 Okay team we are gonna get started we're still waiting for some technical fixes to be worked out but we're gonna we're gonna get going as it's not a requirement that we have a video recording so so the first thing is to well I guess I'm gonna call the meeting to order so the first thing is just some logistics for this meeting if you're joining us remotely if you change your name to your first and last name so I can address you properly that'd be great when you speak if you could start by saying your name and where you live we are asking folks to keep their comments to two minutes or less and over here we'll help us with the time and if as long as you're speaking to something that is related to an agenda item if you could just keep it germane to that topic that would be great if you have something to say that is not about something on our agenda you can do that during the general business and appearances and if you wish to speak just make sure that I call on you first and we if you have multiple questions if you could ask all those questions consecutively that would be great as we don't really get into like a back and forth kind of dialogue in this space is not really for that and I think that is I think that is it right so the next thing is to review and approve the agenda and there are going to be some adjustments to the agenda specifically we're going to reorder some of the later items so after the appointment to the restroom committee let me just go back and see here we've adjusted the online oh the online okay so the online agenda reflects the proposed changes the proposed changes just want to make sure that that looks right and it does which is great okay so just in case folks are wondering that means after the restroom committee appointment we'll go planning commission appointment then our audited financial statements the rights Phil Beach recreation district presentation then the CV PSA item and then our budget presentation and potential local option sales tax charter change discussion utility status update police presentation and then discussion around the composition of the public arts commission so that is our order anyone have any information to have it be something other than what I've just mentioned okay so that will consider the agenda approved so we're on to general business and appearances this is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on any topic that is otherwise not on our agenda and so if you would like to make a comment now is the time and there are multiple people who would like to make a comment so you can just come up as you are ready and the will be a cue probably you I believe you can yeah that's also fine so this makes life easier for me okay so my name is Tom Mulholland I live in the Lane shops in Montpelier and council members and is the proper form of address madam mayor okay because I remember show on TV madam secretary so I thought well must must be appropriate so I'm important parcel of agenda item number 15 which has been euphemistically termed composition of the public arts commission and I don't mean to be a bother to the commit to the council but you might appreciate that whereas for you it is an agenda item for me it's about my character being maligned which doesn't set well with me and so I see that it says here the council may wish to enter executive session under one VSA 313 a 2 3 and 4 and upon reading that VSA it says that for a disciplinary or dismissal action against a public officer or employee I'm not an employee so I must be a public officer so this is a public body may not hold an executive session except to consider one or more of the following and then so a disciplinary or dismissal action against the public officer employee but nothing in this subsection shall be construed to impair the right of such officer or employee to a public hearing and so I request that this discussion be taken place in the context of a public hearing and not executive session I read the memorandum that was sent to all the city council members and the mayor and frankly it's profoundly flawed and I feel that if the council goes into executive session and basis their discussion and then subsequent decision upon that memorandum that a profound injustice is going to be rendered on to me and so that's my request and I can say right off the bat there are some really gross omissions in that report and also under the thing of like undisputed facts I mean within that body itself you can see that the facts are disputed thank you so we can it'll be up to the council as to whether or not we have we go into executive session and I think doing one does actually not also preclude doing the other and so that's something that we potentially could discuss there as well so thank you and well I think we'll take up that discussion when we get to that agenda item okay thank you there are a number of other folks so come on we're gonna get to the folks who are with us in person first and then we'll get to those who have their hands raised digitally welcome Good evening my name is Pelling Cohn and I live at 292 Westwood Drive Montpelier Could you move closer to the microphone? Closer to me Okay is it better? Should I start again? Okay good evening I am Pelling Cohn I live at 292 Westwood Drive Montpelier I moved here in 2007 from Turkey it seems very far away but thanks to technology I can still see my friends and my family I have two kids 16 and 14 they're at Montpelier High School and I'm dealing with their teenage drama every single day so I think I thought myself okay if I can deal with them maybe I can apply for the City Council I can see for District 2 I think I am now strong enough to deal with like all different challenges I know Connor is such a nice person and he has done great things it will be difficult to replace him but I think I can also contribute great things through my international background and also my professional background I work at Norwich University I am the leadership program chair and also leadership center director my one of my strengths is about diversity equity and inclusion and I was very fortunate to work or to serve on SAJAC committee with our City Councilor Jennifer and Lauren and on that committee my team we did great things and all the things I learned from them make me think okay what can I do more so I went and I attended a graduate certificate program at Cornell University and I got my certificate and I start applying all this knowledge in my work and I want to apply for this position and also I want to run for the City Council in upcoming election and I want to bring all those experience to our city because since the first day everybody was so helpful to me whenever I need help thanks to front porch forum of course you know I just type my problem and everybody is emailing offering help so I never truly felt myself alone but it was a difficult sometimes challenging transformation especially in Turkey we sit and like chatting but here everybody likes doing something and seeing their friends and one time my friend want to hike to the Hubbard Park and we forgot that I have asthma and I was almost killing myself now it is our joke you know among others do you remember that day you were almost killing to be socialized I said oh yeah I remember so I want to bring my international perspective and my diversity equity inclusion professional and personal experience and I know that demographic is changing and I just attending a meeting with one of the federal okay so we are expecting 500 leave refugees so I thought I might help and thank you for giving this opportunity to me I have to stop thank you thank you thank you I have a question for you Pelin if I can so we will be making this appointment at our next meeting and do you anticipate attending that meeting too I know you have just introduced yourself but we will be hoping that all of the folks interested in the District 2 appointment would be present to introduce themselves then do you anticipate being here next time yeah I am definitely here thank you for mentioning it thank you yeah great go ahead hi I am Sandy Vitztume 14 Loomis Street you may have heard from Front porch Forum that my water reducer pressure reducer burst this weekend and cause damage in my tenant's apartment I was surprised in the consequences learning that this is actually happening to many houses in Montpelier and possibly businesses as well and the reducer itself is a small investment but when it surprises you by blowing it can cause quite a bit of damage we lost a hot water heater and I heard that one condo up on Murray Hill lost all of its floors and then the condo below it also did so I understand it's a serious problem and there's been there's been good coverage in the bridge in Vermont Digger recently about this but and and I am totally admire our public works department because I know they're doing everything they can and they get out as quickly as they can default solve problems but I'm hoping that the captains of our civic ship which are you folks with the help of public works could do something a little more proactive because it is quite disturbing to have two hundred pounds of pressure two hundred PSI all of a sudden going through your pipes in your house it literally explodes out of your kitchen faucet it it's really disastrous so to be proactive I know you folks are already working on bigger issues our city water pressure is twice that of the maximum recommended which is really significant it puts a lot of pressure on that reducer all the time which is why they finally blow but I would like you folks to be proactive in a small way I think it's an easy way to simply send a letter to every landowner into every resident in Montpelier preparing us all for that possibility if people could if they know that they've lived in the house for ten or twenty years and haven't replaced the reducer they should probably just go ahead and do it also you can put two reducers in line so that if the first one taking all that pressure blows the second one can take over the third thing you can do is put a hundred PSI relief valve right behind the reducer so if the reducer blows the relief valve will go and just your basement will be wet not your whole floors of your house so if you could write a letter to everyone and let them know I feel like it would help citizens understand that that that we're acting as a community here to solve a bigger problem the other thing to do is to let people know the warning signs which I did not know all of our toilets started to leak you know the little sound that's actually a warning that your reducer is going and the other thing is things like you know beginning to get condensation or drip out of your hot water heater so I didn't know those warning signs it would be so helpful if people could and then just this sense that we're all working on it should also point out that the dirt from the first Loomis Street break was part of the problem it gets into the reducer so just letting people know if you've already had one break on your street you should probably go and check your reducer thank you thank you I just want to comment on that thank you Sandy and thinking about the possibility of including something in the water bills that's easy we've included other letters in those water bills already so that seems like that could be an easy thing to do yeah cool thank you yep I took a lot of notes on that we are going to be the public works director is going to be redressing this issue tonight but this is a great idea so thanks thank you okay Steve Whitaker the alternate side I picked up a couple tickets on school street there's no marking I was on the alternate side following the rules and there's no signs indicating that why I'm getting tickets you know so I will challenge those tickets but I have to question what the purpose of the alternate side parking in is when we have snow and when we all park on the other side we still don't plow so it's just you really should suspend the alternate side parking if you're not going to hold up your end of the bargain you know the whole purpose of it was to provide clear access to one lane at a time for plowing but if you don't have the staff or whatever list of excuses you got it's really unfair burden to put on the public the MOU with the transit center is on the consent agenda so I have to speak to it here the transit center handicap doors are still not working Stephen if I can interrupt you I would I'd be happy to pull that item off and then you could speak to that specifically during the consent agenda you'd like to speak to that that that's fine so yeah that if you'll pull that off I would not have to try to compress it into this two minutes oh Elm Street I know that the shim shimming around the storm drains has not happened since we didn't get the quality we needed in our paving at the intersections but Elm Street specifically is so rutted that the water accumulates there and then it gets the drive the cars drive by and splash whoever's walking by and or it splashes up onto the sidewalk and freezes and it when that happens it's not necessarily when there's salting and sanding going on everywhere else it's it's a specific problem of road standing water and so it's a it should be a priority to just shim those puddles on Elm there's also some valves creating huge ice patch at the alley next to three penny can't your street supervisor recognize that it's because he said there's two receivers there there's side by side storm drains and that's unique so that's a big problem there was a yards and yards of glare ice bubbling up from a leaking meter but I wonder why we've got such a staff that I'm have I'm the one that has to call this to your attention thank you anyone else with us in person wish to make a comment yes greetings folks I'm Dan toll from Montpelier resident here on 1st Avenue and I came here tonight for two reasons the second reason is to just talk very briefly about the task force the homeless task force project however the first topic I wanted to talk about is something very near and dear to my heart as all of you know I was part of the Montpelier reviews police review committee got the opportunity to work under phenomenal leadership of Alyssa Sharon as the chair as well as two of our illustrious town leaders Jack McCullough and Lauren Hurl fellow committee members and of course part of your council but I'm not here to talk about the committee I think you all have figured out what I what I am here to talk about and that's chief Brian Pete I can't tell you how long I cried when I heard Brian was leaving working with Brian during that that police review committee was not that I've had a lot of interaction with the law enforcement but I can tell you very honestly I have not met a law enforcement professional in my 64 years like Brian Pete consummate professional in my opinion someone who always takes tries to take the high road he's bright he cares he's a very compassionate human being and I'm so sad he's leaving but I know he's gonna do some great things in Kansas and we'll be hearing about it probably on you know he'll be they'll be interviewing him on PBS the nightly news for all the great things he's doing for the Midwest and maybe but maybe he'll come back and visit us when he's you know this illustrious world law enforcement leader so I could stand here all night and talk but I don't want to get the one-minute sign from Donna so I will I will I will on this topic I'll finish on the note that in honor of Brian I brought two things tonight something sweet and something healthy and practical which I'll leave in back chocolate chip cookies and oatmeal cookies right but I can't stay because I have this big project I'm working on so I have to go home and get to work and on that note I just wanted to give you a quick update Bill and I've had several conversations about giving an update to you and because of the budget the intensity of the discussion tonight and next week on the budget what we had talked about is Paul my partner and I are going to be putting together we we are putting together just a very small handful of pages that's going to be in your packet for next week it'll be there it'll be there for you to review I would love it if you could take a few seconds a few minutes to look to see if there's anything that jumps out that's missing or that's missing or you know questions and if you would like me to come to public comment next week I'm happy to to answer questions but in talking with Bill what we decide is we're going to do a formal a more formal presentation at the next meeting on January 11th so that'll be the opportunity for us to give you a full update and for you folks to have for us to have a subnet dialogue because Bill said we're going to be able to carve out some substantial time to talk about housing and more and as importantly homelessness so unless you have any questions now I'm going to put out the healthy and the not so healthy and head home to get to work thank you so much Zach use prospect straight Montpelier two things tonight and I may come back at another meeting on the other one depending on how things go thank you sorry about that all right so the first item I am aware there's going to be appointments on the restroom committee did want to just give you all information that Carolyn and Carolyn Redpath and myself were designated by homelessness task force two years ago so I don't know how that plays out if anyway so that's okay I want to reiterate because you might hear comments about this from us but for me as a citizen it's important to really work on this restroom thing you know we're I know we've really been working on it but there's been a couple years delay but it's really difficult to find a bathroom once in a while sometimes and I just want to lay that out there I know we're doing that later and the other thing I just want to say is that I also want to give my thanks to chief Pete for all the work and all the work in the Montpelier police department and continuing the excellence of the department and I hardly knew you chief Pete but I will miss you look forward to hearing the news exploits out of Kansas and I'm aware of the joke about sending people to Kansas on the bus we'll try not to do that thank you thank you Zach anyone else with us in person wish to make a comment okay all right so we're going to go to folks who are this digitally and we'll start with Ken Russell go ahead hey good evening everybody my name is Ken Russell I live outside the environs of Montpelier east of Montpelier called East Montpelier thank you for letting me serve on your task force the homelessness task force come tonight because our our task force has wanted me to carry a message of urgency on the restroom committee work or in the restroom work and we've twice now passed a resolution this fall and you know we're all friends here and we're also working to get some stuff done so appreciate bills good work on the committee and there are some logistical challenges in making this happen but we do are aware that this has been lingering for a long time and we want to express a strong sense of urgency at the highest levels in the city for getting this done so those are my remarks. Thank you Ken we'll next go to Phil Dodd go ahead. Good evening good to see you and thank you for having this zoom option available I had comments in in three areas the first is about the Confluence Park I read last week that estimates for building Confluence Park had doubled to 2 million and Bill Frazier told me today the estimates are now as high as 3 million I would urge the council to put the project on the shelf or cancel it that's a lot of money for a tiny park and its location means it would probably continue to be a hangout to the unhoused and little used by the public. They're probably better uses for the money. Next I found the recent VT Digger articles about the water system and its high pressure eye-opening and concerning having a water main break every other week on average is too often and I have to think that the number of breaks will increase over the 50 year pipe replacement plan. Since the articles came out I've had several people tell me they have had to recently replace the water pressure reducer in their house. One neighbor said the device cost him $200 plus $150 for a plumber. This is a burden on residents. My suggestion is that the council consider appointing a citizen committee to study the complex issue and report back. The committee could talk to city staff. State regulators, experts, plumbers and citizens. The more eyes we have on this the better in my opinion. My final comment is about the local options sales tax which I see is on the agenda. I was a strong opponent of the local option rooms and meals tax because it's a way for non-residents to help pay for our city services. But I'm not so sure about the local options sales tax. It has been turned down by voters two or three times already. It could adversely affect local merchants who are still suffering the effects of the pandemic. Since state workers have not returned to Montpelier in a big way. And it is worth remembering that it would apply to anything delivered here. That means furniture purchased in Berlin and delivered here would have the 1% tax added. The tax would also be added to online purchases at sites like Amazon. Given the number of delivery trucks I see in Montpelier, it seems likely that most of the revenue would come from residents, not non-residents. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you, Phil. All right, Carolyn Ridpath, go ahead. Carolyn Ridpath and I live in Montpelier. And I have been on the bathroom committee since it's in September. And in the course of that relationship, numerous people have come to me and I read from H4 about facilities for a variety of different people in town, not just the homeless. That we have old people who would appreciate the facilities. We have visitors. We have downtown shoppers. We have people with little kids. There's been a little kid that had to go. So I think it's important to get that committee up and operating and working on this problem. Thank you. Peter Kellman, go ahead. Sorry. Yeah, I just wanted to just add a couple of things on the bathroom issue. This has been seriously kicking around for a couple of years now. And I know how hard it is to get a committee up and running because I've been on several of them. And I think this committee is not the only way to solve the problem. I think it should be. It should meet, of course. I would like to urge that also that the city manager's office look into this independently or working with the committee. Because there are a whole range of solutions that are possible. Some of them are going to take a longer time amount of time. I make it doing a building, but some of them might take much less time like talking to the state about using some of their existing buildings. And having them be open 24 seven and maintained. And having that be the word out about that. Another thing is to talk to Montpelier alive and get the merchants to open up their bathrooms. To people who are not paying their, their paying customers. That's not a, you know, not a requirement, but let's urge them to, you know, anyone who's traveled around the world. We'll know that most towns or cities the size of Montpelier. And certainly every capital that I've ever been in. Has enormous number of opportunities for people to use restrooms. It's actually a disgrace. And I don't think we need to wait for a company to open up their bathrooms. And I don't think we need to wait for a committee. To make recommendations. Although. Again, I value that. And Bill, I really think it is within your power. To push ahead. And even our, even the city, city, city, you know, if you read from porch forum, people think, Oh, you can go to the police station. No, you can't. Because the police station bathroom is not open to the public because of a lack of staffing. Oh, you can go to city hall. Well, yes, but not when it's, when it's after hours. Let's open up the city buildings to for more time. Yes, it's going to take some, some, you know, supervision, some maintenance and so forth, but let's figure it out. Thank you. Thank you. Alright, anyone with us digitally wish to make a comment. Okay. All right. So with that, we're going to move on in our agenda. Thank you everyone for your comments. So we're going to move on to the consent agenda. And with the hope that maybe we can take off item a thoughts, or is there a motion to take it off? You don't need that. We don't need that. I move the agenda, the consent agenda with the exception of item a. Okay, there's a motion and a second further discussion. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay. So Stephen, if you would like to make a comment on item a, now's the time. Thank you. It's a good segue from what you just heard from Peter and others. It's not been two years. It's not been a year and a half since the toilets committee. It was three and a half years ago that the homelessness task force was formed and toilets were one of their first priorities. The transit center is grossly underutilized. It's owned by the city. It's, it's given to green mountain transit for a dollar a year lease. Those bathrooms should be open 24 hours. I think we should not just update this MOU with $18,000 for, you know, good Samaritan or whomever to staff it and clean it. We should take green mountain transit should have only the glass enclosed cage. The city should maintain the entire building and keep those bathrooms open. One of those bathrooms has a five inch sewer line running directly under the unused corner. A shower could be put in there very easily. And there's a, the lockers that were just a huge fiasco and waste that we invested in lockers. So put a wall of lockers there. Air, airport size lockers where people could actually store a sleeping bag or a backpack. There's a picture in the New York times of a hotel in New York that was converted that happy to forward that photo. But my point is that this is, we have not even maintained or insisted on enforcement of the lease terms to keep those bathrooms open between 11 and 230. So we're allowing them without challenging them to save money on employee benefits by closing the bathrooms when the lease requires them to be open. So they are in violation of the lease. We should cancel the lease or narrow their lease to the footprint of the glass cage and open those bathrooms and have the city takeover management of that property. That's the most immediate as well as the city hall bathrooms downstairs immediate solution. And there's no excuse for a dragon anchor on it. Thank you. Thank you. Any further discussion, Jack. Thank you. This issue of the transit center and what Green Mountain Transit is the obligation has come up repeatedly in the past. I wonder if the manager could explain what the situation is with that. So a couple of things. The city can't actually use that property for anything else other than transit because it was funded by federal transit money. So GMT even though we're the owner GMT has really veto power over anything that's done in there as does federal transit. The agreement with them is that they will maintain public bathrooms while they are present to the extent that they are able to staff. And I think perhaps Stephen is right about why they're not staffing but they get their funds from the state and they are unable to. They don't they don't have the financial resources to staff. We've asked them to staff fully when they are open they the bathrooms are open. It's been an ongoing conversation with them but we're not really in a position. It's an odd situation with that we're the building owner but we don't really have the final say over its use. So we unless we could prove that they are that they're lying when they say they don't have the financial resources to operate it we can't there's nothing we can really do to force them to keep it open more hours. Thanks. Is there further discussion or a motion? I move we approve the memorandum of understanding. Further discussion. Okay all in favor please say aye. Aye. And opposed. All right thank you. Okay so we have a number of appointments to make and I think we have any of them here. What I'd like to do is if any of the folks who are here for an appointment would come up and introduce themselves. That would be great. So Elaine Ball. I don't see Elaine Ball with us in person. Not sure about digitally. Okay so Lucinda McLeod. You here. Okay how about Mary Alice Bisbee. I don't see Mary Alice. Kim Ward. Jennifer Brown. Okay and Maria Arsennlis. Okay. All right so we could go into executive session. We don't have to but thoughts on appointments. I move that we enter into executive session to discuss the appointment of a public officer employee on all three of those items pursuant to one VSA. Section 313A3. And to be clear we're going to be discussing all of those appointments. Yes. Okay so there's a motion and a second. Yes. Okay. Okay thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you Peter Kilman go ahead. Yeah I just like to make an observation. That. The city council needs to make clear. To a point and where the city manager. Two people who are applying for committees. That it would be a good thing for them to show up at a meeting and to make and to present themselves. Unless you don't want them to look at this. process. If you go to the website and see what's involved in applying for a committee, fill out this form, period. If that's really what you want, okay. But if you want people to show up and talk, you need, we need to do more to let them know that they should do that. And I think they should. Thank you. So yeah. Okay. Thank you. And any further discussion? Okay. All in favor please say aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay. We will be right back. Check, check. Oh, that is, okay. We're good. Okay. Okay. So is there a motion to come back into, back to public session, session. Yes. Whatever. To come out of executive session. Okay. All in favor please say aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay. Is there a motion regarding appointments? Jack? I move that we make the following appointments to the Historic Preservation Commission, Elaine Ball, to the Planning Commission, Maria Arsennlis, and to the restroom committee to be clear that everyone knows what we're doing, that we reappoint all the current members of the public restroom committee and also further appoint Lucinda McLeod, Mary Alice Bisbee, Kim Ward, and Jennifer Brown. Second. Okay. There's a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Yes, Donna. We will need to come back because we didn't set any terms. And usually we have alternate terms on a committee. Well, the Planning Commission has set terms. She's filling out an unfilled term, I believe. The new restroom committee, I don't know if they have terms. We need to establish terms, right? Or it'll just be until the project's done. That's good to know. Okay. Any further discussion? Okay. All in favor please say aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay. Great. And thank you to all who put their names forward to serve. That's great. All right. So we're on to our FY22 audited financial statements. And I know we have some folks here to tell us about that. So come on up. It doesn't usually take us an hour to get to this part of the meeting. Welcome. Do you have a presentation? Okay. I may move so that it's bedtime. Just for the benefit of the council and the public, Kelly Murphy, acting finance director and assistant city manager. And then with me I've got R.H.R. Smith, our auditors. This is Miranda McDonald and Ron Smith. And then online Heather Graves, our senior account, is also available for questions. And so I'm going to hand it off to go through the audited financials. They will be posted online shortly. We have physical copies in the room. And I'll leave it to Miranda. Good evening. As Kelly said, my name's Miranda McDonald. We just completed our audit. And for your purposes, on page one there's a letter and it gives our opinion. And in our opinion the financial statements present fairly in all material respects. So this is an unmodified opinion from. The first schedule we're going to present can be found on page 17 of the financial statements. This is the balance sheet. Most people look at, you see the first column is your general fund. And you look at your fund balance. So for your general fund, your unassigned fund balance for FY22 is just a little over $2 million. Your non-spendable includes inventory prepays and then restricted and committed are those items that have been voted by the voters and y'all to reserve some of those funds. I do want to point out the capital projects. You have a non-spendable of $2.9 million. But then you have an unassigned. This actually is a timing issue with the purchase of the Elks Club because in June and then your capital asset rolls on the books in July of 22. And you all will see that your unassigned fund balance went up about $400,000 in the year before. Largely in prior to favorable revenue over what your estimates were. The negative unassigned fund balance in the other governmental funds is a direct result of the TIF. Um, you sold bonds in July, so that will be that will be funded in July. So this is as of June 30th. Scrolling to the next page, we just wanted to show you a yearly comparison of your fund balances. As you can see, the green color is your unassigned fund balance and you have a policy that you your goal is to have at least 15% of your budgeted expenditures. And it looks like you are budgeting and moving towards that direction. And this is the percentage of your general fund unassigned as it relates to your expenditures. So like we said, it's it's going up FY 20. We have to remember that was COVID. Like we can't forget that the statements of revenues, expenditures and fund balances. So this is going to show your revenues at $15 million for general fund in your expenditures at 12. And then you had some transfers out to different funds. So you increased your fund balance for your general fund by about $400,000 as Ron mentioned on the previous slide. I will say like capital projects. There was about $1 million. This year was a relatively easy year for y'all because you opened up the sewer the sewer plant in FY 21. And so it was it was relatively calm. So this is just a pie chart puts it in perspective for your revenues about 75% of your revenue is through taxes in our governmental is about 10%. That's going to be grants and then charges for services. So your ambulance police charges some of those reimbursements that you have coming back. And then your expenditures almost 50% is public safety police fire. You know, a general government is the 21% that's going to be the city manager of finance. And then public works is streets and fleet operations as well. This chart we wanted to show a comparison for 2022 to 2021. I would say the biggest takeaway I take is that everything's about even your your revenues 75% of it comes from your taxes. Public safety remains at 46 to 48%. General government is about 21%. So so nothing dramatic. Nothing really changed from one year to the next. So then we get to your proprietary funds. So this is going to be your water sewer parking and district heat. What we're going to show in your fixed assets. Like I said, it was a relatively calm year. You only put about $500,000 of infrastructure for water fund and sewer fund. The parking in the district heat remained relatively flat. Would say just the one comment about your heat fund is it's still in the deficit situation of a little over $300,000, which is actually having an improvement over last year. Correct. Correct. Um, as we look at this slide, you can see your net positions. Um, the water and sewer both increased water by about 400,000. The sewer fund increased about 150,000. Um, your district heat. So while your overall next net position for your district heat did decrease, um, your unrestricted actually, uh, improved, um, about $60,000 from last year to this year. And then this shows revenues and expenses for your proprietary funds. And this shows the variance in the net changes. So like we said, for your water fund, you increased it about 400,000 sewer was about 126 parking. Last year, you actually zeroed out the fund balance and made it zero. And this year, you actually, um, improved it by $200,000 for your net position. Um, and then you can see the district heat, uh, decreased your net position by $150,000. This shows the comparison of your revenues with the proprietary funds. Um, and you can see, you know, we're back up to the 2020 level. Um, 20, uh, the difference between 21 and the modem off and on. And that seemed to have made a difference period. You guys want to log back into your meeting? I think everything's okay now. So your water fees are up by about $400,000. And then your parking revenue fees that you collected was up by about $200,000 compared to 21 for 22. And then the expenditure side of it, you can see in 21, it was, it was high in 22, it has decreased. Part of that is $400,000 in the sewer fund in supplies and treatment. And, um, you know, you opened up your sewer fund in 21. So that should have decreased some of your expenses in 22. And then your parking was down in the parking enforcement. So we wanted to put together a couple slides here that is actually a comparison with other entities, Barry, Shelburne, Montpelier, their, your size. And so what this is, is we're comparing their annuals unassigned fund balance as a percentage of budget. Um, just to see where you are compared to other towns, your size. We did throw in South Burlington because right now they're also in an investment in, or they're investing in their infrastructure during this time. And we know that that is a discussion that you all are having, especially with your proprietary funds. Um, so we wanted to throw South Burlington in there. Um, for fund balances, y'all have a, you want a minimum of unassigned equal to at least 15%. Uh, South Burlington has, they have a minimum of one month, which is eight, about 8.33%, but their target is two months, which is about 16%, which is right in line with y'all. And then we couldn't find one for Shelburne and Barry. Um, I do want to point out Barry town, you know, in 2019 and 2020, they actually had a negative unassigned fund balance. Um, you know, where y'all have actually been pretty steady and you're working to improve that to make sure you have your 15%. We always refer to in our profession is 15%. That's a sweet spot. 60 days, two months. Am I right? For one of those previous bar charts that we're actually right at 16% now, so so we're actually right where you want to be to the good. Yeah, right where you want to be. And we put some comparisons on here and I don't want you to think here's what I always say. Stay true to you, you know, don't compare yourself to other municipalities. You know, we talk about South Burlington or Shelburne or Barry, you know, they have other things to you know, between reserve accounts, conscientious funding that they put aside some other local tax option taxes that they all have there. Stay true to who Montpelier is though. And one of the things that I think, you know, that you'll see, you know, one of the common ground things that you'll see is infrastructures. Miranda said there is a lot of infrastructure investment going on in the world of government right now. Well, if you haven't seen them yet, from what is that? So so so last November, sorry, just if you're love to capture all this for the folks at home, so make sure you're speaking into mic. Thank you. So I was asking the question if the investment infrastructure had to do with federal dollars. Yeah, so so last November, they passed a stimulus infrastructure packages, like tagged as the build America back again. And then it was tagged as the infrastructure package. That money hasn't filtered its way down into longer than money starting now to filter its way down. I don't think we're going to see until 2324, you know, and there will be a lot of money available to government for roads and infrastructure needs. And that was what the whole package was designed to do. And then in our last slide, we're comparing the debt that you have per capita. And then we compared it to these other communities. So I would say Barry, Shelburne, Montpelier, you're all right at the same size. And you're right at the same level of debt compared to these other entities. South Burlington, you know, they're two and a half times your size, but they still have a larger debt per capita. Like we said, they are investing right now in their infrastructure. And other and they have a TIF they have some other stuff that's going on as well with that. That's the highlight. That's what we got. Are there any questions? Appreciate the glance of the comparison. I mean, you got to take it for what it is, but it's helpful. Thank you. Absolutely. We try to and I think the biggest thing that I take away from that is, is I still maintain state of who you are. I just want to come back to something that Jack highlighted. So so we are meeting our fund balance policy right now. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. It's like the first time since I've been on the council for like 10 years. Wow. Yeah, I guess so. I guess so. Well, that's that's great. Thank you so much. Thank you. And I want to thank Kelly and Heather and Todd for their work in the finance office. So it's always a pleasure to come here and work with them. And I want to thank Miranda because I can't talk. Thank you. Thank you. All right, thanks. You may be that the 40 or 56 to 51% or something was public safety. I understand that our dispatch operation brings in some $400,000. I'm wondering why that isn't managed as a proprietary fund. Why is it lumped in with police work? Generally, it's been a general fund. It costs about a million dollars to run. It's an offset to the dispatching. Priory funds sell sufficient supposed to be paid by the services they generate and certainly public safety wouldn't even begin to hit that target for any municipality. So thank you. Okay, thanks. Thank you all. Yeah. All right. So we are on to the rightsville Beach Recreation District presentation. And I believe we have some folks here from just one second. I just want to thank the finance staff. I certainly thank the R&R for their report, but also Kelly who's been under double duty here for some time, Heather. That's what I'm saying. Nice things about city staff Steve. So you don't have to listen. I'd like to compliment the finance staff. Heather Kelly in particular has been doing double duty. Heather, all of them, Tonya, Serena, I'm going to miss somebody I'm sure. Crystal now, the folks that have worked there. Once again, we've had an clean audit with no exceptions and no comments. And that is not the norm for municipalities. I'm sure they would tell you that. And it has been our norm for quite some time. So they put their very they take this work very seriously. And they do a really great job. So thank you to all the folks in our finance. Yes, I agree. Thank you. Well done. Don't forget that. Yeah, it's a big deal. Please pass on our gratitude, Kelly. Yes. And welcome. Oh, yes. Yes. All right, well, I'll start. Good evening. Good evening, Mayor Watson. My name is Colin O'Neill. I'm the manager of the Rightsville Beach Recreation District. Ben so for about 21 years. My right is John Copans. He's the one of the two Montpelier board representatives. He was a treasurer up until recently on Dan Courier. He's also a board representative and he is the current treasurer. So I did send a handout in last week. I don't know if it was disseminated to all of you. First of all, I want to apologize because I intended on having it be one page. Okay, but I got a little wordy. Now there's I think there's there's a lot of detail that I really wanted to get in there for you. The three other towns they did only get a one pager though. And have you all had a chance to familiarize yourself with the information here? So so yeah, we're here. I'll jump right to the to the to the chase here. We're here to seek an increase in the cap of the per capita that we assess all four of the district member towns. Currently, it's capped at $1.50 and we would like to increase that cap to $4. It's not that we're looking to jump to actually assess $4. Our intention is to assess $2.50 for Wrightsville's 2023 fiscal year, Montpelier's 2024 fiscal year. And then the plan stabilizes that assessment at 250 for a number of years. Any questions at this point? So if I understand correctly, Montpelier's portion would go from $12,000 to about $20,000. Correct. Yes, would be an increase of about $8,074. Well, I don't have all of theirs here, but it's all based on their population. And it's all the per capita. So for East Montpelier, it's just under 3000. For middle sex, it's just under 2000, I believe. Worcester is just over 1000. Is the per capita rate the same for every town? Yes. Okay. So and it's, did I read here that the other three towns have already agreed to raise the cap to $4. Right. Yeah. Over the last month or so, I've met with the three other towns and they've all approved it so far. And so then the intention would be to assess every town at 250 per capita. Correct. Any other questions for these folks at this point? Okay. So thank you. I just want to speak to a little bit of the process from here. So because this is an item that is usually in our budget and we're going to take up first run at the budget this evening. We're going to include this as a part of our discussion together with all the other pieces as a whole. Does that make sense? Sure. Okay. Does that sound okay with you all? I mean, my thought is that we probably wouldn't be making a decision right right now, but have the decision to include it in the budget with the rest of the budget discussion. Sound okay? Okay. And I realize that means that you don't get to it's not done right now. But but I think it makes sense to do it all together. That's fine. Would you like me to stay for that discussion? Well, so there's going to be a couple of opportunities at least to have input on this. So if we come up with questions or objections, even or actually, I sort of assume that if people had questions or concerns, maybe they'd raise them now. But otherwise, I think we would have time between now and the next meetings to get in touch with you to ask questions if we had any. You're always welcome to stay, of course, but you don't have to. I'm getting hungry. Mask as a Dan courier. The the timing for the rights field budget is to try to approve it in December. So I absolutely understand the Council's wanting to loop it into your own budget discussions. That makes sense with our budget because we're on a calendar year. We're trying to do it a little earlier than that. But what is your timeframe like? Is it January that you'll have the final approval? Well, so that's that's a good question. So I'm jumping ahead a little bit. But talking about the budget, what I would like for us to do, and this is sort of a discussion we have to have as a Council. But what I would like to see us do is to really get into some of the things that we need to do. We need to be able to meet with the Council and meet with it tonight and then be making some decisions at our next meeting for the 21st. And if we can come out of the 21st with a budget that we're ready to take comments on, then we can move forward with the budget hearings in January. But then, of course, you know, our budget is still an opportunity to make changes in January, of course. And then we wouldn't know if it was approved until March, but that's that would be normal anyway. Like that's what we would have done, I suppose, in any previous year. But theoretically, we could have an answer for for our purposes, generally by the end of December. Okay, yes, just one more comment. Yeah. So we just finished our 37th season at Wrightsville. And this is only the second time that we've come to the towns asking for an increase in that cap. We are very frugal. I believe it. Donnie, you had a question. Well, I just wanted to hear from John and Dan, who's our reps, some opinion, some influence, what would you like us to do? I mean, the letter is very factual, but I just like an assessment from you two. Yeah, we wouldn't be here, right? We as a as a Wrightsville Beach board, certainly approve this step of approaching all the towns and us being here as a representation that we do feel that these, you know, as Colin alluded to, we try to be very frugal as a board. We're really proud of the resource we have at Wrightsville. It's treasure. It gets great utilization. And this approval of this increase in the per capita, I think really sets us on a solid footing, moving forward. You know, one of the quirks about Wrightsville Beach, where we're sort of a municipality that's a gathering of four municipalities, we actually have no ability to take on any debt. So we basically have to pay cash for everything. So all of those improvements you see out there and that's not easy for any entity, certainly not for a municipality. So like that explains a little bit of our our need for some additional resources. I echo everything John said. And the other thing I'll add is I mean, I've been off the board for a long time just back on, it was a treat to come in and see, you know, a little bit of funds in the checking account, right? And and the goal to increase, you know, the membership and so encourage new, new, you know, resonance to come to Wrightsville, because it is a jewel, right? And so so yeah. Yeah, darling, I go at least once. And sometimes dozens of times, it's just very unpredictable. But I have seen the improvements. And I do enjoy it. I'm not sure enough Montpellierites know what a treasure it is. So we need to do some enticements to get more out there. No, no, no, we need to keep it a secret. Everybody that uses it just needs to buy a membership. It used to be a complete secret. So I've run it for 21 years. When I started it was a complete secret and it was a pit. This year, we had over 17,000 user visits and counting because people are still out there playing disc golf. It's amazing. Disc golf hole six. A lot of constituents asking, you know, if there'll be more back to the original position. Well, that was that was a shift we made prepping for COVID. And then going back. Sorry, you got to up your game. All right, well, thank you. And yes, Jack, go ahead. Thank you. I'm looking. I'm looking about at the revenue breakdown. And it looks like your this past year, your 2022 your user fees are about 60% of the budget user fees are going down next year because you're looking to get more revenue from taxes with and grants. Okay. Okay. Yep. Are you is it possible to break down what the total proportion of revenues is from users in all the towns? I can do you know how many you know, since Montpelier, since 75% of your users are from other towns, is that translate directly into how much what percentage of your revenue comes from non residents of Montpelier? I don't have the data broken down by town where people are spending their money other than season past purchases. And we do the way that we come up with that 75 25% is we do random random sampling without the summer of just asking people what towns they're from. But we but when they're actually making a purchase, other than passes and they're entering their address in our in our logbook, we don't have that tract. Okay. Thanks. Because obviously we're we're Montpelier is the biggest contributor of tax revenues, but probably not the biggest contributor to user fees. Oh yeah, by town, you're definitely the largest contributor by user fee. I mean, 25% of our business comes from Montpelier. And a huge percentage comes from very town, very city around the state of Vermont. And then per capita, middle sex is pretty comparable to Montpelier. But overall use Montpelier is far and above every other town. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Okay. All right, well, we will continue the discussion round this item when we can take up the budget. So thank you so much. And to be continued. All right, pins and needles. Okay, so we are up to discussion on the central month public safety authority. And for this I believe there's a report though I'm not sure I might don't am I looking at you am I looking at sure you can doesn't you'd stay there if you'd like up to you. I'm speaking though from my central Vermont Public Safety Authority Board hat. Okay. If I had a hat, I would have brought it. Just by way of introduction. When we first got word of the proposed budget and some of the longer term plans of CVPS a I think both cities asked the CVPS a board to come to this meeting and connected with our budget process just to understand what the financial thinking was. And I think since then, the boards made some different decisions. So I think at this point, we're just seeking an update from them about where they're at. And certainly take questions afterwards. I you have been notified that at last Thursday meeting, the Center for Mont Public Safety Authority Board voted to advance a plan to dissolve the public safety authority. It also voted to not request any funds this March at town meeting. And it will hold its published annual meeting next Monday, December 19th at 7pm remotely. And though I agree with these steps, I'm very disappointed that the cities and the surrounding towns have not committed to making a regionalized public safety service happen. In the last eight years, Public Safety Authority has really worked to increase coordination, training of dispatchers, improve the communication system. We've done studies. We have really felt we have nurtured the environment that has improved public safety in Central Vermont. But understanding that and knowing maybe this is the time for this particular organization to no longer exist, I'm still very upset that the negative actions of a few, a couple actually individuals could damage Central Vermont Public Safety Authority's reputation, that the consistent negative comments override eight years of putting good action out to support public safety. And so I really want people to know that the board itself is pleased with all the support we've gotten from the city staff, the public safety individuals, the city managers, the councils have been very accessible. We're sorry that we didn't find the total buy-in that was needed to make the Public Safety Authority really valid. But I do encourage this city council, as I did last night in Berry City Council, to really look at public safety expenses, and maybe the whole operation to be separate from the general budget. Especially when it comes to equipment, training, we fit a niche. The Public Safety Authority services in both cities kept reducing their request on the general budget. And they didn't have money for training. They didn't have money for to improve the transfer, the communication equipment. So, you know, when public safety equipment gets right in there with, oh, we want 2% increase in tax, and that's it. It loses. And the one thing the Public Safety Authority did was take it out and look at public safety needs by itself and make it a priority. And the voters supported us every time. When we asked to do a study, they supported us. And I think they would support the cities if you could be bold enough to ask for it. Because this equipment that we have this grant coming in of 2.4 million right now isn't enough. It's enough to get us over the hump of the old towers and the wiring and the links. Definitely other grants will bring in new radios. There's a lot of equipment that needs to be purchased. And then it needs a commitment of setting aside funds to maintain that equipment, to replace that equipment. So we never get in this big hole again. The initial need was some 3.6.4. And we're not asking for everything within the need assessment that's listed as equipment that we need to really service the regional area. So the 2.4 is beginning. 2.4 million, this case people don't know, that's an M behind it. Really, it's just the tip of the iceberg. And so I really hope the city councils can commit themselves to look at public safety a little separately and perhaps put it out to the voters separately and you'll find support for it. And I'm here to answer questions. Oh, Berry City Council to also let you know last night, because the way it was on the agenda, they felt they couldn't do a vote, but they did a straw vote, and they are planning to bring it on the next council meeting to put on the March ballot to withdraw from the Central Vermont Public Safety Authority. So that's the latest update that I have. Thank you. I have a couple of questions. One is, as we have this 2.4 million dollars, does the entity need to continue to exist while that money is expended? Very interesting. At the December 8th meeting when the board made the motion to actually move to dissolve, there was requests coming from the Twin Cities that when they did this application with the Department of Public Safety for all the new dispatch equipment, the state has decided to distribute all the towns they've been doing previous free dispatching on, and they have asked Berry and Montpelier to take on more towns in their dispatch centers. And the Twin Cities, both Berry and Montpelier need an impact analysis before they say yes. And so the Public Safety Authority got a quest of $25,000 to do another study. Now the study is needed. So I'm smiling because we have the money because we've asked the voters for it, and the cities could have the money to do these studies if you ask the voters for it. So the Public Safety Authority hasn't approved that. It'll be considered at the 19th meeting, but we would definitely put that money back into public safety. And once, if indeed we allow, we allot that $25,000, we'll have about $5,000 that we assumed, again, it'll go back to the cities and public safety in some way. Now we are exploring with the League, who we are a member, the Vermont League of City and Towns and Legal Advice, to actually read the charter because everybody has a little different opinion of some of the language there, exactly in dissolving and whether or not, if indeed like Berry puts that on the ballot and if Montpelier decides to put it on the ballot to withdraw and the voters agree, does it take a year or not? The charter says a year after the citizens vote, you can leave, but that's assuming you've got some financial buy-in commitment, investment that needs to be dealt with. We don't have that in this case. So we may be able to modify some of that. But it's... To answer your question, Madam Mayor, the application was not made by the CVPSA for that grant funds made by the City of Montpelier on behalf of the two cities. Because the public safety authority didn't have the capacity to take on a grant like that, and which is Montpelier stepped in to do that, which we're very thankful for. Yep. Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you. Other questions that I know some folks may want to make some comments. Any other questions from council at this point? Okay. Comments. Go ahead. People get crazy when there's big money in the trough. So it's important to note this money, the 2.4 million that you're referring to, the city applied for 3.6. It's not a sure thing by any stretch. It's conditioned upon meeting a governance requirement that there's a lot of wishful thinking going on. The city has convened, the managers and chiefs have convened this quote you've heard, Twin Cities Group. That's operating outside of public records open meeting law. And it is not meeting the threshold of governance of the served towns. So it may be that CVPSA is the vehicle by which we can be eligible for these funds. But even so, these funds, the 2.4 million is only about half what the system is projected to cost. And there's no plan. There's no documents of where the other 2.4 million is going to come from or the increased operating costs. And the towns that are currently served, there's 18, 22 of them, something around there, that are currently served by Montpelier Dispatch have not been made aware or have an opportunity to weigh in on whether or not they want to sign contracts for unknown escalating rates. So this thing is a house of cards. It's been sabotaged from within the board. Then the interpretation of the current chair that we don't have to adhere to the charter. The charter is law. The charter says you will have an executive director. You will have an audit. You will record your meetings. The charter doesn't say that. But state law says that when they're virtual only. And all of those laws are disregarded by this chair. And in fact, I had asked for I believe you've been misled about what happened at the meeting. One of the people explicitly stated that he voted in the affirmative specifically for the purpose of reserving the right to move to reconsider. Okay. And unfortunately, due to the fact that the chair of CVPSA has refused, this is not a two minute one minute thing. The chair refuses to record the meetings. Therefore, I have been unable to get a recording in time to provide transcripts of Jim Ward from Barry, Doug Hoyt and others that have real reservations about disbanding it, especially at this critical time where we're on the potential of accessing substantial money from both the general fund and federal funds. So the problem here is that there is no expertise. Fred Cummings moved on to wherever he went. There is no expertise in the fire service or the police of radio expertise. We're totally dependent upon vendors. And the the analogy I would use is we wouldn't expect the meter maids to do street engineering, right? They walk the streets and write tickets, but we don't expect them to do the street engineering. You don't, we don't expect the firemen, probably the highest users of water to engineer the water maids. Here's a problem of a non-engineered multimillion dollar system that is being co-opted without proper governance. And Central Vermont Public Safety Authority was formed to be that governance. And unfortunately, the charter gave towns the impression that it was going to take over their services, that it was going to be one unified county scale police and fire system, and that all their individual departments would be absorbed into it. So Stephen, you're at four minutes now. If you could wrap up your comments. Well, I can't wrap them up because there's more than that. I don't believe that the two minutes should apply here. This is an issue that you've been post kicking down the road for many meetings. And now it's reached critical. No, so this is still public comment and the rule still applies. So if you would wrap up your comments, that'd be great. Thank you. I will again, protest that the challenge the legality of your if you really don't want to learn about the decisions you're about to make or that you're being asked to make. That's typical. Thank you. Yes, go ahead. Kim, Jeannie here. I live in Town Street. Where things stand on the grant is in the legislature and you and you will probably have a big say in how this works out. What I would like to see is simply we're not asking you for any money for the coming appropriation. I don't know how we're going to evolve how the governance section works out. And I don't think anybody does because the Public Safety Commissioner asked for. I can't remember the number several hundred thousand dollars to get a staff to study what kind of a plan to solve a problem they've been working on for over 50 years, which is how to allocate state and regional governance. And she has said and it makes sense to me if local people involve something that works for them. We're not necessarily going to impose a cookie cutter that everybody has to fall into. On the other hand, the grant requirements were very specific. I said you had the city in this case would have to have contracts with 10 different entities. The only outfit I know with those kind of contracts is Shelbert and they're making it work. I don't know if they have 10 and I don't know. I don't think anybody knows how all this is going to work out. So my play is let's wait the year out. Leave the charter in place. It'll be kind of dormant. And if that I've made some suggestions for how the charter could be amended to be a little more friendly to some of the users, etc. Whether they'd be acceptable or not. I don't know. Chief Pete said that they were looking at it. The last time he was with a general the DPS committee that's studying this. So I would like to just see this. The only action I think we need is for you to approve. You've heard the budget. The budget will come out. It'll be zero. And I should add I don't think there's enough votes for dissolution. But I don't know. I was surprised last time. So I never know how they're going to come out. So I think it's kind of wait and see and the only action that's before you I think is to hear the budget. There is zero for your contribution to coming here. Thank you. Thank you. Well it's in person. Everybody hear me OK. That's much better. Justin Dreschler CPSA. I am the current secretary of the CPSA and the Montpelier Rep. I am the one who moved to dissolve the CPSA. It was my motion. It's been my push if anyone is to blame it should be me. I think that this has been a long time coming and it took someone who doesn't care what people think of them or the consequences to actually do it. And so that's why I put it forward. A couple of things Whitaker is right that Jim Ward did not vote to dissolve the CPSA. Jim Ward voted in a very very wishy washy way. So we had a non binding resolution to prepare a dissolution plan that we could then vote on later. So Whitaker is right about that. Doug it definitely expressed reservations although I would I would I would characterize them as like disappointment more than reservations like disappointment with the process. To me. So Kim is also right that this you have this CVPSA. Somebody's got to govern something eventually maybe. Right. I guess this is the is what we have here. I just happen to think that it will never be CVPSA. Montpelier itself has more or less said they're not going to work with CVPSA. Capital fire has outright said they will never work with CVPSA. My understanding is the Barry City Council meeting last night was was quite contentious. I was not there. I I find it distasteful that they were throwing around people's names as having sabotaged the CVPSA and been the real problem. This is a committee that tried very hard. Donna worked her ass off for years. You can see all the work that she's done. Kim worked his ass off for years. Whitaker has worked as hard as anybody on this thing. It's just that like people disagree and you don't have to say that someone ruined something. Something can just not work and CVPSA just does not work and and I don't see any way for it to ever work without buying. There is no buying. Anyone who's ever been in a leadership position will tell you it's the only thing that actually matters. It's people believing in you. Nobody believes in this committee and it's unfortunate. But it is what it is. Last thing I want to say is I found it very unsettling when the Capitol Fire came to our most recent meeting and asked us for twenty five thousand dollars. It's an organization that said they're never going to work with us. In Montpelier is more or less said they're not going to work with us. Barry is more or less said they're not going to work with us. I can understand why that drives Whitaker. Absolutely fucking nuts and why he refers to CVPSA as the piggy bank excuse me absolutely effing nuts. Thank you. I apologize. Why Whitaker refers to CVPSA as the piggy bank for these towns because it certainly feels like that when someone when an organization tells you that you're no good and then they come to ask for your money because they don't have it. That said it's really important money. It's really important work needs to be done. So I have to say thank you. Thank you. Anyone else with this in person wish to make a comment about this. Anyone else with this digitally wish to make a comment. OK. Well first of all I want to just acknowledge all the work that's gone into this organization over the years and I am very grateful for all the work that you have done and you know it seems to me that at least where I'm at right now is that I think I agree with the recommendation and just in terms of the process if the council agrees as well I think what we could do is potentially have a motion to recommend to staff to prepare some kind of language that could be approved for the ballot because it would take a ballot item to to dissolve it on our part or for us to step out of it. But I think we're not at the point of actually putting that language on right now but we can ask the staff to create that language. But that's just my opinion. Other thoughts. Yeah go ahead Lauren. I'm in the same place. One thing I would love to get and understand if you know assuming we move forward with this it is dissolved you know clearly there was a vision and goals here and like what are we going to be missing out on and if we're going to look to maintain the collaboration and you know maybe there's some future differently constructed iteration of this and so like I would love to understand you know what value has there been and like what might we want to recapture in some other way or are there things that the cities are going to have to take on that CVPSA has been doing it's not entirely clear to me like what exactly we're going to be missing by dissolving this and just like having that understanding in like a memo that then we can reflect on and look for you know where we go from here either just as a city and working in partnership with the other you know regional communities or do we at some point think that a different you know organizing entity is needed and what what would that structure be and kind of what didn't work about this structure so that we can have lessons learned that's something that you could create that okay probably not till after we get done the budget but we can do that I would like to just make a couple of confidence if I could just in response to some of the comments we just heard number one just with regard to the comment about funding all of the funding for CVPSA comes from the city of my pillar and the city of Barry they're the only two funding sources so for those two cities to seek that money to be returned to them for a project they're working on jointly that has been supported by CVPSA I'm not sure I would characterize this going to the piggy bank I would say seeking our own money back to do a project that we've done and I would say that I can't speak for anybody else I would say the city of my pillar has not said we would not work with CVPSA in fact we work closely on designing this project I point out that the main beneficiaries of the project we're talking about are the regional towns who are non-members so the cities of my pillar Barry put a lot of work into this so that we can have better regional telecommunication systems we worked with CVPSA to create the design of the Tel Aviv study to review that and have you know appreciated all they've done we've taken advantage of the training certainly our relationship with the city of Barry has never been better and I think a large of that is due to CVPSA I would say that the city has been clear that at least as currently constituted and with what is available that we were not interested in consolidating services or giving up our services to another entity until we felt confident that our residents would have the same or improved services so I just want to be clear the city isn't this city at least has never said we're going to take our ball home when this was first formed when it was first being talked about being for Mayor Hooper Mayor Holler Mayor Watson all said we're interested in this but not just to save money we want if we're not getting better service out of this we're not interested in that it's always been the guiding principle from the city so I think we appreciate the work and I agree with Mr. Drexler that I'm not sure there is a huge amount of confidence for whatever reason right or wrong deserved or not and and I'd be happy we can certainly have an agenda item in the future about this grant process the project who's involved the conversations that have been held with the neighboring towns about what they're getting into and the agreements that are being made on that but that is another so I think it's up to you what you want to do with the authority itself I just want to make clear that many people have spoken truth tonight and that's great the money came from the cities they want it back the cities have put themselves out to serve the entire region as well as CVPCSA. Other comments from the council yes go ahead several interesting questions out of the Berry City Council and one is what it relates to Lawrence and and that is the cities weren't ready to succeed any authority they weren't ready to appoint their own public safety staff to the board which was the expectation so they always stayed a little back and I think with the state now putting out a grant and the attitude of regional dispatch centers the cities will get guidance and you'll you'll develop a format that works because it is in the future Vermont is going to statewide regional systems so I really think it's a waste of time to spend any more on why we failed you know we achieve some things it wasn't what we aimed that often happens but we did achieve some things so I think the public safety is ahead I wouldn't I wouldn't spend the time Lauren is there a motion hold on I'd like to see if there is a motion yes Jack I'm a direct city staff to produce a resolution that we can go to the voters to exit or dissolve the authority second motion and a second further discussion and anything anything more okay in that case all in favor please say aye okay and opposed all right I don't think you need to okay all right and just to check again any opposed okay great thank you and gosh please pass along our gratitude to everyone on the committee yes he's with this digitally I'm sorry I didn't see him there since 2014 and it needs to be he applied a lot of past experience very very helpful member of the board yes thank you okay all right so we are going to move on to the oh yeah it is 830 okay so yeah we are going to take a 10 minute break it is 828 right now we're going to say we'll be back at 840 which is actually 12 minutes okay thanks we're going to come back from our break one of the things that we neglected to do was accept the report of the audit is there a motion to do that yes I make a motion that we accept the audit that was presented okay motion and a second further discussion okay all in favor please say aye and opposed okay all right and so I think we're ready to discuss the budget okay thank you madam mayor members of the city council but tonight you've received all the line by line detail of the budget I believe we're going to be getting the budget book how's that is that better I don't know how's that is that right that's too fuzzy how's that perfect we like perfect okay so thank you for the opportunity to present the budget the goal tonight so you've received the budget letter which kind of describes what's really in the nuts and bolts of the budget you've received the actual line by line detail of the entire budget we should be getting the budget book by the end of the week which just has more graphs and those types of things that's being completed new this year between now and you're meeting next week we will be we're doing individual videos of each department department will be making a presentation as if they were sitting here just going through the key aspects of their budget those beyond video hopefully by the end of this week up on YouTube for all of you to see as well as members of the public and that way next week you could just ask questions if you chose instead of having to hear the whole presentation here so that's that's still coming this presentation tonight is really meant to provide a high level overview of the budget we've got key staff here if you have questions about any aspects of it I know the mayor had indicated she wanted to get into some meat of it I think obviously from from our perspective with staff the biggest question is is the overall level of the budget where you want it I would you like to see more or less etc because that will define what we do over the next week and then and then obviously how you move things around within it if you choose to so as we prepare the budget we talked about this a little bit earlier our goal is always to implement the strategic plan that we spend a lot of time on we have talked a lot about our staffing we are getting there most of our departments now are getting near full with the exception of the police department although they are making some strides they're not as less not as unful as they were is to continue our investment in infrastructure to deliver responsible services and stay within the seven point seven percent inflation rate which is what it was we started this process we did get new information that it's now at seven point one percent so just so people are aware of that so going through our strategic plan just trying to hit some of the key elements of the budget it's for you to see and improve community prosperity we increase the economic development funding from fifty thousand to hundred thousand dollars with the idea that it would be entirely earmarked for the country club road project we need the money for that project anyway but we felt long run this would then restore the funding for economic development going forward we retain the forty five thousand dollars for the homelessness task force we've got the hundred and thirty four thousand one fifty for the community fund which was last year's amount thirty two thousand six hundred for the mob pillar alive and ten thousand for the mob pillar arts fund community arts fund under our provide local responsible and engaged government we're going to we'll talk a little bit this more about this more under our plan Kelly can give you some more detail but given the constant struggles we've had with microphone sound et cetera we've gotten some pricing to upgrade this room and we can do that actually relatively quickly we're going to propose to actually use some ARPA money for that it's been a constant battle and to try to modernize this room recognizing we're going to be doing probably hybrid meetings in the lake from now on and to approve that we have the transition plan projects which for this year is largely the elevator in the city hall we put money in last year we've got funds in this year we are budgeted for fully staffed city departments including the new position you improved last year on sustainability and taking our part time communications coordinator position to full time we've kept the 20,000 in for the committee stipend program ten thousand dollars for social and economic justice advisory committee and fifteen thousand dollars for legislative advocacy those were all new in the last year or so and we're at sort of initiatives of the council we've kept those in create more housing we've put in a hundred and ten thousand for the housing trust fund with the idea that it would all again all be marked for the country club road project and I'll be talking about that a little bit later tonight but we are we should be receiving a written update on that project soon and I'm going to mention this under my manager's report but so you have time to think about it we had we had suggested that maybe January 18 might be a budget workshop night they've asked that we instead if you're not still working on the budget that we have a workshop night on the community CCR project country culture so that you can see the early drafts and then and get a handle on their initial findings so that is moving along with the idea that maybe within the time frame that have been laid out the council would be approving and the community would be approving the vision for this project. Practice good environmental purchase stewardship we are looking at some of our first truck purchases electric boa purchase you've heard from Chris Lombra about some of the actions so we are looking at converting the DPW complex to renewable and that will require reworking the bond language last year's bond language talked about a series of projects and specifically mentioned pellet burner so if we want to have more options such as using the methane heat those kinds of things we need to rework the burner excuse me the ballot language so we'll be coming forth with a proposal on that capital needs assessment this is a longer term taking a look at all of our doing an assessment of all of our projects of all of our capital assets excuse me to determine where we need to make the improvements for sustainability we're continuing the funding from my ride confluence park is another you heard from a resident today the price keeps going up for that so I think the plan for that is to continue to finish the design work have it come to the city council with the updated design and the updated cost estimates and then you would make a decision whether to delay to cancel the project what you want to do but also that is the six hundred thousand dollars that was included in that larger bond when we think about reworking that bond we might want to have some flexibility for that as well that could because if you chose not to go forward with it it could conceivably be reallocated to housing resources or completely redoing the dpw campus to make it net zero there are a number of things we certainly have no shortage of capital and community needs that can be reallocated to and lastly we are proposing the stormwater utility that you've heard about that will also require a charter change to hear more about that next week with some draft language but that's coming to build and maintain sustainable infrastructure we've maintained the total two point one four nine million dollar capital plan funding that was we had last year we met with the capital committee and an extra earlier today and our goal really had been to get that number to two point four million this year or at least something between two point one five and two point four but given the constraints of trying to stay even at seven point seven percent or actually seven point four where we ended up that seemed very difficult we still have our funding which we'll talk about the rec center is a huge need and that's where we're doing the future planning of the country club road reminder that even though these were all approved last year we will be doing this work in the coming year seven point two million dollars starting on the state street that will actually be a couple years the very main intersection will be getting done the street light improvements these are all friends we approved last year but it's still work in addition there's a CSO project on state street that'll be done which will result in you know paving after that and the state is paving route to all the length of it from the creamy stand to the wayside so while that is not our project per say that is a huge investment in new private paving in the center of the community so there will be a lot of work done even although not as much as we would like probably improve health and safety will continue funding for the body one cameras which started in f y twenty three I'm sure the police department can explain this better than I can but we are putting in a new policy management platform for the police this isn't an increase a new initiative we're supporting a canine unit our dog Atlas just came out of training I met him tonight and he will be out he is a very young working dog and will be carefully managed is right now specifically on tracking lost items and people and those kinds of things and again chief can explain more about that and we've done a lot of work on planning of the crisis since intervention team program and this would be moving forward toward implementation of that so taking a look at the capital improvements plan you can see our total funding at the bottom in f y twenty three was two point one four nine six five one six five and that's what's proposed for the f y twenty four that's the good news and then in f y twenty five you see two point four million that's what we had hoped to be that had been the level we were at pre pandemic and we're trying to get back to that the bad news is because of the debt we've taken on over the last year you can see that the debt went from seven sixteen f y twenty three to one point almost double not quite in in f y twenty four dropping the annual amount from what a little over a million to just six hundred and forty thousand dollars so that's really what results in in less work this year being done but remember those debt payments reflect all those big projects we just talked about so we are money this year is being invested into infrastructure just not as what we call pay as you go or annual money it's in debt money our goal as you can see is to get you know next year to be at two point four million and then to slowly continue to build that up on an annual basis so that we can keep track and hit the so-called steady state I'm not going to go into this in great detail but you can just see really the different programs that are going in the biggest project is the Grote Road Bridge which has been in planning for a while we had three hundred and thirty thousand in last year's budget we've got two hundred thousand in we received a hundred seventy five thousand dollar grant this is a bridge that is failing you can't put a fire truck across it that those particular homes are on wells you can't get a well drilling rig across it it's and it's been failed now for a few years it's time that we we need to do that the sidewalks those are our match for that route to paving project upgrade sidewalks and do things along the way and I T again these are things we need to do buildings ground as I mentioned the hundred thousand dollars for the elevator and so you see the big thing is the drop last year we did excuse me we had a huge amount eight hundred seventy five thousand dollars which would be our goal to pay each year and certainly have a lot less funding for paving next year again recognizing that we have a lot of work that was will be done and we did over a million dollars worth of work this year so we are a little bit ahead of the game and I'll talk a little bit more about other potential funding sources for that and just in the equipment again you can see this here we don't need to go through this in detail unless you have questions for the appropriate department head about these one of the these both of the equipment and the capital plans do have multi years to them I think just a reminder that you've heard before the biggest ticket item coming in the future is a new ladder truck which is one point two million it will be eligible for grant funding in another year or so which is why we've been putting it off but that will be a large again bond purchase that we would make which would impact this fund but it is not included in this year just taking a look at our ARPA so as you can see we had two point two million dollars the column on the left is where we have allocated that funding so you can see it's pretty much all allocated except for thirty six eighty three and you can see the fifty thousand dollars for the upgrade to this room and twenty thousand dollars for district heat connections those are things we are proposing this year those would be to help individual people connect to district heat which would help everything else is things that you've already allocated and to the right is just what we've actually spent so far in each of them so they're still unspent funds but they are in you know they are in certain categories so again you can see there's still three hundred thousand dollars in road and bridge work left to go there's still some equipment purchases left to go so while our capital plan isn't what we would hope some of this work is still being done through ARPA and we still have the big ticket item of four hundred twenty five thousand dollars for awaiting the report from the homeless task force I would add that we did take a look at using some of this funds for public restrooms you heard the demand for that there's no question about that and just to respond to some of the comments that were made I have withheld creating any initiative administrative initiative on that waiting to hear what the recommendation of this if there's a if there's a use for this four hundred twenty five thousand is other than public restrooms that would need a need for unhoused people then I want to make sure that gets fully vetted rather than we somehow grab this money build restrooms and then we don't have enough to deal with that population so I could we advance this faster than the committee I think so but I also think we need to hear all the options on the table before we get to that oops that was what am I doing here something so we didn't have two surveys this year we had a sort of an informal unscientific budget survey which I forwarded to you we only had three or four questions so ninety nine percent monthly residents respond to return and sixty eight responses the top answers were not surprisingly infrastructure public works public safety and housing there was certainly a fifty two percent did not support tax increases but you know forty eight percent were either yes or undecided so clearly we got a message there but we have to balance that of course what you know and then you heard then again forty four percent felt some departments should be reduced and some supported our budget some didn't know some thought there should be some increase so again that was a an unscientific snapshot but still a valuable piece of input we probably won't get two hundred sixty eight people come to these meetings so it's a way to hear from people similarly we had a complete national citizen survey conducted we did get seven hundred and some odd responses that was was statistically significant and all those results you've seen they're all on the website and they are there's also tabs by income age homeowner any number of demographics so it's a very interesting work and they also ranked the the services in order and we can certainly do more on the survey but didn't want to take up too much time in this meeting just note that we we have had surveys we are publishing them and putting them out so bring us all in when you take a look at where the city budget is net of revenues and everything else including the ballot items that you have already approved we are at about a seven point four percent increase so we were we're proud of ourselves for coming in under seven point seven but now we're over seven point one so there's that obviously there's a list of items that were requested not just capital they're in the package that we did not we're not able to find and now we have an additional eight thousand request from rightsville tonight so obviously those will be the kinds of things for you all to discuss water sewer rates we are budgeting for this and again we're going to talk a little bit later current is going to give you an update on those and what kind of money we're putting in those budgets for capital improvements but as per policy from the council we are proposing one percent over inflation again we may need to adjust the the eight point seventy point one that is following the council's policy so that we can set money aside for infrastructure improvements so at this point we can take questions I can take questions there's specific questions we have several department heads present we are planning to talk about this next week we had set aside the fourth if needed for budget workshop mayor says we're going to be done next week so I'd believer public hearings would be held on January 11th and the 26th and just remind everybody the 26th is a Thursday that's the night for final adoption and inclusion of any of these ballot items including these the potential ballot item on CVPSA potential battle I was reworking bonds and of course there's a separate time change timeline for charter changes but they would also have to be included at that point we will have the interactive spreadsheet on the website and here for council meeting so that as you make decisions we can see how that works and that's really the high level presentation on the budget like I said we can get into the weeds as you like or is high above the clouds as you like on this conversation so that's all I have and I'll move back up there and we'll start taking questions unless there's anything in here you'd like me to go back to to read you all right then share that was the right thing to do well so sorry good well first of all just thank you and please pass on my gratitude to all the staff that that put this together so one of the key questions is are we at the generally the right level and then if we want to get into any further detail we certainly can so thoughts about any of those things comments in general a question first do we have any information yet from the school district on just like the overall impact to voters official what we tell you would like to answer that question I mean you the one that saw it so I'd rather have you give more accurate information so it builds probably this is what he was going to say I hope is that we we do have information from the school their budget is down they're actually projecting a decrease right now at this point but they're still in deliberation so we don't know what the actual impact will be yet and I do have a question out or a conversation request for a conversation with the business manager she did get back to me but I didn't have the chance to connect so hopefully in advance of the meeting next week I'll have more information and hopefully we can kind of run the rough calculations of you know where they're at right now currently I'm just not sure where they'll end up and so I'm a little hesitant to kind of give any information at this point because it certainly is favorable I will say that local options on the ballot it passes 1.65 million in revenue what does that bring the 7.4 down so if that we're going to go on the ballot and to pass we at this point we can't assume any of that revenue because we don't know first of all whether or not you're going to put it on ballot and we don't know if it's going to pass we don't know for sure if the legislature will pass it once we've passed it although they certainly seem to be doing so routinely now our experience with the room's meals and alcohol tax was that it took them about half a year to get it up and running before we started seeing money so the well it's not insignificant the most we would see would be about half of that revenue in this year so I was going to mention that when we got to this but that might be a place where we could then backfill some of the capital needs that we had hoped to you know it would be kind of a budget windfall or some of these other projects whether it's for homelessness or bathrooms or those kinds of things but I recall when and you may you you also may have the discussion when we talk about that item if you choose to go ahead to put it on the ballot being dedicated for certain uses I know last time it was dedicated for economic development and and infrastructures and that's what we've been technically using it for so I think those are all possibilities what happened when we did do I think Mayor Watson and council member bait will remember when when we did finally get the projected we brought it to the council and they actually appropriated the money at that time for half a year of what they were going to use it for so sometime you know at this time next year we'd be sitting here saying okay it looks like it's you know we're going to start collecting where do you want to use it so I don't think we should count any of it for this year I think in the future you know it could just be used as revenue and tax reduction I mean there's any number of things you can use it for so but I can tell you if I look quickly to answer the question you actually asked it would represent let me just see here if I put it in the sense of percentages I think I put in percentages so it would be about 15% tax reduction so if we just took it and reduced the taxes by I you know every year mayor you send the survey to all the council members and one of the questions you always ask is well what's your target for a budget what's our percentage or whatever and my answer is always the same I don't really know what my target is because what my really real target is is how are we what are the services we need to provide to the residents and how can we afford to provide them and make it work and where I come come out here is that we don't have any services that we're providing to the city that we don't need to be providing and so I I think we need what we hear from people is that one thing we hear a lot from people is there they've got real issues with some of the public infrastructure the roads the water system in particular and and so we need to keep maintaining our investments in those services and I think the same is true for everything we do I think that although it's a hard year because inflation is high we can't say well we're just going to disregard the fact of inflation and we're not going to because that's really going to result in cuts in the services that people rely on so I just as a big picture view of the proposal I it looks good to me I think we're hitting the target where we should be I don't want to respond to that specifically I just forgot to mention in my presentation which I meant to mention is that it does have to do with inflation as you know this past year we've struggled mightily with vacancies in our positions and inability to fill key positions and also as you know we've come to you with a necessary adjustments in personnel costs to attract employees and that's fully reflected in this budget so that is one of the things that puts pressure on the other aspects like capital those are you know not to sort of trade one versus the other but this is now fully in this budget so the changes we had to make to the police contract public works contract to stabilize you know this is part of the cost not only the inflationary cost in our budget but then the restraints on the other choices and you know obviously at the time we didn't know exactly what those trade offs would be but we did know we were going to have to face trade offs and you all understood you know we all understood that so just meant to say that in my presentation but thank you for reminding me. Go ahead Gary. Yeah just to kind of echo what Jack had said I think you know I don't have a target either because I think we need to look at what do we actually need to do what services do we need to provide and then we have to figure out how to pay for that. At the same time recognizing that we're all dealing with inflation setting a target for an increase that is above inflation is as uncomfortable for me to be defending to folks in Montpelier with inflation being as high as it is and we're all paying all of us are paying so much extra for everything. So I don't have any any thoughts about how to change that yet I will be looking more carefully at it and I'm excited about the spreadsheet where I can play around with different things but I don't want to cut services and if there are other ways to find revenue other than property taxes which I know we're going to be talking about a little bit later that would be great but you know I know we're sort of locked in here but so that's just where I'm coming from over the Confluence Park numbers again there just for what we'd be on the hook for this year and I'm asking just because you know I think somebody had a comment I think I would agree to some extent we significant work could display some of the unhoused who are currently sort of residing there and I would worry about that and whether that might be actually an impediment to move forward with some of these plans. So I don't really have a professional opinion about that but certainly as far as the numbers are concerned you know the original thought was this project was going to be an approximately half a million dollar project and then we got estimates at about one to one point two so a grant was received and I know how like is here so you can tell me if I get this wrong but the grant was received for about five or six hundred thousand dollars. We put in essentially the match last year the bond we included six hundred thousand dollars for the city's match thinking that was the combination of the two would be sufficient to do this project. I haven't seen all the details so I can't speak that intelligently about it but wasn't that long ago that we got word that those costs were going to be close to two million dollars instead of you know one point two and I know for me at least that caused me a little bit of pause this isn't a large piece of land and it's a pretty sizable you know you know cost and then more recently we got costs very recently within the last week or so that those numbers could be approaching three million dollars and so we had a conversation internally about you know what should we do given that this has been a council priority so our conclusion to recommend to you and to talk about tonight and next week is that we would the design is almost done we're doing internal technical review on it with that we would bring the design to the council so people could see it see the estimate estimates and then decide whether you wanted to go forward with you want to just hold the design and delay try to find you know what you wanted to do with it so that's where that particular project stands your choices with regard to the six hundred thousand is you know obviously if you were going to so number one if we chose not to do the project we could just not let the debt just so we had a one point eight million dollar bond we'd only issue one point two million of it and we'd never have to pay the debt on it and we could go back and ask for the funds for something else or we could rework you know and I think what will going to suggest that we we have to put bond amendment language on for that particular article anyway because of the pellet stove so why not also put something that gives us the flexibility to reallocate that money if we choose to so we don't have to have a subsequent vote so then the council could choose again you could always choose not to let the money or you could choose to then reallocate it to some other bond worthy project and I say bond worthy because we will always recommend against bonding for paving so while it's you know there's six hundred thousand for paving that's not a good use of debt service so but there are many other projects for which it could be so that's kind of where we stand right now but you know until you say anything it's still an active project that we are pursuing and that we will bring to you for your consideration when it's ready for prime time. It does seem to like we need to make some kind of decision about that soon but it also seems like do we need to make a decision about that together with this budget. I think so my own opinion is that the only decision you need to make is if you want to sort of just rework that ballot item and to make it more flexible then you then assuming we do that and assuming it passes then you can decide the fate of the project whenever you're ready to hear about it and what you want to do about it and you know maybe that includes asking them how do you get it back down to the number that we want it. You know I mean I think there's you know I don't think you have to do anything. I know Mike looks like maybe he's wanting to speak more to that so I will happily stop talking. Miller planning director so I just wanted to clarify that what we have right now is a grant to develop the plans. So there is a grant. There's already money for developing the plans. That's the project we're completing that what the designers need going forward is a review from the staff. That's the technical review and then a presentation to council so they can finish their grant which is the project design. Obviously we always designed this project with the intention of moving it forward. So there's going to be one step which is what do you think of the design? What are your comments? And then there may be immediately thereafter a process that is but we're probably not going to move it forward or we're going to hold it. There's been some interest. You'll get a presentation from the River Conservancy. They would like a year hold the bond open for a year so we could go and do the fundraising. They will make that presentation to you in January when we meet. So just so you understand there are two separate pieces. One is to complete the design. That's what these folks are getting paid to do. That's what they're working on. They put together the budget estimates to go along with it that have been escalating. So you'll certainly have opportunities to ask them about why the costs are where they are and what we might be able to remove to reduce prices those types of questions. But there is one piece of design and one piece of what do we do afterwards? And then Don. And this money we got this grant we got for the design is money that we own now and we would not have to give it back if we get the design and then don't go forward to construct the project. We don't have to repay it. And so for the public who couldn't hear Alec he said it was that the city could be on the hook for one hundred and fifty thousand if we didn't move forward. When you mentioned the wording you indicated develop the land. Is it specifically at Confluence Park? Was the bond in such that it could be any park? Bill knows the bonding language better than I do. I'd have to look at it. I think it I'd have to look at it. If someone has an annual report we can answer that question really quickly. But yeah, I just. Other questions or comments? Yes, Don. I too and I'm glad to see others who aren't looking for a certain percentage in the past. I was a little bit of a minority there, but I also feel like. That whatever the inflation rate is at the moment changes and it had been seven point seven and now it's seven point one and who knows what it is by the time of town meeting. But generally we know that where we are now is in the general field. We're not way out. So I feel very comfortable with that and maybe even a little higher if we find some essential need that we want to increase like capital. So I'm generally OK. So on that I'm I'm going to. Take a little deeper because on the questions of like what what are the services that maybe we've left out? I have some questions. So in the message that's attached to the agenda, there's some there's a list of items that are not included. And some of those I'm fine with some of those I have questions about. So this does not include the Parks Commission request. That's something that's on my radar of something that I I would like us to consider. Putting that in any way I'm looking forward to getting a spreadsheet so I can play with you know like how much does that actually affect it. Same with the eight thousand dollar request increase for the rightsville reservoir district. And then so that would I assume also be on this list of things that are currently not included. Yes. Is that correct Bill. Yeah. Yeah. No it's OK. We may want to also consider the Conservation Commission request. I I don't know what the Parks Urban Ranger position is. Wondering if anyone has some information about that. Alec Ellsworth Parks Director. The Urban Ranger position was created sort of in tandem with Confluence Park recognizing that we have maintenance needs specifically around the recreation path and with Confluence Park coming on board as we thought in the next year it was a seasonal position to sort of take on a bunch of under maintained items such as the rec path. Montpelier alive was going to throw in some money for watering flowers and things like that. And because Confluence Park it seemed whatever happened whatever you all decide with it it's clearly not going to get constructed in the next budget year. So we just took the Urban Ranger position off in the sense that it felt like an easy scratch. Yeah. Great thank you. Could. Sorry. Did you have questions. Maybe it was going to say the same thing you were going to say which is might be useful to just go through the whole list of things that aren't included to. Yeah. So I would like to know about the Washington County Mental Health social worker. I'd like to know a little bit more about the trash contract that's listed here and then the police subscription to the Lexis Nexus and radio backup. So why don't I'll try to get people up here that in grouping. I'd also point out that you know when you hear just when you hear the budget presentations from each department there may be additional items that weren't included. So this is these are big but just to be clear. So yeah that there are more than that. But maybe Chief Pete could explain the Washington County Mental Health and the police subscription. No just Chief Pete. Sorry about that for Eric Nordenson from the police department. For the Washington County part we have not been able to fill the position for the last year plus. We're having some revisitation of what we actually want to need. So we're talking about possibly having a screener and looking for funding through Washington County Mental Health for that. So that was kind of a cut that hurt. But it also didn't cost us a plow driver or a police officer. So it was one that we took. And then the new initiatives that we had were Lexis Nexus to basically have a dashboard for people to do online reporting to us. And it was just something that again we we didn't feel good about taking new initiatives when you know we're making tough decisions on pavement and things like that. And then the radios were like a secondary radio for us where we can communicate on our radio through our cell phones. So if we're in a unique area where our radios maybe didn't work our cell phones could then double as our radios. And it was a it was a small amount. But again when everybody's sacrificing a little bit you don't take anything new. So those are our three things that we looked at that we just didn't think we should put in there. I guess I would be curious as to those are two separate things. The Lexis Nexus and then the radio backup. Correct. Right. So I would be curious as to what the radio backup would cost. That was I believe it was five thousand dollars. OK. Great. Thank you. Sure. And I heard I believe what you want to talk about the trash contract. Sorry. Thank you team for letting me ask all these questions. Yeah. The spread the interactive spreadsheet is coming right. Yeah. Yeah. OK. This is just going I think you're just going off the letter. Yeah I'm going off the letter right now. Sorry. Thank you. Kurt Modica public extractor. So the current we've gotten a lot of complaints about the trash pickup and the trash barrels overflowing in the downtown. So we had proposed initially in the budget to increase the frequency of the pickup right now it's two days a week. We looked at going to three days a week. You know again like Eric Norton said Norton Norton said from PDE where you know we looked to cuts. So we took that out but we do have a backup plan in proposing an amendment to our union contract and having DPW staff make that extra pickup with some financial incentive in the union contract. It's a little bit of an unknown but that was the approach we're going to take to resolve that issue. OK. Thank you. I have one other question about one of the things that was in your presentation. Excuse me which is so in the upgrades to this room. I mean you mentioned the microphones so that basically like the electrical system. I am one of the things that's just been on my radar for this room that should happen is that this horseshoe should not be elevated for ADA purposes. So is that that's not I assume that's not a part of the upgrades but it would be great it would be. It's actually technological but it is something we could. That would be a separate thing but yes. We could put a ramp. Being able to be seen from when you're in the audience doesn't work unless you're a little elevated. Yeah that's fair. Kelly do you want to try to describe the proposal we've got or. OK it's not that not that urgent right now I mostly was just wondering if you know since we were talking about this room you know. What was included there. OK any other questions that folks have. That's comments. OK do you do you feel like you have enough information to I guess the question is it sounds like people aren't looking to make you know if you want us to move to try to get to seven point one before next week or you just want to leave it where is to see where you end up or I were you know. What I'm hearing is that sounds like we should leave it where is it for now and and we'll have more discussion in the future the next meeting. Yes Kerry. Yeah I'm fine with that I think if we I might be interested in in suggestions for getting it down a little bit but I think that you all have done your part and come to us with you know I know you've done a lot of work at getting it to where you want it to be and so I think now it's a little bit more in our court to look at it and make some suggestions or decisions. We appreciate that but of course where we want it to be is where you want it to be so we're happy to you know we're happy to work on that and I think what we think the difference between 0.03% was like $30,000 or something so that's if you were that's what you'd be looking for to so it just becomes a priority question and and obviously if if you wanted to put more into capital then then the rest has to come out you know assuming it's not going any higher than where it is now I mean I think there's a well I don't know maybe you'll add more I don't want to make that assumption you all have done stranger things in the past. Yeah, I mean, yes, Lauren ahead. Thanks, yeah, I mean overall I echo what others have said I think the approach of, you know, let's fund what we need to fund for the essential services I think a time of hardship with high inflation is not a time to be cutting services to the community and I pretty much every day hear something about people wanting, you know, improvements to the roads or things that's not looking for cutting services I pretty much never hear so I think we're on the right track. I mean one thing that I brought up in the capital improvement conversation earlier but just to name I mean I think as we look at it I mean I just have my eye on that massive pile of federal funds and I know we're still waiting on guidance and what that could be but in terms of like the city needs and upcoming projects and the things that seem to be eligible, you know because there's a lot of money for roads, bridges, EV charging, like there are buckets that we know and so you know being able to look at how do we take full advantage and keep you know our eye on the priorities and the direction that we want to go to be meeting the needs of the community and you know funding the things that we need to in our city budget in the interim but like that's maybe where I would be looking for if we're going to do any nibbling around the edges is things that seem like likely potential federal funding opportunities and if that doesn't happen in the next year we learn more you know then that's okay but that's how I would would be approaching it. Other thoughts? Just one point of clarification from earlier the ballot language was specific to Confluence Park but it didn't have a dollar amount for Confluence Park but it couldn't go to some other park. I have an anticipate that we'll have oh yes go ahead Lauren. Just of these also you know for example the sorry the social worker position I think some of these we could also look at state funding and create new legislators like things that I do think our services that the state should be providing should be increasing services and funding for and whether that's embedded in the community but you know I think for our legislative agenda and the kind of thing we can advocate I mean that should be coming from the state frankly and you know I think keeping an eye on it if it's not happening for our community but just putting a plug in as you should I have a couple of questions about like that so the social equity consultant that where's there's the CJ is still working together with the social equity consultant is that correct yeah so we have been in conversation with creative discourse for ongoing work the current thing that we're hearing a lot of interest from city committees and stuff are DEI trainings and trainings that would take I think hiring consultants with that professional expertise to do so I think likely the 10,000 that's earmarked for that would actually be going to city staff and city committee contracts whether it's with creative discourse or a different consultant because they have been a little maxed out lately so we haven't there's not a current active contract with them I believe although the right still be like a little bit going on but yeah it would be most likely going towards that work which we've been hearing we've been getting a lot of requests for and then the other thing that's on my radar is you know we've got forty five thousand dollars for the homelessness task force but we're already sort of flagging some money for you know it was ten times that you know for for them you know based on this report so it feels a little funny to have both of those things but that's so the homelessness task force money is almost entirely allocated to the outreach worker and actually not to not to go the other way but you know if they're going to continue running the transit center program and the shelters and I think we're contributing 18,000 which isn't in the budget we're just sort of taking it from the general budget so at some point we could even you know if we're trading stuff around we didn't we might even put more into that so that's operating I think the 425,000 is if we're going to build or establish a sort of a more permanent facility type thing or it wouldn't be for program things so okay thank you okay any other comments folks would like to make about the budget at this point okay thank you and thank you for all the answers from the staff it's very helpful and I think we are ready to move you don't need any kind of vote at this point so anything anything further about Peter Kiliman I see your hand go ahead Bill could you put your that very good report you did in the agenda packet the yeah sure yeah we will and it'll all be in the budget book too I think we I'm not sure the power point that we just did tonight yeah yeah I mean we just finished it this afternoon so yeah we will add that to the stuff okay this happened last year at budget time too you did a fantastic report but it wasn't in it wasn't in the agenda packet I get I get that you just finished it but this the general public needs to see that that kind of everyday language approach going through the budget book is beyond what most people are going to be interested or able to do and I think that if we want to engage the public in the budget that kind of slideshow you just did is the way to do it thank you okay I think we're ready to move on then okay so local option sales tax anything I know we sort of talked about that a little bit already but anything so I think the reason for bringing this up obviously as we've we've just been facing budget needs I think the comments we heard earlier today are you know one of the questions is always what impact might it have I think the question tonight was do you is that something is this a conversation you even want to have or should we forget about it if it is then we can you know draft the language and I think obviously we'd want to engage the community and the business folks take a look at other communities that have had this I think generally the experience has been that they have not seen a real change in business sales those kinds of things but I think we should get you know if that's going to be a concern we should get real data to look at that and I would imagine people would want to hear more about it so but I think you know so I'm saying is if we want to do it it's going to lead to a March vote we ought to be thinking about how we engage the business community in the community but if you don't want to do it then we don't have to talk about it again I will just start off by saying I'm interested in doing this I was in favor of the local option sales tax when it came up so many years ago together with the mules rooms and alcohol tax I'm still in favor of it now and mostly it is because we are a destination town and and don't pay for them and this is a way to capture some of that financial support and one of the things that I think we could highlight for folks is so in your remember about this the amount to spend and what is more popular to break even value is fifty four thousand dollars a year or on a weekly average is a thousand dollars you have to spend a thousand dollars a week roughly to for a resident to for it to not be worth it for a resident and that that I think is actually would you mind explaining that sure so without the the benefit of a sheet to put up here I'll try to do this as easily as I could so basically without doing math you know to be confirmed but it looks as though the based on the twenty twenty one sales taxable sales in Montpelier we would net about one point six seven five million that could be awful but I think probably you know there could be some Berlin sales because I think they track it by zip code so we probably need some you know some refining of that but this is just looking at what the state reports for Montpelier sales that's what it would be so that's about ten percent of our general fund budget are about fifteen percent of our property taxes so if you take the assumption that this is money we would have spent property taxes on either we either reduce the tax rate by it or we buy things for the public that we couldn't afford it otherwise but either way the public is getting the value of this as opposed to being taxed if you look at how much so that's about a fifteen percent so if you take the average resident property value of two hundred seventy five thousand they would save five hundred and forty three dollars a year in property tax that would be five hundred forty three dollars they don't have to spend out of property taxes to get that value of taxes paid so if you divide that by you know the one percent of what they you know that's one percent of what they'd have to spend so that's one percent of fifty four thousand dollars a year so if they're paid one percent on these purchases they'd have to spend fifty four thousand before they spent more than five hundred forty three thousand four hundred five hundred forty three dollars in in sales tax so then you just divide that by fifty two weeks and it's about a thousand dollars a week so the average homeowner would have to spend about a thousand dollars a week on taxable sales in mobiliar all year to sort of be spending more on the sales tax than what they would be the benefit they'd be receiving in their property tax thank you I get that I had to close my eyes and visualize and follow along very carefully but I get it so okay so the the problem with that or the flaw in there is that a lot of people besides homeowners are will be paying the sales tax and they won't be seeing that return on their property taxes and so I I just will kind of state for the record that I'm not a fan of sales taxes I really actually hate sales tax in fact I'm pretty much across the board opposed to sales taxes the most regressive tax there is and and it really hits people who are at the lower end of the income scale really hard it makes a big difference if you have to pay that extra 1% you know it's it's something it could be noticeable for someone where it for somebody else it's not really going to be noticeable and then their taxes might go down if we choose to do that which is a big if so I would it would be my preference to find some other source of revenue than a sales tax the rooms and meals tax I'm all for because that really does very directly get get some revenue from people who don't necessarily live here but are still using our services where's the sales tax it will be some people it'll be some visitors will be paying it but mostly it'll be Montpelier residents who are paying it so that's that's where I am on that one other thoughts yeah question is are there what what does it apply to is it everything are there exemptions for food for example like non-prepared foods clothing I'm not a sales tax expert I think if we want to proceed with this we will get the answers I do believe there are some exemptions on clothing there are exemptions on food like grocery there when you go to the grocery store you buy food then there's you get tells you which things are taxable and which things aren't but I think things like paper towels might be taxable but food aren't those kinds of things so I mean certainly yeah so there are exemptions and this this would follow the state anything that is sales tax for the state would because basically that's how it's collected the state collects the sales tax remits it back to the city after keeping their share out of it you know this is a this is a little bit of inside baseball we we do make a little bit of extra money on this because the 30% of the state keeps they keep 5% for administration cost but then 25% of it goes into the statewide payment lower taxes fund to fund towns and cities across the state that have stayed on property so one of the reasons our own pilot money revenues have been going up steadily over the years that more and more towns are enacting these local options taxes so as the pot gets bigger we're getting more money so if we put this money put our share into the pot we get about 11% of that back because we're the bigger probably the biggest recipients of pilot funds so we would in addition to the sales tax we pick up like another $75,000 in our pilot but that is not that in of itself is not the reason to do it or not to do it but it's just we benefit other communities doing this have brought us up to very high level of pilot that's and I think all the issues that councilmember Brown raises are fair issues and that's what we've heard before and I think their policy issues we've got to wrestle with like I said if you don't want to do it you don't want to do but certainly looking at the budgets we've had the last couple of years the infrastructure we need we had that felt like we need to bring this to you because there really isn't any other source of revenue we're really going to be able to do in under the state's construct this is the last one left that we haven't done so Jack go ahead thanks I'm sure if I spent enough time I could go back over my posts in Green Mountain Daily for many years ago in which I argued in support of both the rooms and meals and local option sales tax I agree with everything Kerry says about the sales tax as a regressive source of funds the factors that militate on the other side in my view are the fact that as the mayor pointed out one of the big drivers of our municipal expenses is people who come in from out of out of the city to work and while they're working here they're also spending money so to the extent we can extract tax revenues from them it's going to it's putting into effect the policy of cost causes pay and we're in less of a good position now because we don't have as many state employees coming into the city so that as Phil Dodd mentioned earlier that weakens that a bit but thinking long term I think that we will continue to see an increase in people from outside the city working in in the city I don't think it's ever going to be the same level as it was before the pandemic another thing that the manager mentioned that are meeting a meeting or two ago was that part of the reason that the estimated revenues are higher than higher now than they have been in past years is because of the this would also apply to cannabis sales and we have retail canada canada spenders in the city and so that's a source of revenue that is worth looking at it so I think given the fact that we don't have other significant sources on the horizon to increase our funds I think we should be exploring it and that doesn't mean we'll necessarily adopt it so I guess one essential question right now is is anybody opposed to us having it on the agenda again next time for further discussion okay it seems like it's the consensus is it's at least worth talking about and so it really only becomes timely because there's a deadline by which you have to file charter language with the city clerk before and so I think and I gave you that outline but I don't have it in front of me so we just if we're going to do that as well as the charter language on the utility we just have to make sure we hit those those deadlines are not quite the same as the public hearings for the budgets so okay all right so to be continued on that one do you know Donna go ahead since we already have the meals and rooms how is it how difficult is it for the shops to implement it for the store owner is it the same level that our meals and I don't you know I'm not a shop owner so I don't know I think the state helps them with that I think that's part of what you pay the fee for you know they're already collecting the sales tax presumably it's adjusting their computer and it's an extra percent we're not asking them to collect a new tax that they're not already collecting so I think there's just a bit of the state because they're sending it to the state right they collect it and send it in it's the same activity yes but I don't want to presume for them that it's easy okay all right we're going to move on that's okay thank you so to be continued on that so I think we're ready to move on to the utility status update and I will come our DPW director Kurt Monica I'm going to have a quick PowerPoint presentation Kurt Monica public work stricter I'll try to keep this quick because I know I'm being followed by the cops here so yeah what do you like to be followed by the cops okay so there's been a lot of discussion recently on particularly the water system I've had quite a few interviews with the press and then as we heard tonight there's been some interest in questions from the public on the status so thought it was a good time given all the recent interest to provide an update on where we're at on both the water system and the sewer system so quickly cover some of the history of the water and sewer and where we started and where we're at today where we're on where we're at on replacement schedule for footage of pipes in relation to the water and sewer master plan which is adopted in 2016 speak about the water system hydraulic analysis which is related to the pressures within the water system and update on the sewer where we're at or what's upcoming on regulations from state oversight and then opened up for questions and discussion so the water system history the the Berlin pond was initially started or used for the source for among players water system in the late 1800s so actually when I was on I did a project on Ridge Street for the city when I first started and actually we took out a piece of pipe that was stamped 1899 and that was only 12, 13 years ago so we have a lot of really old pipes. When the pond was first used for the water source that's when the city's pressure was probably about 170 in the downtown 170 psi and over the years that was when the inlet was actually where the plant is now the treatment plant and over the years they extended the pipeline up to the pond and gained another 60 feet of elevation which translates to about 30 psi so since the late 1800s we've been at 170 psi compared to the 200 and then over the next basically in the 1950s I believe is when that was finally extended all the way into the the center of Berlin pond where we have our pressures today. All during that time cast iron pipe was used that was really the only pressure pipe available back in those days. In the 80s the city based on those pressures constructed the booster stations and expanded the service area so that those two tanks were one is on Territory and one is on Townhill. They both have pump stations associated with them which boost the pressure that's coming from the pond and then boosted up to storage tanks to be able to serve a broader range of customers. In the 90s there was a lot of water projects. Primarily large diameter water mains were installed. This was really for fire protection and to bring the water to these tanks. During that time period Dr. Lyron was the primary piping for the city. In 2000 actually when I was still in college I interned on the construction of the water plant until that time you know the city was basically being served chlorinated pond water. There's no treatment at all. Just a chemical drip. So it's pretty astonished coming out of all my college classes seeing the capital of Vermont is drinking pond water. And it really wasn't that long ago if you put you know think about that. In 2016 we adopted the master plan was you know identified as a council priority that we have you know aging infrastructure and the pipes needed to you know accelerated the tension. So that master plan like Bill mentioned earlier is inflation plus one percent and that one percent is intended to go for infrastructure. So that is their you know average proposed rate increase for the water and sewer utilities. About that same time 2016 we adopted HTPE as their piping standard. I don't feel that has a lot of advantages for a high pressure system and being able to basically stretch and expand and absorb some pressure fluctuations. It also has a high pressure rating 250 psi so there's a safety buffer above and beyond what the city's pressure is at. And then the most recent bigger project that we've done is to bring Murray Hill online which adds you know fairly substantial user base and you know helps with revenue. On the sewer side the city's system was initially built with essentially one pipe for all stormwater and all sewer and it all went to the rivers. You can still see around town there's what they call the sanitary dams which basically just kept the water level up in the river to keep the solids from the waste underwater to keep the odors down and those are still you can still see them in the north branch. In 1962 there was a major major project in the city that took the sewer and took basically the intercepted all the sewers from all the buildings and put it to a separate pipeline and constructed the very first version of the wastewater plant and that was only in 1962. Until that point all the sewage went straight to the rivers. In the 60s pump stations were constructed. Most of them were in the early 60s those are still our pump stations today getting very you know aged and then the most recent one is around 1980 the newest one. In the 90s the separation of stormwater was the big push you know state mandated to reduce the number of overflow vents. So just to recap CSOs are we still have a lot of stormwater connected to the sewer system and during really high rain events the piping cannot carry all the storm and sewer together and there's these there's six now structures around the city that overflow to the river. Again in 2016 we adopted the master plan to accelerate both infrastructure replacement as well as CSO separation projects. And then in 2019 we did two major planning documents identifying which roof drains are still connected to the sewer contributing to overflows as well as our long term control plan which is really our guiding document to eliminate sewer overflows. And then most recently it was the large improvement project at the water resource recovery facility. So on the master plan you know probably can't see these numbers but you know we've done we've done a lot of a lot of pipe projects since 2016. I think it's a testament that the master plan is effective it's working. Just the high the highlighted line there is you know we've replaced just under 10,000 linear feet of sewer main since 2016 and almost 17,000 feet of water main. So it is a little bit behind our targets in the master plan. But a lot of that is related to the pandemic. We did essentially lose a year of construction. The state actually shut down construction projects. We got an exemption for the wastewater plant upgrade. But at the time we're doing Clarendon Avenue and we lost basically all summer. One of the other approaches that we're taking in achieving a steady state is what we call asset divestment. So a lot of streets have two sewer mains or two water mains and if you can reduce that to a single line that's that much footage you don't have to replace and it's that much footage that's no longer within your asset management program. So those aren't captured in the table on the left as far as comparison to the master plan. But they do really contribute to you know achieving steady state there. So the this is really getting to the pressures in the water system. We have contracted with a consulting engineer to do a full evaluation of the water system and that includes what it would take to reduce the pressure in the downtown. They have given us just some we don't have the report yet it's currently underway but they have given us some preliminary feedback. They're going to look at three alternatives. Alternative one is not to do anything just going to keep it the way it is. It's obviously not a good option. Alternative two would reduce the pressure to 115 psi in the downtown. So that's you know not quite half but a significant reduction. They're indicating we probably would need four new booster pump stations. There may be some high level service customers that wouldn't we would have to probably drill wells for because we wouldn't have enough pressure to serve them anymore. And then a relocation of the pressure reducing Valentine Hill. So we don't have costs what that would take financially or you know where these pump stations would go. So we don't know if there's actually you know the land available. But that is the option. We are taking it you know seriously and looking at it. You know with an open mind and we'll see where that report comes in. But they're just to point out that there are some high level impacts and some infrastructure needed to accomplish pressure reduction. And then the alternative three is sort of what the city's been doing is is replacing the distribution piping with you know high pressure pipe. That's really consistent with the master plan that's currently in place. The other another item that they that we're looking at as part of this report is reducing pressure spikes. So that can have an impact on the number of leaks. And we've had just one preliminary meeting with CVMC. They're interested in getting out of the water business. They have an existing water tank that is aging. It needs to be replaced. And there's a potential that the city could take over that tank and use that to feed the downtown. And that would eliminate the city having to pump directly from the water plant into the system. And those pumps have to rotate. And every time those pumps rotate you get a pressure spike that can you know result in leaks of the city in the downtown. I think that's we've done a lot would come a long ways and smoothing out that transition between the pump rotations. But I think it you know it would still be improved by having a gravity feed system rather than a pump system. One other consideration is as the impact of fire capacity as we do if we were to reduce the pressure your available fire flow then also becomes reduced. And that's something else we'll be looking at in the report. And then under our permit condition the other last thing is related to fire fire flow capacity is we will be required to identify all of the water mains that are undersized to meet the necessary fire flow which is 500 gallons a minute without dropping pressure below 20 psi. So basically it's going to point out all the all of the lines that are not in compliance with the rules. So this report will serve as what we call preliminary engineering report. So it sets us up for being eligible for funding. So when that federal money does come down the line we're through the first step like to anticipate that federal money will be channeled through the state. So the state has reviewed this contract. They've approved it and they'll be reviewing the results. So you know there's this another benefit to doing this work isn't in that we are curing ourselves up for funding for both you know the hospital option or line replacements. Updating the sewer system we have a couple big really big CSO projects upcoming this summer. The state street sewer main is you know I think one of our biggest restrictions in the sewer system that line that main pipe goes underneath an old steam line and comes back up and we have not been able to clean it. And I know at least 10 years so there's probably a whole lot of sediment accumulated in that piping and now you know the 30s 32 inch pipe is probably you know down to 10 inches. So you can get all that capacity back. We're going to really drop our frequency of CSO overflows. In addition in addition we'll be also separating out a large parking lot out of the sewer system. And then you state street is just the sewer system is terrible. We tried to camera it and it has all these bends and pipe size fluctuations and we could not get the camera up through the piping. So that's in bad shape. I did fail a few years ago and we had emergency repair on the sewer system. And there's a massive drainage area. All of the state street goes to the sewer and then that storm water from the state passes through four of our six CSO structures. So there's four opportunities to reduce overflow frequencies. And then we have a big project at the wastewater plant phase two that was bonded for last year. It handles deals with PFAS and the solids order control which is a permanent requirement and the last piece of old infrastructure at the plant which is the secondary clarifiers. A little bit on regulatory compliance. So the hydraulic analysis I talked about is was a permit requirement from the state under our permit to operate. They will mandate a replacement schedule once the hydraulic analysis is done and it likely have been told will be faster than what our master plan is set up to fund. So I'm not sure how we'll address that but hopefully there will be a lot of federal money available to us and that will be important. The other option to replace the lines is to reduce the amount of fire protection the city has. So that could potentially mean abandoning the hydrants on the smaller diameter mains but there's other concerns of that water quality we use them for flushing. So this study will and what comes out of it after the state review could have some significant impacts on fire flow capacity on the water system or funding levels needed to maintain that fire flow capacity. And then how pressure reduction potentially factors into that is still unknown until we get that report. On the sewer side it's all regulated under our wastewater discharge permit. Through our long-term control plan we are required to do updates every five years. We have the order control mandate through a notice of alleged violation and we also have ammonia limits coming up in our next permit. So we are working with our consultant to see if we can address the required treatment for ammonia in this next project. Sort of combine it in one and get economy of scale and we'll be all ready for that next permit. And right now that looks like we should be achievable for a relatively low cost. And that is it, we'll open up to questions. Now I could talk about this stuff for a long time so I'm going to not do that. So I have just one question which is, so in regards to the high pressure, you know all the questions that folks have for us about how are you addressing the high pressure the answer really is that you've got to study out, we're gonna see what they recommend, what some consultants recommend. Yes, that's correct. I'm really pleased that you've given us such a detail in the past whenever Tom was asked when he was here was is this gonna cost millions to change it? But you can see how complex it is and it isn't a new problem. One of my questions is some of those pipes are so old no matter what kind of pressure we had they were gonna need to be replaced, is that true? Yes, that's true and you know what we discovered was the ductile iron installed in the 90s is actually failing in a lot of cases faster than the cast iron installed in there, you know, 1800s. So and that's because of the acidic soils that we have clay soils are acidic, they're also conductive and you know a lot of homes in Mont Blere they ground their electrical service to their water service and then that puts a small current through the water system and just accelerates corrosion. So we've just found that all those conditions in Mont Blere have led to really quick failure of the ductile iron pipe. So we're getting like 20 to 40 years out of the ductile where the cast is 120 and in a lot of cases better condition. Well maybe that's another message we should send out not to do that. Yeah, I mean I don't think it's legal anymore but these houses are 100 years old and they're kind of grandfathered. Got you. I don't have a question. I just want to thank you for putting this together. I know that this is a lot of work to pull this presentation together and I really appreciate you taking the time to do it. And I think it's between this and how much information there's been in the news lately. I think that a lot of really good detailed information is getting out about the work that you're doing about the plans that you have and about the challenges that we're facing and how you are approaching them. So I just wanted to thank you for that. Thanks, Kurt. I think this is a great presentation. I think that people watching should recognize that the city is not just ignoring the problem. It takes hard work to fix hard problems and that's what we have here. To be clear on what the presentation is, am I right in thinking that right now the pressure coming down from Berlin Pond is so high that even to get to the higher elevations anywhere else in the city, it's enough to get down into the city and push the water up to those higher elevations without any pumping on our part? Well, in some areas, right? So we have the two pump stations so those do require pumping to maintain the minimum required pressures. But yeah, a lot of locations rely on the high pressure coming from the plant to get up to those hills where they're not served by the tank. And you showed the diagram of when different changes were implemented in the system. I remember the folklore used to be that there were a couple of times a year in the city where the water would taste kind of muddy and people would say that was when Berlin Pond was turning over because of the change in temperature. Was that an accurate description of what was happening? Now, yes, that's true and it still happens today. It can, you do get more sort of turbidity when the pond stratifies. So but when now we can address that with the carbon addition helps take out those taste and odor concerns. Yeah, I don't taste the change anymore the way I used to. And a resident came tonight and said, well, what people should do as an individual measure is put two pressure reducing valves and then also put a pressure release valve in their system. Is that actually a feasible and effective thing for people to do? Well, I'm not sure about a pressure relief valve and I've never seen that in a residential application. You know, I think a lot of it is to know the age of the equipment in your home. So I know I think if your house is a hundred years old and you still have the same PRV, you know, absolutely. That's time to change it even 50 years. And I do, I have seen dual installations of pressure relief valves. I don't think that's a bad idea necessarily. If you have a good high quality pressure reducing valve in place, you don't necessarily need to. But if people have concerns, there's nothing wrong with doing that either. Is there a way for a homeowner to find out what their water pressure is coming into their house? Well, there's, you can put, if there's like a hose connection before their pressure reducing valve, they could put a gauge on. We can help, if they call public works office. And from this hydraulic analysis, we're actually gonna get more detailed information about where the pressures are within the city. But we can give guidance on approximate values from public works office. Thanks. Donna's nodding her head, so she. My condo just went through the dreadful water leak that led to all of our reducers being damaged with sediment. And we found out that if you have your plumber come and attach, you have a hose, you have a spigot on the bottom of your water heater. And if your plumber attaches a pressure gauge there, they can tell you. And they came through and tested all of ours after this incident. And most of us needed new pressure reducers. But they didn't advise more than one. So I think you have to talk to your plumber. There's always a difference of opinion. And sure enough, the one person who had two, they both were damaged. They didn't help one another. And there is a release valve on the water heater that they may have been talking about. And it comes out the spigot down. Yep. Lauren, and then I want to go to Linda Berger. Thanks, Kurt. This was super helpful and totally agree that this level of detail is really informative. Seems like a lot of stormwater projects. So I'm excited we're pursuing the stormwater utility. Seems like that will be a helpful way to stay on top of these big projects. My one question, which might be totally infeasible, but I remember at one energy advisory committee meeting, they had talked about how there's some cool technology that they install in the pipe that's like, I think it's a pressure reducer, but it creates energy. So it's like this new renewable energy thing. Just throwing it out there, if we're doing an analysis, and there might be different pots of funding that that could open up, or if we're doing this really expensive upgrade anyway, that what would be infeasible to normally install if it was part of a project or something, maybe it becomes feasible. So just throwing it out there. Don't know much about it though. I don't know, it's like turbines inside of it, but yeah. Yeah, Kurt's like, what? Yeah, no, I mean, so I think Barry City has high and low pressure lines, and they did install a system like that. Pressure reducing vaults are potentially good opportunities to make power through turbines. I don't know that Barry's was very successful. They've had issues with it, but that doesn't mean that it's not worth looking at. So depending on where we land on available pressure reduction, we certainly can look into that. Linda Berger, go ahead. Hi, Kurt. I have a question about the wastewater discharge permit. Has the new one been issued? No, it has not. And could you explain a little bit about what the process is that you're looking for? And the state's looking for? Well, the state sort of, they reached out to us and gave us a heads up that, because you're doing this upgrade at the plant, we wanted the opportunity to consider what your new limits will be on ammonia. The city's never had ammonia limits. And so, but we've been under a monitoring requirement from the state for the past few years. So we have the data on what our levels are at. So it was really, I think within, I don't know the exact timeframe, but within the next year, we're anticipating being issued our new permit. And then we'll have a timeframe of, I think three to five years to meet those new discharge limits on the ammonia. Thank you. Great, thanks. Any other comments or questions from, yes? Just quickly, first, thanks Kurt, great presentation. I hope people really saw that. Secondly, just perhaps a message to all that, the water pressures are not new. This is something that's been on for a long time, city, and we have been on top of trying to fund it and do the work. I think just as you hear about this, and I appreciate people's frustration, especially when they hear something in the news and they think it's a new situation. But to do a quick fix would be millions of dollars. And so I don't know that people would want to put that kind of money on their water rates. So DPW has really been on top of this and trying to address it. And I think that the study will really help direct the work in the future. So Kurt and all the folks, well, Kurt in his capacity as our deputy with his really been on this all along, but the prior directors have all paid close attention to this as well. So it's good that we got to tell the story a little bit tonight. Yep. Yes, thank you. Okay, we are ready to move on then to the police presentation. So welcome up chief. Hello. Oh, well it feels like it. Good evening, Madam Mayor, members of the city council, city manager, assistant city manager, members of the public, deputy chief Nortonson, I'm Brian Pete with the Montpelier police department. And today I'd like to just give the council a very brief summarization of the projects and the accomplished medicine, the things that the department has yet to do over the last two and a half years. The first slide just gives you the breakdown of some of the specifically what I'd like to to inform the council and the public with today. And moving on to the accomplished projects that we had in the year 2020. When upon coming aboard, deputy chief Nortonson and I conducted a climate assessment survey and we did that initial organizational assessment, especially because of the many calls across the country regarding the policing profession. And that's something that we took extraordinarily serious because any organization or any profession and has that much, the power that we do needs to be looked at and needs to be scrutinized and criticized. So we went ahead, did the assessment. We worked with the police review committee. We actually implemented a trial software survey for a system called officer survey in which again, we were dealing with COVID at the time and we were trying to figure out ways to get feedback from the community as to what they thought about the service that they were getting from the Montpelier police department. We implemented a threat assessment capability again and that led us to additions to the strategic plan. One of the biggest things in law enforcement is you can't throw a whole bunch of things at the wall and see what sticks. You have to, you can't paint everybody with the same brush. And we have to do intelligence led policing strategies, not broken windows type theories because you have to know what the threats are that are out there and the potential dangers that are out there and the issues that our community face and what those priorities are and then add them into the strategic plan in order to be truly effective in reducing crime and the perception of crime within a community. In the year 2021, after the insurrection in the U.S. Capitol, we worked with partners to establish a safety plan and working and pushing back any threats that were coming to the city of Montpelier and to the Capitol complex. I'm extraordinarily proud of what the department has done and the dedication to the officers and dispatchers and the staff members there and especially grateful for the support that we received from our system municipalities. It was overwhelming and that's gonna be a word you'll probably hear me say in so many different ways as I give you all this presentation. We also streamlined our onboarding and promotional processes. We've incorporated critical hire, which is intelligence, which is intelligence, emotional intelligence indicator that helps us to understand the types of folks who are applying to become law enforcement officers within the department. So it's a level of maturity. It's a level of assessing resiliency when stress happens and making sure that again, we wanna invest early on in hiring the right people rather than paying the price, whether it's liability, whether it's safety and whether it's our own reputation and not hiring the right people. We also implemented police app and promotional scoring rubrics and various types of hiring interviews. We've changed that, going away from the paramilitary style, the old way of sitting across from a long table with one person and trying to scare them out of it. We looked at just having regular conversations as normal human beings because they're looking at us just as much as we're looking at them and the generations that we're dealing with now are extraordinarily savvy and they're not, you pull that old fashioned type of stuff with people, you're gonna lose talent. And so we wanna make sure that we grow just as much as the folks that we're trying to establish. We don't wanna be those old dogs. So we also did establish a very robust succession plan and with that succession planning, if I may, a quick story and one of the places that I worked at, I went in and I spoke to the detective section and they were telling me all about one detective. This detective was great, this detective's this, this detective's that. Every time we get something, we should have that detective and we shouldn't give this case to that person and my question to them was, well, why? Why don't we have a detective session that's just, that's full of Detective A? And that's what succession planning is. It's identifying people with talent and it's identifying people that have a desire and that have a skill set and fostering that and moving folks along. So I think with the succession plan that we implemented and by keeping communication as open as we could and exposing our staff to as many angles of policing and administrative work as we could, internal promotional processes were extraordinarily difficult because everybody who applied were very capable, very competent and had very strong leadership abilities. So that's a good thing and that's a bad thing but throughout that, folks have met those high qualifications and I think they're the highest ones of any police organization within the state and out of that, and I don't want to downplay the skills of and what they bring to the table but I think it's a reflection to our commitment that we have a young lady who is in charge who is our dispatch supervisor, Carrie McCool, and we have our first female sergeant in the history of the Montpelier Police Department. Some of the other things that we looked into or that we brought aboard was the high-intensity drug trafficking agencies, the OD mapping, our dispatch. Folks are able to look at trends and where ODs are happening within our county and other places and then we use that information as far as like how we're outreaching to the communities and how we're looking at potential folks that we need to target for proactive investigations. We've incorporated ComSTAT intelligence-led policing metrics but due to low staffing, that's been difficult because it's an exhaustive amount of administrative work that's required when we don't have a true CAD or reporting system. Benchmark Analytics for an early warning system, that helps us to collect information on and looking at where we are as far as incidences of use of force, as far as incidences of performance evaluations, complaints from the community so that we can bring all this stuff out at the push of a button to make ourselves transparent to the communities that we serve. With Benchmark Analytics, it's also, again, especially, it's imperative that we want to catch people before they go down a pathway where they can disrupt and destroy their professional lives and their personal lives. And again, there's issues of suicide in the news. And it affects everyone, but especially, first responders are especially vulnerable for it. And Benchmark Analytics helps us in identifying people who may need a little bit more of attention and then coupled with, again, one of the other things that I want to bring up, again, with that gratefulness is the commitment from our city manager, our assistant city manager, and from the council in recognizing those stressful issues. We brought in advanced interviewing training. We applied for a federal officer wellness grant for the entire county of Washington County. Again, I point to the unfortunate incident that happened in Berlin where there was an officer that did commit a murder suicide. And that shows the urgency of the now and how we have to and why we have to identify these types of issues. We did apply for and when a cry tech grant for officer survival training cry tech stands for the Collaborative Reform Initiative Assistance Center. And through that training, it helped officers, its officers across the country were being targeted, unfortunately, but more importantly, the murder of George Floyd, positional exfixiation. And the tactics that we learned through that training pulled away from traditional ways of how law enforcement utilized force and got away from putting pressure on the head, neck, and the spine, especially when we have a person in a prone position. And the person who taught us is a homegrown vermoner and a previous Montpelier police officer who left off to the Department of Homeland Security and worked for the HSI unit there. And he came back to give us some very good training. We've improved access or created access to additional investigative records, such as CLEAR, eGuardian, and the law enforcement Enterprise Portal with the Federal Bureau of Investigations. And then we also won a little over $150,000 in DHS grants, which we use for building security upgrades. In City Hall, in the police department, we also procured a virtual reality training machine with that money. And then we brought in anti-vehicle barriers, because when I first got here, Nord told me one of the biggest things that keeps him up at night is he does in all the festivities and all of the events that we have in Montpelier, he does not want to see a repeat of someone driving through our community and hurting our community when they're doing nothing more than trying to enjoy the time they have with each other and with their families. So we invested in that. And we also helped the Capitol Police get their grant to add to those same anti-vehicle barriers that we've got. And then we've also implemented, brought in new crime scene processing kits. In 2022, we got another grant from the Stanton Foundation. K9 Atlas is here, and he'll be going off in February to narcotics training. So we got that with the out having to ask the city for additional money. We thank you to the generosity again. And it means a lot to me, because this is something near and dear to my heart. But one of the things that Nord and I and Tony, and especially Neil, before he left, this is big for us is to make sure that we can do everything we can to help our staff whenever they're dealing with problems and issues. So thank you for the funding. And then we did sign into a $10,000 contract with the Vermont Center for First Responder Wellness, in which we have folks who come out and talk to our staff on a repeated basis, on a contractual basis. Daytime, nighttime, afternoon, and just to see how things are going. Again, thanks to the PRC and the council, we've implemented a body-worned camera program. We've implemented a vehicle replacement program, and we brought in new NCAR computers for each of our patrol vehicles. We brought in human trafficking training through a grant that we did not have to reach into any of our call first four. We incorporated PowerDMS, which is a policy system. One of the PRC recommendations was to put our policies out there. And our current system does not have the bandwidth to put out all the policies that we have. But through PowerDMS, you can go on the Montpelier Police Department's website, and you can see each one of our policies. And it's easy to update these policies within a click of a button. It also helps us to ensure that our officers and our staff are reading these policies, and we can actually even add tests to them to make sure that there's comprehension there. We won another grant through the Department of Homeland Security in 2022, and we used that, and we just completed training 40 hours, two weeks of training for a county-wide tactical team. And I'll go into this a little bit more about the regionalization of shared assets. But the threats are real, and they're getting alarmingly a little bit more worrisome, and especially with where we are. So we took that initial step, and now we have officers who are trained in concepts that are designed to minimize use of force rather than utilizing force. And I say that is, so how can tactics be de-escalatory? Well, the whole thing is, A, you don't go rushing into a building on a search warrant with the idea that I need to get the drugs before they flush them down the toilet. That's 1980s and 1990s BS. You don't do that type of stuff. You enter into homes in a very methodical way, and the whole concept is to see the person before they see you and then engage that you don't have to use deadly force or any types of force. And it works, and it sincerely works. And through this, I think that we're going to be bringing on, we're going to see this as a trend throughout the state of Vermont. We have been part of the Systems Improvement Committee throughout the state looking at how we can address criminal justice issues within law enforcement. We've also assisted in giving feedback on the statewide use of force policy and body warrant camera policy developments. We standardized threat and vulnerability reporting and projections. And then we've also worked hard to get that at least to start the $2.4 million grant from the state for it to update our communications infrastructure. We've also procured dispatch consoles, which are, as I understand from Kerry, they are sitting at the department now. The only thing that we're waiting for is just the furniture. We've worked with Barry, a very strong partnership again to make sure we have redundancy backup operations. And we've updated our policies to modernize, to hit those 21st century policing pillars. Though those include use of force, whistleblower, which is you don't see many people, but it protects officers who have that mandated duty to report from reprisal. Criminal threat assessments, exits interviews, duty to intervene, crime scene protection, firearms, vehicle pursuits, body warrant cameras, and national incident management systems. Just really briefly, Niver's reporting is just nothing more than just, this is just to give you kind of a snapshot of, again, from annual reporting. I just pulled these numbers from, tells you the level of calls for service that we've had in 2020 and 21, and that the top 10 instances have rotated between traffic stops, disorderly conduct, and one year you'll have 10 of these, the next year one of them will drop off and the other one will pop up, but the bottom line is, this is the fact that there is low crime, and I would say a perception of low crime within the city of Montpelier is a testament to the work and that officers, dispatchers, parking, that everybody puts into getting to understand their community members, gaining the trust, the one-on-one trust, and then looking at proactivity when it's warranted. But more so than that, it's a reflection of the community of Montpelier. It's a reflection of the standards of the people that we serve, and this is why we're extraordinarily lucky that we don't have to deal with a lot of the problems that other places, to include places in, in Vermont, have to deal with. So with that, I'll just turn it over to... They don't want to hear from you. Okay, so. So Will, he got me the way I pushed him up in front the last few minutes, so really briefing to touch on staffing in morale. We're currently sitting at 13 sworn officers within the department, our dispatch is fully staffed. We have one officer who's on administrative leave, and upon my leave, we will be down to 13 officers available to work. I'm sorry, 11 officers available to work. But we have three candidates who are scheduled for the NEX Academy class, which will begin early 2023, and then we're starting to see more quality applicants trickle in, and I'll get to that, and there's I think there's a huge reason as to why. And I'll get to that one a little bit. Our staff has felt some significant relief with the scheduling changes that our city manager, assistant city manager helped us to plan through, and especially thank you, thank you from our staff and from their families for the increases. It's really helped. And so we will always continue to manage numerous competing administrative and operational priorities. The feedback nationally and locally is that there's still some lingering vocal anti-law enforcement sentiment, and that's contributing to low morale, the ability to attract people overall into the profession. But what I will say, and what I have always said, is that Montpelier and our city council support our staff and they support this police department, and there has never ever been a doubt that that has been the case. Despite what anyone may have said, or despite any rumors out there in the street, we enjoy the support and the trust of our council, and that is one of the things that makes us extraordinarily attractive to other members, other law enforcement officers within this state, because several times before, hey, I'm ready to come to Montpelier, or hey, man, you guys are doing this, you guys are doing this, well, why don't you come on over? Oh, I can, I'm vested, and several of them have been VSP with all due respect, but they're vested in those pensions there and they can't necessarily walk over, but it's well known that this council is, this council is tough in the sense that this council challenges us to come out of that comfort zone and to be better than what we, you all see where we can go and you push us to that. And so while that part is tough as it should be, what's never in question is your support for our organization. So looking at some of the projects in work, the CIT program, the steering committee has been in place for about a year now. The training program is nearly complete, where we've got the syllabuses, everything worked out, who's gonna be training, I just have to do a few scenarios, and then early to, I'm sorry, in March. So, and we've also, I've also talked to the Vermont Associations of Chiefs of Police and told them about the CIT program, and they are all on board willing to send their staff to CIT training once it becomes available. It's 40 hours, but it's well worth it. And then we also, there was a $150,000 grant from Thrive that went to Washington County Mental Health Services, and Montpelier has also petitioned the state, and we're waiting to hear back from a possible another $150,000 that we can use to implement into standing up a CIT program. Now the thing about a CIT program, it's more than just training for law enforcement officers and first responders, it's bringing about a response system in dealing with people who are in critical, who are in crisis mode. It's not training, it's how do we humanely deal with folks who are having undoubtedly one of the worst days of their life, and how are we helping them out of it, rather than compounding their problems by pushing them into the criminal justice system or making the experience a traumatic experience even more traumatic for them. So that's what the CIT program is about. Our final session of the COPS office grant, which is the Antibias Online Training, we are a participant site, and after early 2023 we expect that this grant that the COPS office gave to this training group, of which Montpelier has had a part in, will be the national standard in law enforcement officers getting implicit bias training. So it's no longer, you know, finding somebody who says that, oh I can teach you an implicit bias training, well what are your credentials, what are your training, what are your experiences. We're going to set a national model for all law enforcement agencies throughout the country, as far as anti-bias online training. We have to implement the communications infrastructure upgrade and assist the state in dispatching. We have to purchase a base radio station replacement, and we have to look at a true CAT systems and investigative software that has an emphasis on fighting domestic terrorism, and I'll dive into that really quickly. So my final slide is, and there's a typo there, it should be MPDs, accomplishments, could not have happened without the support and trust of the city manager. Could not, but yeah I did, but it would not be Brian Pede if I did not have a screw-up someplace in a slide. And it's a terrible screw-up, like the screw-up about Laguna Beach. So, um. They don't know that. Ha ha ha ha. But, so from the bottom of my heart, one thing I've learned being here through Bill, through Cameron, through Kelly, through the leadership and through how I've seen this council react where I came from, this is, I don't see this, whether it's in Chicago, whether it's in New Mexico, and the one word that I would say is just grace, and that I wish that people understood the level of stress that you voluntarily take on. I'm not sucking up to you, because that's not me, but there is a level of stress that comes with this because there is an altruistic expectation that folks who put themselves out for public service do. And I have seen you all push and claw to make this community better. And I hope that the members of the community, and I'm pretty sure they are, are very cognizant of that. And so thank you. Thank you for training and teaching me and preparing me for the next level of my professional career. So I'll say that, I'll ask that going forward, that you look to preserve qualified immunity for police officers in Vermont. Qualified immunity, there's a lot of people who have opinions on it. There are a lot of people who are academics that talk about it, but it's one thing to be out in the field to be dealing with it. Qualified immunity does not change a culture. What changes a culture is leadership and oversight in the sense that you have to have sunshine and you have to have transparency and that leads into accountability because no matter if you take away my qualified immunity, but I can still hide somebody's wrongful acts from you, you'll never be able to hold us accountable. And sunshine and transparency and accountability, that's what it is. To know what officers are dealing with, to know what officers have done and what officers are being accused of and how we're doing the process, that helps everything. So I would say that it's transparency is the key to stop a culture that has too long looked into covering for each other. I would say to advocate for regional consolidation. EMS, FIRE, there are all kinds of reports out there that are saying there are fewer and fewer volunteers that are coming in to do it, in law enforcement especially. And the way that we're doing things right now, we will not survive in Vermont if we do not consolidate or regionalize the resources that we have left. The projections of getting out of this, if they were fortunate, we're looking at five years. So I will say that again, the chiefs and I in Washington County have spoken offline several times and this is the time, this is the time. Law enforcement chiefs in Washington County have talked about this. And I think at this particular point in time, the only thing that may stop it would be a political ego. It's not gonna be a law enforcement ego that hey, I need to be the chief, I need to be in charge or the traditional bravo. I think it's just going to take that political will to look and see what that would look like. I would again, fully endorse the implementation of the CRO program that will help us to continue to build the, that's the community resource officer program to build trust between us and our community. This is key. We're still working towards that. We've got the right person in the spot and we just have to know it has been diligent in bringing about new talent into the department. So once that comes up, the CRO program will be up and running. I would say again, from the tactical point of it, from the law enforcement point of it, continue security enhancements in response for the capital area and concentrate on strategies that are going to combat issues because there's an alarming crease of domestic violence threats against elected officials. Now the trend is not just nationally elected officials, it's state municipally elected officials. And I'm not saying that to scare you. Just saying that this is where they're looking at ease of access now. And we're committed to making sure that you're safe. We always will be. Government facilities are always been a target schools, faith-based entities that we're seeing now, especially our friends and neighbors in the Jewish community. And now more than ever, we're seeing targets against the LGBTQIA. So we have to make sure we're diligent. And we have, in Montpelier, we have the most critical resource infrastructures in the state. And our officers need to be ready to respond to any possible threat that we can find, that can find us, whether it's domestic or foreign terrorism. I would also, and I know this is a priority for nowhere, it is to look at reestablishing that SRO, the school resource officer program, and bringing officers back to federal task force positions within the department. Again, advocate for modern statewide use of force tactics that minimize positional annexation, keeps knees, arms, weight off the head, neck, and spine. We have the training to do that. We just have to get it approved through the state. And because we've been doing use of force tactics, since it's the same stuff since the mid-70s, and we need to evolve beyond that. And it's going to take push, the political pressure and will to change that. There are tactics available to keep people from dying from positional affixation and unintended consequences like that, we just have to do them. Advocate to modernized statewide L enforcement training, looking at flexibility and improving reciprocity for people coming from outside the state and being certified as police officers in state, that we have to go after proactively, yeah, that took me two years to get my level three certification. They gave up on the last one. They said, we don't have training, so we're going to give it to you. Norwich literally been following me around with a leash. I did not get my level three certification to roughly five months ago. And they gave up that I had one training to go and they gave up. They're like, we don't see what we're going to offer it sooner, we're just going to sign off on it. Here you go. So we have to do that. Human trafficking, that's a hard discussion. For anybody, but while we stand here talking about these things today, there are people suffering here in Vermont and we have to find a way to bring that into the light because they're far too few resources that are being used to fight human trafficking in our state. We need to coordinate with the ATF to pursue a grant program that they have for canines to continue our strong partnership with federal agencies and we have to continue to invest in a very robust succession plan. So with that being said, again on a personal note, it is extraordinarily difficult and bittersweet. But I thank you for the privilege to serve you. And I thank Bill, Cameron, Kelly for your faith in me because I came here damaged. I came here as 124 applications putting into other places and they wouldn't touch me because of what I came from. But you have faith in me. So thank you and I want to thank Nord for his continued mentorship and especially the men and women of the Montpellier Police Department. It has been a true honor. It has been the highlight of my career and this was never meant to be a stepping stone. This was the pinnacle of where I want it to be. And if I could imagine what a police department should be, it's this and that the, to the members of the community, thank you for your support, your outpouring of support to my family, to myself. And you need to know that you have, know your blessings because you have a city council and you have a police department and you have a team of staff members of the city that are committed undoubtedly and unapologetically to serving this community. So thank you for the opportunity and I will answer any questions that you may have of me. Was that? Oh yes, well, before I say a few things. It's late boss, we gotta get moving. That's okay, you know this is worth it. If other folks have things that they would like to say, that would be welcome now, but then I'll save my comments to the end if other folks have things they wanna say. Or you don't have to. Yes, go ahead. Yeah, I had to say like, you know, seeing Dan Tolle get up there, this is somebody who's like a kind of vocal member of the police review force. He disagree with you a lot, but it's a testament to you that I think you changed a lot of people's minds of what they thought of law enforcement and the community I think really gave a collective sigh when they heard the news you were leaving and you entered in such a difficult period here where recruitment and retention was rough and you could have filled the police department with a bunch of people who would be subpar and negatively affect this town for like ages to go, but you didn't, you worked under staff, you did the patrol yourself, you did what deputy Nortonson said, you chose good people and made them good cops and I think someone like Sergeant Matthews is a great example of that too. You see the confidence and the great things she's doing, but honestly, Chief, it's really with a heavy heart to see you go there and I've learned so much from you and you gotta do what you gotta do, but you will be missed, sir. Yeah, you will indeed. Thank you, sir. You're in good hands. You're in damn good hands. We are. Let's go ahead, Warren. Yeah, I just wanted to thank you, Chief. As one of the people who served on the police review committee, that was tons of work and a lot of really hard conversations and really pushing and right in the midst of the George Floyd murder and all of that, so super intense COVID's going on and it was just an honor to work with you. I learned so much from you. I think the community learned a lot and I think together, like you said, we had push and pull and it was a really healthy and transparent and honest debate and conversation and I'm really grateful and I just really appreciate the communication you've brought to the community and the structures you've built. So I think the legacy that you're leaving to, like, I'll miss you, you'll be missed and you built systems, you came into a strong department and continued to build on those and so I think with our new incoming chief, so much to build on and a great department you're leaving behind, so I think that's just such a testament to your leadership of building that longevity of these values. So I'll miss you. I'll follow up on what Lauren said because as someone else who worked on the police review commission, and it was tough, it was a lot of meetings, a lot of hours, a lot of time for you to listen to people that didn't agree with where you were coming from or had definitely different perspectives. I thought it was very impressive and valuable that no matter how clear you were in your own views, you were never defensive or uncooperative, your ability to listen to the and engage with the debate was part of what made it a successful, successful process and coming up with new policies, adopting policies and implementing policies has been very productive for the city and I think we're in a better place than we were when you came. So like everyone else, I'll miss you here in the community and good luck where you're going. Yes. I've already kind of said goodbye, but I mean everybody's already saying things and I'm sitting here crying like a boob, so. Just thank you for making me feel safe. That is probably one of the biggest gifts. Big bad LA girl don't like cops. I really like you. And I really appreciate how easy it is to just sit and talk with you. You're not this mean, scary, intimidating guy and my defenses are down now when I am around police officers and I attribute that to the police department here, but also to you. So thank you for that gift and you'll be my thoughts as you travel, so. Thank you and your gift has a special place of honor in my home. Thank you. Yay, good, I'm so glad. Safe travels. Yes ma'am. I just say thank you and echo what everyone else has said and Montpelier's better off for having had you here and it's a real loss to have you go. And just the impact that you've had on people's perception of the police, I think that's what a lot of people here have said and I think that that's been just so obvious from everywhere in the community and I thank you for that. That will last after you go. Thank you. Well, I also wanna thank you. It has been an extraordinary, wonderful pleasure. I have to work with you and I'm so grateful that I had this opportunity to get to know you and to work with you. I also want you to know that that list of suggestions that those final thoughts that you had, I want you to know that even as I step into a different role, I am taking all of those thoughts to heart and I really appreciate and trust your opinion about those things. And I look forward to working together with the legislature on some of those points. Also, this list of accomplishments that the department has achieved over the last two years. Also, I can't believe it's only been two years that you've done all of this incredible work. You did all of that through a pandemic, right? Like you could have had all the excuse in the world to say, yeah, we don't have the capacity, we don't have the staff to work on these things, but no, like you helped push the department forward even when it was hard. And also, through two of the most difficult years, it has probably been to be a police officer anywhere in the country. And so, and you carried the department through this extraordinarily difficult time. And in fact, didn't just carry it, made it better. And that is just absolutely remarkable. I want you to know that we are extraordinarily proud of you. We're proud of the department. I wanna thank you for everything that you've brought to the department and to our community because we are a better place, specifically because you were here and served with us, for us. And so with that, it is my pleasure and my honor to present you with a couple of things. So one is just a small gift, but the other is a key to the city of Montpelier. I'm gonna tell you what door it goes to. It looks like it don't lock that well. The door is also locked. Turn it a little bit. Oh, we gotta be gonna look this way. You should look this way. I can throw it at somebody. I can make a one person. It's also a beer opener, I believe. A bottle opener. A bottle opener. I'll use it. Thank you, Mary. Thank you. I'll just say thanks, chief. We've had a chance to talk. But I will say, while you're all here, so yes, I will thank you, chief. We've had many private moments. Best gamble I ever took was hiring you. And one of the things that you accomplished, as you talked a lot about, was your succession planning. So I'm gonna give everybody a sneak preview of a public announcement for tomorrow, and that is Eric Nordenson will be our next chief of police, starting December 21st. He learned from two or three of the best, chief Pete, chief Fakis, and chief Hoyt. And he's been here almost as long as I have. We were talking about that the other day. And wow, I remember him as a rookie. And I'm glad you're here. No, he's gonna be great. He's a tough act to follow. He is a tough act to follow. The support from the department, from the community, and from the prior chiefs for him was outstanding. And chief Pete, I thank you for leaving deputy chief soon to be chief Nordenson in a place, better place than he was three years ago and interested in this job. So you've done a great job with that and bringing along all your folks. So congrats to Eric, and congratulations to you chief. Good luck moving on. Okay, all right. Well, so moving on to our next item here. So we had a question about whether we should have a public hearing about this. So just so you know my thoughts on this and I'm open to other thoughts. I think we probably do need to go into executive session to discuss what we're going to do and that we could have a public hearing as has been requested, but I think that's something that we could also discuss in executive session. Like as I said, the one does not necessarily preclude the other. So that would be my suggestion. And if we do a public hearing, I would suggest that it's not tonight. So that's, yeah. So I would suggest that we go into executive session and we may come out and have an action or a course of action we want to take. Other thoughts? Yep. I'm seeing some thumbs up, some nods. Do you have a comment you'd like to make? Yeah. If you would come up to the microphone, that'd be great. Sure. That's fine. Do you after all of that emotional, you know, feel good stuff, you know, as I go now this. When you say go into executive session and then some action, but that action would not entail or involve making a decision relative to whether my appointment to the commission is rescinded, right? There would have to be the public hearing first, correct? It could not be based upon because as I said previously, if your discussion and then subsequent decision is going to be based upon the memorandum which you received, and I know it wasn't. I mean, it's like one does one's best. Nothing's ever going to be 100% perfect. But there are some couple of glaring, glaring omissions in that report, which I think of a profound importance and I would feel abuse, frankly, if a decision was made, because again, as I said earlier, this to you is an agenda item. To me, it's about my character. And if I may say something just on a personal note, since the year 2009, I'm 74 years of age, since the year 2009, except for one year during for the COVID thing, I go to India twice a year to go on meditation retreats. My meditation retreats are what I call my spiritual IRA. My time on this planet is very, very limited. The truth is extremely important to me. I've been a vegetarian since the time I was 20 years of age because I believe that animals are our younger brothers and sisters. So the truth in my preparing for my next lifetime is very, very important to me. People who know me could say, you know, Tom, you could describe as being contrary, contentious, maybe even irascible. But sleaze is one word that people would never ever say about me. And the kinds of innuendos and the kinds of assertions that were made about my behavior, the things that I said. But this relative to that, there's just one very, very important fact about Monica that was omitted in Bill's report, which is very, very germane to this matter at hand. And that is this. When I went to see her poetry reading at the, you all have read the Memorandum, when I went to see her at the poetry reading, at the very outset of her reading, she said to everybody present, six or eight of us, she said, my artwork and my poetry are helping me heal from my traumatic brain injury. I went online, and I, what is this? After all this brouhaha. And this is a fact. It's not like something. And this is why I say, I mentioned this Bill, but it's not in the report. I went online and it's like, okay, what is traumatic brain injury? The very first thing that I'm talking about is a person suffers from an anxiety and that they have emotional responses that are disproportionate to reality. So I did not want to say this here. I wanted to say it, you know, like maybe, but there was no opportunity to do that. So I'm sorry, but it's coming out this way. But as I say, it's about my character. So thank you. I will wait here, I guess, until you do whatever. And just so, you know, we may come out and make a decision. I think that is possible. But we'll, we can talk about what we're obligated to do. Okay, so with that, is there a motion? I move that we go into executive session. Pursuant to one BSA, section 313. A3 regarding the appointment or employment or evaluation of a public officer. And I just want to point out, as we're discussing this and based on your comment, Mayor, that I don't think there's anything that requires us to go into executive session because it is possible. It's always discretionary with the public body. So it's possible to not do this in executive session, but there's more than one public officer involved. And so that's part of the reason that I think it's appropriate to go into executive session. And I'll also point out to the council and the members of the public who are in attendance that this statute's also provided no final or binding decision can be made except in public session. So whatever is discussed in executive session, the public final vote would be in public session. Yep. I would second that. Oh, okay. So motion in a second. Further discussion? Okay. All in favor please say aye. Aye. And opposed. All right. So we will be back at least to adjourn and possibly to have some further motion. We'll see. Okay. Thanks. Okay. Okay. Is there a motion to come out of executive session? So moved. All in favor please say aye. Aye. And opposed. All right. Jack. Pursuant to section 317B of the Montpelier City Charter, I move that Tom Mulholland be removed from the Public Art Commission. I'll second. And further discussion? Okay. All in favor please say aye. Aye. And opposed. All right. Well, thank you. We just want to recognize it was not an appointment that was working out for the committee. So we assume that we're going to reopen advertising for that committee. And so with that, we'll move on to, so thank you, and we'll move on to our council reports. And we're going to start with Donna. Okay. Happy holidays, everyone. Hey, Carrie. I don't have any report. Thank you. Okay. Connor. I'll pass to her. Jennifer. Okay. Jack. I'm also passing. It's very late. It is super late. I will also pass John. Okay. Bill. Unfortunately, unfortunately, I can't pass. But I will try to do this quickly. We already announced chief Nordenson's appointment effective next Wednesday. We are going to do a little swearing in for him with chief beat chief fakers and chief Hoyt present. And obviously family at seven. I can't remember who I mentioned this to either the capital committee or all of you, but the group working on the country club road would like to have a special meeting on January 18 with you council on Wednesday night. That's an off week night for us so that we have the whole night to go through their plans and their thinking and the designs. They've got two or three design options and I think they want to, and then that's going to be followed up with a public meeting on site on the, basically the same pattern they did last time. I'll be on January 28 on site January 2nd here in city council. And then I forget the other to January 9th. Maybe I can't get night. Thank you online. So they would like to, if that is okay with you, I couldn't commit without checking with you. What are the dates of that again? So the main thing is the January 18 special meeting here for the council to brief the council. And then we can send you out the others, but are you available that evening? It's a third Wednesday. We had kind of held it as a possible budget workshop. 630, yeah. Even if I wanted to be here, I will not. I'm otherwise obligated anyway. So for the five of you that will still be on the count. Okay, great. Then we will schedule that. We are very close on finance director. Hopefully we'll also have an announcement on that by next week. If not the end of this week, we'll see. Very close. And just our capital committee meeting left our meeting saying at the end of the meeting tonight, we decide whether we want to meet again tomorrow next week. And we said we'd wait. So now there's no more time to wait. So, wait, I'm sorry. The members of the capital improvement committee, the question was, do you want to get together again next week before the council meeting? And the answer was, let's wait and hear the whole budget. Let's see how it goes. And we'll decide at the end of the meeting. And I would say this is definitely the end of the meeting. Sorry. Sorry. Now's like not quite the right time to ask that question. But well, if you want to ask a question, you can do that in a minute. But right now the question is for the capital improvement committee. So the members of the capital improvement committee. Either way is fine. There's no right or wrong answer. Just do your don't you. Are you there? No, you're not there. I feel like we could address anything in the full budget discussion. I don't. I think we got the information we needed. So I think no. If everyone's comfortable. I'd say no. Okay. Great. Okay. Great. That's the end of mine. That's all I had. Is that anything else? Did you have anything further you'd like to say? No, I don't know. It's a question. Okay. Is that all there is? Is there no explanation as to why you came to the determination? That is all there is. Okay. Okay. All right. So with that, I think that is it. So without objection, we will consider the meeting adjourned. Phew. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.