 I'd like to call to order the South Wellington city council meeting heavens, hopefully a better year. First item is the agenda review. Are there any additions, deletions or changes in the order of anything that anyone wishes to make? Okay, seeing none. Item three then is the possible executive session. So Tim is in here. So we don't have the actual language, but I would entertain a motion to go into executive session to discuss financial matters where premature general public knowledge would clearly place the city at a substantial disadvantage and to receive advice from legal council, including matters related to personnel. Included in the meeting will be Jennifer Murray, Colin McNeill, Patrick Leduc, Kevin and Tom, the council and, oh, I'm sorry, and Jay Pascal. So moved. So moved. Second, it's moved and seconded. So all those in favor, did you have a comment? David, you just raised my hand. Oh, to vote yes. What did you want to say? No, I'm just raising my hand to vote. Oh, okay, I'm sorry. So all those in favor, raise your hand. Indicate yes. Okay, so we are in executive session. So the other two in town meeting and the other paper have been uninvited. Is that how they, they can't hear what we're talking about? They don't need to sign back in for the regular meeting. I'm in city council Monday, January 4th, 2021, executive session and we'll go to item four, comments and questions from the public, not related to the agenda. If there is someone who would like to speak, if you're- I'm not here. It's Laura Waters. Laura, okay. Laura Waters. Yep. Well, hello everybody. Happy new year. Thank you. You as well. The reason that I'm here tonight is I wanted to reiterate that the act 250 permit application for the Burton project has been submitted and that there is a pre-hearing, there's a site visit and a pre-hearing conference on July 13th. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, January 13th. January 13th. Yeah. January 13th. The person who's the project manager said that he called somebody with South Burlington or called, left a message to alert everyone that this is coming up because South Burlington, I believe automatically is an interested party, but he's not heard anything back as far as whether South Burlington is going to be involved with this. So I just wanted to lay that out and ask whoever's responsible. I don't know who that person would be to contact act 250 and make sure that South Burlington is included in the list of interested parties because otherwise if this thing continues then you don't have any authority to appeal or do anything. And the letter that South Burlington wrote to the city council, Burlington city council was excellent and that would be something that wouldn't really cost much time or effort but could be resubmitted tweets a little bit as far as act 250 is concerned. And I think it would be super helpful to all of us to get that recorded. Okay, thank you. We have been advised to. I wanted to, I just want to read into the record a letter from one of our neighbors that he wrote at 530. So most of you probably didn't see it but I just, I want to get it in the record. And it concerns this. Dear city council members, I'm writing this letter on behalf of my family and neighbors in Queen city park. The Burton act 250 hearing process has begun starting with the site visit on January 13th by the act 250 regional board overseeing the hearing. These hearings will be led by Aaron Rondike who's the act 250 state coordinator. They expect the hearings to be contentious enough that he has stepped in to oversee them. A number of interested people from the five surrounding neighborhoods that will be impacted by the Burton HUD project should be completed, should be applying for party status and the hopes of influencing the act 250 board on the environmental impacts decision that will be affecting the surrounding area along with this inhabitants, human and otherwise. I am writing to strongly encourage and hope that the south Burlington city council will participate in these hearings. However, they see fit to do so. Ways to do this would be to include party statuses and a butter along Queen city park road, as well as sending a strong written message to the act 250 board that south Burlington is concerned about the environmental impacts project will have on the adjacent south Burlington neighborhood of Queen city park, the south Burlington town beach and Red Rocks park. Environmental impacts will result from noise, traffic, possible mitigation, hazmat site contamination towards the drilled drinking water well, supply, Queen city park, as well as the south Burlington city swimming beach and Red Rocks park. The impacts are all negative and potentially harmful. I encourage you, our city representatives to send a letter expressing your concern, similar to the letter south Burlington said to the Burlington DRB regarding the Burton hub project permit application as soon as possible. Thank you for your careful consideration of this important request. Respectfully yours, Michael Turner. Okay. And that's it. Thank you very much. Well, thank you very much and we are aware of that. Thank you. Are there any other comments from the public on items not on the agenda? Okay. So we'll move on to announcements on the city manager's report. I do not have anything to announce. You do. I would just like to use this opportunity to give a public kudos to our south Burlington police department. I read the other paper article about their investigation of the hit and run accident and it just, I was quite impressed by everything they did, talking to local business owners, narrowing it down based on the paint chips that were at the scene. I just think they did remarkable work and I hope they know that they're appreciated and it's remarkable what our Kevin Grealis and other officers put into such an important investigation in such a short period of time. So great work. Okay. Thank you. All right. So the city manager's report, Kevin. Really not much today, Helen, after the holidays. We're gonna have a staff planning session next Wednesday for a couple hours, really looking back at what we've learned from the COVID experience and also planning ahead for the next six months, things we wanna try to get done or things we wanna get on track. I think the public can anticipate the staff is gonna be working from remotely and that city hall is gonna be closed probably for another month. We'll have to wait and see what the governor advises, but I think we've been able to manage it pretty well, notwithstanding the lost route against the city clerk by the out-of-state title company, but even with that, people are able to come in and do their title searches now on a reservation basis and I think it's going pretty well. So that's what I've got tonight. Okay. Thank you. So let's move on to the consent agenda and there are two items, disbursements, considering signed disbursements and also the second item B, approved a three-party agreement between the city of South Burlington, the Dorset Park Skating Association and the Sea Anthony Cairns Trust. So I would entertain a motion for approval. Go moved. Is there a second? And a second by Tom. Is there any discussion? Megan and then Tim. Yeah, I was just noting the difference between the two contracts for the Cairns Association, the Dorset Park Skating Association and Cairns Trust. I just wanted us to at least take note and I just wanted, I'm willing to vote on this, I was willing to move and second it as well, but the city's right to pay the loan. In the new contract regarding the new entry, if there is a default or something that means that the city would wanna take over, we would be paying back the family trust as opposed to the bank, which is in the original contract. So I just wanted to have that out in the open. I wanted to actually hear from other counselors about that. It's just, I understand that the family trust is being used as kind of a go-through here since they'll be putting, they'll be acting as a bank, putting out the funds and then being paid back by the Skating Association. But I just, that just seems to be a different arrangement. And I wanted us to maybe weigh the differences between being beholden to a trust as opposed to a bank. I think I can clarify that fairly, fairly easily when we were looking to finance the addition and we still have a small balance to do on the original mortgage. We could have done that through the bank, but the terms were not quite as favorable as we might like and the amount of paperwork and cost to finance through the bank was significant. Finally, Tony said, let's just get this done. I'll finance the whole thing. So basically Tony took over, Tony is indeed the bank right now. And we will look to refinance with a bank. I forget what the timing is that we've said, but Tony's good to continue the financing as long as necessary. And I guess if you want to put it in volume of work, you know, finance something through a bank takes dozens and dozens, if not a hundred plus pages of paperwork, I believe the agreement with Tony is two pages long, maybe three. So, you know, we eliminated a lot of red tape, saved money, saved time and got the project done. And that's the whole reason. And we should be, it'll be just fine. Tim, did you have a comment? Yeah, Kenny, you can hear me, right? Yes. So this question is for Tom Hubbard about the disbursements. Why did the city of Burlington overpay their taxes to South Burlington? Is that airport tax that we had to refund? 12,200 approximately. I'm just curious where that comes from. It is one of the airport properties, Tim. The commercial property paid directly and then the city paid as well. So the city's being reimbursed for paying for the owner. Oh, okay. It's being reimbursed. The city's, the city of Burlington is being refunded. Okay, got it. And where is the manager of the property has already made the payment? Okay, so we're paying them back. Okay, got it. Thank you very much. You got it? You always have an explanation. Thank you. Is your, was that answer enough information for you? Yeah, maybe. Okay. That's what I was gonna ask. Did that give you enough, Megan, to understand it completely? Yeah. And I simply wanted it to be publicly discussed. That's basically what I asked. It's one of the beauties of having, you know, a public private partnership is that when you've got the private sector involved and they're able to do something responsibly and expeditiously, it helps the whole process, good for everybody. And as everybody knows, we've been at this for, if you can believe it, 27 years now, I believe. And it goes beautifully. So it's great. Other than the fact that we're not generating much revenue right now. Yeah. Sandy, Julie, did you wanna make a comment? You're on mute, so. Okay. Can you hear me? Yeah. Okay. I just, is Tony still on the board? Yep. And the Dursapart Skating Association is a 501C3, right? Yep. Are we paying interest to the trust? We're paying interest to, I forget, yes, there's interest in there. It's less than the bank interest would have been, I believe. Do the bylaws of the association allow a director to have that kind of financial relationship? That, I can't answer. With your organization? With our attorney. Sandy, I don't have an answer to that. We'd have to ask, Rick Kozlosti reviewed, he's our attorney and he's on the board, reviewed everything before as we proceeded with this arrangement. So I can only presume there's no conflict, can certainly inquire further if necessary. Cause I know when you do, at least as I recall, when you do a 990, you have to reveal whether any of your board members or officers have a financial relationship with the organization. Anyway, I'd appreciate you're checking that out. Okay, thank you. Good point. So should we wait and only vote on the disbursements and wait till we get that information before we approve the agreement, three-party agreement? Is that the right thing to do? Or are you- I'm- All right, I think my personal feeling is- This is Kevin. Go ahead. This is a- Yeah, let Kevin answer that. Oh, yeah. You know, this was consistent with the prior agreement from 1991. This is really an agreement for the most part between the city or between the trust and the association. The association's lease is the security behind this. So we're in this. Andrew really didn't know that there was a reason why we needed to be in this other than we were in back in 91. And so whether or not it's in the bylaws that Tony can finance this and still be on the board is really a discussion between him, between he and the association, I think. If Rick has looked at this, Andrew's looked at this, neither one of them had any issue. I- Okay. I can go ahead and get this done. It's not gonna stop the project at all if you wanna wait till the next meeting to do it, but- Anyway. Would you like to just keep it on the consent agenda? I'm okay with that. I'm okay with voting on it too. I think it's great that Tony Karens is so supportive of this project. It's a tremendous asset for the community. I'm glad it's happening. It's moving forward, but I agree with Sandy Dooley that we should look into this and maybe the board should consider if there's any concerns or other disclosures they need to do, but it doesn't pause me from supporting this agreement. Okay. So we have a motion made and seconded on the consent agenda. Are you ready for that vote? I'll call the roll. Tim Barrett. Aye. David Kauffman. Aye. Megan Emory. Aye. Thomas Chittenden. Aye. And the care votes aye. So the consent agenda is approved five to zero. Moving on to item seven, consider and possibly approve an amendment for FY22 for the capital improvement plan, public hearing scheduled for seven p.m. So we're five minutes late, but. So I guess Martha will be on deck and Tom and we need to move into a public hearing. So I'd entertain a motion. I'll move. Second. And a second. It's been moved and seconded, all in favor. Aye. Aye. Okay, so we now are in a public hearing regarding the FY22 capital improvement plan. So I don't know if Martha or Tom, who's going to lead off, but you have the floor. Thank you, Helen. Martha will lead off. My name is Martha Machar. My name's of self. My memo was included last week in the agenda. And for the record, couple improvement program is a 10 year plan that is adjusted yearly. Once approved, the first year of the plan is incorporated into the budget. In this case, FY22 will be incorporated into 2021 to 2022 budget that will presented to voters in March. And also once approved, it will replace the existing FY 2022 through 2021 plan that is currently, that was adopted last year. So capital improvement program is a tool used to improve coordination in the timing of major project plan for capital replacement and future maintenance costs with the goal of reducing purchasing in the tax rate. You will also notice that some edits have been made since it was presented to council in December and those edits represent a reduction in the amount of vehicle as proposed for public works by one and by one cruiser for police department. Also the amount that was proposed presented in December for paving has been reduced. And the amount that was also proposed in December has also been reduced for the harsh trees removal. The total amount reduction since it was presented to council in December is 141,000 dollars. And that bring us down to a total here at the bottom about 2.5 million proposed FY22 budget. Somehow what will lead us into the discussion of how that process came about for us to come down to that amount. As you can see, that amount is way less than what was approved for FY 2022, FY 2021 I mean. We have staff members available to answer questions regarding to specific projects proposed for FY22, but in the meantime, Tom Hubbard will lead us in the process of what has been undertaken so far to bring us to where we are today, Tom. Thanks for that. Thank you, Martha. Yep, appreciate all of Martha's help with the budget, the CIP and all the many things finances going on right now are audit and such. Helen, did you officially open the public hearing? Yes, I did. Okay, so we're good there. So just a few comments about the process. The council will need to pass an amendment for the CIP. You may be ready to do that. You may not, but this is the first step related to the budget for FY22. We'll completely go through the rest of the budget process later in the agenda tonight, including all the enterprise funds and general discussion about the budget and its impacts and amendment may be considered by the council at that point based on where you're at. For now, I think I'd just like to continue with a brief overview, but happy to go into as much detail as needed regarding any of the items that are listed in the CIP. I wanna start by saying the summary of the capital improvement plan is really broken into three different sections. The first is general fund expenses, and that's on page one. Martha, if you could flip back to that. That's the one we went into the most detail with back when we first presented this to you at the first meeting in December. That has general fund expenses comprised of requests from police, fire, DPW, recreation, and all our various departments that affect the tax base. The second section is enterprise funds where we talk about wastewater, stormwater, and water, which are supported by user fees. Justin's gonna go into a little bit more detail on those in the next agenda item, and Joe Duncan from CWD will be joining him for that part of the discussion. And the third section that comprises the capital improvement plan are special funds. These include monies for penny for pass, bike and pet improvements, open space projects, energy projects, and city center, which are supported by dollars that are outside the general fund. As Martha noted, we initially presented this to you back in December. It's been slightly adjusted with some reductions since then to really fit within the proposed request that we've given you for the general fund. So those have included cuts and paving, fleet for DPW, some of the tree removal and replacement for the Emerald Ashbore, another vehicle being cut from the police department and a slight reduction in the police department's computer IT fund. The result is that some of these projects originally planned for FY22 or had additional funding proposed for FY22 have either been reduced or moved to some out years in the CIP for consideration at a later date. Overall, the general fund funding for items in the CIP, the capital improvement plan, has decreased by about $400,000 in the general fund from what was approved last year, currently our FY21 fiscal year. All of our department managers are in attendance tonight to respond to any questions related to any of the department asks, including Ashley Parker who's worked with the bike and pet committee and the natural resources committee and have both committees which have reviewed and supported the projects that are proposed, Justin who will speak to the enterprise funds along with Joe and all our other department managers to respond to any questions regarding their department. So with that, Martha's pulled up the summary of the projects starting with the general fund page and we're ready for any questions from the council or the public as you, now that you've officially opened the public hearing. So happy to engage our other managers and respond to any questions council for the public ask. Thank you. Are there any questions by the council? I don't see any. How about the public? Oh, Sandy. Duly. Okay. You can hear me? Yes. Thank you. I just on page 94, it talks about in the coming year, 75,000 would be spent on an indoor recreation facility. And then another 21 million would be spent over the following two fiscal years. And well, just to refresh my memory, the voters turned down by 56% a proposal for a local option tax in 2019 that would fund an indoor recreation facility. And I'm also been thinking about how voters might be more interested in outdoor improvements, more rec pass, et cetera, as a result of COVID. But my main thing is what is the 75,000 in the FY22 budget to be, what is that to be spent on? And in terms of the future, my record election is like for purchasing the, well, the initial proposal to build a fire police station in what became Wheeler Nature Park and also city center. And then later to buy the property that's now the police department. We've had separate votes at town meetings. So I'm just wondering what's the plan for getting voter input on the proposal to build an indoor recreation facility? Okay, is that Holly or Tom? Maybe I can start with that, Helen. And then I think we'll go to Alana. But the same is plain. May I just say, it seems to me that the council are the people that will maybe, this is an administrative decision, but isn't it the council that decides whether something is put on the ballot? And when? Absolutely, Sandy. Absolutely, I'm still asking what the $75,000 was for. I'm asking both questions. Okay, we'll have the $5,000 and then what's the plan for getting the rest of the money? So I think Sandy's question is a good one for the public to understand that the capital improvement plan is a plan. That's what it is. It's a plan. It's a placeholder for some major items that have either been talked about or discussed, mainly with the council in terms of we should make a plan to, within the next 10 years, outline all the different things that are gonna be considered. Nothing moves forward. Absolutely nothing moves forward. Without the council ratifying an amendment every single year for what the next year's capital improvement plan calls for. So they can't bless anything Sandy that's 10 years down the road right now. They can only ratify as you probably remember from your tenure on the council. They can only speak to what's in the budget for next year. But every year the budget comes before the council as part of the public process that goes before the voters as part of the public process. So really keeping the indoor rec center in the CIP right now is to really keep it there as a placeholder. I think that Alana can address the $75,000, which I think finishes up the initial study and engineering that was done. This is all with money outside of the general fund. This is not taxpayer money. These are impact fees and money within special funds. But Alana, you wanna address exactly what that 75,000 would be used for please. Yeah, so the 75,000 would be used to complete the study. We have a small amount left in the feasibility study. I'm not sure how my volume is. But mainly it would be used to work with the construction company to ensure that we have a good estimate should this project be taken to the voters for funding. Okay. Does that answer your question, Sandy? Well, just is there a projected date when that study would be finished and when it would be available for the public to review? So the bulk of the feasibility study that was already undertaken, there should be a PowerPoint online. And if not, I'll make sure that it's online that summarizes a potential design and a magnitude of cost. And then what this study is for is to work with the construction company and to further that particular design to ensure that any numbers that we present to the voters are good numbers for the project. Okay. And represent an actual construction cost. Okay, thank you. Tom? Well, to your point, Sandy, I would just say this. I see the SIP as what the council through feedback and committees and these types of discussions is thinking about for the coming years and trying to plan for it with the capital expenses. I remember before the pandemic hit, we were talking about this recreational center as possibly being on the ballot this past November. I think the council with when the pandemic and all of the uncertainty, we rightfully push that on the back burner and haven't really come back to it. And I don't even think tonight we're coming back to it. It's out a couple of years, so no action is gonna happen to it. But if it were to ever be actionable again, which I expect it to be sooner or later, it will absolutely go to the voters because it would require a bond. So the voters would weigh in on it. This is just saying that the council still thinks it's a plan that is worth us investigating. There's been a long established need for it. And I think that need is well documented. I don't know if that answers your question, Sandy. Okay. Okay, thank you. Are there other questions from the public or the council? Well, seeing none, I guess we can go back to, if there's no other comments or questions, I guess we can close the public hearing for the Capital Improvement Plan. I'll entertain a motion. So moved. Second. Okay. All in favor, signified by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Unanimous. So we have closed the public hearing. Does the council wish to hold off on supporting this amendment till we look at the entire budget? Yes, that seems appropriate to me, but okay. Good. So we'll move on to then item eight, which is a council review discussion and possible approval of the FY22 proposed enterprise fund budget. And we've got Justin Rabadou and Joe Duncan. Welcome. Joe, but I see, here's Joe, yeah. Oh, there. Hi, Joe. How you doing? Justin Rabadou, director of public works. And with me is Joe Duncan, the general manager of the Champaign Water District, the city's wholesale water supplier. And I thought before we got into the city-specific enterprise budgets, including their CIP projects, if there's an interest from the council in public, we would first let Joe take the council through the CWD budget process, which as you know, the major expense item for our water department is the purchase of water, which Joe's team sets the price on. So we thought we'd let Joe just give an introduction. Okay, great. And give him some place time and then I'll take it from there on the larger issues. Perfect. Thank you, Justin. Good evening, everybody. So as Justin said, we are your wholesale water supplier. So we draw water out of the lake, we treat it. And then we pump it out to our 12 service systems and South Burlington being the front door and home city for us. We have a wholesale rate. Our current wholesale rate is $2.31. And we are, every year we go through and take a look at what our long-term sustainability, resiliency, and reliability needs. And this year, the board has put together a budget and revised our rate from 2.313 to 2.392 per thousand gallons. That is about an 8 cent per thousand gallon increase, which results in about a $5.19 per year increase to the average family that uses around 65,000 gallons a year, or basically 43 cents per month. So that is our impact to you so that the city has to purchase it at that rate. So of the city's bill, the city's bill is currently somewhere around $285 for a homeowner who uses about 65,000 gallons a year. So of that, $285, we represent about $150 a year of that. So which makes sense because typically treatment costs and transmission costs are by the primary, primary cost for any system that does provide water. So that's our impact to the city this year. We continue to focus on infrastructure investments. We recognize that similar to servicing a car, if we can continue to invest in our infrastructure, keep it running at a high level, it minimizes the long-term costs and that's our sustainable asset management approach. So I'm happy to go into any detail you would like me to, but I just want to give you that quick overview of who we are, what we do and what our plans are for the upcoming fiscal year. Joe, I just have a quick question because I didn't hear you. What is the average cost of water for a home in the city? So the average cost for a home is $285 per year for someone who uses 65,700 gallons, which is about 180 gallons a day. Thank you. And that doesn't include sewer and storm water, right? Correct, water only. Okay, thanks. All right, are there any questions for Joe? All right, back to you then. Just a quick question, are there any big capital jobs coming up in the next year or so? Because you just put in a new tank two years ago, right? Correct, yep. We did build the tank at our plant two years ago. Last March, the district voted two bonds. One was for a project out in Colchester to add a new loop to the Water Tower Hill feed up there. And also to address some water quality issues in the Colchester Town water system. That project is being built, actually it's under construction now and will be finished next spring. We also bonded for a new pump station now in Essex to help with our water quality as well as our hydraulic grade line, which does benefit South Burlington because we have a tank out, an Essex West tank that's very difficult to turn over. And so we wind up having to stress some of our service systems in order to get that tank to turn over. So we're putting in a pump station there. That will be built next summer. We're actually bidding that in a couple of weeks. And so those two projects are out there. Then the other thing I'll throw out there right now is those two projects, we were able to get a drinking water SRF funding and that funding resulted in 75% loan forgiveness for up to a million dollars for each project. And then 40% for 25% forgiveness after that. And so the one project in Colchester was a million dollars. So we're paying back $250,000 of a million dollars borrowed for that project. And then the Essex West project is 2.6 million and we are paying back only 40% of that. So something on the order of like 1.2 or 1.4 I'd have to do the math again. But essentially we were able to save on the order of almost $2 million in bond capacity. And so because of that, we actually have some projects that we want to move along. We built a new tank at our plant and we have an existing tank that needs repair. And so we're actually looking to do a bond vote in March of this year to repurpose that unused debt authorization. It actually keeps our debt service lower than what we had originally anticipated prior to the loan forgiveness, but allows us to move forward that plus some pump station work down at our Lakewater Pump Station. So we do have some more, another round of bonding we're looking to do but it actually is a net zero impact on the rate. Actually, if anything, it's even lower than we had originally anticipated because of the loan forgiveness we're getting through the SRF. Sorry for maybe more than you wanted to know but those are some of the things we're trying to reinvest in our infrastructure. No, that's what I want to know. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, Kevin, I'm sorry, Justin, excuse me. Yeah, and also just so you know, on the call is the city's representative appointed or voted, I believe it's voted member to the board of commissioners, Dennis Lutz, South Burlington resident. So he's the city's representative to CWD. So if there's any additional questions, Dennis is here in that capacity as well. Thank you. Thank you. So moving forward, I just wanted to give a brief, big picture overview of the three utility funds. As I believe in Councilor Barrett's question, yes they are water, wastewater and stormwater. Martha, can you go to the rate comparison tab which I think is the rightmost tab or it was the rightmost other, okay, it's its own tab. So I want to start from this point and work backwards. This is the sheet that we always have in the annual reports. And it just is a summation of where our proposed rate increases stand relative to both the current rate as well as the average increase to the South Burlington homeowner. Starting on the bottom, you already heard Joe use the number 285 for South Burlington. And that's arrived at by looking at what the 2021 rate of 277.11 plus the 2.9% increase of an additional $789 gets us to $285. So that's where Joe, so it's good that we have the same number Joe, coincidentally, but that's where that number is derived from the biggest takeaway for us. Well, we have a couple. One is the stormwater division continues almost in the manner that Joe just described, their ability to not just get grants, but also to get loan forgiveness. The stormwater staff continues to bring in hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of grants to South Burlington, always in a manner exceeding our budgetary expectations because we budget conservatively. As such, we can again continue to show a lower than forecasted utility rate increase for stormwater. And the stormwater rate, if you can scroll up a bit, Martha, so we can just see the header of this, please. Thank you. The stormwater rate is referred to as an ERU, an Equivalent Residential Unit. So basically, if you own a single family residential home or a condominium in South Burlington, you're charged presently $7.08 a month with our proposed increase in FY22 of 1.7%. That goes to $7.20 a month for a grand total of $1.44 for the year. So we have $1.44 in stormwater. We already discussed we're just under $8 in water and we're proposing it. And again, this is a lower than anticipated number within sewer. We're proposing a 1.5% increase. And as you can see sewer is our most expensive utility to fund. It's roughly $350 a year for the average homeowner with the 1.5% proposed increase. But those three items in totality are $14.50 to the average single family homeowner in South Burlington. And I'm sure all the counselors have done this through the proposed utility budget. The biggest thing people's attention is drawn to is the dollar change or the percent change in any one line item from year to year. So there's just a few I wanted to highlight if I may in wastewater particularly. The largest increase in expenses of things that staff controls that does not include items like salary and benefits. Those are administrative assigned cost but things that my group is in charge of. The biggest increases we're seeing are in chemicals. So you'll see $15,000 in polymer, $10,000 in caustic line, $25,000 in alum. All of that is a direct result of and directly affects our effluent phosphorus discharge. We're permitted by the state of Vermont to discharge roughly 790 pounds of phosphorus combined at both wastewater facilities into Lake Champlain each year. We presently discharge somewhere between 5% and 8% of that annual total which is an incredibly low number. I can't imagine people are coming in any lower than our concentrations of, for example, 0.02 milligrams per liter or 0.03. Sometimes we actually get non detectable because our phosphorus is so low and are effluent but that there's a correlated expense to that. And we're seeing an increase in those line items for chemicals but we feel it's appropriate just given what it is we all know about the detrimental impact of phosphorus on Lake Champlain. And on the positive side of the plus or minus draw your attention to the airport parkway loan payment. Marfa, that's near the bottom of the expense items if you scroll down a bit, just a little bit more. So yeah, so you'll notice, I think Marfa's highlighting. Yeah, thank you. A $367,000 decrease in our annual payment. We had been scheduled to pay and we have been paying $1.27 million annually to the state to pay back the 2012 completed upgrade to the airport parkway project. Total project cost of 30 million. However, we were able to receive this year a retro we applied for and received a retroactive grant that reduced the principal on our loan balance by over $4.5 million. So our recalculated debt schedule has our new annual payment of just above $900,000. So it's almost a $400,000 savings that was achieved through staffs pursuing and frankly pestering the state for about six years for this grant. So we like to thank the state as our partner but also that's a huge impact on a $5 million budget. If you can lop off almost 10% of that budget which we're able to do this year and that will be our payment for the remainder. So that $367,000, it's gonna be times however many years we have left. I believe like I said, it's about $4.5 million total. So those two things really, so that item really helps us keep the rate increase at a low number, particularly in a year in which we're ramping up for the Bartlett Bay expansion project. So we anticipate $400,000 in design services and you can see that above about 12 or so lines above the Bartlett Bay upgrades. So the good news is while we have these large expenses this reduction in loan repayment just about offsets it which allows us to achieve both rate stabilization and put more money in the bank for the funds. Justin, is that federal dollars that come into the state to pay for this or are those really state generated funds? So this was a loan through the Revolving Loan Fund the same program that Joe mentioned earlier. So what essentially what it is is all of the municipalities are borrowing it's kind of a self-insurance. All lending each other and borrowing each other money through the Vermont bond bank at a very low rate. So it's either state nor fed. I'm sure the state contributes some amount first primarily funded by the users of the system who contribute both the debt and receive benefit from it. Thank you. And then in looking through both our water and stormwater budget there's only one other item that I want to highlight. Certainly I'll answer any questions on any of the dozens of account numbers. But Marfa, if you can go to the bottom of the stormwater expense I want to get us to stormwater capital projects. There it is right there. So that's a very large number it's a 4.3 million dollars almost 3 million up from the previous year. There are two main, well there's probably three factors contributing to this. One is the unplanned unbudgeted expense of the Kimball Avenue Bridge that's being funded through this program. However, since the city of South Groningen is running the project we're showing the total cost and expense on each side of the ledger keeping in mind that Williston is paying half of the roughly two million dollar project. So this number is already inflated kind of by a million because Williston is contributing on the revenue side. Additionally, we knew that just the way our project cycle works we were gonna this was always going to be a construction heavy summer for us. However, that was compounded by frankly this last season with the pandemic we and the shutdown we had a couple of projects that we would have liked to take to construction they're just gonna be transferred to this season. However, as Stormwater is an enterprise fund the money just comes with it from the prior year. So the money sits in the reserves. I suspect once you get the FY21 budgeted actuals which you won't have for about nine or 10 months but you will notice a very small number in capital expenditures in FY21 because of the pandemic. So I just wanted if people saw that $3 million number as an increase I didn't at least want to have the opportunity to explain it for folks. Beyond that, everything else is going up or down very minor percentage points. We were very conscientious of understanding that while these are enterprise funds and they're outside of the quote property tax bill it's all the same wallet. So we were very sensitive of the rate increases. We actually took a little bit of money out of our water divisions reserves, capital reserves and as a revenue infusion to lessen the water rate increase. The our reserves are extremely healthy for a fund that is annually about $2.5 million a year. We have almost 40% cash on hand in our reserve. So we felt that was an appropriate move from an auditing standpoint and it does help lessen the rate increase and gets us back down to that 2.9% water increase. Whereas if we had just absorbed all of the justifiable increases that Joe had mentioned without trying to adjust anything we would have been closer to 6%. So that's how in totality that's how we arrived at the various rate increases. And those are the highlights. And there's also some CIP projects that were included in Tom and Martha's discussion earlier that I'm happy to answer questions on now or later as well. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Are there any questions for Justin? How about from the public? I think Barb service, did you wanna ask a question? I just wanted to toss in my usual comment. As we look at a rate increase we still have inequity and we're not doing anything to incent conservation of water and it's an important resource that we don't wanna waste. So I'm still hoping that at some point we will be able to have a more equitable way to assign the water part. I'm not objecting to anything that's being done other than it would be nice if we could do it a little bit more equitably and basically incentivize people to be more careful about their water usage. Thanks. Okay, thank you. Kevin, did you wanna make a comment? And then- Yeah, I do. I really do wanna recognize Justin on something. This grant we got from the state related to the airport parkway plant. The only reason we got that is because Justin figured out how we could advocate for this money and he got very tenacious about going after. This is a huge impact for the rate pairs and for debt and it opens the door to savings at the plant and elsewhere. And this kind of goes beyond just a normal recognition. The city owes Justin a lot for tracking this down and getting this done. And I just wanna recognize it on the record find other ways to do it well but this is a lot of money. So Justin- Who knows to Justin? Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we have another public person. Yes, whoever raised their hand. Yes. I think it's Megan. Oh, that's Megan. I didn't recognize you. Oh, that's so funny. Sorry, you keep changing in your background. I know, we're up in the mountains and so I don't have my usual- I hear someone. Okay, I'm sorry. Yeah, I don't have my usual little hideaway. So I'm having to escape the crowd. I did have a question regarding the sewer expenditures and I just was curious, there must be new people coming on board here with the group health insurance, the group life insurance, the dental insurance, the pension, just seeing upticks there. I'll defer to Tom Hubbard on those administrative costs. Coming. Here I am. So yeah, we did a really in-depth analysis of all the enterprise funds this year and developed a new comprehensive schedule for all the employees. So these are more reflective of actual costs that are coming out. And we did this across the board with all the benefits. There was, we did have a fairly significant raise to our water quality employees this past year, Megan, to keep them competitive because of the certifications that are required for them and their job and to be able to keep them here because even though I know Dennis is listening in, we have neighboring towns that are looking to steal some good people and that hasn't happened with Essex but it's happened with other towns around us. So to remain competitive, we did bring those salaries up and that's reflective as well in some of the costs that you see. Yeah. But in addition to the salaries, there's also the health insurance that's up by over 25%. Yeah, again, it's more truly reflective of what's actually being paid out as we did the in-depth analysis. It's gonna actually help the general fund but I'm sure Justin wasn't happy to see the figures either as they came out of the enterprise accounts but it took us quite a while to do the analysis. I think it was worth doing. Okay, all right. Thank you for that. And we've added, is it one more person, Justin, to the water quality than we had? I know we're looking to fill a position as well but. Yes. But that also accounts for an additional employee as well. All right, thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? Seeing none, I guess we can move on to item nine then thank you very much, Justin. This was excellent and I appreciate you pointing out the highlights and Joe as well. Thank you. We'll move on to item nine, council review discussion of possible approval of the FY 2022 draft general fund budget and we'll go to Tom Hubbard for that. Okay. Now I can recognize you making your pictures bigger. It was so teeny. And we'll have Martha pull that up. I guess Helen, I'd like to start with just some general comments that they shared with the council at the last meeting. This is one of the most challenging budgets that we as a team have really submitted to the council. And we all certainly understand the reasons behind that. Before I begin, I really wanna extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to all our department managers on working with us to develop a budget that reflects and responds really to the fiscal crisis that we're in as a result of the pandemic. But none of us have ever gone through this before and with Kevin, we continue to be thankful, continue to be proud and honored to work alongside each of our department managers to work alongside each of you as we continue to move through this. And we still have challenges even in the rest of this year as we're only halfway through fiscal year 21. So we're bringing forth a budget that has compromises, it has sacrifices and in some departments it has reduced funding for services. We're responding in a way that we believe to be fiscally prudent and responsible given the challenges that we're facing. While you as a council are aware, because you've heard me say this a number of times of what the major impacts are on the budget this year, we recognize that there's maybe people from the public that are hearing this for the first time. And I'll go through some of those and hope that this will help prepare for discussion tonight. I'm mainly gonna outline some of the more significant increases and decreases that are projected. And to be honest, I'm actually more concerned about the reduction in our projected revenue than the relatively small increase that we have in expenses for FY 22. The proposed budget is 0.98% increase in the tax rate. So just under 1% it assumes a 1% growth in the grand list as projected by our assessor. And this is understanding that the real grand list numbers will change once the reappraisal is complete. But this provides really the only true measure of how residents can determine what the impact is of this budget and what that will have on their taxes at this point in time. And how it compares to recent budgets. So this kind of puts in apples to apples kind of comparison in terms of what these numbers mean. And based on what's being proposed, what that means to the average taxpayer is an increase of $13.01 for the year for the average condo and an $18.76 increase for the year to the average homeowner. The total increase in expenses in the general fund is just under $146,000, but the revenue is down almost $262,000. And that's largely due to the impact with a reduction in the projected local options taxes. So looking at some of the major expense factors that we have a number of cost drivers that we've identified, these are agreements with our three bargaining units, health insurance and pension increases, workers come, property tax and liability increases, reduction in the interest on our investments. We've actually gone from a 2% interest rate to a 0.25 interest rate. And we don't expect that that's gonna rebound quickly. There's increase in funding needed for the opening of the new library. And there's the decrease in the revenue from the local options taxes previously mentioned. All told, these items alone, just these factors account for nearly $1.3 million in costs. So let's look a little bit on the revenue side. We were able to conservatively project a 1% growth in the grand list. The city clerk revenue remains high for recording fees and vital records. This has been substantial over the last few years. The city has an additional tenant at Gregory Drive, as you know, as the city now owns the building and we have two tenants. The fire department is projecting to be able to maintain the fire inspection fees and increase in revenue for ambulance fees as we go to the third party billing. And the city also retired some debt this year that was due on the public works building that accounted for about $100,000 between principal and interest. Unfortunately, these revenue factors don't outweigh the budget impact. So significant cuts were necessary. Some of those have already been shared. We've had additional cuts to the CIP as discussed earlier tonight. We've had cuts to various line items that have been noted in the general fund. We've had cuts to both the designated and undesignated reserve funds. And we've had a number of staff positions that will not be filled. We've talked about this, but the following positions have either opened up since the pandemic or were approved positions in the FY21 budget that have not yet been filled. These include a patrol officer, a firefighter, city planner position, the deputy finance officer, a parks laborer and a benefits administrator. Additionally, several positions are proposed to merge from two separate positions into shared positions. Really a total of nine staff positions that are not included in the budget. Obviously these decisions have not come easy and they've been carefully examined and reviewed. Our department managers are aware and our understanding of where we currently are fiscally. And this will have an impact on the level of service from departments some more than others. I shared some further information for council to consider regarding the fund balance at our last meeting, the fund balance for FY20. This provides the council with some additional options should you choose to allocate any of that money towards FY21 or FY22 or leave it in the city's fund balance. Again, I shared at the last meeting that several of the library one-time expenditures are proposed with a fund balance allocation. And I know Jennifer will be speaking a little bit more about that. But we're really all here, all department managers here to be engaged in some back and forth discussion related to the budget impacts, to the level of service, to the loss of positions and any other questions or comments from the public or the council that we can respond to. I would just like to point out that most departments are facing budget cuts on areas within their budget that they actually do have some control of. This is many areas of the budget that they don't. Some that we spoke to earlier with increases in insurance, bargaining unit agreements and such. So separate budget reviews from each of them probably wouldn't be pertinent for tonight. But to start things off with the proposed increase in funding that will be required for the library based on the opening of the new facility, I'd like to ask Jennifer to give a brief overview, a follow-up really to what was presented from the trustees to you back at a prior council meeting and then open up for a general discussion and question with all our departments. So Jennifer, if you're set to begin, I'll turn it over to you at this point. Okay, thank you. Hello council. I wanna start off by congratulating you because suddenly now FY22 is gonna be the year that you're opening a new library. And it's not finished yet, but when you think about all the decades and all the councils and all the trustees and all the residents who've been wanting a library for so long, it's exciting that we're finally in the fiscal year where this is really gonna happen. So congratulations. So Ted and Patrick gave you a presentation about our proposed budget. The last meeting and you have that information and I just wanna go over some of the basics. We know that the city is in, fiscally is in trouble this year. And so what we came up with as a plan because most of our added funding was for staffing. So what we've done is we came up with a budget for that for the first six months of FY22. The library would only be open for 40 hours a week and which we would be able to do with only an increase of 1.5 FTE. And while this option drastically limits staff and public use of library spaces, it does open the library to the public six days a week. And so our hope is that our plan is to start there and then over time to maximize the space for programs and services so that we can achieve what the building was designed to do. So after the first six months, the second six months beginning in January, the plan is to open more evenings, allowing for more programming by the library, other departments and public groups. And at that time after being open for six months, we'll have a better picture of how new populations are using the library and then we'll add staff to fill those evenings, but in a way that is appropriate to who's using the library and how they're using it and how they want to be using it. We'll be asking questions like, are we seeing the Marcot students coming in after school as we anticipate? Are the teens coming in after school? Are they staying on into the evening? And are we programming for them or are they just need space from us? Has the book circulation doubled, which libraries that open new buildings often are saying that their usage doubles? Is that gonna happen for us? And at what rate is the public reserving meeting rooms? So those are some of the questions that we'll have some data from from the first six months and then we'll be able to get the right people in place to make sure that we can open the library for additional hours and address the appropriate needs for the second six months. Tom mentioned the fund balance and the line on the budget is library equipment and I believe it's around $26,000 and that is for one time purchases to self-checkout machines. Self-checkout machines, when I visited a lot of libraries, they're very popular. They're useful. They mean we don't necessarily have to add a lot of circulation staff because once people get used to them, they might choose to go to them. So this is adding two of those self-checkout machines for us to have in the circulation area of the library. So if possible, it'd be great to get those from the fund balance. So opening the library has long been a community dream, as I mentioned, and this budget for us keeps additions to a minimum for FY22 because we are doing our part in keeping expenses low while also making the new library available to all residents. And if you have any specific questions, I'm happy to answer them. Are there any questions? I would agree. It's very exciting. It's pretty cool. All right. So who's up next for the general fund? I think at this point, Helen, we'll just open it up to questions on any of the budgets. And Martha can pull up the different sheets if you'd like to hear from any of the department managers about any of the impacts on their budgets. They're all here, so feel free to call upon them. Okay. Are there any questions? Tim. So just quickly, the revenue shortfall, Tom, is mostly due to the local meals tax, right? Yeah, it's about a quarter of a million dollars that I'm hoping that's a conservative number. It's gonna be more of an impact this year, Tim, but I'm hoping by the full fiscal year of FY22 that we're able to give back to some normalcy. And I think by FY23, we can go back to the numbers that we've been looking at over the past couple of years, which were substantial in offsetting some of the costs in the general fund. Have you seen, I mean, the numbers from the state in terms of the sales tax, does it indicate that you don't have any way to differentiate? We talked about the support between internet sales and local sales tax, right? You have no way to tell the difference. We don't, and this will be a key one because the next allocation that we get in mid-February, and that will include the period of about mid-November, I think around the 14th of November, through mid-February. So we'll have the whole holiday season in there. It's usually our biggest take in terms of local option tax money. The sales tax on the first allocation that we received was pretty close to what we'd received in past years. It's the rooms and meals that have really taken a hit. Do you ever talk to the Burlington, your Burlington counterparts, because they receive their local sales tax directly to them, it doesn't go through Montpelier, right? Correct. And so if they... That's an agreement that they have with the state. The state doesn't have that offer to any of the rest of us. But Burlington then received a remittance from the state which is represented by the internet sales, right? I believe so. So do you know if their ratio looks like there has been expanded use, I mean, I'm sure there has been, but I'm just curious what the percent difference is in internet revenue versus local normal sales tax revenue and I'm just curious because they're the only ones that could give you that ratio difference over time, right? Yeah, I would love for the tax department to be more willing to share some of that data with us. Maybe they will. I mean, they're going through the same shortfall that we are. A decrease in the local options for us is a decrease for them as they take 30% of it. So we should all be concerned about where is that coming from? And I would love to have access to that information. My second question really quickly, Helen, is that the positions that won't be filled, what impact do you think that will have on the city or its services or the residents themselves? If you can quantify that? I think we can by having some of the department managers speak to that point and maybe we'll start with Paul Conner. Paul has a fairly small staff. The city planner position is not being proposed to be filled and maybe Paul can talk about the capacity that he envisions for his department and then have some of the other managers speak to some of the positions being cut as well. Paul, you wanna kick that off? Sure, thank you, Tom and thank you, Tim, for the question. I think as Tom said, this is a challenging budget for all of us, but we're all trying to recognize that this is also a challenging budget for all of our residents. So as Tom described in the planning and zoning department, the proposal was to not fill the city planner position. That was a position that was voluntarily vacated this past summer. What the effect in our department on that is, and therefore to the public is, essentially we have certain required functions that we have to do and those are on the permitting and the development of view side. There are statutory requirements, there's local zoning requirements, there's due process requirements. And so that's, we will continue as best we can largely unimpeded in that section, which means that the side of it that gets affected is more the long range planning side, the voluntary actions, the city. And so that puts us into a position where we have less capacity, one fewer person capacity to take that on. We are mitigating that a little bit by proposing to retain the consulting budget to be able to continue to help get the assistance from the Regional Planning Commission with some of their staff time that they've helped us with. But essentially what it means is that our ability to take on new projects or big projects is reduced. And so we'll have to pick a couple of big projects in a year rather than three or four. We have some efforts that I know people have been excited for a long time for us to take on, like updating our official map that's 15 years old or bringing in some new standards, whether they're related to housing affordability or energy or things like that. And we'll have to, with the position unfilled, we'll have to prioritize working closely with the Planning Commission. And then I guess the last thing I'd say is that we have had, there's been a fair amount of interest in our community in doing more implementation of our plan that isn't just about regulations. That's about whether it's a developing a climate action plan or it's working on sustainability across departments to embed it into our decision making or it's setting up pop-up markets for our local entrepreneurs, that kind of sort of implementation without it always being about rules. That's gonna have, without the city planner position or position like it being filled, that's limited capacity to take those things on. Thank you. We have a patrol officer that a fire fighter. I can't remember who else was cut or not filled. I know that Justin has some significant cuts in DPW between the paving and some of his fleet, the fight against the emerald ash borer. He had a position for parks labor position to be filled in FY21. So that hasn't been filled this year. It's not proposed to be filled next year either I think we're all in agreement that the position is needed and it's a matter of trying to fit it in where we can. But Justin, you wanna speak to some of those items? Yeah, thank you Tom. So in a pre-pandemic world, we contemplated the growing size of wonderful park and recreation options in the city of South Burlington as well as areas in which we felt we could do better. So in addition to having more assets be Underwood or the new city center park, the new Market Street stormwater pond, we also thought the city could use some beautification, planting beds along the median on route two over the interstate, some sort of attractive landscaping feature at Dorsa and Williston Road. So both of those items were contemplated in the FY21 budget. It's the tune of a $75,000 landscape contract and a new staff position. Well, in FY21, the administration authorized us to spend 35,000 of that 75,000. And we did that in upkeep at Overlook, along Market Street and at the Market Street stormwater pond and in city center park. That obviously those functions need to be annual. That is back in this year's budget, but at $45,000. So it allows us to do maintenance in the areas that I've described, but it doesn't allow us to do some of the enhancements that we had contemplated as part of the FY21 budget, putting it together. Additionally, the staff position remains unfilled. So while we were growing these, that while we have more assets, we need, we just, we simply need more people and our inability to provide maintenance, I think was, well, I know I heard it and I'm sure others did either heard it or felt it. Like for example, something as every day as along the bike path come August, once that overgrowth starts crowding you when you're coming up from Farrell up to Spear Street. If there's more leaves, if you're encountering more debris across the path that you normally would, that's because we, you know, the labor hours in addition to people being on furlough, we just have more things to take care of. So through the new position as well as the expanded maintenance contract and beautification contract, we were hopeful to be providing increased levels of service to the city, certainly going forward at least for the next 18 months that's off the table for the time being. Tom did mention our fleet is now at, yeah, I think it's at $225,000 within public works to put that number in perspective. When you see a full-size plow truck going down your street, that costs between $160,000 and $180,000. And we kind of need to replace the one of those every year based on the number of them we have and the number of routes and their life cycles. So this year we're gonna have to choose, do we not, because, you know, once we buy one of those, there's not much money left. You know, we don't buy pieces of equipment that costs $3,000. So we're gonna have to choose, is this a year where we buy a bunch of pickups or do we just buy one big truck and probably not much else to be, you know, so that speaks to a couple of things, level of service and that will be relying on an older fleet, which is gonna result in more downtime, which is gonna result in increased costs in our maintenance parts wide item budget. You know, so these things, there's a snowball effect, obviously. And then the last one that Tom mentioned that I'll cover is paving. We had initially proposed during last year's budget development that we would be up to a million dollars by now in paving. We're at $700,000. So yeah, that's just, again, it's gonna be more money we're gonna have to spend on potholes because that threat $300,000 is, it's one big project or it's honestly, it's probably five to 10 neighborhood-sized streets that are just off the table at this point. And to give you a direct example of what that meant this year with the pandemic, with the cutback that the council approved, we basically only spent half of our paving budget. We have folks that live over off Patrick Road on Archer and Larber. They are desperately in need of new pavement and the money just simply wasn't there this year. So we hope to get to those folks this time around but there'll be another large, there's another large in Arber every year. So does the pothole funding come out of paving? So that's in operations. Okay. The potholes are funded through operations. The paving contract is the large number that Martha has highlighted here. Thank you, I believe those are Tom, so, hi, Megan. Did you have a question, Megan? Oh, no. Yes, go. One minute, let her out. All right, thanks. I have just a couple of questions. First of all, is there gonna be no more cleaning service? You all are gonna be doing the cleaning. Is that what I'm to understand by that budget line going to zero? So this was... Are you talking about the city administration budget? Yeah, yeah. Municipal building cleaning supplies went up $11,000 and the cleaning service went down $30,300. So what we're doing there, Megan, is we're opening up the new city hall and we'll be hiring custodians as part of the operations for that building which we'll need, we'll need somebody during the day to assist with set up with some of the different function rooms and just general cleaning and then somebody at night to also assist with cleaning and to be there for security for the building and lockup. So those positions will be filled and the facilities manager will come online in fiscal year 21 and we'll oversee all the different buildings and we'll determine whether or not we continue to keep cleaning contracts private or if we are able to have our own cleaning crew that would be able to go around to the different facility buildings. We've got the whole 19 Gregory Drive now that we'll be responsible for and we need to look at things more comprehensively like HVAC for all our buildings. I think, Justin, how many units you got on top of yours over there at Public Works? Quite a few. He's muted, but I think he's... Three or four. Yeah, but just looking at all the different HVAC needs for the facilities and looking at that with Lubrizzi and the energy committee and just looking more comprehensively in terms of what we can do with maintenance. So the maintenance cost that's coming out of the budget that you see was the cost for the service that we contracted with. And that has been planted into... Let me just see if I can... I see that City Hall maintenance went up $19,000, but... Yeah, so that's where some of that went into that and I think there's one other area. The building cleaning supplies went up because I know there's a number of things that we're gonna need for the new building, for the custodial services that will be startup expenses. So I think it was a wash between what we were paying on the City Hall side of things for services and then a library budget is picking up a balance of some of the maintenance costs for the building. I think Alana has a percentage of 68% of the costs for the building and utilities are library and 25% roughly are City Hall. And then the balance is the common areas in the senior center area. So that's where the different costs are coming from. It's really a shifting there, but not an elimination of them. Okay, and under information technology, I see utility services has gone up, not quite doubling, but I'm just curious about that. Yeah, Mike, are you on like Michael Mott? I don't think you've met our new IT network administrator since I'll laugh. I did in the office, I think, I did in the office. Let's see if Mike is on here. I'm not seeing him on right now. I apologize, I thought I saw him on earlier. So he's probably having an issue connecting. He's- I thought I saw him on earlier. I'll get you some more information on the IT. I know that a good part of that is for support services for the new building. Okay, all right. And then I know that we didn't hire someone in finance, but we have a consulting assessing. So we're gonna have a consultant helping Martha out or- Yeah, so what we propose to do there with the reappraisal being complete, Megan, is taking the tax assessing and the tax collection of positions and combining them into one position. I think that- Tots retiring. Pardon me. Tots retiring. Todd will be, yeah. And we're thinking with all that information and data up to date that at least for a couple of years that one person could probably manage both those operations. We can- We still have somebody that helps Martha even now at the Welcome Center. And we would- We've also put some consulting money in there so that as inspections need to be done offsite by an appraiser, that we could have someone go out and do that without hiring another full-time staff member to do it. So that is one of the areas where we're taking two positions and combining them into one position. I will have a question about, yeah, what we'll do when we come back to perhaps full employment. And I also see that our printer and copier lease is decreasing. Are we having a change there? We owe most of the printers and copiers now because they're old. But you have that couple of years where they're old but they're still good enough to be able to perform what you need them to do. There's gonna be a time soon here that we're gonna need to replace some of those. We're working with SimQuest to look at the new building in terms of having all of City Hall together, looking at our existing machines and kind of figuring out what is most needed there in terms of a shared kind of a system that we can utilize. And then they'll be working with our other departments as the copiers kind of age out in terms of what we can do with SimQuest in having them come on board and help us with those needs in the future. My last two questions have to do with fire and police. So I'll just give them a heads up there. So you had said that we aren't hiring a firefighter, yet I see that the salaries, the permanent salaries line is going up. Yeah, as our people become more senior, they increase in their steps. And we have another people who were maxed out on their lunch every day, that's reflected in that. We also have a contract obligations as well. So what does, we are down one and a half positions as a result of this budget and about $77,000 in our operating costs as directed by you folks. That's eventually gonna be catching up with us. We're authorized strength is 10 per shift with ADA on duty. Right now I have one shift that's down to eight people with no taxpayers because we have a person who is serving time in some place sandy with the military. And the other open position was a firefighter paramedic position that the person voluntarily separated from us. And what that means is that we have been very fortunate in the city has been very generous in trying to make sure that we have a paramedic for each apparatus. And even with that, we still rely on almost 700 mutual aid calls a year. Truth be known, we need another ambulance and more people, but the budget cannot support that. We will look to safer grants, federal grants and that type of stuff, but that's still a 75, that's a 25% match. And that's not something that'll be able to take advantage of in fiscal year 22. Doesn't mean that we won't be looking at it though. So really what it means is about the loss of the full-time firefighter position is that, if you're unlucky enough to be the third person called within five minutes and our paramedics are tied up, the third piece of equipment may or may not have a paramedic on it, which means that you may or may not get the best quality care that is available in the state. So that's always a risk benefit type thing. Operationally, probably our biggest hit was in our training. And we are fortunate enough that our personnel are trained not only in fire and EMS, but 10 of 16 other disciplines that are within the fire service. Those certifications are gonna run out in 23, fiscal year 23, and we're gonna have to budget for that. Otherwise, things like confined space, which every industry in the city that has confined space in relies on us for their confined space rescue. We don't have that ability anymore. That means you'll have to go to a third party, which may means you might be waiting for an hour and a half to two hours to get help. That's not a position the citizens or you folks or I want to be in, but this is the reality of what these budgets are and these budget restrictions that we have because nobody has a money tree in their backyard. We're still seeing people in spite of COVID needing EMS response. As you know, firefighters is cross-trained and some levels of firefighter too is a minimum and they used an EMT and all the way up to EMT paramedic. And those calls aren't going away. They're increasing. In fact, December was our busiest December in month with 353 calls. And what we're experiencing is that we are getting simultaneous calls, which means that, for example, this morning we had three calls in 18 minutes. The fourth call came in and my fire inspector took it and we relayed on mutual aid to come give us an ambulance in two of those cases. So that's becoming more and more typical. But again, we understand the fiscal responsibilities that we all have towards keeping the budget where it needs to be. But a cautionary tale is, it is going to catch up with us in about 18 months. So we just need to be aware of that. And remind me why in 18 months? Because of the... It takes lead time to get the recertifications done for those 10 or 11 other specialties. The certifications are good for two to three years. And they have to be recertified just like our EMS and fire service stuff has to be done. Which line is the training line? That is, great question. I see new employee training. Yep, no, it's not new employee training. It's about a 30,000 dollar hit on training itself. Martha, I think you could have go down a little bit more. Ah. We just missed it, Martha. Go up just a little bit. Training schools? Yeah, training schools. It's, should be above that. I'm gonna get to my page. I can read my page easier. Bear with me just a second. Yeah, I'm on my page too. Megan, while he's looking for that, I'll say also that we combine some of the things together. We're trying to reduce some of the different salary categories within fire and ambulance. So if you look at the FICA line for total salaries, you'll see that there's really only a $9,700 increase in the FICA there. So the increase in the salaries that the chief was speaking to earlier is really reflective of the bargaining unit agreement. And this, and we don't have to increase it as much because we're short to one employee. So that's kind of, might be a better way to kind of measure what the impact is there. And that's actually. We've made some of these together in salaries. And Megan, that's actually reflected in the firefighter overtime for training. Our current union agreement requires a certain level of overtime for these things. If we're doing high angle rescue, we really can't do that on duty or ice rescue because you're out in the middle of the lake through the water and suddenly you have a call, it's gonna take you more than three minutes to get out of the water, get redressed and get back and same thing with, you know, any of the other things can find space. If you're in a little tube someplace, it's gonna take you a little time to get extricated out of that and then go to the call. And that's not something that is responsible nor a good training because we can't focus on what we're supposed to be doing. Right, right. And how about the next line, the emergency call? So what you were talking about earlier? The emergency call is when we have to hold personnel over, typically on a call it comes in at 7.45 or so. And suddenly they're held over for an extra hour, an hour and a half, two hours. Couple of cases we had multiple, we had a multiple alarm fire, the whole guys, a whole shift over for two and a half hours or whatever while we're mitigating that emergency. So that's where that over time emergency call comes in. Thank you, Mark. Let me ask a question, Charlie. Yes, I'm sorry. I was looking at the lines and not you, sorry. Chief Francis, this is my sixth year on the council. And I remember my first year even running before I was elected to the first term. I heard about the rumbling in the backgrounds for a second. I'm not sure. And it's, I'm sorry, councilor Armead. I didn't hear that. So my question to you is what metric should we be watching? I just heard you say 700 calls once a mutual aid agencies. What other metrics and how closely should we pay attention to this over the coming two or three years to start asking the question if we as a community are in need of or when we will identify that we are in need for a second ambulance. Yeah, so that's a great question. And truly the metric is kind of an industry based metric is that when you start when you get start transporting over 2000 patients a year is when you need to start really implementing a second ambulance. And this year we transported a little over 1800 and when our calls are going up by a hundred between the average is 125 calls a year. So if you use that metric within two years that second ambulance really needs to be in place and operating, that's a substantial cost. That's seven people. It's a $300,000 ambulance. The good news is we have a station that now has bedrooms in it that we could put the right put people in and keep COVID compliant, which we're gonna have to maintain for certainly another six months or so. So we're taking steps towards that but the big ticket item is probably gonna be $800,000 or more for personnel, personnel and equipment. But that's the metrics we use. Tom, I think the chief will agree with me when I say that I think we seriously have to start looking at a more regional kind of an ambulance service or fire department service that I feel our team could really lead because as the chief referred to, we've got a lot of paramedics on staff. And as you look at the costs and then look at the metrics that the chief is talking about, it starts to become a bit unsustainable for any one community to be able to absorb those kinds of costs on a year in, year out basis. And as we look at regional dispatch, I think we've got to start looking at regional ambulance and regional fire as well in terms of combining some of these services so that more agencies are getting a better bang for their buck and municipalities aren't gonna go into the hole trying to fund separate operations and be able to sustain the number of firefighters and rescue personnel that we need to be able to respond to the calls that are coming within Chittenden County. And I know we respond to mutual aid calls as well but the chief already gave you a number of mutual aid calls that are already coming into South Burlington. I think regionalizing that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, this is a better part. If you're looking at that model, the regional dispatch has to be a significant part of that because it allows a dispatcher to track what assets are available, where they are and all of that. You know, Sean's people do a good job with a lot of times one person on duty but it's a little ridiculous when the dispatcher has to pick up the phone and call five different agencies to say, do you have any ambulance? Do you have a fire truck when it could be done at a touch of a button? And it's not from lack of trying. I've been doing this more years than I care to reflect on but looking at the picture in the camera here, I'm like, yeah, I'm old. And, you know, for well over 40 years we've been trying to do a regional dispatch and, you know, maybe it'll happen before all my teeth fall out but I won't be bothered about it. It's gonna happen sometime in FY 22, Terry. It's in the budget. Great, look forward to that. Chief Burke has put his slide on so you're gonna tell us the impact of not having a patrol? Officer. Yes, thank you very much for the time this evening. It's good to see everybody. You know, the way we're currently staffed, we have patrol full and that's really the spine of the dispatcher, the organization, the critical components. We have our vacancy in youth service currently in given, you know, what's going on at the school in terms of in-person learning on a full-time basis. That posture is working for us. I don't have any operational concerns going through fiscal year 22, even if we have to have a lighter footprint with the school district. And by, you know, as evidenced by recent cases we have the right allotment in other units to include detectives and sex crimes and our commitment to the drug task force. All those employees are doing a fantastic job in closing the cases that are headline. So I think we're good to go there. In terms of, you know, the cruiser, you know, it's always better on the maintenance budget to have newer stuff in our frontline fleet, but I'm confident where we are now that we can get through fiscal year 22 with the addition of two new patrol cars and we'll move around what we need to move around with things that we already own into less-front-facing assignments, whether that's converting it to a detective car, converting it to a car that's used in youth service. As long as we have our new equipment frontline serving the 24-7 demands of patrol, we should be in good shape. Okay. I do want you to know that you were highly complimented earlier on and I don't think you had joined us yet, but Councillor Chittenden wanted to make sure that you knew how impressed he and the rest of us were with the work on tracking down the hit-and-run driver. Well, thank you very much. That work goes all to the detectives that were here grinding it out. Very, very impressive. And it makes me miss when I was a cop. Now I get to toil with these numbers and answer really good and hard topic questions from the public. Great. Any other questions for Chief Burke? Tim, you just came on. Oh, Megan. Yeah, thanks and I'm sorry. I don't know. I think I'm having some connection issues. Can you hear me okay? We can. Okay. My question for Chief Burke had to do with, and maybe this is more for Tom, the debt service, how could we have cut the debt service in the, and I have a couple more questions with regard to the police budget as well, but with regard to the capital improvement plan, how can we cut that debt service? Can you still hear me? Yes. Yeah, I think they're looking for it. Okay. It went from 66,000 down to 51,000. The debt service will decrease over time up until I think the stations paid off in 2032, I believe. Martha probably has that in the long-term debt schedule. Those numbers are right out of our long-term debt schedule from the bond that we have for the building. Okay, all right, so there was not a decrease. So it was just the vehicle cruiser that was decreased. And find it, see vehicles and equipment. Do you have the account number, Megan, that you're looking at? I'm looking at the CIP. Oh, the CIP. I was comparing it to, yeah, I was looking at the CIP on the budget line at the same time, where it appears in the budget lines. I just wanted to confirm, I guess, that I was understanding the CIP. So nothing was cut from the debt service, but the vehicle replacement. That just decreased based on the payment schedule. As you can see, it will go down over the next few years on the CIP, eventually to nothing in 26, from the general fund. So it was just the vehicle replacement that was? The vehicle replacement decreased and then $2,000 out of the computer fund from 198. Okay, all right. Okay, so that takes care of that question. And are we having to renew all of the tasers this year? Is that why that's such a big jump? Yes, that's correct. The current devices are at end of life. So we have to replace up them all. All right, all right. That's just a hopefully simple question for you. The easiest ones you've had today, maybe. Thank you. Megan brought up a point about in the CIP, Sean, do you want to just speak to the communications computers and electronics? Cause in 23, you have a huge jump there. You want to just talk about that briefly. This is not for FY22, but for FY23 proposed. Yeah, thanks for bringing up that point. So in FY23, what I've included in the CIP would be in addition to our cruiser camera to also deploy body worn cameras. So our current posture now, we have our patrol fleet outfitted with cruiser cameras that load up to a in-house server that we maintain here at the PD. Moving forward, given the quality of these video platforms and the amount of video evidence that we would produce with body worn cameras, we would have to merge to a cloud-based solution, which increases the annual cost for storage. Compounding that is the generosity of the Vermont Record of Public Records law and how long we have to retain the lion's share of our evidence. So looking out on the horizon, if we were to move to a body worn camera platform in FY23, we would see in year one, going off the top of my head is about $64,000 in year one. And that would be for the hardware in first year of cloud-based storage. And then moving forward, it would be about $24,000 a year, over four years to have unlimited cloud-based storage for our video evidence. Now, hopefully, if there is a more concerted effort at the state level to have all of Vermont police outfitted with body worn cameras, I would hope that the state would at least entertain hosting some services through Department of Public Safety where we could subscribe as a larger body and perhaps improve those rates. But again, that's just a fleeting thought for me as I sit here, but I know that we need to get the organization in a place where we're seriously moving toward body worn cameras in the next year or so. It would be terrific, but at minimum in the next two years. Do any of you have body worn cameras right now? No, they were never contemplated here from the history I was able to kind of dig up within the South Provincet organization. It's not a great place to be, but it's not a terrible place to be because not only is there huge fiscal considerations with body worn cameras, but there's a lot of debate going on around the policy when police officers will operate these, how police officers will let people know that they are in operation, when police officers are required to turn them off, when an officer can or cannot mute their cameras. And that is work that is gonna be taken up this session by the legislature. There is a model policy out as part of the Department of Public Safety's modernization of policing plan. So I'm anxiously awaiting those results, having lived through developing or being part of the team that developed the Burlington policy, I think version 1.0 and maybe 1.5, these are really, really tough questions to answer. And I believe that once the state has a model policy that we can embrace and answer a lot of those questions, it makes a little more seamless transition when you're trying to operationalize body worn cameras because there's also, for new cops, it's terrific because you strap this device on their person and they build the muscle memory, just like when you get out of the cruiser and turn your radio on, you know to hit the button, you know to hit the button. But as an older cop, when you're deploying out of the cruiser, you kind of forget once in a while. So it's actually not only the training of how to operate it, how to engage with the software, how to store, categorize and account for your digital evidence, but we also have to build through scenario-based training that manual activation of turning that camera on because if you don't do that, you will have incidents where it's really an opportunity that they weren't activated. All right, thank you. Helen, I'm sorry. When I didn't have any more sound, I was asking Chief Francis about the hour and a half wait. I still don't understand that maybe he was describing it when I couldn't hear and I was struggling to get back on. But I just want to be able to understand what this one and a half hour wait is. I think it's important to understand this. Specific to our overtime? No. Well, was it? Yes, maybe it was under the overtime. That $6,500 expense that was reduced. Oh yeah, for emergency callback. So that is when an emergency call comes in at just before shift change. Shift change for us is at eight o'clock. The call comes in at 740 and the oncoming shift isn't there because they're not supposed to be there until eight. Most of our people are early. And members of the off-going shift have to go to the call. It's possible that they may be at that call for an extra hour if they're on the ambulance maybe an hour and a half so that each one of those individuals get time and a half for that emergency call past eight o'clock. I got it. All right, thank you. Took three times. I appreciate it. Not a problem. Okay. Other questions? Are there other department heads who would like to clarify or clear up with us? How the impact in the cuts will affect their service or concerns? I mean, I know you're all team players and you're not gonna wind, but I mean, there is no some reality to these cuts. So we do want to understand them. So Holly? Hi Helen. Hi everybody. Thanks. Certainly no winding, but I just wanted to kind of clear up in case anybody was wondering. We do have an accommodation to be hiring for a senior center director, even though we went into this fiscal year as a staff of five and hopefully we'll go out of this fiscal year as a staff of five, but we have had some administrative support that's kind of been shifted. So I just wanted to clear up that we fully anticipate hiring a senior center director and having that up and running to full swinging capacity as long as COVID allows and prepping for that now with some research into job descriptions and it's comparable salary pieces. And we're also a large portion of what was shifted was a registrar. And one complaint that we've been getting really for a long time, but certainly in the past couple of years has been that our registration platform hasn't been intuitive. I think our community is used to kind of an Amazon click and peg situation and we just didn't, we don't have a platform that supports that. So we've been doing a lot of work in the downtime through the past six months and researching new registration platform that is more intuitive and that is user friendly and also friendly from the back loading perspective. So the thought there is that we're not going to need as much support with registration services and so we've done some shifting there. So I wouldn't anticipate that we would see certainly a loss of functionality at all. We're gearing up for a full blown welcoming of the senior center and obviously with two program staff and still a special projects coordinator eager to get back into Suburban night outs and events and those types of things. So, we have accommodated for some shifts and expenses and revenues for programs because it will take some time to rebuild once we are able to get together and not have to physically distance anymore. So you'll see some of those but we don't really see an issue with what we're able to produce for the community. So just wanted to put that. Sorry. Happy to answer any questions if you have them. Okay, are there any questions? That was helpful. Well, who else is out there that we haven't heard from who would like to share some things. Thank you very much, Holly. Is there anyone else? Dave? Yeah, I'm not out there as in the audience but I just like to say that I really appreciate and it's one of my favorite parts about being and living and serving in South Burlington that the department heads and city management have worked so well together in a very tough time to craft a budget that will work. Everybody's taken their hits. Everybody realized that had to be done. Tom as usual has crafted an incredibly complicated budget and it better be a heck of a good teacher for the next time around. And I just wanna express my appreciation probably on behalf of all the council members for the great job you've all done in making this work and with a little luck we'll be out of it in a lot better place six months from now. So thanks, gang. Okay, any other questions? I totally appreciate those remarks. Tim, did you raise your hand? No, okay. Well, Megan? Yeah, I was just curious why the solar credits have nothing in the revenue line. I think they appear somewhere else. Martha or Alana, can you respond to that? Which one are you looking at, Megan, under which department? I believe it's under planning and zoning, planning development review. Can you scoot down to that one, Martha? Yep. There are no page numbers, I'm afraid. It's page 65 or 64 of the PDF. And you have the planning and zoning, the solar credit transfer in. So at one time before we had Lou on board, we were taking some money into planning and zoning and staff was working through that to address some energy efficient projects. When Lou came on board, that $40,000 got appropriated by council into the energy fund under city manager. So it no longer reflects in the, in solar credit money coming in from the landfill to fund energy efficient projects. It's all done through the money that we pay Lou, which is a portion of that $40,000. It's his part-time salary, but also some of the facility improvements that are done would come out of that account and through the revenue that's collected at the solar landfill that gets paid directly to offset the cost of the projects. Thank you. Thank you, Tom. Yep. Okay, Paul, your fate. Okay, no, he was just gonna answer that. All right, so I believe if there's no more questions, we have the option, or we can think on it a little for another two weeks, but we have the option to approve the three draft budgets, general fund, PIP, and the enterprise. I don't know if the council's ready to do that or we don't have to do it till the 19th, I guess, but we can approve it tonight. Megan? Yeah, so going back to Chief Francis, Matt, he doesn't have to answer. Not that he has to come online and answer, but is there any way to stagger shifts so that someone can respond to an emergency? That's a great question. Part of it is actually a fair amount of it is driven by our union contract, and we have not looked at doing that in the 50-year history of the department, not saying that we didn't. Other departments have tried it and has not been as successful as people would hope, but if that's the direction you want me to check it out, I'm more than happy to look at it. I do have a breakout of time of day calls, what day, that type of stuff, but generally we find it's just easier to move people all at one fell swoop, so that we work, we try to work as a team, each shift as its own team, and as it is, we have enough inter-shift swapping as it is because of vacation times and all of that, that can be a little bit more challenging to try to look at a gradual shift out. Certainly can investigate that and take a look at how it works with time of day. Yeah, yeah, because that seems to be, I mean, you're the judge, but me, the layman, it seems to be a problem that is crying for a solution. Yeah, and I think I've figured out what your other question was, was something that you asked about an hour and a half delay, is that what you had asked about? Yeah. Okay, that was regard with if we lose certification for the 11 specialty rescues, things that we do in addition to firing EMS for some of these other agencies to come to our aid could be up to an hour and a half or longer. And if you're in trouble, that's a long wait. Yep. Yeah, it is. But that's future in the future. And we have, you know, the next budget year, we'll take a high, we'll make that a high priority. Okay. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Are there any more questions now? Helen? Yes? I just wanted to clarify that the council doesn't have to decide tonight, but the last date that you have to decide is January 14th, which is before the 19th is your next regular meeting. Cause we have to send by our city charter, we have to send this budget off to the school district prior, so many days prior to the meeting that we have with them, which is tentatively scheduled for the 20th to share the school. So we can still set a special meeting, but I just wanted to clarify that date. All right, so I will put it out there. Are people ready to vote on this tonight? Sure. Okay. So can we make a single motion to approve for a vote by the public on meeting day, the general fund, the CIP and the enterprise fund budgets? Helen, I'm sorry, this is really clunky with this online format, but I just want to have the question answered by Tom. When we go back to full employment, when we go back to getting that police vehicle and we get to have people with the shifts being better serving the public, if we were to go ahead and improve this budget, what jump would that be? I mean, what are we facing going from a point, what is it, 0.98% increase to what percent increase next year? To be ready for the training, to be have the parks and rec, have people in place to help out in planning zoning and with our finance team and... I think we're probably going to be in that two to 3% range, Megan, but history has kind of shown us in the past that that's really what it's taken to maintain our level of service. So I'm just guessing a lot of that is going to be revenue-based if we can generate more on the revenue side of this and get back to a full even more money in the local options than we'd had coming in. That's been the biggest hit to us and it's allowed us to do some of the things that we wouldn't have otherwise been able to do. So I think that balanced with a couple percent up to 3%, probably kind of an increase would get us back probably to where we need to be. The paving and everything that's been taken out? Yeah, I mean, the only other way to look at this is the other options that you have is you could take money off the fund balance and that wouldn't impact the tax rate if you're adding to what's already in there. Or you go to a separate bond vote on a particular item and I'm not saying you would need to do that this year but if you wanted to look at a substantial paving bond you could do that in addition to the general fund budget that you're advocating for. You could say in addition to that X amount of dollars in a paving bond would get us this amount of work done that would allow us to maintain it more consistently in the general fund. So I think the council in future years is gonna have those kinds of decisions to make. In past years, many past years ago where we'd be able to save a certain amount of money a year to save up to a fire truck with the minimum increases that we've had that have allowed us to maintain the level of service those kinds of things have been sacrificed. So the next time that you come up for a fire truck or for any ambulance, I think you're probably gonna be looking at that as a separate ballot item rather than trying to absorb all that through the general fund which you just wouldn't be able to do without cutting services. So I think those are the decisions that are gonna be the difficult ones I think in the next couple of years. Do you have another comment, Megan? Well, just how soon is that fire truck coming? I'm looking. Vehicle replacement here. So that's fiscal year 23. Two years. Yeah. And that's because we're not setting aside any money ahead of time that we would have to go ahead and do a separate ballot item on that. Right? And how about for fiscal year 25 when we have 730,000 and fiscal year 26 when we have over a million dollars? Yeah, I think the chief could probably respond to that. I think some of those are placeholders. We obviously wouldn't be able to do a lot of that in successive years. But again, I go back to my point, Megan. I think we're looking at a regional service here. That's the way to go. If you look at the number of fire trucks and the number of ambulances that are around in Chittenden County, there's got to be a better way to utilize these services than having each municipality own and operate them independently. The chief could tell us how many different tower trucks there are just in this local area here. And I think those are, again, these are the tough decisions that I think are gonna need to be made over the next couple of years in terms of what the future of those of our public safety departments are gonna look like. All right. Regionalization is definitely. Okay. Did police vehicles fall into this discussion as well? I don't know if Sean's still on or not. I'm here. The police vehicles are more reusable on a year to year basis. There's not the kind of huge investment that it takes to purchase a million-dollar fire truck or a $400,000 ambulance. I think Sean is pretty consistent with, if he can get three to four cruisers, as many as four cruisers in some years, there's two for next year, but he's gonna be able to get one in a different way through a special fund. So I think those would probably continue to be required operational expenses that we would need. You still have to put an officer in a car. Sean, do you have anything more to add to that, Chief Burke? I don't. Thank you. Just our line does represent three cars with the projected costs. The police cars have gone up in price. Since the last time we purchased police cars, they went up 10%. I know there's some supply chain issues with that, and then the technology that's going into the emergency warning equipment is getting ridiculously expensive. But again, we are always in a position where we can likely go without one car what the CIP illustrates is that three to four car projection year to year, but our number is a lot more flexible than that that the fire service faces. Okay. All right, so you're welcome. So are we ready to roll this all into one rather large motion? Okay, so we have a motion to recommend for the voters those three budgets. So move. Okay, David move, two seconds. Okay, it's been moved in second. Is there any further discussion? All right, I will call the roll. You're ready for the vote. Megan Emery. Aye. Tim Barrett. Aye. Dave Crawford. Aye. Tom Chinden. Aye. And the chair votes aye. So we have approved the three budgets for ballot items in March, whatever it is, third or fourth. Okay. Good job. Thank you, Tom and Kevin and all the department heads for really a lot of work and thought that went into keeping this budget where you brought it in. I mean, I just think it's remarkable and I really appreciate it. Okay. Thank you. Moving on to 10. That really Diane Bugby's trying to say. Oh, I'm sorry. Diane, Bugby, you're on mute. Just a general question about what the council's plan is to communicate the budget with the community just because the implications of COVID, the changes, what's been eliminated, what the implications are in future budgets. I just wondered kind of how this budget will be communicated to the community. Well, hopefully really well. And I think the newsletter will provide one avenue, maybe Kevin and the newspaper. Kevin, do you have any other thoughts? I don't know as we're thinking about having any public meetings. Well, we'll have the public meeting with the school board to go over both of the steering committee. And then the night before the annual meeting we'll have our traditional budget session then. But prior to that, we'll certainly use the newsletter, we'll certainly use the other paper. And we're exploring whether or not a special mailing might be in order. We're not yet sure what the school district is gonna do with their budget and potentially another ballot item. We may do it in conjunction with them or we may do it separately. But we will certainly do as much or more than we've done in past year. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Good question, Diane, thank you. So moving on now, update on voting options for the 2021 Self-Browing to Annual Meeting. So, Donna, Kenville, what have you heard? Hi, everybody. Thank you for allowing me to come tonight. I know you've got a very cramped meeting tonight. And when I asked Kevin to add this to the agenda last week, the school board was meeting last Wednesday to discuss the same thing we discussed or you discussed a week plus ago. And so I was hoping to be able to report back tonight what they had decided. Unfortunately, they did not make a decision. They have postponed it till this Wednesday night. And I was not invited to that first meeting and I probably could have given some information and maybe nudged them along a little bit. But I have been invited to Wednesday night's meeting. And I don't know where the conversation was going. David didn't give me any indication of what they were thinking. So I don't know if they're looking to keep it on March 2nd. I don't know if they're looking to expand to push it back. I don't know if they're looking to kind of continue on as normal or to mail a ballot out to everybody. But I will have that. Hopefully, I told them, they really, I said, we were kind of promised it tonight. 1-4, you said you were gonna have a decision for us. So I'm pushing back at him to say that this Wednesday is the absolute latest I need to have to get it ready to get all my plans in motion. So see how that goes. Two of the things, I do have just two updates. One is I have talked to the postmaster. Because of the short timeframe we have from when we actually mail the ballots out to when they come in, it's about 20 days. Less than 20 days, if you count the mail back and forth, we're gonna have a lot of people that are gonna be dropping them off at city hall, whether it's our night drop or wherever. A lot of people are gonna be dropping them back off. And I really kind of hate putting postage on those things which are not gonna go through the postmaster. So I have contacted Jerome at the White Street branch who's been awesome to us during these elections to find out if there's something that we could do where something special on the post, we just pay for what's returned to us. If there's some type of system where they can keep track of whatever's returned to us to the mail, we'll pay. But we don't wanna pay for something that's not coming back through them. So he's looking into it and seeing of what options we have. So I'm looking at that to try and keep some costs down. And then I reached out to Paw Prints who is the company that we got a quote from and is ready to go about when they need our list from us to be able to, if we decide to go that route and the post pass and legislature proves it and all that stuff, what is the absolute last day they need to get the list from me to be able to turn around, create all the envelopes and start the stuffing. And they said the latest would be January 27th which is later than I thought it would be. So I think that's good news. So as soon as I hear from the school board hopefully on Wednesday night, they'll make a decision I'll be there, I'll hear it. And then that means Friday, Thursday morning I'll be able to start everything going announcing for petitions to be brought in announcing for people to hurry up and get your address as updated. If you want the ballots to go to a different location other than your home address just start the media blitz out there trying to get people ready for this election which I had more news for you tonight but that's okay, it is what it is. Well, you did some good leg work and are working on ways to maybe save some money with the postage and so that's all good. So hopefully they'll make a decision. I guess if they don't, we make it for them. Right? Yeah. So, okay, any comments or questions from other council members? Okay, well, thank you very much, Donna. Okay, thank you. Okay, item 11, council review impossible approval of fire district number two, land transfer and Andrew, welcome. Good evening, happy new year, everyone. Good to see you all. Happy new year. I also have Peter Taylor is also here to answer some questions from the fire district. Tom or Kevin, can you make me presenter? I think it would be helpful if we just show the map. It's probably the best way. Yeah. Honestly, Peter. Okay, I got it, we got it, great. Great, can everyone see this here? Right, so this is a project I mentioned in the memo that started back in 2015. It started with a request from the fire district based on some research they had done, discovering some land they did not realize that they had. It was of unknown, some of it of unknown origin but also it was the result of a land transfer gone wrong back in 1970 where the fire, if you look on the map here, it's up against the potash brook. I don't know if you can see my cursor at all. We can, but it is in this area right here. The original transfer, instead of referencing any deed, it basically used a line starting about right here and cutting directly to the southwest and it cut off a certain portion of lands and also went right through a property as well, which you can see here. This large triangle is the property that it cut right through. So the city of South Burlington received the potash brook nature area but the fire district number two retained the lands in yellow. Their request to the city was that we would take over those lands and kind of correct this defect and we've been working in the past five years to kind of come up with the resolve, any of the encumbrances that might be on the property. The most significant which was a deed restriction that was in the title of the developer to the fire district that restricted the land so it could only be used for school purposes, which is not what the intended use would be if the city does accept the land. We had to do a joint action in the civil court and that went through the end of last summer. There was also some trees that we asked to be removed that could potentially have some liability for the city. Those were all removed. So we're in a place now where we're ready to move forward with the transfer and accept these lands from the fire district. And the request in front of you is to authorize the city manager to move forward. Helen, can I ask a question? You certainly may. So Andrew, this is Tim Barrett. So looking at your diagram, the city wants to receive the yellow areas. Correct. And then the pink areas, do those have to be given back to the landowners or what happens to the pink areas, the triangles? That's a great question. So we noticed this other sort of encumbrance here, but since this was already owned by the private landowners, when the fire district did the original transfer, they actually did not have the right to transfer that land. So there is no need to clear that up. That being said, we've had contact with the current owners. And if there's any sort of a letter from the city or a quick claim deed to sort of resolve that for future land transactions that they had, resolve those encumbrances, we've certainly said we'd be happy to provide that if needed, although as it stands legally, I don't think it's necessary. So if that landowner wanted to sell today or tomorrow and somebody did a title search, would something pop up that would be questionable? It could pop up. I think a title researcher should understand that this was not the fire districts to convey at the time. So any title issues that would make it challenging for an title insurance company to do a policy or on the mortgage should not occur. And again, that's something that if there is that request when it comes in, I think it's something we can resolve pretty readily either through a legal opinion or through a deed if that's necessary. Okay, thank you. Any other questions or Peter Taylor, do you wanna say anything? No other comments from what Andrew said, but I just wanna take a minute, spend them at least a five year project. And I really wanna thank the city and the staff who've done a wonderful job helping us do all this and getting this already, a lot of moving parts. And Jim Barlow and Andrew have put a lot of time into this and I really appreciate their efforts. I guess that's all I need to say. I'll answer any questions if you have any. Okay, no, I remember this quite well. So I'm glad we have come to a conclusion, frankly. That's great. Me too, huh? Can I ask one more question? You certainly may. In 20 words or less, how many fire districts do we have in South Burlington and why? Ooh, I can give you the answer to that. I went through every annual report for the city. At one point in time, you had seven and today you have two, Mayfair Park District and Queen City. And I got a whole list of when all those changes, at least the years in which different fire districts were gotten rid of, but I'll send that over to Andrew just so somebody can have that in the records. What was the purpose of the Mayfair Fire District? Was this something that was done at that time to create fire protection or something like that? At that time, there were two main things I've heard about is they put an in-ground drainage system in way back and also they did some bug control. And those were sort of the two main functions I know of, we never had a fire engine or any other water system or anything like that that I know of. Okay, thank you. Chair Ruili, I would like to move to authorize the city manager to complete the land transfer with fire district number two and Margaret has legally by conveying a portion of South Road and noticing the same in a paper of general circulation within the city, submitting a minor lot line adjustment application and following removal of all private encroachments accepting conveyance of two parcels abutting the Podash Baroque natural area. Second. Okay, we have moved and seconded. Is there any further discussion? Okay, I'll call the roll. Megan, Emery? Hi. Tim Barrett? Hi. Thomas, Dave Crawford? Dave's still there. Well, we can go to Tom. Hi. When Dave, if he comes back to the chair votes yay. So we have a four, zero, one, and it passes. So thank you very much for your perseverance and thank you, Peter Taylor for making. Thank you all. I appreciate that. Close the book on that one. Yeah. Thank you. Okay, moving on now to item 12. This is the council discussion possible action on the South Burlington-Wanuski Burlington memorandum of understanding related to the externalities created by operations at the Burlington International Airport. This is something we've been working on the three communities for quite a while. And this is our final draft, we hope. The other two communities, I think they're voting on it tonight as well. I mean, you read through it and I think it's pretty self-evident. I would like to highlight that one of the issues that started the conversation on this was really about not tearing down any more houses in the airport area for noise mitigation. And so a couple of the, I think important whereas is include the current administrations and legislative bodies of all three cities believe that removing existing housing is not their preferred method of sound mitigation that all of the cities really desire a new noise compatibility program that includes a variety of techniques for ensuring compatibility of land uses. I think it's important to note the way it was structured clarifies exactly what things or steps each community is responsible for and most of them are the same. I think importantly, Burlington, agrees to pursue an amendment to add an amendment to their city charter to add a rotating seat for the city of Winooski to the airport commission. They've also, army. Did they do that? Because last time we met, you said that they were gonna pass that along to the Burlington City Council that night. Well, I think the Burlington City Council is dealing with that charter change to go into the legislature for this session. Tom's shaking his head. I'm under the impression they're putting it to the voters this time meeting day. So it's one of the four valid items. That was my understanding. And then it goes to the legislature and they typically take up those charter changes and act upon them before the session ends. They don't usually hold on to them. Thank you. And so then they also included, I mean, this took so long that they ended up developing a partnership with the Vermont gas systems. Frankly, thanks to Kevin Dorn to find the $550,000 match for the 10% match to go forward with sound mitigation or noise mitigation. And then an agreement that if additional funds are needed beyond that, that we all would advocate strongly in the legislature to find additional money or with our congressional delegation to find additional money from the FAA. And then South Burlington, we would explore options for creating compatible land uses in areas affected by the airport and build and compatible building codes for future buildings. Not a promise, but an agreement that we may look at some zoning changes there. We would also explore appropriate roadway and transportation network modifications. And we would, if need be, we would commit to funding local match portions of all NCP grants using the allocated local options tax collected from the aviation fuels. And then the city of Lewinowski had similar things that they would work on. And I think importantly, number four makes it clear that all three municipalities agree that we'll do everything feasible to ensure that general funds from all of those cities do not would never be responsible for the local match. And then we continue to work together. So I would encourage you, it's just a memorandum of understanding it's the artful language to maybe not promise the world, but at least put on a piece of paper the intentions of the legislative bodies in the cities. I think it's great work. I fully support what you brought forward and I'd be happy to move to adopt as presented. Okay. Is there a second? And a second from Tim. Is there further discussion? Great job. Okay, Megan. Yeah, yeah, we're close. We're really close. The only true commitment in it is that our fuel taxes will be used as the local match. That's the only true commitment. Everything else is explore to commit. Or they commit to exploring or it's dependent on approval and pending approval. The only thing that this commits to, and I'm gonna say it like I see it, is that they have access to our jet fuel tax fund. I think we discussed that and thought it was a reasonable use of that money. It is, it is a reasonable use of the money. But I just, I wanna say that I would love to have them commit to using airport revenues to meet the local match requirement. I would love to see that language also be seen as a legitimate use of that money. I do not see, you know, that they've committed to as much, I would say reasonable policy. And that's all I have to say on the matter, I guess. And I just wanna double check that, because I think it is reasonable policy for the airport to commit to it. Are we satisfied with the level of involvement? I know that they disbanded the technical advisory committee, is that correct? You know, I'm not aware of that. Paul, is he still here or no? Megan, I think this is Kevin. I think it morphed back into the so-called sound committee that existed prior to the development of the NCP. So the technical advisory committee is required by federal regulations in order to develop an NCP. Once that was approved, that function went away, but the sound committee came back. You'll recall the sound committee prior to the technical advisory committee. So I think they intend to continue to have meetings of the sound committee. And that will have residents from South Burlington participation. Yeah, and I think you probably will need to reappoint, as you recall, one of those resident representatives on the sound committee has moved out of the community and need to appoint other representatives. Right, right. I just, I want to make sure that all of the where as is are truly reflective of an inclusion of South Burlington. And, you know, I see that there is not an indication, you know, saying that they will look at South Burlington's development plans or, you know, things, planning documents. I mean, I think that was something that was a myth prior. You know, they moved ahead with plans without really consulting, not only our staff, but also the Synapsee, which was talking, you know, about planning for Chamberlain neighborhood. And I, so I, you know, I won't vote against this, but I would say we're not quite there if I were to have, you know, the version that I would truly feel comfortable with. I still feel that they have the upper hand. I feel that they have wiggle room to say, we're not going to do this and you have committed to doing this, which leads me with some discomfort at the same time. We can wiggle room to get out of this as well. Everyone can agree that any party shall have the right to terminate this. Right, which would be dramatic, right? It would be a dramatic thing for people to walk away from this. So I guess I'm more of a planner as opposed to someone who would jump ship. I would, but I know that this has taken a long time to get here. So I'm just, I weigh that. Well, I guess I will just say I truly believe that the intent is to include all three communities and they throw Williston in there too for information to improve the communication and inclusion of all the communities and their concerns about the airport. So I think that is the intent. If it doesn't say that specifically, I'm sorry, but I think it makes it as clear as you possibly can that at least the current administrations and legislative bodies are not interested in tearing down any more homes. Right, and I think that was. And I think that was a major, that was a good commitment. Yeah. Before it was just talk and this is on a piece of paper and then it's added, it took so darn long. You know, we got to plan and plan instead of pilot program. And so there's a lot more up-to-date information. That's why I won't vote against it. But yeah, I'm just listing my reservations. That's all. Okay, no, and I appreciate those. And that's, yeah, it's making sausage and sometimes it's doesn't have all the herbs that you might want in them or spices. Okay, so we have a motion made and seconded. Is there any other comments or debate or discussion? You ready for the vote? All right. Dave Crawford? Yes. Tom? Megan? Hi. And Tim? Hi. And the chair votes yes. And so we have agreed to this memorandum of understanding. Thank you very much. Okay, I am sorry. How many charter changes is Burlington going to present to Moncleer this year? I think we have four on the ballot this town meeting day. But I'll say this, I'm hoping to be on transportation. And Megan, all of your concerns, that you've heard me talk about this before, in this coming service and down in the legislature, I hope to actually accomplish change and how decisions are made over the Burlington International Airport. So I welcome advice on how to do that from on the transportation committee. I'm going to be calling Dave Kauffman just about every week to ask what I need to do to move this forward, to continue his good work from the 80s. Happy to work with you on it. In there, Dave. We're calling on you, Thomas. Thirty-three years ago. Tom, you were a little tight when we last worked on it, for God's sake. A little tight. Thank you. Yeah, he was probably at Central School. I was. Okay, so moving right along, the council appointment of members to a city manager, applicant review committee and direction to the committee. And I've been working with Kevin and have reached out to a number of people. He was going to identify some good candidates within the staff. And I reached out and got acceptances actually from everyone I asked. And I was looking for a broad variety of people who reflected sort of the interests of all the different committees and communities within South Burlington. So Linda McGinnis will serve. Donna Kinville offered. And I thought that that's really an interesting aspect to bring to consideration of the next city manager. Bob Britt, Peter Taylor, Diane Bugby, Katie Langrock, Bernie Gagman and Paul Conner, I think. Paul, I mean, Kevin, who did you ask? Paul. Oh, is that all? Well, I and Donna had already volunteered. So two people. Okay, and then I will join the committee too. And the idea is for them to look through all the applicants and make the first cut, not to the interviews, but looking through, we're developing a matrix that identifies a way to sort of check off or evaluate all the different characteristics that we outlined in the job requirements. And we know it down to one, two or three candidates for the council to review and make the final decision. So I believe we need to have the committee, I'm thinking they could probably get this done in one meeting, maybe two, but I think we need a motion to approve that committee to form that committee. And then if there's discussion, well, we can have discussion now if there's any discussion or comments people wanna make. I think it sounds like a great group of people will move to form that committee as announced. Okay, thank you. Second. And have we, today was a deadline, right? For applications? Yes, I believe so. Do we have any? Do we have any, yeah. I understand, Tom told me that there were 11. Oh, wow. So, we don't know who they are, but we haven't seen them, but Tom said, Jamie, our human resources staff person has received 11. Okay, and we intend to send out in hard copy and I guess electronic, all of the applications and the matrix and how we'll go about doing this. Evaluating them, so maybe with 11, I don't know how many they'll win or down. I may have missed this, you're representing the council, is that correct? I am. Okay, great. I think we could add more time than anyone. This is true. Okay, so we have a motion made and seconded. Are you ready for that vote? Okay, you can do an all in favor with the thumbs up, it's fine, we don't need to do, okay. Megan looks frozen in time, so. For me, I said I, I don't know what you're saying. No, I couldn't hear you and you're not moving, so I know you're live. Okay, thank you. So we'll start that and hopefully, I don't know in a week or two we'll have our first meeting and get this all settled sooner rather than later. Okay, item 14, council discussion of options related to legalization of various cannabis retail options and possible referral of issue to the economic development committee. I think Tom has been actively talking to a few people about this. He and I emailed back and forth with Kevin and I think this isn't an option, we're not ready to put this on the ballot, I don't believe in March, we got too many bigger fish to fry. And so this was a process I thought, well, let's have the economic development committee do their due diligence to see what this means for the city and I mean, I think there might be some positive tax ramifications and that would just be good to know. What are the pros and the cons? Because in order to have a retail outlet in our community, rather, you have to opt-ins, you have to proactively say, yeah, we wanna sell marijuana, have marijuana sold and their products sold in our community. So- What's the tax revenue percentage? You know, I don't even know. I know nothing about it other than it was just passed. I mean, I'm assuming it's probably the 7%? Unless it's at all, if it's food, maybe it's 9%. There you go. That's what someone needs to do the research and I didn't think we had the time or interest to do it in order to get it on the ballot. It's a really good question, is what possible revenue could the city see from an enterprise like that or multiple enterprises? Tim, the only tax revenue that's available to us is from the local option tax. The state decided not to share any of their tax revenue with the communities unless you have a local option tax. And so I'm not sure how we could estimate how much we would get from our 1% on the sales tax, but we would get something. I think the bigger issue is that the, I think the legislature set aside some pretty important details when they pass this and they're gonna set up this cannabis control board or something, cannabis control board that will be the regulatory body that will oversee cannabis sales in Vermont. And a lot of the regulation for doing that has yet to be written or even frankly talked about. That board hasn't been established yet. They are hoping to get their work done late in the spring, but there are a lot of unanswered questions right now. My recommendation is to just, is to do what Helen suggested and turn this, turn to the committee and ask them to monitor this and make a recommendation back. I'm sorry, Tom, I interrupted you. No, no. I just wanna, since you said that I've been discussing this, I met a gentleman at a Lake Champlain legislative mixer that's a gentleman who sent us this documentation. I am not endorsing fast movement on this. I don't think there's any reason to squeeze it onto this town meeting day. So I fully support directing it to the Economic Development Committee. I just want the council to hear that if we don't vote on it this town meeting day, it's likely we will miss the vote of the early rush of marijuana purchase and sales, but I am completely fine with that because this will start to go, will legalize marijuana about 18 months from now. So I'm thinking that if the next time that we'd be able to vote on this would be next town meeting day since there's no ballots in between. And that would probably have us come later to the game to allow marijuana to be sold in South Burlington. But I as one counselor and completely fine with that, I don't see any reason to rush action on this. I like what the chair is recommending by directing it to the Economic Development Committee. I completely agree with what Tom just said. I'm there. Megan, do you have a comment? I have your phone to your ear. Oops. Any other comments? I don't have a comment, sorry. That's okay. All right, so. Well, I understand referring it to the Economic Development Committee is one thing that we could do, but I mean, we just need more information, right? We need to know, it sounds like there's just too much that's unsettled at this point. And if there's not enough information that we couldn't even make a decision ourselves. So, I mean, you can refer to that kind of like the Development Committee, but I don't think they're gonna be able to do anything either. Cause they're not getting a lot done right now. More information than I think we have time to generate. And I really didn't want to ask any of the staff in COVID land with, you know, winnowed down positions across city government to take on something like this to research for it. So, I figured. No rush, no rush. Yeah, I'm not in a rush. I just thought that I don't know really how much stuff the Economic Development Committee has done and whether we tasked them to do anything, but this might be something to either get them to quit cause they're not interested or to dig their teeth into and find out, this is the answer to all our economic woes. I mean, that's what a lot of people think. Well, if you have a lot of economic woes, it might be the answer to your problem, right? Yeah, right. At least you'll feel better about it, you know? Exactly. Okay, so we will ask the Economic Development Committee to do a little due diligence and keep abreast of that. All right. Item 15, we're ahead of schedule. November financials. Tom. Yeah, thanks, Ellen. If you hadn't had enough of me yet tonight, I'm back again. Yeah, I was thinking, man. More finances. So just real quickly, these are the November ones. We'll have December probably at the next meeting, but we're 42% of the way through the fiscal year. We're still in the budget freeze. Revenues are at just over 38%. Expenses are at 33% right now. The expenses I'm not concerned about, those are the things that we can control. It's the revenue, again, here that concerns me. We talked about the local options tax earlier, but the building and sign permits, if we were supposed to be at 42%, we're at 11% right now in terms of what we take in for revenue. Fire inspection, we're at 17%. And the interest on our investments, which I know is not gonna increase much, we're at 7%. Those are big numbers that we're looking at in addition to what the shortfall in the local options tax might be. So again, as we move forward, it's really not the expenses in the budget. I'd love to get to the expenses, but we need to make sure we have enough revenue to be able to make some of those expenses like some of the things in the CIP. And I'm hopeful that our numbers in February with the local options tax will be better. I'm hopeful that as we get into the spring, that some development will start up again that we'll be able to have some more building permits and some more fire inspection revenue from. And some of those things are with timing too in terms of the season of the year, but anyway, they're lower than normal at this point. And just identifying those as additional areas of concern that we'll continue to watch as we move forward. Well, I'm sure glad you're around to watch. We will definitely be watching. Tim? Tom, has there been any effect on property tax revenue for the, normally we pay in November, December 15th was an installment date, right? December was, yeah. I personally know a family that received a late notice and so I'm just wondering, do you have an idea of how many people didn't pay on time possibly because they didn't realize and didn't look closely at their bill when they got it or? Martha tells me it was a very good turnout for getting the revenue in. In fact, even in November, Tim, we were at 46% of property tax revenue. So we were actually ahead. There's some people that pay for the whole year, right up front. Our number always is against a little bit, but property tax is a big number. So to have 46%, even in November, rather than 42% is still pretty good. And then December 15th payments came in really well. And I know that there were some that were late and she had said that this is pretty much the kind of the normal kind of number that we would typically have that were late. So I didn't sense that there was anything unusual in terms of the delaying in a month in terms of not getting it in, but I'm sure there were other reasons for it. So there was some chatter that I heard, I think maybe on Facebook or elsewhere where people were surprised by, the second installment being substantially larger than the first installment. And we all know why because of the late school budget vote. So there's a very good explanation, but sometimes people don't pay attention to the news and don't understand why installment one was lower than installment two and three. So we just want to put that out. Yeah, and it was in the mailer that went with the tax bill. And in that mailer, it was identified that the municipal tax didn't change. Right. What you're paying is what you're paying each installment in the municipal tax. So the reason it went up is because the school budget got figured into the mix and we tried to explain that as best we can and with help with the language from the school district, but there's always confusion or education funding is not a simple matter. I thought the different colored paper really helped too. I mean, I think it was like lime green or something when the first guy. That was Mark's idea that really helped. It looked like a real bill in a way. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Okay. All right, any other questions or thoughts for Tom? All righty. Any committees that people serve on that have met? No, but I do have an other business item. It's really quick. Okay. So no reports, then we'll move on to other business. The old shuttered Pizza Hut next to Koto's has been in its hideous. It's a, I don't know when it happened, but you can't miss it. It's this tremendous eyesore. And I just think it's a terrible thing to leave on people's minds when they drive into South Burlington. I don't know what we can do, but if you haven't seen it lately, it's hard to miss. Kevin, if you've heard any thoughts or if you've seen it yourself, I'd love to know if there's anything we as a municipality can do to have that be addressed. I will, I will look into whether or not we have the authority to reach out to the owner on this, Tom. You know, they're like building, which is clearly what it is right now. I'll look into that and I'll let the council know as soon as I can get a strategy around that. What, did we put in our abandoned building ordinance that we tried to work with a couple of years ago to address this type of thing? I don't know if we address the fact that it could be covered in graffiti. Like the house on Dorset Street, you know, next to Fulsham Farm Road, and that's not covered in graffiti, but it's literally falling down. It is, yeah. And all the windows are open and there could be squatters in there for all we know. And it's probably not a safe structure at this point, especially the barn, but Tom is right on. I mean, I feel so awful when I pass that building because it's like at our gateway, sort of when you hit the interstate before you hit it. And it is just a miserable mess of scrawl and color. And plus it's an awful building to begin with. Right. Yeah, it looks plastic. Yeah, it is pretty ugly. I mean, the people, they should just tear it down, tear it down and leave the cellar hole that would be better than what's there today. But you can't leave the cellar hole. No. Then, Phil, whatever, you know what I mean? Yeah, well, you tear it down and throw it all into the cellar hole and then pave it over. Who owns it? I mean, it must be a private, it's not owned by Pizza Hut anymore, if it ever was. I don't know who owns it, but we'll find out. I wonder if they still play taxes on it. Somebody is. Somebody is, yeah. Yeah. Well, I just have one other item and I just want to wish Tom good luck, enjoy the Senate. It's really a great thing. And I like the committees you've been assigned to, so that should be helpful for you, interesting for you and helpful to our city. The one thing that's not on your committee, and I think we forgot to include this to our legislators, but my understanding is that banks will not include in the mortgage the cost of solar panels on the roof, on the roofs, and I just think that's nuts. I mean, you know, I know they don't last forever, but nor does the furnace, but they don't give you a mortgage for your house accepting the appliances and the furnace because they don't last forever. And so I think that I probably should talk to Michael Sorotkin because he'll probably be back on finance and they're the ones who do that stuff, but we aren't the only community who's trying to push or encourage solar as an alternative. And, you know, we've made some requirements just have it solar ready. And, you know, Brian, Evan was telling me, well, yeah, it's an option, but they can't finance it. So they have to, you know, and you can take out a home equity mortgage to, I don't know, put a pool in or something, you know? So we're going on a trip. I mean, it's just outrageous. So anyway. So I was going to call Dave Coppin once a week. I was going to call Dave Coppin once a week. I'm going to call you Helen twice a week since you used to serve in the Senate. Well, I was going to have to get that done. Okay, well, I'll enter those calls. If there's no other business, a motion to adjourn? So moved. And seconded? Absolutely. And all in favor? You bet. All right. Okay, well, thank you. This was a long meeting and a, you know, full of lots of details, but yeah, there were excellent questions. And I hope the public appreciates what we did because that was a hell of a budget. Helen, can I ask a question off the record? Yeah. Has the city of South Burlington made any decision not openly necessarily as to what will happen if Burlington does not have enough police protection and you guys are being called to back us up? We're adjourned. So I'm hesitant to discuss it. That's why I'm asking the question. I'm going to drop off. But Helen, why don't you, when they're clustering. I'm before you go. Yeah, we're very concerned here. I mean, I'm sure they are. I would call Kevin after the meeting. I'll talk to you about it soon. I'll talk to you. I don't know if we've had any conversation and certainly our council has not. Our service. Yeah, since you, I'm sorry, I was going to do this before, but I didn't want to hold up the meeting. You all did a great job tonight. And everybody on the staff and the council should feel really good as a taxpayer. I am so impressed with the tough decisions you had to make. And I am grateful that you are taking such good care of our city. So thank you. Oh, well, thank you. Okay. So we haven't voted. We haven't actually adjourned. We had a motion. So all in favor. Aye. Okay. Aye. Good night all. Thank you. Bye-bye.