 Okay, now I will call the meeting to order. It's 6.31 p.m. We'll commence today's proceedings with swearing in of our new District 2 council member. That's your microphone. Aye. Pailing call. To solemnly affirm. To solemnly affirm that. I will faithfully execute. I will faithfully execute. The office of city council. The office of city councilor. For the city of Montpelier. And will therein do equal right? Will do in. Could you please sweep. And will therein. And will therein. Do equal right. Do equal right. And justice. And justice. To all. To all people. To the best of my judgment. To the best of my judgment and abilities. According to law. According to law. According to law. According to law. And I also. And I also. To solemnly swear. To solemnly swear. That I will be true. That I will be true. And faithful. To the state of Vermont. To the state of Vermont. And that I will not. That I will not. Directly or indirectly. Directly or indirectly. Do any act or thing. Do any act or thing. Any act or thing. To the. To the constitution thereof. As established. As established. By convention. So help me God. You don't want to say for the rest of the meeting. Oh, congratulations, Councillor Cohn. Now, call the meeting to order. I'll review the logistics. If you're joining remotely, please change your name on screen to your first and last name so you can be addressed properly. When you speak either in person or remotely, start by stating your name and where you live. We ask that you keep your comments or questions to two minutes and Councillor Bate will assist us in keeping time. If you're speaking about a specific agenda item, please keep your comments, your name to the topic at hand. Anyone who wishes to speak must be recognized by the chair. Once you are recognized, you can make a statement or ask questions, but we do not consider public comment to be an opportunity for debate. If you speak out of turn, discuss non-dermain topics, go on too long, you may be interrupted and asked to adjust your comments or behavior. First item on the agenda is to approve the agenda. Is anyone aware of any changes we should be making to the agenda tonight? Okay, hearing none, the agenda is approved. First item on the agenda is general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council about any topic that is not on tonight's agenda. Again, we ask speakers to limit their comments to two minutes. Is there anyone in the room who wishes to address the council? Steve? Can you hear me? Yes, I can. The website needs a committee of informed people to debate whether to switch software. That software is a dog. It's not conducive to participation or finding things. There's like four-point type in the window and 14, 16-point type in the left panel. It's just a mess. There is good software out there that doesn't download every document with some gibberish, but actually maintains the name of the document you're downloading, therefore expediting participation. The garbage, the trash problem has been recurring. The garbage cans overflow. The contractor apparently is not on a schedule that works. The dog crap sits on top, gets knocked off, gets run over. It's a mess. And it seems like I'm the only one to notice. The Christmas litter, the wreaths that blew down, the ribbons that blew down, and we're laying in the street. It's as if no one who is responsible in getting paid to keep this stuff tidy is present. The mud has piled up again in the Elm Street crosswalk, Elm Street at State, because I think it's five or six years now. I've been saying that that was ground down too low. The drainage doesn't hit the drain. The ice builds up. It's, again, mismanagement on a grand scale. CVPSA, I asked that you do the right thing and direct your two representatives, Doug Hoyt and Justin Breschler, to not move to dissolve it. You've set in motion, as did the City of Barry, to move to withdraw. You owe it to the voters to allow them the opportunity to weigh in on that. To dissolve the authority prior to the time of the voters would be a disservice. It would be a slap in the face to the voters' prerogative. It would be unethical, but that's part of the course. The State House restroom bill that was introduced today, or wasn't introduced today, was discussed in committee today, H34. Your prior colleague, Connor Casey, has offered a bill to further drag out public restrooms for another year and a half with a study done contracted for this fall with a report back next in 2024. It's unconscionable that we've got restrooms, public restrooms paid for by public dollars in the transit center and in the city hall and you're not allowing people to use it. It's a simple question of staffing, cleaning, and supervision. We've got police right across the parking lot to supervise city hall bathrooms being open. There's no excuse for it. It's disingenuous feet dragging and it's a denial of courtesy to the old people, the young people, the unhoused, and the tourists. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else in the room who wishes to? Yes. I'm hoping this is the right public place to speak. I just wanted to introduce myself. Tina Munsey and I live in Montelier and I came tonight to tell you how disappointed I am in the city manager, the prior mayor, and the city council because my understanding is you're going to present a budget to the people of Montelier that's a 7.5% increase from last year. I wish to speak for people my age who will now be paying a monthly pay for their taxes equal to what they paid for a mortgage payment when they bought their houses. Now let me be quick to say I'm one of the privileged few with the house. So there are a lot of people in Montelier who can't afford a house not only because the price of the houses but because of their taxes. So one might ask, what do I get for my taxes? Well, I don't get my garbage picked up. I don't get smooth streets and I do on a regular basis get water pipes that break, flood the streets so people can't have water. So, oh yes, and then there was the state that suggested to the city of Montelier that the pressure was too high and that they needed to consider that. My understanding is the city manager, even though I would say he's been here longer than any of you and he probably knew about the problems with the water system has not taken that is not addressing that or has not agreed with the state. And I will also say you as a city council recommended that the people of Montelier buy a large piece of land in the last budget. Interesting but to me amusing in that that piece of land will need to have significant infrastructure no matter what you do with it. You already own a lot of land in which the infrastructure is not well cared for. So I'm going to end tonight where I began to say I'm really disappointed because I believe this people of Montelier vote yes every year for the city budget because they trust the people they've elected to do what's best for the city and I'm sorry the evidence is coming in that you're not doing what's best for the city so I'm disappointed. Thank you very much. Thank you Tina. Anybody else in the room wants to address the council and I am not seeing any hands raised online. If you're online and you want to be heard please speak up or wave or something so we can see. Okay I'm not seeing anybody so yes. Just I'm leaving because the process budget hearing it's already been cast like last year there's not it's not worth participating in a charade that you really want input on the budget. Next up we have the consent agenda. Oh yes go ahead. Not to his point but to Tina's point. I'm not going to address thanks for your comments Tina. I just wanted to be clear you mentioned the water pressure issue and I would without getting into a long thing I'd say there's a whole lot of misinformation that went out about that and we certainly do have high water pressure we do disagree with the conclusion of the state and at the state's request we recently conducted an independent study of our system will be releasing that shortly but basically the conclusion was water pressure is not the issue the city should continue to replace lines as they are able to financially so I would take issue that we have ignored a problem we've actually had a system in place where we've been systematically upgrading lines within the authority I'd also point out that councils and managers before I was here had been discussing this issue and they they made what I believe is the correct decision to go forward with water treatment plan we don't clean water doesn't matter if the lines are breaking people were getting diseases from our water and that has sucked up about five to six hundred thousand dollars a year in debt payments which is shortly coming to an end which can then be reinvested in more aggressive upgrading of lines so I think you know the city made the correct decision to put in a water treatment plan we've been trying to fix lines as we've been financially able to we've developed a long-term plan we recently as recently as 2015 did a study of all of our water systems so we know how to prioritize and as I said we just did another one so appreciate the concern none of us like the water breaks including our own staff nobody likes having water being out it's a huge problem but I want you to be sure that we have in fact been on top of it aware of it and we do professionally disagree with the state about pressure issues thanks bill okay next item on the agenda is the consent agenda so we want to I move the consent agenda oh second it is there any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed consent agenda is passed next item on the agenda is the people up here is the first public hearing on the budget so I'm going to do okay thank you uh so I have a couple comments already about the budget in the process so when we clear about what has happened and what has not happened uh city staff presented the budget uh which followed the preliminary guidelines council to stay within um related inflation and then that budget was presented in December and the council held a couple of meetings made minor adjustments to it and and now uh and adopted it is bill preliminary but so I just I see a comment that the online people might not be able to hear us I can't even hear you okay Mike since you are slower than you are they're working on you yep check are we doing they're better okay I was sort of lean here okay so here we are this is the first public hearing on the budget I'll just repeat what I just said this the city uh staff through me through the city manager presented a budget to the city council in December uh in the council's preliminary guidance had been to stay within the inflation rate which at the time was well 7.5 percent at the time that we were preparing the budget it actually dropped to 7.1 percent when uh the day actually that we presented the budget uh so the city council held two meetings uh made some minor adjustments to the budget and voted to bring it to public hearings so they will have a public hearing tonight public hearing in two weeks and uh after that we'll make a final vote on what doesn't doesn't go to the budget to the count to the voters to consider so earlier comments about uh you know I I I don't know what the city council is going to do but certainly the whole purpose of the public hearing is to hear from people their suggestions uh what they would like to see added or removed from the budget so that's what we're here to do so our budget goals when we prepare the budget every year we have some things we try to do so uh the city council adopts a strategic plan sets priorities for the community and uh in different policy areas so obviously the biggest tool to implement the strategic plan is through the annual budget uh part of that is to retain and stabilize our staffing levels over the last couple of years we've seen unprecedented vacancies in our city positions we can't deliver our core services uh someone just referenced what do I get from my taxes and a lot of that is services that are delivered by individuals and we have not been able to deliver them as consistently as we would like so part of our goal is to have full staffing levels to continue our investment in infrastructure we certainly did fall behind on road paving during the pandemic years due to revenue shortfalls last this past year we've made a significant catch up and we hope to continue to do that in the next couple of years to deliver responsible services people need police fire public works road plowing all the recreation senior all the things that we provide and finally to stay within the the range of the range of the inflationary which again in november was 7.1 percent there we go so looking at our strategic goals uh number one well they're not in any particular order improved community prosperity is one of those goals so we've earmarked a hundred thousand dollars for economic development that was our pre-pandemic amount uh and the idea is to divert that funding for the next couple of years to the country club road project so that we don't have to increase budget funds for that we've retained 45 000 for the homelessness task force that is primarily for outreach services but clearly this is a growing need in our community and i think we will see even a greater need at the end of march once the hotel program ends our community fund which funds are nonprofits primarily it's been held steady at 134 150 i think they're about to start their process of awarding those grants we've kept 32 600 from appeal you're alive and 10 000 dollars for the public arts fund there we go another goal is to provide responsible and engaged uh government so we've uh talking about upgrading the infrastructure as you can see our mics and things don't always work as well as we'd like we'd like to and our visuals aren't great so we're hoping to improve the experience in this room for people attending and for people participating we are continuing to work on our ADA Americans with disability act transition plan we are required by the federal government to eventually transition all of our facilities to be fully accessible which we would like to do anyway our big project this year is upgrading the elevator in the city hall which has been problematic mentioned earlier fully staffed city departments we have a to meet the increasing demand for public communications we have a part time communications coordinator now which we would expand full-time we will continue the community stipend problem program last year was started and i think needs probably another full year to see its effectiveness this was intended to provide stipends for people participating on committees for whom it was an economic hardship perhaps they need a babysitter perhaps they need those kinds of things social economic justice advisory committee was retained for ten thousand dollars and again we've retained fifteen thousand dollars for legislative advocacy which is essentially hiring a professional advocacy firm to represent the city's interest on a daily basis at the state house in addition to our own city officials this would be the third year that we've done that create more housing which is uh one of probably the two biggest needs in the city along with infrastructure so we uh recommending level fully funding the housing trust fund at 110,000 but also allocating that fund for the country club road project so along with the hundred thousand economic development and an additional 40,000 that we have in the budget that would be 250,000 this year for the planning work we can talk more about that later the housing committee may have some feelings about that they did let us know about that but that was the staff recommendation to the council practice good environmental stewardship we are looking at our first truck purchase for DPW pickup truck of course electric mowers we are working to convert the entire DPW complex to renewable energy which includes reworking some of the bond language from last year we will be completing our capital needs assessment and sustainability basically giving us the roadmap for all of our facilities that need to be upgraded and and also brought to code for ADA we're continuing to fund my ride for 40,000 dollars to give people an alternative transportation to driving confluence park has been a project there's some question whether we'll proceed with this so we're reworking the bond language to give the council more options and there'll be a discussion I believe in February with the updated plan and perhaps a decision on what we're going to do then and finally actually we won't be having a charter change but we are proposing a storm water utility and that ordinance and proposal will be coming to the council in a more full fashion this spring and that will allow us to address storm water issues throughout the community so to build and maintain our sustainable infrastructure we maintained our funding at 2.149 million in our capital improvement and equipment fleet plan the good news is that's the same funding as last year the bad news is we really want to be at our goal of 2.5 million where we were pre-pandemic so that is something we'll continually be looking at particularly for next year however that's bolstered by 2.2 million in ARPA funding 1.1 million of which basically funded projects that had been cut due to pandemic shortages and we'll talk about the the next 1.1 million in a bit the rec center of course we have a huge investment a huge liability on berry street with our rec center needing 6 to 8 million just to rehab it in place and so we are hoping to invest in a future rec facility at the country club road site and then consider what we use for the rec center what happened putting 7.2 million dollars into east state street some of that is grant funding that would that will completely redo the street all the subsurface water sewer storm water infrastructure rebuild the roads at the base do sidewalks new street be completely rebuilt street when it is completed including a new CSO outflow again to reduce our sewage overflows and storm conditions we approved last year the 550 these are all approved last year but they're still projects to be done so when we talk about investing in infrastructure this is work to be done the berry main intersection is still waiting for its street light and improvements we can't really proceed on that until the railroad does some improvements it's going to mean going right through there so we are waiting for them to complete this project and upgrading our street lights our downtown's already been upgraded to leds and we're going to be completing that project throughout the year for the rest of the community so we will be getting better light and saving energy improving public health and safety continuing purchasing body worn cameras for our police department that's been a very successful project and we've been continuing that we will be investing in a policy software platform I'm sure the chief could speak more about that but allowing the police to function more efficiently we have implemented a grant supported canine unit fully deployed with grant funds so the atlas is on the job now and we are completing implementation of the crisis intervention team program which is a big innovation for us to be able to deal with people in mental health crisis or any kind of crisis for that matter again Chief Nordensen could speak to that more fully so taking a look at our capital equipment plan if you look at the word says total budget you can see that the total is the same that's the good news as I said the bad news is that we are not up to the 2.4 2.5 million where we'd like to be more bad news is because of the implementation of the debt of some of those projects we have less annual money this year to work with so we will not have as much money for new projects this year however given the backlog of big projects that we have there will still be a fair amount of quite a bit of infrastructure work being done so we've got some street paving money in we're going to replace a bridge we've got some transportation projects sidewalks I'm just highlighting what people can see here again we have DPW here we'd be happy to go into more of these in detail if needed and then equipment we again looking primarily at DPW equipment new police cruiser which is our annual cycle that's not a new additional cruiser those are the main equipment purchases and then our ARPA funding so we're taking a look at the 1.2 funding that we had left over well excuse me at the 2.2 that has been we were awarded we can go through you can see here where we did put 620,000 to defer delayed roads and bridges and retaining walls another 420,000 to deferred equipment purchases so that was done with the first batch the second batch has been allocated well action was done last year for the housing trust fund to restore its funding to implement our community outreach program so that included the public survey that we did this year our part-time communications program we've allocated 425,000 for vulnerable populations public restrooms and another needs we're waiting a study to recommend what we do with that we'll be implementing an electric vehicle charging station possibly the public works department for vehicles or available to the public as we wait for public works vehicles we put 400 we've talked a little bit about water and sewer lines we put 450,000 of that into water and sewer infrastructure we already spent about 325,000 of that and then we allocated last year our funds to the Berry recovery residents for moms and kids that's a one-time expense and then we're allocating 70,000 or proposing to allocate 70,000 for connection incentives for new users for district heat because that is also supporting renewable energy so that's kind of the accounting of our ARPA funds both used and proposed I'm not going to go into this in detail these are all available online but we did two surveys this year one a very complete survey the complete citizen survey that was a professionally done statistically significant survey gave us a lot of information and then we also did a much more informal survey about the budget in advance we may do another one now that we've released the budget just to get a sensible look obviously the most important survey of all will be conducted on March 7th and then before but basically trying to get some sense and again I think unsurprisingly the top issues that people identified in both surveys were you know infrastructure public safety and housing and so we tried to allocate our resources in those areas and again these are available so the property tax rate as the budget stood coming into these hearings we did add excuse me so at the council's direction we added $8,000 for Riceville Beach and $5,000 for the parks commission those have been put in however we were able to make some other adjustments to not change the tax proposed tax rate so I figured you'd appreciate that and so we are currently at a 9.3 or 7.4 percent increase which is where it was when it was first proposed to the council and obviously we will have two conversations with yourselves in the public to figure out where you want to go from there this is just a quick history looking at water and sewer rates the long-standing policy of water and sewer rates again to address backlogged infrastructure was to rate adjust rates by inflation plus one percent additional one percent putting into and possibly more but at least the additional one percent going into fixing old water lines in sewer lines so the next steps and questions in the next steps in the process we have public hearings tonight another public hearing currently scheduled for Thursday the 26th that is the last night the council has to adopt anything they do that night has to be voted and that's what goes on the budget we will have an interactive spreadsheet on the website and I think Kelly will have it up tonight so that people can go in and add subtract multiply and divide but add add items take items out and see what that effect has on the tax rate so they can understand what that means to remove something or to put something in and so we hope people will take advantage of that and the council will take advantage of that all budget documents are up on the website and including these overviews there was an overview article in the December bridge is the second December 21st bridge with the summary of the budget proposal there will be another one in the February bridge just in advance of the of the budget vote along with along with the annual report which comes out so a lot of chances to get yourself informed voting but certainly in terms of the public process it's now and in two weeks so that's all I have in the overview I'm happy to answer any questions while I'm here if you want to go back to slides otherwise I'll go back to my seat and can answer questions and we do have most if not all of the key department heads here can answer any specific questions oh I forgot one last thing for the council and the public we've had each department did their own individual budget presentation it's all recorded they're on YouTube and on the city city's Facebook and I think our website so anybody who wishes to see an individual department presentation those are all available to the public as well and the council was able to view those so that they could do that with more time instead of trying to cram it all into one or two meetings so that is another tool that's available for people who wish to get informed about the budget okay thanks bill any questions from the council at this point okay thanks at this point we will open the first public hearing and this is our time to hear from residents about them any questions you might have or any comments you might have about the budget and I will start by taking comments from people who are in the room and even who wants to be heard please just either please just step up and line up at the microphone you can be recognized right yeah good evening damn Joe I am curious just looking at the a few things like first of all is there a paper copy of this rather than the website that one could read for going to sleep at night if possible I I tend to be slow and my I'm not enjoying the screen time any longer but I think we can have one available I don't know if there is one but we can isn't the one of the binders there right on the table yeah so we have some I can live without that I'm more looking about the infrastructure in terms of the 450,000 for water and sewer maintenance that is out of the city not out of the water and sewer fund is that correct no so that was ARPA funds those are ARPA funds right so that was above and beyond what we would normally do out of the water and sewer funds okay as a point of curiosity what has been sort of the average in the last couple of years for the total expenses for the city for the repairs to water and sewer from the various main brakes etc do we have an idea for that I'm probably do do you have any correct do you have a thought on that I think there's only one functioning mic so is you think that one's working now that one is this one okay you think it is working then I should give it a try I'm Germanica public works director so the question about average annual cost for maintenance or repairs of the water system so it does fluctuate a lot depending on the season so yeah I mean last last year was a high one and I'd say it was close to $50,000 and on average I would estimate around 20,000 is probably a rough estimate of average annual no no 50,000 was the contracted cost last year yeah well oh so we don't think we don't figure our own workers in on that um yeah the our own staff is you know I'd say average of 20,000 a year we typically do most repairs in-house um and it's just last year there was a high number of leaks so we couldn't keep up so we had to contract an additional 50 and and how much have we done so I don't know if that's exactly what Deanna asked but in addition to repairs how much have we done in replace you know new replacement because the 450 is for new replacement of lines not repairing yeah so the 450 reference for ARPA funding that was a replacement line on Town Hill Road and and the school street project that we just completed okay I know it was 200,000 or something for the school street does this include anything of this new connection that we're I'm not quite sure what the cost is up to Murray Hill uh no they're separate from the Murray Hill construction cost okay because there was no detailing on that so I was curious what what we're what we're looking at is that as a liability um I'd have to look back to get the exact number on the Murray Hill connection so the the city it was a shared expense with the Murray Hill homeowners association the city's responsibility was to extend um the municipal system from Town Street out to the end of North College that was what the city installed and then from there the Murray Hill homeowners association was responsible for the cost um through the field up to City Side Drive where their existing system was okay I'm just just trying to get a sense so that's why I wanted a sort of a paper copy of the budget to sort of look at the the absolute uh things because I am uh still curious uh you know rather than they you know and I guess I'm trying to ask this in terms of what percentage of the time is spent uh if you will within public works on the repairs and stuff because I I keep seeing these things of you know work crews there for a few days every time there's a main bus so I'm sure that the you know 20,000 sounds like an awfully low number for that kind of work and I'm missing something here or we just don't count that way there uh well I mean yeah this like I said the number fluctuates a lot I don't have the exact detail I could certainly can get that to you we could pull it up for records if you could please I'd appreciate it yeah sure okay thank you thanks Dan so anybody else in the room who wants to address the council at this point yeah Tina sorry Tina Muncie again from Montpelier I have a question could you clarify the Confluence Park money now I appreciate it's not in this budget right it was what we voted for with the it was in the part with the state street uh redoing and what I'm curious about is my understanding is in order to do what we thought we'd have to do it's going to cost twice as much or more than that so if we're not going to do it you did say more flexible wording what does that mean does that mean if you're not going to do something it just goes into the general fund so that's a great question so I will try to make it clear thank you um so right so Confluence Park so there were actually wasn't part of the east state street bond but there wasn't a separate bond last year for 1.8 million that included Confluence Park I think it included pellets stove at the at the DPW garage included the ferry main intersection and the street lights maybe one other project because it's a group of projects so 600,000 was tentatively allocated for Confluence Park which at the time was estimated to be about 1.1 1.2 million total costs so there were grant funds to cover the rest of so you're right we've now heard that the cost of the project could be as high as three million dollars uh and I I you know so the council hasn't seen the final presentation of the final numbers so we're not in a position well I they're not in a position to make a decision yet but clearly the finances have changed so there'll be an article in those years um so we haven't issued the bond yet we don't have the money in hand so um so we there'll be an article on the ballot this year to amend last year's bond amount I mean won't change the dollar amount but to change the potential uses to allow the council to either not issue the money at all just save the 600,000 or to be allocated to some of these other infrastructure projects that we need so if they choose not to do the Confluence Park that they could put it toward one of these other things and it would still be learned into the items that are listed there but but you wouldn't give it back to the people well you could I mean that would be a choice to the council there would be about one choice so the people haven't spent it yet so it has the bond hasn't been issued so in theory the council could only issue 1.2 million instead of 1.8 million is what you're saying and that's very much clearly a possibility the reason I ask that is I think you said we're about at our debt level the bonding is about how far as we can go well so I also want to clarify that because you're you're correct sort of so we know I mean you are I mean for you know you're doing great we have a debt policy a city our own imposed debt policy and we are at that our actual legal debt limit we're well below so so it's just I want to make clear there's two to the right we're not bumping up against any liberal but ceiling it's our own limits that we put on us for good financial practice so yes we're bumping up against that and that's one reason why there's no new bonds proposed this year because you know we've got to manage what we've got we took we made some big steps last year and we've got to play those out for a bit so yes sorry if I was garbled in my answers thanks Tina is there anyone else in the room and then we'll get to the people who are online okay first up online we have Carolyn mid-path hi my name is Carolyn mid-path and I'm a resident above Montpelier and a member of the homelessness task force I am here to ask the city council to restore the funding for an embedded social worker in the police department at the last homelessness task force meeting it was voted to ask the city council to reinstate funding for this position and I am here to advocate for that first I'll give a little history then I'll describe the current funding package chief backos I'm not sure I pronounced these names properly uh of the Montpelier police department and chief bombardier of the berry city police department had talked about a shared position for mental health clinician for many years they needed to find funding and that was secured in both cities in late spring of 2020 the department of mental health provided additional funds and washington county mental health services agreed to act as the employer in august 2020 susan lemire was hired and she stayed in the position until august 2022 when she moved out of state the intention was to have a trained social worker assist police in working with difficult situations by all accounts the cooperation between both police departments washington county mental health and the department of mental health had been deemed a success currently washington county mental health services is attempting to hire for the position of shared embedded social worker the position is shared equally between berry and montpelier the funding consists of 20 000 from berry 20 000 from montpelier and 40 000 from the department of mental health currently there is funding through june 30 2023 if no funding is available for fiscal year june 30 2024 then anybody hired in this fiscal year will need to be terminated as of june 30 at least by montpelier restoring funding at that point would be difficult as a result i am requesting that the 20 000 dollars be restored to the budget for an embedded social worker thanks carlin i thought that history was very helpful chief do you have anything you want to comment to that i know you talked about this last time thank you very valid points and i worked hand in hand with susan for two years so i would certainly welcome to have the 20 000 for susan this is not a for for any embedded social worker we have not been able to fill the position so it was a it was a difficult spot for us to be in and we had a lot of hard choices and if i delivered everything that i asked for atina would would be here i'll earn it so you know so yeah so i really i appreciate that and i think you'd probably appreciate the difficult spot that we were all into so if you all want to give me the 20 000 dollars i will happily take it and i would see i will continue to work to try and fill that spot but as of this day i still haven't been able to fill that spot thanks thank you next up online we have linda berger hi thank you i have a really simple question i can't bill i can't find your um slide presentation um can you give me how to find it on the website i'm really sorry i'm not sure i can do that from sitting here at mcdesk but we'll see if we can figure it out um if not we'll send it to you and make sure it's posted thank you it'll be on tomorrow right yeah but it should have been on from last time too thank you if it's not i'm sorry we'll get it make sure it's up next up dd brush uh hi thank you i'm dd brush i live in montpelier and i do have a copy of the slide presentation that bill i did find it somehow on the web and i just have a few notes on here that so if you don't mind i'm just going to go from the the first slide and move back i i don't have that many questions but um uh one thing and i mentioned this uh the other day to jack um under the heading of provide responsible engaged government um i would strongly urge the each member of the council to do more in terms of meeting with constituents in your in your districts um either people's homes or at a restaurant downtown whatever uh or even in city hall to give people a chance to actually have get to know you for one thing you get to know us a little better because i think either you know when you're sitting in the back of the room at a city council meeting it's hardly a venue to um know one another very well and it's also very difficult to actually have a relaxed conversation so i think that would be a huge plus i also want to ask about the um committee stipend program um i i remember last year when this was discussed there was a question and maybe i posed it i can't even remember as to how you're going to measure its success and i want to know what what has happened with that so that's one question we need to someone have the data about use we can get the data on use there are a few people using it um i don't think it's being fully utilized but there are a handful of people for home it's meeting and we'll get you the data for next meeting and before so my question is if it's only a few people and i was it instituted last july is that when it started correct so if there are only a few people why is there another 20 000 in the budget for this coming year i mean that seems to be a poor choice of 20 000 if if it's underutilized so that's one thought no dv i i would say simply that um from the staff perspective at least you know sometimes programs take a while and um you know they get slow start so if the council had established a limit of 20 000 for the program we felt it needed a full year to run before it could really be evaluated if it started july 1st and it was only note you know we were doing the budget in november december it hadn't had a long time to run by the time we were proposing that so so maybe the 20 000 that was last year if that was the number uh maybe you don't need an additional 20 this year i'm just saying that you must not have you must not have that's a fair argument i just wanted to explain how we ended up with it okay so i i think you could at least look at that figure on and just question whether you need to put the same amount back in this year on the practice good environmental stewardship page there's something here that says rework bond language under the net zero dpw complex could you elaborate what you mean by rework the bond language what way working it i'm sure it can it actually goes straight to the question that tina munsey just asked about reworking the bond language one idea um which has not been approved or thought of by anyone was if we did not use the 600 000 for the um confluence park we could use some portion of that to complete the whole uh convert the whole dpw to uh oh energy okay we might not need the whole amount and then we wouldn't have to come back for future funding uh and that would be completely done at once because there's 250 000 in there for that now but that doesn't do the whole job i see i'm sorry i forgot that that was part of the that that was part of that bond issue right okay um and then one thing you know there has been an awful lot of discussion over the years and i think that you heard a little bit about it yet uh again tonight about the idea of a public restroom perhaps can can can the 600 000 be used for anything other than could it be used for instance if you wanted to build public restrooms could you allocate it for something different like that or does it have to be well the the language isn't um final uh huh it won't be final till the next meeting when we so i'd have to look at what the current draft says but it's yeah that could be added uh it's also possible that could be part of the 425 000 uh that that was been set aside in arpa and uh and as mentioned earlier we've also been working with the state uh the comment was correct that the bill as it sits today calls for study with possible construction uh next year um but they're also taking testimony on that bill tomorrow and i'm going to urge them that they um advanced that project much quicker than uh what is currently listed in the bill whether that happens or not so that's part you know the the reason we're asking the state just is that obviously a public restroom is for lots of people including visitors to our capital city as well as those that are unhoused and as we know the the capital the state building is one of the most visited locations in all of vermont and so we have a lot of visitors that come to our city that need public restrooms and we think the state would be a great partner for that since they're a big draw and they are also you know in the mix on the homeless issue as well uh how they handle it so i'd like to see them be part of the solution okay i just have a couple other points and then i'll i'll move on let you move on um let's see it is on well i think kina brought it up the whole notion you would express great concern about how high the debt limit is it's double what it was last year um and i think you said that that jeopardizes possible projects that the city can do in the future um is the council discussing this are you doing something about this so um i don't know the right way to ask you know i know and i'm trying to think about the right way to answer your question that's clear for people um so there's the debt limit the overall brunt limit which is kind of the accumulation of all of our debt then we have a capital improvements plan and again trying to manage the budget we try to set a target of how much money will go into that plan and our ideal goal will be two and a half million dollars two point four million two point five million dollars this year it's two point one five when you have so part of that is debt payments because that is those are capital improvement projects so when you deduct the debt from the total what's left is what you have to spend any given year so you're right so last year we we had a lot of projects so we're projecting all of that debt to be fully funded this year some of it may not be you know as we mentioned we haven't let the bond yet for 1.8 million so so those debt payments may go down it might free up some money for us this year but we obviously plan for worst-case scenario but those are those are policy decisions not legal restrictions so the council could increase the debt policy they could increase the amount of funding going to capital one of the reasons it hasn't been increased at least in our presentation and and when the capital the council's subcommittee on capital improvements was because of the overall level of the budget you know it was sort of we're already at you know seven some odd percent we don't really want to add two hundred thousand dollars more to it now they may change their mind in the next two weeks but that's where we were at in December okay and then finally oh it's Grote Road a city road by the way yes it is a city road okay and you may have answered this early early on before I hopped on to zoom so forgive me if you've already you don't have to answer the question if you've already done it because I can listen to the recording on the street paving last year you requested eight it was requested for 875 and yet it's going to be a hundred and eighteen thousand five hundred why well so a lot of it has to do with the issue we just talked about was you know because some of the debt payments are meeting into the available funds but also we supplemented a lot of our work last year and this year with ARPA there'll still be a lot of road work including the 7.2 million dollars on East State Street the state is also fund paving all of route two from the crew me stand to you know the east my pillar line to the Berlin line excuse me the wayside that's be a huge paving improvement that doesn't come out of the city's budget but it will still be a huge infrastructure improvement in our community so we have a lot of paving work this year we did over a million dollars worth of work there will be other projects that will include paving in it we wish there was more money in there honestly but again we're just trying to balance but yes it's a good question and finally on the survey you mentioned that the survey you hired professionals to do the survey do you recall what the cost was for those surveys so there were two surveys one was the the american citizen survey done by polko that was about $18,000 and there's we got a long survey a lot of demographic breakout the part of the subscription with polko for doing the big survey is we then get a survey tool that we can use anytime we want and so we did a very short brief and that's you know part of that cost so we can do regular surveying throughout the year I think we're going to be doing some of that with the country club road project and others so we put out a very short you know a few questions about the budget and we got 200 some odd responses back on that and most most of the responses were as you pointed out the the four areas that people were most concerned with but they all almost everybody said they did not want taxes to increase yet we have a 7.4 increase in the taxes tax rate excuse me in the in the budget thanks dd i see you're above the two minute limit okay all done thank you for your time thanks dd next up we have dan toll you're not quite unmuted yet now you should be thanks jack um once again i i want to first make it clear that tonight i'm wearing two hats my mom introduce yourself sorry you think i know how to do this by now jack i'm dan toll i'm a resident of montpelier i live on what first avenue and tonight i want again i want to make it clear that i'm wearing two hats my residential being a resident of montpelier hat and the hat of being part of the montpelier police review kitty committee and uh not the consulting work i'm doing on homelessness i'm here to rep to support um carol and rid path's um representation of the homeless task force recommendation around the issue that the so-called embedded social work issue the first thing i wanted to mention as someone who does consulting in crisis response that um it's it's it's better to use the term embedded crisis worker because there's two two major categories of crisis workers one is social worker slash clinician and the other is peer support workers and i'm happy to talk about that but i don't have time in the two minutes you'll have to a lot more time next i just want to mention i won't reiterate my impassioned response my impassioned appeal that i made in december for the restoring this funding as being a potential life and death situation however i will put on a third hat um as a former cfo in the private sector i would urge you not to take this out completely uh would love to see it restunt or restored 100 percent at 20 000 but as a former financial officer i know once a line item goes to zero it often stays at zero and never comes back so if you have to reduce it i i strongly recommend you reduce it but not take it out completely um this the the other major point i wanted to make is um as i think many of you know by now um my proclivity is not throwing stones but to try to throw ideas and solutions um last time i offered to brainstorm with uh but with chief of police uh around the funding issue and he and i've been working on connecting around that but um since that meeting it seemed to me that threshold issue was uh and i came up again tonight the recruitment issue and just very quickly i wanted to offer some ideas around recruitment as i've been thinking about this number one i sit on the mental health integration council specifically on the workforce development subgroup chaired by allison croft who's the deputy director of dmh with the council's permission i'd be happy to reach out to allison and explore ideas um for recruitment for this position secondly i'm co-chair of something called the peer workforce development initiative which is specifically about developing the peer support workforce including uh peer support crisis workers and again with permission i'd be happy to talk to the committee about the recruitment piece um i did reach out to to eric the chief he and i traded phone calls because i really wanted to chat with him beforehand about this but that opportunity never arose um oh and the last thing that the c it initiative um bill mentioned that earlier as being you know one of the priorities in the budget i am i've been on that steering committee now for a year and a half and one of the key component or actually one of the core foundational elements of of c it which is crisis intervention training is collaboration and and coordination among first responders all across washington county and an embedded crisis worker uh would be one of the key players in that um and so again that initiative which we have um the the chiefs of police and fire and and substance use and mental health from here from here berry berlin we have a big committee of people that are working really hard and by by withdrawing the funding um that would um have a negative impact on that initiative thank you thanks dan next i see carol wilch online uh hi i'm i live in montpellier and obviously montpellier on valerie avenue um i got lost in the weeds of the budget workshops the other day online and um i noticed that there's um most of the staffing is pretty um stable a number of positions um but the city manager's office is is gone up by two and so i'm first of all i would like to know what those two positions are and then if there's an offset are we increasing the number of staffing in an absolute sensor are people just being shuffled around anyway that that's just my question um i could tell you the two positions one was the uh sustainability and uh facilities position that was added to the budget last year and the other was the reworking of the communications director from full time part time to full time um so those are both fully in the budget this year last year had been in portions so um they are fully new positions but they were pre-existing that hadn't been partially funded before so that's when i looked at the um the the organization chart those positions are anyway the um the sustainability position is not shown but that's like out of the city managers budget or the city council's budget it's it's in the city manager's budget i believe that's where that position is i'm kind of looking at kelly i know we i know that that position got added fairly recently and um i was just wondering where it is falling on the organization chart and like who that person is reporting to i think we're getting an answer for you now thank you just being sure you can hear me okay i kelly murphy finance director assistant city manager um so yes you're correct on the organizational chart that sits in the city manager's office and is funded with general fund dollars and is that in the city manager's office because that position is not tied to any individual uh department but provides sustainability services across the city government yes and actually um if you're looking at the line items themselves it's not actually in the city manager's budget per se it's actually in um city halls budget lines and it may be on the dbw in the work charts we've just corrected them and updated them but for the one that went out in the budget it might be on dbw yeah i think it's it should be in any case in the city manager's office but we'll verify but those that would to the extent there are two positions in the city manager's budget that's what those are correct thank you thanks kelly you're welcome okay didi is your hand up again or just not taken down okay thanks and i do not see anyone else online asking to be uh recognized oh i see carry brown counselor brown has has joined us uh because you're because you're online you should uh introduce yourself thank you yes hi i'm carry brown um counselor from district three thank you and i want to make sure there's uh to give a chance to anyone in the room who did not request to be recognized before and now would like to speak okay with that we will close oh sorry dan yeah let me keep it brief i noticed a passing dam jones again i noticed a passing reference to the district peak plan what is the plan there i personally i've been very disappointed the city's failed management of that i just want to put that editorially out there but what is what is the current plans with the district heat plant and the second question i have so i'll make it quick and uh is i was hearing that we seem to have within public works in other places a certain problem of staffing the departments um and i was walking past the sign in burlington today about somebody at the bagel bakery offering 25 an hour and that that may be some new benchmark in terms of what pay has to be because of inflation of the cost of living locally so i was curious whether those are included in the budget are we just talking about what we have now or are there are we restaffing what's what's going on there is my first question then great so i will answer both those questions i want to do anything with the district heat plant what we've included was to we want to uh are proposing to use some arpa funds to assist people with tying out we have some interested new customers which would help stabilize the system uh and one of the one of the obstacles has always been the cost of connection so we're trying to figure out a way to help all including uh the city users that are around the system now so that's the district heat question there's nothing happening with the plant uh i think the second question is actually i'm glad you asked it because it really is the core of the whole budget proposal which is um funding for staff so we did reach historic vacancies over this past year and a half and a lot of it had to do with wages um and other so we had to make some pretty drastic changes over the course of the year to both dbw police the prior year with fire uh to make ourselves competitive um with the private sector and with our fellow municipal so we are now i believe almost fully staffed in dbw but that is a recent phenomenon we are getting close in police we still get a couple of vacancies left but we were down five or six so we're making progress although some of them still need to go to the academy and we'll be sort of not able to be fully functional for us for six to eight months um but so part of the seven percent in the budget is just filling those positions and filling them at higher rates trying to to um provide the services that we need because uh our old rates weren't cutting it so yes you know that was a very astute question because it's it's the no i i mean let's face it we're a people-oriented business i mean yes we pave roads yes we you know do a lot of things but you people hear me say this year and you're out you know it's people that take your dispatch calls people that answer your fire calls people that plow your roads it's people that do the work and people that assist here in city hall and they cost money and when we can't without people we can't do what we do for the taxpayer and we were we had to reverse that trend so yes that's a big impact so thank you for asking that okay i just ending along with that sort of the budget think is there a way of getting a little more detail on what's planned on the district heat system for me uh sure i mean i being on the energy committee we've been sort of talking about that oh yeah okay well i mean i don't know that there's a any more plan than what i just told you at this point but maybe maybe we're maybe we should talk separately but yes we're happy to provide whatever we can thanks dan anybody else who would like to address the council at this point recognizing that we have another public hearing coming up in two weeks okay see nobody online yeah oh sorry dan i wasn't sure i had i had my hand up but maybe you couldn't see i apologize i wasn't sure if it was a new hand raise oh yeah it is a new hand well it's the same hand but i put it up twice well and will you try not to recognize people twice i just did that with dan so try to be brief oh totally different topic um it's on the issue of housing and homeless homelessness and i hope this isn't inappropriate but i just wanted to let everybody know that next thursday at noon for homeless awareness day there's going to be a an event on city hall steps or excuse me the state state house steps at noon thank you thanks dan if you could email me that i'd appreciate it we were talking about it at work today and it would be good to be able to publicize that yeah thank you thanks okay hearing no other people who are seeking to be recognized i will close the public hearing okay and uh so council where are we we have the opportunity to go forward as we are or take any suggestions to either add or subtract from the from the budget that we uh sent up uh last time lauren thanks um i mean i think to me the one outstanding issue on my mind is the embedded social worker if there is a way to get funding i think even to dan's point of getting it in here in an amount that keeps it as a clear priority of the city while acknowledging that the challenges we've had hiring it and um you know trying to work to make it happen i mean as dan mentioned it was again a huge priority of the police review committee and by all accounts it seemed really successful so it seems unfortunate to just let it go and to i could see it becoming harder to bring back in the future when hiring might become easier if it's kind of abandoned altogether this year so i'd be curious what other peoples thoughts are thank you um i agree um as somebody who does work with the community justice center i am working with people that probably could have used a person like that in their life before they committed crimes or whatnot um i feel like we should probably revisit that i would i would really hate to see that slip it's yeah yep i i get that what does that make our percentage 7.55 well so you have your you know the council has options you can increase the budget by 20 000 you can cut something else you can you can direct us to come back with a recommendation at the next you know you have some choices um but i think we'd really like to you know i think you need to give us some direction here i don't know what the no was that 7.6 okay i'm a support emotion put it back in so you're not making the motion but you like to make throw motions i don't care are you gonna make that motion sure i would move that we add back in 20 000 for a embedded social worker at the police department i'll second it okay so is there discussion okay uh bill bill one thing that i'm uh wondering is i i got dance point about even not having a zero line would be uh anything above zero would enable us to refund the the the position if but if the money became available does that literally mean that if we funded it at one dollar that we could put the money you know in an organization this size is that something that would make a difference or so i i think um i i don't want to speak for i don't want to speak for dm but the way i understood his his comment which i i get is it's not so much what happens now it's that when you want to zero something out the next year when you're doing your budget it's already at zero so it's like okay well you know and next you know it just never comes back the status quo right and so i think his argument was even if you put you know five thousand dollars in at least there's a budget line that you'll review next year i think to answer your question so that's a different question than um you know right we could try to make it you know an adjustment um i you know and i want to reiterate what chief nortonson said when we when we did our budget deliberation there wasn't a person in the room that didn't want a social worker and i think you know had we had you know in all fairness had we had someone in that position we probably would have funded it and had to figure someplace else to take it it was just you know you're making tough choices trying to stay within an already high limit and uh it seemed like one area because not only because it was vacant because it had been vacant for so long it seemed like it was almost impossible so that's what made the decision i don't think we would object to the funding and if you'd like us to take a look uh we can uh i don't have many it's right off the top of my head where we get it but um we might be able to do something donna well and along those lines when we have money left from the prior year it doesn't necessarily stay there i mean but could we attempt to keep the money we have left over in case we need more than 20 well so so this particular program is funded as was mentioned accurately 20 000 from us 20 000 from bay area and 40 000 from the state through washington county mental health so our contribution is pretty well set um you know what happens with general fund money at the end of years you know drops to the fund balance yeah um so but then you could appropriate money out of the fund balance to spend if that's what you chose to do i don't i think you know using the fund balance as a revenue when you're setting your budget you know you're using one time money to for an operating expense it's not good practice uh they could be better if there's something we really want to do and it's a priority we should put it in the budget and figure out how we're gonna fund it and you know there's not a huge plethora of choices we either add or cut somewhere else so you know those are that's what we need to do let's see a carry a carry okay good i was looking for your hand yeah thank you um so my question is about bill you said that 20 000 comes from us 20 from berry and 40 from the state and do we have any idea what's what the status of those sources of funding are and so if we don't put in our 20 000 is it gonna it's gonna have any impact on that if we do can we and can find someone can we count on the funding from berry and from the state i am see chief nordson heading to a microphone my understanding is my understanding is that that money has been appropriated again through the legislature and they put forth that bill so excuse me the list theory money should be there you know whether berry has it in their budget berry has it in their budget so we've been trying to find other ways to make it go a bit this would certainly make my life a lot easier okay are we the new guy are we are we ready to vote on this uh motion all right if so all those in favor signify by saying aye aye aye any opposed all right there you go anything else on the uh on the budget anything else you want to either add or to cut or instruct the manager okay then we are set and so that now you need a motion to have that be our budget you just wait until the next no you've adopted a budget now you just voted to amend it uh and then that would be the budget going to the next hearing and again it's not nothing's final until you vote what you put on the ballot so obviously you can change this or anything else at the next hearing and uh you know we'll take a look and if we have any ideas we will certainly bring them in we understand the challenge as well and the will we're at so so okay thanks now um i'm a little confused because i think they're maybe uh mismatch between what the uh printed agenda says and what the online agenda says i think we're up next uh for the warning for the for the first public hearing for the warning is that okay great so item a first public hearing warning um so obviously this is the first public hearing on what would be on the ballot um and let me have this here i'm not going to read it word for word but i will summarize the warning and then there are you know i think there are a couple of key issues that we should talk about um i mean so uh the first the first article one you're going to be doing it is to the one-year term for the mayor then the council district election school district moderator school district you know the basically the first bunch of the elections and article six well the article five is the withdrawal from the public safety authority article six uh would be the our budget article seven would be the school budget article eight would be the school's capital reserve fund article nine would be the mayor's pay article 10 would be the councilmember's pay article 11 is the school board pay so these are all the annual budgets uh and then article 12 would be the uh allowing the school board directors to use the fund balance again so then article 13 is one i think we should talk about this would be um the voters amend the authorization provided to the city council on march 1 2022 to borrow the sum of money not to exceed 1.815 for highway recreation park and building infrastructure improvements and then they would go on to say proceeds from bond funding may be used to finance the following amended improvements of various city infrastructure heating system and energy improvement projects at the public works garage street light traffic light and intersection improvements a retaining wall on marvin street confluence river park and other highway infrastructure projects the estimated cost of the improvements is 1.815 so it just provides a little bit more flexibility but it does still limit us to those um those topics now we don't have to decide now how we would reallocate that but that that would be that's the draft we have from our attorney but it's also was intended to basically keep it within the the family of items from last year um but just specifically thinking that if we didn't want to proceed with confluence park and we don't know that yet but if we didn't and we would have the opportunity to look at that one and is the change the use of the word may yes and and also just for example it's specifically called for a pellet boiler at public works in here talked about heating system and energy improvement projects because we think we will still do a pellet but again we haven't made a formal recommendation yet but if this were to pass I think we might suggest looking at just getting that public works project done you know all the things that chris talked about the floor heating and using the methane and really doing it right and and having that completely onto renewable and using some of the six and so this just gives us that flexibility there but otherwise it's the same projects that will be in next year okay at this point I will open the public hearing on this excuse me let me just finish though sorry let me finish and then article 14 right now is just a placeholder we have not yet made a decision on whether to proceed with the local option sales tax that to the next item on the agenda and then article 15 is the annual special assessment for the designated downtown funds and then the Kellogg Hubbard library and the central front home health and house which you already voted to put on the ballot so that's yet the 17 articles okay now I will open the public hearing on the on the warning for the annual meeting is there anyone up linda berger hi thanks I had a question on the 2022 article 13 there was a lot of at the end there was a lot of information about the issuing of the term of 20 years is estimated to be approximately so there's several sentences or one long sentence which is not included in the current proposed article 13 so I'm wondering why all of that language from the previous bond was dropped because so great great questions to the informed group of residents I appreciate that so the reason for that is that the bond was approved and authorized so the voters have already authorized us to spend this money as per those terms so what we're at so if this article 13 has drafted were to be defeated last year's article still is in effect so this isn't revoting the bond is simply amending the allowed uses so that's why great catch and is that it for you linda yes thank you very much I'm not trying to cut you off if you have more but okay I don't see anyone else online looking to comment or raise questions is there anyone in the room who would like to comment or raise questions on this item okay I'll close the public hearing council where are we on this Lauren one question for bill so we recently adopted a policy that made clear that any facilities improvements we're doing will be net zero or consistent with our net zero plan like my only question would be like I would I'd be inclined to say something like heating system and energy improvement projects at the public works garage consistent with our net zero plan or something like that but I think we just adopted something saying that all building projects will be so I don't think we need to I just want to be clear that that's the case because I just wouldn't want us to be like locking in some things we realize oh that actually would be a lot cheaper to yeah so that's fair I think you could we could put probably put something worse as heating system energy improvement projects we could say net zero or renewable energy something like that you know I think that would be perfectly fine and just good point the policy that was passed was that all buildings will be net 30 by net zero by 23rd so this would the biggest one to do is the whole public works facility so if we can have an opportunity to get that all done along ways away you know this we have three buildings here on district heat already the senior center as users appellate boiler will be building a new rec facility I don't think we're going to probably redo the energy system for for the old rec building unless it gets you know and that's a whole different story so we'll have come a long way if we can toward that goal because obviously we already do the solar read whatever you call it exchange solar exchange so we're we would be pretty far along any other comments on this when you got folks like to see draft language for the next meeting it says renewable or something like that sustainable net zero it sounds like a good idea okay so we don't have to approve this tonight we can approve it as long as you're okay you know basically you're closing the first hearing and suggesting any changes you'd like to see the next meeting you'll have to pass the final yeah okay okay next up we're on to item nine uh consideration of uh proposed charter change bill i think it's up to you again sure and is this uh a public hearing too this is not a public hearing although certainly our practice is to take public comment um um in order to change the charter for anything the city council has to vote to file language with the city clerk the proposed amendment and that has to be done 10 days prior to the public hearing so the idea is if if you vote just doing this doesn't mean you're even agreeing to put it on the ballot but if you don't do this then this issue is over for this year but if you vote to file the language then at our next meeting which is after 10 days we would hold the public hearing and then you would decide whether or not to proceed putting it on the ballot so this is a required step in and then there has to be one public hearing um you know 30 days at least 30 days prior to the vote and then another one within 10 days so we would have another one at the end of you know February and so this if we vote to file this language then it would be on for public hearing at our meeting on the 26 correct okay and this again is the proposal to add a local option sales tax that's right we currently have rooms meals and alcohol and this would include sales which I think 19 other communities have done in Vermont and I think as so as I would throw this out that as you're having this conversations some of the feedback we've received and and we haven't we staff haven't really taken any kind of advocacy role in this because we didn't you know till till we know what the council wants to do um it is what uh what would we use this for so I don't know if you have to you know that so maybe we would say you know 50 percent of it or some percent of it would go to road paving or some percentage of it would go to housing you know those kinds of things or even maybe some small percent provides regular steady funding for Montpelio Live they don't help support businesses who feel like they'd be paying for you so you know something like that if you know I think that would if our goals have $900,000 a million a year in paving and we set 50 or 60 percent of this that has to go to that then we know we'll have that you know it'll be based on that I'm not you know and we'd be happy to come back with some specific recommendations if you'd like or it's just a general revenue that could be used to offset our budget um you know in theory it could reduce property taxes or you know if you do everything from reducing property taxes by one and a half million dollars to adding one and a half million dollars of goods and services that can otherwise not be forward you know to pay so it's how you choose to allocate that but um it may be that people you know again I'd leave that to you or the elected folks but some people like to know what do you plan to do with it so maybe by if you choose to go ahead tonight and we have a public hearing you'll collectively know what I think if we designate it at this point and it continues and it goes on the ballot dead designated specifically then we have to go back to another charter change to undesignated depends how you yeah it depends what you put in the charter versus what you you know if you make a commitment that okay so it can be separate you could not put it in the charter but you couldn't make it simply pass a council resolution that says this is what the use would be and um and for example and just making this up but um say you chose to put a bunch of money into paving and you really want that to go on you know because we need that but then let's say we wanted to put another giant chunk of it into this country club road project for and you might say you know that will be revisited after four years or five years you know I could do that perpetually but that would be a you know way to raise five hundred thousand dollars a year for that project putting it on the property so you know just one example of something you can do and set how long that policy is for and again of course any council could change that too but um state's intention just like when we did with the other sales tax room and board I've got to keep it separate so the charter changes the action option tax and then within us we may decide a policy of how to spend it and promote it as far as the item on the ballot but I'd I prefer to keep them separate yeah no you don't have to put it in let's end with general what are your thoughts about about going forward at all about whether we should do this we will discuss and vote is a better now okay so we will uh talk and discuss now and vote to take it to the public vote the election right okay so tonight you'd be voting to a to file language with the city clerk if you do that then at the next meeting we would have a public hearing we'd hear from the public and then you would decide whether or not to put it on the ballot for the voters to vote so this is a procedural step tonight but obviously if you don't want to go ahead and spend any more time on it you can end it now thank you carry thank you um I think I said this the last time we discussed it I'm not in favor of sales taxes in general because they're extremely regressive and they're felt I'm the most profoundly by the people who can least afford them and so I'm not in favor of advancing this uh so that's where I am right now okay is there anyone else who has an opinion what one of the my feeling is that I agree with everything you said last week and tonight about uh sales taxes but it's also one of the few places opportunities to look for expanding our revenue base with uh without raising property taxes and that's something that you know we regularly hear people with concerns about their property taxes and as I said last time also this is a way to generate some revenue from people who don't live in the city of Montpelier from it well I I would like to at least put it forward so that it's on our discussion for the 26th so I'll make a motion that we advance it onto the ballot for discussion further discussion of public hearing the motion would be to file the language with the city clerk okay I couldn't get it to come up on my iPad sorry I would have read your memo uh word for word so I move that we put the we file this we file this language with the city clerk my second any further discussion sorry Lauren yeah I I'm kind of torn on this one I mean I'm going to vote to advance it because I think having the conversation and I'd be really interested in hearing from the community on it I totally agree with Kerry that this is not my preferred way of taxing I don't like the regressive nature of it and you know we do have increasing needs and limited ways to raise revenue I was looking up because I know it came up last time on what's exempt from the sales tax so I just pulled up from the Vermont government website and like clothing is exempt food food products and beverages so not like prepared food at a restaurant that's already subject to the local options tax but like your grocery shopping the only thing that's taxable is soft drinks but but like accessories clothing accessories and some hygiene products and stuff are subject to the sales tax medical equipment is not menstrual care products are not over the drug over the counter drugs are not um but like sports equipment and other supplies like hot tubs and body massage appliances are taxable so um quite a very specific list it's very interesting how all these decisions must have been made through the years what was and was not it does give me some comfort that like the essentials in many cases are not subject to it some are like I think the hygiene products are essentials so it's not across the board but you know people buying food and drinks and clothes that would not fall under this so that does give me some comfort so again I'll vote to advance it and really interested in the community response and discussion next week and kind of going into that open-minded Jen is that where you are with that for looking that out because that's exactly what I was wondering like what is going to be taxed so thank you um Kerry do you have a response to that or should we let's I'd like to hear what people either in the room or online have to say about it if there are any comments yeah Tom thank you uh Thomas Moore Prospect Street Montpelier uh isn't uh another one percent sales tax no I'm just wondering right now we already have a one percent uh sales tax that we've had it for a few years right you know we have one percent room spills and alcohol tax we do not have sales tax well local sales this tax we're talking it's one percent more we're want to do right or looking to do some different steps different tax it's it's on different items Tom it's the same level it's one percent but it's on different items oh a different item this is a general sales thing increase no not from the one we already have okay because I was going to say you know the the cost of everything that's gone up you already got yourself a little bonus that $10 pizza now is $16 so you're getting uh one percent extra on that six bucks times 300 pizza so steak all right that was a great question though no it is a good question that was a good clarifying question thank you yeah cars cars are not um cars are not part of this uh it no um but just for to clarify for folks that are watching um the city does have a room's meals and alcohol tax so folks that stay in lodging pay a local one percent supposed to eat out at a restaurant or have you know food at paired food a one percent an additional one percent on top of the state's tax and the same thing with alcohol served in a an establishment not what you buy at the store uh so that that the city already has that it I think makes about $250,000 a year from that um this is you know drastically different this is local sales this should probably be about 1.5 million per year in revenue interestingly uh it's the only way not that this would be the reason to do it but it's the only way that local governments can get any revenue from cannabis sales the state took all the revenues themselves but they are subject to the local sales tax so that would be it and also now this includes I think the amazon sales and things like that which in prior years had not when we looked at this before um the simplest way to answer the question though for people that are concerned about this we have a lot of questions like does this include does this include and it only includes what is already subject to the state sales tax the city doesn't have the authority to tax new items or different items we're not the people you know we had I got some feedback about why why doesn't this include professional services and those kinds of things is like the state has opted not to tax those so the state tax department collects this for us the city can't make its program up to be anything different than what the state sales tax is now so if you're paying sales tax which is currently 6% on any item you'd be paying 7% with one of it coming to this you know carry uh bill actually just answered the question I was going to ask so I'm set thanks okay any further discussion on on the motion and if not all those in favor signify by saying aye and opposed no so we think that means we have to have a roll call um brown or hurl a morton cone aye bait aye brown no okay so the motion's passed and we will be filing that with the city clerk's office thank you the next item is the special election for mayor um so on this item uh as we discussed when we were choosing to appoint councilmember cone uh the the charter is very specific it calls for an appointment of a vacant position but a special election for the mayor and does not have an appointment option so the city council decided informally that you would call the special election for the town meeting day but again we couldn't do this until there was actually a vacancy in the position and mayor wants and resigned at the end of the last meeting so this would be you're formally calling your special election it's a simple act to say that and and and bill I had one question about this and it's either related to this or related to the to the warning and that was that uh the the draft warning that we that you presented had uh article one as to elect a mayor for a term of one year to complete the unexpired term and I was wondering if that should be part of the warning for the city meeting or whether it should be a separate warning because it has us called uh so we we ran that through the city clerk he believed that um you know we don't want to run two ballots and all that kind of thing so if there if there's an adjustment to that word again we'll be on the warning but uh his opinion was that it could still run as long as you've called it for a ballot item and the example was uh in the years past we've done special ballot items on other elections okay thanks anything from the council so if I use the wording here on the format bill it's going to be correct that we direct the city clerk to call a special meeting for the mayor on March 7th 2023 in conjunction with the annual city meeting including the same balladine and polling and balladine schedule be correct i did you just move that that's my motion and councillor hurl seconded any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed all right we've adopted that um yeah um so now we're to I don't know how long that's going to be um would you like to take our break now rather than waiting for eight there okay we'll take a 10 minute break and then we'll return for other business council reports the variety of things and then a potential uh executive session hey folks we are uh gonna uh i'm gonna call the meeting to order again we will right now skip item 11 the proposal for housing and conservation project on google hill road and we'll move on to item 12 other business any other business okay um item 13 city council reports hurl um i am officially announcing that i will not be running for reelection um in march i have decided to um take a step back to focus on my family right now sorry this is a little emotional because it was such an honor um to be voted into this position and uh to spend the time with all of you and learning how city politics work how the city runs um it's really been a gift uh but my family really needs my full attention so i am stepping down once my term is over and i look forward to seeing what y'all do in the next year so thank you i have two things okay am i good i need to be right on top of it and louder more okay something is happening so i kept hearing um this issue about crosswalks and their colors and i've noticed that because of the i think snow and the salt everything they are really fading away so i just want to bring this up if uh city has any plan to repaint them or is there any specific season to it because it's getting darker uh so early it's really difficult for drivers to see the crosswalks and the second thing is uh i um i'm serving on say jack uh but now i'm on the city council and i um know that jennifer and loren uh are already on that committee so i just want to ask the council opinion uh what would you like to me do just be there or until election just observe other any other committee meeting so thank you my opinion is that you're you're duly appointed you're on the committee at the after the election we go through a process of appointing people to committees so just stay there i actually have nothing within the role of city council person but i do want to celebrate that my oldest son has bought a property back in vermont it's not in monterey unfortunately it's down in stafford but i've been spending a lot of time down there because it's an empty house checking it out after all these storms but he did get the welcome to vermont stipend it was wonderful i mean it's gonna he's moving from texas so it's a it's a huge help he does work remotely his wife will work remote they're both in a house that definitely needs remote work and they have wonderful optic fiber so vermoner's optic fiber is available in the most amazing places it's what we've made a great progress on that really it's wonderful to know anyway great uh kerry yeah i just want to express my gratitude and appreciation uh to my my district three council member mate jennifer and i'm very sorry that we'll be losing you and i've been really enjoyed serving alongside you and it's going to be quite a loss to us um i know you will still be around and you'll still be connected in some way which is great that i just wanted to thank you for for being here all this time and and being able to work together and i have two two things to say one is that uh the uh city vermont montpellier housing committee met uh last night and we have been had been talking over the last couple of meetings about coming to the council with a proposal for a charter change to uh put a just cause eviction proposal on the ballot and after working very hard and having a couple of very productive meetings we decided that we're just not not there yet uh there it's a complicated issue there are people looking at it with a whole bunch of different perspectives but that's why you didn't hear anything from us tonight about a proposal for just cause eviction but we part of our vote was that we are going to keep working on it and that's who's to say we might be coming back again next year with the with a proposal for that but uh the committee was appointed and got rolling kind of late and so that's where we are with that um the other thing i i share with the council brown jan i'm really sorry to see you go it's been great working with you sitting next to you and sharing the contact and all those these meetings i really valued what you've brought to the council and you will be missed um city clerk's report Sarah and i have no report i'm just filling in for john tonight city manager's report um sure a couple things one um to respond to the immediate question so crosswalks our problem in the winter uh the salt and things from paving really does fade them we try to do them as soon as it's uh the spring as we can um the it has to have a certain temperature for the heat for the paint to stick so it has to be i think it's about 40 degrees overnight so until it gets warm enough consistently to do that throughout the city so usually may or so we start painting crosswalks uh and sometimes we'll do it again in the fall if they've started to fade before the winter but they almost never survive the winter so it's a constant it's an annual problem and then yeah thank you you're welcome bill can i ask another question about the crosswalks is we were talking in in the in the budget materials and one of the things we were talking about was street lighting is there a way to set up the street lights so that they align or there's special lighting going down onto the crosswalks um yes and i would probably want to get some more expertise to respond to that i believe when we redid the ornamental lights not the high overhead lights several years ago we did they are set up to do that but the level of those lights isn't so high that it doesn't do the throw as much as you'd like and that was the council at the time wanted to keep them lower so we can do with that we'll get some more expertise did i scare myself about the people that i almost hit because i don't see any and then yeah so the other thing i have and this is a logistical issue i apologize for this but um somehow or other the group that works on the annual welcome legislators reception we've not had for a couple years so the good news is that we decided to have it coming back all great it's all being organized it's been organized for thursday january 26 so um and it's five to seven so we we could we could start at seven we could have two weeks to publicize we could move the 26th meeting back to the 25th and just go to the reception in case unless there's petitions that come in on the 26th that we need to deal with or we just keep it at six third and we all have to leave at six and you know i'm unfortunately part of the whole point of it is for us to interact well just later so um but i just learned this today and uh i would bring it to your immediate attention thank you learn what do you want to do how often do petitions come in on that last day i mean not that it's indicative of really if ever i mean i shouldn't say no i shouldn't say if ever we do occasionally about it's been years since we could find out you may not know you don't know that john usually knows the clerk usually knows if someone's circulating one you know we usually know because we see people out about or we've heard read something on social media that i haven't heard of any certifications being circulated this year other than election petitions um but yeah so it might be a good bet you carry yeah i i just saw that too and i was so excited to see that it was back and then realized uh we're not actually going to be able to be there for much of it um it does feel it i feel like there's a great benefit to us being able to be at that event and for the whole thing and so um if we could move our meeting a little bit i think that would be great and so and maybe the thing to do is to just start a little bit later i know it makes a very long day but um i i think i'd be a little nervous about doing it the day before if we're worried about any petitions that came in on the 26th and i guess that would be my question is what would what would we do then if we didn't have that meeting scheduled for that night we would so so that uh that's a great question i think the and and um you may be able to get this the answer quicker than than i can um but i think the answer is that you know we don't have a lot of leeway really and what to you know it's it's a procedural vote to vote to add it to the ballot so we could have very quick five you know it could even be an online meeting we could have a you know we could meet here at five and then go to chapel you know i i think there's or have just that meeting uh we could warn the meeting for capital plaza do it there there you know i mean i think it would really be a funk tree and then we'd have to vote to finalize the thing you wouldn't be able to do is i think is if we knew a petition was coming we'd have to amend the final ballot from the night before but i you know again i think we could find out if the clerk knows what i'm not there's something circulating i certainly haven't heard of any so bill if we put our meeting back on wednesday the 25th but we also advertised however long we had to ahead of time for one on the 26th like noon remote well the problem is the deadline for submitting petitions is end of business oh okay so it would have to be at least you know 4 30 or 5 all right but can we advertise yeah okay and then if we don't need it open and close it yeah i think the issue is more just the logistics of doing it and and you know to be fair we have publicized that our meetings on thursday the 26th but we could do a quick you know we've got a two-week blitz of changing the night if we had to uh dave delcor yeah i may have missed her but i thought you said that the uh like for the local option tax charter change was the 26th right we that would have to be changed okay right that hasn't been warned yet so um yeah and the same thing with the public hearings on the budget all that would have to move but that's we can do that we have time to do that yeah so i mean i do we have to move this or just directly we should i think consider if we're going to make a change a formal change either in the date or starting time or something of the meetings would be good to have a formal action council since you voted to to set the schedule in the first place so i would move that we reschedule the meeting and all agenda items currently scheduled for january 26 to january 25th um and that we schedule a meeting for five o'clock for 445 on um january 26 but we don't have to you know what we could do is because the clerk's office is also going to verify signatures if they come in maybe we could do it for like noon on friday cool and then it could just be a zoom meeting at noon on friday the 27th gives them time to verify signatures and it's still time to do the ballot yep does that work for people so that's your motion that's my motion i second it any discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye proposed there we are problem over it yes that was my my point was okay um counselor brown you're by not being here in person you're missing out on baklava so now we have uh turkey oh my gosh that's one of my favorite things on the planet of how soon can you be here i i don't have a car i have no way to get there sorry okay so now chief norton sent in lights and sirens so now item 11 proposal for housing and conservation project on guldhill road and we would entertain a motion to enter executive session well someone else is going to make a motion i moved to find that premature general public knowledge of property property you know real estate oh it's real estate i moved that we entered executive session to discuss the property on google hill pursuant of one vsa 313 a 317 section 30 which is and is there a second actually she's right 333 okay i second i second any discussions all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed any motioning foods that the city manager will go into the meeting with the park director the park director okay and uh in the baklava and are we anticipating that we would be coming back to we'll be voting tonight alec okay so we will be coming back out okay so we will be returning um probably the so we can be on in the public yeah i would think so all right all right and uh so i will get out of this meeting and go to the executive session because yeah so carry you logging into executive session to is there a motion to come out of executive session so moved is there a second second moved and seconded to come out of executive session any discussion all those in favor signify by saying hi hi hi hi opposed okay do we have a motion so i believe the council wanted to um have a motion that authorized the city to purchase 51.42 acres on google hill road for the purchase price of $52,000 to authorize the city manager to sign all related documents and to authorize the city manager and parks director to pursue all pursue the vhcb funding to reimburse the city fully and to authorize the city manager advance funds to be reimbursed to facilitate this purchase don't move second any discussion all those in favor signify by saying hi hi hi and anyone opposed okay the motion carries nothing further on the agenda uh no objection the uh meeting is adjourned at 9 p.m