what's important about substantially damaged is according to NFIP, according to the way the flood rules work is a substantially damaged building has two choices, you either must demolish your building or you must elevate the building. So I had to meet with a lot of people and have a lot of really hard conversations in people's what's left of people's living rooms to go and tell them these are the two choices that you have as a result of the position that you're in. So it's already really hard. I have no money to offer them. I only have to offer them. These are your choices that you have. So a lot of my time has been spent. We created a small listserv and I've been trying to give them weekly updates. We have expanded that list to include what we call significantly damaged buildings. So those are historic buildings that are very close by. So some state street, lower state street. After Bailey, before you get to the cemetery, there's a group of about eight buildings. The first one didn't get flooded. The second one got flooding in the basement. The rest of them got flooded. They may not all be substantially damaged, but many of them were. One or two of them are historic. It's not really fair to go and tell them, well, we're not talking to you because you're not substantially damaged. You're significantly damaged. So the historic property has the legal right to simply, other than elevating their furnace and electric panel, they could put everything back and move back and that's their right. Everybody else doesn't have that right. So we've created listservs. We're doing a lot of outreach. We've started to get estimates because we really wanted to as quickly as possible. These these folks really need to figure out their many of them are homeless. They're or living a family, they're, you know, they're paired up, working, living with family, most of them founded places. But we really wanted to help them identify funding for them. First, they were my priority to try to find out how we can get them funding so we can get their buildings elevated because all of them had flood insurance, but flood insurance only covers fixing the building. It doesn't cover elevating the building. So they needed and we brought in Messier and we brought in. Well, actually, only Messier has shown up to to to look at all these properties. He's given estimates for elevating. We met with Vermont emergency management. I met personally with the folks from Waterbury to learn as much as I could about building elevations. LaMoyle County Planning Commission met with, talked with their senior planner as well to try to learn as much as I could because we really needed to find out about elevating buildings because they really have two choices, buyouts or elevating buildings and all of them want to keep their homes. And so my goal was to try to find out how we could get money to help them keep their homes and the lessons that I learned from all of these places from Waterbury in LaMoyle County and from Vermont emergency management is FEMA money is really designed to buy out properties. And once FEMA buys out a property, it is perpetually green space. You can't go back later and put new housing on it that's elevated. If FEMA buys it, it's perpetually green space. So and the rules are really stacked against elevating buildings that are historic. And this is where a slight definite difference in definition of historic comes in because under the federal rules, if it's older than 50 years, it's eligible. We don't in our zoning rules use eligible. We say if you're on the historic register, you're historic. You're not a historic register. You're not because we want to have black and white rules. And if I pay FEMA has eligibility. So that means there's all these questions that come in. But once it's an older building, so, for example, Waterbury had 10 properties that wanted to be elevated after Irene. In the end, only one building managed to get through the elevation process using federal money. And that one property was not historic. And that's why it got through the other nine could not get through. Some of which were demolished, some of which were simply rebuilt and left right where they were. And we do know of at least one of them that reflooded again last month. So it's really disappointing. As a result of that, I put a lot of effort working with Bill to go through and reach out to our legislative delegation. Federal money is not going to be how we help these folks, unless it comes through a something, an earmark or something like that, it's going to be extremely difficult. The FEMA money would be very difficult to use. Community development block grant money is extremely difficult to use. In these situations. So really what we need is the state to step up and help reallocate some funds. And the numbers I've been trying to give to our legislative delegation at the state is that ballpark numbers about $200,000 per house to elevate it. Might be a little more for some, a little less for others. And we have about 10 buildings. So we need between $1.5 and $2 million. And that would help save 18 units of housing. So that's what I'm trying to do, get $2 million, save one, you know, let's for round numbers, call it $1.8 million for 18 units. So it would be about $100,000 per unit to help these get elevated, to help homeowners keep their houses that they already own. Some of these are quad-plex rentals. There's one quad-plex rental. There's a duplex in there. There's a house which has an accessory apartment. So there are a number of a mix of units that are in there. It's not just State Street. We also have some on Elm Street that are also in that same area. We have a group of them that are in this category that really need assistance. So I've reached out to our delegation. They're going to try to get special funding for Montpelier to help these folks out. And our hope is to get this money. So that way we could be able to get some elevations or some foundations forward, the buildings elevating, get some foundations forward. Then the homeowners can use their insurance checks to fix the buildings. We would only be paying to elevate the building. We don't know if this is going to work. I haven't been able to make, you know, I can't make any promises. I don't make any promises because it's, you know, it's it's up to the whim of a lot of other people, but that's where a majority of the effort has been going at this point is to try to make sure we've got make sure these these most impacted people have been covered that they have places to go. It's been really hard because, you know, some of them have families with kids go into high school and they're like, you know, this is great. I mean, I can live over there, but, you know, with, you know, my parents or my brother or whatever, but how do I get my kid to keep going to high school? Which is a couple of towns away. This this doesn't work for people who have kids going to school in the next couple of weeks. So we've been really trying to work very hard to do to answer as many of their questions. Same questions some of you have. Can I fix my house and elevate it later? You know, all those types of questions, those are the questions we've been trying to work through with getting some contractors, getting some information and really working to try to get these folks and we're trying to expand the list. But most of what we're looking at from an area, if you're trying to understand what area we're looking at, the heaviest hit area in Montpelier was that area in State Street all the way actually down to almost to the creamy stand Toy Town, the last few buildings were just had flooding in the basement. The old Toy Town Motel is probably the last of the heavily significantly damaged buildings in that stretch. Elm Street from. State to Spring and Main Street from Barry to the roundabout. Those are all areas where we had water in the first floor. So those are the areas that we've been trying to categorize into two places. Are you significantly damaged? Are you substantially damaged? If you're substantially damaged, then we have to have a really hard conversation and we've had all of those conversations. We're still reaching out to some of the substantially damaged to try to also find out in some cases they might sell their property to somebody else who might say, I'm willing to buy it and fix it. And so we're trying to really work with people to decide where they're at. We can't make the decision for them. If they want to pursue a buyout, they can pursue a buyout. If they want to pursue elevation, they can pursue elevation. If you're substantially damaged, though, you have to pick one or the other. And we're going to try to help homeowners, whichever they pick, we will help them accomplish it. And that's that's where most of my effort has been over the past couple of weeks is really trying to focus on on that on that group to try to get them as settled as we can. And I certainly understand we haven't maybe been putting enough effort as well to to the others. We we put different damage into different buckets. And like business community, Montpelier alive doing a great job will let them take care of that bucket. We need to take care of the commercial property owners with flooding into the first floor. We haven't gotten there yet. And then we have this group and then we've got the last group, which is the biggest group, which is a group of people who had the flooding in the basements and the other the other damage that is no less. You know, which which is not as difficult for them to deal with at their level. But we we will be continuing to try to get more and more to grow our circle and get more information out. And we probably haven't been doing enough to get to that last group with all the information that that they need to get. We've been relying on Michelle working with the contractors to try to get as much of that information out. But I'll work with Evelyn to try to do a better job of rolling out more information to about the basements and how to deal with elevating the utilities and all those other pieces. But I did know Bill wanted me to have a conversation or at least mention what we've been doing about those those groups of people, those 10 to 15 hardest hit people. And right now, I think our is our demolition list is relatively small. We're we've got Casela's looking at them demolishing a building. We have two vacant buildings that were flooded that we're looking to demolish. But we don't have a lot. We don't have. I don't know of any buyouts right now. That are FEMA buyouts. But that may change over time as people learn more about their insurance and FEMA benefits decisions. So I'll leave it at that. So, Mike, you're talking of FEMA and it sounds as though there's a push and pull with FEMA where FEMA really resists the elevation and they're really by their bias is really in favor of of the buyout and demolish option. And do you get anywhere with them when you say, well, you know, look, we already have a critical housing shortage in Montpelier. And the last thing we want to do is demolish buildings that are and could be providing homes for people. Yeah, my so I haven't been working directly with FEMA. What I've been working with is Vermont Emergency Management and working with and talking with everybody else who has worked with FEMA and their experiences of working with FEMA. And Josh has been looking through the the numbers and in the books. And it tends to track with what we've heard from other people, which is that by and large, the system, unless you're not, you know, if you're a historic or eligible for historic, it's extremely difficult to elevate. And it's very hard to find examples of ones that have happened. So. And that was from Vermont Emergency Management saying that it's just really hard to go and get those. It's less from FEMA. But your example of it's of losing and we're in a critical housing shortage. That is the message we are trying to give to the legislative committee. So when I talked about a hundred thousand dollars to save a building and 1.8 million to save 18 units. When the state passes a budget and they go through and look at it, they are basically allocating about four hundred thousand dollars to create one new housing unit. So, you know, if you have 20 housing units, that's eight million dollars. And we're looking at, well, if we round it up to 20 housing units, we'd be talking about two million dollars. So we can save 18 units for two million dollars or we could take two million dollars of federal money, demolish those buildings, and then spend eight million dollars of state money to replace those units. And you can just look at it and say, this doesn't make any sense. But the way the state rules are working, the Housing and Conservation Board is not interested in helping us elevate. That's not what the program is for. They've got a program to build new housing units. Well, I mean, it doesn't make sense. So we reach out to ACCD, they give us kind of the same thing. This is where we're at. We don't have money that helps you do that. We have money to help you build new units. But I can save four times the number of units for the same amount of money. And so logic only gets you so far. But we've we have given this information and the numbers are, you know, the dollars and cents just make sense. And so I think our legislative delegation gets it and they are going to be moving this forward. It does require, you know, an act of the legislature to to make a change to the money that was allocated. So either they need to change the rules for the money that was allocated or they need to find new money to give to us to help in this situation. And so that's it's in their hands right now to figure out how that's going to play out, that's between the legislature and the governor to sort out which route. And we hope our hope is that we get something that falls in there, that gives us the ability to go and work with these, as we said, eight, ten individual buildings to help them get elevated. But we're not just counting on them. We are exploring other options to go and see if maybe a partner like Down Street, a couple of these buildings are old. Maybe they would be interested in having their building demolished and sold to Down Street to get, you know, if we can't get this money, maybe we can get new money by demolishing the building and then building a new building in its place because we have money for new buildings. So all right, we have to bulldoze the existing building to get money to build the new building so we would be spending four hundred thousand dollars to build a new building where the where the old building was. Again, the money doesn't make sense, but at the same time it could help these folks stay where they are. So we continue to look at a lot of different options because we don't we don't have all the answers yet. And there are a lot of programs out there. And that's I guess that is about the answer to the question, I guess. Thanks, Mike, I think you've just given me the line for my tombstone logically gets you so far. Any other comments or questions from members of the council? Donna, it was really great to get that information. It's another one of those things at some point the public needs to know about, so think about how you can condense it. We I mean, like we said, most of what we've been doing is it's it's been hard because we don't have answers. You don't want to tell half a story and just leave it there. We keep waiting to get that thing that says, you know, now we know how we can help, so now we can tell the story that says here's how it started. Here was the middle and here's how it ended. And we just keep hoping we can kind of get that what's the end going to be? We know it's going to take some time, but let's hope we can find a happy ending to the story. Lauren. Yeah, thanks, Mike, really helpful to understand what you're doing and really important work. I mean, I'm wondering if our little lobbying committee might want to get together sooner rather than later. I can think of, you know, a handful of ideas to try to push on some key legislators for I mean, this seems like a no brainer. The board could probably approve this. They redirected some money to go to flood relief efforts already. So we have to be able to even make a pitch before the legislature reconvenes. So anyway, it would be happy to strategize. And maybe our council, a lobbying committee could could help you. Great idea. I was just talking to our lobbyists last night and making plans to meet. So, yeah. Great. So so I don't mean to cut my golf. But a couple of so I just want to go over quickly. A couple of things I want to talk just briefly about city hall, just briefly about FEMA, but it was one thing I want to make sure that is clear for you. This is sort of in the public needs to know thing. I see Kurt is still on. But in the in the flood hours, we've talked a lot about what happened with the hub, what happened with communications, what happened with the police, fire, moving dispatch and lost in that story. I think was what DPW did and the way they protected. And I, you know, I say this because I've known bits and pieces of this. And this morning we were sort of debriefing what went well and what didn't occur in his quiet way, just kind of outlined some of the things that had happened. And I was like, people need to know this. So I asked him to put together an outline and I know Kurt is brief. So if you would indulge him and I'm sure he doesn't want to do this. But I really think DPW deserves to get recognized because a lot happened in those 24 to 48 hours that saved a lot of property. Yeah, I think people should know this. So with that, I'd like to have Kurt talk a little bit. OK, thanks, Bill. Kurt Modica, Public Works Director. So yeah, this morning, like Bill said, we were sort of debriefing on flood flood items and just wanted to point out for council and the public, the work that our crews did to really sort of protect the infrastructure during the flood event. So just a few examples, you know, of things that our staff did during the flood is Berlin Hill was washing out the culvert at the bottom of Cedar Lane plugged during the flood and, you know, staff brought equipment up there, restored the hills really were sort of the focus of our staff during the flood event, you know, in the downtown things very quickly were getting under water. And at that point, you know, there's really not much we could do. But on the hilly sections of town where water picks up a lot of velocity and becomes erosive, the pavement, like I said, on Berlin Hill is actually starting to unravel. They were able to get up there, open that culvert up and restore drainage. There are similar locations all over town. Hill Street was another example where the drainage systems were backing up. They were able to get there and save the pavement. As a just another note before the event started, our street supervisor has a list of locations that that are either a system set up to protect from flooding or are prone to, you know, backing up during flood events. So one of those is at the top of Tappan Street City years ago, constructed sort of a small retention structure up there. Made sure that was all clean. And that was another area that even after the preemptively cleaning it before the flood, it did still catch debris and we had to open that up again. Again, Tappan is one of the steeper streets in town to protect that from from getting damaged. So there's a lot of areas like that. You know, the park or where the frog pond is in Hubbard Park. You know, again, a lot of drainage structures up there. The city actually did a pretty big project up there ahead of the flood. A lot of checked dams, small retention structures that, you know, I think we really made a big difference in the damage to that neighborhood. So in addition to during the during the flood, I also just wanted to mention a few things that we did from the last flood event, infrastructure upgrades that also helped the city during this event. Some major culverts that were replaced after Irene. There's one on Town Hill near Leapfrog Hollow. That was upsized, that flooded out in Irene. No damage on that. The Berry Street culvert near Laine reconstructed to withstand the 100 year flood after Irene. Again, no damage there. We actually had a request from a resident to inspect that in about a month before Irene and we met with the stream alteration engineer. And they had some recommendations just to kind of clean things up. We hadn't gotten to it yet. But regardless of that, that system completely held up very well. And then there was a number of other areas of Bliss Road, where we did a lot of culvert work out by Cody Chevrolet. There was a culvert replaced. That one wasn't didn't hold up perfectly, but it was because of an easement issue, we couldn't do all the work that we wanted to do there. So there was a lot of things done prior to the flood to protect infrastructure. And it was very successful. And a lot of things during done during the flood by our staff that really helped minimize the damage in town. So just wanted a shout out for the crews of DPW out there all night long at the pouring rain, the Spring Street Bridge. We pulled debris out with the backhoe as it started to back up and build up against the side of the bridge. So, you know, just that they were doing heroic work out there. And just want to shout out to the staff that was that was really helping to protect the city. This is great to hear, Kurt, Carrie. Yeah, thank you so much. I'm so glad you were you outlined all that and explained all of that. I think there I have heard people saying, where was the city in those those first few days? And I'm like, there's an answer to that question. You just gave a lot of the answer. And it's it's it's easy for people to say, oh, look at all these problems that happened and how bad things were and they don't necessarily know how much worse things would have been if you hadn't been doing all of that work that you were doing behind the scenes and without us knowing. And so thank you so much for doing that. It could have been so much worse. And I know that you all were tireless, literally out there slogging through the mind and doing that. And I really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Donna. Yes. And I'd like you to talk a little bit about the wastewater treatment plant. There was some work done out there. Yes. So our chief operator, he actually volunteered to spend the night at the treatment plant because he was just concerned about, you know, maintaining the infrastructure there. So really the wastewater plant was was safe. So I guess first post Irene, there was a lot of work done. We had some flooding there was actually flooded through a manhole on the pipe that goes to the river on the treated wastewater that goes to the river. The effluent it backed up through that came up through a manhole in the facility and flooded the whole lower level. Post Irene, there's actually a submarine door installed to prevent floodwater from entering the main admin building. And then during the last upgrade, we went, worked with planning to elevate all electrical equipment that we could to get our permit to do our work. And and so all those areas were elevated. And this event, we actually did not get significant water into the facility. But what we did get is a massive amount of flow. So the the flow, I think, got up to 10 million gallons per day. Our average is about 1.8 million gallons. So I was in contact with with Chris during the event. And at a certain point, we got scared that the the disinfection system, which is ultraviolet lights that are in the channel as the water is kind of the last part of treatment, it disinfects the effluent as it leaves the plant. We made a decision to pull that equipment up out of the channels because the water was moving so fast that it was in danger of dislodging the system from the racks that they hang from. The other thing that we did was pull the screen up out of the channel where the wastewater first comes into the plant. There's a trash screen sort of collects the garbage and everything. Again, because the flow of moving so fast, those things, those treatment processes that are actually in the flow line are at risk of damage. And so by having staff there and moving those things out, we didn't sustain any damage on those. The damage that we did get, not really damage, but the impact to the plant was that all of the sort of sediment within the collection system washed down into the plant. And there's a series of settlement tanks as part of the treatment process. And those all got sort of filled up with silt. And during the during, well, immediately after the flood, that silt was sort of getting through the system and all the pumps that moved the wastewater around where I'm getting seized up full of silt. We had to keep pulling those apart and fixing them. And now we have to go through and clean all of those tanks. We have to drain them all down one at a time. They're all redundant systems. So you drain one, clean it, drain the other one, clean it. So there's still a lot of work to do there. We've started on that process. But, you know, it was protected primarily through the elevation of the Dog River Road, the wastewater plants, one of the lowest places in the city, but because the Dog River Road sits up so high along the river, it sort of creates a natural dam. And that's one of the projects Mike's looking at is potentially even elevating that through a grant program and collaboration with the state to provide further protection from the plant because the wastewater plant is our most expensive asset in the city. I think the value is somewhere close to 80 million dollars. So it's very important to maintain that. Obviously, for the environment, it's critical to maintain operations there. Kurt, correct me if I get details of this wrong, but one of the other things for those that aren't aware, the wastewater plant is a biological process and has, you know, the bacteria, the bugs, they call them that actually eat the germs and things. And am I right? The bugs got washed out, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I forgot about that. Right. Again, because of the high flows, there's vector treatment in the in the aeration tanks that have air, sort of the give oxygen to the bugs. Those wash right out of the plant and the next day. And that does impact the treatment process because, you know, the bugs eat the organics, the food and the waste. So we got a hold of South Burlington, I believe it's South Burlington. And they the next day we trucked in three loads of bugs and were back up and running. So it was a very quick turnaround. And then thank you, Bill. I forgot about that piece. I liked the whole idea of trucking in the bugs. I just thought it was great. So thanks. We have South Burlington's bugs in our tanks now. So we appreciate they also came by the way and sent a sweeper to the day after the flood. So we had City of South Burlington vehicles and employees down here helping us clean up. So thanks for that. I really wanted people to understand that because it was a little bit of a untold story. And I think the other untold story, perhaps, is the whole story of the hub. You know, again, to the point of what was the city doing that the hub was staffed by the Parks Department, that was really 100 percent a city operation led by a volunteer Peter Walker and certainly assisted very ably by Montpelier alive and we are an emergency team, the mayor, Montpelier alive. Those who we were meeting every day, 11, that was our coordinating point for what people needed. And we were, you know, they would tell us we'd call the state to get supplies. But, you know, I'm not trying to take any credit away from Montpelier alive, but it's really important that was preplanned before the flood that we would work with them on volunteers. We'd already lined up the Parks Department. They brought in the entire Parks Department. Another key piece about this is the M Y C C people that were people saw running around. Those are summer employees, the city, so they aren't just volunteers. And we had one person complain that the city hadn't done anything at all to help them. And in fact, the day after the flood, city employees are to clean out their basement, these M Y C C people. So it was just kind of, you know, and I think that's fine. It says M Y C C doesn't say city, Montpelier, I get it. But I think people just don't realize everything the city was doing. Michelle out inspecting all the buildings, the police, everything DPW did. So I'm really proud of our team, that's for sure. And then the rest of our group was moving whole city hall operation over to that, over to the senior center. So that was going on about city. So let's talk a little bit quickly about FEMA just moving on. We met with we had our first call with them in terms of not just helping not the parts that you've all heard about the aid to people, but just our own processing for the city's operations. And we have a we're meeting with them, I think, on Monday, Monday or Tuesday to fill out all our forms, kind of go over and make sure they have all our information, so they take every bit of our damages and then they turn them all into individual projects. So for example, after the May 2011 flood, we had 75 individual FEMA projects was just fixing a drain, fixing the damage, they'll get listed that way. So we will be sorting all of those out. And then next Thursday, we're meeting for fairly substantial time to go through all the work. So then we'll get a sense of exactly what's covered, what we can do, what we can start and we're expecting after. And so questions are going to be asking. We believe that a FEMA recovery officer is covered by FEMA. Flood recovery officers are covered by to some extent by FEMA funding. So we want to confirm that so we can bring somebody on to do that work to kind of help us navigate the whole FEMA thing. And I was actually as I was listening to Mike talk, it may be that, you know, that's kind of person that could help outreach to some, you know, some of these buildings and provide some of that assistance and knowledge we'll have to see. And then obviously, we're going to get going on our city hall project. So we once we get the go ahead, we're going to release our P to get architectural services to help us start planning for what goes where and all of that. Like everyone else, we'll be elevating our utilities, probably to the back of what was the council chambers and looking at how to renovate the basement into different configurations. So that is really the single biggest project we have. There is some work to be done at the fire station and some work to be done at the police station and a few other smaller project pump stations like that, but our single biggest recovery project is city hall. So those are the things that their city staff is working on. One final thing I have on this list for me and certainly plenty more for you is city committees. We have a lot of city committees and obviously it's important that they keep doing work, but they are also staffed and many of our staff are pretty tapped out. So I think one of our questions was, you know, how you all feel if some of them get suspended or not. Or have any thoughts about that or if we I mean, I think it's important to provide staff support for most committees. Maybe they maybe give them the choice, but one day at least raise the issue because we added the comfortable single handedly just saying no more committee. So there are committees, your committees to do work on your behalf. So I just wanted to toss that up for conversation. I think I'll jump start by saying I think that the city staffing for those committees is very important because in years past, I think some of our committees were laxer than we should have been at stuff like getting the agendas posted and the minutes posted and all those things, all those city committees are subject to the Open Meetings Act and Public Records Act. So all that stuff has to be done. And that's something that volunteers really can't be expected to do. So so I think it's an important function. And I think that it's fine to let some of that not happen while the city employees are doing other work. Donna, you had, did you have your hand up? I did. Just a little different point of view that maybe you were saying the same thing, Jack, is that during the pandemic, committees also had staff have to do other things. One, we were so short of people because of everyone we had put on furlough. But I think that it's not the staff that's doing the minutes. It's not the city staff that's doing the posting. And our committees have matured a lot with the records request and open meeting law. And if they run into a snag, they should be able to go to somebody. But I think we should just have the staff talk to each committee and see how maybe this touch base once a quarter or something just to, you know, keep them on track might be helpful. But I think we have to face reality. They still don't have enough time. Tim. My reaction was just still being relatively new at this is how many committees we have. It's a really large number, right? Do we have like your executive committee, Jack, that maybe could review if we have some key critical committees we want to staff that we need to staff to keep going? We could could do that. And then maybe some of the less the committees that aren't as active or not as critical could could take a break. We don't have an executive committee, but it's true. We have a lot of committees and and that means we have a lot of staff, staff time doing it. And Bill and I didn't think about this before the tonight's meeting, but we could come up with a list of all the committees because we had it, because we go through every year and make appointments to the committees. So then that might be a good start. Ellen. Yeah, thank you. I understand it's a kind of emergency, right? We have to put all our resources for recovery, but at the same time, we should decide if this suspension or, let me say, getting rid of the committees is that permanent or temporary one? We're only talking about temporary just temporary. OK, if it is temporary, then if we can tell committee chairs how long we are planning to have this model, then probably they will find a way to do what they are doing by themselves. If they say, oh, no, we can't, then for a temporary time, they don't have their meetings. But I think it is important to have these committees. Maybe some of them are not functioning better than us. But it's a real public engaging with the city. And it is important. Lauren. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, I mean, I generally agree with the approach of, you know, putting it on the chairs and to the committees, like letting them know short staffing, here's the responsibilities. You know, are you either take a break for some set amount of time, even like revisit in a couple months? The only caveat I'm thinking about is, you know, out of this huge public process that we've been going through, there were a lot of like projects and initiatives identified that could be things that these committees could be like ripe entities for picking up and moving forward some community priorities. So that might change somewhat like a committee that's maybe been a little quieter lately might actually have this like new energy to it. So we might want to, you know, maybe we staff strategically where there's something that there's like a really active that is kind of an emergency response initiative where we can actually get the benefit of these volunteers that have already raised their hand for the community. So that might be the only caveat I'd put in is if it's like really meeting a kind of urgent timely city needs, then putting the staffing in those places as opposed to across the board. Any care? Yeah, I think it's reasonable for some committees maybe to take a little break of a certain amount of time, but but I'm reluctant to say that committees should just I mean, I guess I'm I'm I'm sort of sensing this idea that the committee's work is not seen as particularly important and it's expendable. And so if we have to prioritize what we're going to do, then let's drop off the committees and and if that's true about any committees, then separate from what's going on with the flood, we need to look at that. So if if the city council decides to create a committee, I think it's because we thought it was important work that needed to be done, regardless of what else is going on in the city. And if we have too many committees and we're stretched too thin, then we should really kind of look at that. And I'm definitely open to that idea. But I think each individual committee should be thinking about do we need to keep meeting right now? Can we take a break? Can we meet less often? What, you know, how does our work fit into the overall priorities of the city? But to just kind of say a blanket, oh, staff is too busy for committees, kind of gives me the sense that committees are being viewed as like extra work on top of the real work that the staff has to do. And if that's if that's really the case, then that's a bigger underlying issue that we need to address. So I just want to say I appreciate that comment and know that is the case. But I'll keep going. OK, good. I'm glad to hear that. So the committees that I'm on, there is one of them where we're definitely getting the message from the staff that we shouldn't meet at all anymore, because it's just too much, you know, it's not necessary and it's too much work and we shouldn't do it. There's another one where it it feels like it's kind of fallen down on the staff's priority list. And then there's another one that that is the opposite of that. That's just going great guns. And so I don't know if that depends on the staff member who's assigned to it or what. But I guess I think I would put it or turn it back to the chairs of the committees and say, OK, recognizing that staff is very taxed right now. Is there work that you can continue to do without staff or maybe with the very minimum input of staff to just make sure that meetings are warned and that kind of stuff, or maybe you can talk to your staff person and not meet for the next month or the next two months or something like that. But but but I don't think that we as City Council can say anything about what all committees should do here. I appreciate that. And actually, this is this feedback is helpful for me to address the concerns of an race. And I think you're right, Kerry, that, you know, different staff are carrying different loads in the flood response. And so some, I think, are feeling really overwhelmed because of the particular roles they have. And so they may be not or as other people, you know, I mean, committee work is policy work, and that's your we're here to support that. And so that's, you know, that is your work and that's what we're here for. So I well, I went here from Don, but I think my approach after this conversation is to go back, look at the committees, talk to the individual staff members, and if there's one or two instances and try to work with that with the chair or, you know, come back to report to you all. But I I appreciate what you're all saying. And I guess I've been on a lot of committees without a staff and not every committee has a staff assigned to it and totally functional. And when you need a resource or you need their expertise, you call them in. So many committees do not depend on staff. And I think we can get by. We got by in doing the pandemic without as much staff support for some of the committees here because of time. So I think our committees are so full of competent people. I just feel they can function very well. It's not to take away their value at all. In fact, it's putting more value and more responsibility. It's true, but I think by and large, they can handle it, but it always comes down to the conversation with the committee chair, the committee itself, with the staff that's now working with them. Great. Thank you, Bill. Thank you for that feedback. So that's basically my list about flood, unless there's anything else anybody else wants to talk about. It's just kind of all flood all the time. Yeah, we're going to have a lot of other stuff to talk about. I don't think we need to. I don't think we need to say it all tonight because we'll be saying it night after night after night. I don't want to cut anyone off, though, if they have anything that really is, you know, Donna, you're muted now. Sorry, Donna, you're still muted. My comment, I thought you're like closing the meeting, but I'll save mine for my council report. Oh, yeah, I wasn't closing the meeting. OK, but that does bring us to council reports. So let's start with you. Luckily, all my committees took August off. But really, the community meetings have been great. I do wish people had more information. It seems we've done a lot of things. It's telling Bill, the city's got to brag more about the things they have done in the infrastructure, because the public generally does not know. And when we have this newsletter, it's a great communication, but it also needs to be a way to tell people what we're doing in a maybe a little more detail to keep putting in front of the work that the staff has has done and constantly, constantly does. But my comment was I really do. Here we are, nine thirty one and no break. And I feel it's not fair that I have to miss the discussion because I have a limited bladder that you all don't have. And so I really feel we need to go back and say at eight thirty, eight fifteen, we take a break, it's human people, it's human. OK, that's all I want to say. Thank you. You're right. You're right. I should have listened. I was wrong. Yeah. Kerry. Thanks. Yeah, I just want to say that I'm I am sort of personally still immersed in so much of the flood recovery process, but that I also know that many of my neighbors and many of the other people in my district are experiencing similar things to what I'm going through. And so I am very interested in hearing from folks about what their experiences are and what kind of resources they need and what kind of just in general needs they have, they're not being met. And I'm going to hopefully be trying to to do some of my own research and reaching out to people to find that out, but I also would encourage people to reach out to me and and share that with me and so that we can have a stronger voice about what is needed for support going forward. Thanks, Harry. Sal. I will echo what Donna said about the city doing a little more bragging. You know, it was great today to to hear detail on what I knew was happening. I knew things were happening behind the scenes. I didn't know the scale of it. I didn't know the detail and I heard a lot of folks around town talking about how the city just didn't show up and it's just I mean, it's great. It's great to have this now. So I can I can sort of, you know, with some authority answer those questions. But we really need to tell this tell a better story. And, you know, Evelyn's been doing a great job. I just think we need to get as much information about the kind of planning that we did, the things that that were on the checklist that got done only because they were on the checklist. It would have been so much worse, as many of us have said earlier tonight, had the city not been, you know, been active and proactive about it. But but so many people in town just just don't think of it that way. That's not what they see. They, you know, they seem on Piliar alive, who did a marvelous job, but they were in the forefront and and the city really took a backseat. And I understand that, you know, humility can pay off. But in this case, I really think we need to blow our horn a little bit more. But certainly thanks for all that effort. And it's still, you know, it's still ongoing and people still don't know. I did. You'll see if you get your bridge today. My my art is about some of that as much as I could sit in. I mean, you know, it's kind of it's a simple little thing. But, you know, it was my pillar alive gave us the tense and all the tense and my pillar alive and I think so. It's just one of the, you know, we don't have tents. So we appreciate it. And, you know, Katie was certainly there and working with them. I mean, they would. I mean, they are basically one person and she knocked herself out. But, you know, so did the city folks. And it's just again, I want to be really careful that we're not trying to in any way take anything away from our pillar alive when we talk about this. But I do think that it is also fair to say that that what happened at the hub would not have happened without the city. Well, it was a real partnership. But I think if we if we presented that way, people understand that way. Right now, a lot of people don't don't consider it that way. We need hats or t-shirts or something. Tim. Thanks. So it kind of feels like awful at all the time. So I want to talk about something else. But it seems like so this evening we set the property tax rate for this coming year, which it was really significant because that followed a really integrated, extensive citywide reappraisal of all the properties in town. And that's going to impact a lot of people in different ways. But all financially. We know that the tax here that just ended June 30th. We have a deficit. Hopefully, we'll know what the amount of that deficit by our next meeting. And then that's followed by this whole flood, which we know we have significant costs coming at us, but we have no idea what they are and how much we know we'll cover. Sounds like we may have a sense of that by the end of September. We're really looking at all this with really significant increases in expenses and revenues in this current year's budget now, which didn't contemplate the flood stuff at all because they couldn't. It's just feeling like we have a perfect kind of financial storm brewing. And I'm really nervous about that. And trying to take a cue from Kurt and public works, I think it really is incumbent on us as a council that we need to commit and gather and establish some priorities to start guiding this process because the budget season is going to be here immediately. And we have not had those conversations, so I hope we can all commit to doing this to help to get through it. Thanks. Thanks, Tim. Ellen. Yeah, again, I want to thank everyone, all the city staff, all the great work you have done and you are still doing. And I understand again, this is recovery time, it's emergency. So we have to use our resources in a more functional way. But also having our routines is very important to and public needs that too. So yeah, let's talk about how we can recover. Let's talk about how we can have better responses next time. I hope it doesn't happen, but it might, right? But there are so many things are happening in addition to flood recovery in our community, so we shouldn't forget those things to like senior center. There are so many things are happening. Members are not happy. We have to support them to homelessness, right? You know, I can list so many things, but I just stopped there. So I don't know what the plan is. Maybe we can come up something that, OK, some staff will work on the recovery, but some of them can also just continue the routine work so people feel that, OK, this is our community, right? At least we are going back normal, you know, faster than we imagine. So it will give, I think, great comfort and secure, security feeling to the public. Thank you. Thanks for Lauren. Hi, thanks. And apologies, I had to step away. Are we just doing council reports? Yes, we're at council reports. I have a family issue for a moment. Thank you. Yeah, no, I just, I mean, gratitude, it was really helpful to get this level of detail tonight from the city staff, as you all have said, and I think just continuing to tell these stories and sounds like on a great track for the capturing lessons learned and some of the ideas about how we create checklists and things that are going to make it, you know, even better next time. So just just gratitude to the city staff and gratitude to the community who keeps showing up in big ways for looking at the future, both kind of immediate response and, you know, visioning what kind of community we want to be, even as we all deal with the very depressing reality as we still see our devastated community. So I think it's, you know, it's both a really tragic time and a time for opportunity, so I'm just grateful so many people are showing up for those conversations. So that's it for me tonight. Thanks. Thanks, Lauren. Mayor's report, I just have a couple of things. One, you know, I I said this when I first went on the council five years ago that we had these tours of all the departments. And I was just endlessly impressed by the commitment and the dedication and the professionalism of the of the people that run and staff all of our city departments and and what they do every day to to serve our community. And I continue to, you know, when we when we see a crisis like what has hit us this year, it just makes it that that much more obvious that the quality of life that we get from in this city depends in large part on what the the great work that our city employees do. And I really praise all of them for what they do. I was going to these down at the hub. I was going to these meetings every day at 11 o'clock with Bill and Kelly and other departments heads and I never all these things came up. And I never heard a city employee say, no, we can't manage that. No, we can't do this. Whatever it was, it was a constant commitment to do whatever needed to be done to to meet the needs of the city. The the other thing that I just wanted to mention is that. We've been doing these meetings remotely and we can certainly have effective meetings remotely, but but I feel from our experience at this time and our experience during the covid time that there's great value to also being able to meet in person if we can do it. And so I had this idea today and I looked at the at the school board schedule and it turns out that the school board has their meetings, not on the same nights as as we have our meetings. And so it made me think, well, maybe we could talk to them and see if we could have our meetings temporarily at the high school on nights that they're not having their meetings. And so I'm just curious if if you all think that that's something we would like to explore, because I think it would be I think there's a little value to doing it. Thumbs up, thumbs down. Great. OK, well, Bill and I were talking about that today and we will pursue that. And that's all I've got. Next up, city clerks report. I'll pass. And city managers report. Is there anything you haven't already said? Yes, I do. Things that are not flood related. And actually they tie into some of the perfectly perfectly timed comments during council reports. So just first of all, high school. Just for those that don't realize we have done that before. In fact, the last time the elevator went out of service and we were out for several months, we met regularly at the high school and obviously worked with them. And the nice part is they also have the tech set up in the library. It's handicapped, accessible. So assuming they'll have it. So the reason we didn't do that immediately after the flood was that they were closed to they got flooded and so they weren't letting people in. So it wasn't an option for us. And so when the mayor mentioned it, we'll be happy to follow up with them schools opening so there shouldn't be any issues with that kind of thing. So that's good. The plan is as per what some of you have said is starting at our next meeting to get back to some of our backlog of business that has, you know, we've necessarily set aside, I'm sure we can keep a flood update item on the agenda. But for example, we'd actually for tonight had planned to have the council workshop about the Country Club Road project. Remember that? And so that we don't completely forget that our plan is to have that at the next meeting. We've got a couple of items, other items that have been getting pushed off. So try to get back to normal so you can expect some more normal meetings. And I think to again, the point that a couple of you made, I think Tim, in particular, are the December, September 27th meeting, the second meeting is supposed to be our strategic planning meeting. So that is and I think, you know, probably was already going to be interesting with three new people and you may and all this. So for now, we have this huge, you know, huge flood. So I think getting our priorities in order agreed upon, laid out our work plan and dealing with some of our issues will be really important. Working on getting a facilitator for that meeting just so we can have, you know, the mayor and I or whoever doesn't don't have to manage the meeting, we can all participate and do that. And that's that's worked well in the past. And then the following meeting would have actually been the follow up strategic planning meeting and that actually, correctly speaking, starting to talk about budget preview. So it's it's timely that we get back to that. And particularly under the circumstances, we really need to sort out all our pieces and see where we're at. So just laying the groundwork that we too are of the same mind as you that. So that's that's where we're going. That's all I had. Yeah, I was lying. OK, I think we are set then and we can be in adjournment at nine forty six p.m. Thank you all. Thank you. See you next time.