 I will call the meeting to order at at 6 30 p.m. The mayor is is out sick tonight so I will be chairing the meeting. The first item on the agenda is identification of remote participants. The statute provides that if there are members of the public body who are participating remotely that they are required to be identified at the beginning of the meeting and so we've added that to our form agenda. We don't have anyone in that position at this point. Next item is to approve the agenda. The agenda has been circulated. Are there any requested changes to the agenda? The minutes have been posted and there's a lot of them because there were the two extra meetings, the little ones, and the one that got punted back for a technical error so with the minutes that are available that are finalized on the web that you all saw are for the 31st, the 28th, the 23rd, the 9th, and the other 23rd. Oh yeah that's right it's four weeks in February isn't it? That's how that works and oh also the liquor licenses that you all got as well they should be approved it's kind of last minute for them. Okay so if there are no objections to that we'll add those to the consent agenda. Anyone else on the on the council want to make any changes to the to the agenda? Reviewing the agenda I was going to suggest moving item 11 the Elks Club process up a little bit higher on the agenda to just after item seven the regional dispatch update. We've got a lot of items on the agenda we will do what we can to to get through everything. Well I mentioned both the item number and the subject and what the proposal is. This is the agenda that is on the table. That's what I'm referring to as a post-agenda is 11 I don't know okay good and then the substance of all of them is is the same I don't know how that would have happened. Thank you Mr. Weiss. Next we have general business and appearances this is an opportunity for member of the public to address the council on any matter that is not otherwise on the agenda and I'm going to recognize myself briefly at the beginning we had a public meeting in this in this room just last week and a member of the public subjected one of the city employees to an offensive offensive sexist epithet and I would think that we should all be aware that that is the kind of behavior that is completely inaccessible and intolerable and further is destructive of the productive discussion that we hope to have in all of the public bodies of Montpelier and I hope that we will not see that kind of conduct repeated. Do you want to be recognized now? I think on that same topic with more specificity at the Homelessness Task Force meeting last week Thursday April 7th Mr. Stephen Whitaker called the city staff member a bitch and a mad cow to their face in the presence of an audible to others. Mr. Whitaker also attempted to touch and operate city technology equipment despite prior warnings both verbally and in writing to refrain from such behavior. People may certainly participate in public meetings and offer criticism of the decisions and actions of public officials. Resorting to personal attacks such as these cross the line of acceptability. Public meetings are by their nature open to the public to attend. Participation is allowed but is not unlimited. One VSA 312H states the public shall be given a reasonable opportunity to express its opinion on matters considered by the public body during the meeting as long as order is maintained. Public comment shall be subject to reasonable rules established by the chairperson. I do not take such language directed at city staff lightly nor should the city council. Mr. Whitaker's behavior in this instance in my opinion is vulgar and childish. The city staff and I welcome robust public discourse on all issues. We understand that disagreement and criticism are part of that process. However, no person whether elected official public employee volunteer or resident should be subject to personal and disrespectful attacks of this nature. I will be preparing a recommended set of reasonable rules to maintain order at meetings consistent with the open meeting law for the council's consideration in the near future. Individuals who do not comply may be escorted from the meeting. Ken Russell, I saw you were up first. I was unaware that you two are going to make those statements but I fully support them and that's exactly why I'm here in this chamber. I witnessed these horrible sexist attacks on a hard-wick working public servant. We have disagreements but we need to treat each other with respect. The other thing I want to mention is there was a horrible murder of Fern Feather up in Morrisville. Fern spent a lot of time in Montpelier, hung around Langdon Street Cafe, was a beautiful person and was murdered in a terrible way, which in a way that appeared to be a hate crime. So how we treat each other matters, how we talk about these topics matter. We had a beautiful homelessness task force meeting today where people were thoughtful and sensitive and listening to each other and problem-solving in a meaningful way. Sometimes the fire and brimstone that gets thrown in this chamber is disgusting. Thank you. Thank you. So to correct the record, this is Steven Whitaker. I said she's being a bitch. The meeting hadn't started. There's no issue of conduct or interrupting the meeting. I said she was being a bitch. I was setting up a tripod to record the meeting and moved this to right there. This is moved often by every speaker who needs it, moved up, moved down, whatever, but she chose to attack me on that because of this issue of touching city equipment. There's this petty thing going on about job performance and I'll call her on it. I did not interrupt the meeting. I did not call her a mad cow. You're going to get your facts straight before you go reading things into the record. Actually, I have a recording of that because my machine was on probably. You want me to continue with my public comment now? Yeah. The city, the last two snow storms, the public works department, I suspect they're on spring break or something, but they never, five days after both of the last two store snow storms, they didn't plow the snow out of the parking spaces on most of the free parking areas in town. That's ripping us off for both the inconvenience of the parking ban and the budget of the public works. Secondly, now here we are weeks, a month after the snow, the cones and the yellow tape and the sticks that were blocking off sidewalks for ice falling. They're still scattered around town. They're on Langdon Street. They're on State Street. It's like, who's watching? There's inches of sand and mud in all the corners and on the dry days it's blowing. There's clouds of toxic dust blowing in town. It's like we're paying for public works and they're not doing their job. A wheelbarrow in a shovel. It's a broom. If you want to employ some of the folks at the park, do that, but don't stay in your cozy homes and pretend like the city is being properly managed. Secondly, body cams. You may recall, you were assured at the last time I brought it up, about the selection of the type of body cam and a purpose built body cam. You were reassured that, oh, there'll be time to discuss that. True to form, Bill Frazier stuck it on the consent agenda. A pre-made decision, a sloppy procurement process, axon who provided loaners and the city lost or concealed the proposal that they, if y'all were doing your due diligence, you would have an attorney call axon and get a copy of the proposal that they delivered to Montpelier, which included body cams and tasers, and this improved that the city lied about not having that proposal. And secondly, they didn't even bid or their bid wasn't even considered. But there's no discussion in the bid comparison. The reason I'm going into this is because it's on your consent agenda, but you would be wise to remove it from the consent agenda and discuss it. But a smartphone is not going to get turned on properly or assuredly, and we're going to miss important video coverage of our police behavior and or suspects behavior. I guarantee it. And to whatever the cost savings is, is not well documented, but the smartphone app, very city voted to move forward on axon body cameras, purpose built. You touch them and they record 30 seconds prior to when you touch them. And although the audio is not present for the 32nd pre-roll, but we can't afford to not have body cams that work. Berlin has axon body cams. Motorola makes a good one too, but they rejected it in favor of a cheap smartphone model. Y'all need to intervene. You need to take over or have an independent body do that procurement process. You can't leave it to the police. There is no technology plan. I know you're tired of hearing me. Okay, yes. Tom. Hi, Thomas Moore, Prospect Street. I attended that homeless committee thing. The incident there was on both sides. It just seemed like almost like a feeding frenzy. One would be smart to one, the other would be rude to the other, nasty. And at one time, it just kept going on. And I was just like, I'm leaving here. This is just terrible. But as a city employee, should be a little bit more professional and just let it go and not stir it up either. I know a certain individual is a little difficult here, but it was like, they were going at it, always wanting to get the last word in. So it wasn't just one person at it. In my business, if I get a nasty person, just sort of listen to them and somewhat diffuse it a little bit and go on with my job. But it was a two-way thing. It wasn't just a one. Thank you. Mary Messier, Montpelier. I was at the meeting. I missed the first part. I was here for the last part. I didn't hear all the words. I am hard of hearing. I could sense that it was aggressive feeling. And sometimes if people really find it some, maybe some mixture of things, it's the end of the meeting, it had ended. They could take it outside. There are people that come here, our citizens, and some of the people that come here have been through traumatic situations and aggressiveness in a meeting can be triggering. I will say, it's really unfortunate. People have really good ideas or suggestions. And whichever side, if somebody gets really aggressive and decides to name call or something, it ruins that. So that's really unfortunate. And it was horrible. And I've seen it again before here, too. Sorry to say, same person. I would rarely ever get up and talk about this kind of thing. But I like the city council. I'm just getting involved. And what I'd like to see is it be civil. If it's really that tense for you with someone, call them up, discuss it later or something. That particular person, Steve, I was interested in joining the task force. And he asked me in the hallway one day to assist someone out on the street. And at that time, I didn't feel I could. And we're talking about the task force. He said, you don't deserve to be on the task force. You know, that's shredding people. It's not necessary. So I agree with the council that we really need, you know, people can disagree. I don't know what was said here. I didn't hear it. But if you're really feeling that much tension and that much disagreement, save it till later. Have a mediation. You know, there's lots of avenues. We all make mistakes. You know, it all happens sometimes to all of us. So let's just be mindful. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else in the room who would like to be recognized? Because I see there are a couple of people on Zoom. Vicki Lane looks like you're first. Yes. Thank you, Bill and Jack and Ken for your words. I did watch that entire conversation or interaction, and it was clear what he did. It was abhorrent behavior when he got up just a few minutes ago. I expected him to apologize instead of try to talk himself out of what he did. That kind of behavior is totally unacceptable, should not be tolerated, and I hope we don't get to the point of where we have to have a police officer sit in the council chambers because a member of the public cannot behave themselves in a civil manner. I did not see, and I have rarely seen Mr. Whitaker be civil in the council chambers. That was absolutely the most disgusting display I have seen. He did exactly what people said he did. I don't care how he chooses to remember it, but it was pretty clear to me. Thank you. Thank you. Morgan Brown. Yeah, Morgan Brown, district three resident up here. On this current discussion, just speaking in general, I didn't witness the incident being described. This time I was remote, and I don't think I caught that. I have witnessed previous exchanges, including between the two persons in question, and there has been a back and forth over the years, actually. That said, in very general terms, besides what I understand that somebody had proposed doing when a person is disruptive, if it rises to that level, it's besides escorting having the police escort somebody out if they won't leave, if they've asked to leave, I think there should be other consequences to those actions. And there are laws on the books, including violations of if a person's being disruptive and disturbing the peace. And I think it applies at meetings, including the meeting the other day in council chambers. And there should be a procedure or policy for staff members or a chair of a task force or whatever to be able to say, contact somebody and say, hey, we need assistance here. Well, and first, ask the person to stop. And then if they don't, ask them to leave. And there should be a protocol. There should be a policy. And if need be, call somebody if need be, call the police, and have the person escort it out. But if it raises to a certain level, the person needs to be dealt with, you know, and, you know, charged if need be. And I'm not talking about Stephen, I'm talking about anybody, even a staff member. Thanks. By the way, when you were on the discussing the approved agenda, I had been hoping to get recognized, but I couldn't. And I had a concern about when you get to the consent agenda. I was hoping that C, the body warm cameras could be removed and put on a regular agenda. I had emailed very late about it. But, you know, I would hope that the council do that. Thank you. Okay, thank you. I don't see any other hands up in the room or on zoom. The next item of business is the consent agenda is our members of the council satisfied with the council with the consent agenda as is. So anyone wants to have anything removed from the consent agenda? Yeah, Lauren, can I just make a comment about the body worn cameras? I don't think it needs to be removed. But so I think that, you know, the police review committee had seen the previous proposal just to let people know and no concerns had been raised about this particular vendor and just approving the vendor today does not preclude ongoing conversation around the policies the city can use around the technology. And so I think to me moving forward with the contract and the vendor today makes sense. And I think we can, you know, very much have an ongoing conversation on how we're using them as a community. So just want to make clear that this doesn't stop that conversation, which I think is important. Okay, thank you. Like a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. That would be timely. That's your motion. And it's been moved. The consent agenda has been moved. Is there a second? Second. Any discussion, any further discussion? All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? We've adopted the consent agenda. I would like to make one comment also about the body cameras. We had a presentation. We've had a couple from the department and then we had some from the vendor. So it has been part of city council meeting and discussions previously. I just thought I put that in there. Good point. Thank you. Next item on the agenda is item 2022-106, appointment to the historic preservation committee. And we have one vacancy and one applicant. And I'm trying to see Ward Joyce. Ward, are you here? Why don't you step up and just introduce yourself into this? Yes, please. Okay. Good evening, Ward Joyce. I'm a local architect. I've been here for 22 years practicing. I have designed and renovated 20 houses in town. And I have a keen awareness of the preservation guidelines. And I'm happy to participate in the commission, especially since they are lacking a quorum. So Meredith twisted my arm. And I said I'd be very happy to sit on the commission until they could get through spring business, which is critical flow for them. So I offered to join the commission. So have they been just handcuffed, unable to do anything? Because I think they recently lost someone. Okay. And yeah. Does anyone on the council have any questions? I wish I'd planned ahead and grill you. No, I'm really, really pleased that you stepped forward. Yeah, I'll move to a point for Joyce to the historic preservation commission. I'll second. Any discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed? Congratulations. And thank you, Mr. Joyce. Next item on the agenda is the regional dispatch update. So we have a cast of thousands to present and I expect it might take a minute or two to get the video set up. While the staff is getting set up, I want to put this opportunity to acknowledge that this week is national, I don't know, I don't, my mic's not on. Thank you. Well, while we're, while they're getting set up, I'd like to take the opportunity to acknowledge that this week is National Public Safety Communicators Week and acknowledge the great work that all of our dispatchers and communications professionals do and those of Barrie and all over the state. I see our dispatch supervisor, Carrie McCool is here. So to Carrie, on behalf of me and our staff, to all of you, thank you for the great work that you do all the time. You do three cheers for Rock. Also, while we're setting up, we'll do some introductions before we get to the two chiefs. In the back of the room, we have Deputy Police Chief Larry Eastman from Barrie City. Larry, you want to? And Police Chief Brad Vale, I believe I saw come in. Chief, there you are. City Manager Steve McKenzie is here with us. Deputy Fire Chief Joe Alzworth is here. Of course, our own Deputy Chief Eric Nordenson is with us and dispatch supervisor Carrie McCool. And this is Fire Chief Doug Brent and, of course, Police Chief Brian Pete from Montpelier. All right, you're welcome. The floor is yours. Thank you, sir. Council members, city managers, members of the public. My name is Brian Pete. I'm the Police Chief for Montpelier. I'm the Chief of Police for Montpelier. And as the City Manager had pointed out, with me are leaders from both Barrie and Montpelier. And together, we have been working on the communications infrastructure issues that we've been dealing with. This is something that several people before us, several folks who are still within the group to including our own council member, have been working on trying to bring just improved communications infrastructure to the central area, to the Twin Cities area. So with this, Chief Brent is going to go ahead and lead. He drew the large straw pushed to the front. He's just a better speaker than all the rest of us. You can tell by my mumbling right now. So I'm going to move the slides and he's going to go ahead and talk the magic. Okay, there we go. Sorry about that. Sorry about that. So as Chief Pete's indicated, we've had a great working relationship with the City of Montpelier and the City of Barrie. When Chief Fakos was still at the police department, he and I got together to bring our two cities together and all the public safety officials from each of these two cities, from the fire and EMS department and the police department. We also included the city managers in these group meetings and we operationally have gotten a lot of things done between the two cities and we work much closer than we ever have before. And in those discussions, as they proceeded, one of the things that became very clear was that there were communications issues. This was just prior to CVPSA taking on the task of hiring a consultant to do a communication study here in central Vermont and they hired Televate, which you folks may have heard of the Televate study. It's a whole lot to digest. It's 111 pages and I'm sure it would be like reading Sanskrit if you hadn't read it before. It's really, really confusing to lay people as well as to us who are very, very versed in this. So I'm fortunate that as Chief Pete said, I thought I drew the short straw but he said I drew the long straw. We're very fortunate we have great dispatch centers here in central Vermont and one of the things that we have come up against often is why do we need to? One of the pieces of information that's come out relative to our operation jointly between us is that we have a fiber line that connects both of the dispatch centers, both Barry and Montpelier. And because of that, we share the ability to take over for each other if there should be a problem. I came from a previous department that had somebody walk into the dispatch office one night. A member of the public, they were cleaning out the uncle's attic and found the grenade and brought it into the police department. It was a live grenade. Thusly the whole police station had to be evacuated as well as dispatch. So for us, we work so closely with Montpelier dispatch that if that were to happen to either one of us, we have the ability and the capability to take over for each other. And that is really important because one of the things that we're talking about and I know that your council has addressed this in previous years and may have even funded it this coming this year is replace one of the consoles at the dispatch center. We also need them in Barry. So we've joined together on this and we're going out jointly to get these consoles together so that we get the same brand, the same type. So our dispatchers are used to the same equipment. Right out of the gate, one of the things that we can enjoy out of that is buying in bulk rather than each going our separate ways. We also are able to get in on state bid for some of this equipment as well, as well as the state technology support system that's there for this. The consoles that we're kind of targeting or honing in on are the same ones that are used statewide by the state police. They have 40 of these units in place. We're very confident between all of us on our communications team here with the Twin Cities that those have been well vetted by the state police and their staff know how to take care of them. We've been promised that we would have availability to spare parts should they be needed on weekends nights. So we feel very good about that. And so we put together a small slideshow and I'm pretty sure that maybe Mr. Frazier sent this out to the council or no, this is the first time seeing it. Okay, we've seen it. Yeah. So capital regions communication system obviously it's been called lots of things over the years. One of the things that we most recently have had the opportunity to take place in as as at their invitation, little background, the state police have dispatched for a lot of communities over the years. Currently they're dispatching for 110 agencies that are not the state police. They're small town police departments. They're small town fire departments, EMS providers from out from all kinds of places all all corners of the state. And they have become totally saturated with numbers of calls and the ability to do this. And they are actually doing it for free for a majority of these communities and they just have the state has stood up and said there is a cost to this. You all know that here in Montpelier because you have dispatch customers. We know that in Barrie because we have some dispatch customers not as many as you do. But there is a cost to dispatching. We know we do budgets every year. So we're very familiar with the ongoing costs that we all all face from now and now again. So these 110 agencies that are going to be shed by the Department of Public Safety are going to be looking for other places to have dispatching done for them. And what we have tried to do here with our Twin Cities group is to position ourselves to be equipment wise and readiness wise to accept some of those customers that may come forward and need dispatching services. It would be at a cost no different than our customers pay currently. So we would use the same methods that we use for the current people that we contract with and assist these other folks. In doing that and saying that the state of Vermont has said well if you're willing to step up to the plate and do some of this we'll make some money available for infrastructure improvements. One of the things that our Twin Cities group had looked at and one of the things that the Televate report had verified is that there are some severe communications issue on the fire side of things in the Central Vermont area. We have some extremely old equipment that's it's really at end of life. I kind of liken it to the fact of saying to you all that if you're using a Commodore 64 or a Tandy Radio Shack 80 computer now you're probably using the same vintage equipment that we're protecting the city of Montpelier and the city of Berry and all surrounding communities using. So this is one of the reasons that we want to move forward with this. So we had kind of identified the problem. CVPSA had kind of verified what that problem was and the state came asking because they knew we were looking for money to say if you'll be our partner and step forward and possibly take on some of these customers that we're shedding we'll help you in making the dispatch and communications infrastructure upgrades that you need to. And so we have tried to ready ourselves for that. We've used the figures that were put together in the Televate study and to get our foot in the door and we feel really good about it. It's as I said the Capital Region. These are the different departments that are dispatched for by either Berry or Montpelier and as you can see there's quite a few of them. Go ahead Brian. It's important to note in that last slide one of the things that we checked out during our catchment area investigation is we're protecting with our dispatch centers the two of them about 75,000 people and we're protecting about 750 square miles for our dispatch centers the two dispatch centers between the two of them. So what's been done? So the background for the Capital Region. One of the things that the legislature was calling it was the Washington County Dispatch and we didn't like the sound of that because it's more than just Washington County it's into Orange County and we want to make sure that we're friendly to everybody and that everybody's included in this so we thought we would come up with our name because they asked us to come up with a name so we're calling it the Capital Region Communications Project. As I said before CVPSA has done a lot of work with the Televate Report for this. They're continuing to work with Televate and hopefully pretty soon Donna will be awarding a contract for the next phase of this from Televate. We're hoping that that will be those things will fall one thing right after another we'll get a call from the state of Vermont and say hey we have found that you would be eligible for $3.2 million worth of communications equipment and we would ask the Televate folks or hope that the Televate folks would do the RFP process for us to be able to spend that money. It's a lot it's a lot of money I really I've been fortunate when I worked out of the area for several years that I was in charge of a couple of different communications projects so I have some kind of an idea on how much this stuff costs when I came back to Barrie I also realized that people around us in a lot of the departments that we dispatched for from our two different areas really have no idea how much this stuff costs it's expensive it's a lot of money and somebody's got to pay for it and one of the things that we discovered early on because we have the city managers in our group was don't expect the city of Barrie and Montpelier to pay for it so let's see what we can do to find some grant funding out there and so forth and so one thing kind of led into the other and we hope that we were ready and able to answer the question in the call for Department of Public Safety when they came to us so the the changes that we would like to make are to landmobile radio that's the stuff that we use today that's the radios in the police cars the radios in the fire trucks the portable radios that the responders use as well as I'll call them for lack of a better term the mountaintop structures antennas and radios that are around the area spread around the area in order to be able to communicate and get the message out to all the surrounding departments who purchase services from our two communities again the DPS has started out with about 11 million dollars statewide to spread out to these agencies that are willing to step forward and do regional communications they're planning on adding another six million dollars to that over the next three years I believe and we're hoping that our our request will be looked favorably upon we did this same presentation that we're doing to you tonight we did this last night in Barrie it seemed to be well received by our city council and they gave an affirmative nod at the end unanimous affirmative nod for us to continue on this process and and continue to partner with Montpelier and move this project forward if we get the opportunity to one of the things that was called out specifically in the televate report is very nice of them to do as part of their report unless they did priority one two and three of several different projects one of the things that the twin cities team did shortly after receiving this report was get together and go through this report and figure out what were the things that we needed to move on right off because if we added up all of the priority one projects it was like six point four million dollars and that that number is just too staggering to even start with so we were able to knock a few things off and one of the things that we were aware of that both cities had planned for was the dispatch console replacements and so we came to an agreement among our group that both cities would bite off replacing their own consoles we wouldn't ask the state for money to do that both cities would step up to the plate and as I explained earlier we're going to try and use the same vendor the same equipment and and moving forward that way so we crossed that off the list and the other thing the state had said was that they would not cover the cost of any mobile or portable radios for field forces this is really about dispatch infrastructure so they they selected that off the list for us as well and in saying that both myself in Barry and in Montpelier chief Pete we've all applied for some different grants for funding of the mobile and portable radios going forward and hopefully that will come true as well so we're waiting to hear on that and we're waiting to hear a little more from legislature but what we have figured out between the two cities is that we both think very easily and without much change that both cities could step up and accept two or three more services to to do the dispatching for so two to three more in Barry and two to three more in Montpelier would put us all right about at maximum capacity for what we would do obviously we're not going to tell anybody who needs to come with us the state's not going to take who you got to go with the state's going to make the money available for different regional centers to make their upgrades necessary and we'll I don't know act as an intermediary for the places that they're shedding away and say geez Barry's doing dispatch Montpelier's doing dispatch we've helped fund their infrastructure upgrades and hopefully we'll they'll put us together with the customers that we're looking for so that's kind of the end of everything that we had put together it's uh as my manager puts it a lot of this stuff is a lot like drinking from a fire hose it's a lot to swallow and a lot to understand all at once but um we have obviously Barry and Montpelier public safety officials are on board the Barry council stepped up last night CVPSA I don't know if Donna has something to say on behalf of CVPSA about this the state and our key technological partners and companies have all stepped forward in in support of this so I'll gladly be quiet now and you can ask chief Pete and I any questions that you you may have for us or things that have come up about this certainly thank you for hearing us sorry for that last slide again we have been making this a very inclusive process so as we've been this thing has been moving at light speed from the state and every day something new comes down that we have to respond to and we we're at the point that we're able to pull in the actual dispatchers and having these conversations of what these policies and procedures would look like and get their buy-in as well so that includes conversations with all the dispatchers from both Barry and Montpelier to include the union itself and the union has given us that buy-in and that and they're standing with us on that one as well okay thank you to start is anyone on the council have any questions yes they are smart I have a couple of questions I'll start out with a couple of questions it seems to me that for a number of years we've been hearing hearing presentations and one of the things we've been hearing is that that as long as these other towns are getting free dispatch from from the state police we're not going to get them to buy our service because why would they right are we at the point now where they're getting kicked off and they're going to need to be buying dispatch services yes that that's what the state has done uh commissioner shirling as you might imagine this is quite a ball to pick up and carry has made that statement and he has the governor on board and he has certain legislators on board that it's time for them to get out of the dispatching business for other than the state police now are there other regional dispatch groups the way we have here in central Vermont so I can tell you from a PSA standpoint there's a Chittinon County Public Safety Authority as well as the Central Vermont Public Safety Authority and I only know that because I was a member of that when I was up that way and Rutland has a dispatch center but it's again based around the state police Rutland County is probably the biggest area of the state who is going to be left in the lurch they are working with the state but they are not nearly far as long as we are I don't think there's any other dispatch center in the state currently I might be wrong but I think there's no other in the state that have a report like the televate report that we have to to um guide our way as we move forward with this okay thanks Joe's the expert on the capital okay farm mutual aid uh deputy chief allsworth bear city fire I'm also the vice president of capital fire mutual aid um so very Montpelier are quite unique in the state where they're using our formulas our bylaws our contracts and they're sharing them with the rest of the state so we're actually quite leaders here now uh showing you know what we have and the commissioner has really embraced our system the redundancy has been very huge we've been working with terry le valley um on the redundancy part which is very uh very appetizing to the state because they don't have the amount of redundancy that we have built into bearing Montpelier so on a lot of levels we are above the rest of the uh area which presumably makes us well suited to be like first in line for for these state level grants that's what we're hoping yeah yes coupled with the televate report and and some of the other stuff that we've been working on it really does put us above the rest of the comp I hate to say competition but the other dispatch centers that are trying to to play catch up onto this okay thanks Donna but stay stay there Joe but with this comes envy and so when this bill was in the house and the commissioner in particular the commissioner of public safety uh wanted to advance direct payment to Chittenden and the capital region for this infrastructure right off the gate as soon as the funding was there July 1 there was a lot of pushback so the house passed the budget with an attachment to this money saying it had to be studied that would mean it would go into study committee next year we wouldn't see money for almost two years from now so it's really important that Montpelier Berry everyone really work on any of the legislators to change that mindset and to have this budget go into conference committee to change that language or we won't get the money nobody will for at least another year or two years and and if I may speak to council member Bates uh point on that one part of the attrition part of the issue with what's going on within the state's communications the attrition rate with their dispatchers they are woefully understaffed with dispatchers for a host of reasons a variety of reasons but um one of the examples there was what was it Joe just just just yesterday VT Digger ran an article saying that the actual Williston Barracks was no longer in a position to dispatch right now because several of their members had COVID so so they're dispatched so they were dispatching by phone uh you had you had troopers calling troopers on phone moving through that entire process and so we're at an we're at an urgency level right now and the beauty of what we've been doing here is we understand that everybody's rough right now with staffing we're in just in a different place in the world what we want to do is do what we can to not damage what we have here or overwork ourselves here but we want we we're looking at the AFTEC consoles that if state police had something in which that they weren't able to support continuity of operations we could build a system that we could flip a switch and we could assist them in dispatching in Barrie and Montpelier to any place in the state of Vermont yeah that gets to another question cheap rent you said that uh there's the capacity to uh to add for each city to add a few additional services but but not that many um what's the limiting factor for uh how many we can add i believe it would be this the saturation of the work by the dispatchers that are on duty and the number of dispatchers that are on duty um at any given time obviously those things change based on call volume the call volumes are based around the fact whether they're a busy department like Barrie and Montpelier have or maybe a small fire department like Woodbury or something so obviously they're gonna require one's gonna require more and one's yeah that's gonna require less so we hope to be able to as people approach us measure those their call amounts and numbers and so forth so that we can make sure that our staffing is appropriate without biting off too much um because it's it's not right to put our employees in the position that they're they're overburdened either because dispatchers jobs are hard enough uh dispatchers when you look up multitasking in the in the dictionary i can tell you there is a public safety communicators picture next to that that word because they know multitasking like nobody else does and they've been telling me where to go for 49 years uh that's on the radio but um for a long time and i have an ultimate level of respect for the dispatchers and the jobs they do okay thanks anyone uh in the council before we go to the public okay is uh we'll start if there's any anyone in the in the room who wants to be uh heard on this topic Steve Whitaker again uh i've spent since i think 2017 focused on this problem area uh you're only getting part of the story here you're you're this is a a an end around the regional planning that Montpelier is an obligatory member of cvpsa and despite what Donna says cvpsa has not blessed this uh this end around this this is a attempt to further entrench Montpelier as the monopoly service provider for the regional towns and the regional towns some of them are outraged at the rates that have been escalating that they have no control over in fact Montpelier uses capital fire as a straw man bill collector so these towns uh vote money too much money into their fire department their fire department then has this poorly run poorly managed organization that aggregates the money and gives 400 000 to Montpelier annually and and it's growing and the forecast in the department of public safety's analysis compiled by the legislative council or the joint fiscal office is operating costs escalating to 1.3 or 1.5 million right now we're supposedly at about 800 000 if Montpelier is indeed committing 400 000 and capital fires committing 400 000 i don't have the proof of how much Montpelier is spending on it but 800 000 to a million and a half is a big jump and that we're not at all clear on where that extra money is going to come from the state's money does not come with any operating ongoing operating money that there's needed tax restructuring at the state level so many towns are hesitant to create these dispatch operations because the operating costs are going to leave them in the lurch and you should be if you're doing your due diligence you should be very cautious about that as well so uh the failover the the fiber optic line is buzz word buzzy as that sounds it does nothing right now it provides a little bit of data exchange but there's no interoperability there's no way for Barry to dispatch Montpelier's traffic or Barry Montpelier's traffic to dispatch berries those radios are not connected those consoles are not up to the standard that could do remote control like they might be someday but they're not now so that pretense of failover is pure hooey you know um the city council has not agreed to act as a contract manager for this televate not that not at any meaning that i've been at and yet people are being told that the city i've got it in transcripts donna bait telling senate gov ops that the city is on board to act as the contract administrator to spend cvpsa's money to buy a new 30 000 contract from televate which is 10 000 above the policy ceiling for where it should go out to bid televate short changed us on the last report they didn't come in with an inventory of equipment they didn't tell us what equipment was about to fail or where we could get spare parts they didn't measure the height of the antennas on the tower or the condition of the grounding so we got ripped off by televate and now donna has railroaded this thing in to give them another 30 000 above a 20 000 ceiling on an adopted policy requiring bid so covered that covered that this is inconsistent with regional governance and a regional plan that the surrounding towns that are the customers need to have a vote in how this is managed and who operates it just already okay let's talk about capacity montpellier has three seats and dispatches for 20 something towns berry has three seats and dispatches for three towns but berry in no way could handle their three towns plus 20 new towns data traffic pit dispatching traffic all at the same time even if they had those radio connections right now so i'm glad to see bill writing so furiously so that he can spin this for you and so well let me get to point is your bottom line that you think we should you should we should disapprove what they're saying approve this also you should not approve or give any blessing to this until you've done due diligence you're getting spun by the city's conflict of interest on trying to maintain control of this dispatch while we the city has obligations to a regional authority that we're a member of if you want to vote to get out of it that's a townwide vote you considered and then it takes a year to execute in the meeting meantime the city has obligations to continue to proceed on a regional and the city has never agreed to buy a radio system for remote towns if you're basically funding a multimillion-dollar entrepreneurial enterprise the city's contract with capital fire has been what provided the radio system to reach walden and cabbett and in woodbury that's a radio system that the city doesn't know so in fact the city won't own it even well it depends on who's the applicant for the money also the house asked to study that house asked to study before the 11 million spent to figure out what the best regional dispatch operation is because clearly this is not a transparent or or accountable governance structure this strawman approach where somebody collects the money somebody else and errors get swept under the rug we've had deadly errors we've had life-threatening errors in this dispatch that i've dug out through public records request and the chief says oh no we don't know anything about it we don't keep anything we don't keep track of it i've got that in writing he doesn't keep track of errors that's outrageous okay the committee that's supposed to be governing this contract hasn't met warned a meeting or kept minutes in all the years that it's been in existence okay thank you we're up to about six minutes now uh we have another person kim cheney thank you i've been on a cvpsa board for please identify yourself signed up for another three um kim could you identify yourself please for the viewers oh kimberley jeannie thank you um i want to start off by saying i am delighted to see people working together and hear the cities working together and it was cvpsa that stimulated that didn't happen before cvpsa said we need to have a plan and so i'm happy to see it come to some fruition but this is not a regional plan um it's you can't plan i don't think reasonably plan to spend six to eight million dollars on a handshake there needs to be agreements there needs to be a governance structure and i've been frankly um distressed on the cva cvpsa board because i don't get any information about what's going on so if this is going to be a regional effort the so-called working group has been a dodge for avoiding public records and public um accountability and at the very least the cities should make them a committee of the legislature and they should hold warned meetings and they should let other people know what's going on and we should be able to read their reports i think it's more of a wish list this all depends on getting grants which have not been awarded and there's considerable controversy in the legislature i would say the legislature is in a froth there's many plans many different groups and they're grappling about how to create better infrastructure i was surprised when chief bent said that the money from uh the commissioner didn't include didn't require a p-sap i heard the commissioner myself and government operations said unless i misunderstood something the money coming to my opinion was uh going to be a public answering system and some of that would pay for those dispatchers and i heard discussions about taking over the fourth floor at national life for the dispatching and this needs to be vented it needs to be public and it needs to be regional people have been very kind to uh tell evade today and i'm a big supporter of tell evade i think they did what we asked them to do we didn't ask them to do uh detailed engineering study which they're now gonna fill in some of those holes but there's no governance for this plan there's no central manager and director who has actually authority to do anything and i i understand that um um maybe things have changed they didn't even have a contract with uh capital fire these are a contract signed we tried to get one uh we i mean i and other members of cvpsa i wanted to see the contract and i don't think one's been signed so what you have in front of you is hoping that santa claus is going to come down the christmas tree and give the cities all the money and the surrounding towns to build a system that meets current standards and that may happen but it's a long way from seeing the light of day that i can see and i don't claim to be an expert on the legislative process because i just haven't followed with that closely but the one or two contacts i've had with it including by the way i'm meeting with the e191 one board there are so many subjects up in the air and nobody seems to to me to be as willing to replicate an antiquated system they say you know we've got millions that is floating around here for broadband some of that could be used to help public safety and it all needs to be coordinated in some way okay we're up to five or six minutes that's what the legislature is trying to do so my last word is glad to see the cooperation i think it's a great idea but this is a wish list it isn't a plan okay thank you um justin dreschler they won't let me uh there it goes thanks everyone justin dreschler i'm a member of the cvps i also i find myself in the position that i'm often in which is agreeing this with mr whitaker but for reasons it's different than what he has articulated first i think it is wonderful that twin city is actually making progress if anyone sits on a cvpsa meeting the idea that we would go even one more minute with the antiquated infrastructure that we have should be offensive to everybody and it is it's such a big step forward and it's so great that said the cvpsa is essential for a lot of public safety authority the charter envisioned that authority managing regional public dispatch and it's okay that that doesn't seem to be on the roadmap anymore but from my perspective as someone who is a volunteer on that committee and who is putting in a lot of time to it and watching the other members of the committee put in 20 times more time than i put into it it would really help me if there was some clarity in terms of what role we're supposed to play what role this twin cities committee is supposed to play and how we're all going to make this happen together so cvpsa if the vision for cvpsa is not to be some regional public safety authority anymore which it does not appear to be and pretty much everyone agrees that with that but doesn't say it out loud then let can we just say it can we just all get in a room together and say it so that we're not out here killing ourselves for no point that we have these meetings and we talk about what is our plan what are we going to do we are going to do nothing right now what we are is we are a checkbook for funding studies and the television study was very useful for that whole that purpose but we are not in authority and we have no authority and Whitaker is right Montpelier are the I signed on as a member of central from the public safety authority and yet is taking actions and inconsistent with the regional public safety authority and I understand why they're doing that and I personally happen to agree with the fact that they're doing that because something needs to get done and there's absolutely no buy in for a regional public safety authority but somebody's got to stay it out loud because otherwise we're just going to be on this committee wasting our time wasting each other's time and I want the committee to be what it can be and to not try to be more than it can be so if we are going to move forward with this I would really ask the city council to clarify everybody's roles and just so that we know where we're going and so we know where what we can provide in terms of help because it's it's very frustrating it's very frustrating without that clarity so if you could just provide that that would be really wonderful thank you thank you everyone for all the work you've done with it thank you chief thank you Doug thank you everyone it really is it's great we're thank you Donna especially thanks now I heard a bunch of questions raised and I think I saw some wheels turning to answer some of those questions uh Donna why don't you start well I guess where I'd like to start is we were here in Montpelier chamber in January 20th and we had this discussion whether Montpelier wanted to withdraw from the public safety authority and the answer was no the council wasn't ready you you saw merit in the regional future of regionalization but for the past seven years 2015 that's much longer than that every time the public safety authority has come before either Barrie or Montpelier council you have voted not to give it operating authority so we have been on a mission to do administrative duties such as the studies with Televate such as the training for dispatchers we thought it was important you may not have realized it but your dispatchers were not certified we wanted them to go through a standardized federal process Barrie and Montpelier to get them on the same playing field when we started even Montpelier with all their advanced thinking about dispatching and having a supervisor for dispatcher didn't have processes written down so we feel we've nudged a lot of progress we've nudged Barrie and Montpelier talking more Tony Fakis the previous police chief was really appreciative of that factor so we have filled other niches but we have gone on so long without the councils giving the public safety authority any authority to advance a central regional dispatch center that we now have no staff we've been operating without staff for three years we have no credibility when we went to the bank bank bonding banks bonding banks they said no we can't give you money so we knew that either Barrie or Montpelier had to do any kind of capital acquisition would have to go through one of the cities Montpelier said we're willing to work with our capital west customers and see if we can advance some equipment funding so from the standpoint of where the public safety authority wants regionalization we desperately want this equipment to be replaced and tonight what we're talking about is not public safety authority existence it's about antiquated equipment that is in the hands of our dispatchers and our first responders that to me takes precedent over territory and that I as a chair feel like everything the public safety authority board has worked for and once is to improve public safety for residents and for the first responders they are all vulnerable with this equipment folks so I don't care who they want to give it to but it'll come and serve my first responders in central Vermont my residents my friends I'm all for it and so I say why do we want to resist getting this capital money we're replacing radios we're not adding any operational cost at this point we're not asking you to go out and take 20 towns on we're saying we've got a chance for infrastructure to replace antiquated equipment I don't get where this other peripheral discussion comes from I'm just focused on seriously folks you know Doug Hoyt always said our public safety equipment is put together with safety pins no one would allow this to be in their house this kind of equipment and so I'm back to that really Justin others have raised questions about public safety authority relationship with the city is great but not now now we have a chance short window with the legislators and they are they're confused it's a lot of technical stuff they're getting a lot of mixed messages and I would like to see Barry Montair and all your customers getting after their legislators and helping our legislators have clarity this is a chance we'll never get again I just really want us to jump on this together and say let's go for the equipment we know that Barry Montair have the credentials to take in the money to to administrate the grant I just don't know why we wouldn't want to do it thank you anybody else Bill I just started out a couple technical points here I'm not going to refute all the comments but I guess the crux of this is nobody is asking the city council tonight to approve spending five or six million dollars we're based so I think the request is number one you support the concept we're seeking a grant for three point two million dollars from the legislature for the region which is not the city's correctly spoken budget maybe we'll get it maybe we won't we hope we hope we will maybe we'll get part of it and we'll have to figure that out there are three separate aspects of one which chief Brent talked about one is the consoles we have the antiquated consoles they don't communicate with each other mr. Whitaker is correct particularly well that's why we're seeking to purchase new consoles that don't only communicate with one another but with the state police and you may recall we had this in our budget a year ago objections were raised to the purchase at that time and the council put it on hold so our specific ask for tonight actually is for the approval to go ahead and work you know to get approval to actually purchase consoles when we're ready to purchase them the second aspect is the radios that our police of fire use particularly fire you've heard the details where radios don't work inside of buildings it's very dangerous we've asked each each community is asked for approximately half of the million dollars from the Department of Homeland Security and grants that's right are we waiting for Santa Claus yes we're not asking for a million dollars now we're asking you to support that effort to try to obtain that important funding and lastly we're seeking to provide added infrastructure for the region as per the telebate report as created by CV PSA given the governing votes that have occurred prior to now so you know I think as Donna said we're trying to improve the infrastructure give all of our folks the tools to provide help to the region and this you know if we are given if we are successful in obtaining 3.2 million dollars for the infrastructures that pay you know that's for the town's benefit really as much as for us it's going all to the input so that's money that all those member towns will not have to come up with so we are trying to look at this from a regional benefit and so I think you know the ask tonight is does the city council support or continue to support this effort and will you authorize us to proceed as when appropriate with the consoles which was put on hold last year that's it and so I think to make more of this is really overstating the case yes we're waiting to see if we get out external funding we're not going to spend a million dollars on radios three point two million dollars on regional equipment if we don't receive the funding we will seek other funding plans or come back or put it in the budget or do whatever but right now this is the effort that's here we're asking for your expression that you're either on board or not because that helps us in seeking funding Connor yeah I think it'd be irresponsible to leave this money on the table and we do need to move forward I would say I totally hear Justin I hear Kim I hear others like you know every time CVPSA comes in here we smack them down and we don't have clarity of what they should be doing so I'd be very frustrated as well I think if I was sitting on this committee but that said I'd like to make a motion to um authorize the city manager to purchase the dispatch consoles I think we do need another conversation about CVPSA so no would you did you did you mean and to support all of these grant efforts is part of that of course that's what I thought I heard yeah second it's moved and seconded any further discussion yes Lauren just just I mean I thank you to everyone who's doing this it's really exciting to see I feel like a lot of the previous conversations on this topic have been you know challenges with how CVPSA is working and stuff so seeing just progress getting the equipment our community's need is really exciting and I'm happy to support it and appreciate the input we've gotten and I think the city's Montpelier and Barry revisiting the mission and scope of CVPSA makes total sense to have a future conversation about soon to give clarity to the members of that so appreciate that feedback too but thank you all for what you're doing okay ready to vote all those in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed and the motion is carried thank you and thank you for coming in thanks all the folks from the area yeah while they're gathering the things and leaving the next item on the agenda is number 11 also known as number 16 the yeah elks elks club process change the order yeah I'm sorry isn't there a public hearing worn for 645 and what time is it now I don't know that it's worn for a particular time it is 714 now we will take up the zoning second public hearing after the item that we're about to take up okay thank you start them after they can start okay are we ready to go I think I'm ready to go thank you all right so I'm Mike Miller I'm the director of planning and community development and so tonight in addition to the zoning I just wanted to I've been asked to kind of go through a quick presentation of how municipalities do projects and this is really to try to help the community and city council understand you know what's a roadmap of what we should be looking at for the former elks club property so today real quick I'm going to discuss municipal municipal projects in general and really the take home message there is we're going to break things into a couple of big pieces big steps plan prepare then implement and it makes makes sense sounds simple but we'll go into some of the details I'll also talk a little bit about proposing a path forward for the former elks club land then we have a staff request for council to consider and then we'll take some questions so I'm starting with a couple of examples seems to be berry city night here so based on my experience in berry city and I chose these because these are projects that the image on the left is the old Wayland's drug it's old right right aid building that had been burned out and we turned that into an 80,000 square foot office building with 400 jobs and we did that in four years so big projects are things that can happen if they happen in a certain way and they can happen in a timely basis another project at the same time as that one was going on we did enterprise alley this is where the all fired up restaurant used to be it was an old dry cleaner terrible brownfield again another project that we designed prepared and implemented in that same five-year period and so I have experience with how to kind of keep projects moving efficiently and so I wanted to just based on my experience give a little bit of an understanding of as we think about big projects how can we make this move most efficiently so you know a little bit of a project process overview again the key is to break projects into three big steps one is to plan then we're going to prepare then we're going to implement and a lot of this makes sense you're like of course that's the way we would do it except that a lot of times what you'll find communities do is they might go ahead and pursue funding to build a project and then say okay well we have five million dollars let's start planning and decide how we want to spend five million dollars as opposed to starting with a plan and then finding the funding you need to do the project you want you rarely end up with the project you want if you work backwards it also takes longer you're more likely to run into hurdles if you've got money to build a project but you haven't studied what your site conditions are or what the other costs might be so working in a specific order plan prepare implement is very important for everybody to keep in mind how long each step that depends on the specifics of each project certain projects we are relatively easy to plan you know if you're just going to build a sidewalk on route 302 from the roundabout to the wayside pretty easy we just have to decide which side of the street to put it on really quick to plan preparing and implementing may take more time other projects are going to need more time in the preparation or more time in the implementation depending on what the project is and for major projects like the one we're considering for the Elks Club land think about at least one year for each step we're going to spend a year just doing our planning and it's it's critical and we'll go into each one of these steps so the first step planning I'll say this over and over again this is the most important step the one most people want to skip nobody wants to talk about planning we want to get going we want to start building things in the outcome of this step is an agreed upon conceptual plan and this is where all your public input is is gathered this is where public input is vital because by the time we get to these other steps in the future most of those are implementing steps so this we're going to gather ideas from the public we're going to evaluate opportunities and constraints that's what staff would do we're going to present the findings back to the public with options we're going to narrow those options and present final options for recommendation to the public and council and then council makes a decision and then we build a final conceptual plan which is graphic rich and detailed so I put this together from from again back from berry city if you are looking at the right side of this screen that's where city hall is and city hall park and and youth triumphant and on the left side you'd have just off the screen the the courthouse the dark block is the new city place so this was the conceptual plan that was put together for merchants row enterprise alley and the areas on north of north main street there and the purpose of this is not to answer every question and get every detail but really to lay out conceptually this is what we are looking for and if you knew the site before you'd kind of be able to look at it and go through and say you'll see a note on the bottom that says bike path so we would be answering questions in the conceptual phase that goes and says okay what do we want to see in enterprise alley we want a sidewalk on one side and a bike path on the other we're going to weigh generalized things like we could have 120 cars in this parking lot but if we have a bike path we can only fit 110 are we willing to sacrifice 10 parking spaces for a bike path those are the conceptual plan issues we know where where every detail goes isn't there but we need to have an understanding of are we going to be having a bike path or are we not going to have a bike path because then we can move forward later on to work on that that's what these conceptual plans help to do for you they're typically done by or in coordination with the landscape architect they're used to doing these types of large scale projects this is where a lot of preliminary studies are done could be parking studies and in the case of enterprise alley it was a lot of questions on parking soils economic studies utility capacities we're looking at order of magnitude costs these are things that are going to say if we did this 10 to 15 million dollars two to three million dollars we don't have exact numbers but we have to have an idea because usually we're comparing options do we want option a that costs five million dollars and is okay or do we want the 10 million dollar project that looks really nice and they're just some preliminary studies order of magnitude costs it's not an exact representation the details will evolve as the final plan is prepared but why is this important because it makes sure everybody's on the same page if we talk about things just in words in in things I might think of a housing housing for 200 units as a lot of multifamily housing but somebody else might go through and say oh I was thinking 200 single family homes and somebody else might be thinking something different when they're thinking of housing by putting it down in paper and it's not just the picture the conceptual plan actually had one here this was one of the ones that was put out for city place the construction of city place so the final plan is more than just the picture but that picture is important so it's important to make sure everybody is on the same page with what we're all trying to do that makes my job as staff much easier later on because I'm just being told build this we've all decided this is what we're going for let's move forward on it there are a lot of hurdles to get there but we know what we're doing the graphic plans help greatly to improve the ability to get grants it shows grant funders a level of public input that has been conducted and both of these really add up to getting a lot of grants and a lot of money behind projects and that was my experience in berry city for both of those projects among a number of other projects that I've worked on there this sets up the next steps preparation so staff can move forward on projects to implementation which is difficult to do if we don't have a clear vision of where we're going so the second step is preparation this starts falling more on staff and consultants we begin to write the grants we start refining plans we're doing more detailed studies now that we know what we're doing we can start spending more money on those more detailed plans we move into engineering and architectural plans we develop more detailed cost estimates and eventually getting into permitting rezoning bonding all of those pieces that are going to take us and get us ready for some of the final pieces we also in the second step will begin outreach and coordination with partners and potential partners presentations to the public and council at this step are more about progress reports and any refinements so again as I was pointing out that first step this first year is the year for public input because we have to find out what the public wants and what we all are going to agree on what we're doing because by the time we get to the preparation steps it's really more about the refinements and progress reports and then finally we get to the third step the big step this is where we start moving into the bids this is where you've got your public works folks who are very experienced at doing bids and construction getting involved in moving things forward for the elks club this could mean in the implementation selling of building lots signing development agreements building roads and utilities and I'll point out because we own the lots we didn't really know where to talk about this but we wanted to just mention this third step is because we own these building lots we have a lot of control over what happens depending on how we write development agreements and I one of the other reasons I wanted to pick pick out and pick on the city place project that I was so involved with in berry city was because that project we own the lot we owned everything so we had a public process for approving the designs which you couldn't do if it was just a regular project but because we own the land we could have a public process to approve the designs we could require some public amenities that otherwise wouldn't be required it's it's it provides us a lot of control over what happens when we get there and these would have to be happening in the third step not in the first step but in the third step when we get there we can start having a lot more control over over how we move forward with implementation public input at this point is really progress reports by this point we've already decided what to do we already have our act 250 permits we already have our zoning permits and we've got bulldozers pushing dirt around so at this point most of what you'd be seeing is probably a project person who would be coming in and giving you updates as to where things are going if implementation is broken into phases which it might be then this might happen over a set of years so implementation could be something that takes three four five seven ten years depending on on how the build out is for something like the elks club so now a little bit more getting specifically the next steps for the elks club um as as many everybody knows or or many of you know we had uh the ideas and kickoff session already we had this gathering ideas step it was very well attended um and now what we would be doing next is coming with our public feedback process so this is what would happen for that first year we have to have our follow-up meeting and evaluate those ideas with the public and then we need to start shifting into evaluating opportunities and constraints we need to have staff and consultants start to look at the site constraints start to look at what we see on the ground start doing some preliminary studies um so we can bring back some findings to the public later on so we can start talking about um all right what do the options look like we knew what we wanted for ideas some of those might not pan out because of site constraints so we need to have a presentation that says this is what we found on the ground um then we're going to narrow the options and come back with final options and recommendations to the public and council um before we have a final vote um provide clarity around the role of the hub at this point this is this is kind of sitting a little bit outside this process we have to figure out how um the the hub is going to fit into this whole process um and then we would present a final conceptual plan again very graphic rich and detailed that will let us be ready for the next step um to do this first step we would need to hire a project consultant to coordinate the development of the conceptual plan um this is going to be needed because we're going to need to have somebody who is going to be managing and establishing clear channels of communication um web pages front forum posts facebook um can capillary neighborhoods and polko um why would we hire somebody it's going to be a lot more efficient at hiring subs and our staff really lack the time and experience in this type of development so one of the key things is is if we hire somebody to be the project coordinator it gives them the flexibility to then um do certain subs by hiring certain environmental subs to do the the soil borings and all these other things it gets us out of the job of doing 50 rfps um for each one of these different steps so uh that's what a consultant would start to work on um there is separately at the same time where we have the recreation master plan which is still an open and evolving process we haven't entirely nailed down whether this gets built into our conceptual plan we do everything at the same time that kind of puts some things on a hold some you know some um recreation things people want to get started on faster um so we still have to sort out this process of how the recreation master plan will be built into this greater master plan for the property and the goal is to have the conceptual plan done by this time next year that would be um I think that's a good time frame um it would make sure we have given the public plenty of time to um see the options give input we could have multiple hearings to talk about what this conceptual plan is and it's very important we don't rush the conceptual plan um we really need to make sure that uh everybody if if we've had complaints about things you know from from stuff in the past is that stuff has been rushed this this is an opportunity we don't have to rush it so let's look at trying to make sure we take a good amount of time to get a plan not everybody's going to agree on everything um but we need a plan that we uniformly say this is where we're moving forward on so staff has good direction um the preparation starts in 2023 that's next year where we already know there's likely to be zoning changes that would be needed it's likely we're going to be applying for act 250 there are some state designations we could apply for that would help us in implementing this but it depends what comes out of the conceptual plan the conceptual plan that looks one way might be an NDA another plan might be a new town center another plan might be um expanding the growth center there are a number of programs we could get into help implementation we would also be exploring grant opportunities and partnerships during 2023 um and that may take a little bit longer act 250 so it could be a longer process um we hope it's it's relatively um succinct but um you know we're looking at one year for preparations and then two years from now if if everything went well we would be starting to look at the implementation phases a big project like this is going to be likely broken into phases we probably develop you know let's say the lower part first we might construct roads or utilities there might be some selling of lots and development this would really depend on what comes out of the first two steps so what is our request for tonight so staff would like the council to direct the manager to create a funding plan for the project and to develop a request for proposals to hire a project manager to coordinate public input and to develop the conceptual plans for the former elks club property so it's a little bit of a mouthful but it's it's really basically we need the funding to hire the consultant to move this to the next floor we didn't mean to fund a plan for the entire project we meant for the consultant developing the consultant part of the project yeah no we're not yeah this is just for developing the conceptual plan we need to develop the conceptual plan we're just looking at this first step and in in the in your cover sheet I did point out the fact that we do have $50,000 in our budget for economic development some or most or all of that I don't know how much of it's already been allocated but there is a set of funding that could be applied to this towards this it'll probably be more than $50,000 but we'll see when we do the RFP process and that is what I had so in questions can probably be for me or Bill or or Cameron okay thanks Bill any any questions up front Connor yeah thanks very much Mike that's very very thoughtful I think um you know one thing we know for sure is the building on Barry Street probably doesn't have a future as far as providing some of the same functions that it currently does so I'm wondering as we're doing this plan is there gonna simultaneously is there gonna be a plan to replace sort of the functions because you know I wouldn't want another year planning for the place on Barry Street after we figure out what we're doing with the the rec pieces of it I'd love to get affordable housing something in there you know pretty quick yeah I think that's something we can that's something we can certainly need to consider as part of the planning process obviously there will be a lag time from the time we decide what's going to happen before something is built and things actually move out so you know that so we may make a decision over the next year that we're let's say that we're going to put a new rec center at the site but then we've got to get the funding go to voters build it over those two years we have plenty of time to sort of plan for the rec center so I'm not sure it's as urgent but it absolutely has a lot of you know residual uses and things that we need to consider it's got to be part of this process great thanks go ahead my enthusiasm and that's a great idea that's how clever I mean that's really maximizing the time we're all spending for everybody the citizens as well to come and talk about both spaces I really hope that we could forward that kind of approach maybe it's not manageable but I'd like to try it for you yeah Lauren um yeah thank you Mike I appreciate the extensive public input and I was really just thrilled by the participation and a lot of great ideas at the first public forum so I think being able to really incorporate and like thoughtfully spend the time planning even though I know you know we all want to see housing yesterday but taking the time to do it right makes all the sense in the world the only question I had about the funding request so right is it just just for the budget for hiring the consultant or all the sub grants the consultant would need to do the planning for the year the budget for the planning process so the okay so that's thanks so Mike who are the consultants are there consultants around the state who do this kind of work and what if we were to find someone that we like what what kind of timeline would we expect to get someone in and starting with the process I think that's what we would probably discover in the RFP process I mean we've done these conceptual plans before some of you remember SE group did our downtown master plan that was about a $60,000 $65,000 $70,000 project you know and they did it in about a year but we've done other the Greenie America's capitals was ORW that was another one that they came in for about you know six months and did a downtown master plan based on the redoing of the 2000 question was how soon would what would be the timeline before we identified who is doing it not how long oh how long to get somebody I well we've got some we've got somebody we've been talking to who is going to help us with the RFP so we do have somebody who's in in the development field who does this type of work who has said you know they could be interested in applying but they also are very interested in just helping us put the RFP together so we can get get consultants but yes there are a number of firms out there that could fill this role okay thanks anyone else up front any members of the public who I'm sorry and I I really like the pace this is moving because I think it gives you know the tortoise ones a raise here gives people time to take a bit of a breath and I want to consider when I see she's on now Cali and she was great she said I voted against this you know I voted against this but but I'm invested in making it like the best it can be and I'm really worried about some of the you know wildlife up in the area and I know we're going to disrupt it but let's let's disrupt it as thoughtfully as possible and do a bit of an analysis of that so I would just want to make sure like some of our committees as well are on the front lines on this too and able to offer input you know if we bring the tree board into doing analysis or something I think we have time to do it with the way you've laid it out but I would just emphasize uh let's get those volunteer committees coming up with ideas right off the bat here great yeah and I guess I would follow that up with just a quick statement of saying that this the conceptual plan process should take as long as it needs to so you know as much as I'm I'm just trying to by saying a year I'm just trying to give everybody an expectation that goes and says you know okay we're it's not it's not boom boom boom boom and we're trying to build by next year you know some people may want us to be building by next year and I'll be saying no we really our best thing is to go slow but the most important thing is that when the conceptual plan is approved and handed to staff and the consultants to implement that we have the support of council and the public behind it because that makes those next steps go faster the last thing we want to be doing is second guessing and revisiting designs and revisiting things because that that just bogs down getting your permits if you're changing your designs all the time so the the most efficient way of doing this is to make sure we've got good buy-in from the public good buy-in from the council and we've taken all the time that we need and if we can do it in eight months that's awesome but I'm thinking it's got to be probably a year but if it took a year and a half then it's what it takes to get to make sure we are at the right point to move it forward and you know part of the that process is in addition to sort of public process about ideas is the evaluation of you know where are the wetlands or the important wildlife areas you know that that's what some of the consultant works so won't necessarily be public meetings but it will be saying you know here's best places to build you know most difficult places to build so making sure we have a full understanding of the site constraints and the site opportunities there a couple things I wanted to just mention on this number one to the public you mentioned we have found a person to replace Kevin Casey guy named Josh Jerome who has worked mobility resident and works a ton it's got a lot of experience in this work so he'll probably be one of our you know we will have a lead staffer really I mean in addition to Mike and Cameron and I secondly Mike quickly mentioned Polko and I know I mentioned this a little bit at the last meeting when you approve the contract we have a we have a kickoff meeting with them Friday but this is a new bit of technology we're getting and it's going to be very important I think very helpful for this kind of community process you can you can really put on regular polling and options and people can can feedback you can also feed out information on a real regular basis as well as doing the full we're going to do the full community survey but that would be about all sorts of things not just this project but we'll we can really have a pretty steady diet of not only sending out information but getting two-way communication as well as obviously follow-up meetings so we're we're really looking looking forward to that and lastly I did want to mention the hub it was in in the post you know we met with them yesterday and I'll remind everyone that you know there is no formal agreement between the city and the hub and we've made no commitments to nor they to us but we haven't been in regular conversation with them and it was actually their initiative that got people thinking and I you know I know they would like to get going on their ideas sooner rather than later and you know we tried to be as clear as possible that we the city weren't in a position to commit to that that we had a we had a process but the one thing I did say to them and I would say to you is I think we owe them some clarity at some reasonable point in the future as to how we view going forward with you know whether it's you're just part of the mix or yeah we're going to allow you to go forward or we're not interested whatever it might be I would I think we need to do that tonight although several of them are here I may want to talk about that but you know they've worked hard and they've put together a plan and they've got donations and they've got you know something and and frankly if not for them we probably wouldn't have thought of this property so I do feel that we need to be we need to give them the kindness of clarity even if it's not the answer that they don't like or if it's an answer they like but just make sure that's on our radar for the relatively near future Donna my question is called a bill is what hub is asking more clarity than I want to be partners with you but I don't know what it looks like well there's but but I also may have other nonprofits and other organizations I want to be partners with correct so I there are people from the hub here that could probably speak more clearly for what the hub is looking for than I can and should what I would say is I believe and I think I'm correct the hub has plans they've got some funders and they're they're working it they'd like to get going they'd like to start their seeking grants they'd like to maybe start renovating the building this year and putting programs in and you know maybe starting making plans to build their building that is way ahead of our process so for that to happen we would have to say okay we're carving this portion out and allowing you to go forward we may or may not want to say that so I think what what we need so they should they we owe them the courtesy of saying you're part of our planning process and it's going to be a year year and a half or we're going to let you do this or we're just going to put this all out to be you know whatever we're going to say to them and and you know they've heard me say this so I'm not surprising them with any of this but I don't know that we there's I don't believe there's a single answer that we owe them but I believe we owe them the clarity of where we're heading so they can make their plans accordingly even if their plans are just set for a year they deserve to know that okay um thanks all right right we're at the time for comment from public starting with the people in the room my name's Nat Winthrop I'm uh vice chair of the hub the chair Ethan Atkin is also here and available to answer any questions we're just a sidebar to this much bigger project this much bigger discussion that you're embarking on um you know we're interested in being able to do something in partnership with the city on 10 acres or less of this 138 acre parcel and as bill thank you for that introduction um we feel like we've had to put everything on hold pending the outcome of the bond issue the bond vote uh now that that has passed we've started picking up momentum again making progress um we submitted a three-year grant application to the national life of vermont foundation for a total of 120 000 over those three years mainly focused on renovating the existing building the old elks clubhouse we did get a sign off from bill and cameron before submitting that proposal but with the understanding that it's not a firm commitment it's a tentative commitment um to allow us to lease that building and a small amount of acreage around that building near the parking lots um to be able to get our project going so that the building and all of the land doesn't uh merely lie fallow so to speak over the next three to four years as mike was uh outlining um as bill referred we brought this idea to the city uh not as a proposal but more as a courtesy to late uh the folks at city hall know what we were planning to do in terms of to create a fairly ambitious recreation and social hub up on this property and this was at the time when the city was looking at the possibly building a new wreck building uh on upper elm street by the by the wreck field up there but right away cameron and arnie who were the first people we met with saw that the potential in instead focusing on this property that's not in a flood plane that has plenty of parking etc up on the hill so um i really want to thank bill and cameron and arnie and mike and others at city hall that we've been meeting with pretty regularly over the past six months since we first brought this it was actually cameron who first mentioned the possibility of a public-private partnership and as bill pointed out nothing's in writing nothing's firm there's no formal commitments in either direction but we are ready to move forward and it's going to significantly handicap us in terms of applying for grants getting bank loans etc etc raising additional private capital we our goal is to raise through private donations and then to leverage that to get bank loans and and federal and state grants and private grants uh to invest over three million dollars on our piece of this partnership so we're bringing significant private funds raised in almost entirely from private citizens and local banks and local foundations and so forth and maybe a federal agency or two that we might get a grant or two from um so we would really appreciate the council's support as as you see fit in enabling us to get out of this sort of holding pattern that we've been in for most of the last four months and move forward uh we also have a commitment I have a couple of uh handouts to that I'll pass out in a minute to the council members one of them is um a letter of interest they call it or a letter of intent from the vermont community loan fund for a loan of up to four hundred thousand dollars specifically to retrofit the existing clubhouse up there in the land now obviously this would be contingent on your buy-in your approval and the city's approval uh so we're not going ahead with a loan application until we have further discussions with all of you so that's our hope we may be back here in a month making a formal proposal to the council but for now we're just giving you an update on our progress and our hopes um ideally we would like to open for business uh within a couple years so that puts us probably a couple years ahead of the city's timetable in terms of building a new rec center up there and rolling out the other recreational amenities that would complement ours in this public non-profit partnership that we've been talking about and envisioning for the last six months before that we were talking to Steve Robellini and his partners uh in the same vein but we're very supportive of working in the context of a partnership with the city and we were very supportive of the bond issue and I like to think we had some influence in uh lobbying our constituents to support that uh that bond okay yes so are you looking at like one of those long-term leases or are you of that land and up to so many acres around it is that ultimately what you're you're in gold yeah it's critical for us to be able to get large bank loans and uh and or federal grants to have what they call site control and since we're not going to own a piece of the property the most likely way for us to achieve that would be if the city were willing to sign some sort of long-term lease but in the short term the the the closing with Steve Robellini and his partners as you probably know is July 1st uh so the city isn't going to be in a position to sign anything or negotiate much with us uh before then but we're hoping before then we could get some sort of indication a memorandum of understanding or a letter of intent or something along those lines um as to this is what we intend or envision thank you um is there anyone else in the room who has public comment yeah okay Steve's and you're you're right up to the mic so you're up i'm a bit uh confused it seems like we're in two different it's a dystopian disconnect between what our city planner is asking for in some sense of an entitlement uh i'm shocked that the city manager and assistant city manager think they have the authority to commit to a lease of a particular piece of property before we've even started the design process we may not want to have to design a round of pre-existing i don't think the title is transferring with a lease or an easement for a tennis club you know that may not be what we we all agree to a year from now or a year and a half from now so i the entitlement just reeks here uh so i think that we also i'm glad to hear that the closing won't happen till july i think the city council would be remiss uh in not getting an analysis of that intersection and whether or not that road up is going to take is going to be constrained by the railroad crossing and the grade the intersection requirements to enter a state highway with a certain amount of traffic are very strict and complicated and the railroad is not removable i've heard that directly from the commission the secretary of transportation they need that they will not forfeit that spur because they need to be able to park spare trains along it so that could be a real defining factor and we should know before we commit the money before the deal is signed we should know whether if it's going to add millions of dollars to the city's obligation uh maybe that's the price of uh we have to sell a piece for a tennis club but i just think we're we should have known the viability of that access road i know there was problems with it i know the city knew there was problems with it and we need due diligence requires we find out before the deal is signed and as to providing uh if we first it's a second city center or a a publicly owned rec center that may be first priority for the existing clubhouse we're not we're not we won't be ready to forfeit the rights to the clubhouse until a year a year and a half out according to mike i'm not i'll be happy if things move faster than that but i trust his experience with this kind of thing so i don't see how we can accommodate the desire of a private interest or group uh with the with the process that's been laid out for a design um i don't know what poll pro is but if it's anything that requires internet access it's going to discriminate a whole lot of old people and poor people who don't have broadband or don't have computers so i just like to more clearly understand what somebody's going to rely on old pro as the uh um have the appraisals been three appraisals been completed or two or three the appraisal was completed and has that amount been announced yes it was 2.97 million so it went from a million or a million and a half it doubled as soon as we went public with it and the appraisal was started before the public and who selected the appraisers um okay i'm going to direct us away from this because we're the the item before us is planning for the uh public process to uh to develop this property and uh i just heard a whole wandering scheme about funding a tennis club well you didn't hear that from the city but you didn't shut him down we're just like to offer one clarification yet another misstatement that was just made um the city manager and systemator have not committed to any lease at all nor do we think we have the authority to do what you heard me say was i believe given the good faith conversations that have happened that we owe clarity to the hub about whether they're gonna have to wait a year and a half for everybody else or whether we would consider doing something different um but i did not say one way or the other what i think we ought to do i simply said given the fact that we've had regular conversation with them we owe them the courtesy of clarity thanks bill uh mr weiss hello thomas weiss resident of montpelier i have five comments on the presentation and the discussion to date first is that i believe it was on mr miller's first planning slide it lacks public participation in the development of the plan it starts out with public gathering ideas which has already happened and then staff and a consultant do some things and then the public is not involved again until after the plan has been developed i suggest that you allow public participation with staff and with the consultant during the development of the plan so that all of a sudden at the end there's a plan that comes out and there's nobody on the public who knows what it's about and was involved in the development no matter how many updates and progress reports you give i think that public participation in that process is important second point i think it was in the second stage mentioned some zoning changes i really think you need to direct to the planning commission to update the master plan before you contemplate any zoning changes for this area the master plan is 12 years since it's been updated and this will be a major change that was not considered in the master plan so if the master plan they're going to be done with the zoning changes like tonight or at your next meeting whenever you decide to accept them that they then be directed to spend their time on updating the master plan third point you've probably heard that that's happening right now i haven't heard that's happening right now okay well it is i've got some more comments in the next part on that okay um mr miller said don't rush and i agree with him i'm hearing and my comment was first written in response to what he's asking you to do tonight which is to combine i think it was a uh a financial proposal and then going out to an rfp i think it should be two steps develop the financial proposal that is what it was right mr miller that that's our intent mr wilson to come back but but it wasn't worded that way but i i think there needs to be two separate steps get the financial proposal see what it's involved and then authorized going out with an rfp fourth point i believe that uh my counselor said that the barry street won't have a use for recreation if this gets built and i would totally disagree with him on that because i think that for that portion of the public who would not drive out to this new recreation facility that there need to be some downtown recreational facilities also in keeping with the city's uh plans to uh you know foster downtown programs and services and net zero and and those things and the oh getting back to the don't rush i believe that we should not be carving out any part of the parcel before the study and the plan gets done we might or might not if we carve something out we might regret it when the as the planning process goes forward last point polko who knows what their privacy policy is somebody signs in yeah they own that we don't have it's not public record and what do they do with it what are they allowed to do with the data that they collect about each and every one of us who takes part in i have i'll get that information for you i did have a conversation but to me that's important because if they're selling the data data brokers whatever or using it for purposes other than the poll then i think that's something that we need to know about so anyway those are my five comments a little longer did longer winded than i thought but thank you for listening thank you i don't see anyone else in the room i see uh john snow online oh it looks like somebody needs to unmute you and okay you it looks like he's muted still john could you unmute yourself we're being told that it's on your end do you want me to try to unmute him yeah Cameron station thank you we can hear you good um first off i want to thank mike for a really good overview presentation it's great to start off with that kind of framework john snow thank you um and among other things i am chairman of the tree board and we've already done an informal visit up there and we're gonna do some more visits up there counter uh the trees are fabulous i have to say i i have never seen trees quite that beautiful on a golf course before not that i'm an expert but i will say there's no green ash which was a big plus um the two two other things that i think are are important um that whatever the planning process involves looking at the economic and traffic inputs to the surrounding areas of businesses and property owners uh and i don't know exactly what that looks like but i think it's important to make sure that we at least talk about it if not do a professional analysis second i think that we we really need to put effort into having some way to clearly communicate what is coming towards us in the way of planning what decisions have been made and then a historical record of that uh that's accessible i know that when i try and find out about city projects it's just really difficult to find out where they started and where they're going so i'd like to use this as an opportunity to beef that up that's all for me thank you okay thanks john i don't see any other hands raised in the room or online so are we ready to take action and the action requested right now is to direct the city to develop an rfp for a consultant to come back to you with a funding we would probably draft the rfp but and come back with a funding plan and draft rfp and have you approve the funding authorizes to go forward yeah we should we should have a motion for that so moved all right you got that job right i move so that we i can try to i move that we direct city staff to develop a financial proposal and draft rfp to present to council related to the former elks club property planning process for the project manager right what this for the project planning process yeah okay okay that gives you and my quick you need okay any uh any further discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed all right the motion's carried it's now 844 p.m we're completed with this item it's uh we're a little bit past our standard 830 break so we'll be taking a 10 minute break now and we will then go to the second public hearing on the uh zoning proposal i'm sorry but we left the hub up in the air they weren't expecting something tonight okay great i don't think yeah we're not in a position to give them any answers right so yeah okay so we'll reconvene at 855 okay we're up to the uh item on the uh second public hearing on the proposed zoning amendments so for starters i will open the public hearing and we have uh mike miller uh to make a presentation um yeah so again mike miller director of planning so we're not going to um unless somebody objects and would like me to go through the the presentation for brevity's sake i'm not going to go through the presentation of the 11 sets of changes uh anyone who missed the last meeting uh just to catch you up there were votes to remove number eight which was the uh remove residential densities so that is no longer under consideration and inside of number nine the solar access proposal was also struck so those two changes uh for anyone who missed the last meeting those two changes have happened so i did want to um talk about two quick comments um one of which is to address uh comment that was made at the last public hearing which was about the zoning changes and conformance with the city master plan so this is a legal requirement that um all zoning must be in conformance with the adopted master plan and there is a definition of this under the state um there's a memo that was provided to the council and is in in the packet and i won't read through all three or four pages of of the description but what's important is that conformance with the plan means a proposed amendment uh proposed implementation tool including a bylaw or bylaw amendment that isn't in accord with the municipal plan in effect at the time of adoption when the bylaw or bylaw amendment includes all the following so this is the definition under state law so it means that the bylaw or bylaw amendment makes progress towards attaining or at least does not interfere with the goals and policies contained in the municipal plan b it provides for proposed future land uses densities in intensities of development contained in the municipal plan and c carries out as applicable any specific proposals for community facilities or other proposed actions contained in the municipal plan so this comes up uh from time to time as we talk about amendments to city plans and um i believe the current proposal is in conformance with the city master plan as it was adopted in 2017 but ultimately that determination is really up to city council um through your adoption or your decisions um and so the first uh thing i wanted to point out is that municipal plans cover a broad range of topics and inherent in that um the fact that we are covering everything from natural resources and housing and energy and historic preservation and transportation economic development some of these goals are inherently going to conflict with other goals economic development may conflict with our natural resource goals so we have a balancing that has to happen and so municipal plans don't answer how we balance all of these conflicting interests and that balancing happens um as we go through and do the adoption of our implementation tools or doing our projects um so if you look at that first definition above um it states that conformance means the implementation tool must make progress towards attaining or at least not interfering with the goals uh of the plan contained in the municipal plan and a strict reading of that would lead you to believe that if a zoning regulation furthers 99 out of 100 goals that it would not be in conformance because it interferes with one um and that's simply not the case that's not how how um these things are evaluated and the way they're evaluated um under law is through a two-step process and the first step is does the proposal advance a specific policy or goal outlined in the plan and if it does that action the zoning proposal is in conformance the fact that it may hinder another goal while meeting the first does not negate the conformance so that second piece of that phrase comes into effect if what you're proposing is not talked about at all in the city plan so if you have an item that's being proposed in the in the um in the proposed zoning that's not talked about in the city plan then we would check to see if it negatively impacts one of the stated goals and if it doesn't support or negate then it's in conformance but if it impacts one then it would be not in conformance so it's a two-step process um so that's one of the key pieces that's why I believe because I I did outline a number of goals in here that I believe these proposals support so I believe that um based on that two-step analysis that what we have been proposing is in conformance with the the master plan there is a second uh second piece that is referred to um about matching the um the future land use plans trying to find my note on that one um so there the the second goal was looking at oh there it is going back to the conformance with the plan there is a second requirement to provide the proposed future land uses and densities um and again this is a lower threshold we're talking about providing for the densities and this um the subsection um the zoning bylaws do just that the densities in our zoning prescribe much higher densities in our growth center and smart growth centers around those neighborhoods and just to be clear the growth center is a uh it's a state program and the it is provided by the downtown board and the purpose of it is to direct 50 percent of development towards the growth center over the 20 years that it's in effect and we have so far been about 80 or 90 percent of our development within our growth center we've been highly successful at meeting that target um it doesn't say you can't develop outside and it doesn't say you shouldn't try to be developing outside um it simply says this is the goal that we're trying to attain is reaching that 50 percent goal so again i believe um examining both of these pieces that in in this case it was directed at the north field street proposal and i think in both cases the north field street proposal isn't in conformance with the city master plan 2017 so i'll leave that for any more questions on conformance with the master plan the second piece i just wanted to touch on with the piece that was eliminated the solar access and shading and while i understand we're not going to be bringing this back up i did outline in my memo a number of issues why this was a problem why we felt in the planning commission in the planning department that it was a problem and while we recognized that the proposed solution was not acceptable by the council that's fine but we do feel some direction to the planning commission would be helpful um and i outlined six different ways that we could look at adjusting how we regulate shading because because of the terms any shading of any walls yards or roofs that exceed the formula will result of a denial of an infield of an infill project there is no waiver no variance yards could be unbuildable due to steep slopes or completely shaded already by trees or by the terrain could also completely shade it and it applies even if it only makes a shadow for one week onto that yard in the middle of december it would there's no no way we can not not deny the application so it's an extremely strict rule and we just think that it's it's overly burdensome on applicants and will have a negative impact resulting in shorter buildings building set back farther from property lines so i listed some things for you to consider you don't have to make any decisions tonight but it's something at the planning commission if the planning commission is going to take this up and bring a new proposal to you they would appreciate at some point having some ideas based on the six or seven bolts that i put in there or any other idea if people have other ideas for how you might like to consider it so those were the two points i wanted to make to keep this short and we have a long agenda and turn it back over to chair thanks mic before you wrap up the a point i made earlier could you talk a little bit about where things stand with the current master plan development process so the city the planning department has been working for a number of years with the various committees so our plan for updating the city plan started in 2017 and our approach was that we wanted to make a much more strategic plan and a much more targeted plan for how we can accomplish our goals so we've been working with individual committees over the past four years and we have gone through about 80 of the plan so far we've got community services and public service public safety that are left to do and we have an rfp that went out and we have one response which we're reviewing right now which is going to be for a company to help us develop the web-based city plan we want to have a digital plan people don't tend to read hard copy plans there obviously probably be a hard copy plan for people who want it but most people access plans now through through the internet and so we're going to try to build a much more responsive plan and so we have an rfp we have proposals to look at and so we're going to be hiring somebody and there should be a lot of building out of that plan this year with more public input on those chapters coming in hopefully later this summer great thanks um this is a public hearing so i want to start by asking if there are any members of the public who want to be to be heard on any of the issues arising from the zoning proposal that we've heard last time and tonight and thomas weiss and and patty okay why don't you step up and thank you patty comm lines for my first time here donna doesn't remember but about you 20 years ago she taught me a public speaking class in in manchester vermont so funny to see you so i am from a from across the river a small neighborhood we call upper doughnut given its proximity to duncan doughnut so i live up there and i'm here to talk about the north northfield project um a number of months ago we were given a tour of that project a few of our neighbors and it raised more concerns than it did answer questions and so a petition was submitted um to the planning commission unfortunately those questions were left largely unaddressed so more people have added their names to that petition which i have here so i'm here representing 30 of our neighbors um some of the questions we have and i'm going to be brief i'll stay within six minutes notice that was the key time uh should the zoning be changed to benefit only one landowner should the zoning be changed if the greater density denudes the wooded hill sides around montpelier this is a prominent ridgeline as seen from downtown i do have pictures i do have pictures here um don't know if you could take that and pass the thank you it shows the ridge top it also shows the second page you'll see a green area which is the proposed development which is indeed the top of that ridgeline another question should zoning be changed before it is known whether the road infrastructure can support denser residential development during our tour we were told that one area considered for access to this area to this development would be the end of um pleasant street which is actually my house and a cliff so i knew that couldn't be so the other side is cherry street which is equally problematic well not equally because it's not a cliff but when you're driving down there and i have pictures of this it's very tight when we're passing our neighbors we have to pull into a neighbor's driveway it's a nice way to wave to your neighbor not so nice when it's icy and you're heading down the luge hill and you're trying not to slide into each other but it's a pretty tight access i believe it's possible there is another access um through northfield street and may not be better i don't know that wasn't really discussed during our tour but it's something that would be considered my last question would be i had more questions but given the night would be grateful that i cross those out should the zoning be changed if the greater density threatens the neighbors with storm water runoff issues this is a great concern to us because the change is from what is allowed there now are 27 units the change would allow to 270 units and it's very steep up behind our houses uh the soil base is very shallow my neighbor when i walk by their house every day i hear this flushing sound well i've lived there for four years and i only just recently learned that is actually a pump to their basement i just thought they had a really loud toilet but that goes all the time it's flushing out so it unfortunately our house is dry but there is some water that runs through there and the idea of 270 units up there is a concern we even have stone walls that are starting to give way so there is there's serious concern anyway without all of this so those are some of the questions i know vhcb has provided funding for a feasibility study that's in process that hasn't been completed yet we heard about the else club project i know that there's a consideration of a both project that's all in the same vicinity so i would ask you all to take a holistic approach to the development of all of this and what impacts those would have on the environmental impacts the traffic impacts we're just we're just really concerned that planning commission hasn't answered these questions so we would ask you to wait for that feasibility study to get our answers from the planning commission i know this is late in the process my only experience my only experience is with the legislature i consider this like third reading things do happen in third reading even though people are kind of checked out and ready for things to go but it's meant to be a deliberative process and i know that you all want to make a comprehensive decision armed with all of the facts and i would ask you to get those that information from the planning commission and wait for that study okay thank you very much thanks for coming okay tom vice hello again i forgot to mention the first time thank you for removing the solar access proposed provision last time i'm also a civil engineer and this comm line mentioned what i intend to talk about let's step back a minute and consider why there are no houses on the majority of this parcel the usda uh department of agriculture has a natural resources conservation service and they map the soils over the whole country and this each soil type of complex is rated for suitability for various uses the soil map at 102 northfield street is soil type what they number as 66 e and the e after the number designates the steepest slope that the natural resources conservation service assigns to soil map units the soils the slopes in that map unit are 25 percent to 60 percent and these slopes the nrcs calls to be steep or very steep and because of the steepness of this map unit there's a severe erosion hazard and the slope also has of course severe limitations on use as a building site and the crest of the ridge through the central portion of the site or the parcel is the least steep portion and it's considered to be strongly sloping this portion consists of the summit and shoulders of the ridge so as you're coming down the ridge the summit would be this part and then the shoulders would be these parts just as starting to slope off off the summit and this the and the bedrock in these summit and shoulder areas is shallow one to three feet below the surface typically and the bedrock according to the vermont geological surveys bedrock map of the state is metamorphic phylites slates and quartzites those are very hard rocks and it means that a large amount of blasting likely will happen in these less steep areas of the bridge so in short the slope and the bedrock make the site difficult and expensive to develop i suggest that's a major reason why the majority of this parcel has not been developed yet so based on the soils maps and the geology maps it's unlikely that this area can be reasonably developed and i request the council reject this proposed amendment i'd like to step back a bit back to nine heat and street and ten heat and street i talked to you about this last week i'm not going to repeat anything i said i trust that you remember it and you didn't take it out last week or three weeks ago after last meeting but it's not clear to me whether the contemplation is to put apartments or congregate housing into the existing building i've heard both i didn't think to call the property owner soon enough to get an answer as to what they are contemplating but if congregate housing is what is contemplated and the jargon congregate housing is might be shared kitchens it might be shared toilet facilities it might be shared some other facilities that would normally be found in a complete housing unit so if that's what is contemplated then nine residences may be built on the site in addition to the congregate housing in the existing building so i don't know whether any of you know which has actually been contemplated and they use the word contemplated because i don't think it's far enough advanced to be a proposal or or anything else so if it is congregate housing that's contemplated then there's no need for this zoning amendment as i understand it would be then the housing in the building plus five or six additional housing units when they could get nine on there so i know i'm running out of time also back to 102 northfield street the master plan identifies this area as a biodiversity conservation area a rich northern hardwood forest and a hemlock northern hardwood forest and the master plan sets goals relating to biodiversity conservation areas the recommendations the recommended strategy for this calls for the conservation commission the planning commission and the city council to establish planning policies and bylaws that promote biodiversity conservation and if the planning commission had done that sometime in the last 12 years that they've had to available to them to update the master plan it seems we wouldn't be floundering around now trying to figure out how to deal with a biodiversity conservation area on this parcel as well as everything else we're trying to deal with which leads me into my next topic on master planning updates and what i was about to say is totally revamped so it's much much shorter i suggest you put these zoning amendments on hold until the master plan is revised and i also suggest that you as the city council follow through on the required monitoring and evaluation of progress toward the goals in the master plan which requires the city to convene the stakeholders from the envision process annually to take stock of the progress that has been made and this and recommendations for changes to the master plan and the critical part is the results of this annual meeting should have been reported to the voters in the city's annual report every year and i didn't find anything like that in this annual report all i found was a little mention in the planning department's part that we started doing this in 2017 and we expect something out in 2022 but that's definitely not the type of analysis that i would expect based on what the master plan calls for so anyway thank you for taking the time to hear my comments thanks for coming in um i don't see anyone else in the room with their hands up there are a few people online starting with um eve mendelson yeah hi eve mendelson and i'm over on fuller street which backs up to heat and woods um and i'm talking about your number two i'm going to just read a little bit from the unified development regulations from october 2019 just to clear because i think it clarifies my thoughts more than i probably can so for the res 6000 and res 3000 the purpose of this district is to encourage infill development and a range of housing choices while preserving neighborhood character and quality uh for the college hill north um proposed land development should protect the historic character and appeal of this neighborhood while accommodating modest increases in density through compatible infill development and conservation and conversion of existing buildings to multifamily occupancy so um heat and street is a very small street it's maybe a quarter mile if you met include parts of woodrow and uh the usage of the existing washington county mental health building which actually used to be a nursing facility and people did live there and uh would be great but adding five townhouses um and five townhouses built to res 3000 with the parcel sizes and setbacks and density are not exactly preserving the neighborhood and i know we're the idea is to build a different neighborhood but literally if you walk by heat and woods for 400 feet you're you're going from college street north five or 400 feet of these new neighborhood and then back into college street north i don't it seems a little bit of a of a spot zoning in some ways but i know the zoning feel like strongly that this is a different zone but but to me you can't you can't there's no demarcation there's no ingress or egress the roads that are there are are heat and street and and woodrow and so looking at heat and street there are 39 beds apparently at heat and woods and four houses let's say on heat and street that's about 43 units so with the request from washington county mental health to add 23 units 18 inside and five outside that's a 50 increase i i don't i don't know about modest increases but i think if at res 6000 from my helpful discussions with mike miller today it seems like it would be about half or even maybe a little less but that to me seems like a modest increase while still using some some of the inside building and perhaps some townhouses but built to to match what really is the same neighborhood which is college street north and not a separate neighborhood so i'm not opposed to having these housing but i think it should still meet the res 6000 as it is set up now thank you thank you next up we have brenda hausauer thanks my name is brenda hausauer i live on 20 pleasant street and i just want to build on a couple of the other comments that have already been said about the the rezoning of the property off of northfield street i just wanted to paint a picture for you of a few of the basic attributes of this property so the property is 57 acres so it's pretty large that's about twice the size of the north branch nature center land so it's a pretty big piece it's completely forested at this point so as you would expect there's a lot of wildlife back there the property is contiguous to a lot of forest land and farmland to the south so um you know the wildlife has a big corridor there to roam through um and it's located very close to the downtown and it forms one of the wooded hillsides and ridge lines that surround von pilier um so i want to try to show a picture i don't know how well you'll be able to see it but i hope you can like kind of make it out here um maybe if i tip my screen okay so this this picture is taken from cliff street it's looking south and you can see the sort of v in the hillsides and that's where northfield street is and you can see the the hillside to the right is undeveloped and then you can see the hillside to the left is has some housing about halfway up and that is pleasant street and the house is below at our cherry street and so the the parcel we're talking about rezoning is above pleasant street houses and to the left of the the houses so um if this property is rezoned we're likely to see housing on that ridge line as well as to the left of that of the pleasant street houses um which will really um which will really you know result in the loss of much of that wooded hillside um so you know this hillside is one of the backdrops of of wooded hillside and ridge line that surround von pilier we don't have another residential development on a ridge line like this that's so close to the downtown and so easily visible um any development that would happen there would obviously be very visible um and it is one of the goals of the master plan to preserve these wooded hill signs and ridge lines around mont pilier um so you know to me so what will we lose if we develop this property we'll lose a lot of trees um you know we'll be logging and exposing most of that hillside um we'll lose a lot of acres of wildlife habitat and we'll lose kind of our typical view of being able to stand in the middle of mont pilier and look around and see us mostly surrounded by wooded hill sides and ridge lines um so i just want to kind of invite everybody to walk around mont pilier and look at that hillside from different vantage points you can see it really well from the shaw's parking lot from state and main from um the transportation center lots of other locations and to just really reflect on whether we want to see that whole hillside covered with residential development um you know i really support affordable housing more affordable housing in mont pilier but i think that we would just lose too much by developing that um that hillside and ridge line and especially when there are other locations around mont pilier that can support residential development without some of those issues um and finally i just think that developing the hillside will ultimately be unpopular with a lot of residents of mont pilier so thanks a lot thank you and i would have to say that your technique of you holding your phone up to the camera actually worked pretty well to enable what we're looking at surprisingly well thank you next up kirby keaton hi everyone um i'm kirby keaton i'm the chair of the planning commission so i thought i should respond to some things um because this is the first time i think northfield streets come out as um as an issue so there was there was a comment from patty that um there wasn't a lot of response from the planning commission but as you know in in hearings we don't do a back and forth just like the city council doesn't tend to do a back and forth so um that's why there wasn't a lot of planning commission feedback during the hearing because you know you know how these things go um but now's the time so i'll give you some of their reasoning and and what came up in our deliberations about this um for one thing i want to be really clear that what we decided and what we're suggesting for a northfield street project um it was not about one parcel it was not about a project it was not about an owner it was about uh looking at the city plan and the zoning map as it is and looking at what's appropriate now that this neighborhood and area has been calling their attention and for us to review further and in doing that we realized a lot of things that hadn't been noticed before when we were doing the zoning ordinance um little background the reason why that this project is uh or why this area this this neighborhood area is zoned the way it is is because uh there's not a lot of development around there and when we redid the zoning years ago we based um the zoning around the current development and at that time we were not looking at prospective development we weren't doing a whole lot of planning for future land use to be honest we set everything at 90 percent of conformance for the current neighborhood and kind of put everything up to a status quo and that was actually progress at the time because our zoning was way behind what our neighborhoods actually look like our zoning was much more restrictive and and so so 90 compliance means that there's still 10 in each neighborhood of uh parcels that don't conform my point is that we haven't done a lot of perspective analysis of well where are the best places for future growth where we need to to look and expand on what we're allowing and this is an undeveloped area so it's it's it's zoned as a very low density low development place because that's what it's currently like but it has the features of exactly what we want as a city I believe and what maybe more importantly the city plan wants in housing development it it's walkable to downtown which is incredibly important for our city plan it's close to public transportation um and it's it's a prime area for what we want to see for development um as far as any other alternatives for a project like this within our city geographically we are we're tiny there's not a lot of opportunities for um any big new projects that that actually meets the criteria of being walkable to our downtown and and contributing to that so so that was a big part of this we realized that this is a very unutilized area as far as the development that we want and need from our city plan um so so we reassessed it um I want to reiterate that the the city plan absolutely is in line with with making this adjustment and as Mike mentioned earlier um maybe there are some other things that you could find that could conflict but that's not what's in matters as long as we're doing something that part of the city plan wants to do then that's the barrier that's the standard so so in my mind there's no conflict plus whatever and in it by and large it goes far for what our city plan says for housing goals as for what was said about the engineering things and the blasting and engineering concerns I mean in my mind I think that's speculative it's not something we have to worry about because whatever gets built there will have to follow all of our rules about slopes all of our rules about you know how things are supposed to be built so that's not really our concern it's the concern of whatever developer comes in and has a project and and that is our attitude is the clinic Christian's attitude was like it's whatever developer we're not we're not thinking about this in terms of one project we know there's a project out there um but that's that's not what's leading our thinking another thing I will add as an aside is that maybe maybe you are aren't aware but that side of the river is in dire need of some parks it that that area needs parks compared with the rest of the city um it's something the planning commission's aware of in in our rewrite of the new city plan we are hoping to call for more parks over there it just so happens and this isn't a big part of our decision but the project that's being proposed involves a lot of open space and public access so as far as as far as this project goes it actually meets a a sub goal we have but even aside from that I mean we we need residential development that that's that close to downtown and then when it comes to the views that that photo that we just saw came from cliff street well cliff streets developed and it's right over our downtown this is another ridge that's right over our downtown that's that's maybe a little farther than cliff street but it's still walkable so it absolutely fits within the current development and what and what the city looks like um I could also talk about the um the solar shading issue now if if people are interested um should I go ahead and do that yeah okay I'm interested so my understanding was we haven't heard any comments about solar shading tonight my understanding was that you know solar shading was set aside in the last meeting but it was going to be reconsidered tonight so I sent you a letter explaining some of the reasoning of the planning commission for what we were advising before so I'm just going to hit just a few quick highlights about that shading shading issues then and problems with solar access and what people are right now have almost everything to do with trees and terrain buildings aren't a big obstacle and and this regulation though goes to goes to just the buildings and preventing new development from stopping hypothetical future uh solar projects and we don't see that as a big issue that's happening but we do see that the way that the regulation is currently written is so strict that it's it's almost definitely going to stop development and a lot of needed infill development for housing but we're not sure it's actually going to achieve anything for solar and we actually think that it might defeat itself in a lot of ways because if we stop new construction of taller things that might create a shadow then we're stopping the construction buildings that you could put solar panels on top of because that's the best place to put solar panels because that gets above the shading issue with the trees and like and really the trees is the big is the big issue that we have and we see so I would I would like you to consider rephrasing the right the requirement as we've suggested which is a pretty simple fix I like that it's simple that it's short because that makes it easier for the public to follow and comply with um if we don't take that approach if you do want something that's not as um lenient I guess you could say is what we're asking then Mike's put forward many great suggestions for how to kind of sure up this requirement and not make it so strict and likely to prevent development um I think it will be more complicated that way but it at least will be better in that it's not going to absolutely preclude development like it's currently stated and just as a bit of a background by the way we redid the zoning a few years ago as you know this requirement was added when we did that um when when we went to read when we went to redo all of the zoning for the entire city that was a huge project and we worked really hard for that um but we did not give a thorough analysis to every single part of everything there we just didn't have the time you know we don't we don't meet we're not full time doing this right this was not something that I think that we looked at very carefully I don't think we ever intended for it to be as strict as it as on the ground as it turned out being um and that's one reason why we're we're like the entire planning commission would like to just take this one back a whole lot because we didn't we didn't mean for something that's going to uh be you know so so strict and and opposing to uh to zoning and new development um and I'll stop with I'll stop with that because I think that's um I don't think there's any other issues you need to hear from you about great thank you that was very helpful um next up we have Zach Watson thank you Zach Watson mom failure um Kirby really just summed up um everything more succinctly than I possibly could have I just want to say I appreciate the discussion that's going on tonight and um and one folks to know that if it is the city's council will to to approve this rezoning change that we will continue to have a robust public engagement process that is required by the funds that we'll be using for our feasibility study um and I hope the folks know that that is a and not just uh something we're saying that it's something we're committed to as we've already we've actually already hosted three public meetings about this we are really committed to making sure that um we're hearing from our neighbors and we're and that whatever we build on this parcel of rezoning is approved um fits within the desires and of our neighbors so um really encourage you to continue to be part of the process if this moves forward um to make sure that it's the best project possible I also just want to just want to say again and I said this last meeting as well um we are not looking at going up Pleasant Street or Cherry Street that is not an option and Patty knows when we walked the property the only part um access we talked about was coming off Northfield Field Street and I think I might have explicitly said it was definitely not coming off of Pleasant Street or Cherry Street so um but thank you again for considering this uh the rezoning request and um and I invite everybody to be a part of the process if this goes forward thank you. Thanks Zach I have a question because the uh this feasibility study has come up a couple of times are are you in one of these chicken and egg things where if the zoning change isn't approved it's not going to be worth spending the money on the feasibility study so that's not happening until we know what's happening with the zoning. That's that's correct um you know we it's it's tough to really say what we can do and what's feasible uh up there before we have a feasibility study um it's a tricky parcel it's very very tricky and um access is the number one issue um but stormwater mitigation is another big piece and ultimately you know optimistically we the project could go forward if we could build maybe 50 units up there and that right we'd have to get pretty creative to to make that happen with the current zoning um so really for this even a feasibility study to make sense um there needs to be higher density um but I will also say that and I know I've talked to other folks about this um and Kirby had mentioned it this parcel is a great parcel for residential development for Montpelier for a lot of the reasons that were mentioned um and regardless of it's our project or for somebody else um this should be this this parcel's like this should be um given rezoning options to allow for them to have higher density to make the probability of creating uh housing closer to the downtown more likely so um so I hope that answers your question Jack it does thank you um I don't see any oh Steve you have your hand up now the more I hear uh about the I'm here there's a five year updated master plan and there's a 12-year updated master plan um and that these zoning changes are only to be done in coordinates with what would presumably be a current updated master plan and if we're in the process of updating master plan that should be that completed before these phony zoning changes if this one reeks uh I mean the visual impact on the town of building our you know a rocky steep hillside uh in the absence of a completed master plan and zoning that is only proposal following a completed master plan reeks of uh preferential treatment to the mayor's husband and you know if even habitat if habitat is tailored to low income housing low income housing should be infill in the meadow or infill in the areas that are walkable walking up north wheel street is not easy for people especially handicapped people it's so it's not the right site for building possibly anything and it seems like we're trying to force it in because of the desperation for affordable housing but in the absence of our master plan being completed to make sure that that's a proper place to be rezoning I would say table that one thank you um patty someone else who's not spoken yet has uh has a hand up so I'm gonna have them first um Dana online hi there I'm Dana um I'm a resident of Colonial Drive District 3 and I guess I just felt the need to speak to the equity issue um I do feel that those of us that live on the south side of Route 2 we don't have a park we don't have amenities it's not really a focus of the town to think about creating outdoor spaces or uh spots for our residents to recreate and this is a spot that historically has been utilized by those of us that live in this district and um I just would like that to be considered I can't speak to all the technicalities of the zoning and the water runoff etc but as a resident here um um I don't feel like that we always get the attention to prioritize these types of spots and this is something that I feel like is should be considered in thinking about is this the best spot for the town to prioritize other housing needs when there are other opportunities that could be utilized okay thank you now can I get your last name Dana Paul to else okay thank you thanks so Patty uh if you have a very brief statement very brief I would just like to say to Zach Watson's points about talking about access points the most definitely discussed with us the Pleasant Street and the Cherry Street access points also the photograph that was mentioned that was taken from Cliff Street that's a developed area I don't believe Cliff Street has 270 units up there so that's where our concerns are and could I just ask a question if and I don't believe the HCB um funding for the feasibility study is contingent on the rezoning but if um if the feasibility if you rezone and the feasibility study shows that it's not a viable project does that mean that this out of state one person out of state developer can do whatever he wants on that property or with with regard to 270 units and whatever way he wants I I will be asking the planning director a question about okay thank you about related to that yes I'm not here listening in on this I just want to say that I understand the housing issue and the affordable housing issue totally but I also have great sadness about seeing every parcel of land covered with buildings you know we we need nature and also anything that's built I hope it's uh really far up to energy standards extreme because otherwise it shouldn't be built you know we're we're struggling with the environment so that's just my two cents thank you um yes word I want to be a little polemical here and say that I actually would like to see more traffic more housing and I think we have responsibilities to develop properties like this and I'm sorry to say as much as I love Montpelier's rural sort of urban mix the fact is it's a downtown and so we have to pump up the downtowns and I strongly support infill on properties where it's appropriate thanks yeah Tom Weiss again very quickly if you could yes Thomas Weiss again very quickly in response to Mr. Keaton's discussion on solar access I sat in on the last year of the planning commissions every meeting when they were developing that zoning regulation that I think it's well it's not quite the one we now have because it's been amended a few times since then and I do remember because I was involved with it the solar access discussions occurring over multiple meetings in that period and went through multiple variations and ended up with the variation that is in the zoning now so it was heavily discussed back then and that is what the planning commission decided on is the way I remember it as I said I mentioned last time that solar access was my thesis my study in graduate school and so I was quite involved with with helping to shape that and the commission left it the way it is after what I thought was a thorough discussion over several meetings okay thanks um Peter Kellman online Peter Kellman I live in Mountain View Street so I live in the Northfield Avenue area I'm very much in favor of this project for a number of reasons first of all the obvious one that we need much more housing and much more affordable housing in our city and we need to have more densely developed areas near the downtown but also ironically Dana if you're still there um that area uh if it's developed by habitat in any case will have a great deal of parkland for our side of the river precisely um right now it's privately owned and yes people have colonized it with bike trails for themselves and your next door neighbors but this would be for the whole area I think it's a terrific project and I urge the zoning be changed not just because of habitat and certainly not because of any impropriety having to do with the fact that Zach Watson and Anne Watson happened to be married nothing to do with that um but whether it was habitat or not but I think habitat is the right developer but habitat or not this land should be developed thank you thank you um Mike I had a question for you uh because we've heard a figure potentially 267 units on the lot uh the runoff and that kind of thing and so I just think is that no matter what's theoretically permissible is it a practical reality that someone could develop 267 units on that uh parcel and are the runoff and steep slopes and other regulations in our zoning bylaw still there to protect uh the neighbors from uh from the storm water and the other problems that we've been been hearing about yes so there's so there are a number of related points so um all of those requirements still exist so the 270 units would be really possible only if that were a flat open lot you know which we obviously don't have very many of and and certainly no 57 acre properties that are that big that would be flat and open so the reality is it's not going to be able to accommodate that amount of of development simply because it has so many steep slopes and so much um shallow soils um but I I wanted to make sure I clarified one point on the reason why we considered rezoning this it was zoned rural and the reason why it was zoned rural is because it didn't have access to sewer and water so this property doesn't have sewer and water that's why it's zoned rural rural is a two-acre zoning because generally you need at least two acres to drill your own well and put your own onsite septic so that's why it's zoned for two acres when zack approached the city he said I would like to extend sewer and water into this now we have other properties in the city where we have rezoned crest view is one of them it's an interior parcel but it has access to sewer and water so it's zoned at residential 9 000 residential 9 000 is the kind of the the target number that is used if you have access to sewer and water you want to have about four units per acre because you need about four units per acre to generate enough wastewater to generate enough fees in order to pay for the long-term maintenance of the line so if you extend sewer lines into an area that has one acre zoning the users of that will never pay enough in fees to maintain their own lines that'll have to be subsidized by the higher density areas so usually what you're recommended to best practice is if you're going to extend sewer and water you should have at least four units an acre or in this case residential 9 000 so the reason for the change is strictly due to the fact that they have said they are looking at a proposal where they're going to extend sewer and water into this area and so that's why we've basically why we're considering the residential 9 000 now my understanding of the proposal and these will all be reviewed at the zoning level when the permits are applied for but they're looking at finding 15 acres of the 54 acres that they find that might be buildable so they're they're not looking at at denuding the 57 acres but again that would all be regulated when the permits come up in 30 slopes there is very serious engineering and design requirements for 30 slopes of which this property has a lot of so I can't speak to exactly how everything would play out with an application if habitat didn't do the project and a private developer came in again they could only take care take advantage of those densities if they run sewer and water and because of the cost of sewer and water think of it costs two million dollars to run the sewer and water and then you build one house that costs five hundred thousand dollars you'd have to sell that five hundred thousand dollar house for two hundred two point five million dollars to get your money back so what you need to do if you're going to spend that much amount of money for bringing in sewer and water and roads everything else you need a number of units so that way you can lower the per unit costs to pay for all of your utilities and that's a lot of why he says Zach says he needs about 50 units is basically looking at those the math and it doesn't do him any good to spread those houses out that's more cost for more roads and more cost for more sewer and water and more costs for stormwater runoff his best interest is to concentrate it which is my understanding what any proposal would do in that area so really the basis you know roundabout way the basis of a lot of this zoning change comes down to the fact that they're proposing to extend sewer and water and if they're going to do that we should consider it a res 9000 thank you very much do are there any other questions or comments from other members of the council yeah I would just say I really hope the habitat project is successful to me it's you know kind of a perfect marriage of green space and affordable housing and you know it might be bad policy on my part that I really am envisioning the habitat property going through and taking this space so I hope the feasibility study is okay thanks anything on our side this I think Lauren um yeah I mean I I really appreciate the input I mean I am someone who like works professionally to protect the environment so the you know conversation about protecting our bridge lines and you know really resonates with me I care a lot about that and the environmental benefits of developing dense downtown housing are huge to not be sprawling out with all the associated transportation costs for people and walkability and there's so many benefits to having dense housing which is what our community should be so I I think moving forward in that direction and just the comfort that a lot of the concerns I'm hearing we have other zoning with steep slopes and all kinds of considerations around traffic and other things that came up that I think that will be dealt with and that some of the kind of worst-case scenarios I don't envision coming through and I think it could be a really great project on that solar issue um I appreciate the the conversation and the ongoing thinking about how that could be dealt with I mean I would love to see something I do it does seem extremely restrictive to say you can't have any any moment of shade on any property you know again the benefits of being able to do dense housing or you know a huge environmental benefit so balancing that with solar access um you know I I was like trying to look at if there's like way to propose language or I mean maybe it is something that we could bring up or if it's coming up as a real um issue that's hamstringing the kind of infield development we want to see I would certainly be interested I was having trouble taking the input that we got into specific language because I would like to to go from like any shade anywhere all the time from like no shade it seems like there's a middle ground here and I appreciate Mike putting some thoughts into what it could look like but I don't know if anyone else had any like specific language that they had seen that jumped out at them to propose tonight but I I'm where you are I think that uh that we can get there and I don't think we have a specific sentence to amend the ordinance that would do that but I think we can get there because I think we mostly are looking at it the same way but but not not for this package of amendments right yeah but just wanted to express that desire to get there from my part as someone who had proposed removing the language as originally proposed thanks are we set if not if we are then I will close the public hearing and what we could do at this time is hear a motion to approve or adopt the proposed ordinance or or any other emotion that someone would want to make make a motion that we adopt proposed ordinances second second all right is there don't know if we should do them as separate because they are two separate hearings with two separate ordinances I don't know if it should be two separate votes okay because we technically are doing a hearing for the updating unified development regulations and there's also the update of the river hazard area regulations yep why don't why don't we do them separately so you want a motion to update the river hazardous ordinances is that the right name I think it was in the the coverage I believe it was to approve the river hazard area amendment as proposed well my iPad crashed I don't have maybe somebody else can make a motion I don't have the language sorry I think Bill is finding it okay the okay approval of each of the yes so in the case of the unified development regulations most would be yeah I can hardly hear myself here in the case of the unified development regulations the motion will be to approve the proposal as amended in the case of the river hazard area regulations amendments the motion is to approve as presented assuming new changes to recommended motions so was your first motion to approve the unified zoning unified zoning by law as amended yes and that's your second Jennifer yes and and John have we is that clear enough for you are we overwhelmed you it's great thank you yeah and and is is there any further discussion on Donna's motion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed right we've adopted the proposed by law amendments next up the motion is to the adopt the river hazard area regulation amendments as presented all right it's moved and seconded any discussion on that all those in favor indicate by saying aye aye any opposed and we the motion is carried okay I would like to thank Mike this was a great great presentation and thanks to all the people who participated I would I would like to talk a little bit about the the agenda because it's just past 10 o'clock and we have a number of things on our agenda we have the Gerton Park structure discussion the locker discussion the NBRC grant discussion and we have also have a confidential personnel matter on our agenda and so I'm wondering if maybe we should do Gerton Park and move the locker the grant yeah so we have to do that yeah no I was the lockers and the personnel update could wait okay well I would could I ask that you take the Gerton Park into another meeting because some of the people especially Susan had to leave to get into the shelter and I've been here for three hours what's your pleasure I think we should go ahead with the Gerton Park discussion since it's been on the agenda for a while and a lot of people have been counting on it happening tonight and what do you all feel about moving the locker and the personnel discussion to a future meeting yes okay that's what we'll do so we're taking up item number 2022-109 Gerton Park structure and I assume we're looking to Cameron hi yes so my name is Cameron Niedermeyer I'm the assistant city manager thank you for letting me be here today I'm also the staff support for the homelessness task force and I am not coming to you with any recommendations but I did want to give you sort of an overview of what the conversation has been and then I will see myself out of that conversation and pass it over to councilmember Casey or Ken if you're still here so if they would like to say anything so I wanted to sort of structure this by saying this has been an ongoing conversation and I appreciate all the input and feedback that the community has had about this topic I think it has brought a lot of the struggles that folks who are experiencing homelessness deal with on the daily and it has really brought some of this conversation to the forefront of people's minds where it may not have ever been before so this has been discussed a few different council meetings back in 2020 council had approved to move the gazebo that was at the Gerton park on the bike path due to an increased amount of complaints of people feeling unsafe in that space so we've moved it to an open an open lot that we had at the time we had applied for a grant that would hopefully allow us to make it more of a park lit if you will the original intent was to have the gazebo facing a few amenities in that lot but we were not successful in that grant but we moved the gazebo anyway so since that time there have been on a staff side quite a lot of calls you were provided some examples of those there might not be full accounting of the calls that have been at that location as it's not an exact location right so it's hard to track things that don't have an exact location but we have experienced a high number of public safety and public health calls to the current location staff did hear quite a bit of requests to give you options if you did decide that you wanted to move it some of the options that we had discussed included elm street in the recreation area over by north branch park dog river a section of the bike path all off of old country road some hovered park locations with caveats about how the gazebo is structured and then keeping the gazebo where it is rotating it so the front faces the street when i got this project approved the drc one of their stipulations was at the pad that the gazebo is light is on was large enough to accommodate that so we could do that if that is the request all of those options come with negatives most of those are in the floodplain and would need to be anchored would require anchoring it is important and it was brought up in some of the meetings looking to continue to beautify the space where it's at now that 12 main street lot some of the issues with that is that it is a brown field we can't dig on it which is why the gazebo is placed where it is if we wanted to move it on that lot further we would need to do some i probably some site studies if we wanted to put it on a pad or something that wouldn't disrupt the soil i'm not even sure if that's possible to be honest with you have to check with one of our engineers so that's why it is where it is now that's sort of the story behind it and some of the options that we were asked to come up with for other locations i will say that i included all of the notes from some of the homelessness task forces special meetings on this topic and some of their other discussions on it a lot of them have been doing a lot of the members of the homelessness task force have been doing a great job talking to those who are experiencing homelessness and getting their feedback about the location i am it is in your packet but a lot of the notes that we've gotten and the feedback we've gotten is that the gazebo while it is not an appropriate space for a shelter as it does not serve that function well if at all is the only option that a lot of people have during the day and that it is meeting an unmet need and they wanted to impress upon everyone that there's always going to be a need for a place to go and i would also say that in response to that there is a recognition that you'll have put a lot of money into your next fiscal year budget to sort of address some of these issues in a more holistic way other feedback we've gotten from the homelessness task force is that they would like to see it main stay downtown or something equivalent be built in the downtown as it's a very easy place for providers to find folks some of the arguments i've also heard is that some of those emergency calls would have happened anyway now we know where they are so again i'll sort of see my way out of this conversation i just wanted to give you a little rundown on the history and some of the feedback we have gotten um and that again we are a staff not coming with a recommendation on this yeah i can yeah i recognize in the hour i'll try to do this as quickly as i can but i'd i should like to give an even longer history lesson and first of all acknowledge that you know we're talking about this in some regard because i raised it at the last meeting and um and recommended that it be moved because it is because of the drain on the city's resources right now it is our highest call volume for police and fire responses and it is not in my opinion functioning the way it was intended to be functioning at least in in its initial inception but about the lot that it's in in general i think it's helpful to understand the history of that lot some of us may remember there used to be my pillar beverage was located on that lot and then there was a parking lot next to it at the time the city was acquiring those properties is part of the one tailor project to put the bike path through the original plan call for my pillar beverage to purchase essentially the parking lot parts i'm trying to make this as simple as possible put in some sort of retail on the first floor and either offices or housing and they got approval for a three store building through our planning process and we worked out the details of you know us purchasing their lot them purchasing our lot again i'm simplifying this a little bit uh and that was what was going to happen so it was going to be a commercial space there and in fact the parking behind was designed to sort of go with that building literally the day before the closing the folks at the moat trust to own my pillar beverage said you know what we don't really want to do this we think it's probably just cleaner and easier if we just sold you our parcel and um not do the rest of the deal so at that point the city became the sort of owner of all all of this property uh and there was some discussion about should the remaining parcel what you see now uh be open space parkland should it be developed what should it be and uh so while there was some conversation we decided that in order to complete the project and deal with the brown fields we would just grass it over because that gave us the most options uh so there was a working group form to discuss what should happen with this parcel and the conclusion of that was we shouldn't really be talking about this parcel um on its own we should be looking at in the context of the entire downtown and so it was folded into the downtown master plan taking a look at the various needs of downtown and the recommendation of that process was that this parcel should be developed that it should the city should seek a private partner and develop it in some sort of private way and not have it be a park and that was essentially the direction where we were headed in uh you know sort of fall winter of November of 2019 and then in spring of 2020 of course COVID hit and everything stopped uh so there has been no further work on that lot and we actually have scheduled this spring on our list of items is the resolution of what to do with that part with that property so one of the reasons we were hesitant at least at our end to invest a lot into that property was that there is no there's no firm decision with the future of that property as a whole not just this one structure so that is still a decision left for you to make but I think it's helpful to understand that it's hasn't necessarily been targeted for open space or for long-term parkland and that it is left as this sort of open grass space because that was the way to complete the work at that time and the way that would allow the most options in the future camera is correct that it's a little sloped because of the one part of it has restrictions about excavations another part of it does not so the buildings would have to go on the part that is not so just a little more context I know you know it's one of those things I assume everybody knows that I look around the room and say um I know what we've got a lot of new people since this all started so I think it's helpful to have that background but with that I know there's been a robust community discussion about this and you know I think I feel we've raised our concerns and we will do what council says and we'll make it a success regardless of what it is thanks bill Connor to you yeah sure I'll just just say a few words about the process and then I I have my own feelings about this and what I can say a few words but obviously a pretty emotional discussion as you've heard and I want to start by thanking Cameron probably there's never been as much work done on an eight foot piece of property as Cameron's done looking at the different options here and doing the different meetings we've had this week you know some of its symbolism I think but there is meaning in symbols and I would channel the mayor in saying we should assume best intentions and folks you know certainly I think there have been comments that I would say are prejudice but you know there are also some very legitimate concerns as Bill said the drain on city resources the litter's been out of control to the point of being a you know health issue at times there's been you know cases of harassment with folks passing by and I shouldn't be taken lightly a bit not a bit it's not an ideal situation that said it absolutely serves a purpose right now and if you talk to service providers I don't know if don littles here I know we have another way obviously represented but the value in being able to in a centralized place that's accessible to folks facing disabilities have a chat with folks direct them to services be there if there's an emergency where there has been to intervene and make sure they're safe and healthy is definitely preferable in my mind to pushing folks into the shadows which I think we have a tendency to do sometimes if we don't like the behavior going on so you've had all these sort of conflicting viewpoints come together there but as they have you know and I would compare it to the camping proposal a bit that we had last summer there as we've had folks who have these different opinions come together uh one thing that's been a bit beautiful I think is a lot of folks coming to the table with with some solutions you know and they might be valuable they might not be but it's a matter of your community coming together recognizing these issues and saying okay it's not just going to be one meeting it's not just going to be one structure we all have to come together we all have to think of solutions and it's going to be a long term issue the homelessness task force is looking into the future and like I do want to say you know this structure it's not a magical thing right it's not there's nothing magic about it right we have an increased homeless population people experiencing homelessness or people feeling isolation after this pandemic and it's served a place for them to like come centralize but we need those long term decisions and I think the warming shelter with $425,000 banked into the next next year's budget with the RFP going out pretty soon we'll look at a lot of these issues here and hopefully come to some better solutions then where do we put this little piece a little structure right so anyways I think there has been value to it it's it's been a bumpy road I'm glad we did it you know hopefully we come up with some decision tonight and again I do have my own personal thoughts on this that I'll come back to but I think it would make sense maybe for I can't relate some of the thoughts of the folks on the task force which he's been writing down thick notes we're either way either at the table or okay thank you and do identify yourself I feel like Joe Biden take off my mask I'm gonna speak thank you Ken Russell with the Montpelier Homelessness Task Force and I'm the director of another way Zach Hughes I'm an outreach person for peer plus private organization thank you so I do have a few remarks first of all we're grateful to have had the opportunity to weigh in and to reach out to folks and to get input there's really been some fantastic discussions very thoughtful on what you were saying about similar to the camping discussion I mean you'll there's a lot of common ground I mean you'll hear people who may be strong critics of my camping ordinance or people using Gerton Park will preface it by you know we got to take care we got to look out for these folks you know we'll emphasize the importance of of the humanity of all this and then so that you know the assumed positive intent is very strong um there has been some ugliness in different quarters um in in these chambers at the at the park on front porch forum and I do think that you know looking to our better angels is part of what we need to do and it has really tangible benefits um one of the in the in there about a hundred people who weighed in in meetings I've been part of um I mean including we had a big meeting in another way on this we had the coffee at Ravel Rousers we had the meeting last Thursday we had our homelessness task force um there were not a lot of strong voices hardly any saying gotta move it a lot of people can we just adjust it we can do this and what that says to me is there are a lot of functions as others have alluded to that it does meet it has it's um you know it it was designed to to to be on the bike path so bikers could stop and drink water and it's turned into something different um and I just want to say on that score we do have to be careful uh when we hear of folks saying well it's not what it was designed for well it was designed to be a public space and a certain category of folks of the public have been utilizing that space and so what we don't want to do is be in a situation where we're saying there's a certain class of people who don't belong in our public space I'm sure we can all agree with that um and I and I know and again not to diminish some of the behavioral concerns that people have raised um I I've definitely been out there and uh you know some some of the situation out there has has disgusted me I've also seen tremendous humanity out there I've seen people helping other people get out of situations that were dangerous for their recovery Susan who had to leave early she I don't know if you've been paying attention the last few weeks she has been cleaning that thing she has been as she said like the the dead mother she's been asking for gloves and garbage bags she's been coordinating with neighboring businesses you know so so that you know there have been people of course bringing food by to people um there have been well this is over at the transit center but the same populations making music and singing songs and dancing so it's just important not to get hooked up on the caricature and understand that now the full spectrum of these of these folks I know there's I know it's late so I'll just get through one one thing that is a concern is if and this was expressed by a lot of people at these meetings if this this goes away you you might well have a lot of people in doorways downtown people have some need to have somewhere to go we had some folks in another way talking about that yeah we're just trying to we're just trying to move along we just don't know where to go and and then it's I kind of reminds me the grapes of wrath you know people just being moved along from place to place or or Snoopy no dogs allowed I don't know if you remember that but but seriously it's like I I have to say it's like there is not enough housing we have 300 and some odd people in motels in washington county we have 75 up at the hilltop we have 100 I mean 75 at the economy we have 100 at the hilltop there are their own challenges there we people are not landing in this situation because of their moral failings I mean I'm sure you could point to anecdotally yeah this person yeah yeah but this is economics this is supply and demand in the housing market and we all you know we know what's happening for middle-class families you know here from our housing finance agency like trying to get some kind of movement on housing it's it was you know interesting to hear the zoning discussion so what are we going to do and this is going to get worse and if you're you know as an environmentalist we have to learn how to live in cities we have to learn how to live with a lower footprint we need to learn how to how to share space part of sharing space is I'm up against a person that makes me feel uncomfortable how do I share space with this person you know so um I was in the bookshelf I just reached I was in the other room while you all were talking on something else on the elks and I just grabbed this book from Krishna Murthy and I was going to read this in it and I just want to preface this by saying this is not meant to be judgmental of anybody but more of the sort of challenge I think we all have why do we hate the poor do you really hate the poor I am not condemning you I'm just asking do you really hate the poor and if you do why it's because you also may be poor one day and imagining your own plight then you reject it or that you dislike the sordid dirty unkempt existence of the poor disliking untidiness disorder squalor filth you say I don't want to have anything to do with the poor is that it but who has created poverty squalor and disorder in the world your parents your government our whole society has created them because you see we have no love in our hearts we love neither our children nor our neighbors neither the living or the dead we have no love for anything at all and he goes on and on about love no um no but he said do you love anything do you know what it is completely love and I really feel like and this is sounds corny in a meeting like this but you know how do we love the folks that might make us feel uncomfortable thank you and I and and on a more and and I know these are some tough decisions and I know that as cameras Connor says there's there's symbolism here so I'm being a little bit philosophical here but we do appreciate everybody's good efforts here and I just want to reiterate the call for having something downtown and for a few reasons I mean first of all it's where people are it's already the current geography of this population it's it's the downtown center and it's also where we're at we are a city and part of what a city does is people end up there gritty as they are and they figure out how to share space together when I first got involved with homelessness issues 25 years ago and Palo Alto in California um I thought it was we there was a talk about at the acts of enclosure and like the commons they're making illegal to sit or lie on the sidewalk downtown and I saw the housing market drive artists and everybody out of those communities and you know what's happened in San Francisco and it's happening here in in Vermont and so you know how do we design our space in a way that meets social justice challenges you know they had a sustainable Montpelier design competition how about a social justice design competition uh Ward is here Ward has beautiful visions about public space the students at Vermont Technical College did some great visions visions for visions for a day shelter and as Connor said we and and thank you for the support of our agenda the financial support and thank you for the taxpayers who who are investing in in this we're I think hiring a consultant to help fine-tune how to bring down that's you know how to spend wisely this this money that the $400,000 and do something we can all feel good about and and really does make a difference is something fantastic so thank you for your time and Zach so I uh I've been rehearsing this for a while but I'll just stay brief and submit things and writing at this point decision or no decision tonight I'll submit still I um Zachary Hughes I am also a citizen over at Prospect Street in Montpelier and also on the homeless task force but I'm also a service provider I wear a couple hats you know out there so um that I will echo the downtown thing I really think it's really necessary to have something if this if this doesn't work out and I do um understand the concerns I get it um but there are concerns also from our side and um and I just need to say something from Susan who had to leave early to go into shelter so we're talking about real time here uh she actually had to go into a to the warming shelter or the overflow so she couldn't stay the whole time she reiterated that um that she was concerned about sanitation um you know and uh what's beautiful is I'm hearing that within the next year we ought to be able to have that figured out with these fundings and we've talked about it for two years to be fair to some people but yeah bathrooms are the big thing and I know we didn't that potty thing went somewhere and have found it yet but anyway that's one thing and she just feels uh she said some people are feeling defeated out there so I think this is um you know and and just real quick I have introduced a initiative at the homelessness task force that I learned at the state level called build for zero and this is built for zero dot org um if we're looking at this because only municipalities kind of can really touch this or join this um this isn't something I can take my service provider thing and do so we're looking at that and I appreciate your time this evening I'll submit the rest from writing thank you um let's start with members of the council see if anyone has any questions or comments to uh to move this along well there I know there are people in the public and I will be uh taking comments from them too thank you thanks yeah Jennifer um I don't have questions I just um I I have some comments um I've I've worked um with homeless populations for 20 years and I myself have been homeless and um you know there's a lot of people in town that are one paycheck away from being on the streets and we keep talking about the need for housing and the need for space and I think that that is our intention is to provide that for folks um but I also think it's important to remember that we are a city council and it takes time and I know that's not what a lot of people have and um I would appreciate if if people could give us just a little bit of patience um this is really hard work and um these are people's lives and we're not taking it lightly we're taking this very seriously um I don't think anybody sitting up here does not care about the people that are over at Garden Park um and I've done a lot of really horrible emails from people and you know that's my role I'm I'm taking people's opinions and ideas and thoughts um but it's really hard to have people that don't know me or my life make assumptions about my opinions and my thoughts and so I'm I'm putting them out here I I am absolutely in support of helping all of our community members especially those that don't have anywhere to go um I understand that this is a very touchy subject for folks but I I'm asking for my constituents and community members to give me some space and time to think about what is the right decision because I don't want to make a decision based on emotions I want to make a decision based on what's best for everyone in this situation and it's not an easy decision to make um and also I'd like to say that if you would like me to agree with you or hear you I would appreciate it that you came to me with respect that's a huge thing for me because it's part of my culture and I would never come at anybody with disrespect so I'm I'm just asking if you if you want me to support your ideas community ideas um please come to me with respect please don't come to me with your anger and frustration because I too am frustrated by the situation so thank you it's all I have to say thanks anybody else up here yeah anybody else wants to go first like like blab on but um yeah no first thanks a lot for that Jennifer you know that means a lot and uh you know it may sound cheesy but like uh you hear the term eyesore thrown around a lot and sure enough the structure can be an eyesore but people can't be an eyesore they can't they'll have their own stories there and I you know I've learned with all these hearings a lot of those like personal stories um and it's actually been quite moving um you know I worry it's a slippery slope if you know you don't like people who are sitting on a public structure and you move it where does it go uh the weather's getting nice we're about to set up benches in downtown Montpelier if somebody sits on other benches that we don't like do we remove the benches you know we've already moved it from the bike path because of some of these concerns you know we we move it here we move it again as ken said like the issues don't go away and people always need a place to find shelter and part of the reason the homelessness task force was created at the beginning was some of the issues with folks hanging out downtown in some of the merchants like doorways here um if we move it like we got to move it with eyes wide open because the parklite policy that we just approved entitles anybody to sit in these parklets at the end of business hours here that's where folks will go and they should go there because they have nowhere else to go we're getting a lot of complaints right I worry if we don't get these calls for emergency services because that means somebody's in the shadows who might need help there and they're not getting the care they need um so you know whether you have a house or not um it's a different population again everybody has their own stories some people are up at the hotels some people are just isolated and it's a sense of community and it's a very small thing but it's something it provides um and I you know I think I've evolved in my thinking over this but um you know we we we face logistical problems and that we actually don't have much city property in downtown Montpelier um the the options outlined in the memo um a lot of our good options maybe for the future use of the structure but I can't support moving it unless we have a clear uh downtown replacement that's accessible to services that could serve a substitute function to it uh because otherwise what we're doing is just they think turn on a blind eye to some of these issues even if we can't solve them in the immediate future um I I believe it keeps people safer actually leaving it as is so that's just where I'm coming from yeah um yeah so this this one is um this is really tough right everyone everyone agrees on that and and I think we have a lot of competing issues going on here and um we're we're thinking really hard about people's lives and people's safety and about how we care for everybody who lives in Montpelier and and the idea that we we move the structure um clearly does not solve the problem of the people who are using the structure now and have needs for it I would love to see an alternate plan so that we only move the structure if we had somewhere else for folks to go and at the same time I don't see that alternate plan happening right now and we have a current situation that has a lot of significant problems that I'm also not seeing a solution for so I feel like we're really stuck we have something that doesn't really work in some major ways and if we just move the structure then we have something else that doesn't work in some really major ways so I am looking to the homelessness task force largely to try to give us some solutions to this right now uh I know that longer term we may have some more solutions coming although I don't you know I I think we'll still have some major gaps because that's just the nature of this so that's where that's where I am right now and I and I appreciate everybody who has put so much thought into this and is so and the compassion that I hear from people and the true caring for people who live in Montpelier I just really want to appreciate that thanks Carrie Donna I guess along those lines I've been thinking about having an intentional structure that would increase the amount of people who could socialize something that would work if not totally protect from the elements at least something three-sided and one of the discussions came up with a space that was talked about before behind another way of putting shell we talked about before with showers and I thought well why not put at least another alternative maybe we need more than one space but you know so I mentioned it to Ken and some others and it's not shoving people off of Main Street but thinking about here's a space it's a it's near where they're also getting services and so I'd like to go in that direction and I guess it's the same way I'd like to have one happening that we can research and find out because at one point we had potentially some private people who could get involved with that project at another way property but it takes some time to invest in it but I'd rather do that before we take away what's now being used this is Zach and I did have a follow-up date in one of our meetings we've heard feedback about opening up more areas for people to be able to go to instead of being stuck in certain areas this was very encouraging to hear this idea it was just laid out like build more of these and you know in the space make the space shareable with others one of the other ideas we heard or other comments was they didn't uh citizen didn't feel comfortable using that space it wouldn't it be great if we could equalize it somehow thank you do you want to say anything now lauren you don't have to oh wait for now there's a lot of public okay yeah there's there's some public comment I'm going to start with people online because they're our hands have been up for a while starting with peter kehlman uh peter kehlman and I encourage everyone to be brief because it is already 10 38 p.m. right peter kehlman um uh I pretend that I'm a man from mars and I've arrived here and I was listening to this and I I go well yeah you've got that piece of land you've got a need to have something downtown you need bathrooms you need showers you need lockers so why not build something in that piece of land that has all those things in the meantime because you have to do something now before you move the structure there are spaces behind another way and on stonecutters way let's think about solving the problem not focusing on the obstacles yes you'll have to deal with the obstacles at some point but start thinking about some ways to use empty stores uh empty spaces we are moving into a warmer period of time so right now we don't have to worry so much about uh uh warming shelters but let's think about what we can do now and start planning for what we're going to do before next winter thank you and thanks peter next up we have morgan brown morgan brown resident of district three mapea um um i formerly served on a almost a sas force and i've been someone who uh lived in house for many years of my life but i've been housed for over 12 years now um so back when i was living in house in the area um we didn't there wasn't a great box structure to go to and i remember sometimes in the winter even walking around town because i had no place to go to or rest and just walking with all my belongings and i'd sometimes go to that little bus shelter that was at the tail of street lot there when the bus used to go there at one time greyhound and i'd be in there get my feet up and try to stay warm wasn't easy and that was a night daytime you know i when the state law library was open during the week i'd go there well the public library pandemic hit you know and for those that well of course state libraries and around anymore for people so you know when especially with the pandemic people have less place to go and one thing should be noted with girt and park is not everybody that uh gathers there is living in house there's many people who gather there and socialize who are house yeah and uh including myself but also others and um it provides a central location and even though it's less than ideal um you know it does provide a certain amount of socialization the previous location of it provided a certain amount of privacy here is none and uh you know the other day saturday i believe you know i happened to witness an altercation that was pretty bad verbally uh be yourself but then turned into a physical one and now if girt and park wasn't there you know maybe that incident might have happened somewhere else at out of sight out of mind maybe it would have been worse so you know for all the concerns about what is going on it's important to realize that as people have mentioned that the current location it is meeting a certain need and you know if i was living in house now where would i go where would you go where would your loved ones go your family members your close friends think about that and so although this might take a while to try to figure out and do something about it is important to try to do something as soon as possible to help with what is it growing need and it's only going to get worse we've got people being evicted you know we've got people who will be you know not able to go into the motels we've got the overflow shelf to close as soon as i understand so you know there you go thank you but thanks morgan next up we have don little online hey um i'm don little i'm employed by good samaritan haven i am a resident a member of the task force and a street outreach worker um some of this will be somewhat redundant we've heard some of it before um as far as the task as the uh curtain park structure itself is concerned um i we have a need for something downtown that serves the purposes curtain park is serving and i personally don't have no preference i would like to see it used for what it was originally meant for but i feel that it's at least as important that these these functions be served somehow and right at the moment it seems to be what we have um if curtain park is moved um which i do not prefer at the moment i would ask that we consider moving it to someplace not really far away but somewhere where lower income people or people without cars could use it um not to dog river or some or harvard park or someplace that's already considered recreational but to one of those neighborhoods the woman was talking about earlier where they don't have parks they don't have central areas in the neighborhood or to or to again mill pond park um my preference would be for it to stay in town for the moment until or unless we can come up with a substitute but that it be moved back from the street because i really don't think that that works for anyone um you know i believe that we need a place that is centrally located for all the reasons people have mentioned before but in addition because people whether they are housed or unhoused need a place where they can sit down where they can get out of the weather um a lot of people can't walk that far to get to bathrooms so having it in the downtown area near the services and the and the bathrooms is a good idea having an accessible is a good idea i think in addition to that it provides privacy for people without housing it provides an ability for people to find each other i know when new people come to town or even local residents who are newly without housing due to job loss or divorce or being exited from their apartment or whatever people go to the girtland park and they call me i mean i get many calls from people at girtland park saying hey there's a new person here they don't have a phone they don't know where to go you know can you talk to them and that wouldn't be happening if people were widely dispersed um it's kind of instinctive place that people first go when they don't know where to go they don't know what services are available they don't know what they're going to do they don't know you know and and it gives them an opportunity to be oriented and to get in touch with appropriate services um and it's also a point of stability for people who don't have a home you know you have a place to go you read the paper in the morning you talk to your friends you don't have money to go to a coffee shop um you don't want to sit out in the rain if it's raining but it just gives people part of a routine you know it may be the one stable spot in their day besides going to the shelter which which won't be available in the summer by the way but I would just like to say that I think we have a need for a centrally located but not right in people's faces I don't know how to accomplish this I'm sure there has to be I'm sure we have the money to do this there must be some corner if we replace girtland park where we could put a couple tables and a tarp or something or maybe we could just move girtland park away from the street but there's a serious need to have these meets net until we can find something perfect that meets all of the needs um and there will even at that point be a continuing need as there will be more people passing through there will be more people who need a very low barrier uncomplicated place just to sit down where they can hear themselves think and not feel like they're being stared at um and that's you know it's also true that low-income people and people with disabilities need somewhere and I like the idea of having a variety of inexpensive small places where people can sit so they don't all have to go to the same place they don't feel pushed out or marginalized if somebody else is occupying their bench they can go to another bench um thank you uh thanks Dawn uh next up vicki and lane online um yes I'd like to also echo the fact that I do not believe that it should be moved other than maybe to kitty corner it a little bit um and also I think um oh for one I think it's got to be near the services I like the fact that it's so close to the fire department so that if there's medical needs they're really close um and the police can check in on them and so can varying assorted people that also check in on them periodically um it is a terribly small spot a small structure so um I'm going to propose something radical that probably will get me thrown out of businesses in town are not welcomed but I think we should maybe um construct a few more on that spot maybe another couple three um similar structures on that spot for people to get out of the rain and make sure that the the roofs overhang enough to where there's no rain coming into them it's very important that um that people are able to get out of the the rain and visit with other people other like people the um the the structure that I've seen is when there's several people there there isn't enough room in that structure for all of them and some of them end up sitting or standing outside of it and um you know I it's too small for people to be comfortably um socializing in so I really do think that we should construct some lean-to type things and maybe make make them a little more secure and weather proof better than the one than the Gertin one um which was not designed to be weather weather proof um I think that's why you saw some of the tarps go up around the the Gertin structure in the winters because they were trying to make it as comfortable as they could um and I do think that as citizens of Montpelier that we really do need to welcome these people too they are also our fellow citizens um even though they may not live like the rest of us um I certainly don't live like my neighbors live um and I don't live like anybody else really lives so everybody's different and I think that we ought to embrace that and um protect people um I don't know what well this is really going to get me into trouble um but I don't know why people are not taking shelter um at city hall on the steps or in the overhang there when it's really rainy or stormy or whatever you can get out of the out of the weather um I don't know why we don't let people kind of sit there um but I guess they don't and I guess it's been a problem but anyway so I think we need to really um I mean it's a perfect little park place for um people that are unhoused or um or their social circle needs a place to meet um even if they are housed um that's a convenient spot so uh that's basically all I have to say I would like to encourage us to um construct more rather than remove what's there just because some people find it to be an eyesore I don't find it on an eyesore but um I know other people who have less compassion may find it an eyesore uh thanks vicki um though on your hand is still up but I suspect that it may be because uh you just haven't taken it down and so I'm gonna uh look in the room and see if there are people in the room who'd want to speak uh yes we have Ward Joyce uh first up thank you so I went by the Girton Pocket Park today and I saw I think eight or ten people in it and there was someone that was like 85 maybe they were listening to music they were talking they were chatting and I actually found the most vibrant part of downtown multiplayer on the other hand it's a disaster as a public space and I said this the other night um there's a principle in public space design that I didn't invent the the project for public space has codified it and it's called the power of seven and it means that if you want to build a public space you need seven things in that space it could be a trash can a bench a bike rack a pavilion newspapers when you have seven things you bring people to a space so that space is mostly being complained about because it has an absence of anything of quality as a public space so Bill I understand that the that it isn't meant necessarily to be there for 10 years and you might want to build a building I'd like you to revisit with the community I know you will I'm just inviting I want to build a building that was what I'm inviting you to revisit with the community whether the community as a whole really does want another building or whether that might become a gateway park to multiplayer which for visitors is a pretty dismal way to enter our city not because of Girton Pocket Park and not because of the homeless but because we don't have a public space and we don't have good city fabric there so I love the last idea of the notion of making that a better pocket park I think spinning it around and making the current piece address the street and then building a much better one in the back of the park for the folks that like to hang out there it's clearly an important space but it's just poorly under designed and so it is going to fail it is going to raise people's hair because it's a terrible use of an open space so I challenge the city to develop that space even temporarily better more better gooder that's really bad English no I just really it should be better conceived of so instead of moving it a mile away which you did to the skateboarders 10 years ago which was really cruel to take the kids from downtown and say you can go skateboard about a mile away it's a really bad urban gesture to move an amenity away so I encourage the community to come together and assist the city in making that space even temporarily a better place and it needs to be pumped up with energy and not removed of what's there that's my thing thank you um yes and I know you said your name I'm sorry just forget it you're up yes yes come on up Mary okay you're up you're up I'm so I'm so damn tired I had to lay down there Jesus oh I was interested in those other things too pardon me oh yes I'm Mary from messier from Louis street um yeah I've talked to Don a lot about this and other people and um yep I'm totally into making that space better um so while I was home tonight at five o'clock thinking about coming here on my bicycle all the time um you know I started doodling you know I was getting excited about it so I made a little map I made a little map it has uh so my idea is would be angle it's a goofy map I know I didn't draw it great angle curtain park I think I got seven items in here so cool uh got a picnic table uh maybe even two uh bench bench uh thing of flowers small benches two trash recycle areas um so yeah I don't feel when it first got put there I I didn't feel comfortable with how it was facing it just didn't feel right and um it didn't look good and um I do see the need I I hope it doesn't get moved off someplace although I do get upset with um litter and um that's one of my things I just don't like littering um I hope it doesn't get moved far away but maybe it could be angled and improved and if we got to do the go fund me I think that's a great idea um I know this isn't for solving big the problem but um I'm not talking very even worse now because I'm really tired oh sure sure you may I I just like doodling a lot too when I'm when I'm thinking so uh let's see my note said maybe move it back about 20 feet angle it slightly so it's a little bit uh maybe facing the drawing board facing the capital just angle um develop the area maybe if we need to do a go fund me effort um benches and I would really like to see some of these benches covered minimal would this uh clear plexi stuff maybe something not really expect you know I don't think you have to put a ton of money into this but um something simple um yeah so that's basically it but um I bicycle for about six years on town uh a lot of it because I didn't have a car then when I got a car unfortunately the only one I could find is in New Hampshire and anyways high mileage it broke down back to bicycling but I've found it really hard to carry everything I have and be prepared for all weather all the time and what if my back starts hurting really bad with the arthritis because I have it and there was times I couldn't walk 40 feet really I'm telling you so it's better now but we need this around the city we need it for our elderly folks our disability folks you know I mean I'm not saying that right but we need it for everyone and I think I said the story the other night about being down at the um transit center I was waiting for the greyhound it never showed up and I found out it left 30 minutes early so on that side of the street where the greyhound pulls in there's no shelter I mean if you're disabled or elderly and it's cold it's raining what are you doing you know you stand there and wait you could wait be there early and wait really late because they come in late sometimes so I really feel that the city needs a bunch of places like say I don't know six at least and I haven't followed the confluence park thing really I'd like to look at that closer but I think the city really needs these kind of spaces that are maybe minimal seating but maybe some coverage so that everyone can sit down when they need to or know that two blocks away there's a space where they can sit get out of the wind or the sun I frequently see Maxine Leary in the in the summer walking she's got her umbrella she's like 95 98 now you know um we need this we really do and especially with um you know people being encouraged to bicycle and walk more um if we're going to do that spend six months biking year round or whatever and you'll realize a lot of our infrastructure is not set up for the future not at all we we really need to get there and that doesn't count the transportation and by the way I love the bike path I do it gave it gave people some relief could we try to wrap up I'll wrap thank you it gave people a relief and I wasn't in town right then um I was in Barrie but it really during COVID it gave people an ability to go out not going to restaurant and get a little nature so thank you thank you so thank you and I hope you don't move it really far away thank you Steve as you recall most of you recall I opposed moving it from its prior location because I foresaw this very same uh competing uses uh there's one piece I want to it's a one line from a op-ed that was in the New York Times last week quote first first human beings are powerfully driven by what are known as the thymotic desires these are the needs to be seen respected appreciated if you give people the impression that they are unseen disrespected and unappreciated they will become enraged resentful and vengeful they will perceive diminishment as injustice and respond with aggressive indignation now that applies to me as well as a lot of the homeless and I've been talking to y'all about a lot of priorities for year after year after year and you ignore them so yeah I'm indignant but I'm also trying to help solve this problem for the homeless folk and regarding city halls portico one no as an alternative I don't think that's an alternative uh it's tile it's concrete it's cold and there's a brand new surveillance camera hovering over it um the Gertin park is wood it's soft it's got a little bit of privacy um we don't have time the homelessness task force has had two years and eight months and accomplished none none of its goals and we have empty perfect hot water bathrooms in this building we are just too damn selfish to allow them to be shared and keep them clean you know the police are right across the street they can check on it every hour they're right across the parking lot to not make these public bathrooms available is grossly reckless endangerment and callous indifference on your part um we disrespect the homeless we we treat them like like dirt like unwanted you know we that littering I'm I'm annoyed as hell by it and I go and reprimand people to pick up after themselves but it's it's an expression it's one of the few voices they have they don't have the luxury of staying out till 10 or 11 o'clock at night to come to a hearing they got to be in the shelter but we got a real problem twit the christ church is going to close 20 more people out on the street 150 getting getting exited from the two hotels good samaritan with a five million dollar grant is only going to house 38 people when by july okay we got a real real tsunami of unhoused people coming our way and we have made no progress on renting purchasing toilet trailers that can be pumped out by wind river you know shower trailers that could be located in out of the way places where people could access them we should be designing our city to accommodate people of all incomes and hikers and you know the the long trail hikers we so for tonight's problem I think there's enough votes here to not move it immediately but I do want to suggest we could move it very soon last time that was pushed back by only donna bait I believe at not down a bait donna barlow about locating it on the back of the new parking lot the new part there's a knoll right behind it's it's grown up into weeds five feet tall last year the weeds are down now there's a nice level spot it's it's protected from the bike path by a chain link fence and the bridge and there's the masking of the noise by the little waterfall below so that people could have some privacy they'd have a view of the river you may or may not need to I would say keep it six eight feet from the riprap you it could even put a fence in to keep any drunk people for falling under the riprap but I ran that one by took Richard shear there whom I'm sure you have heard about this issue he said that's a good spot Lord just said that's a good spot okay that's a good spot especially if you put a toilet trailer in that lot give up a couple of those parking spaces and put a toilet trailer right in it that'll take a little pressure off you get not getting our city our city hall bathrooms open to the public and with the idea the consultant talking about a warming shelter we don't need a warming shelter we need a night shelter we need a single room occupancy with showers and a couple of community rooms maybe that should be built in the rec on the site of the rec center demolished and or on the lot that we're talking about now so I know you want to shut me up so in any case I think you've got the idea if you must move it keep it in town but deal with the the problem of trash if you'd respect people by giving them bathrooms they won't litter as much that's common fricking sense thank you chief council members brian p with the Montpelier police department this is a situation that none of you all created but it's an unenviable situation that you're bearing a lot of weight on and it's something that can't be solved by the folks in this room can't be solved by the state it's going to take a partnership it's going to take a lot of different things so if I am I would personally from from from my point as the chief of police would like to move away from the existential conversation of homelessness and the uncomfortability of it to the behavioral issues what do you want the Montpelier police to do because no matter where you put it no matter what you bring in there there's going to be a group who are going to act outside in a way that's going to cause a call for service from us or from the fire department that's just an unfortunate situation of where we're at there's a lot of conversation about individuals this is the place where folks need to kind of gather to do things I get that understand other people don't have places to go but what about the ones who don't have places to go but are afraid to go to that shelter because they don't want to deal with the substance abuse issues the assaults or anything else like that so when the department gets constant calls for service regarding behavioral issues whether it's drinking on a public way whether it's defecation or you're urinating inside of someone's hallway room or moving into someone's building how do you want us to address that we can reach out to dawn we can reach out to kin but if someone does not want to go to one of those facilities there is nothing I can do the complaints will continue to come in and come in so this is a very unenviable situation which is why I'd never be able to be good in public service well from this point but but I guess what what I'm asking specifically from the question that's constantly asked to me from my officers and from the fire department is what do you want me to do now and then when our officers are getting the brunt of the angry conversations that people you've gotten a taste of but the angry conversations and the accusations that are pushed against us each time that we're called to deal with a situation like this and we're doing it in a very empathetic and trauma-informed way what is our next step and and that's the only thing that that's how I would would would if I could give any advice would be to look at what do you want us to do from the behavioral issues rather than the issues of trying to tackle homelessness which is something with all due respect you all cannot do because you don't have the resources to do it that's just my two cents whatever you tell me to do or whatever you tell him to do he will tell me to do thanks chief very very one more sentence and you need to get up to the okay the thing about making a space better is that so many people are in that one space it's cause conflict it does it causes conflict if people can kind of spread out that's part of it too and maybe less than the conflicts because people have a space thank you yes sir it's the other guy first all right good no no no no yeah okay hey hi i'm tom i'm tom could you give us your last name for the name is thomas fallon thank you this feels really weird when you're up here i'm sorry i've been watching for hours my first time um i i wasn't sure if i was even going to comment because so many people before me i mean spoken i mean it made me relieved to know that there's other people experiencing deeper emotions about this and it is trouble you know um but i guess what the police chief said really made me feel as if i had an interesting perspective um and that carries off of what ken said about his experience with susan you know she's a great woman um but sometimes the environment you're in every day don't provide opportunities to do service for others and they don't provide a feedback for what's a good behavior versus what is necessity um and i think a lot of people deal with that whether you are homeless and have a job or whatever your demographic is you want to feel a sense of inclusion and purpose and um uh the quote about this kind of tit for tat behavior of well we don't get a bathroom so i'm going to piss here you know that happened in my building i i have a an apartment right across the street from uh dirton park um and side note a lot of us are on v-wrap we're trying to advocate i mean i am i'm trying to advocate for a uh practical and and kind of understanding approach that the way the economy is going we don't know what's going to happen to people that are already in in you know installed in their homes and where they might have to go so i think a really just kind hearted way to deal with it is to address the public en masse i mean we have newspapers and we have waste release statements and i'm so sorry that you experienced the hatred and stuff uh the pushback but it but it is a dire issue and um the fact that the shelters are closing um the people i mean they're gonna sleep on the park benches whether you want it or not you know i think your option is how are we gonna do that to make it look nice in our community and to make it something that we can deal with or um we can you know bear it's a shameful thing um but we all you know we we we just live our lives and so you can't really force a homeless person to go and seek that elsewhere but i do think we can take the cue from other cities uh maybe you know look at portland they have a really crazy homeless problem but you know just small things we obviously are full of uh people with with plenty of skills and ideas and i've talked to people individually and uh yeah their communication is off so i think releasing statements about what you're gonna do and what you want to put forward is great um you know so i'm optimistic and um uh yeah i don't know circle back just just try to try to um oh gosh am i giving advice here no um yeah no i have to do it no he said he said or she said she said where do they go if they they have nowhere to go and and they don't like the people there that's kind of me sometimes because i got to put up with these people but you know they're hard to deal with and so uh if we're all going through psychological stuff and we're all pointing the finger it's not going to work um provide the resources i love that i i just i i love the conversation of what what's the kind of gift we can give to these people you know in a way that works for the community i think the community wants that and that's all like really good to say all right thanks for coming uh net um i think there's some uh there's some really good things happening and i'd like to hit on those uh you were kind enough and you were kind enough to invite me to that meeting at the rabble riser and um people are talking to each other and this is this is uh this is a great thing it's an advantage that we have at the moment people are talking to each other so i don't think we should uh i think we should seize on we may not be able to do a lot of things right away but i think we should seize on the good fortune that people are talking to each other that's number one number two i think we should begin to make discernible steps towards some of the more difficult arrangements that we need to put in place we may not be able to build uh uh uh a good relationship with the community but i think we should we may not be able to build uh uh patio apartments uh with loges and great views for people right away but we probably can find a way for people to have a place uh to relieve themselves go to the bathroom to take a shower we can do some simple things right away we can continue to talk we can do some simple things right away and we can draw in those people when we've discovered to help us design a plan that incrementally will address their needs and our needs so i congratulate you and you and others because i think things are beginning to happen i wasn't actually going to speak but you looked past me and i thought it was i it was being called upon to speak so okay thank all right thank you thank you very much um there are a couple of people of the public who want to who have already spoken i will let call on morgan and don one minute and i'll be very strict with that so me yes welcome brown again i'll try to be brief well one of the things i had mentioned had meant to mention is previously before the pandemic people could gather at the community meals sites and that was good and that hasn't been available as much and another matter is a lot of times people don't have activities and things to do and if they did um that would be helpful and lastly i just want to say in terms of resources i would argue that our community has more resources as well into a met we just don't always do a good job of sharing them and make them make them available to those who have nothing who have little and we need to do better in that regard thank you very much for your time and listening thanks morgan don you too one minute if you have a minute yep um two things one um if richard shear steven wittaker ward choice and i can agree on something i think it's worth consideration um however briefly and i know there are some obstacles but a number of the people outside have all been talking about how great it would be if that was just at the back of that lot and i know camera and has said there are a number of obstacles i also would like to point out that if you have it further away from the street it might reduce some of the less necessary calls for emergency services um my other point is if you're talking about moving it down stone car's way or something please be mindful that it may not be best to put it in a residential section that's all thank you very much thanks don yeah oh it slipped my mind okay it's good uh we we have a lot to talk about um so where where are we now folks i i clearly don't see that there are votes to say we're getting this uh moving it from where it is all right so i just want to say that um after sitting for five hours i cannot make great decisions and that's probably true for a lot of other people so not to say that we can't make any decision i just kind of feel like it needs to be said um i i do not know what to do here i feel like we have a a really significant problem facing us that needs to be addressed and we are not finding ways to address it uh and i appreciate the chief of police asking for some direction on how to handle the the additional load on the public safety folks um we have uh a lot of folks who feel it who are who are feeling very unwelcomed by um from lots of different directions i think by what's happening there and um i don't know where the solutions to that are supposed to come from but i don't see one sitting here right in front of us right now um leaving things the way they are does not seem like a good idea so if there's a way to rearrange things in that space i'm unclear whether that's actually a possibility given the space i would like to hear more about that um moving it somewhere completely different and way out of town means it's not going to serve the need that it's serving now and it also would mean that it would be reducing the problems that are occurring now um presumably or though maybe not i don't know so um so i guess i'm i'm i'm not convinced that just doing nothing is a good idea and if we could hear more about maybe there's some way to change the use of that space and um as a new council member i'm also not entirely sure what response we can give to your to the chief of police this is a question about how do we handle these calls um kind of seems like you should handle them the way you handle them elsewhere but i don't know you know if you need some kind of different direction from us so i'm rambling a little bit here um as i say it's it's almost tomorrow so i'll stop okay i'm gonna make an observation which is that i think that i i agree with you carry that i don't think doing nothing is uh is a good option i don't know what the next step is i had a conversation a couple of weeks ago with ken russell about whether it would be a sensible thing to move it in the uh in back of uh another way and i still think that that's something that is was worth considering and in terms of one of the things that i've heard from a lot of people and observed at the public hearing the other night which is that the one function that this structure serves is it's a structure where people can go and congregate and get services and uh and service providers know where to find people same thing would be true with uh having something a short walk uh from downtown at another way and so i even in downtown at another way and so i'm not saying we have to make the decision to do that tonight but i do think that uh you know ken ken you're nodding it seems sounds seems like something we're open to i haven't talked to my board about this um but we were looking like a year and a half ago we were looking at bringing in a shed to do pretty much the same function i i know i approached bill at one point about this idea and there were some concerns my only suggestion was going to be given the hour and the brains that while i tend to agree that we need to do something we've heard a lot of feedback and get some sense of what may or may not be feasible and we may need to do something but we don't necessarily need to do something you know until two more weeks yep um or whatever because we also have a long agenda so i mean i rather than try to force ourselves into a bad decision or or something let's let's talk to them let's see what you know let's look at the back of the lot let's see you know come back with some more thoughtful commentary Lauren i mean i i agree we should wait for um any action because it's really late but um one question i had though was you know so you referenced earlier that the homelessness task force is working on kind of scope for the rfp and i mean this conversation always becomes bigger than just this this one structure and so i'm just wondering if like when we're expecting that because i think the broader contextual conversation around like what are the other steps and what are the other things the city's doing and what are the pieces and you know are we getting the right questions to the consultant that are answering some of these pieces um and so like to me that would be a more productive conversation that could help inform this particular question i mean i just real quick because it's late for me too um is i mean karen was at the meeting and we were all talking about the need to sort of intake like we can't just hand this work off to karen to hand off to the consult to issue an rfp to issue the consultant we we need to actively there's a lot of wisdom collective wisdom in what we're doing but there you know there there are a lot of moving parts there's potential moving parts it is integrated but it's we're also just got done with a preliminary study of you know root causes and people's stories of how they ended up there that will ever lead championed through the continuum of care um so we're moving on it um but you know it's it you know it's only so many months until cold weather again so we've got we got to get we've got to get cracking sounds good i'm going to cut this off now because believe it or not folks we have more stuff that we have to do tonight so and hopefully you all can leave um but those of us those of us out of the council cannot and go to the bathroom i think it's a human for us to be here in three hours yeah That's all. What? Oh, Jesus. Go. An item that we need to take care of tonight is. Is the next item on our agenda item 2022 dash 112. It's the Northern border regional commission grant options. Bill, are you kicking this one off? Sure. So we have not applied to this funding source before. And we understand that, you know, like many places they have a lot more money this year than normal and may not have it again. And it came, it was interesting because I've been speaking to the mayor and I think the energy that me act had to cut the, you know, I think the district heat idea and the idea to perhaps have a heat pump program. Those are sort of the mayor's ideas and me axe ideas. And I was kind of looking into that funding and then we had a, you know, recent staff meeting and other folks was like, Hey, we were thinking of this for hours. So I went back to the mayor and said, you know, I could just tell them that they can apply because the bear wants this. She said, no, no, no, that wouldn't work, you know, that we need to bring it to the full council. So we have, you know, a list of items on here. We have looked and excuse me, Bill, can I interrupt you for just a minute? Is someone in the room available to go outside and tell the people in the hall to be quiet? Yeah, there we go. We sent the, we sent the militia out. There we go. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Yep. So anyway, so we did ask our team to, to submit ideas that they had. And I think that, you know, they're all great ideas. Just in the order we have them listed here. One is to seek funding for the Elks Club planning process. That would be, you know, perhaps in lieu of any other funding plan we might come, you know, we wouldn't, this wouldn't be our funding plan, but obviously if we could get that, that'd be great. Confluence Park, of course, we just passed some bonds and there's funds, but there's also a CSO limit outfall right near there. So perhaps it could look at eliminating that so that if people were in the water there, it would be less toxic district heat. We are, we need more connections. And one thought is, is we're constructing a state street. We could extend the line. So the, so there's, this would actually may require two funding. There's also a capital improvements for private or nonprofit groups. So one thought is we could seek funds here to extend the line and then seek that as a package, seek that fund for the private people to then pay for their connections because those are also quite expensive. So be kind of a twofer. And then I think the mayor had an idea to maybe either create just a grant or a revolving loan fund to help low income people put energy efficiency like heat pumps into their homes to, you know, overcome that barrier of entry. The cemetery is a major chapel and vault building that they've been talking about for years that needs serious repairs. And we have thought about, you know, they technically are a separate chartered entity. So we're exploring, you know, potentially they could apply as the green mount cemetery and then we could pick projects we apply for. So that's one option. And then we, we, you have in your goals of work, you know, some ways to try to create some sort of workforce development, perhaps for native people or others youth and to perhaps look at the feast program as a way to create jobs and those kinds of things for people. So that was submitted by the senior center. So that was our list. They're all it's tough to prioritize. They're all pretty worthy. So I think this is, these are policy and priority matters and they kind of fall here. They're all, they're all really, well, they're all really in our strategic plan. So I'm going to jump in from my, myself first this time. I like the idea of asking the cemetery commission to submit their own proposal. I talked to the mayor this afternoon and she had just heard of a, of a program called V light V L I T E, which is I think done by V I C or efficiency Vermont, which is a grant opportunity for help low income people with energy efficiency pro projects. And so just thinking about ways we could knock out some of these and proceed with others. So I would knock out the number four and five for that reason and, and with workforce support too, I think, I don't know what they're looking for. We're not, we're not going to get, we're not going to submit something for four projects and get funded for four projects. So I would probably do this in the order that it's listed and go for one, two and three. I don't know. Actually, we should be down to one, maybe two at the most. I mean, I think that's what we're not asking to apply for all of them. I think part of the problem is we had competing interests, you know, in the last couple of years, we've been building amongst our own team. And they all seem to fall into our priorities. And this felt normally we come in and say, here's how we rank them. And but I think in this case, we need, just need some guidance from you. And I know I realize it's not easy because if I had to do it, it would be hard. And I will. Laura. One question before. I'm gonna read it. I don't know. As long as you're on the program or grant recipients of like, what kinds of projects they tend to like and tend to fund. I mean, I haven't talked to them. I have talked to the person at the state who works with them. And is a popular resident. And so I, you know, it's kind of wide open, but they are more, I tend to agree that the workforce support is more of a program and less of a project. So beyond that, I think there's a wide range of things. Well, given that, I agree with Jack's initial hacking away, encouraging the Cemetery Commission to apply, in addition, as a separate application, I think I would order it personally district heat. That's just a hard one to find funding for, and just a case of a unique need. Confluence Park, we've had good luck with other funding sources, and there's momentum there, and it just feels like it's going in a way that district heat. This could be a jumpstart in a way that it doesn't have right now. Elks Club, I mean, maybe when you do the analysis, you'll be like, we really need this grant. But I think there's also, it seems we can probably find the money to do the stuff that's kind of the short term planning, maybe more easily than funding for district heat. So I would probably do district heat, Elks Club, Confluence Park. Yeah, that's fine. That's OK. That's what you think? That's how I numbered them, too. But I just have to put a plug in for the cemetery, because we no longer have continued visiting them. But that is an awesome chapel neglected, and I'd hope staff would give them help. OK. Carrie. Yeah, I heard from somebody in District 3 about the cemetery and got a chance to see a picture of inside that chapel, which I had never seen. I didn't even know it existed. So if they can apply separately, that would be great. I'd be all for that. In general, I'm always going to lean towards what's going to really help people directly and the greatest number of people. So I was really drawn to the heat pump distribution one. So if that's a real funding possibility from somewhere else and if we think that the city may pursue that, great. Then let's take that off the list. But I'd really like to see that happen. That one, I really like that resonated with me. And so then after that, what I'm looking at is how many people are going to be served here and how many and how direct is that? And so maybe that's district heat if it can be actual residents of Montpelier who are hooked up, who wouldn't otherwise be. I would actually put the Elks Club way down on the list because I think we're going to figure out a way to do that one way or another. And again, I'd like to see something that's really going to be going into the pockets, so to speak, of people in Montpelier. So I think I'd put district heat at the top. And then I don't know about Confluence Park, if we have funding elsewhere. Maybe I'm just going to stop right there and say district heat. Bill, following up on the district heat thing, is it right that there's capacity for more connections? And what would those entities be that we would be adding? So that's the challenge. And it depends on the funding that we have. So right at the corner of each state, there might be some. But then it really is all residential up until the big building where Vita is. And that would probably, I don't think we'd get anywhere near enough money to take it all the way up to the college or something like that. So that would be as far as we'd go. So it's contrabanded by the fact that there aren't any large users. But nonetheless, if we could get a series of users, funded elsewhere, that would be more revenue to the system at really not much operating cost difference. Actually, this is the one that it started with us looking at this for district heat. And that's where MIAC was. And then the heat pump idea kind of got added to that. And then staff came in with the other ideas. But the district heat one, we do, it really works best if we can also get this other funding. And one idea was maybe to see if Montpelier alive could be the nonprofit funding sources instead of trying to get each entity to get their own grant along the line so that we got the money and then could dole it out to the people making the connections. And that way, if there were additional connections along the current route, we could also do that. So at this point, these are just letters of intent that we're sending in. It's kind of getting us time. So we could potentially send two letters of intent in and really only apply for one. But I think any more than that would be dangerous. And Linda Berger online, you're here on the Cemetery Commission, I believe. So why don't we hear from you? We just wanted to say that we would probably submit a separate request for this project. We worked with Cameron on the other grant that was submitted in April of 2021. She was very helpful. And so we were documented for the need for repairs on the Chapel Vault. So we would just wonder if the city council would give a letter of support for our separate project request. OK, thanks. Donna. Well, the other thing for district heat, I see one of the biggest need is to reduce the cost. The cost really got high this last year. We got a lot of complaints. So that is something I'm not sure the whole council is aware of. Well, yes. And no, some people's bills. So we sort of did a well, it's probably another whole. I think we're planning to do a district heat update in a couple of meetings. So it's probably best to get into that detail there. So but certainly regardless of that issue, having more revenue into the system without incurring a lot of capital costs is really what's needed. And I think it's worth pursuing. But so are all the others. And there's no question that Cemetery Vault is a major project and it's been on hold for 10 years at least. If you send them a letter of support. Everybody here, we should send a letter of support to the cemetery. OK, yes. OK, Linda, you got your letters. Thank you very much. You're welcome. And we're all over the map on what we could possibly be doing. Yeah. I am in the camp of Donna and this lady over here. That one, yeah. Yeah. That's all. And so what are you? District heat at the top. That's your two. The rest I'm really OK with. But I feel like district heat should be. How many people would vote district heat number one? All right. That's number that's number one. We don't need one. What I think about Confluence Park is that I agree that there's some momentum. But the CSO thing, we've got this long list of CSO projects that we need to do. And it's going to take years to address them all. And so even if we could just get one more knocked off, that would be a real benefit to the city. And I don't think I would package it as a Confluence Park project. I think I would package it as a CSO project. And a potential dam removal. Yeah, a water quality keeping stuff out of the route to Lake Champlain. Yeah. I think that's a great idea. I think if we get, especially if we get advice from them, that there's no harm in putting in two proposals, then we should totally do that. But I guess one question that you might have for them on that one, if you're able to connect with someone before, I know it's a quick deadline. So if not, it's OK. But there is a lot of federal dollars right now for CSO issues. The state is the budget that passed the House had something like $25 million and new money for CSO issues and stuff. I don't know if knowing that there's federal infrastructure dollars and stuff that are going to that, if that would be lower on their priority list, because it's something that there's other programs that are funding right now, it doesn't mean that we would get that money or anything necessarily. So I think it's still a good project to seek. But I guess if it's one of two anyway, then there's low risk. But just noting, I don't know how they're doing their calculus for that. What does anyone else think? It's still OK to put the CSO project in as a second one? Or is there another letter of intent? We can always file that and then withdraw that one. We could find out that we were getting more money from the state or something. Yeah. I had the Elks, and I would stay with the Elks Club for my second. Yeah, I put the Elks first. But I think I've persuaded to put it lower. Is this something they do every year? They do, but not with this level of funding. This is kind of what's unique about it. So it's sort of like everyone's going for it. The only thing I'll say, and first of all, I think I agree with your choices. But I will say this about the Elks is, I mean, we will have to take money from other places. So Mike mentioned the $50,000 for economic development, which is fine, except some of that was going to go to an economic development strategic plan. So that would mean we weren't doing that. And we might look at ARPA, which is fine, but really the bulk of what's unclaimed for that is the $425,000 for housing, which this would be to help generate housing. So there will be some trade-offs when we think about where we get that money from. We can come up with it, but it's one thing versus another, unless the hub gives us $1.5 million. I don't think it was going to walk out of the room. We're actually also submitting, the hub is submitting a letter of intent. And it occurred to me that perhaps we could do something joint for the whole property as a joint application. So our application would be to fund the planning process. Yeah, so maybe we could figure out a way to join that up with what we might want to do. We only have three days to do it. But all of those, I mean, we've looked at very carefully at what they do fund. They funded a community center in Plainfield for $220,000 last year, for example. They're encouraging infrastructure, job creation, and all of those are the kinds of things that we were talking about wanting to apply for. But we can talk about that. Are we happy with where we are on this? But I'm not sure where we are. That was my question. So what does Bill feel his directive is? My directive absolutely is to send a letter of intent about district heat. And you're not sending one about the Elks Club? Well, what I'd heard was the second choice of at least some people was the CSO DM removal and others for the Elks Club. So I don't have clear direction if there's four of you for a second. So we need to do a vote on that. Yeah, we do a vote for all. OK. Can we just for a second, what I was suggesting was that as you're transferring one of your requests to the Green Mountain Cemetery, you could we could because for us, having this planning process go faster by getting a grant is definitely in our interest. And we could apply but include that portion of it in our application. Yep, I appreciate that. What do you think of that, Donna? That covering? You know, I guess I so I would say the question just since we're here and you brought it up would be what else are you asking for? Because I think for us to be partners in an application that is for a specific construction when we haven't really made a conclusion about the timing, I would think that would be what the councils want to know. So I don't know. I don't know what else is in the application. I think if we're jointly applying for a planning process to see then maybe. But it is the city owned property. It could be seen kind of odd for us to have someone else apply for that, honestly. But we can talk if that's where that is. If that becomes their number two priority, then we can talk about whether that's feasible. That's what I'd say. OK, let's see. So Elks Club, we're already doing district heat. How many people are we should also do Elks Club? I'll go with that too. So Elks Club. Yeah, so Elks Club, it is. It's four. Yeah, I said yes. Yeah. You didn't vote for CSO, did you? She thinks there's more money. Yeah. There's so much money right now. Sorry, Carter. She's going to help us get it. I will happily do everything to try to help us if you get it. OK, I think that resolves that item. Other business, I don't think we have other business. Council reports, start on your end tonight. Really quick, we had a social and economic justice advisory committee meeting with the different committee chairs, giving them an update on the new stipend pilot program that we're rolling out. And so it was sparsely attended, I would say. So it would be great to, well, when is that so late? I'd love to get information to all of you so that we can be disseminating as another helpful outlet in addition to Cameron and city staff and getting this in front of people, because we want to make sure people know that this program is going to start July 1st and how it's going to work. And there's still opportunity for feedback and stuff. Thanks. I'm healthy, and I have nothing else to say. Yes. I'll go next. People have been learning recently, and there's been a lot of some publicity, long-time peace activist Lucy Nicholl recently died. She did a whole variety of peace activities, including one of the people who has been out in front of the post office every week for many, many years. My personal connection with Lucy goes back to even before Bill came to the city of Montpelier, which is really something. It is. Yeah, it was back in 1989 and 1990. There were groups all around the country looking at the world situation and saying, hey, we don't have the Soviet Union anymore. We should start cutting our military budget and telling the government to take some of that money that we're cutting from the military and spending it on human needs. And a number of activists here in Montpelier circulated a petition to put a resolution on the town meeting day ballot in 1990 to say just that, to say we the people of Montpelier think that we should be cutting the military budget and spending it on human needs. And they got the requisite number of signatures. They came to the city council and said, we've got the requisite number of signatures. We want you to put this on the ballot. And the city council said, no, we're not doing that because that's not city business. And so some of these peace activists came to me because they knew me. And the plaintiffs were Chris Wood, Ron Ferry, and Lucy Nicol. And I represented them and sued the city of Montpelier and the members of the city council to get an injunction to force the city to put it on the ballot. And we won. And we got the injunction from the Washington Superior Court and got it put on the ballot. Well, there's case law and everything. But we got it. And of course, it passed the peace divot end that was called. The peace divot end. That's exactly right. And so that was Lucy Nicol. And yes. And so I think people will, many people in Montpelier are going to be remembering Lucy. And that's all I've got. That's sweet. Connor. She had two pages of the book I'd like to read. Just like the book. Is it a great catchphrase? Really? Thumbs up? No. I'm all set. I just have one thing. Got an email recently. Maybe everybody here got it about an opportunity to get free trees to plant in your yard. And on St. Paul Street several years ago, we had one of our neighbors get a really coordinated effort with the tree board. Got a whole lot of flowering fruit and nut trees planted on our street. It's really fantastic. I'm excited about the opportunity for more trees. And I really hope that people snap these up and plant them all over their yards. Cool. Is my son going to plant it in your yard? I don't know. This one might be self-planting, actually. So I'll have to learn some planting skills. Native species. Yeah. Donna. Is that all you want to say? That's all I want to say. OK. Well, I'm going to close the meeting with, I really do feel we have to contain public comment, that speaking is not the only avenue and that we have less time to talk when this meeting is all the time we can talk to one another about issues. And I feel it needs to be balanced. And I may come across this whatever. But I do think you have to be balanced and continue to keep people on topic. Because I don't think this is acceptable. I totally get that. I would say that, though, that much of the commentary today I thought was really pretty focused to not only focus, but also informed. And so I thought it was valuable. But just every time we talk about it, we get this huge set of the small piece of blockers. Who goes with this bold thing again? Yeah. And Robert's Rules of Order is really clear. You get one chance around, folks. That's it. Not two, not three, once. Good point. What are we up to next? Clerk first. I'm so tired. I'm not sure I know who any of you people are. OK. That's all I got. Manager. Yeah, that's right. I've tried to get this done before tomorrow. So you mentioned Lucy Nicola. Just like to mention, I attended the services for Steve Walk on Saturday morning. And just a thank you to he and his family. Steve was on the very first city council I worked for here. My pillar served from 1995 to 1999. And then I actually came back on after Tom Carey passed away to fill out half a term. And it was just an active person, very active person in our community. We missed, people know him as steamer, larger than life person and personality. Yep, my wife served on the family center board with him. Very active, very good man. So he'll be missed. And anything else I have to say, I can put in the weekly memo. OK. Without objection, we are adjourned at 11.58 PM. So we're out of here before midnight.