 And I, not having had the experience that Helen really has had, do not know what is appropriate, but we are facing, I think, very dire times as a world. And so I would just like us to have a minute of peace and reflection and peace being one of the operative words, but also reflection, because peace requires reflection. So I just want us to have a minute, please. I don't have a stopwatch. I imagine I didn't quite wait a minute, but as we can see, a minute is a short time, yet it is a long time. And I hope that everybody who is making consequential decisions in the days to come will take that minute of reflection. Now, we have instructions on exiting the building in case of emergency, and we can, of course, thank goodness, we don't have to necessarily imagine that there's going to be an emergency, but just in case. So for those in the room, thank you for joining us in the room. If there is an emergency, you can go out to the rear of the auditorium on the left or right and then turn left or right to get outside. For those participating virtually, thank you also for joining us. If you would like to speak on any item on the agenda, please feel free to turn your camera on and Chair Emery will call on you or indicate you'd like to speak in the chat, and I'll have her call on you. Other than that, we are not monitoring the chat for content. Thank you, Jesse. So now is the time for agenda review, and I ask my colleagues here. Tyler Burns will be joining us in about 15 minutes. Are there any additions, deletions, or changes in the order of agenda items? I wonder if we might spend a few minutes talking about the letter with respect to the noise on the long development by the golf course. I'm happy to add that under other business. Is that agreeable to you, Tim? Yes. So that has to do with some construction noise along the, is it Long Avenue? Long Drive, thank you, along the golf course development. Just off of Golf Course Road. Just off of Golf Course Road, yes. Can I just point of clarification on that? I might suggest you do that immediately following public comment because I think there might be some folks in the room or online who would be interested in that. And Steve, can I ask you to call? I just saw Paul walk by. Can you call him to see if he can come down for that? Thanks. All right. Thank you, Jesse. Very good. So not seeing any other changes. We're going to move on to number four, which is comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. And I see Peter, is it Towsley? Yes, Peter Towsley. I live at 112 Spear Street. I haven't seen the agenda, I apologize, but we would like to bring up an issue about outdoor venues in the backyards of student housing, student rental housing on Spear Street. So there's concerts going on and they're pretty loud. They do stop at the appropriate time, but they are becoming a problem. How often can you give us a little, a few more details, Mr. Towsley? Twice in the last month. Thank you. And the times of the evening, I'm supposing. About seven to 10. And it's one particular house that's having the bands. It's right next door. All right. Thank you. And how many months has this been occurring for how many months? Well, they, it's just this last month so far, but they had indicated to us it was going to be a one time affair and then it became a two time affair. And now we're concerned that it's going to continue. It includes roughly a hundred students, a lot of alcohol and kids wandering around under people's yards looking for a bathroom. Mr. Can I ask Mr. Towsley a question? Did you indicate earlier today in my conversation with your wife that they were charging admission to this, these concerts? Yes, they are. And do you know for a fact whether or not they have any control over the age of the people who are getting access to alcohol? I think they're checking IDs. They have a table with two people collecting money, whether they're really checking IDs or not. I'm not sure. Okay. Thank you. Is there a response forthcoming right now? Yes. So I, so Councilor Barrett alerted me to this today. I wasn't aware of this issue. So we will look into what, if they need permits and have the police respond accordingly. And we know that the address, I'm assuming it was in perfect. Okay. Because I did see it on our discussions with the police say that they're not doing anything wrong. If the kids become a problem trespassing, then call them and they'll deal with that. All right. Well, thank you very much for coming forward with your concern. And I believe that there will be some follow-up. And you have Councilor Barrett that you've been in touch with. And perhaps Councilor Barrett will be the go-to person for any follow-up for you. Okay. And just for clarification, these are residences like right across from the Godderson garage on Spear Street. Mm-hmm. Okay. Very good. Well, thank you very much. That is correct. We appreciate you coming forward. Thank you very much. Is there any other member of the public who would like to come forward and make a comment? Please do. Yes. Can you turn the mic on so you press the button on the push button? Thank you. Oh, nice. Yeah. So I guess I misunderstood. Is the long drive issue on the agenda? No, it's not. We added it to now. Oh, okay. So would this be an appropriate time to comment? Would this be an appropriate time to, yes, comment? Okay. Okay. And I see Paul Conner is here, too. So I am Beth Zigmund. I live at 338 Golf Course Road, which is in close proximity to the long drive property. Everyone on the board and City Manager Baker knows that there's some incessant, very loud hammering going on on that property. This whole saga started in 2020 and multiple complaints were made to the City Council at that time, which was had a different composition and Ms. Baker, you weren't here then. It was Kevin Dorn at the time, but there were numerous complaints over a period of several months during the warmer season. The hammering was incessant, consistently measured up to 90 decibels on my back deck. In the summer we have our windows open. So this is inside our house, 90 decibels, eight hours a day, every day of the week for entire warm season. It happened several occasions after that in different years. We also complained about it. We have been told over and over again there's nothing the City can do. When I read the noise ordinance, it's the public nuisance ordinance and the construction ordinance. It's pretty clear to me that the construction ordinance doesn't allow for the flagrant violation of another city ordinance, which is the noise ordinance. So again, I have to reiterate, I could play it for you, I've got it on my phone. It's absolutely unbearable, incessant, eight hours a day. So just to tell you a personal story today, I woke up, 7.30, I was at my desk in my home office trying to do important work. I have a deadline. I had to, when the hammering started, I had to vacate my home office, which meant collecting about 20 or 30 articles, my laptop, the cord for my laptop, my phone, my cord for my phone, my breakfast, my lunch, my coffee, everything I needed for the day. I went to the public library thinking this was the only place I could work because we have limited office space at the hospital where I work. And I showed up at the library and all of the study rooms were occupied. I had four meetings on my schedule today that I could not reschedule. They were mandatory meetings, some of which were with other physicians. I was in a very bad bind and I'm telling you a personal story, not because my personal story is of any great significance. I'm sure that there are numerous other people in my community who have suffered similar issues because of the noise. So the solution that, and I appreciate the fact that Jesse Baker went to bat for us, she sent people out to the site and they spoke with the construction workers, et cetera, and a solution was hammered out. Well, the solution is apparently that the duration of hammering on a given day will be limited, but they're going to continue to hammer. Which means that the total duration of the hammering is indefinite. There are numerous lots on the site. As my husband put it, if I can find his quote here, it amounts to 100 shallow cuts instead of one deep one. We're going to be subjected to this noise over and over again, season after season, until they're finished construction over there under the current paradigm. I am coming to you, I'm pleading with you. I'm asking you to please not let them do it anymore. It's disruptive, it's unhealthy, it causes annoyance and anger and frustration and potentially hearing problems if we're subjected to it over the summer, OSHA says 85 to 90 decibels is the limit before you have to start wearing hearing protection. It's 90 decibels, almost 90 decibels on my back deck right next to the kitchen, right next to my office. So I think that allowing it to continue is simply allowing the construction workers and the developers to violate a city ordinance. It gives the developers the ability to flout laws that the rest of us have to abide by, the rest of us who are tax-paying citizens of this community. And I don't understand why the reason why they're hammering is because apparently these permits were issued on these homes, which included basements. If they're going to build on those lots, they don't need basements. There's no requirement that you have a basement. Houses can be built on slab, they can be built on crawl. I don't understand why the city, the zoning and planning office, having full knowledge of years of this sort of incessant noise went ahead and issued permits for additional homes with basements when they knew that ledge removal was going to be necessary. So I'm asking for a durable, like a real durable solution to the problem. I'm also asking that if any further permits are issued on that property, if there's ledge, that they don't get to put basements in. The rest of the neighborhood should not be subjected to year after year of this torture. So anyway, thank you for listening. Thank you for your efforts on this. And I think one of my neighbors wants to speak to the same issue. Thanks. What was your address again, quick? 338. 238? 338. 338. 338. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Beth. Please do come forward. Hi there. Don Anglin. I also live on Golf Course Road 294. And there's really not much more that I could add that Beth has already very well explained. Tim, I know I spoke with you back in 2020 when this was going on. I spoke with you last year. I spoke with Paul Connor at length about this back in 2020. And my question is, why are these permits being issued for this type of work? That's something that needs to be answered. And again, to echo Beth's question, why are developers allowed to flout these ordinances and laws that the city has to abide by, residents and developers do not? And if you would like, I do have a recording of the hammering. Do I have time to play it for all of you to listen to? I think we can imagine 90 decibels. I'm not so sure if you do. I'm really not so sure if you do. Because it's very easy to say, oh, that's hard to listen to. I live in a neighborhood, believe me. I know. OK. So we're asking for some help. And it's been four years. And why hasn't there been anything done to prevent this? And from my understanding, there is also a development that's slated to go in up off of Park Road, whatever position that's in. And at one point, it was the same developer. I'm not so sure if they're still in the process of developing that parcel of land. But it's all bedrock up there. When is enough enough? Thank you. Thank you very much. And I do appreciate that noise is potentially very aggravating. And that's why noise is, as the meaning has. You had Paul Conner come down. Would you like him to answer some of these questions, Jesse? Or if you'd like to respond? I'll give some background, I think, first. Would that be a good thing to do? I would like for Paul to. I guess I'm happy to have Paul share, talk through the letter he shared today. I don't want to bring him up for you all to just beat him up. So if you want to share comments first, that would be great. And then he can. Can I have a question that I'd love Paul to address? OK, let's ask her questions then first. Because I tend to agree with the residents that when I read our ordinance, it doesn't appear to me that a DRB permit gives anyone the right to violate the nuisance ordinance. And it's clear to me that they are in violation. I walked around there, and you can't stand on the sidewalk. It's so unbearable. So it's clear to me that it's in violation of our noise ordinance, which talks about unreasonable noises when it disturbs the peace. And so having a permit doesn't give anyone the right to violate, to do something illegal, to violate the law. And I'd like to understand why that's not right. What else is in our law that allows them to do it? OK. I think that basically was the question, is why was this permit granted? No, no, no. That's not my question. The DRB doesn't enforce our noise ordinance. You can have a permit to build. It doesn't mean that you can build in an illegal way and violate the noise ordinance. So I'd like to understand. Building in an illegal way involves our DRB. Well, OK. I had not understand that DRB would be the one to enforce the noise ordinance or to make it a condition of a permit. I mean, the permit says this is what you can build. And how the developer goes about doing it can be a whole variety of things. Some of those may be illegal, which this seems to be. Any other questions that we want Paul to answer? Just to say that from my memory, the long drive itself was built out the road in 2020. That was an entire summer, at least eight weeks of chipping in order to create the bed for the road and for the trenches for water sewer and all of the fire hydrants, right? And that was a really long summer for all those residents up there. Now, last year, there was a stormwater issue. I mean, Paul can comment on this if he wants to. But they had to go in and create a better swale because their original stormwater design was flawed. And in order to conduct the water on the eastern portion of that property that rolls off of that, they had to catch it and bring it north to there's a stormwater pond that's actually on the golf course. Otherwise, the water would have poured right onto the golf cart path, which then. So there was chipping last summer for days, days and days, because they had to maneuver inside and create this trench all the way down the edge of the property. At this point is a foundation. I think it's his nine house development, just like any other sub-AC 250 little plan, right? And that particular site is chock full of ledge. The site across the street that they're digging that I saw on Friday, they were just using a backhoe excavator. They weren't chipping there. I don't know if they're going to experience the same ledge there or not. So I just want to give some background. And I took a video. I took sound readings as well, both right across on the sidewalk and from about where your house is, just so you know. And it's just like it was last year and like it was two years before that. Anyway. OK. So Paul, I think there are two questions. And perhaps you can address both. Why was this permit granted? And the second one is who is the body who has jurisdiction over the noise ordinance? Sure. Potentially stop the actions that are causing this disturbance. Paul Conner, director of planning zoning. We acknowledge this is not a fun situation for anyone. This is disturbing. It's loud. It's been going on. We acknowledge that that's not very fun for anybody involved. Most certainly the residents that are nearby. The background of this project makes it a difficult project. As I think you all know, this is the original jam golf. This was when all the way up to the Supreme Court on the Supreme Court ruled that these 10 lots could be built, it is subject to Act 250, Councillor Barrett, because it's part of the larger golf course. And so many of the conditions that apply come through the Act 250 as well. The challenge here is striking a balance between the right to construct and methods of construction that can work. In this instance, as indicated in our letter from earlier today, we did explore extensively with the applicant last week about whether there could have been a different methodology applied. And it's not feasible at the scale of this site to do something like blasting. And so it really leaves the hammering as the methodology that can establish getting to the building and building the structure as permitted, which is their right to do. As I said in the letter, our enforcement team has worked with them to have it be less incessant. And of course, that does mean it will be a longer total period of time, but it would be less constant. And we're also working with them with some creative ideas to see if there's things that can be done to alter the parameters of how much has to happen total. And we'll provide an update later this week on that. The we're also, and I'll get to your second question we are also, we've opened up a dialogue with the master developer of the property about are there ways to address the future sites here differently. Again, understanding that they have their Act 250, they have their court-granted approval to build homes here. And so we're working within those parameters. In terms of enforcement, if it's within the land development regulations and the performance standards, which we feel that construction activity like this most closely follows, it is the zoning office that is the enforcement wing. The nuisance ordinance is under the ordinance, the police department that enforces that. And there are arguments that it can go under that as well. But in working with our legal team last week, we felt that a more appropriate enforcement tool would be through the zoning office, not the police department office, for the application here. So that's where we are. You asked this not to a question or? I'm not saying you can't question. I'm just keep in mind that this is an active conversation that is trying to limit the city's liability and protect the residents. So if you have follow-up questions for Paul, by all means, but let's be respectful of one another. I'll first defer to my colleagues, and then I do have some questions. Acknowledging what you said, Jesse, I guess I respectfully disagree with the conclusion here. It doesn't seem to me that someone who has a permit as to what to build can do it illegally. And this is illegal. This is in violation of our ordinance. And if they can't find another way, well, I don't see how that's the city's issue. So I don't see how we give someone a pass to violate our ordinance because they have a DRB permit to build a house. I just I don't get it. OK, that's more of a statement, perhaps, OK? Yeah, so I mean, the only two choices to remove the ledge are either blasting or chipping. I guess the question I have is if I don't know why they chose not to blast, I know that comes with another whole round of responsibilities and costs. O'Brien brothers did it when they started Hillside. They had to talk to people at Stonington Circle and have an agent come in and the blasting people had to do bonding and had to take videos and have everybody sign release documents that locked them in that after they had been inspected that if any cracks occurred afterwards that they'd be responsible, blah, blah, blah. So there are two paths. My question is, is there a bigger chipping machine that could take care of it quicker? If anybody knows, I don't know. I'm not aware in this year's version of it, whether that's a possibility. I know that in other years they have looked at bigger and smaller machines. Bigger machines can potentially go faster, but they're louder when they do it. And it's as one of the residents spoke, it is somewhat of a zero sum game in that it's loud for a shorter period of time or it's less loud for a longer period of time. And that's always the challenge with these. If it were me, I would prefer louder for a shorter period of time. I don't know if there's like machines that specialize just in this other than just an excavator with a chipping tool that they just put down and go, God, God, God, God, God, you know, that's what they're doing today. I'm not a rock removal expert so I don't know what is available, but if there were a better piece of machinery that would do it faster, even if it were louder, I would want the developer to think about that really hard. That would just be my, because I don't think there's any other way around this but it's too late to start the blasting thing because I don't know what their details are, so. All right, all right. My questions have to do with the actual design. Is it possible to ask the developer to amend the design in the midst of this process? This is the first question. The second question is, I realize that the council has nothing to say regarding a DRB decision. Do we have something to say regarding an ordinance, which would effectively take it out of your hands and the development world and the planning and zoning department and put it back with regard to the peace and safety of our public? Those are my two questions. Those are the first one, I'll answer the second one, Paul. Sure. So I'm sorry, can you repeat the first one again? The first one is, is there a way to change? Oh, so. Or amend. I guess what I can say at this time is that the builder, the property owner and staff are engaged in some creative conversations with a agreed upon schedule of middle of this week to explore those. I really can't go into more detail other than to say that all three are on the same page of trying to limit the extent of noise and disruption and we're working collaboratively to see what can be done. Okay. And I will give a public update later this week on that. Well, that's the most I can say, right? Is there a halt in activity until that is resolved or? We determine that the work that is taking place right now has to be done in any scenario. So there was not a, as long as they were working in good faith and in collaboration, there was not a reason to find them for operations right now because what is happening right now, there are no alternatives to what they're doing at the moment. Do you want me to answer this again? Yes. So I, so no, the short answer to your question is no, the council has no role other than passing ordinances and enforcing ordinances other than to hold me accountable for the operations of the city. So I have the privilege of having additional information about how we are actively engaging with the property owner for a solution for that best meets everybody's needs and limits our liability. I believe we are taking appropriate enforcement actions. You, the zoning administrator has independent authority through state statute to enforce and the police have independent authority through state statute to enforce. So beyond changing the policy and the ordinances, you don't have a role in enforcement other than told me accountable, you can take action against me if you think we are really doing things wrong. Can I just ask one more question? So Paul, is your conclusion that because they have a DRB permit, they're entitled to violate the noise ordinance? I don't think that it is fair for me to answer that question directly. I agree with that. You agree with what? Paul's answer. Tyler, I don't know if you're aware, I see that you have joined us now. We are discussing the long drive construction issue. We are able to ask questions of Paul Conner here. We've heard from two residents regarding the nuisance issue and the quality of life issue is clear. We have heard from Paul that he is in negotiations with the developer and that they are seeking, actively seeking, everyone has agreed that we need to seek perhaps a different method, but for now the pounding will continue. That is my brief summary. Do you have any questions that you would like to say to offer or Paul is here to answer questions? I think the only question that I have is really around exposure. And well, actually, and to that point, Paul, can you provide it maybe a 30 second synopsis of how we got here with this? Just because I, is this, if my understanding is correct, is that this development, and I'm very well may not be, but this construction is part of a settlement agreement that we reached? Yes, the GAM golf settlement agreement, yes. Yeah, so I guess maybe it's a better question for Colin than it is for Paul, but I'm asking it like, how should that factor into how we proceed in the sense that are there additional things that we should consider as we explore our courses of action to make sure that we are addressing the concern of residents and citizens, while at the same time still being mindful to the fact that we are, that we need to maintain good faith to honor our end of that commitment. Councillor Burns, I think this is Paul Connor. I think that the only thing that I would say specifically to that instance is that while the golf course as a whole is part of a settlement agreement, it's more, that doesn't necessarily influence the manner in which we are pursuing enforcement here. The, I think salient from the zoning perspective is that they have all of their Act 250s, they have their DRB approval, whether granted by court or locally, ultimately it's the same thing, they have the zoning permits to construct and so we're weighing that versus the performance standards of the regulations. So it's not so much, there isn't a special case here associated with the settlement agreement, but that doesn't make it any less challenging for everybody involved. What I understood is what else can we offer to the residents in the short term? Am I correct, Tyler, that that was your question? Well, not entirely, that's a follow-up, but I think Paul answered it sufficiently for my perspective and then I guess what I was trying to ask is are there any special considerations that we should take into account given how we got here? And the answer is no. The at the end of the day, the core issue is no more or less challenging based on how we got here. Given that, are there any, to Megan to your point, are there any, is there anything we can do right now that would be, you know, that would help provide some relief to our constituents? What options do we have? So what I can offer from our office is, as I said in our letter today, we're committed to providing a further update later this week. We hope that will include a lot of specifics that folks can rely on and see exactly what is being done. So that's part one and then part two, a small thing and I hope our city manager doesn't mind, but if anyone faces the situation that Ms. Ziegman or Dr. Ziegman came across today where they get to the library and there's not a space, come to our office will help you find somewhere to spend your day if you need to. I know that's not much, but it is, we wanna help as best we can. I'd like to go on record as saying, I think we should ask the develop to stop what they're doing until we figure out a solution. It's completely ridiculously unfair to our residents. Thank you. Yeah, I am concerned that we do have this ledge that is allowed to be hammered, but that is not in our ordinances, I'm afraid. The ledge. It says we can't allow people to create unreasonable noise that's what they're doing. They're doing something illegal. We have the power to stop it, we should stop it. It's absolutely clear to me. Okay, thank you. I think we have noise standards that we have to put into place and that work was not completed and that I'm in favor of us pursuing. And I'm also in favor of us pursuing some language with regard to ledge. But Megan, our ordinance says, and I'll just read it, because we have an ordinance, we have a noise ordinance, and it says, it shall be unlawful for any person, no exception for developer department to make loud or reasonable noise and it defines unreasonable noise as noise that disturbs the peace or health of a person. It's absolutely clear to me that this falls within the scope of that ordinance. And I don't know why we're letting them continue to do this. Ask someone in Chamberlain neighborhood and they'll say, they've been doing it for many years. So there's obviously a way. They should speak up and we should stop that too, but you know, one, one doesn't make like two worlds don't make another life, right, so yeah. There's obviously legal standing here and we certainly need to, I think work within that and work to find a different solution because obviously our noise ordinance is not holding up to snuff and I'll just say that. It's only matter of enforcement. I don't know what this snuff is, honestly. I don't know why we're beating around the bush. Because there is a right to develop that. They have no right to do something illegal. They have a permit as to what, not as to how. Yeah, well we have state statute, federal statute and our local ordinance. I would like us to beef up our local ordinances. I truly would. And I think that adding decibel levels would help. And I believe that adding some more verbiage regarding ledge would also help. And I think that is something that we should look at. Believe me, as someone who has fought this fight for over 13 years, I'm with you, but I have some realism. I've been getting injected with it for 13 years. Which is, feel free, I mean you are free to protest. Yeah, no, I understand, I understand. I would allow two more minutes if you'd like to have some follow up, Beth. I heard from Paul Conner. Sorry, Paul, I hope you can look at me when I talk about this. What I'm hearing from you is that you are, you're discussing this with the developers and there's being no consideration given to what the residents are up against until this noise, I don't know what the solution is. We've been, we've gotten letters in the past. The letters have done nothing. We got a letter today, the letter did nothing. And the dialogue that I just heard suggests that you have the power to stop them. You have the enforcement capability and you're choosing not to use it. That's what I've heard. This is not, I think this is perfectly clear. They're violating the city ordinance and the choice is being made to allow them to do so. Thank you. Is there any further public comment? Thank you, Paul, for coming down. Thank you, residents, for coming forward. We hear you. I will then move on to number five, which is Councilor's Announcements and Reports on Committee Assignments and City Manager's Report. Do you want to just check if there's any other public comment? I think I did. Oh, you did? Okay, sorry, sorry. I'm willing to, okay. I'm going to start with Councilor Barnes if you could start with any announcements or reports that you have. Yes, one moment. I have a, sorry, some prepared remarks that I'd like to share with the group. I would like to take this opportunity to formally announce my resignation from position as City Councilor for South Burlington Effective after this meeting today, 10, 16, 2023. It's with mixed emotions that I make this decision, but I believe it's in the best interest of both the organization, the community, and my family. During my tenure in the council, I've had the privilege of serving our community and working alongside dedicated colleagues who are committed to making a positive impact in the lives of our constituents. I'm very proud of the progress we've made together and I'm grateful for the opportunities I've been given to contribute to our mission. I've recently been granted a promotion by my employer, one that requires out-of-state relocation. And after careful consideration, I've arrived at the conclusion that this opportunity is the right decision for my family and I to make. The decision has been difficult for the reasons one would traditionally associate with a transformative move. And my role in the council compounds these sentiments. As a councilor, I've endeavored to ensure that future generations and remuners would have access to the same vibrant community and remarked schools that I'm a product of. And I've tried to use my voice to make sure that South Burlington remains accessible to people and families across the socioeconomic spectrum and to ensure the decisions we make are for the benefit of all in our community and not just a select few. Given Seth James, I can't help from occasionally telling that my family's departure and this resulting resignation is at least in part a recognition of the fact that South Burlington is quickly becoming more difficult for many middle and families to go home. Now more than ever, I'm examining over the course of the last couple of weeks, I'm examining council deliberations to the lens of whether or not the decisions we're making or does the council account for the entirety of the challenges and opportunities we face and address the immediate needs of our community. Are we making it easier for residents current and future to call South Burlington their home or are we making it more difficult? And as the council begins the important work of implementing both a new city charter and climate action plan, fellow councillors, I humbly invite you to consider such questions by considering both the existing burdens borne by our city constituents and the city's immediate pending municipal needs in these deliberations. Already an expensive place to live, South Burlington will soon require investments to further burden our already strained tax base. Our municipal services are stretched thin to the point where 40% of our fire and rescue calls are serviced by the Monero National Guard. Our wonderful schools that rightly so are touted as crown jewel of our community will soon need capital, significant capital improvements. We're continually stretched to maintain our impressive network of parks, fields, paths with our current plan to increase density within corridors of the city will be even further stretched to provide these citizens with equitable access to these amenities and green spaces. And because we're limited in our ability to increase our tax base, these costs will be borne by our current residents. Can we afford to make these changes while adding 10% to our operating budget to address the climate crisis? I'm not suggesting that it's not imperative that we fight the climate crisis, it is. It's also imperative that we do so in a fashion that doesn't impair our ability to provide the basic municipal services we've promised our citizens or that drives those out who are proud to call South Carolina their home. Continuing to focus on the climate crisis without also maintaining an eye on our other needs, not only jeopardize the ladder, but then this is my real concern, may also result in backlashes that compromises the former. If we can't do our part to demonstrate to our community that we can fight climate change while also addressing their concerns and needs, we won't win the support or adoption we drop and we need to really make our efforts successful. Enough on that, I will work diligently to ensure a smooth transition during this period and will assist in any way possible to minimize any disruptions to the council. To all of you, please let me know how it can be of assistance to facilitate the process and to ensure the continuity of important projects and responsibilities. I'd like to thank and express my gratitude to Jesse in particular to Jesse for the support and guidance and camaraderie that she has brought. He brings fresh privacy to our council and to our city. I'd like also, if I'd like to thank council chair, Helen, really during my tenure in council, I've tried and I believe I have brought an independent voice to council discussions. Although challenging at times, I'm proud of this. I believe my actions have matched my campaign promises. Helen has always supported this dialogue and recognized this is healthy discourse in government. As have all of you, thank you. I hope that whoever follows me as a new council member, council member will have a similar voices mind. This will help ensure balanced representation for constituents who may otherwise feel that they don't have a voice. And finally, I would just like to close by saying it has been an honor and a privilege to serve our community in this role. I look forward to staying, contributing to the betterment of our community in as many capacities as I can now in the future. And I am confident that soft points will continue to thrive and make a positive impact under your leadership. Thank you again, all of you for the opportunities and the trust that you have placed in me. Well, congratulations to you, Tyler. Promotion is a big deal. And I for one think it's a wonderful opportunity that you just can't turn down. So you clearly are committed and it shows in your demeanor tonight that this was something that was not easy for you to say to the community. And I think that the community has heard you and has taken you at your word. So I for one thank you for your service and for your true commitment. It is an honor to serve this community. I do agree and it is a great responsibility. I do want to note that we do have later on in our agenda. We have number nine discuss the process to fill a vacancy on the city council. And so we will be asking you, Tyler, as well as all of the members of the council and the public to consider names to put forward for us as a council to consider to step up and serve through town meeting day 2024, when Tyler seat will then be up again for a new counselor. Anything else you'd like to say with regard to committee assignments? I know that was your big announcement, Tyler, but is there anything with regard to committee assignments that you would like to share with the public? Not at this time, no other than I wish I could have done more with my committee assignments. I feel they're incredibly important and I'm incredibly grateful for the, really for the strong leadership and vision that the committees I am a part of, I'm grateful to their leadership and for their vision and for their passion. And I think they're in great hands. So please keep up the good work. Well, thank you. They are, it's true. We have a great committee, said committee members. Andrew. I just want to say, Tyler, thanks for your efforts to get elected to city council. It's not an easy process. And I also appreciate having known you since probably experiences on the DRB where you were either giving testimony or as an applicant, but seeing your growth from that time until actually being a city counselor, which is a bit of a difference. And I appreciate that effort that you've put in over those years and the work you've done. So good luck on your new plan out in the West. And I'm sure that'll be a great adventure out there. Thank you. So a little jealous to get to move out there, but Vermont's good too. So good luck. We're, thank you. Yes, we suffer from a wealth of riches and it's important to keep that in mind, but thank you very much. Very good. And Andrew. So Tyler, I'd also like to thank you for your service, your commitment and just really truly wishing you the best of luck. I know you're going to be very successful in your new position. So good luck. Thank you. And Megan, thank you for the minute of silence at the beginning. Can I just say a few words in that regard too? So I just wanted to really speak to the community and say that my thoughts and prayers are with all South Brompton residents and the wider community who have family and friends in Israel and Gaza whose lives have been impacted by this really unspeakable violence. And I know I share your thoughts, Megan and Tim's and Jesse's and everyone. Tyler's in praying that all parties will figure out some path forward for long-term peace, which is desperately needed there. In terms of committee assignments, okay. I attended an EC meeting, energy committee meeting. We reviewed the very successful energy festival that we spoke about last time a bit. We discussed some learning opportunities for next year, the more the many. I thought the committee did a really good job but the intent is to hold it again and to improve and learn. We discussed follow-on events following the festival and as I think we discussed a little bit here, the energy committee is going to host together with the library some monthly book and film events around climate. So kind of climate change book and film series over the next six to nine months, which I'm very much looking forward to. I attended natural resources and conservation committee meeting. They have developed an ordinance, which would limit cutting of trees in connection with development. I understand the intent is presented to the planning commission in the next few weeks, maybe by the end of October, beginning of November. I hope that moves forward. I hope we'll be able to take a look at that and pass it into law. I think that's also sorely needed in our community. The NRCC is also working on an open space plan. They discussed the need for funding for that plan. There was also some talk about the scope of the plan and I actually think it would be good to discuss this with the NRCC, maybe have them come before us and for us to give them some more guidance as to what we, the council and the city are really looking for from the plan exactly we want and what we expect, I think it's just a little unclear. We were gonna hear from you, Jesse, about that open space plan. Were we not that, I asked that there be some followup on what Andrew, and I'm talking about Bullduck, what he had reported over a year ago that that plan was required in some way and you were gonna look into that? Is that something that we could have a report back on that necessarily tonight, but as a followup to Andrew's report as well? Sure. Okay, thanks. So I was also happy to be able to attend some walking, attend some walking tours of all five of our public school buildings over the past couple of weeks. I was very impressed with the obvious level of commitment and engagement of all the teachers, the staff, we got to observe a few classrooms and really a remarkable learning environment. I think our children are on good hands. On the other hand, it's very clear to me that there are some significant infrastructure issues in the schools, both crowding and physical plant that do need to be sorted. There was obviously the bond vote that didn't pass but I think this community really does need to begin sooner rather than later some serious discussions about how we're going to address those issues because problems don't get better, they get worse. Finally, just to report, the school has formed its own Climate Action Committee. The purpose is to be consistent with South Burlington's Climate Action Committee and have the schools kind of follow through on the portions of that plan, our Climate Action Plan that will kind of assign to them. I'm on the committee, happy to report. Just read off quickly the other folks, Tim Drobbers who's Director of Finance, Rama Nami who is a high school student, Kate Bailey's the school board chair, Alyssa Backman who's Executive Director of Learning, Matt Transfield is a Environmental Studies teacher, Julie McWire is the Communications Coordinator and Nick Anderson from our City Bike Pad Committee. And the first meeting is Thursday. Thank you. So I attended the Economic Development Meeting last week and it was a really great discussion. They had two guests, they were supposed to have two guests, Evan Langfield couldn't make it but Mads Almasalki who's the Director of Control and Optimization of Renewable Energy Systems Lab at the University of Vermont came and spoke to us. And it was, I was fascinated because I like this stuff. He was able to tell us that for once this year Vermont became a net exporter of solar energy at one of its peak days back in the spring which is one of the questions I've been asking GMP for a year now, like how much power does Vermont create itself from its renewable resources and does it meet its own demand? So on those occasions it did happen. Apparently there's about 600 megawatts of solar capacity around the state. It's almost equal to what the output of the old Vermont Yankee plant was. And so the discussion among the members of the committee was how do you take the aspects of that information and somehow make it viable to keep businesses or entice businesses to come and do business in South Burlington, right? And some of the ideas were like, well, as long as you have a reliable power supply that is sustainable environmentally and it has a stable price, if you spin it as being green, that can be one way that you could possibly sell that as a way to entice people to come and stay. And of course there are all the other issues concerning housing and providing employment for companies but it was a really robust discussion. Maz was an excellent speaker, answered every question, sometimes answering questions with questions, right? So also I received an intro meeting with Anne Janda from the CCRPC to get it introduced into the Chittenden County Communications Union District and then we had a meeting on Thursday which was the first one I really attended. That district which we joined because of the vote that we had brought in a little bit of extra money into the district and the district's goal is to try and extend broadband to the last 840 homes in Chittenden County that are what they determined or either unserved or underserved by their broadband speeds, that's defined as being less than 25 megabits per second down and 10 megabits per second up. I suffered with three megabits per second at my old house until I moved and was forced to use Xfinity during the pandemic when I had two kids at home both trying to do Zoom and remote learning and stuff. So South Burlington has about 28 homes. There is a contractor in Maine that's trying to prepare an RFP to go out to all of the different providers of broadband services and that would be people like Fidium Fiber, Comcast and whoever else is out there, Burlington Telecom to determine who should be asked to try and provide to make that last mile to get to these homes because the interesting thing about the GIS map that they showed where there was a red dot for every home that is in this 840 is that there were clusters that would start in Williston and then move right up into Essex like there was a road that had just never had either cable of TB ever laid on that ever and so the thought is that if they can qualify this well enough and have the contractor create the RFP then they can start putting out to bid these jobs to attach all these homes to a source whether it's a fiber optic or it's cable and there is ARPA money available today to help pay for the consultant to do this work and then afterwards there's more money that can be released by the state and there's even another whole program that's part of the IRA, I think it's called the BEAD, the BID program, I may be a misspelled that but there's a lot of money in that that could be a separate program to actually pay these contractors to go do the job so I don't know how long it'll take but there are people out there that are still on DSL getting one megabit per second and you really can't run a household on that especially if you have multiple people trying to do things at the same time so really interesting meeting, it was great to meet everybody, Regina Mahoney is the chair and so I look forward to the next meeting and learning what we do next. That's, oh plus my sister was here from Halifax, Nova Scotia and I took her on a drive around Spear Street and Hubbard Park and she just, she can't get over the amount of beauty there is in South Burlington, it took her down Market Street to see all the construction, she was, her eyes popped out of her head, she didn't, because it's been a year since she was here and seeing as that much steel has gone up and so she's always glad to come back and see what progress we're making, thank you. Thank you, thank you all. Yeah, I would agree with your sister. I went away over the weekend and drove down Route 7 to New York City last Wednesday as the sun was setting and it was absolutely stunning and it brought to mind not only the beauty of our landscape but also the words of former residents who are now back with us here in South Burlington who said that they came back to Vermont because this is a state where people work together to seek solutions to problems and that in the various states that they've lived in, it has not been with such earnestness that people work together to that and I'm really reminded of that in many ways. I know that tonight there was a lot of frustration here expressed and I want us to take that frustration as really an earnest call for us to work together and to find solutions and I do have trust that the system does overall work and that we as a council need to, without casting aspersions, really seek to find ways that we can ourselves look at our powers and how we can work to ensure that things work better. So I just wanted to say that. I did want to give a minute of silence and I of course was thinking of Israel and Palestine. It is also a moment when people need to work together to find solutions because violence is contagious. There have been now terrorist attacks in France and in Belgium. I know that when I was in New York City, there were high alerts and so we just, we need to really look for those opportunities to be part of the solution and so when we talk about consequential decisions that also has to do with working towards solutions and knowing that that trust is dependent on that good faith effort that we all give as citizens and decision makers at whatever level, we are world of citizens and what happens in another part of the world affects us and of course my heart goes out to the families who have lost loved ones. With regard to our LDRs, in addition to noise standards and ledge, one of the things that we did in New York City was go to MoMA where there was an emerging ecologies exhibit that was talking about things that happened post World War II in the architecture field. When, if only our federal government and state governments had listened, everybody knew that we had to do things differently and it wasn't there in terms of the working together towards that solution so I would really encourage us as I have the chair of the planning commission here who's done a mighty job on that already and that mountain is steep and tall. How can we work to meet the challenges that they had recognized back in the 50s and 60s so that what we do in terms of our built environment matches the wilderness. So here's what the wilderness does and I'm reading from an exhibit at MoMA. That's the Modern Art Museum in New York. Creates pure air, that's what wilderness does. Creates pure water, stores rainwater, produces its own food, creates rich soil, uses solar energy, stores solar energy, creates silence, consumes its own wastes, maintains itself, matches nature's pace, provides wildlife habitat, provides human habitat, moderates climate and weather and it's beautiful. So how can we as architects and as the people who put in place the rules that our architects and engineers must follow, how can we look to wilderness for guidance? So I thought that was a wonderful list that a man named Wells in the 1960s came up with and I really looked to us as a community and us as a world community to work towards really matching the goals that nature does so well. With that in mind, I also want us, when we think about how we provide human habitat, I want us to think about how we remain affordable. I did attend the Housing Trust Fund meeting this past Wednesday. I'll be attending the Affordable Housing Committee meeting upcoming and we will be hearing from them. I really don't have anything that is ready to report right now. Also regarding housing, New York City bans all short-term rentals except for owner-occupied residences and I have been in touch with the residents of Bartland Bay, the Bartland Bay area and I do call upon the members of the audience here, whether you're here live or whether you'll be watching this later, to let the council know how you feel about the short-term rental question. I am continuing those conversations and I will likely be putting a letter to the editor of the other paper in for publication next week. Really seeking information. Again, I think that this is a case where there are isolated instances where there are acute, there's an acute concentration of short-term rentals so that means commercial properties surrounding residential properties that is degrading a sense of community in parts of our city and when those acute situations occur it's not easy for the majority to hear because it's not acute everywhere, it's acute in specific areas so I would really like to hear more from the broader community to hear about the concerns that have various facets to them and what those facets are that we should be considering as a deciding body. So that is my report and I know that we are well beyond our allotted time but Jesse Baker, let us continue with yours. Sure, thank you. So just a few quick updates actually. So last week Plenty and Zoning issued the zoning permits for the lot N which is the block right across the street, on Market Street, mirror image of what's on our side of the street and just a reminder that's 177 new homes and 27,000 square feet of commercial space. Jesse, just a question on that and so that because the permit was just issued that new building will have to comply with the renewable heating ordinance and the solar commercial. Yes, last week also the holiday in at 1068 was demolished. Did you miss that? Yeah, it's down and just a reminder that's to allow the two other infill buildings to happen. Continue to get a fair amount of press about Braber and apartments which is the former Hoham site. As of last Friday, all but three of those apartments are fully leased up and folks will be moving in starting on October 23rd. I shared this with the council but for community awareness, Adam Math will be joining us on October 30th as our new director of parks and recreation and parks. He comes with a really interesting background in collegiate and minor and major league baseball has run many, many, many large events was we were really excited about how he talked about convening people together as a way to create community and create kind of sustainable human communities. So he will come with our new IT director who also started two weeks ago to your next council meeting so you can meet them both. And he's a local guy. Both of them are South Burlington residents. Yeah, just a reminder, we are still looking for candidates to serve on the town of meeting TV board as well as the development review board. Folks know of anyone. Those ads have been out in the other paper for a while on front porch form, et cetera. Please talk to your friends and neighbors. And then finally, just wanted to also thank councilor Barnes for his service. I've been really impressed by how you jumped in to a new role brought a new voice to the table. I think it's hard when you haven't been involved in other city community efforts before to jump in and learn. You learned really quickly and I always appreciated your good questions. So thank you for bringing a new voice to the table. And with that, I will turn it over to the regular agenda. All right, good. So that takes us to item number six, the consent agenda. There are five items, consider and sign disbursements, receive the September financials, approve an application for a municipal planning grant to partially fund a parks master plan, approve an application for a bylaw modernization grant to fund San Remo drive planning and bylaw updates, approve the allocation of up to $80,000 of ARPA funding to conduct the design and engineering of a signalized intersection to Heinzburg Road and Market Street in advance of capital improvement plan funding in fiscal year 25. I move that we accept the consent agenda. And is there a second? Second. All right. And I do have some questions myself. Is there other discussion among counselors? My only comment is that I'm really excited about the vision that evolves for San Remo drive and that whole block that's between their endorses street, you know, in future years. So as much as people have seen Market Street come to fruition, I think that's another section of the city that's going to probably see some changes in the next few years too. So I'm excited for that. Yep, thanks. Good. Any other questions from other members besides myself? Okay. So I had a question and you can tell me if this needs to go back to the office and the answer will be forthcoming. I'm sorry I was out of town. The first one has to do with the door in Whittier charge with regard to 577 Dorset Street. Steve is managing that? Yeah. That fee is the first of a series of fees with a contract to look at the separation of 575 and 577. So the fire station versus the school part asking them to look what it would take to change really the infrastructure. So from power, water and separating those two buildings into two distinct utilities. Basically, that's the biggest things that we share and we are splitting the cost of that with the school department. We'll pay 100% and then we'll invoice the school. Was that put out to bid? No, that was not put out to bid. That's about a $7,500 contract doesn't require bidding by our purchasing policy. Okay, very good. And my second question, there are several line items in the warrant about the raise CVS appraisal, raise appraisal row right away. What is the raise, RAIZ, the Garden Street appraisal? I can't handle that one. So raise is the acronym for the federal grant that is funding the bike pad bridge over the interstate. So this is the work to be done to do the pre right of way acquisition portions of that project. Okay, and the Garden Street appraisal? Same, it's the right of way needed to complete earned street. Difficult, okay. All right, so we have to do an appraisal in order to move forward. In order to purchase that, right? In order to purchase it. Okay, all right, thank you. The other questions I had was I don't recall a saying that we were going to fund the parks master plan, but rather items within their work list, their project list. And that's kind of linked to E. So that's for C and E was use of ARPA funding to conduct the design and engineering of a signalized intersection. Is that something where we are going to be using ARPA funds and then replacing it with a CIP funding? I'm not sure I understood your question about park master plan, but Paul can speak to that. That Heinsberg Road one, as we wrapped up our city center traffic study, the Heinsberg Road Market Street intersection is warranted for a signal. That's quite an expensive effort. Our team is bringing this forward as kind of part of the transformational city center effort. If we do the engineering and design this year, we can put the construction costs into next year's CIP. So it can be done either late summer, 2024 or fall of 2024. If we don't pre fund that now, then it skips out to 2025. And at that point, some of these buildings will be inhabited. So we're trying to get ahead of that construction. So we are recommending the use of ARPA funds because that has more of a clock on it. You certainly could allocate surplus dollars to that instead if you wanted to not use the ARPA funds. Okay, well, I just was curious. So this would be use of ARPA funds that would no longer be brought back into the ARPA fund. Correct, yes. Column. All right. I understand the timing of it, but I think we have a lot on the ARPA funding horizon. I don't know how others feel about surplus versus ARPA. It's another bucket of money. Let's spend it now. I think it has a time constraint so it makes sense to dip into the ARPA rather than the surplus. The ARPA has a time constraint. Okay, I tend to think that ARPA has a little bit of a special connotation to it, but I don't know if Tyler has anything to say about it. I'm certainly willing to be outvoted. I'm based on the feedback that I received from constituents in that area. I'm inclined to move forward with spending the money now and getting this job done. It's been long awaited and I think the problem, any issue that we have in that area are only going to compound as time goes on. So I'm in favor of moving forward. Okay, I'm certainly in favor of moving forward. I would like us to use the surplus funding as opposed to the ARPA funding. I think the ARPA funding was an opportunity for us to do something transformational and I do see it being frittered away not to deserving projects, but projects that aren't necessarily as transformational as we had been advised to use as guidance. But I'm willing to move forward with that. With regard to the municipal planning grant to partially fund a parks master plan, I don't believe we had talked about using ARPA funds for a parks master plan. So what I have on my list from your conversation on the 19th was potentially 280,000 for parks included within that being the 150 for the parks master plan. So this would be buying that down. So you'd actually have more ARPA funding available for parks, the IP projects. Okay. But Paul, I don't know if you've, if the planning commission talked about it a different way. No, I was just gonna note that the objective in this year's policy and strategies is to identify the funding and the scope of work to do it. So this was an opportunity that comes up where we think we have a competitive grant just but to be transparent, the state in reviewing it will want to know what piece of the puzzle they're funding. So by saying that we're applying for this money, we are saying that we are doing the full project and we can of course swap out other funding sources but we are saying that we're gonna do the project. So I do want to be clear and transparent about that. Okay. And when I say we, I mean you. You will be transformational to all the people stranded at five to 530 on Marcus Street, trying to turn left or right. This is the parks master plan. No, I'm going back to the section. Oh, I'm in favor of the traffic light. Believe me. I've driven by that and said, why don't I look more? No, no, when I read the traffic report, I'm like, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. Okay. Just to quote a famous 1980s band. We'll go back then to our motion, which was seconded. Is there any other comments? Seeing none, all those in favor? Aye. Okay, I saw Tyler open his mouth. Okay, good. So item number seven. First reading of the planning commissions recommended city plan 2024. And we're going to discuss the process going forward and we are very lucky to have the chair of our planning commission here, Jessica Luizos, along with Paul Connor, our director of planning in Zoning. And we will let you first, yes, frame the discussion for us. And I think that there's going to be perhaps a presentation, a visual presentation. Yeah, I'll just, if I can get permission to share my screen. Oh, sorry. That's what I was trying to, pan to mine there, but I don't have that. That's right. Well, thank you for having us. Paul Connor, director of planning and zoning, Jessica Luizos, chair of the planning commission, Laurie Smith, who's a commissioner is also online. Thank you for joining us, Laurie. And really this is Jessica's show. I'm really just here to say that the commission and all of our community members and of all of our committee members have done a tremendous amount of work to get to this point. And so I will be showing the slideshow while Jessica does the talking. Sure. Yes. Paul, answer all the really hard questions. Well, I guess first off, I'm pleased to say that the planning commission unanimously, all seven members present voted to move the plan forward for your review and public hearing process. And I think that that was a feat. I think people have individual items. Maybe they'd as an individual like to see differently, but kind of based on all the feedback we got, we're able to call us around what we've presented to you in your packet. It does continue to have a new name. This was what we had previously referred to as the comprehensive plan, which we felt like city plan is, I don't know, maybe a little more accessible for community members that were comprehensive. People didn't always know what that meant. So moving forward here, we have a little bit of a intro. So the municipal plan is what our city plan is technically called at the state level. It's a long-term vision that we would update every eight years, but we are certainly not going to accomplish all of our goals and actions we've laid out within that eight year period. We have 162 actions and 86 goals identified in the plan. Ranging over all of the different sections and many topics. So they do have a much farther out into the future planning horizon. So I think for you, staying on track with the schedule and we'll get to that at the end is important because the plan is important for applying for grants, for Act 250 review and many different kind of legal states. So making sure to always have a plan that's current is important and ours does expire in February. Now I was just listening to something. Tyler, we'll hear you. Okay, so moving on, right up front in the plan, we have a statement focused on climate change. We heard loud and clear from the community and as well as from the climate action plan process that this was really a central theme for the city when kind of moving forward with any policy or action. You know, how does this fit within the climate change crisis that we're seeing? And with that, we have our four guiding principles. The plan has these right up front and starts with the statement as seen on the plan on the screen here and I am gonna read this because I do think that it's important. City plan 2024 is an expression of our values as a community, our goals for the future and high level actions identified to meet these goals. The overriding guiding principle of this plan is to make every policy decision through the lens of climate resilience and reduction in greenhouse gas emissions while recognizing other important goals in our diverse community. South Burlington holds high the following guiding principles in every action we take as a community. And in the plan, they're listed vertically but they're kind of shown this way on the screen. So climate resilience is the first one and it is listed first. And this is a little bit of a change from during our public outreach period. We had tried out a format where climate resilience was kind of separated above with a kind of statement in between. And based on feedback and subsequent discussion with the planning commission, we felt like it was really important to have all four of these guiding principles listed on a little bit more equal footing. We got some feedback that things like being inclusive felt like a secondary guiding principle. And we wanted to make sure that it was important for us to be looking at all four of these guiding principles and felt like we got to the point of the climate resilience being kind of an overarching goal kind of in that introductory paragraph. So I just wanted to point that out because it is a change from when I had been here in July and from our public feedback. So one of the pieces of the plan is looking at the future land use. And we gave a draft to you in July kind of and pointed out that we have some different categories. The purple category that commercial industrial was supporting residential is a new kind of land use category from our previous plan or currently in effect plan, I guess I should say. And one of the things that we also made sure of within the text of the descriptions of all of these is that small scale commercial is allowed and appropriate in all the different districts. So I accept, I guess I should say not in principally conservation and open space but the other residential districts as well. So like a small store could be in the principally residential lower scale. And that's something that we felt like was important. We've seen a few of those pop up around the city. So the focuses of the plan, we have many different themes and focuses. We wanted to point out a few here on some of the things that we heard a lot about from the public, the climate change mitigation and resilience. We've incorporated a lot from the Climate Action Plan. I think I'm missing a word, Climate Resilient, no, Climate Action Plan. And throughout the plan as well as a lot of the central themes of housing, making sure that city center is implemented and building community as well as the environmental protection which we've taken a lot of action on in recent years. So some key aspects. The plan is significantly shorter than previous versions of the Comprehensive Plan and that is that's on purpose. So using plain language, we've changed the words, objectives and strategies to goals and actions. They felt a little more like common usage of those terms. I think people had given us feedback in the past that objectives and strategies felt a little vague, which is which and where are kind of measurable goals. We did try to make things measurable whenever possible. So you'll see a lot more numbers in our goals and actions. And overall, really trying to simplify the text. So to get down from our very, very large document to the approximately 100 page document draft, what we did was really make things more succinct and compact. And we have gotten some feedback that people were concerned that some of the text or description language was missing in different locations. And the intention wasn't to kind of say that that old text from older versions of the plan wasn't important, but to really focus on a more succinct analysis and really focus on the actions and path forward. It also sets up a framework for future work. We've seen some of this incorporating more by reference, some of the more detailed information in the climate action plan. It will be kind of incorporating by reference and kind of leaving room for some of these more detailed plans like the bike ped master plan and other plans like the parks plan you were just talking about so that any goals and actions that are identified in those plans can also be implemented by the city. So I'm not gonna get into a lot of detail of those 162 actions that I pointed out, but what I can say is that each of the sections has a specific organization starting with an introduction overview, which we've tried to really pare down from previous versions, list out the goals and actions, which are all numbered. And then gets into some additional text about really where we've seen challenges that need to be addressed. And then that kind of organization applies to all of the different plan sections that are listed there. So this is basically a timeline of when the last kind of 17 month process and you don't necessarily need to read all of this, but I think the bigger point is that we went on this journey and there's been significant input from the public and our committees throughout the process. Last winter we held 11 community listening sessions with over 250 people weighing in on those, over 300 people did an online poll. We got significant involvement and comment from all of the committees, the city committees. And then added some additional steps to the process, including this summer we did, we got significant feedback on a full draft, which we incorporated and discussed those public comments before moving into the formal public hearing process. After which we also discussed comments and made additional changes. So I think that is the overview. In your packet, I know you have some kind of suggested timelines for your part of the work and how that might look. So I'll take that as a segue. Since we've got this chart up on the screen here, we're in the bottom right two boxes here. And I see that the text there has leaves you with a cliffhanger city council worn hold to some things. It's public hearings is the answer. So staff met with chair really and vice chair Emery a couple of weeks ago to look over one of the different options for you. There are, as with anything that is public hearings and state statute, there's a number of metrics that need to be met. But basically the council needs to hold two public hearings. They each need to be warned. There's no time separation between those two. However, if at any point leading up to or following the last public hearing, the council decides to make any changes. It needs to warn fresh third public hearing and then subsequently again. And so our recommended timeline for council is to warn tonight your very first public hearing and to hold that on a special meeting date of Thursday, November 16th. I know that's an unusual date. It is a bit of a magical date that meets each of the statutory requirements of being at least 30 days from tonight, which is a minimum and also doesn't put you having your public hearings in the middle of a holiday week, the following week or into budget season afterwards. Our recommendation would be that you warn that public hearing tonight and then over the next couple of meetings, you all can initiate your dialogue and we can communicate to the public that you are discussing it and you're accepting feedback from the public. Then you can see the results of both your own work and what the public has to say at the first public hearing and leading up to it. Decide at that point what next steps you wanna take if you're ready to warn your next public hearing right away or you wanna take another meeting or two. It gives you some flexible options from there forward to make sure that you all come out with the document that you are comfortable with. That's our primary goal and to meet the deadline. Very good. Okay, so. You want a motion? Well, I think that we definitely will be accepting the city plan as presented tonight in this draft form, but I think this is also, I realize that we're a little bit behind schedule, but I think we should take at least 10 minutes to discuss our initial reception of the document. I've opened the floor to any comments from the counselors. You wanna take a, do I have a substantive discussion now, Megan, or a discussion about the process? Overall, thank you very much. I know it was a lot of hard work. Certainly I have substantive comments. I've read it. I've marked it up. I thought we would do that at a different session, honestly. Okay. Well, I just have some overall comments then. I will certainly get into the substances at a different time, but I have heard back from several members of the public and I wish to just kind of present those tonight in addition to thanking you and to accepting it tonight. And I think that there is some opportunity here for us to hear from the public again, and I don't quite know what the circuits that they had used prior to contacting me. I don't know, but I think that there are some things that potentially should rise to the attention as we go forward. So for instance, we are clearly putting climate at the forefront of this. And so when we think about housing development and we think about infill, I've heard from members of the public that the context sensitive qualification for where to place that infill is perhaps anxiety causing. And that if we are looking at a climate crisis by 2030 that those context sensitive areas should be including all areas where there is housing, not just the older neighborhoods built prior to 1980. So I think that that is something that I have read in the plan itself and I have heard as feedback from members of the public. I've also heard. Do you want responses? Cause that's actually something that I believe we changed in our last meeting. So you may or may not be looking at an old version. No, I was reading the version here tonight. It's post war neighborhoods, page 20, post war neighborhoods. Sorry. I believe that action or strategy associated with that does have the language change. So maybe that's in the text. Cause the language changes post war neighborhoods. That's what I read for tonight in the packet. So I just, I think we should be thinking about, you know, the climate at the forefront that these built areas should not necessarily be distinguished based on when they were built. That if it's built, that's where density should go. And where it's not built, that's where we have to consider, you know, keeping the diversity of our ecology and bringing, you know, bringing that diversity on those natural areas and parks. And this is something that I've heard from many people, not only, you know, to existing places where there are parks, but when we think about infill making sure that there are parks next to those infill areas because that is where the heat islands work will occur. So I will just say those as kind of general remarks. I think there was also some, I think hope over the last year that there would be more focus on diversity in our governing structures. And I think we could do more in terms of that with this plan that, and I'm talking about diversity in all different forms, socioeconomic, ethnic, racial, that there is a lot of, there's a lot that a former category among the goals for human focus I think was removed and not necessarily put back in the plan. And I did put that into a councilor corner as a heads up to everybody that that is, I've heard that resoundingly as well. So those are my overall comments and we can certainly get into the nitty gritty at a future date, but I certainly wanted to address those things as feedback that I've been hearing over the past months. All right. I didn't get a chance to comment. Oh, you do want to comment. Okay, Tim. He went first and then, so I'm really impressed. This is a really crisp document, right? And I think it encompasses what we've been talking about for several years and the feedback I have is pretty nominal and I'm not going to bother with talking about it. I think as we'll get into another night. So, but thank you. Thank you for all that listening and then that agglomeration and then that refinement and then that crystallization of all that, all those ideas into a lot of words. Some really nice maps and some nice graphs too. So I really appreciate all the work that everybody did to create this document and I'm sure staff put a lot of time into it. So, but the things I have or if you want, I'll send them back to you separately later on. No, I think we're going to have time to discuss that in open session. Right, we're not going to send these to you. Now this is for the council to deal with in open session. Some of it might just be word smithing, but you know. And the thing is that from what I read so far, there isn't much word smithing to do. Thanks. All right, any other? Tyler, did you have anything you wanted to add now that two of us have spoken? Well, I guess the thing that if I just want to make sure is I'm reading the people and population goals and I'm reading the housing goals. There's some math here that doesn't seem to add up for me. And admittedly, I haven't spent as much time with this as I should have. So please forgive my ignorance if it's right in front of me. But under goal one for population, we're preparing for an average annual population growth rate of approximately one to one and a half percent and a housing growth rate of one and a half to two percent. So effectively our housing is going to outpace, it's going to stay constant, if not, but perhaps slightly outpace our growth. Oh, which makes sense. I don't necessarily agree with it, but it makes sense. But then we scroll down to housing goals. And if we're talking about goal three on page 16, increases vacancy rate to five percent as a proxy for healthy and well supplied housing market. If our housing stock is only going to increase, is effectively going to stay at par with our population growth. How are we going to achieve goal three in housing goals? Because the math feels like it doesn't add up. Do you want me to address that? Sure, please. So I guess one of the things that I have written down here and didn't say was that our goals are equally ambitious. So there were many ambitious goals set by the climate action plan. There's many ambitious goals kind of throughout the city. And that's the one that you bring up, the five percent vacancy rate. That number and goal was specifically recommended us by the affordable housing committee. And we did have discussion on this actually just very recently. We made the decision not to temper the other goals and to be equally ambitious across the sectors. So you're right. We might not reach a five percent vacancy rate in eight years, but it was recommended as a goal to work towards to solve the housing crisis that we've heard loud and clear from many, many members of the community that it is a real crisis. Can I just ask a question about that? The five percent, is that for ownership, rental, or both? It's the stock, the... Includes ownership, includes owned homes. In general, that five percent is a rental vacancy rate. I think that's usually it's quoted because that represents a healthy market where there are enough vacancies that the landlord are willing to cut rents to get people into their apartments and offer more amenities. I think we meant rental, but that's why I asked the question. Yeah, it doesn't specify in the goal, so. So in a situation like this, as where we have these equally ambitious, yet somewhat mutually exclusive aims, how does the planning commission, how does this report provide guidance on how we should prioritize one over the other? Well, let me take a stab at that one because I think you're raising a really important one, Councillor Barnes. Many of the goals that are in the plan are, as Jessica described, ambitious policy goals, whether it's a climate goal or a housing goal, an affordability goal, all sorts of other ones like this. The one that you picked at the beginning in terms of preparation, I look at, it's policy, but in a different category. It's almost, what should your staff team, what should the council be looking at as it explores, how does it put together a capital improvement plan? What should we be prepared for? Is a little bit different from a policy ambition and maybe the answer is if the council wants to be even more aggressive and ambitious in its goals of getting towards 5% vacancy then maybe the housing growth percentage to prepare for should go up a little bit as well. Being mindful that we don't wanna be ambitious in what we prepare for such that we buy more fire infrastructure than we need or we overbuild our infrastructure when it's not needed yet, but that's the sort of balance that we're working on here. So that goal one is really driven out of our historic growth rates and looked at what's happening in the current market, what can we expect, and then there's the policy ambitions of the other parts. So I think that's for you all to wrestle with a little bit more, if you'd like. Yeah. I think that what Tyler's comments are getting at is linked to the comments I have with regard to infill being only in these high scale, what do you call it? I just saw it here too. High scale residential or high scale neighborhoods or developments, high school, high scale developments versus low scale developments that these kinds of things really need to be defined. And I think that the open space plan would be useful and determining what development should remain low scale and what should be prioritized for this urban style development where we have mixed use, et cetera. I am concerned that the plan relies on current development patterns as opposed to really looking at what plans we have in place in order to determine what should be high scale development areas versus the low scale development areas. So I think that we kind of dovetailing Tyler's comments with my comments. And you're looking very confused, Jessica. No, I'm not confused. I think that Tyler was talking about, okay, you have one goal that's about housing and one goal that's about protecting open space. And they both are goals and they both might have percentages. How do you as the council and us as a community reconcile when we have two goals that might have a particular piece of land where those goals could wrestle? And that's something that I think that looking at everything in context can help you when making a specific decision like that. One of the things that I think you might be getting at is- You said exactly what I was getting at is there's also the future land use map which I did show, which shows kind of in a little bit of a fuzzy way. So there's not a hard boundary between different types of development, but it does I think start to get at what you're talking about. Like how have we figured out where in the city different types of intensity or different types of land use might be appropriate? So I think that the future land use map is a location that would help kind of figure out where on the ground we're planning for things and not planning for things. And it's not only based on existing. It's also based on a lot of the planning that's been done. I think you'd see maybe the most changes around our transportation corridors where we do have a lot of public transportation. Seeing some of those colors like blend a little bit more in those areas maybe to a higher intensity that you might see on the ground today. So I do think that us doing planning and thinking about what we want to throw in the future did go into that mapping not just based on what's there today. But I'm not sure that you looked at where future transit corridors should be. That's my question. That if we just look at current transit corridors we are not using all of the built land and thinking about where transit should go in the future and where housing should be built more densely in the future and potentially have additional transit corridors. And I think that you're if they haven't come to your meetings yet they're gonna come to the meetings eventually or they're gonna be not only talking to me. I think that there are people in the post war neighborhoods that are particularly concerned by this focusing. I've heard them in public meetings focusing on already high transit areas without thinking about where else should those transit areas be developed and where should they not be developed and using the planning documents that we have in our collection to determine where that opens space and we have lots of plans where there should not be the high traffic and where there should be more high traffic and changing those patterns to match the documents that we have. So I say we're gonna talk about this I think going forward and that's why I'm really glad that we were able to meet Helen and I with Paul to look at the calendar because I think that there is some nitty gritty that I will definitely be needing to discuss with my colleagues here. All right, any other comments? Oh yes from the public, please Laura. Yeah please, if you could make sure that it's on and then introduce yourself, I know who you are but the public would like to know who you are too. Yeah, my name is Laura Williams and I'm here as from the South Burlington School Board and thank you very much for that presentation that was great and the school board's request didn't make it into the city plan 2024. So we are requesting that they be added to the draft of the city plan for the public hearing on November 16th and we sent an email, I believe we were late. So I've been asked just to read these nine bullet points and so here we go. Number one, value of educational services, strong education system supports a strong community. Two, connecting schools, bike pad plans to the city's plan. Three, add employing and funding school traffic monitors to the city's climate action plan. This supports all those in community getting around safely. Four, implementing school zones at all campuses to increase walkability as connected to the city's climate goals. Five, separate education from community services section to provide more visibility and overall plan. Six, incorporate safe, inclusive, accessible pre K through 12 public education system into values e.g. lens through which all policy will be assessed in the introduction. Consider data on demographic growth, for example, zero to 19 and family ages as two of the highest growing segments of the South Burlington population and the current and future needs for school facilities, recreational space, safe transportation, such as walking, biking, cars, buses, et cetera. And consider identifying land within the city for educational expansion, whether needed for enrollment growth, facilities, consolidation, safety, and access reasons. For example, the current issue at Rick Marca or for potential extraordinary needs, such as the issue of PCBs at Burlington High School, whether temporary or permanent. And lastly, consider including information on how community, state, and federal program closures may impact the district surrounding communities and their needs, such as center point and other therapeutic alternative program closures. So we're just making requests that'll be added to the draft. Okay, yes, please. Thank you for reading those into the record. So we did, the planning department did receive those bullets after the Planning Commission had recommended the plan to the city council. So staff is currently, but there are important ideas that we don't want to lose. So staff is working on a memo to the council responding to some of those ideas. So we will be sure you have that well before your public hearing so you can see those bullet points that Laura just read in writing in front of you and staff's response. All right, all right, super. Well, thank you very much. Yeah, and best of luck to you, Tyler. All right, thank you. Thank you. So do you want to motion? Yes, I think that... I move that we warn a public hearing for a special meeting about the city plan 2024 on November 16th, 2023 on Thursday at 6.45 p.m. Service. Second? Second. Very good. And no more discussion. Just want to be sure I didn't ask if anybody was online who wanted to speak. Okay, thank you. All right, all those in favor? Aye. Aye. Very good, that's all of us. Thank you so much. And we will talk more in November. Very good. Well, are we gonna talk about our process for our discussion? For the city plan? Yeah. We've not been before. No, no, we talked about the hearing, but I thought we'd be going to be talking about discuss the process. Well, okay, we can certainly do that now that we've passed the motion, but... Well, no, I'm not talking about it. I'm happy with the motion, but our... I thought we would have discussions amongst ourselves about the plan. At a future meeting. Yeah. Yeah. When? Well, that will be with Helen. So that will be, she will be back for that. And I don't know that for November 16th, we're a little bit off the agenda now, to be quite honest, we should have talked about that before, but I would suggest that we talk about it on November 2nd. If you wanna talk specifically about how we're gonna organize six. Thank you, November 6th, when Helen is here. What I would foresee is that we are gonna have feedback and people can propose amendments, people can word Smith, people can word Smith is perhaps too fine of a thing to do word by word, but I think that with regard to some of the statements that I made and Tyler made, there are potentially some bigger amendments but Tyler will not be here, of course, but that this council would potentially consider. I guess I was hoping that the council would have a session, maybe less formal, where we could go through this. Frankly, there's a lot of things I'd like to talk about and it's awkward to talk about a document in this kind of setting. Why? It's good to be around the table. And to look at each other and to, I mean, obviously it would be open and warned and they'll be public, but in a less formal way, I think we'd accomplish more and I think it would be a better venue for hashing this through. As a council over the years, there have been that kind of conversations before the public in this setting, but I'm happy to have a special meeting, but I think we need to have Helen present for us to be able to set that date prior to the 16th, if that's what you're requesting. That is, yeah. Okay, anything else? And would it be useful, because I could do this, to send comments to some central place so that we all have what each other is thinking? I don't think we're allowed to do that under open meeting. I think that she would distribute it for us to be talking about it at a regular open meeting or a special open meeting. So I think you might be suggesting two separate things. If you each want to kind of submit public comment, we do and collect it and share it with one another to review in advance, you can do that. You can't debate it in advance, but if you wanna submit, scan pages or notes in advance of a special meeting, then I would then distribute to everybody. You're welcome to do that. Right, but for us to discuss at an open meeting, we wouldn't work on a document online. I wasn't suggesting that. Yeah, sure. Yeah, but as far as when that meeting would take place, we should really, it's gonna be hard because Helen doesn't get back until October 28th. So we're gonna have... And you have another special meeting already on November 2nd with the school board. Right. And then the special meeting on the 16th in addition to the 6th and the 20th. So you already have a meeting a week in November. Right. And we're gonna talk about item number nine with regard to an interim counselor, but that could potentially be something that we would discuss at a special meeting on October 30th. I had discussed this with Helen and that's potentially when we could also discuss the city plan. But we're not yet to... I'll go with that. Are we there now? It would be good, yeah. Not yet. So it's one more item. So we can think about that and hold that thought until item number nine. Yeah, I just think we should do that before the public hearing. Yeah, but I think that the public hearing, and correct me if I'm wrong, Paul, can be a time where we talk through our ideas, hear the public and talk through those ideas and that at any meeting that we have that kind of discussion, we should expect the public to be there and to really be hashing through those ideas. It's a hearing, right? Right. It'd be good to do some pre-work before a hearing. Right, but we have set a hearing for this draft, right? Yes, so it is a formal public hearing. I think what makes us a little bit different from most of the hearings that you hold is that you must hold at least two. Right. And so the reason that staff was recommending that you separate the first and the second one is that the first one can be, it's still a formal process, but it can be in the midst of your discussion. It doesn't, this will be the version that we post for November 16th. And also we can share with the community that the council is receiving it and is discussing it at the same time. For your second public hearing, that will be a more formalized, this is the version that the council has warned as potentially adopting this document. Right, right. So I think this is a case where you can be both hearing and talking. Right. And communicating. Right. We did a similar approach in the summer, just knowing that it was really important to continue working on it. We didn't wanna just wait for six weeks while we collected public comments. So we kind of dove deeper into different items and kind of individuals were able to bring up topics at some of those meetings like at the same time and parallel to when we were collecting public comment. So it's a reasonable approach and we've also found it to be helpful what you've suggested, Andrew, to have individuals kind of put some thought into some ideas or at least topics, even if it's not specific language, just to kind of get other people kind of share them through what we did, our staff, but through Jesse to kind of be able to mull over it ahead of time. So, yeah. I'll just say, looking at our agenda planner, right now the public hearing is the only thing on the November 16th and it hasn't changed since Friday. Okay, so just, we won't be balancing this out with the budget and LDRs and various other, well, hold on, LDRs, hold on. No. That's the 20th, okay, very good. So it really could be a full evening of discussion, but I'm happy to have a preliminary discussion. Yeah, whatever fits. We could have like a preliminary discussion and then the hearing, I suppose. Yeah. Right, on the same day, we could do that. Yeah, we could do an early, meet earlier, right, and potentially on the 20th. Yeah, that's also very... You mean on the 16th? On the 16th, sorry. Yes. Well, yeah, I mean, if that's the only day, yeah. How's that? We should ask Helen, however. I mean, it's really, we want to have... I think we do lose a month if we do that. I think I missed your comment about October 30th, was that? That is something that Helen and I had discussed regarding item number nine. So that would be potentially a meeting where we would be discussing candidates, possible candidates to serve on an interim basis as a city councilor. So we can just hold that thought, perhaps, and come back to it. Yeah, so just, I wasn't aware of that, but just throwing this out there, because October is a five Monday month, we actually do have three weeks between this regular council meeting and the next regular one. You do have the dinner on the second in the middle there, but you could do a special meeting on the 30th for both purposes, and have it in 301, have it with snacks. Snacks, that would be a favorite product. Coffee. All right, all right. Should we aim for that? October 30th, yeah. Okay, yeah. And I would just ask if you want to send thoughts in advance for each other to think about, if you can get those to me by October 26th, we can include those in the materials. Thank you. Okay, let me just add into my calendar. Okay, are we thinking the same meeting time as usual? 6.30? Works for me? Yes, for everyone. Oh, does this work for you? Like you should be there. We'll make it work. Okay. Okay. Cool. All right, very good. Okay, so we're gonna move on to item number eight, which is the first reading. We can take five minutes. Oh, of course. It is a 37 now. Of course, yeah, we can take five minutes. Oh, blah, blah. Hold the first reading of land development regulation amendments, number LDR-23-03 for multiple principle structures on a lot. Mobile home parks, we're also gonna be reading for number LDR-23-04, city center form based code, buildings on outside of road corners, and number LDR-23-05, minor and technical amendments and consider warning a public hearing. So let's first do an overview and then we will move ahead with our warning. Hi, folks. Paul Conner, director of planning and zoning with the city of South Burlington and of course, Jessica Luizos, chair of planning commission. Laurie Smith is also in attendance online. These are three relatively small amendments as was alluded to earlier in the meeting. The holiday insight is in the midst of a redevelopment and the former Holiday Inn came down last week. As part of the discussions in that area and in other parts of the form based code it was identified that there's a sort of a gap in our form based code tool where if a planned street or an existing street has an L corner to it that you have this pocket that cannot be built for with anything because buildings must face onto streets. Planning commission identified three or four different circumstances where this might be the case around the form based code and presented this solution to allow these to move forward. This is part of a larger plan if the council recall when you did your walk around a couple of months ago of looking at short term changes that are needed to facilitate activity in the very short term in the form based code, medium term work that the planning commission is gonna be looking at around things like the building envelope standards and the east end of Market Street and then some more midterm amendments looking at other aspects of the form based code including what you submitted the grant for tonight of San Remo Drive. So really looking at these in stages. The other two amendments, one of them is really making sure that we're compliant with state law. So the state statute state of municipalities must not have the effect of prohibiting mobile home parks. It was identified that through the amendments that were made two years ago, there's only very, very, very limited circumstances under which more than one building can be on a lot which is in the city center form based code and that is the definition of a mobile home park. We as do all other communities in the state treat mobile homes, manufactured homes and stick-built homes the same but this is a special category of mobile home parks where you have the definition is more than one or more than two on a parcel. So it's really just re-enabling what was allowed a year and a half ago and then the third one is really just a consistency item when you made the amendments to the LDR back in early 2022, in order to support compact activity, to be compact in the natural resource protection district there's circumstances where you can allow up to three homes to be built. The amendment at that time said, well instead of requiring it to be single family homes which was the standard before that they could be in a triplex instead. So instead of building three different buildings, build one, it was discovered that we changed it in one area but not in another part of the regulation. And so there's an inconsistency so this is to just true that up. Anything that you wanted to add to that? No, I think the report really lays out like which comprehensive plan items are met and achieved with each of these goals and I think this is to be expected that when you make changes to the plan you might miss something in one section or you have an unintended consequence. We were in no way attempting to not allow mobile home parks. It was just a kind of technicality when we made the change. Where would they be allowed now with this change? They would be, well so the change here would be to allow for mobile home parks to have more than one building on a lot. So the districts in which that could happen would be essentially any of our lower, I guess lower to medium density residential districts is where they could take place. So the R2, R4, R7, those districts and then the Southeast Quadrant equivalents of them. There are of course lots of standards associated with them but the allowance of having more than two buildings on a lot which is the definition of a mobile home is what's re-enabled here. All right, any other questions? Yeah, so I think what you're saying is that a mobile home park is defined by Vermont statute, right? And the term mobile home is also part of that language as well. So, because I'd love to get away from saying mobile home because they're not really mobile. They were mobile when they were brought onto the site and then they're, they couldn't be moved away. It's an interesting that the state statutes in one place say that municipalities shall consider a mobile home, a manufactured home and essentially a stick-built home to be the same thing. So it says it is one thing and then in another part of statute it says, here's what a mobile home park is. And we have, there's a specific requirement that municipalities shall not have the effect of prohibiting mobile home parks and that's their terminology. So, while I agree with you wholeheartedly, we're making sure that we're compliant with state law. Sure, okay, I'm good with it. I'm ready to make a motion to set the public hearing if you are. What date would we choose? 16th or 12th. So I gave you the two options. So right now the only thing on the 16th is the city plan public hearing, which we may wanna hold sacred because it could be a big conversation. I have it on the agenda planner right now for the 20th, which is there is time on that agenda. It is also the week of Thanksgiving. So sometimes folks like to not have big public things on that agenda, but. Fill it up. I agree. So go with the 20th then at seven o'clock. Okay, so I move that we set a public hearing for the land development regulation and amendments number LDR 23-03, multiple principal structures on a lot, mobile home parks, LDR 2304 city center, forum-based code buildings on outside of the corners and LDR 2305 minor and technical amendments and consider public warning for November 20th, 2023 at 7 p.m. Second. Any more discussion? Seeing none, all in favor? Aye. That's unanimous. All right. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Very good. We are now to item number nine, where we are going to discuss the process to fill a vacancy of coming vacancy. We don't have one yet. City council. We don't have a vacancy yet. Not yet. Not until. Not yet. So I spoke with our chair yesterday and she really, and I do agree with her, hopes that we can have someone relatively quickly because we do have this budget discussion that this person needs to get up to speed on. And so it would be better sooner rather than later. And so I will jump in here and make a suggestion, but feel free to add anything that you think is important. She had reminded me of what had been done in the past, which is a subcommittee of counselors, say two of us would be receiving, people's self nominations or nominations received from counselors or members of the public, as long as the people are willing to serve, that the subcommittee of two interview these candidates. And then we as a subcommittee bring forward the candidates to the full council. And we as the full council then get to decide. And the question was, what needs to be done in public session versus executive session? That was something that she said that you could help us with, Jesse. But that was the process and she really was keen on having something on October 30th, so that potentially by November 6th, that person could be seated with us and participating as a counselor. So the only thing, so if it's just two of you, that's not a quorum, you don't have to warn it. If you want to have debate amongst yourselves about candidates to consider, that can take place in executive session if you choose. It's also an elected official position. So you might want to err on the side of public viewing. Of course, any vote to a point would have to take place in open session. Right, right, okay. All right. Viewpoints. Can I bring up one other challenge? So we have missed the deadline to get into this Thursday's other paper. So if you want to advertise and there's no legal requirement to do so, but if you want to advertise and you want to have appointments made on the 30th and you want time to receive interested candidates, that really will be solely done through website, Facebook, front porch forum, word of mouth, not buy out in the other paper, which is fine. You can do that. I just want to call your attention because I think- The 26 is too late. The 26 I think would be too late unless the subcommittee wanted, I mean, then you're warning the appointment of somebody, I think that would be very hard to pull off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is again, not your choice. So is October 30th too soon? I mean, this is something that we talked about last night with Helen as well, you know. The advantage of October 30th is you could also have somebody present at your November 2nd Steering Committee meeting with the school board. All right. So I would assume that, I don't know. I really don't know if Tyler's announcement tonight will be in Thursday's paper or not or in any paper this week. We still have broad range on front porch forum. We still have broad range and we can also make nominations ourselves. We can also put in a request to the other paper to do an online advertisement, which doesn't get into their print edition, but anyone who goes to an online edition would see it. We could buy that ad. That sounds sufficient to me. Yeah, okay. All right. Does everybody agree? All right, consensus? All right. I think, I mean the two subcommittee, that sounds fine. If we are able consistent with open meeting laws to have a conversation in executive session, that would sound right to me as well. I think that's a good idea. It's what we have done in the past because we are talking about sensitive things here. It is very sensitive, yeah. I would be in favor of doing it that way. So if we are working on interviewing as a subcommittee in time for an October 30th executive session slash public session to take our final vote, when should we get nominations into Jesse? Yes. So are we thinking like next Monday or the by the end of this week, Friday? I think you've got to give people, if you're going to put an ad out inviting people to apply, that's not going to be up until, we have to put it together tomorrow. Maybe it will be up on Wednesday. I think you've got to give people at least through a weekend, if not a full week. Right. Who's on the subcommittee and can you meet on the 26th, 27th, or 28th? So I said to Helen that I would be happy to do it. If there are any, okay. I will defer to you, both of you. Okay, so what does your calendar look like, Andrew? We can figure it out after. Okay. But let's just make sure that the two of us can do this, right, before we, we. Okay, I'm free. We leave because we will be interviewing, right? If we, so we're looking at the 25th, the 26th, and the 20th at my convenience. All right, so I certainly can do it in the evenings of those days. I have more time during the day on the Thursday. All right, and. Can I ask you a question? Please do. As you asked about the mechanics. Well, it's somewhat about the mechanics. I think one of the things when I had additionally shared this news and was soliciting advice from Helen, she had mentioned was that one of the things that she wanted the, and I don't want to speak for her, but I thought it was a great idea. She had mentioned that, you know, we, is as realistically as we could respect the intent of the voters who elected me, my words paraphrasing, not hers, number one and number two, that as we evaluated this, that we tried to look at perhaps things through a lens of someone who can bring an alternative voice right to the, or a similar voice or perspective to the council because it's helpful and it helps it's, it can help us make better decisions that account for more viewpoints. I'm just curious in the process, does it, I guess there doesn't need to be a formal mechanism for that or does there and what does that look like in terms of, should that look like anything in terms of how we go about soliciting input and evaluating suitable candidates. You can certainly nominate people to, you know, ask them if they really be willing to serve, bring them forward to Jesse by next, did we say Wednesday, Tuesday or Wednesday? So let's say Tuesday, the 24th. And I think you've made your request here known and we will be sensitive to that, Tyler. I think that's as far as a formal process would go. We certainly, you know, would I think be, remembering your, you know, what you brought to the council and wanting to, I know I, we've agreed a lot of times, Tyler. So I know I certainly would be in favor of having someone with many of your viewpoints on the council. And so I would certainly be speaking up about that in a meeting. Okay, that's, no, that sounds great. And thank you. I appreciate that. And I have solicited some, I have a short list, it's gotten much shorter there. It's very difficult to find folks who have young families who also have the time and flexibility to make a commitment, but I'll redouble those efforts and I'll provide a short list to Jesse within the next 48 hours. All right, wow, that's even sooner than next Tuesday. Okay, very good. Well, thank you. Thank you. All right. Anything else that we should keep in mind, Jesse? So I'm actually just looking, the school board is going through the same process, as you all know. So they have a lovely application on their website. And I'm wondering if there are, as we advertised, do you just want us to advertise for, are you in, you know, a few sentences about what the city council is and when you meet and blah, blah, blah? Or do you want us to seek something specific? Or do you want us to ask people to submit an application with some guiding questions? Or their resume or letter of intent or? Yeah, yeah, that will happen at the interview, I would say to, yeah. So they just need to submit their name. Yeah, and to know that we will be holding interviews on the 25th, 26th, and 27th of October in order to have a decision made by October 30th. Okay. That this is, and that this is to serve through, of course, town meeting day, right? In 2024, I think that's important too. All right. So that's a consensus. Oh, yes, please, Barb, and please just. I'm just a quick, just a quick time. Having this in mind. And just introduce yourself for the public's benefit and that no takers benefit. You all know me, but yes. Barb Service, a South Burlington resident I live in Summer Woods. Just another thought. If it's possible, all other things being equal, if we could get someone who doesn't live in the Southeast quadrant, it would be really a bonus just in terms of the conversations that have occurred with the charter committee. And I don't think anybody wants us to really go, well, no, some people want us to go, but regardless of whether we go that way or not, just the thought that it would be nice to have somebody from another part of South Burlington. And those, there are areas where there are people with young families and all that sort of thing. So I just tossed it out as a thought for your consideration. Thanks, Barb. Any other comments? Okay. Well, then let us go on to item number 10. And we all now have in our head by October 24th. Jesse needs to have those names, but confirmed people who we are nominating and that they are willing to serve, right? So you all are confirming that? Right, right. You will not, right. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. They have to be willing to serve? That's a whole nother dog. So speak it up, Tyler. Talk it up. All right. So now we are on to item number 10, receive the fiscal year 24 policy priorities and strategies report number one. So I don't need to walk through this. I provided you and the community's link to the agenda. Folks are watching our first report of our FY24 policies and strategies report out. This is meant to be just a very high level, quick summary for you of where we are across initiatives. Happy to answer any questions you have about it, but don't intend to walk through it. Yeah, can you keep going? I have a question. Does anybody have anything? I do. Okay, please do, speak up. Just one, the item with respect to sidewalks, the note is to discuss more in detail during the fiscal year 25 budget conversation. Is that the budget conversation we're having now or is that the following year? No, you will be building the FY25 budget in December. Perfect, thank you. I already have paving on my list. Sidewalks. And sidewalks, yeah. Climate action plan, we need good sidewalks more than roads. Anything else? Any other comments or feedback? Feel free, this is, if you ever have feedback on how this is presented to you, I'm happy to take that offline. If it's, I'm hoping it's a quick guide that you can refer back to from time to time. But if there's a better way for us to present this information, I'm all ears. Has there ever been any challenges, that's a word, a key word from the city plan that I'm kind of ambivalent about, but any challenges that you've had with regard to the various goals and priorities? I think that's a lovely question. Steve, if you have anything you'd like to jump way in with, please feel free. I think honestly one of our biggest challenges in this first quarter is that we've been down to department heads. And so managing two significant department head vacancies and continuing services at the same time is a challenge. So you see some places here where we say that new leadership is starting at a certain time. I think that's the one that comes to my mind most quickly, who we are also, as you all know, down an attorney, which does slow down other things. But staffing I think is the biggest challenge we've encountered. And the parks maintenance division so far, nothing is happening there. We are having it, those are an incredibly hard position to recruit for CDL drivers at the municipal level. This is not unique to South Burlington, this is municipality-wide in Vermont, when you can make a lot of money for FedEx or UPS driving CDL, we require CDLs for our flexibility in plowing. It is a challenge, you may see that come up during future AFSCME conversations. All right. Do you want to get one? Yes, I see Tyler's hands, Tyler. Yes, thank you, I'm a student chief locus in the audience. I'm just curious, the computer area dispatch system went live on September 26th. I know it's super early, right? But do you have any early indicator? How's it going? And is this meeting expectations, exceeding expectations? Do you have any learnings thus far about, or insights about whether this is helping us achieve what we were hoping for? I would say it's certainly meeting in probably exceeding expectations, a very well implementation, very little problems. We're seeing the benefits of closest unit dispatch. We're seeing greater cooperation, or probably more cooperation is not the right word, but perhaps a quicker deployment of the air guard to calls because we're actually announcing them that they are assigned on the run. So we're using what we call unit dispatching now versus station dispatching. So we're seeing a lot of, so it's very exciting. It's working well. The staff is enjoying that alerts just the unit that's not going instead of the entire shift. So if just station two is responding, the bells are only going off in the middle of the night at the, at station two. So that is quality of life. And so we're also looking to expand perhaps that too. And again, this is a shared services of Burlington. So when we're on a call together, there's quicker notification between our two agencies and we're looking perhaps how we can expand that with UVM rescue as well. So we are doing some mini-regalization through the use of technology. And I would say that it's certainly meeting Eric, meeting it and exceeding our expectations so early on. I'm sorry I was muted. Thank you for that. Do you, is it too early to say whether or not, you know, the success of this program would potentially influence an ask or need moving forward? Like if this is working so well, are there lessons that we, is it too early to say that there are lessons we can learn from this to say, okay, this is how we might want to roll this out in a more broad fashion? Yeah, I think it is too early to tell. You know, I would say my excitement is that the success I've seen in the firehouse. I, you know, I meet having lunch with Chief Burke on Friday. I'll be curious to hear, you know, his take and how it's working within the dispatch center. We definitely, you know, have some opportunities to, as we're looking to, I guess, an upgrade within the dispatch center beyond this technology with some other technology, I would want to talk to Chief Burke to see if there are other learning, other opportunities before I declare a complete victory, but certainly within the fire station and how we're deploying resources working very well. Awesome, thanks. Congratulations. Okay, so we're feeling good that this is doable still the priorities and strategies. Okay, all right. It should, but we like that. All right, very good. So let us move on then to number 11, discuss if the city should explore putting in place ordinance language staffing and materials to implement an intermittent, intermittent winter parking ban and provide direction to staff. So, do you want me to intro this? Please do, yeah. So this is one, actually, I believe Council Emery, you requested to be added in, I might be wrong on that. No, you're correct. This is a request we get from time to time as the council knows per our current ordinance, parking is prohibited overnight on city streets between midnight and eight a.m. That's historically has been to allow public works to maintain the roads during the winter months from time to time we get requests to move to a winter parking ban option where we only have winter parking bans during snow events. I wanted to bring this to you as a discussion among you first because this is an incredible, it seems simple in language and it is an incredibly heavy lift. So before we spend a lot of time bringing to you a staffing proposal, a capital proposal, timeline for ordinance changes, all of that, I just wanted to see the majority of your hands to go going up to say this is a priority because it requires a lot. The lift, Jesse, is the writing of the ordinance, the enforcement of the ordinance, just help us understand. Sure, so it's primarily capital and enforcement. So it's signage on streets, it's flashing lights as you enter the community. It's how we are going to notify the public on those evenings that a parking ban is in place and then what are the things we have to have in place in order to enforce it. So the challenge we're going to have is we have 400 lane miles of road and we're going to need to sign that pretty extensively so that during a snow event we can tow up, we have the policing authority to tow a car. And then the enforcement, I mean I think the other question for this community and I think to me this is a three to five year horizon question, not a one year question but it's up to you all. We have no traffic enforcement on staff now. We have a police officer who sometimes is inside to traffic enforcement. I think if Chief Burke were here, he would say that if we are going to really move to either a paid parking model or this kind of enforcement model, do we want badges and guns doing that kind of enforcement in many other communities? In Burlington, Winooski, Montpelier, this is enforcement that's done not by police officers but by teams of enforcement officers. That's a whole new staff. We don't have on staff at the moment. That's what I think I- I can just make an or just to give the background. I saw one or two emails on this but is this a- This is a regular issue and it usually comes up every year. Every year. Is it an issue where there's a handful of people being very sneaky or is it an issue that's, you know, well, you know, where many members of the community are. I mean, do you have a sense? I have a sense that the people concerned with it are fairly small number. I mean, if you get your car towed, I know that hurts. There's a monetary, you know, fine on top of that. I mean, it hurts, you know, monetarily to have your car towed. In an ideal world, you know, Tom DiPietro would go, boop, boop, boop, boop, and everybody's phone would get a light up and say, move your car. Oh, couldn't we just talk to the federal government? Move your car, right? And everybody would go, oh, I'm gonna move my car now. But, you know, that's not how Burlington does it. It's not how Winooski does it, right? And it, I guess the question is, you know, what is the problem, what's the problem statement, right? If the problem statement is, and the question is, how many cars did get towed last winter if you happen to know off the top of your head? Not very many, we do not tow very much. So if not many cars got towed and there's a really small education problem for some people, or if they have a problem putting their cars in a place because they don't have a place, then maybe that needs the focus and not create this huge infrastructure change, you know, that's been running pretty well forever. And they do put, they do put leaflets on windshields as we're getting close to the December 1st stage. If they're parked out on the street. But I do wonder if there could be more warnings as opposed to calling the tow truck first thing. And winters are getting milder, right? They are. Well, the problem is they might be getting warmer, but there are more icing events. Right. And they still have to like, you know, scrape and put down brine, right? I mean, I know that there are cars that don't get towed even when there are snow events. So it's, I know that enforcement would be an issue. But if there's a way, you know, perhaps to give, I mean, I know there's no perfect way. There's no perfect way. How can you know, how can you keep track when you've given a warning? It's true. The data keeping is really, really hard. But on a night when there's no ice, no snow, giving a warning, I do. So we only tow during major storms. We are not actively towing. I mean, you could change. I've heard the opposite, but okay, okay. Okay. But if that's the policy, okay. Do we know if the towing was in one general part of the city or was it spread out across many neighborhoods? I would have to look at that data, which I could do. I think the towing is usually involving where there's a travel pinch point. So where snow banks have built up and there's really not, the roads are narrow anyway, and there's really not a safe way to get a plow around where a car is parked. So look, honestly, even if we change this whole structure, the problem is gonna be when it snows in any event. Like this, we're not gonna be solving anything, right? So what's the point? Would it make any sense to spend all this money to change something when they're still gonna have the problem during a snow event of these cars that don't have a place to go? It just doesn't really make any sense to change it. Okay. No, I would agree with all the signage that's required. I didn't know that the signage was required on every road. I don't see it on every road in Burlington. Am I just not looking? Often there is, so how we did it in Winooski, I don't know as well as in Burlington, but in Winooski, they have small signs that sit under other signs on each street. So you can make the argument that it is signed on the street. Oh, I see. So it's not a whole new, you know, we were really concerned, they in Winooski were really concerned about sign pollution because there is, it does put too much signage up and it has the reverse effect. People don't read it, right. So that's how we tried to come back that. I say. I might suggest that I think this is something that's gonna stay on the community conversation. I think it's something the council should take up. At some point, I believe that they're, that city center is gonna require paid parking, especially as the commercial spaces fill up. The point of that paid parking is to get traffic to turn over. At that point, when we're going down that path of creating a parking fund, of, you know, hiring enforcement staff, of thinking about communications channels about how we're doing all of that, that that might be a point in time to consider standing up this kind of effort. Okay. That's how I had envisioned this discussion going because I, you know, I didn't expect that this would be possible based on the email reply I got. Yeah. Okay. But what all of city center, the parking you see there is underground for most of the buildings, right? There is a significant amount of underground and behind surface parking for the residents and for the businesses of the buildings. It will be interesting to see how that progresses over time, whether it depends, you know, if we have a lot of cafes and restaurants and retail, there people want that turnover of cars. So you don't have people coming and parking in front of a coffee shop while they're at the library for eight hours a day working. You want to push those cars to a rear long-term lot. That's the theory of why we would do that. But that's a policy decision you're gonna have to make with in the future time with better data on the ground. Okay. All right. Interesting fun fact about parking funds or traffic funds. That is how the city of Burlington pays for their crossing guards. Oh, that is an interesting fun fact. It's not an interesting fun fact. Fun fact? How did you share that? Crossing guards in New York City. And I saw lots of school children crossing the roads and taking the metro. Just so you wanted no crossing guards. Fun fact, I crossed Kennedy this morning on my bicycle on the way to the public school meeting. And I was terrified because there were three young students on the corner trying to cross Kennedy. And that is a crazy intersection. Yeah. And I just, they like this work. Yeah. A dangerous intersection. There's right turns, left turns. There's, you know, and like, you know, there's like, young kids, we need a crossing guard. At Kennedy? Yes. I agree with Andrew. You're definitely wrong. I mean, off the topic, but I... Okay. If I were a parent, I would sell my kids a car. You know, I don't know. I grew up in a major metropolitan area and nobody took the snow off of our sidewalks and we had to do it. And nobody, you know, helped me get to my middle, my junior high or my high school. I did get to my elementary school with one crossing guard, but I crossed one, two, three roads before I got the crossing guard. This is an intersection. And parents today are, for whatever reason, more protective. They are. It's just the world. And if we want to really get children to walk to school, we need to make the parents feel comfortable. I was a crossing guard for Green Street School in Brattleboro in 1970. I don't know. I guess I disagree, Andrew, and we'll have to have that conversation. I think that we have to give kids the tools to be successful, yes, but I think one of those tools is confidence. And I think that there's a lot for us to talk about here, but it's not on the agenda, so we'll keep going. Yeah. Thank you so much. All right, so number 12, we have convene as the South Burlington Liquor Control Commission to consider the following, Delta Hotels by Marriott, Burlington, which is the first-class hotel, Delta Hotels by Marriott, Burlington for a third-class hotel. I move that we convene as the South Burlington Liquor Control. Second. Second. All in favor? Aye. Very good. I move that we approve the first-class and third-class liquor licenses for Delta Hotels by Marriott. Second. All right, all in favor? Aye. I now move that we leave the South Burlington Liquor Control. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Excellent. So now we are going to consider entering into executive session for the purposes. You missed other business. Oh, yes, other business. I assumed that we'd discussed the loan property, but yes, other business? All right, so let us consider entering into executive session for the purposes of discussing pending litigation. So I have a motion? Yes, please. I move that the council make a specific finding that premature general public knowledge of the council's discussion of pending civil litigation to which the city as a party would clearly place this public body at a substantial disadvantage. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. So I now move that the city council enter into executive session under one VSA 313A1E4, the purpose of discussing pending civil litigation to which the city as a party inviting Jesse Baker, Steve Locke and Colin McNeil into session with council for the discussion. Second. Very good. All in favor? Aye. Aye. We will not be returning. Aye. Tyler, I sent you a separate Zoom link to your city email. Thank you. All right. Thank you all and have a good evening. Yes, Sue.