 Great. The general logistics for the meeting is anyone who's joining us remotely, please change your name display on your computer to your first and last name so we can know who we're talking to and who we get listed in the minutes. When you speak, please start by indicating your name and where you live. We ask you to keep your comments or questions to about two minutes and if you're speaking about a specific agenda item or anything else, please wait to be recognized before you start speaking. We have a couple of items changes to the agenda. One, item six, the street closure application for February 11th is going to be moved up to the consent agenda. Two, the city manager's review item 10 on the agenda is is going to be pushed back to probably to our next meeting because we had some technology issues involved in putting that together and with with those changes is everybody approve the agenda. Are there any changes anyone else knows about? Okay, hearing no objection, the agenda is approved. Next up we have general businesses and business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council about any item that is not on the agenda and we ask that you keep your comments to two minutes and Councillor Bate will assist us with the timekeeping and we will start tonight with people who are physically present in the chamber. Anyone want to be recognized? Steve? Steve Whitaker. Again, I protest two-minute limit. I've got a number of topics here that are constitutional. Elm Street that has not been plowed. The parking cars are on a tilt and it's very hazardous to get in or out of the cars on Elm Street. I ask that the council consider, I'd like to know whether Jacobs is being billed for the parking places that are taken up by a walkway. Tonight there's a car in the walkway so that anyone's having to walk out into the middle of Elm Street to get around that section of sidewalk. So this is the bitnails location at Elm and Magnet. The problem stems from the roof maintenance and the lack of heat and gutters or snow fence up on the roof and it's an occurring annual problem and it's a hazard with hundreds of pounds of ice and snow falling on the sidewalk because of building maintenance issues. So I believe that one incentive for him to maintain his building would be to build him full-time for the meter places that are taken up creating a walkway. Thank you. I'll ask the city manager to have VPW look into that. Alternate side parking. I mean you still are enforcing parking when you're not plowing and and then I got caught just because we had two odd days following on one. I do this we move back and forth every day and then lo and behold we have two odd days in the series which should be forgettable especially since you're not plowing anyway. I am told that it's water pressure blowouts. We typically are having over 200 pounds of pressure and then we had some spikes over the weekend which blew out the main going into the TD Bank building and blew out the parking lot behind the Jacobs lot which closed Mad Taco, Positive Pie, gravel rouser. Who's bearing the expense of that? That's lack of maintenance, lack of planning, lack of installing some balloon type of decompression or pressure absorbers and yet you're closing businesses for lack of city maintenance. Who pays for that? I think that merits a question or a discussion by the council. The website is still you know I believe that when we voted to approve money to consider other options it would have included looking at other software. I've provided information on other software products that don't give illogical names of gibberish for every file you download so you can't find you know a file you go download a dozen files. It's not anyway. There are much better pieces of software out there and we're not using them and I think we put money in the budget to evaluate them and I saw no report that we evaluated anything else. It has been cleaned up a little bit but not it's not usable. I don't understand how the city manager review is happening in the absence of a mayor but I imagine that'll be a topic for comment later. Thank you. Any other member of the public who is present in the room would like to be recognized. Okay and is there anyone online who is interested in addressing the council? Peter Kelman. I would just like to follow up a little bit on the two points that Steve Whitaker just made. I think it would be very helpful to the public to at least understand what the procedure is for doing a performance review of the city manager. The city manager reports only to the city council. How it would be great to have an explanation of how this works and what tools you may or may not be using. Are you using some kind of a 360 degree tool? Where do you get input from to to evaluate the city manager? I think I understand that that's topic is not being dealt with today but prior to it being dealt with I think an explanation would be useful. And the other thing I just wanted to say about the website. The website cannot be made to work on the platform it's on. I know a lot about websites. That is a very old platform. I don't care how many other municipalities. Bill says use it. It is decrepit. The search engine is useless and making it prettier which has been done is actually worse because now people think oh hey this looks great but in fact there's so much misinformation. It is very difficult to find anything that is there. There are things that are just absolutely wrong. Things that are left out. For example, Pellin your email address isn't linked to everybody else's like everybody else on the council is. You can't make something look better without fixing the fundamental problems which includes tons of content that is out of date incorrect and it's got to be a different approach to dealing with the website. Thank you. Thank you. Bill Dodd. Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity. And I just wanted to make a comment quickly on Confluence Park. I was here a few weeks ago to urge you not to go ahead with the project because I heard of the projected price tag had risen to 300% to 3 million. Now that I've seen confirmation that estimate. This is on the agenda. Yeah I wasn't sure I'd be able to stick around for it later but that's up to you. It will if you want to get your comments in now and then will be satisfied. That's fine. Yeah, this this will be it for me. I'll be quick. I did look at the materials and I see a lot of work and thought went into it. And another time it might have made sense. I just think we've experienced a pandemic that brought disruption and homelessness followed by inflation that is making everything the city does and needs to do more expensive. I have other concerns but it's really focused on the cost. We've got so many financial changes challenges from the roads to the water system. People want to develop at Elks Club. And you know maybe we need another bond to pay for this park and we're getting near the top of our capacity for bonding. I will understand. So we've we've got a big budget increase this year. We're gonna have a new stormwater utility fee starting next fall. I understand. We know our school taxes are gonna go up in 2025 FY 25 because of the way they're changing the finance system. So it just just seems to me at this time based on the cost. It's not appropriate to move ahead at this time. Thank you for your time. Thank you. I don't see anybody else with their hands raised online. So next up is you. Thank you very much. This is working. A little closer. Okay, thanks. My name is Zach Porter and I live at 17 North Park Drive here in Montpelier and I want to thank you all for the work that you do the very hard work that you do and for the chance to just speak for a moment here. I wanted to mention we have a daughter who's here with us tonight. She's six on our street or maybe a dozen school kids every summer. As you all know, hundreds, maybe thousands of school kids descend on the park right down at the bottom of our street, the pool, the play playing fields all around the year, but especially this time of year. The intersection at North Park Drive and Elm Street is incredibly dangerous. I am a relatively large person. Most cars never stop for me. I wait for 10 cars to go by during the busiest times of the day before there's an opening. These little kids are crossing that street all year round to get to rec fields kids after school coming to play sports kids in the summer going to the pool. And I want to encourage you all to consider a crossing flashing or some other kind of assistive device like there are in other parts of the city because a tragedy could happen there and that would absolutely break my heart. So I'm sure it would break yours too. So I don't know if this is on your agenda at some point to consider, you know, items like this, but I hope you might add it to the list of such structures that could be added in Montpelier. So anyways, I really appreciate your time and yeah, thank you. Thank you. I do not see anybody else seeking to be recognized either in the room or on the online. So we will now move to the consent agenda with the addition of item six, the street closure. The chair would entertain a motion. Make a motion to accept the consent agenda. Is there any discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? The consent agenda is adopted. We're next up item seven is the Capitol Fire memorandum of understanding. Thank you Mr. President. This is moving the regional radio project forward. This is the entry into a memorandum of understanding with Capitol Fire mutual aid system along with all the other member towns. Clarifying, basically re-establishing, reaffirming our membership in Capitol Fire, reaffirming the appointments that Fire Chief says the representatives and having each member town sort of acknowledge their financial contribution. Joe Aldrich, Joe Aldsworth, who is the Deputy Fire Chief and Baird, and I think also the head of President, Chair, something of Vice President of Capitol Fire and mutual aid as well as the main mover and shaker on our radio project is here. He really has visited each community. He could probably answer any specific questions that any of you may have. They may have a few. I don't know if you want to say anything, Joe, or just wait. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm really here to answer any questions that you may have and I'll just leave it to you folks. Anyone have any questions from the council or comments? I strongly support that we pass this. It's a really incredible relationship that's gotten stronger and stronger over time. I have a question about the membership and so I'm still relatively new. So I'm still trying to understand all this, but I see the bylaws list a bunch of members and I'm wondering if that is up to date because I've seen reference to different numbers of total members. So I just want to know who's who's a member of this or where I can find it. You don't have to list them all off, but where I can find that. So Capital Fire Mutual Aid is made up of 33 different communities. The users group, which is part of the radio system, is made up of 22 different departments. So the Televate Report, I believe each of you have received that. That lists out exactly who is in this radio project and in the bylaws, I think in the charter. If you don't have a copy of the charter, I will. I have the bylaws and there are 27 towns listed. So the updated is 33 to include outliers like Stowe and stuff like that in our office. Is that in the Televate Report? I believe so. I don't want to be misquoted, so I don't have any funds. The MOU just says it's in brackets. List CFMAS members. So that can be added in. So the MOU is directly related to the radio project itself, and that would be the 22 members that are being dispatched by Barry and Montpelier. Anyone else in council have a question? Thank you for sending us detailed information about this document. So do you want to share anything like a general summary of this like behind this project to avoid any misinformation for public? So basically the radio project is the culmination of about 10 years worth of work. The original project was an earmark that was received by Senator Leahy back in 1990-92 in that area. And so now Capital Fire Mutual Aid has maintained the radio system for this long. So as it is aging out, we've been trying to figure out how we're going to replace it fiscally responsibly. So we were able to have this opportunity to work with the state to come forward and modernize the radio system. And that's where we've come to today. The MOU is actually a culmination of the city managers and of Barry Montpelier, Capital Fire, and the town of Waterbury, Andrew Sheplek, who just retired. So they said, listen, we need to be able to lock in the 22 members to be able to agree. How do we replace this in 10 years? This charge was done by the governor who said, listen, we don't want you to come back. We understand that statewide the radio systems are aging and are not efficient. So that's how this came to a culmination is how do we get 22 members to get together and agree a capital improvement plan to plan for the next upgrade? So that's what this this is all about. So part of the model is that the fees will be in part going to create a reserve to replace the system in the future. Yes, sir. Any other questions or comments from the council? Okay. Steve Whitaker, I assume you would like to be recognized on this topic. I think a little background is in order here. The this project is has not been engineered. The records requests show that the price tag that has been positive to buy it, it only represents about half of the costs. The motorola spreadsheets that were provided showed at least a million and a half, two and a half million more in engineering, operation, monitoring, network testing, etc. There's no funding source for those. My reading of the MOU, which has not been as precise as an attorney, I know that others have looked at it more carefully, basically looks like a blank check. There's no financial. It's asking you to vote tonight to bind the city to pay the bills, whatever they may be for 10 years from now, which is an absurdly fiscally irresponsible thing for any council to do. And the fact that the manager put it before you, and the CBPSA, who has undermined the regional model chair, has sit there so wholeheartedly supports it, should raise lots of red flags for the council members. But basically when you read the MOU that says we will pay for it, whatever the costs may be. And then you look at the spreadsheet model from Motorola and show that there's lots of hidden unaccounted core costs. I would ask how many towns have signed this, it was represented that the member towns are members to this MOU. Has anyone has any towns signed this besides Barry, I'm told, Barry City? Yeah, actually, yes. I received the town of Marshfield yesterday morning, I received a phone call after the town of Berlin, and the town of Berlin actually agreed to pay 10 years of their assessments ahead of time. So we are getting them in. I have bar chiefs that have come forward so far. And those are the three that I have physically copies of. Are we talking that the select boards have voted in or the fire chiefs have voted this MOU? The select boards have adopted and signed the MOU. For both Marshfield, Berlin, and Barry City. And what's the status of the others? They're all on the agendas, the fire chiefs have bring them forward just like Chief Gallens does and that they will vote on them as they come through. Okay, thanks. But maybe, Joe, you could also add the letters you got that were in support from the select boards for the grant application that went to the state that is behind all of this new equipment. This is my answer your question. It's responsive to what you're asking. Thank you. So prior to Montpelier submitting the grant for the state of Vermont, I was able to attain 22 letters of support from all communities that are involved in this project. That was submitted with the grant request and given to the legislature and the commissioner. To be clear, those were from the select boards. From each of the respective boards. Okay, actually, that's not true. I've got all those letters and most of them are not from the select boards. So this is a very misleading operation. But just the fact that you're being asked to commit 10 years of funding when we don't have any financial analysis of what the system is going to cost, whether it's even the right system. I mentioned in an earlier meeting, a trunk radio system, we've got separate radio projects going on with Berrytown, Berry City, Montpelier, Washington County Sheriff's and Capitol Police. And no integration among them, no accommodation of LTE, which is an essential broadband service, data service to keep first responders safe. It's been left out of this design. This is the reckless, half-baked proposal, basically stolen from the work that CDPSA paid for, which was the Televate Report. And then this city manager and this group operating outside of open meeting law, not keeping minutes, closed meetings has hijacked the report from Televate and decided to move forward. And this actually MOU indicates that Montpelier, as a grant recipient from the Department of Public Service, is going to give away the radio system to Capitol Fire. That Capitol Fire will become the owner of this. This is just so far from diligence and responsibility and fiscal. I don't think it stands a prayer of getting funded from the state under this kind of shenanigans. But I really think you need to take a pause. You need to hear from the former board chair, former Attorney General, state's attorney, who has witnessed this abusive process. Okay, thank you. Chief, do you have any responses to any of the other things that you just heard? Mr. McCullough, there was a lock in there. I did prepare a response through Manager Frazier. Just to touch on a couple of things. The 22 towns and admissible boards, I visited them personally. I went to each one. They entered it into their record. And they indicated either they signed it or they have the fire chief sign that. So I went to each one of those boards. So I take offense to that very statement. As far as the engineering, Televate was commissioned by CBPSA to develop a strategy and engineering. They use the same engineering practices at each of the peristate motor rule it would use. And basically what will happen is is that they'll take that report. We've created an RFP through CBPSA of exactly what benchmarks we want them to retain. And then they will engineer their own system to meet our benchmark. The state in their infidelism has decided that they are going to hire a third party vendor to verify that the system that is being proposed will actually achieve the goals that are there. And that was actually achieved through Mr. Whitaker's advocates. So they are in the process of getting folks to give RFPs to become the state to evaluate each of these projects so that they're not wasting their money. So it is a redundant part. You will find that there are certain people that want to have a third party engineering study. And from what we're being told what I've seen done in my research, it's really not necessary because it's really a waste of money because we are doing the same thing that Televate did that each of the vendors will do when they do an R1 to respond to the RFP. And then when we come through and meet our benchmark that we've already set through Televate, which was created the RFP. So that is how we've come to this level of the radius. Okay, thank you. Is there anyone else in the room who we should be recognized at this time? Seeing nobody online I see Kim Cheney. Thank you, Mr. President. I sent you all a memorandum. And I hope you've had a chance to read it. I would like to ask Chief Al's worth some questions. But before that, I want to say, I think the MOU is a step in the right direction. City of Montpelier should have its own contract with CapFire. And that way the city would retain its managerial oversight. But before I go any further, can I ask Mr. Al's worth a few questions? Yeah, let's let's get all your questions down at once. And then so we're not getting confused about whose time it was to get your questions out. And then we'll give the Chief an opportunity to respond. All right, well, one of the questions I have is, is there a formula for a portioning construction costs? I know there's I haven't seen it, but I understand there's a formula based on population. But is the plan that all construction costs will be apportioned among the towns on the base of their population? That's one question. The second question I have. Have you estimated the actual costs above the amount of the grant that it would require to get the system in working order? And is the intention that the Twin Cities would pay 25% roughly of all the costs above the grant, which is what it seems to me, the MOU says, is the cap fire going to solicit Motorola to finance the additional costs? And has that been put out to any bid? And capital capital fire, any plans to seek an amendment to his charter so that it would have public members elected or appointed by public bodies on the Board of Directors? So those would be my questions for Mr. Aldsworth. Great. Thank you, Kim. All right. So if I miss anything, we got in there. So the formula for construction costs? No. So basically what we're doing is we're taking the Tel Aviv report and the estimated of the number one most important part. And we are taking that basically how we developed the system with Tel Aviv is that we created a three stool approach. One of the stool legs of the stool is that the upgrade of the dispatch centers themselves, but each of the municipalities have taken upon themselves to do that. So Barry's in the process. Currently, Montpelier is scheduled to do this within the month. We didn't do a bond, we just hadn't made budget. So that was taken upon themselves to do that. And that's the first leg of the stool. The second leg of the stool is the actually the system throughout the region. So basically they would upgrade all the towers and make a simulcast system that would improve the area. The third part of the stool is the in building communication between the twin cities. So now that was a third leg of the stool that we put in there so that we would be able to in Barry Montpelier improve our radio system. We're able to the Tel Aviv and our consultants to look at what we had originally granted from the state, look at the three legs of the stool and we say, okay, listen, we can turn around, we can actually trim down the request to stay within the $2.4 million, knowing that the state is going to verify engineering and knowing that we can actually achieve in building communications going with a singular radio system to be able to go through with all the towers. Now, when you say in building communications, does that for a win a firefighter is has had to gone and go into a building on a call? Yeah, so one thing that we've done right now is mass glass and distance, distance to the radio towers, mass of other buildings in class, you know, the windows and stuff like that. So when they go in deep into the basements, we have that problem. So with the redesign of the system, we actually took into account that we might probably not going to be able to go back for a second flight of the apple with the state. So we really looked at that hard with that said we can adapt the three towers that we're going to achieve the in building communications and we can adapt them to the singular frequency. Chief gallons of myself feel that that would be beneficial to stay on the same frequency with the summer cast towers, turning down on the amount of frequency because we don't have to rebroadcast and we can still achieve what we need to do in the future. If it wasn't supposed to work, if that didn't get to work, then we can always go in and look forward to see how we can apply for grant monies to put in the third different system for the two cities. But right now we felt that it was physically responsible to stay within the two point four four million dollar grant that was given to us tentatively by the state racially and be physically responsible and achieve the same goals. That's how we came up with that. As I go through my notes here. So the 25 percent payment of all costs above the grant our consultant is saying that we should be able to hit that target. We actually were able to talk with Terry LaValley, who is also the state. Shweig, he's in charge. He's a private contractor for the state. Also, he's been involved with this in the get go. He believes that we can get that mark very easily. The capital fire. This question is about Motorola for financing and gone up to bed. Yeah, so that hasn't even been decided yet. RP has been crafted and that was paid for through CB PSA. We have the RP and that we are replying that to reflect the new request for the radio system and I'll add to that. The state was very clear that we should not issue any other things until they continue to restore. That's correct. As far as the the plans for capital fire to realign their board and put public members on. Capital fire mutual aid was designed as a mutual aid system to organize the bar chiefs together so that one that we're not charging each other for mutual aid costs. So if I come to Montpelier with my tower, I'm not charging the city Montpelier involves not charging us to do the same thing. We work hand in hand. Perfect example is today's incident. We were able to dispatch resources here and didn't cost anything to the city of Montpelier and then vice versa. Part of us we do have an obligation to the other town. If I were to have a granite shed to go on fire here tonight in the city very I would rely heavily on our volunteer partners to bring in manpower so we can efficiently fight them and they would not charge us and we would not do the same thing for them. So that's how the mutual aid system can in the bear to to go ahead and put a charter change. Nothing has been put forward to us. They would have to go to a vote of all the members of capital fire and I would go down that road. But at this point in time, we have not had any requests from any municipality or any bar chiefs to do that. Did I hit it almost no color or I think you did. I didn't I didn't hear whether you have identified additional costs that you're asking everybody to sign on to cause that's the costs estimated costs over the amount of the grant. Done is seen at this point in time and we don't we're planning to stay within the 2.4 million dollars. Okay. Thank you. Is there anyone else online who'd like to be heard on this topic? Well, could I just have a clarify on the last question? You you hit your time limit, but let's get that qualifier out because I want to make sure we're doing getting the information out. Is the MOU limited expenses to the towns to the 2.4 million? The MOU has nothing to do with the radio project. The MOU is actually a pledge to the all the communities that are involved to replace the radio system in 10 years. That the MOU has nothing to do with the radio project itself and MOU is everything to do with the spreadsheet that was provided to each of the boards that will lock them into 10 years of prepaying for the system that will be replaced. So we found it was financially responsible to follow the governor's lead and say, okay, how are we going to pay for this because myself and Bob are not going to be here in 10 years. We don't want to saddle the next generation of fire chiefs with our lack of preparing and planning. So I'm not sure how you're drafting that this is locking into the current radio system. Okay. Thanks that answers my question. It's too great. The city does have its own contract with capital fire for provision of dispatch services that is not changed by the SEMO MOU. The SEMO MOU was in fact in part due to concerns raised by the two individuals that have spoken saying there was no formal relationship between the communities. So now we've done that and they don't like it. I'd also point out that many of the comments we've heard tonight, we've heard several times before, including critiques of the engineering in the system. You know, we have relied, we didn't steal the system from Tel Aviv. They, we had CVPSA. We worked very closely with CVPSA to use it. We received a design from qualified people that know what they're doing and it received criticism from someone with no Aaron credentials or knowledge other than his own self-expression of expertise. So we have chosen to follow the experts to follow the recommendations we have. We've put in the grant, we've been told by the state that we are in line for receiving it following the engineering review. And we are certainly trying to create the relationships in the remaining town so that they're all on board. Obviously, everybody doesn't commit that you have to revisit that at the time. This is, you know, we're knocking them off one at a time. We're one of the 22. Okay. Thank you. Any comments or questions from back to the council? If you're ready to entertain a motion, I would make a motion that we approve the MOU with Capitol Far and Mutual Aid. And is there a second? Any discussion on the council? Seeing none, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? And we've approved the memorandum of understanding. Thanks for, thanks for telling me. Next up, we have item eight request for city council approval of design review guidelines. Long time no see. If you're up for it. I do have a little presentation. Oh, there we go. Especially because some of some city council members weren't here previously when we came before you as part of the grant and the regulation. Sorry, I'm not sure that's for everybody. So my name is Meredith Crandall and I am the city's planning and zoning administrator. Good evening everybody. I'm here this evening on behalf of the city's planning and community development department and the historic preservation commission to ask that you approve new design review guidelines that will be official guidance supporting the city's design review regulations. As the zoning administrator, I'm responsible for issuing zoning permits within the city that includes those subject to design review. And I also staffed the historic preservation commission, the design review committee and the development review board. So I'm very familiar with trying to administer the design review regulations. So, um, oh, there you go. So the city council was provided with some detailed background as well as a link to the online design review guidelines and a printable version of them. But briefly, the design review guidelines are supplemental to and provide information that's for the relevant parties regarding how to comply with the city's 2020 design review guidelines as well as broader guidance and resources for anyone in the city that's looking to renovate existing structures or build new structures, both within the design review overlay district and just in the city in general, a reminder that the guidelines that I'm asking for approval of tonight are not regulations. They're not rules. They are really a policy document. So I'm for a little background. I'm sorry, but the people online, maybe they can see it, but up on the screen. The, uh, yep, some images. Thank you. Sorry. There we go. You're step better. Yeah, you're welcome. Sorry. Um, so just a little background on how we got here. Um, development of the new modern guidelines was triggered when the city adopted the new design review regulations. Um, and those regulations replaced design regulations that had been in existence since the 1970s. Um, and we had a document that was sort of like guidelines back then as well, but it's, it was very much a 1970s or 1980s document. Um, so, and it was acknowledged throughout the process of adopting those design review regulations that we would need new guidelines. There's actually a placeholder for them in the text of the regulations. So the core of the guidelines are tied directly to provisions in the design review regulations. So that's what this bit up here is. Um, and they're providing and there's a easy method in these guidelines of being able to navigate through and find the sections that are pertinent specifically to someone's project, so specifically to windows or if you're building a new building. Um, but there are some additional resources in the guidelines. So that includes things like definitions of key terms. Um, one of the, one of the highlights is compatibility. Um, so what does it mean to be compatible? Um, both when you are changing something on a building, what does it mean to be compatible with the historic character of that individual building? Um, as well as if you're adding a new building, what does it mean to be compatible with the surrounding structures? You don't want it to look exactly the same. It shouldn't, it shouldn't look like a historic building if it's new. Those are one of the terms that gets defined in these guidelines. Um, there's also a lot of places where we have provide links for people to get help that they need links back to the city website. Um, both the planning department, start preservation commission. Um, we also spell out procedure. How do you go about getting your permit? Um, in the online guidelines, all of these little, not all of them, but most of these little bubbles have pop up windows. So if you click on them, you get more detailed information about that step and who to contact if you need help. Um, there's other key terms in here that are really providing a nice floor of knowledge for anyone who's trying to learn about their building, learn about their project so that someone doesn't have to be a contract or a professional to be able to have a conversation with either the design review committee or read and have some understanding of what the actual regulations are suggesting to them. So things like names for parts of windows, types of windows, um, things like that. Um, if we have time, I'm going to give you a quick little demo. This is also for the public who hasn't probably gone through them. Be really quick. This should go up. So this is a general view of the guidelines. There's multiple ways to navigate it. There's arrows up at the top to go by page as well as on the side. And there's always a way to get to the table of contents here. Um, so. Table of contents is broken into sections. So your general information, introduction, including history of the, um, city, some other context. Excuse me. That isn't being shown online. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. Hold on. Okay. Um, so give me one second. Stop that share and let me do a different share. So here's the, um, yep. Let me go back to the homepage. Right. So there's a homepage. I'm glad you're monitoring the actual zoom that shows there versus what I'm seeing up there. Thank you. So, so there's multiple sections in the guidelines. Um, there's a lot of introduction information and context. So context is where you see the definitions and learn about different architectural styles. The guidelines part here is the real core of it. This is where a lot of the interactivity happens. So that if somebody is, knows that they're working on maintenance or rehabilitation of the building, they're looking at windows. They can go directly to that section. And all of these paragraphs here on the right hand side, those all tie directly to design regulations. The first sentence is a rephrasing or even sometimes the direct quote of a design regulation. Then the additional language helps explain what that means and each of those is tied to pictures here at the bottom so that you can see examples. Um, one of the clearest ones we have here has to do with window shutters. So one of the regulations is about sizing and hanging shutters appropriately. What that really means is that if you decide to put window shutters on your building, they should be shaped and sized so that if they were closed, they would actually cover the window. That's what historically, but they were for. So this is showing you an example of one where it's really well done, where the shutters are designed to actually curve with the windows where the windows are curved. They're all sized appropriately. Whereas this is one where shutters have been added on as decoration, but they're, they're, they're clearly not going to cover the windows. So again, this is a design feature. This is nothing, um, you know, it's, it's a matter of, of, of taste sometimes and these are guidelines. These are not the rules, but it's something to help people understand, um, what the design review committee will be looking for, as well as new design review committee members, what they should be thinking about when they have these kinds of applications before them. Um, so I'm going to switch back and turn that off for a minute. Um, so, you know, next steps really, we're asking city council to approve the guidelines as city policy tonight. Um, and once that step happens, the planning department will actually be able to do a full roll out of these. Um, you know, I want to just acknowledge the hard work of our contractor that got hired through a grant, a brandy sacks and a place sense. Um, she really took the historic preservation commission's ideas and turned them into something that we think is going to be a really good workable document and helpful for a lot of people. Anybody have any questions? Okay. Thank you. Um, I, I spent some time going through this and I think it looks really good, really understandable and something really, I think a homeowner or a contractor who wants to make modifications to a building would be able to follow this and know what's being looked for. Um, as an overview, could you say a little bit more about what design review is and where it applies and what the relationship is between design review and development review board? Yes. Um, so there's a lot in there. So, um, the city of Montpelier as part of adopting the different zoning districts also adopted a design review overlay district. Um, if somebody wanted me to, I could probably pull up the map on my website on the screen, but I think that you don't necessarily need to go there right now unless it's requested. Um, but it's a specific overlay district that covers mostly the downtown. Um, and then a few other, other neighborhoods and within the design review overlay district. Um, if people are doing projects where they change the outside of their structure, um, and it's, it's not everything, but a lot of things. Um, then they need to go and have their application reviewed by the design review committee. Um, the design review committee is an advisory committee, so they don't actually issue a permit or put direct conditions on a permit. Um, they either advise me for administrative permits, permits that don't have to go to the development review board. Um, and I take a look at the recommendations they've made and if they tie closely enough to the actual regulations, they can become conditions on a permit. Um, otherwise they're just recommendations that go in on the permit, things that, you know, the, or options, things that the applicant could do if they want to. Um, if it's an application that's going to the development review board, so it's a larger project, um, say like the addition that they did on the back of the Gary home residence. Um, the design review committee made recommendations on the external aspects of that project. And then that flowed up to the development review board and the development review board is the entity that made the final decision of whether or not those recommendations flowed through. So those were some things along the lines of, um, you know, what kind of, uh, molding needed to be along the top of the building so that the new addition echoed the historic front building. Um, and sometimes there's recommendations about how to say hide, um, rooftop equipment, um, how to make a, um, new window that's being put in a new modern window fit with other historic windows on a building. Um, I hit all of them. I think so. And so if, so the design review committee doesn't have the ability to deny a permit application, but it could have what the design review committee does could be one of the inputs in a decision by the development review board. Yeah. There, there is a process in place where if the design review committee and the applicant are really budding heads and the applicant really just doesn't want to do something that the design review committee is asking them to do that ties directly to one of the regulations, um, then it gets appealed to the development review board and the development review board makes the decision there. Um, because like I said, the design review committee doesn't have that authority to make the final decision. Thanks. Any other council members have comments or questions? Jen. I'm not a homeowner yet. Um, but I do. My question is about, so does this only apply to like historic buildings or? No. So, um, and this was the case even with the pre 2020 design review regulations. Um, Montpelier made a distinct decision to go with design review regulations, not historic review regulations. Um, they're actually in two different provisions in state statute. So you have your options and they have different criteria and different aspects to them. So design review is not just about historic buildings. Um, and in the details of the design review regulations that got adopted in 2020, there are some aspects of it that only applied to historic buildings. Um, but there's other general aspects that apply to any project within the design review overlay districts. Um, they also paired back some things in the 2020 adoption to say things like we don't care about color anymore. The old regulations went so far as to regulate what colors you were going to paint your house. And in 2020, there was a lot of discussion, a lot of debate between everybody as to things that just didn't make sense that they really, we didn't need to worry about it. Yeah. Color was one of those. It feels very much like if I work really hard and buy a house, I shouldn't have to ask other grownups what to do with my house. So that is why I'm, I'm asking for clarity. Yeah. And the other, the other thing to keep in mind is that in my almost five years here, I have found that the design review committee is actually a very, very helpful resource. Um, and for anybody watching, even if you're not in the design review overlay district, if you want to just get on as other business, not be getting to permit or anything and want to go before the design review committee because you want some guidance and some help in a project. They're completely open to that. Same for the historic preservation commission for anybody who doesn't have historic building. Thank you. You're welcome. Thanks. Anything else from members of the council? Laura. Thank you. Yeah. I'd quick question. Um, so. I mean, I think the document looks really thoughtful, well done, easy to understand, which I imagine is really tricky with this kind of thing. So grateful for that. Um, my only question is, you know, with the urgency around housing, really active conversations, like there's, so there's a lot. Um, for example, under discussion at the state house right now, for example, like anywhere that you, like one of the ideas that's being discussed is like anywhere that you have a single family home, you have to allow duplexes to be built anywhere. Like, so this would just be like, if you're putting in a different kind of building, you just have to have the design be look a certain way. Like just, I'm just curious from like your perspective, is this in any way making it harder to build housing? Is it in any way slowing down our ability to build housing? Um, just how, how, how do you respond like knowing we're in a housing crisis of how this interacts with that? Yeah, I, I really, I really don't think so. I mean, so Montpellier zoning rigs currently already allow two dwelling units anywhere. You allow one dwelling unit, as long as the parcel complies with the, the, the parcel minimums and you get city water and sewer. So, um, you know, that's, that's a huge part of the city. Um, and the design review really isn't going to slow down the standard process. Um, especially me, even if you're not already having to go to the development review board, the design review committee needs twice a month, same nights as the development review board. Um, and oftentimes for design review, once you get, we only need the application about a week before that design review committee meeting. And then often we issue that permit within a day or two. Um, if all it needs is design review, it's a pretty quick process as soon once we have a complete application. Um, and the planning department, we look at ourselves as being there to help people get their complete application. So hopefully they just have to go to one meeting night and they're good because we've helped them put everything together in a way that, that gets them what they want. That's really helpful. Thank you. That question too. You know, the design review district is in the center of the community, the most densely built part of the city. So that's the least, I mean, not that you can't put new structures in, but to Merida's point, um, anything that's allowed in zoning is still allowed. It's only the exterior. And, you know, again, I appreciate Jennifer's point, but it's also, we've got a historic take pride in the center of the town. So this is sort of a community standard to just make sure everyone is benefit. But it's not, it's, it doesn't zone out any uses. Well, well, it's not just the design. Design review overlay district is mostly the center of the town. Um, and it's the other thing to keep in mind is that the design review overlay district having that and having the design review process is also one of the items that is meeting one of the criteria to have a designated downtown. So if you've got rid of that, you'd have to put something else in its place. Um, um, yeah, that comes with funding. Yeah. Yeah. Just thank you. That was incredibly helpful and just want to make sure we're being responsive multiple competing needs. But oh, that was great. Let's make sure that the public's fully informed on everything and how it all interrelates. So no, that's great. Anything else from members of the council? Okay. I see. Oh, Dr. Gilbertson. Gilbertson. I've lived in Montpelier upon Richardson Street since 1976 up behind the state house. It's very nice. Uh, I chair the historic preservation and vice chair of design review. I've been on design review. I think since 2000, uh, to answer your question, we've reviewed a number of the nonprofit housing development on very street. And they put in a second means of vigorous. So, you know, kinds of changes to go. It's never really been a problem. I would say designer review really operates more on a kind of a collegiate basis. And especially with a project, not with helpful suggestions and I think usually people go away with maybe a little different project. But they, their project is approved and they're I want to say a quick thank you. This first, this is a project was done with a certified local government grant from the state of Vermont, which is part of their allocation of federal dollars from the National Parks and Resource Authority. I can say the planning department has been very helpful and the project would not have happened without merits. She is super helpful and uh, Randy Saxton did the graphics and all that with it. Got the pictures and she was so as a real team, there's a real team effort, uh, design review, participated particularly that were his chair the design review committee. Um, and we, I think the historic renovation commission really set out to do more than just provide guidelines for design review. We wanted something more for people on property in the city to be able to at least find out and figure out what the proper treatment of historic buildings was particularly uh, and if we also of course wanted to write guidance to both the design review committee and the applicants and uh, to help project people design good projects and we also wanted to educate the public about the importance of the historic resources in Montpijer. This is really in the usual city. Uh, uh, and when uh, years ago when I worked for the state, I had the state historic preservation officers. Every state has one here for meeting. They were blown away, uh, walking through the downtown in the neighborhoods and really want to keep it that way. I think it's part of what makes Montpijer special. Uh, and uh, uh, I think that the next step we've got another certified local government grant, uh, to identify, uh, how we're new historic districts, both state and national registered districts in Montpijer. And it's really bad as a planning document. So we can, uh, move forward with that. So the city and it has better ideas of what is historic in community even, uh, even if it doesn't fall in the regulatory process. Happy to answer any questions. Okay. Thanks so much. Um, anybody else in the room would like to address this on this agenda item online. I see Peter Kelman. Uh, Peter Kelman, Sixth Mountain View Street. Um, uh, this is a very impressive tool that has been developed. Um, uh, I do however want to mention a few things very quickly. Um, uh, as Meredith mentioned, although the design, uh, uh, review, uh, overlay is mainly downtown, it significantly includes parts of Barry Street and VCFA, the college campus is not only downtown. Second thing I would like to say is that it is precisely because it is the densest part of the city that, um, uh, Lauren's question about, uh, housing is very relevant. You have to be extremely careful that nothing either in that, in our, in our guidelines or in our regulations are going to prevent the downtown from being even more dense than it is now. Um, and so, uh, although this is what makes my pillar special, it's also what makes my pillar somewhat of an exclusive community. And that's something that we're going to have to really guard against. Um, suggest, um, um, uh, Meredith suggested that my pillar already allows two units on any property. That is misleading. It allows it, but there are so many regulations, uh, for that second unit that it doesn't really allow it. Furthermore, although it's quite true that the, uh, Meredith and, and the others in that, in that department are very helpful, nevertheless, any business, uh, sorry, any development project that is undertaken costs money and costs time and, and has frustrations, um, that make it, uh, discourage people from doing it. Um, and, uh, it's a little disingenuous to say that these are only guidelines, not regulations or rules because the guidelines can be then passed on to the development review board and then it becomes a requirement and a rule. So it's not all as smoothly as this has been suggested. I think both Lawrence concerns and Jennifer's concerns need to be listened to by the department of, uh, uh, planning and, um, community development. We've got to get out of the way of preventing people from doing the kind of development that we need. We need to, and we need to reach out to people who are seniors who are living in huge houses and help them to subdivide their houses and reach out to people who have double lots and help them to do subdivisions in ways that are not going to be, you know, costing them time, money and aggravation. So I just offer those cautions while at the same time, I very much appreciate and admire that you put together a tool to make a Byzantine process more manageable. But now we need to have some less Byzantine processes. Thank you. Thank you, Peter. I don't see any other hands raised. Oh, I'm sorry, Linda. I don't funny. I didn't see it. Linda. Go ahead. Thank you. I have two questions. One is kind of a, it goes along with Peter's statement. Um, I'm not understanding the impact of the differentiation between not a regulation versus not a regulation or a rule, but a policy document. Could you explain how that would impact a homeowner? Um, so the regulations, so the design review regulations, which were adopted as city ordinance are the statement of the actual rule that needs to apply. Um, and for design review, or a lot of those are, um, a little fuzzy, right? So when you say that something shall be compatible. Um, so design review really goes down to judgment calls of the design review committee. And this panel of, um, you know, up to five people making a decision on what compatibility means for a specific application. It's a very, very fact, fact specific determination. The guidelines are there to help people understand what things like compatible mean in different situations. It is just a list of examples of ways to understand, um, and apply the regulations. The guidelines, if later on we, we feel like some of it doesn't make sense, we see that there are problems with it's the way it's being applied. Um, they could be amended fairly easily because it doesn't need to go through the planning commission and city council hearing process. But it really is just examples of ways that can be used in different applications, different windows, doors, um, porches. And nobody can point to that and say you're in violation of the guideline. So you're in violation of your zoning permit. It's like I said, it's examples. If people come in and convince the design review committee that what they have done is compatible, the design review committee has the opportunity to make that decision. It doesn't have to exactly match something with the guidelines. Does that help? Yes. Thank you. My second question is about the map. Um, I looked at the draft, um, design review district on the zoning district map that was adopted on 413 2022. I'm visually, it's kind of confusing. Could you possibly, um, project that map so we could see it and, um, and also it said it was a draft, um, design review district and I'm wondering has, is it still a draft design review district? No. So I'm thinking that you probably got to a older link. Do you want me to train, pull that up, Jack? Um, so give me a minute because I'm going to have to, I was not prepared to do that one. Uh, wow. There's a lot of PowerPoints actually open. I only want to close mine. Uh, yep. Um, all right. So I'm going to need to go to the city website. I don't have that on. No, where's my city website? There's an opening room. There you go. Give me a minute. Sorry, everybody. We're actually, yeah, so it's going to be on the zoning district map is, oh, actually it looked like there was two. Um, yep, but it looks like we also control map up separately all by itself. So I've got to share this. Do you want to screen? All right. So this is the zoning. Can everybody see this on zoom? Okay. So this is the zoning district map as a whole and everything that's surrounded in the dark black bold line is in the design review district and you really need to zoom in to see individual parcels in here. It is not, I agree. It is not easy to navigate. Um, you know, if anybody has questions about specific parcels, they can always call the planning department. We have, um, some other map systems where we can search particular parcels, but each of these little items in here is an individual zone parcel. And so you've got to kind of map out, figure out where your, your street is and then figure out where your parcel is. If you're zooming far enough, right, you can find, um, East State Street is here. And so you can see that parts of East State Street, like up by the college campus are in design review over here, parts of it are outside, but it's everything inside the black line. Um, we, we understand that the bold black line is difficult. Sometimes it's, it's obscuring exactly where parcel lines are when it goes right directly over them. Um, so like I said, people have specific questions about specific parcels, call the planning department. Um, there's, there's at least two of us who can look up your specific parcel and answer questions about it. Um, the other thing just to keep in mind when you're looking at this is though, even though it's inside that black, bold line, everything here with the red crosshatch is excluded because that's the capital complex district around the state capital. So on the key on that map, it says it's a draft design review district. So it's no longer draft. It was passed. Correct. It's not a draft. Um, does it actually say draft? It does say draft. Yup. As of 2020 to 413. Well, nope. Nope. We'll need to fix that. Somehow the draft got left in the legend. Thank you for that. I'm so sorry. We'll get that fixed. Thanks, Linda. You've just helped to improve the information the city is putting out. We got the draft off of the lines on the bottom and missed it there somewhere. Somehow. Okay. Now members of the council. I move that we approve the design review guidelines presented. I'll second it. Any discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? And you've got to be. Item. Thank you, everybody. Thanks, Meredith. This has been great. Next up. Item nine, Confluence Park presentation. All right. Does that work for everybody? Okay. Hello. Thank you. My name is Kausha Rangel with I am co-director. My name is Kausha Rangel. I'm co-director of Vermont River Conservancy and I'm here tonight with somebody you may know. Long time resident. Bryce Schiff of SLR engineering who's been part of this project for Confluence River Park really from the beginning. For several years now. For several years now, Vermont River Conservancy has been connecting with Montpelier residents and community leaders and asking residents what they'd like to see for the future of our local rivers. How does Montpelier want to face the river? And from these conversations, the community surfaced a very clear first priority. A new riverfront park and downtown Montpelier, a project that has been a city council priority for several years. We are here today circling back with all of you once again to share the latest design updates that we've been working on with the community and ask for your support. And with your approval, we'd like to move forward with to raise funds alongside the city to work towards implementation and realize this community vision. The proposed park is on the north side of the Manuski River just upstream from what is now one Taylor Street. So looking at the overall goals here on the slide, I want to emphasize a few values that we heard again and again via our community outreach and engagement. River access and accessibility. The chance to access the river for boating, fishing, splashing, just enjoying a lunch by the river downtown and a shared community space that's truly accessible for as many people as possible. The benefits of this visionary riverfront transformation after opportunity for Montpelier to become a town with a river and to become a river town has been a resounding success and communities across the country. Creating vibrant downtowns and thriving communities. Some of you have likely seen this kind of transformation right here in Vermont where residents and visitors love Burlington downtown accessible water. Before we launch into the design, I want to share a quick overview of how we got to where we are. Here's the timeline of some of the community outreach that we've led at Vermont River Conservancy from hearing from public works and and VTRAN perspective to conversations with families with young children, high school students and older adults focused groups with a full range of people in the community, including people experiencing homelessness, businesses, families, young adults. There's been a community survey really affirming a desire of accessible river access and a place to sit by the river. Those who have been on the council through many at much of this will remember the initial design and the community engagement and review with resounding support for really the final concept which is here. I'm going to turn things over to Roy to dive into the design update, but because of this, all of this of course takes a financial investment. I want to first touch on some of the fundraising today. Together, Vermont River Conservancy and the city have raised more than one million dollars. This includes a city bond that had very strong community support on last year's ballot and with city dollars already being doubled with significant grants and soon to be leveraged nearly four to one. As I turn things over to Roy, just to reiterate why we're here tonight, our hope is that the council will continue to support this visionary project and give us time to raise the funds to fully leverage the existing financial commitments to make this project happen. Thanks. So I'm again, my name is Roy. It's on the Conservation Commission for several years and always enjoyed our city rivers and this is really I think a once in a generation opportunity to get down to the water in town for many people to enjoy. This is just the river setting and we're going to run through these a little quicker so we can have a conversation about the plan. You can see the features proposed kayaks, canoe launches, they kind of fit within the context of the river. There's shallow areas, deep areas, as well as some of the features of lives in the river. The heart of this plan is an ADA accessible path shown in blue on the on the map down to the river. So people able bodied as well as walkers, wheelchairs can get down to the river, enjoy fishing access area. There's actually an inclusive launch for people to launch kayaks. We've consulted with Vermont adaptive and others who use waterfronts for events. So we, you know, we're really excited about this opportunity, especially in the downtown among failure. So one of the reasons the cost of this park has climbed is that the design has changed a bit following the community vision for the park and that is really to create this accessible path as well as some of these features. And if you look at the grades, you can see there's about a 14 foot difference from the bike path down to the river. And and so it requires a structural wall system to sort of walk down into the river and access the river. And then you can see a set of several sets of stairs that would go into the river for direct access. This is an amazing spot for education. There's been a lot of talk about parks about what the programming could be here through the schools, what you could do here. Thought, you know, thoughts about a video camera. And this is actually, we did a flood monitoring, a full monitoring program. It's a unique spot because Wrightsville releases in a pretty unnatural way to keep the city safe from flooding. And then you have, you know, 400 square mile watershed coming down to Medusia. They all kind of meet at this exact spot. And so what you see here is the dark areas, the frequent flood level and then the light areas, what you see periodically under a big, a bigger flood. And so the bottom of the park is structurally designed to be structurally stable for these flood conditions and ice conditions that we expect to see in the spot. We're going to look at a couple of cross sections and elevations that are shown on these lines. And this is essentially a slice through the park. The dotted line, you can see the hand, is the existing ground. And then all that material comes out. All that bill is contaminated. And so that has to be trucked to Coving Coventry. And that's a big part of the increase of the cost. And then you can see a series of walls. These may have passed down to the river and the bottom one is another cut showing a one of the steps in the park. And these are the wall sections. So the walls have been designed to be mobile art spaces or permanent art spaces down by the river to create these really accessible and interchangeable areas for people. And again, these are the visions of people who have exterior art as well as the plantings in the park. We're getting deep into the design here. I think we need about curvy material will allow water to more naturally move through the system. Right now the site is filled with construction, granite debris, steel auto parts that are all very good in Spain. It's pretty much a waste fill spot that we're going to store and create this amazing public spot. There's been a lot of talk about paintings on the walkways, boss mints that sort of highlight otters and all sorts of things that people cherish in our rivers. Another a couple of visions of what those one of the walls at the end of the river could look like. And finally, one of the biggest things we heard was people want to go to their lunch, walk over to the park in a safe way, just taking a really peaceful, beautiful spot down by the river. It's really hard to access the river right now. And so we've had some local designers and past people help us with some of the designs that kind of fit some of the aesthetic of things around mobility or honoring some of the industrial past and some of the natural background. And all these orange features are sitting here. So we have a lot of people sitting against the park up in their own spaces. And finally, the highlight of the park is something we don't have a lot of money. My player is water access. So there's both orange areas. There's a accessible fishing platform. This area actually here is fishing right in this area. And hopefully as the rivers get down to the mine will be more river access. A couple of features. This is an example of an APA accessible fishing platform on the New Haven River health design that here's a stair case with a boat slide. Higher standard. We heard a lot about the budget increase. Bill brought it up. There was a paper. There was an article in the bridge. Feels a little misleading because the park, the design has really evolved first knowing that there's a deep source of fishing under the park area. A lot of people are on this ground right now and it's something that needs to be cleaned up safely access. At the same time, we have to, we had to expand some of the wall systems to really create all of the access points to the river. And then we talked about utility improvements. And so over the course of talking with most of the departments in the city and all the public that have put in that the cost really to design has changed and cost of the farm has changed. So I think with that maybe we'll end it. That's it. Before you stop sharing one of the, if you go back to one of the slide that showed the blood levels. If we had another 1992 flood, the whole thing's underwater, right? I think the 92 flood would kind of come to the middle of the park. 27 flood whole things in the water. So yeah. Okay, thanks. Sure. When you talked about brownfields, so have you looked at grants for that? So that's something that we're looking into now. And one of the things that I, as a fundraiser, I think is actually very helpful is that now we have a concrete budget that says these are the line items in the budget and how much they're cost, they'll cost and what they're for. And that allows us to be much more creative with our fundraising. So brownfields funding, there is a significant amount of brownfields funding in Vermont. We have some phone calls out to some partners with the state to see if that's something that would make sense. That's the kind of work that Montpelier really needs to be doing whether or not there's a park there. And if we can cap it off with a park, all the gop more better. And I think with the, you know, with the budget being able to look at the brownfields pieces, we have a proposal pending with Vermont Arts Council and it's pretty small. It's just $15,000 of the total project budget. But that's kind of an aspect that we wouldn't really necessarily think of the park as hard. But now that we have the design and line by line item budget, we can kind of start to take away at that. And so that's what we're doing now is looking for those, looking for those creative fundraising opportunities and so that we can fully leverage the city's contributions. Just I'm so glad you mentioned the word art because I do think of parks as being an outside structure. And beauty and art. And so thank you. So you mentioned that after fundraising, you can estimate how much money we can use from city budgets. Do you have any estimation now or you have to do the fundraising first? Well, the city funds right now we can go back up to the fundraising slide. So the city funds right now with the city passed a bond at this time last year. And that was grouped together with the pellet boiler and those few other items. And so the allocation from that were Confluence River Park was $600,000. So that portion of the city fund and the remainder we're working to fundraise now through outside grants. Thank you. So our share will be 600,000. That's our hope. Yeah. And that's what I was using that. What's really helpful is that having that as a leverage, you know, no one wants to be the first person to fundraise and invest in a project, but being able to have this existing funding, including that city allocation means that we can go forward to other funders and say, Hey, we're a third of the way there. Can you help us get 100% away there? And it will be able to better leverage those city dollars. So I will ask one more question about money. So is there any like a upper limit, right? $600,000, right? So what is the worst scenario for the city? So how much, so how much do you estimate that city might end up paying? Like if there's like a between, right? Well, our hope is that it's $600,000 and we can leverage that with grants. I think we're going to need a grant The way grant funding works is that we need to identify the opportunities. Everything has a kind of varying deadlines of cycle and depending on what the funding sources are, there will be various groups to jump through. You know, if it's EPA funding or FEMA funding, that's going to have additional kind of just, you know, just steps to take in order to receive that funding. So it can vary from, you know, commitments within six months to a year to 18 months to, you know, fully funded. Thank you. Okay, any Lauren. Two kind of wonky questions. One, I know there's been talk about exploring dam removals that would that change anything about is the design resilient to if that happens? That's a great question. Thanks for bringing it up. I mean, if any ways Confluence Park could be the cornerstone of revitalize the system and where people could use a paddler's trail from the distillery through town, stopping at Confluence Park going on downstream. So we thought we've heard the advisory group in the public have talked a lot about this and so the design sort of sort of embraces future change and potentially taking dams out. There's been talk of Whitewater Park and have voting features in town. So again, the park set up to allow an event to take place in town. A lot of people come there and launch their boats and if and when features get put in the river around the rat dam or down to the belly dam when you go to bedrock and falls naturally if that dam were to come out. And this park would sort of serve as a launching spot to enjoy that site. So that's all kind of been considered part of that because the dams are all in a various states of disrepair and obsolete. So it seems like a part of our future. And I might add to that right now. There are kayakers in town and boaters that do like the rat dam at Highwater. From what I understand is there has creates a really amazing wave and people get down there into the river, but not that many people because it's hard to get to the river. And you know, with this work and in combination with potential dam removal and waves and things like that, it would mean that more people would be able to access it and have a, you know, more equitable experience for all to be able to access that experience. Yeah, I have a question. So first of all, the idea is really like you mentioned visionary. I really like and it reminds me lots of like European cities who have where they have rewards and they are really actively using. So do you have any information? How many months public can use this park? Actively, not only boats, not only kayakers, but like I have two kids. How many months I can take my kids and go there and enjoy this part or leave them alone there. And I just enjoy. Conversations. We've talked to the parks department about this and it factored into the design. We believe the upper part of this park, definitely the bike path this year round. We think maybe that first, first stretch of the upper path would be year round. It will have there'll be a couple vantage points out on the river. We also think that there's been talk about a video camera in this spot for both education. If you've ever had the chance to see the ice out in the river, it's quite an amazing to see. We could we could be an educational piece, but also for safety in this area. So I think you're going to be able to like use the park probably year round. The top half year round and at the bottom will be sort of non flooding and non ice conditions. Yeah, very good. I have a number of questions. I'll try not to ask every single one. Sorry, well, might not need to. So the question about access by boat to to the river. If I'm bringing my kayak, where am I parking and how am I getting my kayak down there? And I mean, is that I guess that's a little bit more detail than you really need to answer. But you you mentioned that there are people currently putting kayaks in the river and how far can they currently go and how many people are doing that and are they are more people not doing it because I mean, physically do they have to like climb over brush and stuff to get to it? So would it be reasonable to maybe just clear some brush at least temporarily and then people could get there? Do you think that would increase the number of people who are using it? So I think there's a set of maybe a little more ambitious river users that use the river in here, both fishing and paddling. There is a canoe launch at high school. It's got a lot of poison ivy on it, but there is a launch there. And then clearly the dam is is too unsafe to access it from upstream. So you can you can sort of paddle upstream. There's a few I don't know informal access points maybe by the lumber store and a lot of poison ivy first hand knowledge and then you can paddle around the dam in there. And then downstream, I've seen people sort of go over the the new rock that's protecting the new trail bridge. There's a lot of riprap people park sort of behind in the public parking lot there and then kind of go under the bridge pretty precarious. Right now we have two parking spaces allocated for this and they're the idea is that they're one of them is a boat drop off spot and one of them is a handy cap accessible parking spot. This is sort of our first cut and what's available in the area. However, there is parking sort of off the back of the park. So you could you could drop off walk or you know drive around park your car in a public parking lot and then walk kind of right right back. So we thought about boat racks and sort of what that flow would look like. Okay, another question. Have you thought about putting a bathroom down there? Um, we actually did not. We we did think about water for the plants like a spigot for drinking water and for watering the plants down there. But we did not think about a bathroom. That's a that's a great need that we have currently you might have heard. No. And just a quick question about that. This is probably not set already, but I noticed in one of the drawings that there were a number of benches that had no backs on them and I'm wondering why you would put in benches that have no backs. We actually created a there's partial back back and no back right and we're sort of these are kind of some of the furnishings we're exploring. Um, I think the no back benches were actually planned for right further down at the river. Perhaps not have things sticking up sort of at the water level elevation. So when the river comes up, you don't have a lot of debris and ice hanging on the backs of the benches. Um, but there may be a little higher up there would be a back on the benches. That's kind of the first answer, but that's kind of a work in progress. Yeah, sure. That's not set. And then have a question about your process of public input and I wasn't on the city council when this decision was initially made, but was in Montpelier. I remember conversations. Years ago now we're talking like five years ago. And I would say that. Well, my question is, did you hear from people who don't want to park? Um, I, you know, I, I think the vast majority of people are, are looking to connect with the river downtown. Um, I, and I, um, and you know, looking at some park surveys that were done back in 2021, um, taken by over 1300 people in this community, which is just about the number of people who vote in any election. Um, those, um, the, um, about 76% of people on that survey said I would like a space to access the river. I would like more improved river access. And so, you know, whether people are specifically talking about this space or, um, you know, just the resources in the community, there are the clear need to be able to, we, we have multiple rivers flowing through town and it's almost impossible to get into and so there's a clear need for people to be able to interact with engage with the rivers and, um, there's also, um, some of the feedback will be heard but simply a place to have lunch and go and support a local business and buy lunch, meet up with a colleague, meet up with a friend and go sit by the river. And right now it's really, there's not really a lot of space to do that. Um, and so this type of park is really intended for, um, to meet multiple uses and, um, so that it's a vibrant space that people can use for a whole range of purposes and meet people where they are across the community, whether it's somebody who just wants to have a sandwich or bring their kayak and get into the river or a splash with their family and your kids. Okay. So that leads me to my last question and promise, um, which is about exactly that. Who do we expect to be using this space? And currently the space is largely used by unhoused folks and so, and it's, um, meeting a certain need that will continue to be a need even after it's a really beautiful park. And so, um, do you expect that unhoused folks will still be using the space? Do you expect that it will be shared by people who are not there for kayaking and recreation, which are, um, activities that are available to people on a certain income scale and not others? Uh, and so are we, I mean, how are you, and I'm having a hard time envisioning this very small space accommodating lots of diff very, very dramatically different kinds of uses and needs at the same time. So I'm wondering what, what thoughts you have about that. Well, um, I'll let Roy speak to the design pieces, but in terms of the community outreach, you can look at this is not even comprehensive. This is just a sampling of some of the community outreach. I think most recently just last spring, um, so there's a, there's a group of Confluence Park advisors. It's about a dozen people who have been meeting monthly, usually for, for a couple of years now to, um, that represent cross-section of the community, business community, um, senior youth, anglers, ecologists, um, a whole spectrum of people across the community. Um, and last spring, each of those members went through and, and led focus groups across the community that included, um, children and young families, um, families with middle school kids, high school age kids, the unhoused we, um, had two focus groups right on site and set up a table with, um, just snacks and drinks and talked to the people who are there and using the space now and asked them the same question, what would you like for this space? And, um, one, I, I, I wasn't part of that focus group, um, but my co-worker who was, um, talked with a woman there who grew up in rural Vermont and, um, she grew up meeting fish, she was guiding fishing trips and she said, I used to spend so much time in the water and I, you know, as a teenager and young adult was guiding fishing trips and I'm so excited for this space to be something that we can be proud of as a community and really embrace. And so is that, you know, is, is that population going to go away? No, that's going to be part of this space and we've defined for that as well with that in mind to make sure that it's accessible for, for truly everyone, um, and has space for families and kids and, and, you know, business people having lunch at kind of at the same time so that can be a shared space and it's not safe or I can talk to you. I think what I'd add is that, um, we, one thing we've heard, which is kind of a burning experience is that, um, accessibility and the phone was like, we're really looking for an inclusive space that allows people to switch between different things in a smaller space and that's kind of what this design is. And there are pockets on the farm that are visible yet. So people could be at the top of the fence or sitting at the top of lunch or sitting on the box. Education and all kind of having a different experience and challenge of this and one of the reasons the cost is so high is that it's happening to help a lot of people, so it's trying to create a lot of spaces on a very steep smaller art soul than right now. So that's sort of, that's, that is the concept of this part is that creating a lot of spaces that are together. Now I really want to go and enjoy there with my kids. However, is there any discussion about the maintain maintaining fee or cost for city or like other parts of my family? We go to reservoir every summer, but we pay like a membership fee. Is there anything will be there? So maybe it will make the cost a little bit down and, you know, it is good for public to know this thing. Is there any plan for that? Some of the maintenance, a lot of the maintenance is going to be at the bike path and that is ongoing and will remain. You know, we talked about when there's snow and ice, probably the lower half of the park is going to be closed. So there's not going to be a lot of maintenance there. There will be a gate. It will get closed off sort of. Right now we anticipate it's at this point right here. So maybe there's a little bit of shoveling here. The other thing is that we know that the bottom of this park is going to flood and that means there's some sediment on there's some debris and so that requires maintenance, maybe in the spring or after a big flood. And we've sort of had all sorts of brainstorms of whether we have a volunteer group, a school group or something to not dump all this burden. I don't think there's going to be a huge maintenance burden, but there certainly will be some. We don't want to put all out. Again, I think a key to be here is can we sort of like take the next step into the final design? Retain that funding, not ask for more funding, but we'll go and do our homework and try to raise that money and really kind of dial in these final details about the specifics of the maintenance. Donna Ben-Lynne. Thank you. Great questions. Great questions. You forget when you've seen this project for so long, you know, it's really good to have this question. And I love the maps that you gave us that really simplifies the path and divides it seasonally. And I do think we should have a major May cleanup and volunteers and we should have friends of the parks. I think there's ways to get donations and support all of our parks much more than we do. And so I really, I guess I'm looking at my fellow counselors and I hope that we can make some sort of a commitment to you so you can count on that 600,000 at least for a few months a year. I mean, because we're talking already we're half through our FY 23. So you're talking 25, 26. And I know you need that anchor. So I would hope that we can keep that anchor for you and see what's down the road in 18 minutes. Lauren. Thanks. Yeah, I guess I was hoping to get some clarity like because my two questions are could you just walk through the process. So tonight if we commit to maintaining the commitment to the 600,000 that the voters approve then your plan is go try to fundraise and then in 18 months like we'll be getting reports back on how it's going but the plan is try to raise everything and do the plan as laid out here you know with the final design pieces. Is there is there a way of like phasing it or say you get part of the money are there ways to just get going and do some of the work that we know has to happen like removing the contaminated soil building some of the features and then phasing others in overtime as as funding becomes available or grant grants become open. It's a good question as soon as we started seeing where this was going we started thinking about what could we reduce I mean we're all aware of where we're out in the world and everything's expensive and we have a lot of needs. The key one of the key things if you really want to take a dent out of the budget here you have to take away accessibility and that was the like the heart of the part. So that really put us. Hey we this is really where we want to go and then we thought well we can take out some of the local crafts benches and so we you know you start chipping away and it doesn't add up to a lot and then it then you have this amazing accessible area but you don't have the things that could just really make it truly wonderful to be in. So we can phase a few things and pull a few things off but it doesn't get you far without really going against the vision of the part that the people sort of set us on. We have talked about staging it's complicated because it's such a small area it's flat prone and you kind of have to sequence this thing from the bottom up and so maybe you could build the lower half and then stabilize the upper half and that actually actually adds costs to phase something like that. So we kind of landed at coming to you for this request to maintain this budget. Kasha we can maybe work some fundraising magic and and bring this home and then otherwise we'll have to sort of figure something out to the stage back or the way up. I'm sort of I mean this is kind of that's the sort of recent thought process sharing with you. And and just to be clear I know we've talked about it during the budget process but these the bond funds will not be expended until we make a formal decision which this would not be that decision this would be committing to giving you the green light to go and try to fundraise but we wouldn't actually issue this bond until we're kind of just people to be clear on. Okay. Jen. Okay. Question so because we put this on the warning right people will vote. So when they vote yes this project will have $600,000 from city. So actually this was included in the bond last year and so the $600,000 was already approved. We haven't issued the bonds we haven't gone to the bank and borrowed the money that triggers us having to pay it back. So we have authorization to borrow $600,000. We haven't done that. We've done some of the other projects that we're including in the bond. On this year's warning we asked for more flexibility so that if this project weren't filed or other projects in the form then probably we could leave the money when I'm having the flexibility in three weeks but we have not spent for this other one the part you have a grant that if we don't use this money we have to repay part of that agreed. So that probably would come up on the $600,000 and the borrowers would figure out seeing the cost of the money. When would the house be paid back? What? Out. Out. Okay. Well, he's on so we can ask him that when he gets there. So the I'm trying to I probably didn't mean to complicate matters but we have a grant to do this project and the design work is going to be paid out of that rules. If we don't so we do the project then that's all eligible costs are part of the room. If we don't do the project then we have to repay that portion of the grant already spent from some sorts. So it could come from you know we could only borrow $150,000 out of the $600,000 or whatever or we could take it out of some other budget line like we would have to identify the funding source at that time. So what two questions which was the what's the grant that you're talking about and how much have we spent out of it already? And Alex Ellsworth has his hand Alec why don't you answer that if you can Yeah Hi Alec Ellsworth the parks director we have two grants both of which were sort of design build grants in the sense that the park was intended to be this phase of design was intended to be done with the money and then other money was supposed to be spent building the park. So either one you know, basically neither of those grants neither of the granting agencies would want to give us the money if we were not going to build the park. So we would have to spend we would have to pay you know SLR Royce Farm we have a contract with them for I forget what it is but it's basically somewhere around 120 $125,000 to do this final design work and engineering and so that would come from the bond if if we didn't move forward with construction or somewhat whatever source we decided and and which I mean I'm looking at the fundraising list and there's clean water funding downtown transportation fund land and water conservation funds I'm assuming that one of those is the source of this much of those they well yeah the land water conservation fund I guess is a short answer but yeah those though all those grants would go away if if we didn't move to construction yet okay Donna I'd like to make a motion well we haven't had we haven't had any public comment yet and so that I I would just say from my perspective you know I I thought this is a very exciting idea when it came to us and you know it's a great evolution that we see in other cities around the Northeast especially where what used to be an industrial water front and is not hasn't been needed for industrial applications for many years and so we've got a choice of either leaving the water front be just kind of a crummy river or lakefront or doing something very attractive with it you know I just saw in the times yesterday that the city of New York is opening up the first beach on Manhattan people aren't allowed to swim in the Hudson River yet but but it's a start so I think it's a very attractive thing to do but I can also tell you that we've gotten a lot of communication from people about this and people are really saying but you know it was one thing if it's it was $600,000 when we're talking about two or three million it's pretty hard to imagine going forward so it's encouraging to hear you say you think you can raise another two million and we'll see but we have some people online who want to be recognized starting with the D.D. brush you've had your hand up for a long time. I thank you D.D. brush Liberty Street a couple of my questions it sounds like some of it has been touched on already in all of the drawings you show that there are steps and or lunch launch areas including a lot of tree plantings in the floods flood zone I assume that means that all of that concrete would be compromised and many of the trees would be eroded and or lost so I'm wondering why trees down there other than perhaps stabilizing the streambank it seems it's pretty but it seems impractical so that's one question I have I'll go through them and then hopefully the people from BNRC DRC will answer the questions or council members we have a terrible history of a track record of maintenance Donna mentioned volunteers taking care of parks well that doesn't happen there I've been volunteering taking care of by the way City Hall Park which the city does not do it doesn't take care of any of its planted areas it mows lawns and that's about it so I think it's wishful thinking to think that maintenance can be taken care of by volunteers it has to be plugged in to the budget which means staff and if it isn't then you make in my view you're making a mistake and also you know we're up to three million dollars and that's without a shovel in the ground and probably a year to 18 months away my guess is three million will get inflated just because of inflation if no other reason and cost will rise it's probably I've heard from somebody who served on the advisory committee and therefore was informed throughout this process that it could easily be four million so please keep your eyes open please do not yes, it would be lovely to have access to the river but we've seen what it has been in the last 18 months I think that if we have a bunch of people who are using it for living space the numbers of users families, children, others might not be robust so I think it has to be very very careful I know I have one minute I think it has to be very carefully thought through and analyzed again and so I'd love your answers oh and the two parking spots that seems a little minimal because there's no parking behind the other parking is paid parking from the plaza as I understand on the other side of the railroad tracks, is it not? so where are they going to park? thank you thanks, Steven try to tick off a few of them first question was why trees? yeah so well, end steps end steps so the the bottom of the park will be resilient to the flooding that's going to happen we know the patterns sometimes water backs into there because you have two rivers coming together sometimes it will rush down so there'll be mechanisms whether it's pinning anchoring and the trees you know we're trying to balance a accessible riverfront with a naturalistic riverfront so the idea is the plantings a lot of the plantings are actually in planters surrounded so when there's a big ice load they'll actually be a little protected but they will shade, cache, shade provides some habitat and yeah so we're going to try to sort of blend it into the the riverbank that's adjacent to the park bring some landscaping through there and also make it a robust bottom and we're thinking a lot about that let's see the parking I was referring to is actually the the public parking pulleys and that there's a lot of public parking in there so you drunk drop your boat, drive around and that's one nearby there's also some public parking a lot you know there's a lot of the street that you can go up and actually use the bike path we cut there this is probably something we need to think a little further about like you said do a little bit of more analysis we did ask if we could grab a couple more spots from the one Taylor lot and that was not allowed so we have to right now that's where we're at let's see we've thought a bit about who will be using the park the safety and we've created the plantings and the slopes to sort of the not to make sure they weren't isolated so that the park is openly visible and our thought is that the more people can see the more that a broader cast of users will feel comfortable seeing the park and try to like we purposely are not creating like isolated hidden spots around the park that can lead to all sorts of bad activities and that was a recommendation from the police oh god I'm sorry but it's very attractive I don't dispute that at all I just think let's let him keep answering questions okay sorry and then cost over next maintenance and oh yeah and inflation with the other yeah I can jump in on maintenance to whenever we get to that okay maybe I'll hit the inflation because you are right two to three percent we are in the preliminary design phase and I feel like we have a really good understanding of where this design came from and where it is now you know three five percent inflation yes a whole another million dollars that's really unlikely that this budget isn't going there I just so people know and Phil spoke about this like we all we all share this concern right about the cost of the park and and again we're not here asking the city for this money that you know I live here I don't just something we wouldn't we wouldn't do that's the whole point is to maintain this money and then go fundraise and hopefully we get lucky on that so I just wanted to echo that and then maybe I'll turn it over to Alec to talk maintenance yeah yeah we we actually I think we're you know we're all disappointed that the park when we pass the bond we kind of thought the park would be being built this year and we were all disappointed to see where things went our plan for maintenance when back when we were thinking this park was going to be built was to have a seasonal position we have a lot of sort of green space and recreational assets downtown including the rec path including the flowers that Montpelier live waters maybe some of the stuff to eat he's doing Lancer Park the you know the existing Confluence Park and if we were calling it an urban ranger position which is something Burlington has they have a lot of them but we were proposing proposing one seasonal position to take care of all these downtown assets and really make Montpelier more beautiful in the summer season and when it became clear that the Confluence Park wasn't going to be built and it was very challenging budget budget year you know we took that out along with many many other things but I think the concept still holds and it still holds now we felt like Confluence Park really took the skills to making it really needed but I think if we that that was our plan for maintenance and then I also just want to raise thanks to Ryan Kosh for a great presentation and sorry I'm not there in person just home tonight for obvious reasons but there are a couple there are I think three three big things three big sort of silver linings to the project getting delayed that arose you know when we started to think about this being more long term one is we have money to study dam removal and we can be doing that while we're looking for more funds to build this park. Two is we have money to study what a white water park would look like in that location through Grant we could be doing that too and then three we really wanted to look into the connection between this park and State Street to make it you know better access from you know all state offices and where people are getting lunch and so we have extra time to do that now and all of these pieces coming together they were all part of the vision for Confluence Park Oh and then the fourth is the CSL thing which there's one just upstream on the North Branch River and my understanding is the East State Street project is going to mitigate the impact of that to some degree and I know DPW is also working hard on eliminating eliminating those but those were all pieces that were part of the park vision and you know we had a lot of money raised to build the park we thought it was going to move forward and and it's taking longer and appreciate the deliberation here and thoughtfulness ultimately it's up to council but those are just a few things that sort of came up as potential silver linings to the delay. Thanks, Allen. It's 840 now I was hoping earlier that we were getting close enough to the end of our agenda that we could power through without taking a break but I don't think we're going to be able to do that we usually take a break at 830 so at this point we'll take a 10 minute break and I appreciate you all for participating and staying online and we'll be back at 850. Ready to come back into session. I know there are people waiting online. We have someone in the room who needs to leave so we're going to recognize Zachary or Zach again on this item. Thank you. Thank you very much. Can you hear me okay? Zach Porter again resident of 17 North Park Drive and thanks for this public comment opportunity and I do appreciate you letting me go first. I've got a young one here who we need to get home way past her bedtime. I wanted to just speak in support of you know anything that this body can do to help with the acquisition of Confluence Park. Confluence Park is just the beginning of the transformed modernity and I say this having lived in the community of Missoula, Montana for 10 years which had maybe a very similar riverfront that for many many years was degraded, polluted, inaccessible and today is held up as a I mean I think easily one of the best examples anywhere in the United States of a transformational project that resulting in huge economic development for the city making it a not just national but international destination host of competitions on the river place that people go for farmers markets for concerts you name it that to me is the vision that we are just launching into here with Confluence Park just the beginning and so without taking this first step you know it's hard to figure out how we'll take the next and this might seem like a small corner along this you know large stretch of river along the North Branch of the Winooski but I think it really is just that that first first step so please you know whatever this body can do to move this project forward can't come too soon and can't be I think you know too too large a step in the right direction here so I just really appreciate the presentations today and hope that you'll be bored so thank you. Great thanks for staying. Next up we have Linda Berger. Thank you. I have one point of information and two questions. The point of information is that Gateway Park is part of our system and it sits at the edge of the Winooski it has a parking area river access and a canoe launch so I just wanted to remind people about that and it is used by fishing people it's used by voting people it's used by people that sit and look at the river there but my two questions are one Kasha had indicated that the Gateway that the Confluence Park would be accessible for as many people as possible so my question is where would somebody in a wheelchair be unable to access Confluence Park? I'll go back to the map. All right. Can you see the map now on the screen? Sorry about that. Looks like it's a little cut off. This key parts the bottom. So we Okay, okay good. So wheelchair accessibility would be able to come down the blue dash line to the edge of these stairs and then on to this fishing platform here that's at the bottom of the screen and then there's actually a ramp proposed into the river to be a lucid boat launch. Good consultant for monadaptive. So the steps that people are able to enter the river into would not be accessible. There wouldn't be like a ramp there for people. That's right. So the steps are not and this ramp is off to the side here. Thank you. And my last question. I think this is more for Alec at one point. There was a talk about that a lifeguard would be needed for maybe it was. I'm not sure how much use of the park was planned at that point, but there was a discussion about a lifeguard. Could you could someone respond to that? Yeah, I'll be the lifeguard. Sounds like a great job. We have not lately been talking about a lifeguard. What we have been talking about is making, you know, Bob gallons of chief gallons of fire chief, you know, has raised that swift water rescue is a capacity that, you know, our current fire department does not have. So that would need to be something that, you know, we'd need to look into as the city. I don't think at this point we're going to be encouraging swimming to the level that we would need a lifeguard. Roy, correct me if I'm wrong. But that's not currently part of the conversation. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks. Peter Kelvin. Thank you. I have four quick points I'd like to make. The first is that from the very outset, this has been a vision driven project, not a needs driven project. And it's been a very particular vision. I too am interested in a facing the river. But I can think of lots of ways to face the river that are nothing like this part. This was this was a group. There's some of them are here now. Some of them have gone on to the Senate. Who had this kind of vision for Confluence Park and that vision didn't include inclusivity. And that's one of the things that bumped up the bumped up with the biggest thing that bumped up the budget. I think we can address many of the needs and have a beautiful river. If we look at it a little differently, Linda mentioned Gateway Park. I was going to mention that that fulfills a lot of it. There's also a big stretch of river that we are that we already have going along stone cutters way. There are also parking lots that are being used and unused that could have food carts picnic tables. The works, you know, we need to talk to the owners of those parking lots. Some of them we actually lease from the owners. There are many other ways to skin this cap. The last point I would make is this the finances. There are two ways to look at the finances. One is the way that you guys have framed it. We're only asking for 600,000. We won't ask for any more than that. Well, maybe and the other way to look at it is even if we take out the 125,000 that's already been spent that leaves the city with 400 and some thousand to address the real needs of many more people. I really as one person who filled out the, you know, participated in some of the focus groups and filled out the forms. All of that was looking at this vision. What did we think about this? It wasn't saying what would you want? How would you like to face the river? Because when I tried to talk about that to some of them saying, hey, I'd like to see restaurants along the river. I'd like to see the parking lots turned into, you know, places where people really could walk around and, you know, because most of the rivers that I've seen, I haven't been to Missoula, but I've been to a ton of cities that have rivers and most of it is restaurants and stores and benches. It's not this kayak vision. So I really want you guys to rethink this in terms of what are our needs? Not was not what what was a vision of some people who like the kayak. Thank you. Thanks, Peter. Is there anyone in the bill? Okay, Steve. Steve Whitaker. I applaud the vision and the hard work that's gone into it. I questioned the expense so far, but that's another story. I think that we're really out of touch to be pursuing this at this time when the tax rate is so high and the maintenance neglect is so high. I mean, I've been telling you for four or five years now about the shopping carts in the river. They haven't been removed right within eyesight of this park, right? We don't bother to pull the shopping carts out. We have combined storage going right in. We don't have signs warning the kids who are swimming right below the sewage. I mean, this is this is pie in the sky stuff and we haven't. We haven't addressed the maintenance. We're going to ask people to come down here and have lunch in this, you know, three, two, three, four million dollar part. Meanwhile, we can't get we can't enforce the lease to keep the transit center bathrooms open during lunch hour. I mean, this park right now is a bathroom for the unhoused. People crap right off the back of the granite blocks under the trees and y'all have done nothing about any of that. And I reminded you again and again about the lack of maintenance. This park has been important as has the piece of it on the east side of the bridge behind the new parking lot behind drawing board as has the lot right next to drawing board. These are all maintenance neglects. The Parks Commission was warned and asked again, who's going to move this? Who's going to pick up the track? It's three years later in the soup locker isn't down the storm drain. You know, the shelf that it's actually I don't want to go into too much detail, but you've heard it before that you're diluting yourselves and you're ripping off the public to continue to neglect the maintenance and acknowledge the maintenance shortfall you're already doing and start proposing more park. The path along the maintenance of the shrubbery, etc. Along the bike path, the people. I mean, why our Public Works Department and our Parks Department and our, you know, Tree Committee all point the finger at each other. It's not my job to clean up that mess. It's not my job to pick up the track. The Shaw's Rip Wrap. You're going to canoe out if the dam were removed. We can't maintain Shaw's Rip Wrap. That's Palmer Lowe's problem. I've been telling you about it, big construction debris and sheets of vinyl and all that stuff just floats down the river and we pretend it's not our problem. You know, we put environmental protection on our gold sheet and then we just trash the river, retrieve it. So you're a bunch of hypocrites. The Haney lot parking in the Haney lot. We're going to, we forgot in the city. This manager can't account for why the walkway was removed when that curved. Curved wall was built that would have provided access in our city plan. Downtown plan says maintain walkability between these areas. So you can't walk from Haney lot in up to the bike path. I've told you about the 90 year old woman trying to drag her grocery cart up there. You're not going to carry a kayak up there either. So the dysfunction here is, is, uh, owning. Thank you. Um, is there anyone else in the build in the room who would like to be heard? Anybody else on line? It looks like the only people are people whose hands are just still up. So council, what's your pleasure? I'd like to make a motion. That the council votes to hold the $600,000 that was previously approved by the voters for at least 18 months. And during that time, we'll have updates and they can reconsider the situation. Very. Um, so I feel like it's a little premature since we put, uh, item on the city meeting warrant that was asking the voters to give us the flexibility to spend this money or not right now. We don't actually have that flexibility. So there's no question. Well, you have this flexibility to spend it or not. You can choose not to spend the flexibility to spend for something. So we could choose the, the voters approved a bond, but we don't, that doesn't oblige us to actually take out the bond. Well, no. Okay. You've authorized us to follow. It just authorizes us. So we could say, nevermind, we're changing our mind. We're not getting it. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. Thank you for, um, all your hard work. Um, I can see that it will be a really great thing to have in our city. At the same time, all the questions I raise, I couldn't hear very clear answers for them, like the maintenance fee and councilor Brown mentioned about the bathrooms. And I think it's a good point. If you want to do anything like that, we would increase the amount, the cost more. And that's why I think we should postpone to say anything tonight. And maybe you can add all this costs in the plan. Then we can review it again. Um, idea. Thank you. Anybody else? I just want to mention the transit centers bathrooms are there right within that same parking lot area. So that to me is why bathrooms weren't an issue around the parking so it's not open 24 seven, but it's open a lot of hours. I just wanted to say, as somebody who needs to access the river for ceremonial purposes, this would be really helpful for community members that do do that. So I appreciate the thoughtfulness of having access to a water space where you don't need to swim or whatever you can access actual water and touch it and do what you will with it. So I appreciate that. And, um, I kind of, I'm, I'm leaning in the direction of Donna's motion. And were you looking to be heard? Sure. Don't feel pressured, but you're not. Yeah. I mean, I, I mean, I seconded, I support this motion. Um, I mean, I think it's clear the engagement, the depth of work, I mean, the thoughtfulness that has gone into so many of the issues, um, you know, and, and at the same time, this is really giving an opportunity to do the fundraising to get us to the full project costs. It's not yet sending out the bond. So I think it's keeping, keeping the project alive, um, knowing that there's still a lot of work to do to get it to the vision that is laid out, which I think is really exciting. I think we've talked for the last couple of years, um, about, uh, you know, being a recreation hub and being a recreation economy and like this just really is a central part of that just so I think it's economic development. I think it's water access. I think, you know, as a environmental advocate in my day job, just accessing the river and having that be an asset and something that we're protecting and caring for better in our community and removing this hazardous waste that's along our river. I mean, all of it just seems like, like I think it is stuff that's really important for the community and would really benefit the community. So I'm hopeful and I mean, there's so much federal funding out there and stuff right now. So like fingers crossed that there's ways to access it. The state's talking about recreation funding and there's so, um, I will be thinking of you and if I see anything I'll send you any, any of the things I come across. So I, you know, I hope we can continue on track and you know, the concerns I've heard from the community were really if the city was going to commit like $3 million or something, but I think sticking to the $600,000 that we've committed so far and looking to raise the rest seems like the right call to me at this point. Thanks. Sorry. Um, so I, so it's kind of content and process comments. Um, I still don't, I don't feel comfortable saying yes, we're committing to going ahead or no, we're not going to need to go ahead right now. I would like to hear for more for more of the public. I'd like to have a little bit more input because I do think things, the whole universe I were living in is so different now than it was when it's not just a time that has passed. Obviously it's the world has changed significantly and I think it deserves really looking at again. And so I would be a lot happier having a little bit more time. So I'm uncomfortable with voting yes or no tonight. I'll just say I'm not sure how I would end up voting, but the other thing is that somebody made a comment about how this seems like it's really a vision driven process, not so much a needs driven process and that resonated really strongly with me. So I'm trying to think about what I've been hearing tonight and previously about what are the, the needs that we're talking about. And I think, I think there are some that we can kind of identify. There's being, there's cleaning up environmental hazards for sure. There's having some kind of access to the river, which I think is really valuable and some kind of way that we can be actually taking advantage of the fact that there are rivers here instead of just being like poison ivy and trash. So I think that's important. And I think there are, there are a lot of ways to do that. And then the other, the other need that we have, it's not in your presentation that we have and is not part of this plan, but is you see it every day is for people who are unhoused to have a place to congregate and be and sometimes sleep in mobiliar and that's what it's being used for right now. And so that's a need that if we're going to spend not we, but if it's disturbing me at a core level, the idea of spending $3 million and not meeting the need of the people who are currently using that space, think of what could be done with $3 million and I know it is not as straightforward as not like we have a pile of $3 million and we could decide what to do with it. I know it's a lot more complex than that, but the, but if we were to put the amount of energy and resources and creativity and visioning and public input and process into helping the people who have nowhere to live in mobiliar and find $3 million to do that, it would feel so much better about our city. And so that's where I'm kind of kind of wrestling with that right now as the social worker on council. I absolutely hear you. I've been working with homeless people for over 20 years. I was homeless and I also know that a lot of the homeless people around here are people that have been asked to not return to services because they can't stay so and that is something for another conversation on another day. Yes, we need something here in town not very to help the homeless people in this community, but there is not enough staff. There is not enough people in the state willing to do the work and that is why our mental health system is falling apart. Our homeless programs are falling apart. Our domestic violence centers are understaffed because people don't want to do this work anymore. It is drained your life dealing with people's trauma day in and day out. And my hat goes off to Zach and I can't remember the other woman's name who the street outreach done. They are the only two in town doing this work and I don't know how they can keep doing it because it's so hard, but I adore them for doing it. I wish that the community would understand that solving the homeless problem isn't a matter of building buildings. It's a matter of people willing to dedicate their time every day to supporting people because they have so much change over service providers are changing constantly. There is no stability for them and that's why a lot of people are just like, fuck it. I'm done with the system and I'm just going to live outside because it's easier. I understand all these things but building buildings and putting up toilets isn't the only answer. And so I feel like until the state can step it up quite honestly and the federal government can address the global not global but the country's homeless problem and mental health crisis. I'm sorry. Reacting this way but it's the hardest work I've ever done in my life and I can't do it anymore, which is I quit and I don't think anybody at another way or any of the other agencies down street are willing to see what I'm saying right now. But I'm just going to say it. There's not enough funding for paying people to do the work people are quitting people are burning out people are going out of state. It's it's horrific right now in this field. So we're what I'm trying to say is that I don't think that just building a structure or a community center or putting a bathrooms is going to solve the problem. It's much deeper than that much, much deeper. And while I see we have these other needs having a place where it's free for people to go and access water and put their kayaks in the river on and like families that can't afford to go to the park or to the pool and need or to the reservoir that costs a lot of money. I don't have that money. My neighbors don't have that money. So having a free place to go. Hell yes. Yes, I would love to have a place to take my kids on a hot summer day that doesn't cost me 10,000 bazillion dollars in gas food, whatever. I hear you and I'm so glad that you have such a big part. But I just I wish that everybody in this town and in the state would understand that solving the homeless problem isn't just a matter of putting up structures. It's much deeper. It's all the systems, all the organizations. Everybody's tired and nobody wants to just say that they're tired. Yeah, thanks. I I hear you and I think this is what is what is causing me such distress right now is that there is energy and money for building a park like this when there isn't for the work that you were talking about. It's the most frustrating thing about living in this country for me personally right now is the fact that our mental health system and our social service systems and the police and the fire department in EMTs, people that are boots on the ground, working with the public, working with the homeless people, working with people that are doing sex work, doing drugs, whatever it is people that are struggling. Those of us that are on the ground doing that work are tired. We have our own trauma now. We're carrying other people's trauma plus our own. And I think, you know, the pandemic has broken people and has broken systems and nobody wants to talk about it. Everybody just wants to keep avoiding it like it's not happening, but try to find therapist in Vermont. So that's making sense. Sorry, I didn't mean to get that way, but I just don't think anybody's talking about what's really happening. Thank you to both of you. I don't, I don't think there's any need to be apologetic for getting emotional, emotional about people's real suffering. All these beautiful ideas that people have about pallet houses and whatever. Yes, those are great ideas, but who's going to staff it? Nobody, there's not enough people to do the staffing as it is right now. People in the hotels aren't getting their needs met because there's nobody to do it. Sorry. Donna. I agree with both of what you're saying totally. I also feel like other avenues have to keep progressing and that looking at the parks, the art and looking at recreational revenue. I mean, that's why we talk about removing the dams and whitewater activities. It brings other people in people who have money who can spend it and maybe that's jobs. And so I feel this three won't have now is a million point one isn't available for anything else. So it isn't like we're taking money away. The 600,000 has already been improved by the citizens of Montpellier. So I just feel like the flexibility that I voted for to modify the language that this bond is part of is much more about some of the other funds. And I know that we promise something and I'd like us to continue that promise for at least 18 months. And then meanwhile, nothing's going to happen. Anyways, it's not going to be a bond issue. So we have time, but they need to know that we give them that much time. And that doesn't work out. Then we still don't have the bond. We can make other decisions. So that's what I'm asking. I've got a question and maybe Donna or Bill can help help us all think about this and that is that whether your motion carries or not, we can still hold onto this money for the next year a year and a half, right? And obviously, assuming the amendment to the bond passes in next month, what will happen is that there will be other proposals coming to us to spend some of that money and we'll then have to decide do we do that or do we hold on to this at $600,000 and that's just a choice we're going to have at that time. I just feel that we have partners and that we that made this commitment. And so I feel like they need time. We made this change potentially in the language and that's left them a little bit of float and for them to go forward with other solicitation of funds, I feel they need some stability of time that they can count on the $600,000 and they're telling grantors that I have this, they should know they have. That's all. And from your perspective is 18 months the right amount of time is a year. What do you think you actually need? I think that depends on the specific funding sources. If it's federal funding, it will take longer because there are more hoops to jump through. I think state funding would be a little bit easier than that. I think 18 months would make sense to come. I would hope that we have some progress in 18 months to say, here are the opportunities that we pursued. Here's what worked. Here are the some dead ends we found. Here's what didn't work. Here's what, you know, with another three months will come through. But Donna's absolutely right that, you know, to go to funders and say, hey, we have this amount and can you help us get towards our goal? If we don't have that, we, we lost our backbone. You know, we can't, we, it's hard to move forward with the fundraising with that. And you know, will we 100% absolutely get to $3 million? I don't know. I can't promise that, but we can come back to city council and say, this is how far we've come. And do we want to keep moving forward now? And so it essentially is, is buying us time to continue this good work. And you know, something that I think is really important, one of the big projects that the city invested in really recently is one Taylor street, which is a transportation hub for people who don't necessarily have a car and it's a, it's mixed income housing. And if you take people and, and, and live downtown and live in that space, how amazing is it for those people to also have right next door, an outdoor space and space to access to engage with the river and nature and have that as part of their well-being and kind of the mental health kind of full picture. And it's hard to do, you know, I, I, I would hate to think of this as kind of an either or type of thing. I think this is a whole, like, let's, this is a part of the whole story for our community. And I think it's a place where we can all lift each other up and, you know, if we can hold on to these funds, let's see, let's see how much we can leverage them. Let's see how we can make Montpelier citizens funds grow. Thank you. Does anyone else on the council have anything more to say before we proceed to vote? First of all, thank you for the conversation. Really grateful. Important and challenging stuff. I mean, I, I, again, I mean, I think the the pots of money that they're going to be going after are like land and water. It's like a different realm of money. I still think moving forward with this makes sense with this commitment. I mean, I am thinking about like we had a conversation a few months ago about there's no shelter, like just a physical space that has a route where people can get out of the rain. And like, is there some, some element in here that I mean, I know so much thought and design has gone into it, but maybe there's a way to more explicitly look at some of the, because that was like one identified need from the homelessness task force. So, yeah, there might, there might be some connections to continue looking at to make the space a real asset for the unhoused community in a more explicit way. Okay. I think we are ready to vote. And all those in favor of Doug's motion indicated by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? No. No. Motion carries. Thank you all. Has to be four. Vote has to be four. Has to be four. Chair votes vote aye. Can I just explain my vote really quickly? Not voting against Confluence Park. This is a confusing muddled process. I think that we have our day. If we did nothing tonight, you would be able to carry on the way you're carrying on because the money has been committed and you know, you're working it. So I'm not. I'm not voting against Confluence Park and I'm I'm voting though because like I said before, I think this means if we're going to have this question about are we recommitting to it or are we getting rid of it completely that it's a it's a question that deserves more public input and more conversation. That's all. I think it's a beautiful design. Yeah, just want to echo what you say. Thank you for your hard work. Yeah, and I think I said no. I said no because I haven't heard very clearly to the point answers to my questions. But I bet our suitable enjoy the spark. Thanks for coming in. Thanks. I just like to make one comment. I wanted to help it talk to you. Voting so that I think I'm trying to do things. Vote one or another. Just to the extent of some of the questions, I'd like to point out this park was first a vision and first discussed by the public in 2002. It was part of the bond vote for the one Taylor Street the car lot at the time. And it's actually in the language of the bond vote at that time and had been an active part of the planning for that project and as as was a parking garage and as time went by and the environmental reviews went and money changed things had to drop out of the project and the first thing to drop is the parking structure because it's expensive. The second thing to drop is this but the reason that lot was designed the way it is with that space at the end was because this has been a vision for over 20 years. So I just want to be clear. There was, you know, this is not a new vision. It's not a vision of recent council members recent city officials. It's been a community vision for a long period of time and it was only it was essentially we couldn't focus on this portion of the project until the rest of it was completed. And when it was done, but then city council said, okay, now it's time to continue the rest of the project that we had envisioned 20 years. So, you know, I think sometimes it's good to have the history of these things. This isn't a, you know, whether you think it's a good idea or a bad idea isn't a new one. It's not a recent somebody's, you know, kayak happy idea. It was an idea of the community articulating the very extensive community process for helping the time is trying to essentially and I thank you for pointing that out. I want to acknowledge that I'm new on the city council. I wasn't part of a strategic planning process. It included this. I do remember the votes in the past and and just as a voter, I do remember facing the question on the ballot to approve funding for X and Y and Z and P and Q and Confluence Park. And there was no way for me to say, well, I really want to park in garage, but I'm not sure I feel about a park. And so I'm not trying to say it's good or bad. I was just saying, so going forward. I think it's a lesson that I'm going to keep in mind that when we're asking the voters for things that were that we're not smashing a whole bunch of different things together and then assuming that there's equal support for all of them when a task is okay. Thank you. Now you have the commitment for at least this period of time and I hope you're successful. Next up, we don't have anything under other business. So council reports and start with council debate. I do want to mention the park commission. I'm just thrilled to be back on it. And they really led the way with diversity, equity and inclusion as they are approaching dog policy changes in the park and lots of public input and whatever they end up deciding they really have worked hard to balance balance the need in the park for people to walk their dogs on a leash and off a leash. So I really salute them for that. Thank you. Yes, I agree with that is a tremendous amount of work that I think has been very well done. Um, the restroom committee met, I believe for the first time recently and and I went just as an interested person and I don't know that we have anybody from city council on that committee at this time and I would love to be a city council representative on that committee if we need it. So, okay. Yeah. Ski showers. Okay. And by by an exclamation, you're right. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it is very cold outside and thank you for cleaning all the roads so I can take my kids to school which my son doesn't want to go anyway. So he is really asking for a snow day every single day. But I just want to mention one thing. Um, there's a bridge when you go to reverse street and then you it is very narrow bridge and now there are ice in both sides and makes it really, really narrow work and it is really difficult to, you know, drive there. I'm real. I am afraid of hitting another car. So is there any plan at least on the bridges? Just clean the ice because they make everything so small to pass through. So I just want to mention those. Thank you. Resilient, you're talking about granite, the granite street bridge. So, so there's a cop, then, then you take and you go reverse streets. Yeah. Yep. And there's a historic reason for why it has to be that narrow. I mean, there's no. It's just, there's any plan. Tell about me. Well, I was just wanting you to encourage people called DPW. They do like to know when drivers are having problems. I called about pot poles the other day. Just as a citizen, just call and say, I experienced two pot poles, blah, blah, blah. Okay. So it's great. Yeah. Yeah. Great advice. Telling us. Okay. So I will mention. Why not? Just, you know, yeah. Thank you. Yep. I mentioned a pot hole for the city manager just yesterday and it turns out it's not a pot hole. It's one of those receivers. My report is today. I just can't understand why we have so many millions of guns in this country, but today we had another one of these folks is in Montpelier and in many schools around month, around Vermont and I don't know if it's all around the country too, but high praise to the door. Police department are too bad cheap left, but high praise to the police department for the way they handled it and the way they got the information out as as quickly as they could because people are sending their kids to school. They want to be safe and hear about this and it's got to be freaking them out. That's all I've got. Jennifer. Sorry. I'd like to echo what you just said and thank Libby Bones Steel for it was a myriad of messages I received today, but I would much rather receive a ton of messages than one and they were coming back to back and via email and text and I just I really appreciate the way the schools and police department handled that situation today as a parent of two students was really sketchy and nerve wracking and all the bad things are going through my L.A. brain. But I don't have anything else and I really do want to apologize for my little outburst tonight that is not how I like to carry myself, but I do feel very passionate about the homeless people in this country. That's why I get that way. That's all. Appreciate you. Yeah, I also just wanted to thank the police departments. I mean, the response, the communication with the community being quick and it seemed like it was really handled with care and sounded like they had, you know, staff and it's called the Washington County mental health and like to help the students and you know, I was getting the calls as a parent with kids and two of the schools. My husband is a teacher at another of the schools. I was also going through the lockdown so too many guns and mental health service. Yeah, other things in the country, but yeah, so that was helpful. One other thing just wanted to appreciate when the cold snap was coming through. I thought the city did a really good job of communicating the options for where people could go to stay warm and you know, the power of that. So the proactive communication around that that was great to see that there were a lot of options and that that was pushed out through. All right. It's the city clerk. Very important. Oh, just the balance for taking a lot longer to communicate. They're not even here yet. That was where the plan was. Then bouncing back and forth on that. I think I've been told the drop dead date is going to be next Wednesday. I think the drop dead date is going to be next Wednesday. If nothing else comes up with them, but I still have some hope we'll get somebody into the week. And how are we doing on? Oh, it's pathetic. We hardly have any. I can't believe it. I'm trying to remember my old calculus. I used to use to figure out to project the final turnout based on the early vote requests. I don't know what it was, but if that still holds true, this is going to be a tiny turnout. So we'll see. I mean, that could pick up and change very quickly, but I'm astonished by how few requests there. If it wants to work, it's a balance. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. People are all confused all over the map on that. Well, we got to get the word out. Yep. I put that out regularly in front porch form. I'm due for another one. So yeah. And anything else? Oh, that's it. It's a manager's report. Yeah, so I'll join the course of people thanking our public safety responders today. Obviously. Delighted that it was a hoax. Because nobody got hurt. Yeah, I really appreciate their care and response. I got called by the two chiefs. They were writing together to the scene. And at that point, they already suspect that it was a hoax in part because of the out of state number and because there had been no calls from the high school. And, you know, it just stands to reason that we don't have to think of it as a gunshot gun up. Everybody with a cell phone calling 911. And so yet my point though was even then they treated everybody treated it as though it wasn't like, you know, we don't think there's much to this. So it was like, we have to prepare for the worst. These are our kids as a community. And I really appreciate the turnout. We have multiple agencies arrive. Huge amount of resources were mobilized on behalf of this person who made this call and no idea how the other communities responded. But a lot of a lot of wasted emergency, but I guess maybe some training. The bright side, the only other thing I mentioned because it came up early tonight, someone asked about city managers. We knew how first point out that anybody ever has any questions about anything that we do. You're welcome to ask. We look at council meeting to try to raise a point, but we do have a mechanism that is distributed to city council. They fill out. It was initially based on a recommended form by the ICNA, the University of city managers Association has been modified to be mobilized over the years. And we also look at the strategic plan and how accomplishments are there. And we usually council does a written version of it. I see it. I also provide my own self evaluation and response to those forms goes into the mix and then we meet and talk about what went well, what didn't go well and where we could improve, but it's be personally of the team. All of us as a group for the next year for the benefit of the community. So that is the process and certainly people at any point at any time over a 12 month year can go into city council. How to deal with the aspect of city government is working. Just now someone wants to often have opinions there. Welcome to mitigate their elected officials at any time or to. Thanks. Okay. Oh, and one other question. No, just on that same point. I forgot something else. There is also an aspect of a 360 I have a potential through ICMA and every two to three or five years I should be worth company had I'm required to do a 360 staff members in public. And even though it's for my own professional credential, I've always shared that with the council. So you don't do it every year, but when it happens, I'm shared and it's part of the conversation. Thanks. All right. Well, I was predicting tonight that it would be an early night. It's it's it's it's not as early as I thought it might be, but at 940 we will be in a little adjourned.