 I'm not going to be able to take up anything else in five minutes, so I don't want to start the other. So what you're saying is that we should end early. Well that'd be good too. And really make no motions whatsoever. Oh I'm saying ten o'clock. That's my prediction. Really sorry. But there it is. And we're going to, I should probably say 9 to 30 so I could be wrong. What you're doing now? So Glenn moved to combine the executive session and Jack seconded. That was 16 to 18 in favor. I was at 7.08. And then there was no general business. So where do I find what you're? I mean is it on the website? Do you have the binder John? What's that? Do you have the binder? It's supposed to be the binder and the liquor license. Okay. It is 7.15. So we're going to come back from our break. Timing is perfect. 10 minutes before I saw the clock. Mayor and the president were out. Okay so we are back from our break and we are going to start with some potential changes to the zoning. Yes. So I am Mike Miller. I'm the planning director for the city. And so we had a brief introduction to this two meetings ago on what are the zoning fixes. So in 2018 we went through and passed new zoning for the city and we realized soon after that we had a couple of small and some larger issues that had kind of come up. And so the staff assembled a repair list of about 100 changes that needed to go through but there were two sections that were of particular interest that really impacted projects and a number of potential projects that could happen. So we wanted to kind of expedite an interim change, an emergency zoning change that would just go through and address two issues, steep slopes, and landscaping and screening requirements. So what you have before you tonight for consideration, this is a public hearing so we will take public comment, is to review the strikeout copy changes for section 3007 and 3203. And so these are designed to be interim changes and we will be soon after going through the full adoption process to include those two sets of changes with the other 80 or so sets of changes. So this only requires one hearing so the council does have the option if they chose tonight to adopt the interim changes or we can have another public hearing so that just give you an idea of the process. Last time I kind of went through some of the more detailed pieces. I can give a general update to each of the two sections. It's up to you how much information you guys want me to go back over again. Section 3007 is steep slopes and the issue that came up here was we had no regulations impacting steep slopes before 2018. So we did not regulate steep slopes at all. In the 2018 rules that were added there was a prohibition on development of 30% slopes which seemed to make sense except that as we started to use that rule we noticed they come up in small amounts in a lot of places. And it was impacting a number of projects that we felt were good projects. We reviewed and went through and made a proposal that you have before you that the changes are kind of embedded into figure 3-08 and 3-09 where we revised some of the hearing thresholds and disturbance thresholds for who needs to get permits and when a hearing would be required but most importantly for this we removed the prohibition on development for 30% slopes and simply said that all development that affects 30% slopes will require hearing and all development that impacts 30% slopes would require an engineering plan. In that way the purposes of the steep slopes section are to make sure that we're protecting public safety and property and we're minimizing the potential for erosion and we felt these two changes would maintain that. Any questions about these potential changes? Lauren. One question I had had was if there was a benefit to adding some indication in maybe language 1-14 just indicating that the goal is to avoid developing on greater than 30% slopes just because this goes from a standard of prohibition which clearly was the policy goal to allowing it and there's no language that's indicating that we don't really want you to develop there but if it's unavoidable and otherwise a good project you could get approval with a good engineering plan whereas this just says just do an engineering plan and there's no motivation to try to avoid developing steep slopes so I was wondering if you had thought or if there was an easy way to do that or that opens a whole can of worms that's not easily resolved. Well I did think about that after our discussion and a couple other people have made that or a comment similar to that. So options to limit impact I kind of came up with three one of which is kind of a wait-and-see we could pass these changes and evaluate we already said there were no regulations before 2017 this 2018 is 100% prohibition and this is kind of bringing it back a little bit we can see how that goes. The second option would be to cap the amount of development allowed on figure 3-09 so if we were to and these are just example numbers if we had a disturbance no more than 4,000 square feet requires a hearing then we could say but at development can't be more than 12,000 square feet. So basically put an outside boundary on what could happen so maybe it would be 12,000 square feet is the maximum disturbance at all for 15%, 9,000, 6,000, 3,000. I just multiplied each one of those by three but you could there's no nothing behind that other than just adding some outside boundary could be larger could be smaller that's another way of doing it. A third way that I thought of would be to add language as you propose which might say something like where other viable locations exist that are less steep on a parcel the applicant should or shall utilize those locations first to the maximum extent feasible some language we could insert. So those were the three kind of potential ways I saw maybe addressing those types of concerns that put a boundary. Do you have any further thoughts on that? I mean do you have a preference? If not, that's fine. I mean I would probably prefer the last just in terms of sending a signal that we want to avoid that when you can but you still have a process to go through if it's unavoidable and have the whole process to ways that a good project that should be approved. What do you what do you think about that Mike? I mean if we because I mean I know these were you know the Planning Commission agreed to these changes if we further modify them I mean one one thought well I would love to if that's if that's a change to what's written here. Then you know I'd love to hear from members of the Planning Commission see if you agree or think that's fine and you know one possibility actually one of the things that I could use actually a little bit of clarity on is were you hoping that we open a public hearing tonight on this? Yes it is a public hearing. So when we have this public hearing we could also be adopting these tonight as interim zoning bylaws and then what's the can you explain again the process of like how we move from these being interim to fully adopted? So the Planning Commission has already started their warning process for the permanent adoption. Their first hearing will be April 8th. So April 8th will be the Planning Commission's first public hearing where they'll take testimony on all the changes most of which are relatively minor these are the bigger ones. And then they would they could at that time move it forward assuming they don't need to make other changes but they could then move that when they're ready they will make a motion to move it to City Council for your consideration you guys have to have at least two public hearings. Those need 30 days notice so as we start adding these timelines out it may be May or June my hope is to have this all wrapped up by the end of June. And I recall that you know there's something about there's this overlap time you know that there's a certain amount of time during which both sets of bylaws apply and it does that apply to the interim? It doesn't apply to the interim and applies to the permanent adoption. Okay great thank you. So if we could go back to a second to Lauren so what was it that can you just reiterate what you had hoped the change might be? Well I think the language that Mike proposed to add something in the language I think somewhere in 1-14 indicating that you know to the extent that the project can avoid the steep slopes if feasible that the project would do so and otherwise you would trigger this engineering plan and then go through the process. Fair enough thoughts from the Planning Commission on that? That's what Mike mentioned this is something we discussed and we didn't have voting on it but it was something we had discussed so we've already thought about it. What comes to my mind is so for the steeper slopes we'll be hearing and we want to make sure the DRB has something that it can apply on some kind of standard. Feasible seems pretty strict to me so the Planning Commission may want to talk about because a lot of things are feasible so it still might be desirable to allow development that impacts us a little. That you know maybe doesn't mean a feasible threshold or maybe it could be done theoretically somewhere else but so it may be worth it for us to talk about a standard that can apply but I do understand what you're getting at because we have the same thoughts. We'll actually we'll be discussing later some other discussions we had some other suggestions we have concerning steep slopes where this also is a factor where we want to make sure we want to allow some more things with steep slopes. I'm going to give you a heads up about that where this will also it'll help that we have a standard for this I think so when that comes up. Yes. So that would be the kind of thing that you would continue to discuss and come back to us later of some potentially different language but not at this point. Yeah and I think you're right there is the challenge with the way this is worded because something could be a better project might be closer to the road that will have a minor impact on a steep slope that can be easily engineered and protected against erosion. But because they have farther back in their parcel a you know a flatter spot that they could put the property with a longer driveway. It may not be as good of a project but it would avoid that small impact on the slope. Fair enough. Does that does that satisfy you learn. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you Kirby. Any other comments or questions. Jack and then I want to make sure actually before you go Jack I want to make sure that I don't forget. We're going to officially open the public hearing so we'll take public comments in a minute. Yes. I just noticed a technical change that we should put in in a section three point two oh three seven a. There's a point where the phrase day. Minimus. Appears and it should be day minimis. So it should be IS rather than us. Okay. From the. Legal maximum day minimis not correct. Okay. I'm not concerned itself with rifles. Can you can you say the three point two oh three seven a. What's the letter that's after three two oh three point. Let me see. Three two oh three I. Actually in their toys but in the original it was misspelled as well. Okay. That's what I get. I'm just saying that's not a big deal. I will just make a note that that's an amenable change. Yeah. Friendly amendment there. Further questions. Any comments from the public. Hello my name is Will Schambow. I'm here in Montpelier. I'm a contractor and also a member of the development review board. And. As somebody who works. Daily interacting with the planning and zoning department and also on projects that. You know range from flat fields to slopes. This I encourage the adoption of these interim zoning. Changes. We've got multiple projects kind of on hold waiting. You know whether it's first it's one of them to small addition. Single family household nothing dramatic. We're not talking condos here. Whereas a small portion of it just do the nature of the lot and design. Like. A 50 square foot portion of this addition is tucking into a 30% slope. And. The project that they installed do that. And. I've also spoken with civil engineers who said. We can develop up to 50% slope with no problem. It's doable. So 30% is not very steep. Ultimately. The difference between say 28% and 31% is. Most of us would probably not notice that. And. So as I said I think for practical purposes. And just kind of furthering smart infill development. I encourage you to adopt these changes. Thank you. Anyone else. Hello. I too would encourage you to adopt. Yeah. I'll see you. The standard aim is. To protect structures and erosion control. You can easily be achieved by engineering plants. I'm actually a structural engineer. You can design on a hundred percent slope. I'm not suggesting you guys want to do that. But keep in mind the 30% slope. That should be 15 degrees. It's this. Right. It's not this. So I'm looking to do. A. 700 square foot two car garage addition. And. You know. $150,000 in local economy. Not a radical departure. It's an attachment to a house that's already there. And I'm probably going to have to do it. It seems a little excessive. And it seems that it's. Can. Try to. My. Strong. Recommend. Further on say. There's. The way there's that the way the regulation. The. Safety. And runoff. But what I'm hearing here is some. Aesthetic concerns. And not. Developing. For. Other than. Well. That should be addressed as such. Not. Sort of tucked into a safety. So. That's. Thank you. Other comments. Okay. I'm going to close the public hearing. No one else has thoughts or comments. Do we did we want to go over the landscaping. I haven't personally received. Comments on the landscaping. I just want to. Okay. Well I'm going to keep the public comment period open then. Let's talk about landscaping. I won't. I don't have to necessarily do have a big conversation here on. The landscaping. It's a. You were provided strikeout copies and a clean version. The reason the strikeout copy pretty much is most of it. Everything in red. But the important things were with the landscaping. It was missing a lot of administrative rules. There were no. Discussions of how we're going to handle grandfathered properties. So existing properties. A lot of the rules that were proposed. For 2018. Seem as though our consultant. We're. Kind of using rules that were designed for. New development. In a green field. As opposed to most of our projects which are redeveloped. So we really need to have a discussion and have rules that address what we do. When something doesn't meet. Existing rules. And those were the things that were missing. We needed some exemptions for certain applications. Change of views inside of the building. There were no exemptions. So we'd have to go through a full site plan process. So. This was. A somewhat. Carefully rewritten. New set of rules. We haven't seen a lot of. Comments from the folks that have reviewed it. Many comments. More people are more interested in the steep slopes. And they were. With the landscaping. I can go into more details if you want. Questions from council. Jack. I remember the last time we talked about this one. Topic that. Got people's attention was. How we would apply. Whether this would be applied and how would be applied to. Vehicle sale. Lots. I just wanted to throw with it open to ask if anyone has had any more thoughts about that, which I really haven't. I'm not advocating for any change myself. And you haven't heard anything further. I haven't. I haven't heard anything. That's a rule that. Isn't being proposed for changing. In the zoning we have today. The ones that were passed in 2018. They also had an exemption for. Parking lot landscaping. So. Does not apply to. Automobile sales. Lots. Okay. Fair enough. For the comments. Questions. Okay. He comes from the public on the landscaping. Okay. Seeing no. I'm going to close the public hearing. On that as well. So. Mike, if I'm correct, I think we are probably at the point of potentially having a motion. On. The zoning. Bylaws. Yes. Yeah. If. Anybody. Indeed. But. Anybody like to make a motion. I can make the motion. That. We adopt the interim zoning amendment. The planning commission recommends for section. Three. Oh, oh, seven. And 32. Oh, three. Second. For the comments. Okay. All in favor. Please say aye. Aye. Opposed. All right. Motion carries. Thank you. Planning commission for all your work and Mike. Sounds like this is going to be. A much needed fix. Can I ask for. Clarification on what was. Was there. The change added. That. Oh. Lauren. Oh, no, I think. That's being. Yes. So that's. That's. Okay. It was an understanding that we are, you know, we're changing. The misspelling there. Right. Jack's Jack's amendment. Okay. We're going to assume that that's fine. Okay. No. I just wanted to make sure when I go back to the planning. That's. Okay. Super. Thank you so much. Okay. It's got to be a record for the fast. So many. Yeah. You know, some limited topics. All right. So on to the audit report. Well, welcome. Let's you introduce yourselves. Everyone. My name is top for venture on the. All right. So on to the audit reports. Well, welcome. Let's you introduce yourselves. My name is top for venture on the finance director. This is. Heather Graves. In the. In the. In the. In the. In the. In the. Yeah. I like to be. And we'll be there. We have a couple of Yeah. They're talking. I have others. As well. as well. If anyone wants one, just let me know. Okay, I can hand it out to everybody so people don't use the... So other than that, just keep it brief. I'll let Teresa keep it brief. She's really reporting on us. I am an electronic copy or the paper copy going around. There's a loose paper that is the governance letter of the audit. And this is something that is to address to the city council from Father Gale, Sugali and Valley. And I'm just going to go over a little bit of that and then talk about just a couple of highlights in the audit because this is a June 32, 2018 audit on those April 1st. So these are old numbers. But still the audit needs to get done and there's certain, just some things that I wanted to go over. One of the things that happens in the audit that we like to discuss is there are certain estimates that have to be done. And the ones that we feel that are sensitive are estimates of the useful lives of the capital assets, all the assets that the city owns, which is a lot and has. So we just like to say that that's just an estimate. We don't know how long they're actually going to last. The other estimate in there is the amount of doubtful accounts that you might not receive certain receivables. Whether it's tax receivables, no receivables, there's a lot of notes in the community development fund that are 30-year notes that have been loaned to various patients and various people. So we just, you know, there's an allowance for those not being collected again. That is an estimate. We didn't encounter any significant difficulties with the audit. We got through it soon. We have a lot of help from the city and everything we asked for was provided to us. When you perform an audit there's sometimes things that don't get booked because they're not material. And these need to be addressed so you guys understand what those are. And there's two things that happened. One, a prior year receivable for the local auction tax was missed on June 30, 2017's audit. That was money that was received in probably September of 2017. That was actually for the previous year. And so instead of booking a prior period adjustment it wasn't a material amount. I don't remember the exact amount of it, but I think it was 50,000 yen. So that's not material to these numbers. And the other item that wasn't adjusted was way back with something to do with depreciation on a capital asset. And that's coming down to almost not having to even discuss that every year. Like we have been for four years. We proposed no audit adjustments. We work with Ruth during this whole process and she, what did you say? And a lot of things that kind of get discovered aren't really audit adjustments. It's usually stuff she's discovering while she's closing the books and we might still be here auditing. So that's good. The other thing I wanted to just note is that we performed a single audit which is based on the City of Montpelier received more than $750,000 of federal dollars. And when that happened you're required to have an audit and it's called a single audit and there's certain compliance requirements that needs to be done. And we had no findings. The major program was related to the Northfield Street project which the state monitors very heavily. We found no findings. The other part is the financial audit is an unqualified opinion that we did. Nothing was qualified that wasn't important with the government of that. So with that I can talk about all the numbers in here. Like I said this is definitely historical. I can go over some of them or you can ask me questions. One thing that I did want to note is the general fund unassigned fund balance was about $610,000. I think that's on track of where you guys want to be. And the other highlight is that the water fund decreased its deficit during the year by about $2,000 which is in the right direction. Those two items came to my attention when I looked back to the audit today. Again you guys are budgeting for I don't know $2,000 for me. And 19 is almost done in it. So that's the big stuff that I have. If there's anything more for you. The report does represent a tremendously tremendous amount of work. I do have to thank Ruth again this year. I wasn't expecting to thank her because I was expecting to try to sneak out but she stayed with us a little bit longer and we hope to get a little bit more out of her in some capacity. The fact that financially we're moving in the right direction and we didn't have any significant findings has major implications in terms of great eligibility when we're working with outside entities, federal agencies. So that is really good news. And Ruth and I choice as well for her efforts through all of this. For insomnia. Government accounting standards focus on improving the functionality and financial statements for easier for readers to understand. I'm not quite sure I subscribed to that. It is a lot of information. Great. I'd just like to thank our staff too. And of course Father Gelsigalli in Valley, but I think as Theresa will tell you this is I don't know how many years now in a row we've had unqualified audits and that's actually pretty rare for municipalities. So we just kind of get used to hear it every year. It sounds like a turn but actually we really have done a very good job there. I'm grateful that we don't have to be dealing with anything different. So it's really great. So thank you so much. I also point out, I'm not saying you have to do this, but the audit is really for the elected officials because it's an audit of management. So if you wanted to you could go into executive session with Theresa without staff. If you had any questions or any concerns that is your option and it's fully okay to do so. I want to check backdoor payments. Remember this next year. It would be in the letter anyway. Super. Any further questions? Yes Donna. I don't remember you coming this late. Was there a reason? Because we didn't schedule you? No, honestly kind of a series of combination. A company of errors, not errors, but just scheduling status. I don't know if it's going to come up with my personal life or if it's going to come up with her personal life. It is kind of overlapped and by the time we had a final report prepared for Theresa then I think she had two things going on. And they were starting their tax season as well. Well every year it gets more complicated. I do know what happened. The original field work date what happened is there was a hold up with the North Hill street and the allocation of the loan. That was a big thing. We had to reschedule a whole week of time. It's like a month out. We've got you scheduled now already, right? You guys are going out to bid this year because you have the new tip. We made you, but whoever it is it helps to have it just a little more timely. Because we've been buried in 2019, 2020 and we're really looking at it. Usually it's January. It's a little bit difficult because the bulk of my time is consumed by the budget during the auto process. We're building budget next year. Basically it's one person with trying to train Heather too, which takes extra time. Because I'm retiring I don't know. Some people know that. You said that last year. I know. I was supposed to be gone by now. We're glad you're still here. Basically it's a lot of work for one person which is me. I've been trying to train Heather as much as I can too for when I'm gone. Plus I've been having back issues and I don't know. A little bit of health stuff in there. One of the things that we're contemplating since we are going out to bid we're required to go out to bid every so many years is contemplating whether we do financial statements in the house. Because that is a big chunk of work that falls back on the staff internally and whether it makes more sense to have whatever audit permit it is actually prepared for the documents. Right now the bulk of financial statement preparation falls on the roof. Because I can. So if we spend more money you can get the money. We'll see what our bid proposal is coming up. I hear the money. That's another element to the audit process. There's no action that we need to take. Thank you. Further discussion? Alright thank you so much for all of your work. Okay. Todd. You can have mine back. There we go. No that's okay. Sometimes it might be useful for you to have hard copies to give out to people. Okay. Okay next up we have a tax stabilization request so with the Connor brothers welcome. And as Fred comes up I thought I'd tee this off a little bit. Those of you who remember we did Mr. Connor appear before us last year for this project and was approved for tax stabilization with the option to come back once he could if he could secure the appropriate number of employees for the building that met our standard. I know there are some people who have questions about tax stabilization policy and I'll just note that it's actually on our next agenda. So this I would urge that so I would say if we have policy issues about the policy itself just remind you know we will be going into that into great detail so if we could focus on the application of hand and I really I feel that it meets the standard and that it meets the spirit that we was approved last year with that provision to come back so I certainly wouldn't recommend approval but have at it. Fred would you like to explain the developments since the last time you were here? Sure. Could you pull the microphone up to you? Could you just pull that mic just closer to you? Thank you so much. I'm pleased to report that we have secured Central Vermont Medical Center as a tenant for our new building at one home farm way as a combination of their epic health care IT infrastructure that's being done throughout the UBM health network as well as other administrative operations and we have a letter from the hospital in support of this of level four funding pleased to be adding to the ground list and pleased to be bringing more jobs to the city. Any questions or comments for Fred? Actually so I was looking at the revised application because I know you were here last year at some point last year don't remember when. So I saw a range of $30,000 per year to $100,000 per year and I was curious what the numbers were in terms of how many jobs are going to pay on the low end and how many jobs are going to pay the $100,000. I don't have any of those numbers I just asked for a range and that's what I was given. I would just highlight for everyone on the council that the salary of $30,000 after taxes is around $2,000 a month and I am not aware of a really realistically how somebody could afford to live in Montpelier on $2,000 a month. Rent alone in this community is huge. I would like to see what that breakdown looks like understanding that you don't have that information. I don't know how the rest of the council feels. I know I've been solo on a number of these with my vote which is fine but I really feel pretty strongly that if tax stabilization is something that the city wants to do there is a way to do it and I don't know that not having the information about what those jobs are pragmatically going to pay. If it's one job that pays $100,000 a year well that's really nice for the person making $100,000 but for the people who are making $30,000 a year that's not really doing anything for them and it's probably actually making life a lot harder working for $30,000 a year because you've got the benefits cliff and then you're going to be dealing with how do I access healthcare even though you might work for CVMC. You know I'm going to have to pay for healthcare I have to pay for childcare. I have to do all of these life things that $30,000 a year ain't going to cover in this area. Jack. I agree the criterion is at least 25 new livable wage jobs and I don't think we have enough information to make that determination yet and I know you're negotiating with CVH but I would be more comfortable voting to approve this if we can show well how many jobs what the breakdown is, how many jobs really are paying what we would consider a livable wage. I consider the request meddlesome. You have a policy we meet it to the letter and we're back saying we've got good news. We're adding to the grant list and we're delivering these jobs and that's what the policy says so I don't have the ability and I think it's a little privacy issue. They're not going to obviously give you names they're probably not going to give you positions so I was asked for a range I don't know whether there's one at $30,000 and one at $100 or whether it's you know the median is something different. I know they paid very well as far as benefits go so. I think they're a good employer but I do think that the criterion includes a determination that it's their jobs at the livable wage. I was just looking at the minimum the livable wage at least as of 2018 was considered 1334 and I'm not saying that is it but that's what the state says is a livable wage. $13.34 so it's about $7,000 a year. I appreciate that's what the state says but as someone who's actually worked for minimum wage in Vermont when I first came here and the national studies where they've broken down cost of living, infrastructure needs, transportation, all of that it's I think for Montpelier it's around $22 an hour in terms of just being able to support a household here so I just I know that's what the state says I have issues with what the state says is a livable wage because I'm pretty sure the people who are making that living that what they call a livable wage probably aren't working for that. The policy doesn't say that the employees are residents of the city it just says the jobs are located within the city. But if they're getting Montpelier taxpayer money which in essence they are in terms of a tax abatement I do think that that's passing that on to Montpelier residents and I understand what you're saying I mean it says creating new jobs but we're in essence asking the Montpelier taxpayers to be funding infrastructure upgrades and developments and you know I think that people who are going to be taking these jobs should have the option to live in Montpelier if they want to and if they're not making enough to do that I don't think it's definitely not something I'm going to jump in and say it sounds like there are two issues that you're raising actually that I feel like are worth raising in our discussion next time about the policy one is do we want to have any thoughts on residency I don't know that we can do anything about that even so but then also like whose livable wage do we go by and so that's something that we can discuss next time. Yeah so I was going actually what our policy says is that it will result in increase of 25 full time equivalent jobs would pay at least a livable wage for a single person as calculated by the state of Vermont fiscal office throughout the life of the contract and the livable wage for a single person is 1334 which would be 27,000 so when we got the range we didn't ask any other questions because it met the standard in the policy and I think you're right if we want to change that standard in our policy for future applications that's certainly within the purview of the council but it was not the policy currently placed or what was in place when this happened. I would add I'm not required to finish any additional information but we're talking about double the 25 number you're at you ask us for a statement of 25 or more which is what we've given you we're talking about in the range of 50 jobs. I just want to check over here before we go back Glen. Thank you I want to say a few things and I'm going to try to say them in a reasonable order. First I make about $30,000 a year and that's as part of a dual income family in Montpelier so I can't say that it's a perfect data point. I think that jobs at $30,000 a year are a benefit to Montpelier. It would be great if they were more than that but I do think that it's a benefit. Second that said I really do sympathize with Ashley's point that we should try to do better and with Jack's point that it seems possible at least to just get a number of how many jobs at X salary versus how many jobs at another salary. I agree with Jack that that would make my decision easier. Third I agree you've met all of the requirements that you've been asked for and I really do appreciate that I think that and correct me if I'm wrong about this but I think that the council regardless of whether the requirements are met can choose to disapprove or not in any case. That's not to say that I would choose to disapprove it but I think that that's at our discretion. That's correct. And the number of years is that also at our discretion? Yes. Up to Tim. Well I'm really excited this project is happening and I'm grateful for all your contribution to increasing the grand list and helping the city thrive so I'm excited to approve this and also to have a conversation about how does this council want to frame a tax stabilization policy and let's make it something that we feel really good about and would support over time. So that's a future conversation and anyway so I would love to add that this is the fifth investment in the city that my brothers and I have made over the last 20 years constituting a lot of employees and we just firmly believe that we're playing by the rules and I think if I jump across the other side of the table it's whether you want to say you're open for business or not. We've got another job going on simultaneously right now on the Barry Montpelier Road that we're not seeking authorization for which is a project of similar scale to this one and so we're out there doing what your council goals tell people to do so I'm asking for an up or down vote tonight. I need to vote tonight because I believe I'm up against my one year deadline coincidentally. Fair enough. I'm asking for your support. We think we do what your council goals tell folks to do encourage folks to do. Is there a well option or yeah. Oh yeah sorry to write Jack. I don't think that the 1334 is a reasonable standard but I do think that it is what our policy, our policy ties it to the state's standard and I think since we're operating under the current policy I don't feel that I can say vote to disapprove it. I do think as we examine the text stabilization policy we should be looking for something more ambitious than that. Lauren. Yeah I would just echo I'm excited to dig in on how we could potentially improve the criteria in the future and you know looking at this through the lens of what the current proposal is. That's what I'll do for tonight but I'm really interested in that discussion and allow the issues raised by fellow councilors. Next time. Further questions, comments? I'll make a motion that we approve the tax stabilization award to Connor Brothers. Actually you're amending the one that you awarded last year. Okay excuse me to amend the April 2018 tax stabilization award to Connor Brothers at the Montpelier Armory LLC to level four tax stabilization benefit 50% it's the years that I have trouble with. I'd say 50% for five years. We already have 50% for seven. I thought this was an increase from seven to ten. Okay okay I just thought it was three more years great. Okay 50% for ten years. Thank you for clarifying that. Second. Okay. Further discussion? Again I'm going to be that trope and I'm okay with it but residents don't get to come to us and ask for a tax abatement like this. I appreciate what you're doing. I think what you're doing is important and I think that there are ways that as a city Montpelier can support you in that endeavor. I don't think that it's through tax policies that in essence abate half of the property taxes when residents here are struggling when property taxes go up rent goes up and we all talk a whole good game about what it means to make a city where everyone can be and we've had residents come to the council when we were talking about a nuisance ordinance who were very candid and vulnerable and put themselves out there and said we can't afford to fix our property. They're still responsible for taxes on it and we struggled as a council to figure out a budget and the increase I think was more than I know what you said you were comfortable with Mayor Watson and so I'm just highlighting that we allocated funds to create new positions and to do all these things and that comes from the grand list and while I appreciate that there will be addition to the grand list 50% residents aren't paying 50% of their taxes. They are paying all of their taxes and I think that businesses need to pay their share and are there ways to do this that businesses and residents both pay their fair share absolutely I don't think this is it. If I may and I don't mean to argue with the council member on a policy matter but just a matter of information first of all commercial housing projects would be eligible for this. But renters like homeowners here aren't. No single family house by state law also renovation we were actually talking with a renovation of commercial properties and I'd add that the three times it's been before the voters including residents it has actually received pretty large support by the voters so it's not something that residential voters in the community don't agree with. So just toss that out there. I would highlight that there are reasons that people are able to vote and you know and there's a lot of people who aren't at the table who aren't heard and I think it's incumbent upon us as councillors to just be mindful that I think there are people that acknowledge that this policy is not effective as it is and there's leaves a lot to be desired but it just it really does not sit well. I have dual loyalties as you've heard but I'm also a 20 year resident and I firmly believe that throwing the grand list and having more people working in the city are your goals and they're things that should continue to happen. Okay we have a motion and a second any further discussion Okay all in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Nay. So that was a motion carries and thank you very much. Thank you all. Welcome to the next job of the city. Okay awesome. Great. Okay alright so alright we're up to the responsible employer ordinance so this was an item brought by Councillor Casey. Do you want to introduce this? Yeah I would just give a brief introduction to it. I've invited a few guests to weigh in on this so I don't know if right now Tim, Larry and Danielle if you want to maybe sit at the round table in the front there. Might have some other folks chime in. This is something I've been looking at since I got on the council and I think it dovetails pretty well with our previous discussion. I was hardened when I got on this council to see that we treat people I think more than just numbers on a spreadsheet. You know we've put in place a social responsibility committee to look at issues around you know workers' rights and you know I think generally if we look at our municipal employees we do quite well by them. We have three unions in the city here negotiations are very respectful but as you notice we're also doing a lot of building in the city here and a lot of contracting and as we look at this I think it's important to keep in mind that there is a category of worker who is largely invisible I think not only in the state of Vermont but around the country here. My brother is a plumber in New York City who works on construction sites and he often tells me about the routine abuse of the band actors and some of these construction firms who bring people on board and treat them as less than humans. I would say just in talks with you know city staff I think we do a lot better as far as who we work with you know who gets some of these construction contracts but what we contend with every day is the lack of oversight both on the federal and the state level. We have a state government who tried to merge the agency of commerce in the Department of Labor pretty recently I think which tells you something about the oversight that they have. I had somebody call up the Department of Labor recently to give a complaint about something happening with abuse and they said we're too understaffed to even look at it here. As Montpelier and as we spend tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars on some of these projects I think we need to think about the human level again here and who's working on some of these jobs and you know as Ashley points out and I always appreciate this is the person carrying a pipe on one of these construction sites making enough to actually live in our city and you know I think the answer is no in a lot of cases here so going forward you know I would like to talk about putting an ordinance into place that weeds out some of these bad actors on the front end so we don't find ourselves well into a project and find cases of wage theft, misclassification abuses as far as the Affordable Care Act and other standards at the state and federal level and I think there are ways to do that and a lot of cities have already implemented responsible contracting ordinances I think it's about 250 at this point. Portland being one of the most recent ones. So I want to at least start generating a bit of discussion around this issue again keep in mind that we have some projects in the pipeline here I'm not by any means an expert but I did bring in some folks who I think could talk about this with a level of sophistication that I can't so I've asked these folks to give about 15 or 20 minutes just talking about what the problem is now that they see in the states some solutions that they'd like to see ways to address this language I've been working on myself here but I could certainly bring to a future council meeting but I think it's best to just talk about the concept of this before we get into the weeds to really look at what some of the problems are and again I'm a lay person myself but I have a family that moved over from Ireland recently who are construction workers working at building trades there I've just been disgusted with some of the stories I hear you know I'm happy to take any questions from the council but I don't think there's anything I could answer that I wouldn't be outlined by the folks here so with your permission sure yes yes turn it over to Larry, Danielle and Tim here where you come from? I'm Larry Mokwin I'm a resident from Vermont I wrote a little testimony good evening Mayor Watson and members of the council my name is Larry Mokwin I'm here tonight in support of the responsible employer ordinance you guys might have put in place I'm a lifelong resident of Vermont I'm a member of Labor's Local 668 which covers Vermont and New Hampshire I'm Vice President of the Vermont Building Trades and I'm also an organizer with the Labor's International Union of North America and New England I'm second generation laborer I'll give you a little background on what it's like to be a union member in our industry in our state I had a good childhood it was only due to the sacrifices my parents made for us like me and my siblings on Sunday we'd have dinner every Sunday night and then my father would pack his stuff and either later that night or before we got up Monday he would leave and we wouldn't see him again until Friday night our mother did a good job we all turned out pretty good because he had to travel out of state to provide us a shot at the blue collar middle class life that we all deserve and also still plan for his future hasn't been any different for me in the 17 years I've been doing this I'm very proud to be a union laborer I've worked here in Vermont some but I've traveled more than my fair share to continue this dream that my father instilled in me he's been a laborer for over 50 years now and is living a wonderful life in his golden years he lives in Florida now but that's only due to the fringe benefits in retirement that he earned through being in this union the employers that he and I worked for are the definition of responsible contractors many of them are small family owned businesses and the main reason that he earned a comfortable retirement and hopefully the reason I'll be able to retire someday I believe like Montpelier as the capital of our state you guys never really have been followers and you should lead the way with an ordinance like this to show that the city cares about the hardworking men and women that build the infrastructure here and make the city as vibrant as it is now construction workers to serve a shot at a human right of work hard and get a fair wage and also make it livable employers who provide family supporting wages and benefits and invest in workforce training and apprenticeships are actually going to benefit your local economy passing this ordinance will level the playing field and ensure a minimum threshold for bidders to compete and it will also limit irresponsible contractors who have the potential to cost the city precious dollars it will require the bidders and the subcontractors to demonstrate that they can and will comply with the bid documents and the specifications that are in these documents wage theft, misclassification of workers compensation and unemployment fraud is a real problem in the state it cost the taxpayers millions and it was shown in a report just recently February 15th of this year the Vermont legislative committee released there are responsive contractor proposals in many areas that have been useful at guarding against this type of fraud along with this ordinance it will also benefit women and minority workers who are often paid less by guarantee they're paid by worker classification and not by gender or race it also has potential to generate revenue back to the city and the state by making sure contractors are providing and paying the correct amount of unemployment, insurance and workers compensation insurance and just so you know this isn't a union versus non-union issue the ordinance applies to all the bidders and it's an example of good policy to protect working families, the taxpayers here and the city the ordinance doesn't give an advantage to union contractors it only gives an advantage to responsible contractors it asks that any contractor wish to benefit from public dollars play by the rules of fair and honest contracting that's what I have to say and I'd like to introduce you to Dan and Tiffany Boyven they live in Northfield, they're married expecting the first child both members of the laborers and Calvin Foster he's a single father used to live in Montpelier, had to move because he couldn't afford to live here he lives in Colchester now and he's also a member of the local I'm going to let Daniel go next because I'm more like Larry's father Good evening, my name is Daniel Bombardier I'm a licensed electrician with the International Brotherhood of Electric Workers Local 300, I now also am the training director and an organizer for Local 300 which serves the state of Vermont Thank you to Connor and for you all for listening to the discussion I think it's an important discussion and for allowing us to speak here this evening I'm happy to be speaking after this last topic following the discussion of a livable wage and creating jobs and paying people enough to actually stay in Montpelier and live in Montpelier I'm new to the building trades as well within the last few months and when I first heard of this concept of responsible employer agreements I was a little confused, maybe I'm a little naive but you see I've had the privilege of working in the IBEW Electricians Union and I'm pretty new I started at age 26, began my apprenticeship four months after I started, pay raises, followed the contract even for apprentices, health insurance, retirement benefits were provided and my working rights were protected through a collective bargaining agreement our responsible contract working in the IBEW was my first experience in construction and it was fairly smooth I became pregnant on the job I didn't get pregnant on the job that may be the single best life it's 24 years of being in this job but I worked on the job and spent it during my maternity leave this experience is not universal especially for women but I didn't have to worry that I was making 84 cents for every dollar that the man next to me was making doing the same job because of the way we were classified all the same we made the same wage and it was a good one through the apprenticeship and when I first became licensed I was able to buy a house in the community where I worked, I'm a Colchester resident I grew up in Colchester, laughed and came back because it's Vermont and earning a livable responsible wage is important as we heard if one can't afford to live in the community where they work you tend to resent it you can build it but you can't enjoy it, you can come here to work every day I have a family here for dinner because I was working under a contract, one that required the contractor to act responsibly I progressed through the apprenticeship flawlessly there was no snafus with the contractor not registering me with the state not recording my hours, not getting pay raises, not paying for my classes and as apprenticeship director for the IBW now I meet with a lot of people who come in who face these obstacles with their current contractors the responsible contractor language that I think Connor has a copy of, it requires contractors to employ registered apprentices and licensed individuals ensuring that the people on the job are receiving adequate training and have adequate licensure and experience in their particular trade essentially it shows a level of commitment to the craft which in turn shows up in the quality of the work that's performed and I want the state's capital to look good secondly it prevents contractors from hiring people on the promise to register them as apprentices and then waste their time keeping them back on their path to becoming a well paid licensed individual before I worked in construction I didn't really notice it buildings went up and I enjoyed using them I didn't think about who built them, how they were built, but now I do the built environment stands long after we're all gone and that's one of the reasons I've enjoyed working in the trade leaving an imprint on the world Montpelier has the opportunity to provide something valuable to its residents through this ordinance the city can provide an example of what it looks like to take care of the construction workers who built the city with the city's money Montpelier can provide its residents and local workers a better quality of life with this ordinance business owners or CEOs unfortunately it takes rules and contracts to make employers do the right thing and treat employees responsibly and fairly but fortunately you have the power to enforce this through a simple ordinance thank you I have some questions oh I'm sorry did you mention your mind no no no I'm happy to wait you go ahead my name is Tim LaBombarde I'm president of IBW Local 300 and the Vermont Construction Building Trades I'm like these two I've not fairly new I've got 32 years in the trade and it's sad to say I hope it gets better by the time I get out that these problems are solved it's not happening I've held all the positions that Danielle did in my career and it's sad that apprentices come in and or they come in and they think they're apprentices and we call the stage and people are bowing how much how many hours does Tommy have documented well Tommy who and he has none and I was told by my contractor that he was taking care of it they don't educate them because it's cheaper in terms of these ordinances you'll have that they have to have indenturement the process is out there people just abuse it and abuse the kids they don't know any better so it's not fair but it happens too much and our ordinance which is our constructive bargaining agreement is our contractors would as president we hit the local and everything we police our own it's human nature they try to get away but we're there we have this ordinance we have the contract they have no gray areas it's written so we have to do it and we police them which would happen here you'd have documents to back what you're doing would be no guess worth and right now we're speaking with Burlington to get it done as far as the livable wage goes the $13 and something it's a joke we have the Vermont state prevailing wage rate which we worked on as the building trades and everything from 1996 that I can remember was the first time we brought it up we got it passed in 2016 it it took effect in 2016 where they had the rates which is for a journeyman wireman electrician and Burlington Chittenden County is $26 an hour plus 42.5% benefits so they added the benefits and they buffed it on and that's what the Vermont state prevailing livable wage is for an electrician or it is I mean that's what you need you know you're there that that gives you a pension it gives you health insurance and you're not going on social welfare which nobody should have to you should give somebody a chance to make their own living do you know if that prevailing wage is tied to the like the Davis Bacon prevailing wage or is it separate for Vermont it's totally separate and it's totally here and here no that's what I thought yeah Vermont state prevailing wage now is supersedes and exceeds Davis Bacon places now that Davis Bacon has been stagnant and as Vermont is we have to get through which everybody knows that their green mountains are beautiful you go into New York state and you make 40% more just across the way that's all I've got I think this is great and it's it's happening all over the nation they're different but it's all the same it's fair to contract and it's to stop the cheaters there's over 20 states that have these already over 250 cities do you mean like states that have adopted there are 20 states representing 250 cities have some sort of either responsible employer, responsible contractor, responsible bidder community benefit agreement and I mean our state really if you look at it is no different than any of those states you know overall thinking has a little bit of progress and a little bit more for the people I have questions but I'm going to hold off questions from the council there was a study that came out in 2018 and it's called Out of Reach and it was published in 2018 and it focuses mostly on housing wage but it's put out by the national low income housing coalition and in Vermont we are the 13th highest housing wage in the country with an average and Chittenden County is actually they also had a differential I want to say it was about a 22% differential but in general in Vermont it's $22.40 an hour to afford housing which is 85 hours a week at our minimum wage other comments so first of all mark me down as interested this seems hugely important and as far as we can make a dent towards this it seems like steps we should take my questions are really around the logistics of it you know it's one thing to put in an ordinance and say you have to do this the other side of that is the enforcement and so could you speak about what the enforcement of this hat either looks like in other places or just what that entails most of the time enforcement is taken out of it because if you do it before the job starts you don't need to enforce anything because the employer is going to be responsible and through the big documents and specifications if they follow them correctly then you guys will know that they're going to do it and the ones who don't follow the documents go in the garbage how do you verify that they're actually you know so they say I'm going to pay you $10 an hour and then how do I actually know while the job's going on that they're really doing it they said they would they have to have a workers log a sign and sign out sheet all stuff that can be presented back to the city on a weekly, a bi-weekly, a monthly basis and those are effective in your opinions that those work so there's no heat from the someone to say you sign this you know even though it's wrong I know that I'm just trying to I'm trying to understand the questions I'm going to get asked I know a responsible employer would have no problem following the rules because it's going to be the worst for everybody sure the issue though is with the people who aren't right so I mean even just by having the ordinance you're probably going to have an increase in people acting responsibly and that's good but they're still going to try they're still going to try and I just want to make sure they're following the rules and I just want to make sure that we are just eyes open about the part that goes into checking those logs and that's potentially fine I don't know but something that we should just be conscious of Ashley. I did a little bit of research about this because I was curious and I'd seen it called other things and I wasn't sure if it was the same thing so the Indiana, Illinois, Iowa foundation for fair contracting actually has a whole bunch of information about these questions and it actually becomes part of the contracting process so if they violate any of those provisions they're actually in breach of contract which makes them liable for damages and it also talks about and I can email this to everybody but there are a number of these coalitions in various parts of the country that seem to do this and one of the things that they mentioned that caught my eye at least in this particular one they actually have to provide sworn statements which opens them up to the pans and penalties of hergery but it also requires that they provide a list of employees and that they be classified and then we as the offeror of a contract are able to call Secretary of State and other relevant licensing agencies to in fact verify that they have done all of those things and so while it would certainly be a little bit of heavy lifting up front I think in the long term the enforcement piece, there is an enforcement piece and would people breach the contract? Sure, lawyers wouldn't exist if people didn't breach contracts so I'm a little bit grateful that sometimes people do but I think the way that contracts are written can really alleviate a lot of that enforcement piece and there are legal remedies that are clearly spelled out so that everybody is on notice what the potential penalties could or would be. We do have just for regardless of whether they're fair enough we do Davis Bacon jobs it's pretty spelled out and there are worker surveys and you have to verify so it's not like we've never done this sort of thing I was just hoping it was maybe a little less burdensome than the Davis Bacon is and you got more money out of it I believe with the contracts that you're saying and as a point of interest currently at the State House they're working on I believe it's S182 a bill to move enforcement of all licensing laws misclassification and everything from the DOL to the AG's office. It's S108 which is it just was read last Wednesday for the third time the Senate's going to the House without any appeals and the Attorney General's welcoming it with open arms and it's going to give them more staff to do these things and they would be responsible for any of your projects also. It's a violation of state law. Just a couple of quick points too. One you would of course have a threshold on this for the cost of the project right? So you're not rocking every $10,000 project jumping through all these hoops but some of the bigger ones I'm thinking like $200,000 plus you know it does make sense putting some staff time I think at the front then to make sure you do it right there. The other thing is that and I want to echo Bill I think we're doing a lot right right now in Montpelier but it makes sense to codify that in the ordinance then if you're doing it right because there's going to be turnover you know let's make sure we keep doing it right. Great so some of the next steps that seem to be apparent to me on this are just to check in with Tom McCartle and you said you have some language that you're working on and I think it might be good to have a comparison between what the language that you all have written so far compared with current practices just so we know what that change might look like and you know just be conscious of the enforcement side and what that might take I will just also put it out there too that this might be the kind of thing that the social and economic justice committee at least should be aware of and I mean they may not have time to do a full vetting of it but I think it's worth touching base for them. Donna. And like the website that Ashley talked about I'd love more information because we didn't get any language so all we got was you were here you are and here's the title and I had an idea what it was but it really helpful to get more information as we work on the weeds and how they interface. Thank you. If you're uncomfortable with this that's fine please don't answer or maybe we could talk privately just there are some companies contractors you'd recommend that we could talk to about you know the response about how this has worked from their perspective and if it changed the cost of their projects and those kind of things so we can get that information. I can get you some contacts. Yeah that would be great. Yeah obviously you don't want to out them without checking with them first but it would just be helpful because we will hear from the contract and community so you're looking from like a municipality or municipality or even you said many of you talked about we work for contractors the way I understand it the contractor hires the union to do the electrical work so are there mass major contractors that you think are good employers that follow these things that we could talk with and say if you've adopted these practices did that change the price of your bids if you had trouble getting jobs because you know how hard is it to do because that's you know that's we're going to get asked about that too how much more is this going to cost the city if projects cost more and those kind of things yeah yeah AGC that's fine I appreciate that we have other guests in the audience if they would like to make a comment I'd love to hear from you I mean I appreciate you giving the time but I'd like to hear what you have to say if you want basically this is my first child working union as a laborer I would not be able to do even fathom the thought of having a kid without having these the wages that we get I get paid just the same amount as my husband as a doing the same work I you know go work and you make the same amount more work that into the area that will excuse me I'm nervous you're doing great more responsible contractors high you know into the area so beneficial to so many families when I used to live in Oregon for the longest time and I was a union member in nursing homes out there and I moved to Vermont and it was so different here that you know I didn't make a little wage what you know I made more than what you guys are saying is as a little wage it's not the state is saying the state is saying it's a little wage it's not so I moved into construction so that I could make a family be more of it thank you could you also say your name and where are you from okay thank you she was a nursing assistant for quite a few years when we moved back into Vermont from Oregon she was continuing to do that same profession and she wasn't making a living so I kind of convinced her to come to work with me and she hasn't looked back and she's actually thriving sometimes she commands more respect attention than I do on a job site and I'm like a Swiss army on a job site and she's awesome we just bought a house in Northfield last month and I've spent a dream of mine since I was this big and I would have been able to do it without a union just the little wages and the kid on the way we're not paying a lot in hospital bills because of our benefits so that's a life saver all by itself you know I can't imagine myself doing any other type of work there's a company called PC that works over Burlington I can't go to work for them we don't make the same we do the same job and I mean more than they do with benefits included so I mean you'd have to be an idiot to say no to that I'm with her wait we've got my bro okay Lauren you had something you wanted to say? yeah first of all thank you all so much for coming tonight really appreciate the time and perspectives on this important issue and look forward to digging into it I just wanted to note that I brought this up at the last social and economic justice meeting a week ago that this was coming up and we talked about we're trying to develop like a checklist of questions we thought that this would be a great policy to use as a way to test out how we can really try to make sure that we're doing a really good policy all around so we look forward to engaging in this and using it great I did want to let you guys know I passed on that the document I was reading from to Bill so there's a lot of them that exist though and I have a couple more that I'll email out when I get home hopefully it'll be an early night okay well thank you so much for taking the time to come speak to us this is great and to be continued awesome okay are you okay? do you need a break? keep going okay yeah so have a heads up that there's a gentleman who would like to make a comment that missed the general business and appearances at the beginning so if you want to come talk to us now okay interrupting our regularly scheduled program and lane shops on Mechanic Street which is District 1 before I say anything pictures worth a thousand words so if these pictures could be passed around I'd like to preface my remarks by saying that I think the city of Montpelier given the severity of the winters we have does a great job in taking area of the streets and sidewalks and I realize we don't have a super huge budget to contend with all unexpected events that being said even in championship games whether it's Seth Curry or Bill Belichick whoever they can always point out to certain blunders and that's why I'm here this evening to point out a blunder I I've been living at one Mechanic Street in the lane shops which my apartment of butts right on the north branch and also right on the pedestrian walkway and I don't know why by first winter there wasn't any problem this winter all winter it's been a nightmare and you can see from those pictures the I'd like to also say that because it's been from day one it's been you can see from the pictures ice ice ice and this particular spot I'm not familiar with the pedestrian walkway arguably it's one of the prettiest sites in the city and it's heavily trafficked by pedestrians forget about the fact that it's a loading zone for that building kids going from and to school from the Meadow neighborhood and what not go back and forth people walking their dogs young lovers old couples mothers with their baby strollers bicyclists it's heavily trafficked that it should look that way is a blunder and the other thing is that building that it bucks it I live there myself I don't like to call myself a senior citizen more an old clotcher on seventy years of age every person in that building is a senior citizen and that door that goes into there unlike the front door it's a handicap accessible thing so if an ambulance had to come to that building they'd go in that alleyway they'd have a hell of a time getting that dirty out and to get into that building it's the ices there is not enough room to negotiate an ambulance it's just absurd I spoke with a woman up one of the she's the assistant director over at Bonkilly Housing Authority and she said she spoke with the plow person the plow person said oh well I come through here sometimes there's someone parked here because it's a loading zone because old people who are getting out with a walker or they need help with their groceries with their son or daughter or whatever and there's a car parked there so he says well it complicates the plowing thing so I have to say that that is BS because as I say I live right next to that alleyway and it's six o'clock in the morning whether it's snowing or not that guy I hear that plow go back and forth there's no one in that driveway there's no one in that pedestrian way so when I Lorna told me that a number of people had complained about it too hard and it didn't go any further so I called the city garage and I spoke with Eric down there I guess he's a maintenance foreman for this stuff and he said he would talk about it with Bill Tuttle well I haven't heard anything and nothing's been done and so I thought the only way that I could see forward would be to come here and hopefully there are other citizens in Montpelier viewing this or will view it and you know the excuse me the proverbial saying the creakiest wheel gets creased first so I'm just here hoping that this wheel will get creased thank you very much thank you so Mr. Mulholland I can follow up in your comments I walk through there with my wife and dogs this weekend and observe that and I said what's that because like you I walk through there a lot and I said I don't remember this from the past I made a note our D.P.W. directors on vacation this week and he's due back Friday and I have actually note to ask him about that so I will follow up this is actually looking good compared to the recent melt but you know we're not out of the winter that stuff's going to freeze so anyway I got it so we're on it thank you very much thank you oh Donna just living in that same neighborhood the complication is that that part of Franklin street does not belong to the city the city does not plow that part so they only part the other part mechanic that comes to there and it's been an extremely icy winter but he's right it really needs attention thank you isn't the city's responsibility to keep that clear I don't know that's what we're going to check we're going to find out we don't know we'll find out I don't have a direct answer for you it's used that way and it connects to the bridge that the city does have a snow pile that goes we have the it's a joint connection but this I don't have any answers one way or the other for you right now but I'm going to get it because that was my question is that us or is that the housing people isn't it like we can get into like details and look into things but it says about this councilist and mayor the city council is the legislative body of the community responsible for Delville and policies and ordinances that preserve and protect the health safety and welfare of all of our residents and I think that takes precedence over and nitpicking about whose property it is no no Tom I just meant we need to work with them we need to work on it absolutely I wasn't trying to bypass it but we need to work with them because there's some property is theirs and some is the city that's all we need to work with them on it and get it resolved you're right we agree we're all on the same page here all I'm saying is it is loud all I'm saying is do a good job it's icy and water it's a mess we'll follow up thank you very much okay so onto the rental inspection program so welcome back Mike Miller thanks for taking some time to tell us or explain to us how the inspection programs work well I was going to tee this one up as well this was one of the last things on our to-do list from last year's goals and priorities was to have a conversation about this and Mike was worked in Barrie for a number of years before he came to us where they have such a program so what I asked him to do was just to give you a conversation about what it looks like what it may or may not include what pros and cons were in Barrie successes and problems and then get a sense from the council whether this is something we wanted to continue looking at or not and if so maybe get together a working group of renters and landlords or housing task force and people that figure out how we want to proceed and all that so with that said I'll turn it over to Mike okay so apologize that we were only able to kind of get on this we had a number of big things going on last week that didn't let us get this out for you in advance but I did leave for you guys to review just a quick summary of what rental inspection programs are as Bill mentioned from 2008 to 2014 I was the planning director in the city of Barrie they are one of a few communities that have a rental inspection program and the primary purpose for rental inspection programs is to protect the public health safety and welfare but it's really looking primarily at making sure that we have safe sanitary and fit human habitation so the goals of these programs is to maintain that piece so there are some things that sometimes kind of get mixed into that discussion when we're looking at minimum standards for habitability we're usually looking at these minimum standards and what I handed out includes a checklist from what Barrie has on theirs which includes mostly in the left column of fire and life safety requirements but in the right column are those minimum housing standards which is what you have usually for a rental inspection program we already do the inspections on the left through our building and fire code inspections if we get a complaint but really the new ones would be ones for minimum housing would be some of the ones that are on the right where we would look at you know does every room have two working outlets only one is required if there's a light fixture do doors and windows have locks do they have smokes and CO's do you have running potable water do you have hot water do you have flushing toilets and proper wastewater connections doors that close roofs that don't leak so it doesn't look at things like quality of apartment finishes or the price or the availability of proximity of parking my kind trip to you you were talking about things on the left versus the right and so I went to I went here okay this is the page I should be looking at yeah that's just a checklist that Barrie has for the left and the right so and when you say the left I mean there's a P column and an F column and then there's literally like the big left that's past fail so big left column versus okay and so I mean are the things underneath miscellaneous that are continued over in the right like yeah there's a couple of things that roll over under miscellaneous but with a minimum housing in the right hand side okay that's what's included that would be included in a rental inspection yes but the things on the left generally are things that are already done if you get complaints yes okay sorry thank you for letting me interrupt carry on that's fine I want to be clear so you usually what we're looking at are things that really are related to very specific health safety and welfare they are if we were interested in going in that direction they're expensive and they're administratively heavy to kind of run these types of programs and in Barry we weren't having a lot of success we had one person that was working on it when I started and handled the electrical inspections and most in the housing inspections over time we migrated that to the fire department because they had additional staff who could work on it and they also had the training in the fire inspections as well so they were kind of making a slightly different process so they actually had three people working on it but it can be depending on how you set it up it can be expensive and there are some pros and cons which I put in a table on the next on page two and really one of the issues it just comes down to is the cost of being able to run these types of programs you know if it's $150,000 a year you want the program to pay for itself and you want to have an inspection once every six years it'd be about $600 a year per unit divided by 12 months you're adding $50 per unit to the cost of that unit if you want if you're not going to subsidize it with general fund dollars and it just I mean it may those are just rough numbers just to start thinking about it it's not cheap it's not easy but if we have a big problem with the safety then it's something that we should definitely can consider so the pros of a rental inspection program is it does assure the housing is safe and sanitary and certainly that is the goal the city would want to have it does preserve existing housing stock and it gives an accurate inventory of the rental housing stock some of the cons are that you know it is could result in rent increases or could result in rent increases there is an administrative requirement there's certainly a lot more work it seems like it might not be but it takes quite a bit of time if you need to send out say $1,500 or $1,000 invoices every year and then collect those invoices and catalog them and who's paid those invoices and collect delinquent incomes and then pursue penalties and fines it's there's a certain amount of stuff that we had to deal with and bury that really ate up a lot more time we spent a lot of time doing things that have nothing to do with helping the units get better can I ask you another question I'm sorry to interrupt the $150,000 cost per year that's what would pay for a full-time inspector and an assistant is that right and I based that on which was kind of in that second box which was our current building inspecting department is $90,000 and that pays for Chris and he's separate so I figured one inspector plus an assistant who can handle all the administrative paperwork and scheduling there's a lot of scheduling unlike building inspections you don't have to make a 48 hour appointment inspection you have to contact the landlord you have to contact the tenant you got to get 48 hours notice to the tenant you got to make sure you can be able to get in and get access so usually you have an administrative person who is handling making all those appointments so the second inspector and a half-time admin yeah that makes sense to me I guess just based on the number of apartment units that we have I just like $600 that math doesn't make sense to me so I don't know where yeah I just want to flag that as like wait a minute I because I mean we have something like $1,400 $1,500 units $600 per unit that's way more than $150,000 so is it off by a zero? $600 times $1,500 is $900,000 so he gives us plenty of money to run the program well more than we need so I may have divided one number wrong in there so it would be about $100 so like $12 per month I'm sorry that math I didn't do just right just now good for catching my math $600 per year that feels like a lot but $1,000 a year I've seen numbers in other communities that are in the hundreds of dollars per unit I don't know what Wyniewski's was I have to see what there is but a couple of them have them okay thank you just wanted to flag that sorry carry on catching that even when I double check it I still get it wrong and so the last point on those the last two cons is one is it doesn't have a significant impact on quality I mean while it is affecting health and safety whether that two bedroom unit that's not in very good shape but is safe is $600 or $1,200 this wouldn't affect that and the last is that you have to consider even under state law which is attached well on the next page I have to take into account the potential results of condemnation and eviction of tenants and that would be the city's responsibility so I did have the unfortunate experience of having to evict people for lack of housing standards and to take somebody who's clearly not in good financial conditions and make them homeless was not something I enjoyed doing and it is something that everyone of you would have to be willing to understand and accept that that is a potential consequence it didn't happen often only happened once but it did happen and it does happen and the threats of shutting somebody down are only good if we're willing to actually stand behind our threats that say if you don't meet these standards we will close your building down so and that was that was all I just wanted to put some pros and cons and get some stuff on the table give you a little bit of information the legislative housing codes are here and as I said the checklist from very city was here and I'll just take some questions and see I have a bunch of questions so how many apartments are there in Montpelier that have been reported for I mean major deficiencies like no heat no running water you know a door that doesn't shut lock running potable water I mean that's these are fundamental basics to me so do we have a huge problem with that in Montpelier? When we asked our building inspector what he gets he gets about one complaint on average a month for conditions and it doesn't always mean that there is a problem and many times they come back to somebody who's getting evicted who's trying to solve a process we I think when we were talking with Bill this afternoon we knew of one or two over it was time before I was here of units that when the city actually got involved and took him to court. Yeah so that's kind of that at least that's been my experience is like when there is an issue you know I as a tenant have had to call the city because a budding you know landlord didn't empty the hamster one of those weeks where it was over 100 degrees for like every day and it smelled horrendous but you know so I guess this is not something that I find super exciting for a myriad of reasons mostly because Montpelier is a small town people are going to hear if you know if there are lots of units that are not even meeting these like these are to me like basic habitability standards have mechanisms by which to deal with those already I have rented since I was 17 I moved out on my own at 17 and to me the things that have really become clear I've had some amazing landlords here in Montpelier I've had some pretty unresponsive landlords here and everywhere else that I've lived you know it's kind of been the same deal some of the things that has really stood out to me as critical are upfront moving costs this is hugely significant when you are talking about someone moving from one place to another I picked up my entire life in Boston I moved to Burlington because I wanted to find a place that was like kind of similar to where I had been for the last 10 years I had to come up with like $3,000 and I literally moved to Vermont with $3 my checking account and Burlington had you know had a cap on what they could in terms of money upfront what they could take and Barry also has a cap on that and I have talked to lots of folks in Barry about what that actually translates to which is a degree of mobility that a lot of us would not be able to experience otherwise because when you're moving into an apartment that you might be able to afford your monthly rental payments at $1,500 a month that's just throwing a number out but then you have to come up with three months rent first last security that's $4,500 a month I don't think any of my friends have like $4,500 just chilling around to move and then you're doing the security deposit jockey you've got to wait to get it from your old apartment which if you're moving states away can be forever and then if you don't get it back then you're land you know it's a disaster so one of the things I think is really security deposits or not even security deposits just move in upfront costs what kind of cash money needs to be put down to move in and one of the things that I think is something that we kind of need to talk about here in Montpelier is there an appetite to talk about what is going to take for people to be able to move here because if the ask is you're going to come up with $6,000 first last full security that's going to cut a lot of people out if there is an appetite to explore that I think that's one way that we could start to get better basic minimum things aside which I think I've seen a bunch of units in Montpelier and I've seen a bunch of them at this point I used to move more frequently than once a year I haven't run into this I think the other piece is in terms of moving out what kinds of things are landlords obligated to do and there are minimums by state statute but in terms of providing accountings to be provided if those accountings aren't provided what are your remedies that are very clearly codified so that renders know like hey this is what you have to do you didn't do this here's what I'm going to do in response to get what is legally mine as a render myself and almost all of my friends here in town are renters as well it's a magnificent battle if you are working full time and you've got all these other life responsibilities and now you've got to try to figure out how you're going to get money back from an apartment that's just being withheld and you don't know why or you kind of get this nebulous like oh we took $800 because there was a scratch on the wood floor as a renter I'm entitled to documentation about that but I also know that because I do other stuff I don't have that knowledge but there are a lot of people who don't and I think that making sure that people know what their options are as renters and what their legal rights and remedies are is critical to making sure that we don't end up in situations where tenants are being exploited the other piece that I'm really interested in and I don't believe, I know that there are federal laws but anti retaliation protections for tenants I'm not here but in other places that I've lived I actually have had to call a city inspector because plumbing wasn't functional for long periods of time and the answer that I got as a tenant was oh well we're working on it I'm not really sure what that means because I don't get to work on paying you my rent and so I really I think that this is important stuff but I'm wondering if there are other ways in which this can be subsumed but if the goal is to make meaningful strides in terms of the rental property options and the pool and expanding renter accessibility in Montpelier I think those are very concrete tangible things that realize significant benefits when you're talking about being mindful of every person who wants to move here in terms of economic ability in terms of liquid assets and all of those kinds of things I would hope that if a tenant calls and raises something like I haven't had water running water for three weeks but my rent is current I think the city would step in at that point yeah it seems like this is a jumping off point but I'm not sold that this is a way to I mean if it's only looking at bare minimums I think most of our units meet that but there are other things that are way more important check I do have a few thoughts having spent a big part of my career representing low income tenants in substandard housing I think it's important I think it might be worth people looking at the actual regulations which there's a state regulation called the rental housing health code which is on the health department web page and if you google for month rental housing health code you'll find it and it's about 10 pages it's pretty extensive I don't, it requires a lot of things that I think many of the apartments for tenants that I've represented haven't complied with including one thing that's always been a big one to me is exterior walls, doors and windows being reasonably weather tight and lots especially in a place like this where we have old housing a lot of apartments that I see are not reasonably weather tight and I think that's a big deal and it's something that causes increased costs for the tenants I was part of the study looking into the possibility of inspection program back in 2004 one of the big concerns that I've always had about a program that is purely inspection on complaint is that it does give rise to retaliation retaliatory eviction is prohibited under Vermont law not federal law but under Vermont law but it's the protection isn't great and depends on being able to defend yourself in court and prevail on that and so I think that many tenants are reluctant to complain because they know that landlords are likely to retaliate by evicting them so I want to push back a little when you say well a lot of the complaints a lot of the times tend to complain is because they're being evicted I think that for one thing maybe if an eviction is already in process they know well I don't have anything to lose I might as well complain and two saying that they're complaining because they've gotten a termination notice has no bearing on whether there's merit to their complaints yeah we always do investigate I mean it has nothing our interest in investigating doesn't have anything to do with it it's just when we do get them and we go through and realize there isn't much here and we ask the landlord you know because we've got to contact both that's usually when we find out that it's not surprising that this person has filed a complaint because we filed paperwork with them last week for failure they haven't paid rent in so many months and we gave them the notice of eviction so we're not surprised to see this but it's definitely we were talking about that in terms of what data we had we only have the complaints so of the complaints of the relatively few complaints we have none of them have been particularly serious but we don't know the unreported complaints exactly and that's another thing that I was going to say the fact that we have a system that inspects only on complaint means that we don't have a sense of the general quality of housing we don't know in Montpelier we don't know how many of the rental units we have do not comply with the rental housing health code and having a systematic way of inspecting all the apartments or all the rental units on some regular basis is a way to address that and to provide enforcement even if the tenants are not complaining and so I'm not saying we definitely have to do this I think when we were working on this in 2004 it was received pretty well by the council right up to the point of budgeting and financial the budget is always an issue but a lot of work was done to put that together that I think it's might be worth looking at again to see whether we really want to pursue it so I think this is not something that we should reject out of hand Glen, thank you I think I'm more or less with you Jack on this I am scared off by a couple of things for example the enforcement and shutting down building and excuse me making those tenants homeless that is something that I would dearly love to avoid for sure I'm curious and maybe I'm not understanding it the way you mean it but one question I have is about the no significant impact on quality because I guess it depends on what we're talking about in terms of the word quality but when I look at the minimum housing checklist for Barry there are at least some things that feel to me like they are points of quality that would be worth inspecting regardless for example maybe a third of the way down minimum housing are all painted surfaces free of deteriorated paint that feels like something that I would bet many apartments would not pass and I think it would be important similarly walls sound and free from hazardous defects and so on a lot of that kind of basic wall sealing window I bet that I don't know but I would suspect that many apartments do not pass some of those basic things and I don't know if you have a response to that but the sense for when I put that together to go and mention about housing quality was more the fact of with respect to an apartment with 1970's shag carpeting and kitchen cabinets without doors on them old refrigerator that maybe is a little too small and makes funny noises but it works those are the types of things where the rental inspection will go in is to make sure that you've got the GFCI protection on your outlets and you've got it's more health and safety when you go out there are improvements and it isn't improvement in quality but and there may be some that are cosmetic that will make an improvement in quality repainting those walls that may have the dings and the holes and specifically on that around here I think if there's chipped into deteriorated paint I wouldn't have my toddler there because chances are there's lead paint somewhere under there and you know I did some low grade remediation on an apartment that my brother is in in Boston when he had his kids because you know they'll eat that paint yeah getting this out as a former life as a property manager one of the requirements about the state health department is that every year every landlord is required on every unit to certify that there are various lead paints so certain things window wells need to be installed all of these basic things they are required to submit that to the department health they don't do that they can suffer pretty significant time so just I just want to put that out there just so that anybody listening at home can I ask about that exactly that's my question who checks on that but they're not all checked right check when we put the law in we had a housing task force meeting the other night and we talked about this in just for a couple of minutes when we got the law passed for lead paint what we thought was that we were going to establish these this requirement for EMP essential maintenance practices we were going to establish liability and then the insurance companies were going to make the landlords do it because they wouldn't want to be on tap for having to pay damages and it turns out we were just totally wrong that they don't do anything and for the most part the state doesn't do anything to enforce it so I think that it's not enforced and I'm sure that we could find apartments in Montpelier with deteriorated paint now and we'd find landlords who are not conducting the essential maintenance practices is there a way to do a long term maybe two years and do a total scope of the whole city whether it's a VISTA or a project for some college student that we could actually get the city done and then we have a baseline and then move forward with that to see how much we feel we have to follow up it's like an assessment I think we had talked Kevin and Bill and Sue and I we kicked around some possibilities of how we could do a survey or what other way we would do to kind of get a baseline we've got 1,500 units what's our problem, how big is our pool of problems is it just 30 or 40 bad units or is it 500 or 600 bad units from our evaluations we haven't been getting a lot of complaints but people don't even know who to complain to or if they can without getting ramifications from it let alone that's why we were kind of putting this out on your strategic plan that we were going to have this conversation and kind of see where we would go from here is there support to continue doing homework on this or is there something that we put aside do we have a way of knowing and having contact with renters I mean mailing lists do we sort of know which buildings they're in and then could go through the voters list to find them I'm just trying how do we get in contact with renters can I ask a foundational question maybe this is stupid what problem are we trying to solve with this that's why I was talking about an assessment are we trying to solve like in adequate housing in sufficient numbers of units like what or is it the quality of I want to understand like what this ties into I have an answer that I don't think that people should be forced to live in substandard housing and that's what the law of the state of Vermont is and in a place like Montpelier with essentially a zero percent vacancy rate people don't really have a choice of where they're going to live now I don't think we have a basis to know whether there are a lot of people in this situation or just a few people in this situation I think it's worth giving some thought to figuring out how we find that out what the scope of the problem is and so what I would suggest we do is ask the city staff at the housing task force to spend some more time reviewing what we've done before and talking about it and rather than just saying well we put it on our list last year but we're not going to bother with it to start with where you're at but then also I guess to assess we know we have the older housing stock so that we also want to have renters landlords doing the investment for energy efficiency and so along those lines we don't know how old their appliances are so much information we don't know so I just see an assessment helpful to us and other policies as well as immediately for the renters just for whatever anecdotal use this is I actually put it to some of my students knowing that this was coming up you know not that my decisions are based on students telling me necessarily but we were talking about housing and we're considering the possibility of a rental inspection program and it happened to be that this particular group of students were a lot of children of renters and they unanimously were like you definitely need a rental inspection program and they each had a story to go along with it which I thought was fascinating actually so I'm sort of where I'm at is that it feels like there's it's worth investigating further I'm not necessarily convinced that like this is I think having an evaluation to having some kind of something to just understand sort of what the needs are and I think that actually gets to Ashley's point as well having a more holistic picture of what the barriers and needs are I mean to be fair this is maybe something that we've been exploring right but we haven't looked at this I mean this came up as Mike said from you folks last year it wasn't a staff proposal and it was basically the goal was to have a conversation about whether we should do this and it's just one of the last things on the list so that's we're kicking this off now and obviously we've got a goal session coming up to the time to think about it but it seemed to me that certainly some assessment of the need is important and maybe we did talk about doing a community survey in general and I think we could put in we have some questions we could have you know first of all the differences between homeowners and renters and we could ask if you're a renter you know have you had issues because they're all anonymous or you know maybe we could do some other forms of outreach to the renter community to try to give you know an anonymous survey to just get a sense of people you know are you generally satisfied with those responses with the conditions do you have life safety issues or I mean this like sorry to interrupt I mean this list is very interesting because I mean many of my friends are renters as well and you know as I think about some of the houses that I you know of my friends that I've been in I wonder like I don't know that they would all pass even all this stuff on the left so yes well when I used to do door to door campaigning I mean I was amazed at some of the places people live stairwells getting to them just that experience along I haven't been a renter in a month or a year for a long time but I started out as a renter and saw many nasty places that still exist so I just feel that there is out there a lot of insufficient apartments we do also have just so people are we do have one other means that we check on these things and again it's random or not random but it's not systematic but our police and fire when they do go or ambulance when they go into apartments for other calls they spot something that looks odd they do report it so that's sometimes initiates a review but again that's only places that happen to get those calls and not any kind of you know random or regular systematic so there is one other way of seeing an apartment without necessarily being generated by a resident complication. Connor and then did you have some? Well we're endearing ourselves to landlords tonight. Do you know of any municipalities in Vermont who have either rent control or rent stabilization programs and I'm not saying I support this necessarily but I'm interested in it with 40% of our residents being renters? My understanding is that Burlington is the only one that I know of that has a form of rent control. I'd like to learn a little more about that before the council goal session or as part of it as possible. I'm just going to push back on that a little bit only in that probably not as part of it. What I don't know could fill a book about it. It's incredibly complicated so if somebody from Burlington ministered a program I'd like a few minutes just with the 10,000 foot field list. It would certainly be something else that would require a charter change because I don't think it's enabled under state law. I mean would a rental inspection program require a charter change? No, that would come out of this right here. Yes. Why don't you Google it and let us all know. Let us know what you find. We can chat. I just wanted to add on to the value of taking an assessment. Because right now you're talking on anecdotes which are important but it's hard to have a full view of what the problem is. So I would definitely encourage that and I'd be happy on behalf of MDC to partner on any sort of assessment that's done. And then I just want to provide the other perspective from the perspective of the landlord. I'm a renter and have been a renter for my adult life. So I get that perspective but I also interact quite a bit with landlords and from the communities I worked with in Pennsylvania there was numerous municipalities that had rental inspections. So just considering the impact that may have been wanting to have rental apartments, especially as we're considering the accessory dwelling units, when we have such a low vacancy rate just consider how that may deter people from adding rental units to our market. So I think that's just another important nugget. I think quality of our rental units is incredibly important but just to think about the other implications of how rental inspections that's what is needed, how that's rolled out and what are the implications of that, there's a lot of layers to be considered. Jack. No city in Vermont has rent control. Burlington. Burlington has provision requiring a 90 day notice which is longer than other places have. We do have rent review for rents and trailer parks. It's not actually rent control but it is opportunity to challenge rent increases and I spent years working to get that passed but no other rental housing is subject to rent control and of course if you have a rental agreement that fixes the rent the landlord is stuck with the rent at that during the period of term. There's federally subsidized housing of various kinds but no generally applicable rent control. One other policy matter that I lived in other places in Mass that they would actually cap the percentage that your rent could increase from term to term so if you had a year lease they were capped at raising your rent by no more than X percentage if you renewed that lease. So if you wanted to stay on for a second year and the landlord was willing to have you I've lived in places where it's gone from $1,000 to $1350 in the matter of a month and nothing has changed but it's just going to cost you $350 more to live there but some municipalities will cap the percentage increase that a landlord can charge if you renew. I think there's a significant debate in housing and economic community whether rent control is good policy because it tends to reduce investment in properties because people aren't taking the money in and it creates lower vacancy rates because people that have a rent control department don't leave them and so I think there's definitely a pro and con, certainly the people that are in them benefit but to the extent that it becomes you know if a landlord can't afford to keep up because the rent isn't going up then not I think it's worth, it's a work done few economics classes on that. So what I feel like I'm hearing is that there is some interest in some level of looking at either the quality of apartments you know even the things that are in sort of the left hand column or other issues or even barriers that renters face so I guess one proposal and I'm open to other suggestions if people have them but I guess I'm coming back to Jack's suggestion about and Donna's suggestion too about having some kind of an assessment and or working with the housing task force because that seems like a natural place for or a group to collaborate with this and I mean I mean it sounds to me like it merits further discussion at least so I don't know if we can or if we should specify anything further than that any other ideas or thoughts on that as far as next steps go. Yeah, Ellen Lauren I mean I would just echo a lot of what I've heard from Donna and Ashley and Jack and others of just I think it's a great idea to have the housing task force look into it like I think getting data seems like a great first step before we don't want to solve a problem that we don't have or make sure that we're solving the right problems and have the right program to do it so data seems like a great step but it seems like if we're going to go through that effort making sure that if there's other policies and things that we're thinking about that we're getting the data at the same time so it's not like oh we also want to do this energy efficiency thing and we missed the bow on getting a bunch of data that we could have gotten so just doing some thinking around like what's coming down the pike that we could ask the right questions of whatever data collection exercise we go through Well and that makes me think about you know build this you know the community survey that we're planning to do so you know if we can keep some of that in mind I mean how what's the timeline on that survey you know it technically starts with I mean July 1 budget Right, wouldn't be before then but that seems fair I mean it's within the scope of the coming year I don't know that we need any motion about that but I'll take it back to the task force Does that seem amenable to folks? Further conversation? Ok, yes Donna This is a rental and landlord rights and I believe it's a brochure I saw that the state put out and maybe we could all educate ourselves and also make sure that that's more available maybe we can make a link on our website or something there's some ways to be proactive it's already there It was actually one of your last year yeah Further discussion to be continued Thank you so much, this is very helpful actually I've actually been on the other side of one of these cases This is a long time ago but I litigated a case up at October Lane where the city was condemning a unit and I was representing the tenants to try to keep them in the building but it was it's very tough to be in a position where the city says we've determined that the foundation is unfit and this section of the building is actually likely to collapse if we don't get this vacated so the person can so the work can be done One of your colleagues was there representing the tenants for the same reasons and it was like do you want them to live in squalor but their argument was they got to live somewhere so it was an interesting case Moving on then we have some appointments to make none of them could be here for the tree board appointments nor the conservation commission with the first one there were two applicants for one seat so it's very likely that we will go into I move we go into an executive session pursuant to one vsa section 313 a3 to consider the appointment of a public officer Actually we do it for both I mean I know it's but we keep them both up at the same time the second one only has one applicant for two That's a minimum we'll do both of them Okay so we will be coming out of this executive session even though it's our last item to vote and I'll in favor please say aye Opposed? Okay so we will be back shortly The tree board and Steven Seats to the conservation commission I think these are both people who are able to provide great service to the city Steven Seats has spent many years in service especially in the field of conservation and Sean White with her work with the project manager at Friends of the Winooski River and her obvious knowledge and devotion to the subject is going to be a great addition to the tree board Second was that a was there a second? No I thought it was a motion I was like I was with us Okay for the discussion I'll in favor please say aye Opposed? Okay congratulations to Steven and Sean Alright so we have no other business so we're going to move on to council reports Let's start with Lauren and we'll go around this way if you don't mind Or do you want to go, would you like to go last again? We'll give you some time, you can pass Let's start with Donna and we'll go this way Yes as Connor mentioned the transit has been meeting and we are going to be putting out a white paper probably by the mid-April so that's going to be circulated and right now the talk is if to make GMT a partnership in that and that we'd be taking the capital shuttle the circulator route and funding and potentially mump your hospital hill and put them together into a micro transit route that would be on an app as well as call-in mostly an app related so you can get a ride within 10 minutes and so they're going to do some simulation with some software on their ideas but that's where it's moving forward but I also want to go back, any questions about micro transit you have to see me and Colin after side the meeting because we're going to get out here by 10 I do have one question about this though would it be the same hours or would it can't get into that kind of detail at all yet they're just taking the resources, putting three vehicles on it and trying to work from there so I just have one really quick question which is you said they've compiled data about commuters and parking if I could get that data that would be really helpful because that's one of the things that was asked for and it's like this incredible, Ken Jones has it from the state and he provided it so yes I know it in the paper I don't have the gross data but you can get it from Ken, Ken Jones has it, it's really good and just one other thing is just that the park commission and the park staff are thrilled to have this new truck coming the old one not only was just having a lot of aging issues it never quite fit their needs and that if they had a crew they had to bring another vehicle whereas the new truck is laid out to carry more people, must be a double cab front and that's really important because they rarely go out one at a time so anyway they've been talking about the parks commission and are thrilled I was going to throw something together tonight and John might weigh in on this but I spoke to a couple members of house government operations it sounds like it was a pretty good testimony today on the non-U.S. citizen issue but the second point I think at the committee is just the sort of safety of the list there, not wanting people to be necessarily identified as non-U.S. citizens and maybe opening up an exemption in the public records act to put that in there but what they might want from this council at some point is a resolution or some sort of statement just saying that we would be committed to and this would be parallel language to the voter checklist on a state level not handing it over to a foreign or federal entity that's a law right now so if we maybe have a resolution on that in the future it could be helpful. Is that a resolution to follow the law? Yeah, I'm sorry. He said it was a law. For the state-like voter checklist it would be a bit different than I know your bus and my child's park but you're going to get a chance. It's Connor. That's a big one. That's funny. Just checking to make sure you two are done. For the moment anyway. I don't have much to talk about this week. I'm pleased that the chunk of the Winooski that we're on seems to have iced out. That's great. It was a good thing to see on Sunday night Monday morning. I went on Monday afternoon to another way down on Barry Street and talked with them once again. It's great there and that seems like a really good group of people to keep in touch with to keep in the loop on city matters. I'm going to keep going once a month. They have a Monday meeting 2 o'clock to 3 o'clock and I'll be there every last Monday of the month. They invited any other council members to come along too if you ever want to show up. It's again 2 to 3 Monday afternoons and I'll be there on the last Monday. That grew out of my Thursday mornings at Baguitos and I'll be back there again tomorrow morning 8.30 to 9.30 as usual. See you there. Thank you. I think I've talked enough tonight. I'm passing too. I have gone to the social and economic justice committee as I said and there's some good progress being made on a strategic plan I'm happy to announce with some tangible next steps so I look forward to updating you as that plays out but it was a very positive meeting and I think the idea of taking some of these policy ideas and trying to run it through and see how can this committee be effective at giving a lens to all of our policies is exciting. I went to the Montpelier Energy Advisory Committee as well and they're just cranking on all cylinders with lots and lots of projects but until there's one that's kind of actionable at the moment I'll spare you. I'm going to highlight one of those projects. I wasn't at the last meeting and I wasn't able to go so I was glad you were able to be there but one of the things that has come up as a possibility and I just want to flag it for you all is the rec building as we know see some changes sometime next year we'll see but that's not connected to district heat it's a standalone oil burner for now that's what's heating the building and one of the possibilities that we could look into is switching that heating system over to biodiesel there may be some there is possibly that we may need to change a little bit of the infrastructure to make that transition happen but relatively minimal anyway so just want to put it on your radar it's something that we may talk about or may come to us over the next year so we'll see and I think that is actually all the update that I wanted to add which is that the public the city hall art committee is meeting tomorrow at 3.30 and it's meeting here so we'll be talking about the art in this room and perhaps out in the hallway as well and just so you know I think the general well actually I don't really know necessarily but something that has come up is wanting some color in here and I think that seems fair anyway just putting that out there we're not colorful enough the other piece of that of the arts committee is that the public art commission has been invited to join us looking more at the whole building so some of them may come John speaking to your mic nothing okay I just have one thing also related to me act the chair of the committee had advised me that there's actually a vote on the international building code coming up and various officials have the right to vote up to four votes a mobiliar would be one of them and so she had suggested that we register the deadlines Friday so we had a meeting today with our staff we recommend so it can be elected officials or staff officials and we had recommended that it be our building inspector our fire chief is the assistant building inspector the planning director and me but that we asked the me act for specific issues they have concerns on so that they flag for us but then not counting myself the other through a more knowledgeable aspects of the code that said if anybody wants to take one of those seats we have to register by Friday so I said I'd run it up the flagpole tonight I did let her know that was my plan and she didn't object to it but others here may have better information than I do I trust your judgment we'll be taking input from me act and others certainly we weren't even aware it was happening so thanks to them for pointing it out you don't have to but I suppose I just want to make sure that there's sure why don't you move it not designate those four of us I second her motion did you move that okay because we're coming up on the mayor's deadline further discussion opposed that came up under other business yeah that's fair great so I think that everything so without objection I will adjourn the meeting