 Okay. It is 631. So I'm going to call the meeting to order. The first thing is to well actually the item number two is some meeting logistics, so which I'll just run through really briefly so that folks know what they are. So if you are with us remotely if you could change your names that it's your first and last name so I know how to properly address you. If you speak at all this evening if you could say your name and where you live. And I recommend that you keep your comments to two minutes or less and I will give you some heads up about that Donna will help us out with timing of folks. And then if you're, if you have a particular item that you want to speak to, we generally take comments when that item comes up. If it's an item that is not on the agenda that can be addressed during general business and appearances. And yeah, just make sure that. So, if you have multiple questions to ask just if you could ask them all together that would be useful. And make sure your comments are germane. All right, that is it about logistics. Reviewing and approving the agenda any. Oh, thank you. Yeah, that it's actually not listed here but we do have it's okay. One of our counselors is joining us remotely. So we want to just identify folks for joining us. Well, the counselor joining us remotely Jennifer do you want to introduce yourself. Yes, Jennifer Morton district three. I am on zoom. Thank you very much. All right, so reviewing and approving the agenda. Does anyone have information about changing the agenda. Okay, so with that, without objection will consider the agenda approved. All right, so general business and appearances this is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on any topic that is otherwise not on our agenda. And again, if you would introduce yourself and keep your comments in two minutes or so that would be great. Go ahead. Welcome. Yep. Oh, actually, maybe a little closer. I'm going to give another test maybe. Hello. Oh, yeah, am I there. Okay. Hi, my name is Karen Hanron. I've been a resident for about 30 years. And I'm going to read what I wrote because I'm really nervous so I don't want to stumble. I'm wanting to approach the council in hopes of opening a dialogue about the use or the discontinued use of fireworks for holiday celebrations. And here's my written blurb. On July 2nd, I submitted a lengthy post on front porch forum, offering information on the dangers of fireworks to bird population wildlife. Home companion animals speak with PTSD and sensory processing disorder, as well as the environment. The personal responses I received flooded my inbox. Personal discomfort with the explosions stories how difficult it was for their pets even moving into the following day stories. A few stories that pets were injured trying to escape the noise at one story of a woman whose dog was actually killed in the process of fleeing out of panic. Several veterans who had been in contact and now in combat. PTSD responded as well. Thanking me for bringing bringing people's attention that veterans can have a lot of difficulty with with fireworks. All to say there was a significant community support for discontinuing the verse of fireworks and finding alternative ways to celebrate. I'm asking the city to consider rearranging how we cohabitate with other living beings and to find ways to celebrate our own existence without harming others and the environment. I am prepared to put together packets for each member of the Council if that would be helpful with various articles and scientific information on the impact of fireworks on animals, the environment, veterans, people with PTSD, whatever would be helpful for people to consider looking at this as something that we can take on as a city. But I was told to come here first and just initiate a conversation. So I'd like to know what concrete steps can we take? Oh, can I take to move towards making this change and what that process involves and who oversees it? And I did speak with Dan this morning just to get some further information from him. Great. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. I actually spoke with Karen earlier. She's a constituent there. And I want to plead ignorance. I actually don't know where the funding for the fireworks comes from and who oversees it. So I got some information from Dan about that. Yeah. Yeah, so it's part of Montpelier live but they do fundraise for lots. So they fundraise for the event including fireworks and I think they get, they used to get some of them donated. Yeah, he said there's a lot of sponsors, a lot of companies sponsor. And I think he said if I remember correctly that the city contributed to 4th of July only. We just contribute to the event right to the event exactly not specifically to fireworks just to the event. So this is something that I wouldn't mind taking up as a council as a part of a discussion. Yeah, I think it warrants a chat. It might be good to like pop into a Montpelier live initially I think to talk to their board and see what thoughts are because, you know, I know on front porch forum there were some alternatives discussed, you know, to the I talked to Dan. Dan has looked at those he's he's looked at drones he's looked at some other options and we discussed those as well. So if it's all right with the council I think a future a future agenda item. And we'll also maybe check in with with Montpelier live about this as well. So can you explain to me this process like what happens after this. Do you want me to put together packets for you folks so you can read some information certainly could please drop or send my email to our office. And so basically from the head nods to council saying that they will put it on a future agenda for discussion and then figure out you know when we have more time to go into it decide what they want to do from there so it will obviously let you know, and everybody else know when that's going to be very good. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay anyone else with this in person wish to make a comment. That's good. It's hi good morning. Good evening. This is Maurice Martinos 6th Gribner Street Montpelier resident for 26 years. 25 years ago I asked for a crosswalk down where pioneer and River Street merged and I was told then and I quote it will be give people a false sense of security. Well we now have that crosswalk however people do not see the no right on red sign because it's so small and it's over on the right. I've almost been hit three times it either as a suggestion to move the sign up next to the street lights so people can see it or make it larger. People aren't seeing it they're turning in at a fast speed and someone's going to get hit because there's a lot more traffic foot traffic there children etc. Also on River Street I'm requesting another crosswalk near the jolly and they use clothing store there is a crosswalk way at the other end however there's no sidewalk on the other side. It's a child or as I have seen numerous times a woman with a child in a carrier waiting to cross and I've had to stop traffic to allow her to cross. There are numerous families on that side and there's no way for them to safely cross River Street and I suggest that that be looked at because there's going to be a fatality there or something very serious is going to occur. Regretfully I have a 7 o'clock appointment that I have to be at. I just would like to say for 30 seconds in reference to the 3D criminalization of prostitution in Europe it is used. It is they have to pay taxes. They have to have a liability insurance they have to have workmen's comp and if you're going to go forward with that please look at these ramifications and quite frankly I'm opposed to it and I'll leave it at that. However it's getting embarrassing when I have a lot of relatives in other states and they just don't believe what we're trying to do. Can I ask you a couple questions, Maurice? I just want to make sure that I'm understanding so the crosswalk at Pioneer Street and River Street the no turn on red that's the one coming from Pioneer Street is that right? No coming from the area. We're coming from the roundabout. You can't see that and it's right at the flag. It's tucked on the right hand side. You can't see it unless you know it's there. The other crosswalk that you mentioned the sidewalk ends there. There is no sidewalk. People cannot cross the street and use the sidewalk to go to the use clothing store, Jolly, and you've got businesses right there. They cannot cross the street and use a sidewalk to go to those establishments at all. Thank you. Thank you so much. And just to be clear, if you have comments on items on the agenda, you can make them when we get there. That's fine. It's not on the agenda. Now's a good time. Anyone else have a comment that is something not on the agenda. Hey there. I'm Aaron Clark. I'm a president. Do you mind if I just take this mic off here so I can a little bit short for me. I'm a resident right here in my pillar. And anyway, I saw that the agenda, the thing that I'm here for is to talk about the prostitution thing. I know that quite a few people in the room are here to talk about that. I'm wondering, I know you guys approve the agenda, but I'm wondering if we can move that item closer to the forefront because there's a lot of people here who, you know, have early bedtimes and last time we were here and went so late, I couldn't believe it. How long these meet you guys do a lot of work for us. Hey, you guys just turn around and applause. Thank you. But, but you know, but we're not going to pay to be here. I don't know if you guys are either. But anyway, so I was just wondering a little bit. I'm just wondering if we can move that. That is a good question. And just by a show of hands who is here for that item. Oh my goodness gracious. Okay. All right, so let's see here. Okay, thank you. Unless they're waiting to speak. I think that. Yeah, at least one is waiting to speak. I think we could potentially move it to after GMT. We should do the GM unless. Yeah. Yeah, so we'll move it up to right after the, the GMT my ride update, which is item six. So we can call this item like six and a half. So, okay, thank you for that. And you anyone else have a comment on something not on the agenda. Really shortly. Yes, yes. I can hear myself. Okay. Anyway. Yeah, I just had a quick glance at the agenda. And I was trying to find if, you know, there's any discussion about this area where we have the garden box, the lovely garden box installed right by Shaw's here on the corner here. I don't know if you guys are planning on discussing plans for that area or fielding public opinion or when I can participate in that discussion. Yes, planned out. Yeah. I think we have a meeting. It is, it is on this agenda. It's quite a bit later, but yes, it's called 12 to 16 Main Street on the agenda. Okay. All right. That's great. Excuse me, could you identify yourself. My name is Thomas Fallon. I live here in Montpelier. Thank you. Okay, anyone else with us in person, wish to make a comment. I will turn to folks who are with us virtually. Peter Kelman, go ahead. Peter Kelman. I live in Montpelier. I just want to second Karen Hanron's request about the fireworks, but I would like it to be extended to be a conversation that is not just about the fireworks on the fourth of July. The fireworks in the downtown area in general, that would include New Year's Eve if that's up for a conversation and also national life doing it at their good works festival and people doing it apparently, you know, randomly. I would like it to be a conversation about loud explosive fireworks in general. I assume there's an ordinance about it. About about how late it can be, etc. If there isn't, I'd like that to be on the table as well in this conversation, not just about fourth of July. Thank you. Thank you. And just so you know that is how I understood the conversation. I hope we're good there. Thank you, Ashley Strowbridge, go ahead. Hi there. Yes, I'm also here to I guess third Karen hand. I forgot her last name now. Yes, Henry, about the, about the fireworks. They are so hazardous to so many population. I mean, wildlife pets, so many pets get lost and and even have heart attacks, including wildlife also, you know, die from this. And people with PTSD, whether it's veterans or, you know, people who have had domestic abuse situations like there's just so many people and animals and environmental hazards that this affects, and negatively and and for what I mean for what I mean, how many of things blowing up in a, in a somewhat beautiful way, like, is it worth it. I mean, how many things are we harming so I definitely, you know, I'm on board with what Karen is proposing so yeah. Thank you. Anyone else with us virtually wish to make a comment. Okay. Thank you everyone. And, oh, yes. Oh, sure. Yeah. Just like to introduce, we have our new communications. Community coordinator Evelyn Prim is here. Evelyn works for us part time will be working at least through this year as we sort of way through helping with our website and other things and decided to brave tonight's meeting in person to meet people and see how it all all goes so I just wanted to introduce her to all of you. Yeah, thank you. Well, welcome Evelyn. Yeah. All right. So we're going to move on then to the consent agenda is their motion. I'm on the consent agenda. I would like to propose that we take out item, each the stormwater utility contract, not for further discussion tonight, but for another time. Because that it's a, it's probably worth more discussion unless folks want to move forward but I, that's fine but I think it's worth discussing. Yeah. I was going to make sure that I commented how much work that Zach and Kurt both did on this and the committee and thought it was very, very thorough. So, oh, I'm surprised. Oh, you don't want to pass it. Well, I. So that's not to say that I don't want to pass it because I do. It just feels like a weighty enough topic that it is important that the public understands the implications. But I will leave that to you all do you want to move to remove that item. If not, that's okay. Okay, so we have a contract to do the plan and so the public will have lots of input while the process is ongoing, and I may be wrong but I thought there was some concern of dates but Well, maybe I'm misunderstanding you want to. Okay, so just decide if you want to do. Okay, that that seems good so if we, maybe we could pull it off tonight for some discussion to see if we can pass it tonight. Is that okay. So, I think we might need to amend my motion to pass the consent agenda with the exception of item H. Okay, so voting on the amendment further discussion. Okay, I'll just note for the record that you voted on accepting the Murray Hill water system which has had a lot of work done as well Jim tringes here and did a huge amount of work. Well, to be fair, this is the vote on the amendment to pull this item off. Yeah. Oh, I thought you just had changed your motion. No, that just the way Jack framed it. It's okay. Okay. All right. All in favor please say aye. And opposed. Okay. And so that's unanimous. So now it's without item H. And so yes, including the item regarding the Murray Hill water system very grateful for everybody's work on all of that. So if you would like to speak to that, that's perfectly fine. Welcome. I'm Jim Tringe. I'm a Montpelier resident and just want to spend 47 months since we really first approached Connor and Jack. Yeah. I just want to recognize Jim Tringe for all the work he's done over over all these years. I know that it's been like having another full time job for Jim to to carry this over the finish line. Connor and I met with him years ago and I met with the with the residents and it's going to be beneficial both for the residents of Murray Hill and and for the city. And so glad to see this finally brought to a successful conclusion. And hats off to DBW staff who worked. Okay. Any further discussion about the consent agenda? All in favor please say aye. And opposed. Okay. I got you though. Okay. Jennifer votes aye. And opposed. Okay. So that is also unanimous. And so that passes. Thank you. Everybody for all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And hats off to DBW staff who worked. Yeah. Also curtain is team. Okay. All right. Any further discussion about the consent agenda? All in favor, please say aye. And opposed. Okay. Was it wanted to wait? I got you though. Okay. Jennifer votes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you everybody for all of that. And just so. Folks know what at least I'm thinking. I think we could take up the. Discussion about the stormwater utility. Maybe right after the district heat rates. Since that's. Okay. Similar folks probably talking about that. Okay. All right. So we are up to. Yeah. We're going to move on to the green mountain transit. And. So for this. I am not sure if the person from green mountain transit is with us virtually. Oh, you were here. Oh, there you are. Hello. Hello. Good evening, everyone. My name is Jamie Smith. I am the director of marketing and planning. For green mountain transit. And if it's okay, I'm going to share my screen. I'm going to share my screen. Our on demand micro transit system in Montpelier. My ride. See. All right. Can everybody see my screen? Okay. Yes. Great. So for those of you who are not familiar with my ride by GMT, this is a flexible route, flexible schedule system that we operate. In Montpelier. Parts of. It is a service that sort of Uber for public transportation. And it replaced some fixed route service that we were operating in downtown Montpelier. So the capital shuttle, the Montpelier circulator and the Montpelier hospital Hill. That service began January 4th, 2021. This is a just a service map that sort of shows our service area unlike our fixed route service. This just operates in a 9 and a half square mile radius instead of on a linear fixed route like the previous services. And so I brought some high level metrics today. And then I have some some other items to discuss about some temporary service reductions that GMT initiated this week. But to date the my ride service has provided over 48,000 rides, which is impressive as we launched this service in the middle of a pandemic with out a lot of opportunity for in-person communication with riders and travel training. To date, we have about 1451 active writer. So these are folks that have booked at least one trip in the my ride system. We are we have an average utilization of three, which is the amount of trips that it can be completed by each of our 3 vehicles per hour. And so far, our on time performance has been fairly great hovering right around 91%. So that's folks being picked up within 5 minutes of their communicated pickup time. And the met demand rate. So 97% met demand means anytime somebody calls GMT or uses the app and says this is when I want to be picked up 98 or 97% of the time. The trip that is presented to them meets their needs. So it works within the schedule that they're requesting. So you can see here is our completed rides show our sort of month over month growth. And this was this data was pulled part way through May. So you can see that's not a complete month, but in April of 2022, we saw. Or sorry, March of 2022, we saw our highest ridership month with 3341 rides. This exceeds our sort of pre pandemic fixed route ridership by quite a bit. Most fixed route services across the state are still operating probably 40 to 50% below the ridership prior to the pandemic. So this slide shows our rider growth, which the darker blue on top is our returning riders and the lighter blue on the bottom shows new riders every month. And so you can kind of see month to month that conversion of new riders to returning riders. And it's it shows, you know, that folks, most folks who are trying the service are at least attempting to use it again in future months. I threw this slide in today just as a comparison. There have been lots of questions about recently that have come up about our former fixed route services. So in FY 20 in FY 19, that was our last ridership year where all of our services were operating unaffected by COVID-19. So all three Montpelier Hospital Hill, Montpelier Circulator and the Capitol Shuttle, our combined ridership for FY 19 was 51,737. So my ride is hovering in terms of trip requests right around that number. There are some factors that that go into not fulfilling that request. So are, you know, the met demand rate is that 97% as I mentioned. So that 3% of trips don't happen for whatever reason folks have to cancel folks. No show. They get a ride. They do something different and they don't end up taking that trip that they've booked. And then for comparison's sake on the bottom, the six months leading up to the launch of my ride service, Montpelier Hospital Hill and Montpelier Circulator ridership was 10,674. I threw this in so folks could see what the most popular pickup and drop off destinations are. So most folks are using the service from, you know, to get back and forth to the Berlin mall area. Montpelier Shaw's Berlin Shaw's. You can really see that about 45% of all trips are going from downtown Montpelier out to the Berlin mall area. So it really speaks to the need that folks have for, you know, medical grocery trips and essential trips. Since the launch, from the launch through April, we were seeing a high trend of folks who were calling GMT and using our call center to book their trip. Almost half of folks were hesitant to use the app or didn't have access to the app. But I threw in this next slide that shows April and May where we saw a huge trend, an uptick of people using the app and that trend has continued into June and July where we're seeing the number of folks booking through our call center dropping down and as more folks become familiar and comfortable using the MyRide by GMT app. I threw in some benchmark data. I know that there have been some questions that have been sent to the city of Montpelier about seat unavailable or folks trying to use the service and not being able to get a trip so I showed here that, you know, unavailable seats unavailable is about 3%. That's far below the global average. These gray lines indicate all services operated by via across the world and you can see sort of down here this little red line is MyRide. So the average seat unavailable rate or percentage of time somebody is not able to use a service like this usually is about 10%. So MyRide is sort of exceeding that global average. And again, this is benchmark data so the lines represent all of via's deployments. This is the acceptance rate. So about 96% of the time when somebody is given a proposal or given a trip option, they're accepting that. That's far above the average of 81% from other systems. So it really speaks to, you know, when folks are trying to book into the system overwhelmingly they are accepting the times that are given to them by the service. This past Monday, July 18th, as many of you probably know, GMT put in place some temporary service reductions due to some staffing challenges that we are having. We had four long time operators retire all at the same time which is about 30% of our workforce in central Vermont. So I've been looking at just for the last couple days, what has this done to the MyRide service where we're operating one fewer, one less vehicle in the morning and one less vehicle in the afternoon which are our peak times of service. So you can see the wait times or the ETAs are increasing quite a bit. And again, this is just a two-day snapshot and we hope this starts to level out as folks are able to plan for some of these supply reductions. But you can see the darker blue line indicates an increase in the wait times when people are requesting. And it's by time of day. So 8 o'clock, 7 to 9 o'clock is roughly our peak. Morning peak and 4 to 6 p.m. in the evening is our highest ridership time. And that's generally when we see folks having the most challenge booking into the system or being offered a ride. Just what we're working on in the future. We have been working very closely with our operators and the staff that works with us from VIA to identify some of the challenges that are still occurring with the service. How can we make improvements to get some of these numbers up and to make sure that folks are getting rides when they need them, where they need them. And so we've been spending a lot of time looking at the testimonials from riders, drivers, and submitting that product feedback to VIA. And they are actively working on some tools to help improve the MyRide service. And then we've made some slight alterations to the app on the operator side, which just will continue to improve the efficiency of the service and will reduce some of the, if you're familiar with some of the comments made about MyRide, some of that back and forth that people feel like they're experiencing where the bus drives by their location to double back and drop them off. So continuing to make some of those app improvements to hopefully improve MyRide service in the future. And that's all I have, and I'm happy to answer any questions. Great. Great. Thank you, Jamie. Any questions? Connor than Donna. Right. First off, I want to thank you, Jamie. You know, everything I've heard is you've been incredibly responsive to constituency groups who have reached out to you. And, you know, I'm a strong believer in the program. I think it's sort of the future of public transportation. You know, somebody lives off Town Hill Road or something has mobility issues or a low income family. You know, suddenly they have an option to get into town and do what they need. So I'm really excited about this. A couple of questions. So the 10% that you say when it says like, you know, folks can't get the ride. Does that include like, if I go on the app, I've had a number of times where it says no drivers are currently available. So that would be logged in that 10% number. Correct. So for clarification, say Connor, the number that MyRide is experiencing is 3%. The global average is 10. So we're, you know, we're not able to get a 3% of the time folks are not able to get a trip in the MyRide service. But yes, that would be included if it says driver unavailable or there's no proposal at this time. That's all captured in that 3%. Okay. Great. Thanks. And could you give just a quick, like sort of 10,000 foot view of what the legislature decided last session there? Because it looks like there's talk of expanding to bury maybe some other areas in the state. And I think my concern is if we're having trouble with driver retention, you know, it's sort of in the same small radius barry there. So if we're covering a bigger area, how would that work with like driver recruitment? Sure. So the legislature did pass the house transportation and the Senate transportation passed some funding for additional microtransit services. That money was awarded to Vermont department of transportation or my agency of transportation. And they have contracted across the state's 12 feasibility studies to look at different areas of the state where these services might be implemented. And one suggestion by via who conducted those feasibility studies is using smaller non CDL vehicles. And so right now there's a challenge with recruiting CDL drivers. It's a arduous process to get your CDL. There's lots of lots of training involved, which GMT does provide, but getting folks CDL drivers specifically in the door has been a challenge. So we are looking at not offering my ride service with the same buses that we're using in Montpelier, but moving to a smaller van where we could recruit drivers either a mix of part-time drivers who didn't need a CDL or some full-time non CDL drivers, which we think will help with recruitment. Great. And last question, Jamie. I think Elizabeth may have sorted this for me, but I've had some healthcare workers just express some concerns that folks with mobility issues have tried to get rides to like the integrated healthcare center in town. And because it was in the sort of small radius there, that would be walkable for other folks. They were denied the ride. But my understanding is folks would have to call there and you could waive that, right? We had actually changed the parameters of the system. So there is no minimum travel distance at this time. That was something that was happening sort of early on in the system, but that has since been resolved. Fantastic. Thanks, Jamie. Go ahead. I just want to comment in Jamie and the crew and the Sustainable Montpelier Coalition have all been really putting extra customer service into this service. And without that, I don't think you would see the ridership let alone the increase in using the app. But it is hard with lack of drivers. So I appreciate you filling us in. I also comment that the committee that goes with this has been meeting regularly. Peter Kelman is one of those who shows up. It's been about five monthly, mostly that we've been meeting and they've been following up on the data and asking good questions. So and I really appreciate that you've actually focused the statistics today so they're more absorbable. But there are even finer tuned ones that people are interested in. Thank you, Jamie. Thanks, Donna. Jack, go ahead. Thanks for this presentation. I know that I've heard. People from outside of city council meetings and people communicating at city council meetings at the system. Just doesn't work for them and. So I'm one thing I'm just concerned that. The 97% success rate may. Not be capturing people who have tried to get rides, tried to make something work and have given up. So they're not any longer even trying to get a ride. My recollection when we started was that. There was talk about some kind of. Hub or terminal going to be placed downtown at Shaw's or someplace so that someone there needing a ride would be able to log on there and request one. And I don't know where. I don't think that's happened, but I certainly don't know. And I wonder if you could comment on that. Sure. We have been discussing the possibility of. Accessibility phones. So those would be, you know, freestanding stanchions like you might see on a college campus. With a phone system that would ring into the GMT call center. And we would place those at high ridership stops. We have been working with V trans. And some of the business owners like for example, Berlin mall and trying to figure out the permissions and and the permitting that we would need and what that would look like staff wise to maintain a system like that. One item that we were able to accomplish in the last few months was there's a period of the day. Where our Montpelier transit center is not staffed. And we have put a speaker phone system, one of these phone systems in our transit center. So if there isn't a customer service rep available. In the middle of the day, folks are still able to call in and book a trip from the Montpelier transit center. So that is something. Thank you for bringing that up. That's something we have recognized as a challenge. We are working toward trying to find a solution. For that, for that issue. Thanks. Go ahead. Yeah, thank you so much for this. I really appreciate seeing the level of detail that you've provided and I've been kind of, you know, wondering exactly how it was going. So I appreciate all those statistics and I'm glad to see the level of ridership is as high as it is. So I'm wondering who is being served and who is not being served. And I'm concerned that there may be kind of a whole section of the population that is feeling like. If I. Like, like this doesn't work for them. So I'm wondering if you have kind of a sense of. Partly because perhaps similar to Jack, what, what I, the feedback that I tend to get from folks in the public is that the times when it's not working for them. And so I am. Wondering about. Who is being served and who is not being served. So I'm curious about that. I'm curious about how you would find that out. I would have kind of a sense of how people are using it. And who is, who might have been using public transportation before. That is no longer using it. I don't know how you would find that out, but I'm curious about that. And then I have a more specific question about the, the wait times. And that you said that most of your rides, people are getting picked up. And so my understanding and perhaps I'm wrong about this is that. When you have a time offered to you, there's a 15 minute window on either side of it. So it's really. From what I understand, it's a 30 minute window. And so. Is that five minutes again on either side of that. So we're talking about a 40 minute window when you. Your ride might come or maybe you can just explain that part to me a little bit more. Absolutely. It's actually, when you are given a time, you're given just a 15 minute pickup window. So if you were to look in the system and say, I want a trip at noon, the system looks forward 40 minutes and backwards 20 minutes. And it will offer you a proposal somewhere within an hour of. You know, 40 minutes ahead of noon and 20 minutes back. And it will offer you a good, better, best option. So it might say something like we can pick you up between. 12 and 1215. The next option might be 1230 and 1245. It gives you choices for rides that are as close to your requested time as possible. So at the time of booking, you do get a 15 minute pickup window and then your ride will never be you will never be picked up outside of that window. And there are various levels of communication. So the night before your scheduled ride, you would get a text message saying your trip is scheduled for say noon to 1215 was your pickup window. You'll get an actual physical time. So it will say the bus will arrive at your location at 1208. And then you'll never. So when I say within five minutes, it's five minutes of that 1208 time. And then in terms of riders, certainly we have heard from some folks who either don't have access to technology or don't are not comfortable with technology who really just want to fix route service. They, they want to know that this is the schedule. The bus is always going to be outside at 15 minutes after the hour. But we definitely have a, I think a high percentage of riders who would never have used fixed route service for that very reason, because there was no flexibility if they missed the bus. It was another hour until a bus came. And so because we don't have that specific data, we are working on a plan for the month of September to do very in depth surveying. We're hoping to host some informal sort of town hall style meetings at our transit center where folks can come and just give us that feedback so we can identify. Is this service meeting the needs of folks who need it the most and are there solutions? For example, would it make more sense to bring back a Montpelier hospital Hill, so fixed route service given that nearly 50% of people using my ride are sort of using that, that former routing. So that will be happening in September. And hopefully we'll have a feedback report that we can share with city of Montpelier and our other stakeholders and partners are, our my ride advisory council in our board moving forward with a plan in October. Thank you. Thank you. Jamie, is there a phone number you could give that counselors could pass on to people that when they have difficulties they can call because I know you walk through help people walk through the system to make it work better. But what's the key number they should call? Sure. So our number is 802-223-7287. And that will get you into our phone system and connect you directly with one of our customer service reps. Thank you. Great. Other questions or anyone from the public wish to comment on this. Okay. And I see we've got a hand from Peter Kalman. Go ahead. Peter Kalman Montpelier. I am on the my ride. Community. Community advisory committee or group. Thank you, Jamie. I think what's very important about what Jamie has presented here is that it shows that this pilot project, which is what it has been, is very much a data driven pilot. We're finding out what is working, what isn't working. Jamie has other statistics that drill down into some of the questions that were asked. But we all know that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. You guys, Jack and Carrie, you hear from people who complain. You don't hear from people who are happy. People don't call you up and say, Oh, wow, this is a great thing. Okay. But it is a great thing. And most people, and the data shows. That increasing number of people using it. And the people who are using it are coming back and using it some more. Now 3% is a very small number, but it represents some real people. Of course it does. Some people, this isn't working as well for them. And there, there are some indicators. For example, people who need to get to work at a certain time or to school at a certain time in the morning, which is the heaviest period of time. And those are the people who probably are running into most problems, although some of it may have to do with the way they book. They need to book about selecting their time of arrival, not their time of pickup. Now, maybe that's not the problem, but that's, that is one of the, one of the issues. And so again, drilling down. GMT is finding out more about. What is working, what isn't working. And we are all, we discuss this. Actually, we meet more than by, we meet most sometimes once a month, but we meet frequently and we have emails with Jamie and with sustainable Montpelier. So they were constantly working on these issues that come up. I urge the counselors not to be swayed by the people who gripe. I'm not saying to tell them to go away. Tell them to call up GMT like, like Donna said, but believe me, this thing is working. And it's very important to have the support of the council on that. Thank you. Oh yeah, go ahead. Question. Peter, thanks for making that point. And during the presentation, I had a question that. You reminded me of. If somebody has a need for. For a regular or recurring service. Is it possible for them to, I've just used it a few times is, is it possible for someone to set up a regular appointment? Like I need to be at. At work at nine o'clock every morning, or I need to be at my doctor. 11 o'clock every Thursday. Is it possible to set something like that up? It is. And it's also possible to book your trips for four weeks at a time. So. There's quite a bit of leeway there and how you book and how often and how frequently you can set up your trips. Thanks. Great. Thank you. Any other questions. Folks have about this. Okay. Not seeing anyone else. So thank you so much, Jamie. This was really helpful and yeah, look forward to further conversation about the my ride system. Thank you all so much. Have a great evening. All right. So we are, we've changed our schedule around. So we are going to be taking up the first reading of the repeal of the prostitution ordinance right now. So I'm going to officially open the public hearing on this ordinance and we're going to be taking up the first reading of the public hearing. So we're going to be making a series of changes. And. And I don't know that there's anything we need to necessarily. Save up here first, unless you've got something. Very quickly by background, we did have a lengthy discussion about this and at the conclusion, the council. Ask that we warn first reading for repealing this ordinance and also took. Sort of a policy statement action. So this was the, it was actually. to repeal both sections or just one, but I took it that you meant both. So I put them both in for, because there was the prostitution and the house of prostitution. You can always change that. Okay. So as this is a public hearing list, and any councilors wanna make some comments before we hear from the public, I think we should just go right to the public. And we'll start with folks who are here with us in person. So if you wish to make a comment about this, now's the time again, if you would say your name, where you live and try to keep your comments to two minutes. And Donna here will help us with that timing. So thank you so much. Yeah. Okay. Can you hear me? Is it on? Okay. My name is Aaron Clark, resident here in Montpelier. So I would like to suggest to the council that we change the city ordinance to match the state ordinance language. I think that there's a lot of good reasons for that. I can just give you two reasons. I also have a question with those reasons that I'd like to hear an answer from for you guys. The first reason is basically, well, I'll start with this. I've heard a lot around this. A lot of people are saying, we don't need a city ordinance for this kind of thing because murder, for example, is not on our city ordinances. Why would we have prostitution? We're just going with what the state says. Well, that makes a lot of sense, except we don't see the state ordinance enforced. I mean, we were right here just a few weeks ago, and we heard people saying, I sell my body for sex. I am a prostitute. And here's the police chief right over here, five feet away, here's all of you guys, it's on public record. And what kind of enforcement was there for that? There was no enforcement for the state ordinance. And so clearly, if we're not even enforcing the state ordinance, I think that first of all, I wonder why are we, that's kind of my question, first of all, is why are we not enforcing the state ordinance? Why is our police not doing anything? When we hear people say, who are not being subjected to this, they're not being trafficked in this, but they're saying, this is who I am, this is what I'm about. Why are we not enforcing those? Before I get to the second reason, I just want to hear from you guys about that. I don't think I have any comment about that at this point. So I guess my recommendation is, is to keep going at this point, unless folks want to answer. Okay, yeah. Yeah, cause it's a very- It's a good question. It's a very hard question to answer. Well, exactly. So which is why I would say like, I don't, yeah. Ask all your questions at once and then we'll keep going. Okay. Well, and that's basically, I mean, that's my one question, but the second reason is because essentially, if we get rid of this ordinance language and we don't replace it, when the state, there's a movement right now to change the laws around the state. And so when that, a lot of people are saying, we don't need to remove the city ordinance language because the state ordinance language is there. Well, it may not always be there because our city ordinance languages are changing. There are movements to change this. So when the state ordinance language is gone and it could be gone, well, why can we not have some extra security here for our city to say, well, here in this place, it will not be. We do not want that here. We're making a value statement. And here, Monpelier, we don't want consensual prostitution. We don't want what it brings in, which is sex trafficking and human trafficking. Why can't we put that, yeah, to stop that? So those are my two reasons. There's my question. I would like to have an answer at some point if anybody would like to email me or talk to me or something. Why are we enforcing this? Thank you. Thank you. My name is Diana Tierney and I live right in Monpelier. I just like to, you know, I'm concerned about the youth and the relationship with drugs and people's vulnerability. And in Vermont, there was an article, you know, this is an old article, Attorney General's office has dropped prostitution and drug charges against a Boston youth arrested over the weekend when police cracked what they called a homosexual prostitution ring. Two men and a 16 year old boy who were arranged today were picked up early Sunday at the Andrews Inn in Bellows Falls for a gathering place for gays. So I am worried how we as a community are gonna prevent people from vulnerable people from being caught up with others who might take advantage of them. And you know, when we were in high school, we used to hang out in the combat zone and bought just to have some fun in the combat zone. You know, we were lucky that we didn't get into trouble doing that. We thought it was a joke, but it's not. Then he has another article. A Burlington police said Friday with the arrest of a local man, they have broken a Chittenden County prostitution ring that allegedly involved as many as 10 teenage females. So I'm just concerned about people getting caught up in this who are vulnerable. Thank you. Hi, my name is John Matthew, I'm from Berrytown. And I am opposed to any changes to this ordinance that is existing. Presently I've read this ordinance and I feel that it is strongly shows exactly what we do not want in this community. And I wouldn't want that to come to Berrytown or Berry City or actually any other city in the state of Vermont. I lived in Tampa, my wife and I did for eight years. We saw exactly what prostitution does in that city and it took an act of the legislature out of Tallahassee to write what was wrongly put in place in Tampa. And I certainly would not want to see any of that kind of stuff take place here in Vermont, any city. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, my name is Rebecca Savoia, I live in Williamstown. This is a very important topic to me. I've worked in counter human trafficking and in the with people in the sex industry. I've seen the effects that it's had in nations that have become a sex tourist destination such as Bangkok and I just want to appeal that the well-being of the women and men. I know we both have the same desire to see them protected and that's the most important thing. But if we look at statistics, there's so much crime and violence that's associated with that. And I know the idea is to get protection for them but even PTSD studies show that PTSD levels with people that work in the sex industry is comparable to those of war veterans or people who have been tortured. We see that that violence levels just in the US is 58% report that they have been abused or raped. Mortality rates, it's the only job where mortality rates and abuse is so high. So I just want to urge us that even for I'm a mom, a foster mom as well. And I urge us that we look into the repercussions that this means for our community. Just one more minute, okay, sorry. Yeah, the repercussions that it means for our community and our kids, we are worth more than just the sale of our body. And I strongly believe that and I want to raise kids that realize that yes, their body is worth something but their intellect is worth something as well. Their emotion is worth something as well. If we look at prostitution, most people that enter into prostitution enter at the age of 14. And it is not because they have other options. It's not the best option. It's the lack of options that has pushed people into this job. I know there is a this persona that it's freedom. And in a sense, yes, maybe that is freedom. However, it's lack of opportunity. So my appeal to us is that maybe we look at how we can give them better opportunity as opposed to just bringing protection that in turn doesn't actually bring a whole lot of protection. And I've seen the effects of prostitution. Human trafficking brought to that as well. I don't want to go too far. Okay, thank you. Thank you. I have a question before I start. Could you give a clarification when I finish or before we finish the discussion on how you're calling this a public hearing in the terms that you use? Because I'm seeing, I think you're calling it first reading. So I'm not sure that everyone might understand that it's actually a public hearing. It's your first of two public hearings. And could you also clarify how you warned that and where it was posted? And if you typically just call them a first reading and a second reading, so we would know in the future how to do that. That would be great. I'm going to do script because that's how I roll best. So I spent five years living in Nevada, a state where prostitution has become normalized. And I want to share with you what that experience is like. One of my very first experiences after moving to Nevada was to be the tourist and go see the sites. And one of the very first sites a newcomer or a tourist has shown are the ranches, the cat houses, the brothels. These brothels sat just a few miles outside of Carson City in a cul-de-sac of sorts just outside the city limits. One right hand turn off the main highway and there sat several very modest buildings that housed the quote unquote legal sources of prostitution. It wasn't something similar to our more sugar shack or our ski slopes or the Burlington bike path. It was the brothels. Nevada has an annual Nevada Day Parade that occurs on October 31st every year. It's a huge amazing parade that stretches literally for hours and is all inclusive of all cultures, including prostitution. Set in the vast expanse of cowboys, horses, and just about every aspect of Western culture, you could imagine was a black convertible with the top down. It was driven by what would be perceived to be a pimp with several colorfully decorated women sitting in the passenger seat and across the back. In a state where prostitution is the norm, having them visible in the community is also. When I first got to Nevada, I took a job at a local department store for easy access until I settled there. I worked there for about a month with a young 18-year-old just out of high school, a young girl. Her job was really quite simple. Keep the store clean, mind the fitting room, help the customers. About a month after she started the job, she came into work one day and we were chatting. The conversation went like this. I think I'm just gonna go do what my mom does. It's so much easier. So I ask her, well, what does your mom do? And her response was, she works at the ranches. Her mom was a prostitute and this young 18-year-old perceived that job to be easier than being a store clerk and was willing to join her mom in selling her body for money. That says, stop. Am I stopping? Okay. I have copies of the rest if you'd like to have it. I would like some clarification though on your public hearing notifications. Thank you. Thank you. I also wanna clarify that if anyone has written statements that are longer than what you can say in two minutes, that is all welcome. And actually there's one other question that I have for you. I'm sorry, if you could tell us your name and where you live. It's okay. Okay. Thank you. And we will get you some clarification about that. We could, should we do that at the end? Okay. Yeah. Once we'll, yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Go ahead. Mike Shively and is this on? Yeah. Okay. I think so. My name is Mike Shively, I live in Massachusetts and I've been coming up to these meetings since October whenever the issue of prostitution has been on the table. And I've been a researcher for about 30 years and for most of it I've studied these issues, prostitution and sex trafficking from lots of different angles. There are about a hundred thousand studies that you could find on prostitution. So it's really easy to go into it and get lost. It's also easy to go into it and pull out whatever you'd like. If you have a conclusion and you just want support for it, it's easy to do that. And that's what happened with your police commission report and the recommendations. They took a very, very narrow sliver of the research and the evidence that supported the idea that decriminalize and prostitution is a good idea. And that's what was presented to you. There wasn't anything else. Also the choice of people that weighed in when we're part of the commission, they were hand-picked and they were representatives of the industry. So it would be like if this is about clean-air regulations and the only people invited in were representatives of the coal industry. Well, that's what you got. You got industry reps who say that they've had a good experience and their proponents of it. And surprise, surprise, they're saying wouldn't it be awesome if there were no laws against this? And also wouldn't it be awesome if there was no taxes, no regulations, no oversight? Sex workers work, except it's unlike any other work because we don't want any regulations at all. So that's what you've been asked to endorse with the one recommendation to support decriminalization at the state level and to lose your ordinances. And I want to correct something else that one of the city councilors made at the last meeting which is ordinances are not redundant. They are supplemental. Thousands of cities and counties throughout the United States have prostitution ordinances even though they have laws and they have them for a reason. They didn't start out with them. They instituted them because they needed them. They do things like allow businesses that are actually brothels or nuisance properties to get their business license revoked. There are a lot of things that can be done through ordinances that supplement the state law. And it's a little disingenuous for people to say, well, 10 seconds, five. You're fine. Okay. So it'll disingenuous for the people to say, well, don't worry so much about jules in these ordinances because we still have the state law, right? This is just a cleanup language when the recommendation right next to it is and we want to abolish the state law and we also want the police not to enforce the law we have while we have it. So it's clearly a much broader effort to just decriminalize. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, well, it's with us in person wish to make a comment. Okay. And so we'll go to folks with us virtually. All right. Caitlin Masias. I'm sorry if I did not say your name correctly. Oh, it's Masias. Thank you. Hi, my name is Caitlin. I am a resident of South Florida but I'm here representing a world without exploitation. We're a national coalition of over 200 national-based anti-trafficking organizations. And we definitely stand in opposition of fully decriminalizing the sex trade. I personally work with young people every day. I run our youth coalition and we have young people all over the country and young people are very susceptible to entering the sex trade. There was someone here that has already stated that youth in foster care, youth who are part of the LGBTQ community are particularly vulnerable. And by decriminalizing pimping, brothel owning and sex buying in the state of Vermont, you're actually just gonna make youth more vulnerable to tactics of traffickers and brothel owners to be manipulated with false promises of love, safety and security. And they'll find themselves unable to escape this kind of exploitation. So we hope that today that you consider the harms to children to marginalize populations in your state. And instead of actually fully decriminalizing the sex trade, we at world we take a holistic approach called the equality model also known as the Nordic model. That's something that's been passed in Sweden and has been very successful. And that is three pronged, which would be to decriminalize people bought and sold. So we don't want people that are in prostitution to be criminalized, but we do wanna continue to criminalize exploiters like sex buyers, pimps and brothel owners. And the third thing that is super, super important that is often mixed is exit strategies and services. So the right to exit getting people mental healthcare, getting people the healthcare that they actually really need. And I see someone actually nodding your head. That's super important because it takes an average of 12 times to actually get someone out of the sex trade and rehabilitated. And as a lot of people have said, there's an extreme amount of violence and PTSD that people experience. So decriminalizing those bought and sold, continuing to criminalize exploiters and then also exit strategies and services. And so we really don't want to have or might be the first state or in this ordinance to decriminalize the sex trade and we want alternatives to be proposed. I am also a student at the Columbia School of Social Work. And so I'm really in opposition of this. Thank you. Caitlin, can I ask you a follow-up question? Sure, absolutely. What was the name of the alternative proposal, set of ideas? You had a name for it and I just, I didn't catch, couldn't remember the name. So it's called the equality model. Equality model, okay. As the Nordic model. So it's basically the same thing, but if you Google equality model or Nordic model, they're very similar and it's the same three-pronged approach. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Jenna Clark. I am a Montpelier resident and I am here to just, yeah, share with the city council that I would also really love to adopt the state law and as our city ordinance, which criminalizes prostitution. And I just wanted to share that my family, you know, desires this, but also every other community member that I've spoken to in Montpelier, in Berry city, Berry town, are very surprised that we're even considering this and also desire that we criminalize prostitution. Thank you. Thanks. Rebecca Zipkin. Hello, my name's Rebecca Zipkin. I'm a resident of Connecticut. I'm here as a national anti-trafficking activist. I'm also with World Without Exploitation, like Caitlin. I just wanted to add something very briefly to what Caitlin said, which is that while we do support changing your local ordinance and not using the archaic language that is included, we would love to see the ordinance changed to prohibit the allowance of exploiters, brothels, houses of prostitution, anything like that to pop up in Montpelier. We also really want to emphasize that we think the city council is signaling to the state legislature by doing this, that you are in support of repealing criminal laws at the state level and that you are thus in support of legal prostitution. What happens when a state repeals laws against the sex trade, against promoting prostitution, third party exploiters and sex buying is that it then becomes decriminalized and people then want to legalize. People want to open brothels legally and you will see Vermont become a hub of sex tourism in this country. So we ask you not to signal to the state legislature that you are in support of legalized prostitution in Vermont. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Anyone else with us virtually that would like to make a comment? Okay, Ashley Struberge, and then I see your hand, Michael Mannion. So we'll go to you after. Go ahead, Ashley. Hi, I just want to, this is the first time I've actually heard of this. And yeah, I agree with the two folks who are from the anti-sex trafficking group, Caitlin, is it Messiahs? Anyway, and I just think, providing safety for the victims of sex trafficking and anyone who is selling themselves, I guess, is probably the first step. And then also, but making sure that the perpetrators, the folks who are creating these victims are not getting off scot-free. I think the idea of Vermont and Montpelier becoming sort of a beacon of bringing in sex trafficking just sounds, I can see where it would lead to that. And that's scary to me. So I just want to mention that. But yeah, that's what I'd like to say about that. Yeah, thank you. And Michael Mannion, go ahead. I'm sorry if I am not saying your name correctly. Yeah, that's fine. Thank you. I just want to say I appreciate all of the hard work that you do there at the council. Obviously you intend to make life better for society at large and individuals. But I'm curious about a couple of things. I know you do feasibility studies for a number of different issues. And I wonder what sort of feasibility studies you've done regarding this particular topic. You've had a number of people who have worked very hard professionally in this area. And the evidence that I'm hearing from their testimonies is that decriminalizing prostitution is not a good idea for the individuals involved as prostitutes or for society in general. So I'm wondering if you can provide any evidence from people who may have testimonies that would support the idea that decriminalizing prostitution would be a good idea for society in general or for the prostitutes themselves. And I'd be very curious to hear what the board has or your council there has to show for that. Another thing that I had, I think I saw was that one of the reasons that you wanted to do this was to change the priorities so the police would be able to focus their attention on more serious matters such as sex trafficking. And I'm wondering if you can explain why focusing on something more serious is not easily accomplished without legalizing the prostitution or decriminalizing yet. And so I'd be very interested to know what your response to those questions would be. And thank you. Great, thank you. Anyone else with us virtually wish to make a comment? Okay, I'm not seeing anyone. And so I want to go back to folks in person. Anyone else wish to make a comment? That's here. Okay. Yes, go ahead. Oh, sure, go ahead, yep. So I'm not here to argue for or against this action, but I think for the clarity of the conversations a few points that might help because I heard some of the comments. First, we did a search. There's only one other community that even mentions prostitution in any of their city ordinances and it's in Winooski. It has to do actually in their buildings along with rowdy people, disorderly people and it mentions prostitution. So folks that spoke here from other Vermont communities, your communities don't have an ordinance about prostitution. So it's not like this would make Montpelier an outlier or would actually make us consistent with the entire rest of the state. The second thing is the city council has no authority to criminalize or decriminalize prostitution or anything else. Any of our ordinances are several local ordinance violations. The only people who can put criminal statutes in place are the state legislature. This action, while it did come from the folks on the police review committee is actually something we've been eyeing for a long time because of the language and if anybody reads the actual language it's supposed to be repealed. It says no female person shall be a prostitute nor shall apply the vocation of a prostitute nor shall subject her person to prostitution and no male person shall associate with such female person for the person of prostitution. I think we can all agree that that language is not very good and should not be in place and that was really I think one of the impetus here. So certainly everybody has their own views and I'm not a policymaker, I don't have a vote but I think it is helpful as we have this debate to understand really nobody else in Vermont has this kind of ordinance and second of all the city council has no authority to criminalize or decriminalize prostitution. Thank you. Do you wanna comment a little about the process for public hearings? Yes, so there was a question about public hearings. Our charter requires one public hearing to change ordinance, we call it a reading. It is advertised with the agendas. We by practice do two readings just because I think it's a good process to give people a chance, a couple of chances to talk about it and sometimes an amendment comes out of the first reading which then is read at the second reading. So legally we have to do one hearing or reading in practice we do two. So this is the first of two scheduled hearings or readings. And it's posted anywhere the schedule is posted. It's warned along with the regular meeting agenda that there's no additional running or reading requirement for ordinance changes than regular meeting notices. The exception of zoning ordinances but I won't go into that. Fair enough. Okay, thank you. Okay, lots of good questions. Thoughts. Oh, I guess I will close the public hearing at this point. Yes. Yes, go ahead, Connor. Yeah, sure. Well, I want to start by thanking everybody come out. I think everybody has the best of intentions on this issue and really appreciate the input. Where I'm coming from to speaking for myself, I think we have an antiquated ordinance here that has not been invoked as far as we know, to prosecute trafficking, prosecute rape or prevent sexual contact with minors. We don't use this ordinance. But I think it's mere existence could have a problem in negatively impacting health and safety of sex workers by criminalizing this act. It sort of undermines, I think, sex workers ability to seek justice for crimes against them. That could include like rape or robbery. It could include like violence from a client. It has a chilling effect, I believe. And if you treat people like criminals, they're much less likely to report exploitation of minors, to report instances of trafficking because they may be afraid of being prosecuted and going to jail themselves. So by taking this out of the shadows, I really believe it is a measure that could help health and safety there. And I think we really need to make the distinction between decriminalization and legalization. This is not like setting up an Amsterdam type of situation with a bunch of red booths there. But I do appreciate those conflicting information on both sides and data. And when that's the case, I generally turn to sources I trust. And in this case, that would be the ACLU, Human Rights Watch. I've worked with them on a couple of issues over the years there. So that's where I'm coming from. Where I would maybe clarify what we did last time is I could see the blanket motion to decriminalize this on the state level as being interpreted different ways. And I would be supportive of taking a step back on that until we actually see the legislation being proposed and could kick it to the legislative committee to give it more due diligence. I would be amenable to that. But as far as this ordinance, I think it's time has come and we do need to repeal it. Okay, Carrie. Yeah, thank you. Just following up a little bit on what Connor just finished with, I did vote against the motion last time that included advocating for decriminalization on the state level, simply because I didn't feel like we had followed the greatest procedure in order to make that kind of decision. And so if we were to reconsider that particular decision, I'm not making any statement about how, whether I would support that or not, but I would prefer to see it go through a more deliberative process in order for us to decide that the city is going to take that position. Donna. Just a little different perspective is that I feel that the police review committee did a huge deep dive into this and they kept us posted and it came out from their group. And I really respect that because a much deeper dive than I've had. But I also feel like that we should strengthen human trafficking laws. But if we're after prostitution, which in our mindset is unfortunately mostly women, I think we're going after people who are the victim that we're not separating them from those who are abusing them or coercing them. So I'd like to see human trafficking get stronger and all the things that they're under including child abuse and D move this fact of putting it on sometimes, which is the victim or the person who's voluntarily wanting to earn their living that way. Thank you. Yeah, Jack. Thank you. Thanks Donna. I served on the police review commission and we studied this extensively. We had several of our meetings in which this topic was discussed. And for one thing, as other people have said, it's very clear that nothing we do here in this council will legalize prostitution in Montpelier. Second, I think that what we saw in the police review commission is that the most important thing that we as a city government can do and what the excellent police department we have can do is to focus on responding to and eradicating abuse, exploitation and human trafficking. And that is, that's a very high priority. And I think it's in line with the priorities that are operationally in effect for the Montpelier police department. We don't see the police department running around town, arresting sex workers, but they are responsive to allegations of abuse and exploitation when they come in. So I think that the time has come to repeal the ordinances that we have now to talk about what the overall response would be to the real issues of abuse, exploitation and trafficking. And so for that reason, I move that we schedule a second public hearing on the proposed repeal of this ordinance. Second. Okay, so there's a motion and a second. I have some further discussion about this. I want to check in with you, Jennifer, with us virtually, anything you want to say about this? And if not, that's okay. Thank you, Mayor Watson. I appreciate the interest in our small little state capital from so many people that are out of our little state capital. But I have to say that I don't have a problem stating where I stand. And if we were able to decriminalize sex work, I would vote for that because I've spent 20 years working with sex workers. And I see what FOSTA and CESTA has done for people that are legitimately trying to make a living with their bodies as they choose and it makes it harder for them to be safe. And it takes away a lot of energy from actually working with folks that are being trafficked and putting a lot of emphasis on sex workers who are choosing to do this. And I don't want to split hairs and it's horrible what happens to people when they're being, I mean, I get all that, but we have to think about the human beings that are also doing this for choice. And I know that that's not what this ordinance is about. I know that we're just talking about language here, but I've heard a lot of conversation these last two meetings regarding this about what's gonna happen if we can't legalize prostitution. That's not what we're talking about here. And I'm also not afraid to say that I would support changing things if I had that ability, but I don't. So that's where I stand, but I also am with counsel and I would love to continue this conversation amongst those of us that have to vote on changing the language. Sorry, Jennifer, if I can jump back real quick, you cut out for a second, like maybe you all heard what- Sorry. You all, okay. No, no, no, that's fine. My air conditioner's on behind me, so. No, you're good. I'm not sure if I had heard you correctly. So great, thank you, but it sounds like folks did. So that's good. Other thoughts that folks have? I have two thoughts. So one thought is do, I know we're gonna have a vote on the motion. So one thought is, is there energy that folks wanna put into reconsidering the part about the legislative agenda? Is there anyone who, well, I just wanna just check in about- I'd be okay reconsidering that piece because I would like to see what the legislation is before we consider it. And maybe even advocate for strengthening the trafficking components in some cases. But to just, you know, and to be very clear, I don't support prosecuting this at the state level or the city level, but I like to see what I'm signing on to the legislation. Okay, so that's one thought. Yes, Jack, go ahead. Thank you. I know the mayor and I discussed the question of whether we would have a motion to reconsider the vote that we had our previous meeting about the overall policy question. And I was thinking about doing that. And then unfortunately, we've had an intervening meeting with the meeting we scheduled, special meeting we scheduled to do the set the tax rate. And so at this point, I think it would be out of order to do a motion to reconsider. However, I also think that when the legislative session comes up and starting to meet to discuss what our priorities are, what we're gonna support and what we're going to oppose, I think that it would make sense to be looking at all the possibilities, including whatever legislation on sex work and sex exploitation is going to be before the legislature. Just to clarify, is it has to be at the next meeting or the next regularly scheduled meeting? Because that was not a regularly scheduled meeting. That's a good question. And I did not bring my copy of Robert's rules with me. Okay. That doesn't mean that you can't make a change. That's true. We could just. I mean, so it's beside the point. I mean, if indeed you wanted to make a motion to modify, then this is the hearing to do it to be presented next time. For a point of clarification, the issue is not amending the ordinance. It's the additional policy statement that went with it. And that, that's different. Because this is changing this ordinance isn't a reconsideration. This is a vote on its first. So they're two separate things. They're two separate things. So they shouldn't be discussed right now. Right now we're just dealing with the hearing on the ordinance. True. That's true. Okay. And the motion to set the hearing was all one motion. Yes. Yeah. I think we separate. They were separate. Yeah. Oh, that case thing. But even if they weren't, we're now talking about the second hearing. So we make a motion dealing with the ordinance of the second. Mostly I just wanted to check in to see if there was, if we should be discussing that after. Well, I guess we're kind of discussing it now, but we should have a vote on Jack's motion. I heard Jack's motion being the ordinance. Yes. Thank you. Right. That is it. Yes. Accurate. I had another question, but I'm going to save it till after this vote. Even while Jack is reading the rules. Any further discussion on setting the hearing for the next reading? Okay. Seeing no discussion. Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay. So one thought was do we have any further conversation about the policy statement? Another thought is I am hearing from folks what sounds like consensus to me about and having an emphasis on human trafficking. And the last time we were talking about this, we had a presentation from the chief who had some thoughts on how there was some, he called them loopholes in the state statute. Maybe we're not done having the conversation about human trafficking if the state statute is, so that's maybe another topic that we could take up. Maybe we don't have a prostitution ordinance, but maybe we have a human trafficking ordinance and that is a slightly different emphasis and slightly different thing, even though they are related. So I realize I'm talking about two things simultaneously or so maybe we all, I just wanna make sure I raise that. Jack, are you still coming up with an answer here? Here's what I think. And this is section 37 of Robert's rules. And this is the 10th edition, but I don't think this has changed in the 12th edition, which is the current one. In a session of one day, such as an ordinary meeting of a club or a one day convention, the motion to reconsider can be made only on the same day the vote to be reconsidered was taken. So I think that means that it would have had to be made at the meeting at which we took the vote. Now, someone else may have a different opinion about that, but that's what I think the rule is. Fair enough. Carrie, that's what my quick Googling came up with as well. Okay, I think it's probably right. All right. There's a possibility for a modification if we want to. Yes, Donna. You've also modified the motion not to go to a specific legislation, but that in general we were interested in pursuing and following up. I think Connor or somebody reminded me because I think I quoted the actual motion and we said, no, it was just we wanted to make sure that we were paying attention to what they were doing. Just so you all know it was two separate motions. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Any thoughts on having a motion regarding modifying the policy statement? If not, that's okay. Oh, Jack. I've been reading during part of this, so I'm not sure. As I said, when we get to the point of formulating our legislative agenda for the sense to have that be. Okay. Yeah, fair enough. And that should probably be what? Like November ballpark. When does the legislative? Okay. Okay, comfortable. Okay. So we'll revisit it at that point. Okay. Great. Any other thoughts on that? Okay. And we do have another, a second reading on this. August 24th. Okay, August 24th. Any interest in having more conversation about the possibility of having human trafficking ordinance? Right, just checking. Cool. And something that we can just check in with, oh, actually, and Jennifer, you're, okay. Okay, cool. Well, I think that is it then. Any further thoughts on this before we move on? Okay. Thank you. Came out to speak on this this evening and there'll be another reading on this on August 24th. And we'll go from there. Donna, could we have our break early today before we get into the next meeting? Well, we could take a break right now. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. All right. So we'll, it's 810 right now. We'll be back at 820. All right, team. We are gonna bring it back together here. We're a minute past our time here. Hey, great, awesome. Hello, we're gonna bring it back together here. Okay, so we are gonna take up the equity reports update. So for this one, am I turning it over to you, Bill, to you, Bill or Cameron or who may turn it over to you? Probably Cameron or if there, or Sheena, if she's on. Oh, is Sheena on? She was. She's not able to make it. Oh, Jeremy. Oh, Jeremy. There he is. But I wonder if Cameron wants to tee things up. Sure. Not. This is unplanned and unrehearsed. So I don't have a set thing to tell you, but what I will sort of queue up is that the social and economic justice advisory committee has done an incredible amount of work in the past fiscal year, really, but beyond that to bring an equity report to council to take a look and help staff take a look at our policies and our internal practices and how we can better accommodate our entire community within everything that we do. And one of the products that they're here to talk about today is sort of an update on where they're at within that equity plan. So they've recently come to you with their stipend proposal and we have implemented our stipend program. I'm gonna give this a plug in general to the folks who are watching at home or for anybody who is interested. Anyone who is currently serving on a city committee is eligible to receive a stipend of $50 per meeting. No questions asked. Anyone who is interested in applying to a committee is also eligible to receive a stipend. No questions asked. And we would really encourage everyone to take a look at our website. We have multiple openings and multiple committees right now and we are looking for folks to help us. So the social and economic justice advisory committee would like to just give you guys a general update on the broader equity plan and where we're at and what our next steps are. And I do believe that that is sort of the question at the end of this is what does council want to prioritize as the next steps for our equity plan? So I hope I didn't steal any thunder. I will turn it over to Jeremy now and there are other members of the committee here as well. Michael Sherman is here and I just want to thank them both for their work. Thanks, Cameron. So the way we're gonna just kind of quickly do this update is I'm gonna kind of speak more about the general recommendations that came out of the work with creative discourse. And Michael is gonna touch on more specifically the police review recommendations. So before I dig into this, Cameron is way too kind. She serves as our liaison on CJAQ and the updates that I'm making just would not be happening without Cameron's work and others of course, but Cameron is the person we most directly interact with and she is like a fierce champion for these things. So I'm like really grateful to have Cameron working with us on this stuff. So just really want to say that first. So there's the way this is structured and you have access I believe to the written report. So I'm not gonna read through that. I'm just gonna call out a few of the highlights, but we were kind of structuring this on those recommendations that came out of the creative discourse work. Some of those recommendations were generated by creative discourse themselves and also included were recommendations that were solicited from members of the community of Montpelier. And so we have some updates on some of those items as well. First, and kind of the most exciting for us right at the moment I think is the stipend pilot program which council I think is pretty aware of you approved the 30,000 budget to run this pilot. And so we're really just kind of getting into actively recruiting and we're confident that it's gonna improve participation in city government. And we do have some metrics established to help us understand how we're doing with that program as we monitor it over the next year. And that was a recommendation that came from creative discourse. Another recommendation area that we're working on is around language access particularly for folks with limited English proficiency. The work that's been done is just to identify what the most common languages other than English are spoken. We've reached out to the school district to give us a list of those languages because they're I think a little bit ahead of us I'm kind of tracking that. The city currently does partner with a translation service for the police department. Other departments can make use of that if needed. We acknowledge that there's more work that needs to be done on this issue. One thing that's currently in process though is welcoming our kind of new community members from Afghanistan who speak Pashto. And so there's some work kind of being done specifically for that group of folks who speak Pashto. The next bucket of things around equity have to do with just accessibility to city services both kind of digitally but also in physical spaces. There's a few things to update on that. So we are in the process of overhauling the city's website that work began in June. And I think it's at the early stages of kind of content development with each of city departments kind of reviewing their content and suggesting new updated content for the website. So that's an ongoing process. I think it'll be a really good improvement for the accessibility of our web services. Second around staff council interactions. There was the rules of conduct of public meetings was passed in May, just to make some clarity around expectations for how city and staff are interacting and council interacting in the course of public meetings. And then finally, just because of an ongoing note around physical accessibility, the ADA Committee continues to meet and of course they're prioritizing ADA compliance projects within the city. And that's an ongoing review process that is occurring. Okay, moving on, the next batch of recommendations I'm gonna touch on really have to do with recommendations that came from the community members themselves and were incorporated into the creative discourse report. I may not touch on all of these that are in the report but I'm just gonna highlight a few. One, where a lot of work has been done and led by Cameron in particular is around conducting anti-racism trainings for staff. A number of trainings have already been completed. I could be inclusion work and with the leadership team there's a whiteness at work training that's being piloted. And an all staff sensitivity training was held in June of this year. So, and Cameron can speak more to those, I'm sure. Another accessibility piece that I think has been really important for folks is just keeping the remote option for attending city council meetings. So, making them hybrid and that will continue for the foreseeable future. In the category of kind of community relations, just note here that the city signed a contract with Capital Area Neighborhood, the CAN group in March and really the focus of their work is to facilitate the sharing of information from the city to neighborhoods through the various representatives in the CAN network group. We received in that creative discourse report a number of concerns and recommendations around housing issues, particularly around folks who are experiencing homelessness in our community. And so there's a long list of things here just in terms of city supporting other organizations who are working on these issues more closely. And so there's a lot of funding opportunities whereby the city is supporting services that kind of wrap around our community to assist folks who are experiencing homelessness. Lots of detail there to read in the actual update report. One other thing I think that came out of our work specifically in CJAQ that's been in use ongoing is the Budget Equity Assessment Tool which we introduced in November of 2020. And this is a tool to help with city departments in their planning processes to make sure they're kind of reviewing their budget priorities through an equity lens. That tool has been used in the FY23 planning process and will be used again moving forward. And then the final update I'll just make before I turn it over to Michael has to do with our diversity equity inclusion initiatives of the city. And so the update here is that the city has increased staffing numbers for folks who identify as women, gender non-conforming and those who identify as a race other than white. So there's been some percentage increases in new city staff in all those areas and the specific numbers are in the equity update report. So I'm going to stop there and Michael turn it over to you to touch more specifically on the police review committee recommendations. Thank you Jeremy. Thank you council. Thank you Cameron for helping us get to this. I think there are a few things that I'll just add to what Jeremy said before I go on to the specifics of the police. When we as a committee were discussing or trying to figure out what's going on and where these are, we created a three-part way of analyzing it. There are three categories. One is operational. The second one is relational and the third is structural. So as you think about these suggestions and where we're headed, most of them fit into at least one and some of them into two of these general categories. So there were four recommendations that came out of our committee, out of our report. And I want to emphasize one thing and that is that many of the proposals that you've been listening to in the police chief's presentations over the past few months are a combination of recommendations that came from the CJAQ report and the police committee report. I've served on both of those as, and sometimes we have to be careful to separate which belongs to which. And in every case, there's some overlapping. We didn't contradict each other in anything that I can tell, but the police committee reports went into more detail on different specific activities, whereas the report from the consultants that you read had only four general areas of recommendation at all. And I think you've seen this document, this seven-page document, which is a summary of the CJAQ committee's report. The first one for policing was creators a restorative process that can be implemented after a use of force incident that causes community harm. And that's one that we labeled as structural, but I think it's also relational. This is ongoing as you doubtless know, having listened to the chief's reports when he comes to the council, but it's clear that the police department is moving forward on this. They have made efforts to partner with the city community justice center to hold open public platforms after significant events to hear feedback, field questions, and leave with community healing. And that will continue to go on. And I think that there will be more opportunities for the police department to work with the community justice center. The second is to clarify roles and expectations of law enforcement officers in the greater vision for public safety and city engagement process. This is clearly a relational issue. The, there are ongoing conversations and the chief has come back to you at several points at this several times since this report was released to let you know where some of those are going. And again, he's mostly responding to specific recommendations, but it's just simply important to know that this is a high priority issue for the police department and clarifying its vision and clarifying the both the limitations and the necessities for processes and procedures that the police department are being scrutinized carefully, I think. The third is to strive for maximum transparency. There's a lot of information now that is actually happening. The first most important one, I think, is the proposal and now the implementation of a city body-worn camera procedure and policy. And those will contribute to clearly contribute to transparency. They, I think we were all warned while we were going through this that we shouldn't think of the body-worn cameras as necessarily preventive measures. They're not gonna stop crime and they're not necessarily going to or police actions which may be questionable, but they will certainly put a break on it and they will certainly make it easier to discover and evaluate how events unfold in any particular in arrests or stops or if things get really out of hand. So that's the first part. There are a number of other things that police department has done so far. They are continuing to release arrest information on social media platforms under the title Community Awareness Policies. They are working on releasing monthly arrest and traffic stop data on the social media platforms and the city's webpage once that webpage has been upgraded and made available. And they're working with the VALCOR, which is the records management system on a public dashboard. That's a very complicated system. It has had its critics over the years, but it is one that is generally used and so are the police department for the time being sticking with it. But they are also making every effort to make the information accessible, certainly available and accessible on the dashboard. And that will be also put up on the city's webpage. The fourth area was what we called relational. And this one was a very complicated one because in our interviews with people and our both members of the committee itself and the consultants that we just hired, they came up with some contradictory or conflicting attitudes about what they want out of the police. Some were saying they want more police presence. Some were saying they want less police presence. There's some effort to sort of get the police out of the cars. Some more effort, some effort on the other side to keep running around the city and policing the whole city, not just downtown. So it is a matter really of trying to moderate and not moderate, and not ameliorate the city citizens contact with police. So one of the main ways in which this is done is the city's, the police department has made a much closer alliance with the capital area neighborhood, the CAN networks. And to, I know that the chief has attended some of the CAN meetings around the city. And then the city is also putting together a crisis intervention team program that will bring people who have special training and experience dealing with drug abuse, with mental health issues onto the scene as quickly as possible to work with the police instead of keeping those in separate buckets. And the most visible, I think effort in this respect has been the community resource officer who is in a new position and the police officer turns up at the farmer's market, is working with community groups, is out on the street. And those are, and there's more of an effort to make the police a part of seeing in the community. There's also a, the creation of the GERD, which is a graffiti, a community-led graffiti removal team. So there's some work in every one of the four areas that we identified. And obviously it's ongoing and it's a long list of things that we presented to the police chief, both through the CJAQ report and the police committee report. That's all I have to say. Okay, thank you. Anything you want to add? If I could just maybe kind of fine tune our request. But Cameron kind of prefaced, there are many, many potential issues that CJAQ could be working on. We've started a kind of prioritization tool where we're tracking each of the items that we just presented to you, as well as others that are coming up. And it's a list of dozens of things. I think what would be helpful from you all over the coming months and as you get into strategic planning processes is having a sense of what your priorities are as city council around equity issues. And so that we can understand how we can be a really supportive resource in our function on the committee to really advance the issues that are really important to you all council, but also the larger community. So that's one of the things we'd be looking to hear from you about over the coming weeks and months as you start looking at planning for the following year. Thanks. Yeah, thank you. I just want to start by saying, I mean, I think this framework is really helpful and it's really nice to be able to piece together like what the different initiatives are and what they're about and sort of where we're at. So I appreciate that you all are doing this work to track where we're at with each of these particular initiatives. And thinking about where we go next. So the next time that we do strategic planning, I assume we would do that because we started doing that ahead of the budget cycle. And so we would do that in October. And so is that timeline, if we took that up then, I mean, I think one thing I could picture is having just gone through all this, it's in our, all these things are on our radar now. And so as we go through the strategic plan process, we can see which of these things sort of floats to the top as a priority. If we took that up in October, is that soon enough for you? Or would you like to be thinking about that any of this sooner? I mean, I'll maybe Cameron and Michael want to weigh on this. I think, if there are thoughts you have prior to October, we'd love to hear about that. I think there is some question about where we should turn our attention to now that, you know, we're kind of got the stipend program up and running and we're looking to just kind of recruit folks and make folks aware of it. I think that the strategic planning process is an important moment though, because it's aligning priorities so that we're all kind of working in concert and collaboration in the same direction. So it may be that there's not a whole lot of direction until that time, which I think is fine. And I think we're also, as a committee, happy to be a part of that conversation and helping kind of understand the strategic priorities for the following year based on what we know from our position in CJAC. So yeah, we're here and able to be a support. I don't know, Michael or Cameron, if you have any thoughts about that. If I can jump in here, I want to certainly give folks in the council an opportunity to jump in and have some other thoughts on how we can proceed, but other thoughts from the council. I thought that's okay. Jack. Thanks, I have a couple of thoughts. Thanks for this report. I think it shows very well the kinds of things the city has been working on and I appreciate the work that the members of the committee have done. One of the things that is sort of related to the stipend program is something that I think could be very useful is for us to look at what kind of outreach and recruitment we do for boards and commissions. And that's something that I've sort of had in the back of my head to work on since even before I got on the council. And that's something that I'd be interested in discussing. Another thing that is a big deal for a lot of people is the quality, which I know we're working on, the quality of city communications and the webpage. And it's really hard for even people like me who are on the city's webpage all the time to find things I'm looking for. And so I think it must be very difficult for members of the community. So I'm hoping that we do a lot better than we are now in the coming year or two. Yeah, so a couple of thoughts unless there's more thoughts here. So a couple of thoughts. One thing that I think might, oh, Michael, go ahead. I just can say in response to Jack's comment about recruiting, the CJAC has taken a lot of responsibility for putting the stipend program together with help, of course, council giving us the money. But also we're doing a lot of publicity and it's a way of recruiting people is just by announcing that there's a stipend available and a release that has gone out to Front Porch Forum I think just about every day for the last month or so. We're placing it in letters to the editor, to the newspapers, each of us is taking turns, posting it on Front Porch Forum and making connections. So the stipend itself calls attention to the need and the invitation for more people to consider being involved in city government. And the idea, as you recall, was to try to get a wider range of social and racial and ethnic groups involved in city government. So that's where our effort in recruiting money, in recruiting people with money to spread the word about the availability of these opportunities. I just have a couple of thoughts and then I wanna go to you, Peter Kelman. So one thought, Michael and Jeremy, one possibility is that as we get closer to our strategic planning session, if there are priorities that you're, that C. Jack thinks ought to rise to the top, we would certainly be interested in hearing that, I think. So especially considering all these metrics, like what would be the easiest thing to do versus what would have the most impact. That's the kind of discussion that I think you all might be able to have and bring the results of that to us and that would be really helpful. And I guess my second thought is just in the absence of any other suggestion, the fact that we have a communications coordinator now and there's some suggestions here regarding our website, it feels like there might be some opportunity there to, I don't know where we are with the website, but if it makes sense to have those conversations, fair enough, fair enough. So at least to start those conversations around how the website can be more accessible and potentially have different documents available in different languages, all the digital kinds of communication, that feels like it might be a place to start, but if you had other suggestions that you wanted to bring to us, that would be fine too. And Peter Kellman, go ahead. Peter Kellman, Montpellier. I was initially a member of CJAC when it began and it's very exciting to see these kinds of results coming out. I'd just like to comment on a couple of them because I think we always have our best intentions that it's very important to see whether we get best results. And so the metrics of measuring our results, I think are gonna be critical. Jack pointed out the importance of recruiting. And yes, there's been lots of stuff on front porch forum about the $50 stipend, but has this actually been a part of recruiting for openings? I know that I helped to recruit for the new housing committee and I mentioned it, but I didn't see much, I haven't seen much use of that in recruiting. In fact, I haven't seen much recruiting aside from posting it on the website. So that's the second point. The website needs more than content fixes. The website needs a complete remake. And it's not just a technical fix, it's also a staffing fix. If you don't have a webmaster through whom all information goes in to make sure that information is consistent across pages, et cetera, et cetera. I don't wanna give a lecture on this, but I was in the business for a long time. This website needs investment. So when you guys are making your budgets up next year, and I said this at the last budget, you haven't put enough money into the budget to make a real professional website that will work for everybody. But there's also, you can't rely on technology. There are many people in this town where older folks who don't have access who can't be reached in that way or can't be reached satisfactorily in that way. And that's the reason why CAN is so important. And I would urge you to not only continue the relationship with CAN, but to strengthen it by having the city councilors work as the city councilors from district three have with CAN to reach out into the neighborhoods. But also, I know that there's beginning to be work with the various committees and with various departments, but it's really just scratching the surface. And I think we have to recognize that we're in the 21st century. We no longer have the Times Argus coming out every day. We no longer have WDEV as the radio station that we can all tune into in the morning. We know what many of us no longer go to churches and civic organizations, but we can't let social media be the replacement. Social media has a role to play, but human contact, we've seen the frustration boil over on Front Porch Forum. We've seen the frustration boil over at city council meetings. And it's frustration by people who feel that they're not being heard or that their issues or the issues that they wanna talk about aren't being dealt with, that they're not getting a response. There needs to be more back and forth response. And I think it's gotta be done in a human way. Look, I appreciate Bill and Anne writing on the bridge, the message from City Hall, but how many people read that? How many people really read that? There's gotta be, we've gotta figure out ways to get personal. So I applaud what's been done. You've got a lot more to do. And I think the council has an opportunity to really support this work. And I hope you will do so, but I hope you'll really hold yourselves accountable for results, not just for actions. Actions that don't produce results aren't worth much. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Any other thoughts here, team, on this? Okay. All right. Well, thank you. Michael, go ahead. Yeah, I just wanted to say about, well, no results yet on the stipends because it just went into effect on July 1st. So it's gonna take a while. We did do a preliminary survey of all the committees to allow, first of all, to sort of get the population and allow the chairs of those committees to circulate information about it to their members. And so we have a base, something of a baseline to see what the population is like of the city committees and how many of them would be who are already on committees would take advantage of the stipend offer. And as Cameron pointed out, no questions are asked. There's a very easy form to fill out. It's not invasive form. We tried very hard not to make it formidable or difficult. And we'll see. But it's now just a couple of weeks old. So wait a little bit. Fair enough. Well, thank you, Michael and Jeremy for your work. Please pass along our gratitude to all of C. Jack for this work. It's excellent. And we look forward to hearing more from you all. Do you feel like you have enough clarity from us moving forward? Yeah, I think so. I think it's something we can take to the committee and discuss and we can let you know if we need anything else. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you. Okay. All right, so we are up to item eight, district heat rates. So yeah, great. Welcome. A brief presentation. Everybody can hear me okay? You can get a little closer than Mike maybe. A little closer? Yeah, is that better? Yes. Okay, much better. Okay, thank you. So I'm just gonna get started here with that. And then we'll go from there. And just hit share. Okay. Thank you. Okay, I think everybody can see this, I hope. So I will be quick. So just to take us back to what we're talking about here, we're talking about district heat rates. At the last council meeting, we did set the budget. And so I'm just gonna go over sort of a brief outline of what I intend to cover in this presentation. So for starters, I'm just gonna start with what's included in the rates, then move on to the annual overall performance based on the audited financials. And then from there, a quick budget summary pulled from details provided at the last meeting, then on to the rate setting sequencing and why we're doing this the way we're doing it. And then on to proposed rates and then the impacts therein. And so without further ado, I'm gonna get started. So here we've got outlined based on the customer agreements, the two sides of the rate equation of the capacity side, which is the fixed side and the cost of running the system. And then the energy side, which is energy based and based on consumption. And so wanting to just underscore those things as we move on, the most impactful piece here, I think that you'll kind of see as we get on in the slides is the capacity side of the equation. The energy side is also up for sure, but we don't have as much by way of the customer impact because we don't know that yet based on their consumption. So moving on to this next slide, this just shows based on the audited financials, I'm gonna try to minimize. I'm just gonna go with it. Based on the audited financials here, you can see year over year, this goes through 2021. We are auditing 2022 right now. We won't have final numbers until August, but you can kind of see where we're ending the year, each year, we are ending at a net loss. And that's just what this identifies. This also includes depreciation, which the budget does not for best practice for budget. It's either debt service or depreciation. It includes debt service and the budgeting. So moving on to this next slide, this is the debt service associated with the district heat system and what it took to build the system. And what I really wanna point your attention to is that in 2021, it's about $200,000 in debt service, which is about a third of the budget. And so I just wanna highlight that for you in terms of some of the fixed costs that we can't change. And so here we've got a slide from the budget detail that was provided at the last meeting. So just some key points here, we've got the 689,620, that's an up over FY23 of approximately $63,000. One of the points that I wanna highlight here is that we were given two options from the state and I'll get into the sequencing piece of the discussion in a minute, but we were given two options from the state to set rates on a traditional methodology, which was just averaging costs over three years or looking at the impact of energy on the system. And so we chose to go with the higher of those two rates to be conservative and build in what the state was projecting for that forecast. And so that's what's reflected here in the pie chart. You can kind of see what's included within the budget at a higher level roll up. The other cost that is debt service, just to point that out. And so now on into the capacity and energy side and what we're really looking at. Yes, yep. So this is adjusted for what they think energy rates will do. So based on the energy market, so not necessarily inflation. Okay, so it's not like normalized for inflation. No, okay. Just noticing they're like, oh yeah, it's kind of an upper trend, but so is inflation. Thank you, how's it? Okay, sure, thank you. So just what we're gonna talk about next are the rates in the next slides and what we're proposing going forward. And so I'll just bring them up here. And so this is what the rates will look like if they're approved. And so I talked a little bit about the sequencing, typically what happens is we get detail from the state on what it costs to run the system at the state level that really helps inform our budget. And so that's what we set the budget on. And then from here, we need to assess the amount of money that we need to yield for our budget. And so that's where our rates come in. And that's where we've got the capacity rate here at 685 up from 625 and the energy rate of 1547 up from 1240. It's been quite some time since we've increased our rates. The last time we did so was in 2019. And prior to that, it was 2017. And when we did increase those rates, we were seeing kind of a similar jump or increase. We did not opt to increase rates previously just because of what energy was doing. But now that things are going up, it's really important to make sure that we're catching those rates up to fund the operation but also to be reflective of what we're seeing and what we're gonna see pass through from the state. And so that's what's represented here. And so just like my notes here, make sure I didn't miss anything. But ideally what we're really trying to do is set things up so that it can be a little bit more incremental and looking at things more year over year rather than big chunks of time. Because it really does inflate what we're looking at here because they don't wanna minimize the increase of 60 cents on the capacity side and over $3 on the energy rate. However, it's been kind of a long time coming. And then the other thing that I do wanna note is we did run sort of the aggregate all-in cost on the system per gallon and it's $593. And so that takes the total budget and we run some calculations to convert that into BTUs so that then we can really assess that cost. We also look at the efficiency of the system. We used an 84% calculation which we received from our consultants. And so we feel like this is a pretty good gauge of what it costs if you were to put it on a gallon of fuel equivalent. And then just for sort of hangs together, the cash price of fuel for right now is 545. So pretty good generally. And then the other thing that these rates are reflective of is the study that Evergreen Energy did for us for capacity and the allocation of the use of the system across the user base. And so that impact is represented here. And so you can kind of see where things come out on a monthly basis for the users. We did meet with the end user group on Monday to brief them on what this would look like for them. And so you can see the impact of these changes. We do intend to do this for the next heating season just so that we can really take a look at things, see how things are going and move on from there. And our intent is to really come in compliance with the user agreements and the contracts. And so with that, that is my presentation. I can go back to any of the slides or exit my share or take questions. But what I'm really looking for is for you to approve the rates based on the budget. Jack. Thanks, Kelly. Could we go back to the slide that you showed that showed the year-end balances for each of the years? Yes. That's it, I think, yeah. Now, I'm gonna ask what may sound like a stupid question and I hope it isn't, but if it is so be it. You know, I supported doing the district heat plan when it was proposed although it wasn't on the council was the design to have it be a revenue loser at the time it was created or was it designed to meet to cover the expenses of the service? Oh, the service. I'll answer that. Thank you, Bill. It was not intended to be revenue loser and one of the difficult things here is if you notice that line that says depreciation and you've got a 325,000 this year, if you go, I think it's on your next page in the budget that number is actually the debt payment which is 196,000. So on a cash basis, it's actually pretty close. Some years it's actually come out in a positive and but we're required to show the depreciation. We would like it to be even more cash positive and that really would come from, you know, as Kelly mentioned, most of the costs are pretty fixed. There's not much we can do to reduce the costs. We're working with the state on that aspect of it and we are working actively and trying a few angles to get some new users which is really what we need some additional revenue sources. Thanks, and I recognize that there are like, there were environmental benefits that we, there were the driver for this and so I don't want to, so it was never meant to be a cash loser either. Okay. And with the meeting with the customers, are you, and you told them what you're planning to to propose slides? Yeah, are you getting a sense that there's anyone who's saying, well, I can't afford to pay these rent rates. I'm going to go back to my oil provider or some other source because this isn't, I can't cover these costs. Obviously, fuel oil costs are high now too, but it sounds like there's a gap between what someone could pay for, eat for fuel oil as opposed to our system. So again, I'll jump in. We are hearing concerns about the cost and we've talked to them, I think, so we've spent a lot of time this year working with the customers to build a communication information stream so they've seen how we do calculate the capacities, they understand how the budget works. They're in 20 year contracts, so they really can't switch out right now. I think the question on everyone's mind is, how can we have this positioned in 13 years so that people will want to renew and to stay with the program? And everyone understands that. And I don't see users here objecting like they were, I think last year when we did this because they were caught by surprise. I think we've been very active in keeping them informed. They knew we did the Evergreen study, they saw the results of it. We sent this out, we've had quarterly user meetings. We've committed to them that we're gonna work with them. Kurt does a huge amount of work. Kurt and the DPW team helping them make their buildings more efficient to bring their capacities down. And so I wouldn't say people are excited about paying higher rates, but I think they see a path forward. And they also, some more than others, put a lot of value on the environmental benefit, I think particularly some of the nonprofits and social groups, I think some of the business owners are kind of like, I could get this for less, but we're getting there. Thanks, I think it's, I'm struck by the parallel to the water and sewer rates that we were talking about recently where if we let something, let it go for four or five or six years or three years and then they like having an increase for a few years in a row, but then they don't like getting hit with a big increase when it happens. So the idea that you've already put in place of having it all audited every year and presumably that would go along with a more regular pattern of increases. We hope so and we hope it will stabilize. We're hoping that by doing the capacity study, three straight years that people, but then that will stabilize as well that won't jump around as much. But the other point of that and just to the city's defense or whatever is that for a number of those years, oil prices were really low. And so these numbers were drastically different. Right now it's not too different. So for us to raise rates at that point, even though maybe it called for it was, I think even more difficult. Yeah, so. Okay, thanks. Other questions? Okay. I guess I asked everything. You're welcome. I guess I do have one follow up question, which is related to the per MMBTU cost. I just want to make sure that I'm clear on this. So, you know, for a while, oil was cheaper per MMBTU. Where are we at with that now? It's like it's close, isn't it? Isn't that I think you're very close? Yes, if they're not, it's still cheaper, but not great. It was like 545 versus 593. I just want to make sure that was clear on that. And that's all in. So that's the full cost of the system. It's not necessarily just the fuel per gallon. So when you consider the system cost of maintaining your system of a boiler of, you know, all that goes into it that may factor into that, you know, so the 545 could potentially be more if you consider those things. But I think generally on a per gallon basis, you know, oil is still a little bit lower. A little bit, okay. All right, thank you. And I think we need a motion. I move that we approve the proposed rates. Second. Further discussion? Okay, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. I just like to really begin the work Kelly's done on the financial and her finance team, Todd Provincher and others, to really dig into the numbers behind district heat and Kurt Modica and Eric Ladd at DPW have really, you know, they needed a district heat system like they needed a hole in the head and they've taken it on like champs and are really watching over it and working with customers and have really done a great job with it so long. Since we're here, I want to be sure to thank both of you publicly because we've come a long, a long way because of the efforts of your teams. Yes, I agree. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. At this point, we'll take up the holdover from the Consent Agenda, which was about the stormwater utility and I'm hoping that, I think I just had a misunderstanding and so hopefully this is very short. Oh, no. Modica, this is your one. Modica, Deputy Director of Public Works. So I want to just start by saying there is a very urgent need for a stormwater utility for funding of infrastructure first, but also for some of the environmental benefits that the council is interested in. So we've done two storm projects recently and those two pipes, you could literally just put your finger through the pipe. So all the infrastructure, storm infrastructure installed in the 70s and 80s is primarily made of metal and in Vermont we use a lot of salt. So we're seeing a high rate of failure in our storm pipes. So I guess the point is, I don't want to hold this up. I'm hoping that one, with what I tell you here shortly, that convince council to approve the contract so we can move this forward. I could just ask like one question and then I'm good. Is that there, are there going to be more opportunities for the public to have input? Yes, absolutely. Okay, that's it. Okay, great. Yeah, okay. Okay. It's very, very detailed. Okay. So we're on the agenda for September for a stormwater utility update. So we hope to have some numbers with the consultant. We need some work by the consultant to be able to really inform council of what this means. So we plan to do that work and come back to council to give an update. And there's also the committee meetings are open to the public. And once we get the ordinance changes, there'll be obviously public hearings associated with that if council moves forward. Okay. Thank you. Great. Is there a motion regarding, I think it was item H? I'll make a motion, I'll make a motion that we accept the stormwater utility contract as presented. I'll second. Okay, further discussion? Okay, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye, okay. I see you there online. Awesome. So it's unanimous. And okay, it's that passes. Thank you. Sorry to make you wait. We were counting on the fact that you're going to be here for district team. Maybe I was just wrong about that. I apologize. Okay, so we are now up to a discussion about the Elks Club and including a hub lease request. So I know there are folks from the hub here. So I would invite you up unless there's anything you want to say about this. I will just, one of the things that we had committed to was to put monthly an update on what was happening with the Elks Club, how much or a little it happened to be. And hopefully it will be more in the future. So the only update that I have, we've already told you that we have in fact purchased the property closed on it. So we are the happy owners and that the request for proposals for the project manager consultant is out. So we're expecting, hoping for responses and technically target, tentatively targeting the next meeting for us to award that. So then a lot, these reports might get longer. For now it's just we own it and the RFP is out. And then we've had, I think a couple of conversations with a couple and a few conversations with members of the hub who are interested in doing some things. And I felt certainly that was probably, some of these were policy decisions, not administrative decisions about how you wanted to proceed in light of where we were. So we invited them to make their presentation and update you all on what they're doing and what their ask is of the council. So with that, I'll turn it over to the August body that is the hub. Once you get set up, we want to give the list to you also. Thanks. My name is Ethan Atkin. I'm the board chair of the hub and we have some, we have a request that we'd like to make to the city council as a follow-up to the resolution that the council passed on November 17th, 2021 that authorized the city administration to explore the possibility of building the long envisioned new municipal indoor recreation facility at the former Elks Club property and to explore a public-private nonprofit partnership with the hub to create a recreational complex. So that's what we're here for. And as a real quick update or reminder of what is the hub, I'm not sure how easy it is to read what's on the screen but basically our mission, we're a nonprofit organization and our mission is to provide a safe, vibrant, equitable and inclusive space for leisure activities and recreational programs to enhance and promote the social and physical well-being of the community. It's a little long-winded, but that's our mission. And quickly, we're a volunteer board of directors, we're made up of residents of Montpelier and surrounding communities. Our vision is to create a year-round membership-based social and recreation center to serve all members of the community. But particularly, there's a great need for places for families to go that are safe and would allow all the members of the family to choose something that they wanna do. And we feel that that's what the hub will eventually create. And we plan to have a very vibrant center that we expect will become a lasting legacy in the city of Montpelier and something that will attract families and businesses to the community. So we feel we're doing a public service and we feel the council made a good decision to ask us to work with the city administration to try to create a partnership that would have a synergy that would be greater than the sum of its parts. So what have we done since November 17th? We had a number of meetings with a variety of staff at the city administration to discuss what are the recreational needs. We looked at the data that had been accumulated by the city about what people identified as their recreational needs. And we've jointly identified the overall concepts of which entity, the city or the hub would be responsible for the creation, operation and maintenance of each of the activities that were identified as needed in the community, both indoor and outdoor. And we are now at a point where the hub is ready to move forward with the components that we would agree to or that we agreed to. And we hope and expect to work very closely with the city to realize this partnership in the long run. We understand that the city is not ready yet to move forward with the recreational component what they're doing, but we are ready and we feel that it's a good time for us to begin doing that. So I'm just gonna read a few things about where are we right now? In March 2022, as you all know, the public passed a bond authorizing the city of Montpelier to purchase the former Elks Club property to be used for recreation, housing and open space. At the time that the bond was announced, the hub was about to complete negotiations with the previous owners of the property take out a long-term lease to put up a land lease to put up our buildings and our outdoor recreational facilities and a lease of part of the existing building that's on the property to be used for an indoor social center and indoor recreational activities. But that was obviously put on hold when the bond was put on the market on the ballot and that lease was never signed, but we were ready to do that. Right now, as you all know, the city is undergoing a public planning process to identify the most appropriate places on the property for each of the three intended uses, the recreation, the housing and the open space. And it's expected that this process will take 18 to 24 months. We on the board are very supportive of this process, the public input process and we fully support it and we think it's an important thing to do. But at the same time, we understand that once the locations are identified, these three components of what will happen on the property can move on different timetables. And we also understand that the recreational component is the component that is most likely to be able to move forward more quickly than the other components, particularly the housing component is obviously going to take more time because there's infrastructure and all kinds of other things that need to be done before the housing can get underway. So we're requesting the city council to authorize the administration to negotiate a memorandum of understanding with the hub. That would help us to have the certainty that we need to be able to move forward with what we're hoping to do, both as the hub and as part of the partnership. So, and we feel that waiting for the projected 18 to possibly 24 months for the whole planning process to be completed would jeopardize our plans and jeopardize the possibility of the partnership as a result. So we're not asking the city council to go into the details of what that memorandum of understanding would be, but there are three components that we feel would be important. And we hope that that could be included in the council resolution to the administration to negotiate this memorandum of understanding. And the three things that we're interested in. So I just do want to take a step back and just say that we're not coming to the council asking for something because we heard that the city has just bought a big piece of property and we want a piece of it. We're coming in, we're making an investment in the community. We're going to be putting over $3 million into our component of the project. And we're really excited about the possibility of doing this partnership where we create a complete recreation complex that would be sort of a crown jewel of the city. And we also are coming to you because we've been involved in this in both the discussions with the city and in the discussions with the previous landowner that would have enabled us to move forward as soon as possible. And so the request we're asking for here is not like we're coming from somewhere outside and suddenly asking for something. It's we're actually coming and saying, we're ready to move forward and we just need the ability to do that. So the three components that we feel would be important in the memorandum of standing along with anything else that comes up. But one is that we feel we would like to be designated as a stakeholder in the planning process, particularly or actually exclusively related to the recreation part of it. And in other words, we're not, we feel that we have a bigger stake in this than just any other organization that might want to use the land for something. We are, the other thing we're asking for is a short-term lease, probably two to four years that would allow us to lease a part of the existing building that is presently empty. And some land outside of that in order for us to get some activity started up there. And I think everyone recognizes that it would be good for the city, for residents to start seeing things happening up there. And so this is part of something that we can help contribute to what the city is doing. We would also like to have kind of a relocation clause because we understand that the final site plan may not have the recreation facilities where the present building is. So we would want to have some understanding of what would happen if we were to relocate if that ends up not being the end site. And the third thing that we're interested in is something that we're calling an acreage commitment. And this is something we need in order to get grant, federal grants, state grants and commercial loans which are all part of what we need to finance the project. So once we are able to get a site control, we can get access to those funds. Without site control, we can't get access to that. And there's a number of things that are considered site control and one of them is a long-term lease. And we've talked to the commercial banks and they've told us that a acreage commitment which basically says that the city of Montpelier, assuming that they go ahead with a recreational component will allocate some land to the hub for a long-term lease and that would give us what we need to get the loans and the grants that we need to apply for. We're saying three to six acres. That, you know, we probably need a minimum of three but if we had six that would give us more flexibility. And I think I'm gonna let some other members of the board give you a little bit more information and then we would ask for a resolution to move forward with authorizing the city administration to sign a memorandum of understanding. Before you go there. Yes. I had a question before you disappear. Sure. And you said three points, but I listed them as four. One was the designated stakeholder, two was a short-term lease, three was a relocation clause and four was an acreage commitment. I'm sorry, the relocation clause would be part of the short-term lease because we would be investing money in retrofitting the existing building and putting up some outdoor activities. And if we end up being told that's not where it's going to be, we would wanna have some clause in there that would identify what happens then. Okay, so it's a subset. Okay. Thank you. So I'm gonna ask John Radle who's been active in this program for a long time. Thank you so much. Yeah, that site plan would be great. Yeah. I'm John Ray Hill. I'm a tennis player. It got involved in this when our first in fitness was sold and our courts went from four to three. So. Four to one. Excuse me. Four to one. Thank you, Nat. This is a site plan that shows this amazing site and congratulations city for now having possession. The bottom of this, you can see the parking lot and the white thing is the Elks building. And so you get a sense of how much sort of half of it's covered by open field that used to be the golf course and then the other wooded areas are more sloped. We got involved in this because we were looking for a place to replace the four court facility, Sports Barn. And this city properties who owned this was amenable to leasing us the building and then doing a building Sports Barn next door and the parking is right there and it was gonna be a pretty straightforward arrangement. What developed was they decided then not to do golf and it's like, wow, what, look at this amazing open land that's flat and all kinds of athletic groups approach this disc golf, capital soccer. There's a lot of interest in a practice golf where all of a sudden interested in getting involved with the hub to utilize this. And one of the things that we get excited about and this is where Ethan said that the sum is greater than the, or why does that work? The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. We really felt that by having other multiple sports there including some common facilities like daycare and as you might know, the Elks Club had a restaurant there and that the previous owners were looking to lease it and we've been in conversation with three penny to use that restaurant. And we're thinking that nothing is better than if it's accompanied by food and the ability to get a sandwich or a beer. So that was a really important part of this, something that's bigger than just a single place to have a single activity. When the city decided to buy it, we buy the property. Well, I should say that we presented to the city where we were in this and we were kind of surprised that they had some plans for tenants facility and at the rec field and I think they were surprised to see how nice this site was and what the potential was and we sort of agreed on this public-private partnership and agreed that we weren't gonna duplicate facilities and that non-tax payer funded stuff was probably an advantage and had some great conversations about the possibilities. Next slide Cameron. This was an image we gave because we're fundraising for this to pay for this and on the left is the Elks building and then the right is the new sports barn. At the time, this would include this gallery and a restaurant and game rooms and locker rooms, daycare, virtual golf and all those things are still possible. This rendering is obviously out of date because we understand that the and really support this master planning process that location might change and what we're looking for really is a commitment to the concept, not the specifics. So that just gives you a little background on how we got here and we are excited about the prospect of moving ahead in cooperation with the city and this partnership. Hi, I'm Nat Winthrop. I'm vice chair of the hub, 40 year resident of Montpelier and I have two kids and four grandkids who are also Montpelier residents. What follows is a description of the hub's short and long-term vision for the proposed public nonprofit partnership with the city. The two parties to the partnership will be independent and will operate on parallel tracks on our respective timetables. As John just described, the hub has been formulating plans since 2020 to create a nonprofit membership based indoor, outdoor, social and recreational center on the grounds of the former Elks Club property. In discussions with the city administration over the past several months, it became clear that a collaborative effort could create an exciting synergy that would offer a wider range of facilities than either entity could offer on its own. If the city has recognized that it will see substantial benefit from the hubs investing over $3 million to create its complimentary cluster of recreational amenities contiguous, presumably contiguous with the city's recreational facilities. In March of this year, with the consent of the city administration, we applied for a three-year grant from the National Life of Vermont Foundation for a total of $75,000 from 2022 to 2024. We were granted that amount. A centerpiece of this grant was to create a new childcare facility, presumably to be run by the city. Also in March, we met with the staff of the Vermont Community Loan Fund, who gave us a quote letter of intent for a fixed 5% interest loan of up to $400,000. We've kept in touch and this offer is good, but only through next month, only through August of this year, after that the increase. Over the past nine months, we've explored the feasibility of installing two to three indoor virtual golf simulators in the existing building. This technology enables users to play digital versions of famous golf courses like Pebble Beach and Seino Andrews and also indoor golf practice and teaching environment. We've consulted with the golf pro at the Berry Country Club, who confirmed that there is vigorous demand for such a facility and who fully supports our plans. But we also believe it is very important for the hub to be the first in the area to open such a facility, ideally in time for the upcoming winter to preserve our first to market advantage. We've also had multiple discussions with Wes Hamilton of Three Penny Taproom, as John mentioned, and he has expressed strong interest in helping to renovate and then operate on a phased in basis, the restaurant and bar in the building that will be open to the public. Three Penny has an immediate need for a large prep kitchen and would like to host special occasions to include live music events. And Wes would be happy to talk to any of you. The hub is prepared to initiate starting renovations to the existing clubhouse building and creating limited adjacent outdoor recreational facilities as early next month or September. This is a floor plan of the existing building and it's not actually empty it has three tenants who are on the right side of the screen. There's a woodworking shop, prevent child abuse, Vermont, the nonprofit is in there and existing preschool program run by the Waldorf School. So what we are proposing in terms of this short term lease is actually just for the left-hand part of the building and the restaurant and bar are at the top left and the dark blue it would be outdoor seasonal patio seating. Okay, many details concerning finance, construction maintenance and operation of the property and facility still need to be worked out. The hub board will continue to cooperate in good faith with the city through hub representation at meetings with managers, planners and consultants and at public meetings as needed. After the proposed, sorry. After the proposed two to three year short term renewable lease runs its course or at a point that Ethan alluded to earlier than that if the city and its consultants determine the preferred location for both the hub facilities and the city's new recreational facilities whichever comes first, the hub's expectation is that we will negotiate a long-term lease 25 years plus with the city that will give us site control which we need to be eligible for long-term bank loans and large public sector grants. Okay, the last slide please Cameron. These are the advantages that we see to the city to approve this memorandum of understanding and short-term lease. I won't bother reading all of them but I wanna stress the last three bullets on here to provide families with middle and high school kids with a safe place that they can go after school transportation provided and hang out and learn sports related skills if they so choose. So a big youth component provide the city with a short to midterm facility for childcare. And lastly, take advantage of the opportunity to bring in the three penny tap room as a flagship tenant on the property with a note that they are not able to wait two to three years. So they would find a different satellite location but they really are seriously interested in this one and are prepared to be flexible. The fourth bullet point there has to do with the short-term timetable ensure that the city has the opportunity to create, thank you, synergetic public-private recreational complex with private and public funds. And then we note this opportunity may be lost if the hub is unable to soon get a commitment the commitment that we need to proceed with our project. And that largely has to do with the Vermont Community Loan Fund and the letter of intent which expires at the end of August. That's it for me. Go ahead, Donna. And then I want to frame up this discussion a little bit. Yeah, it's a clarifying question. Yeah, for sure, go ahead. You mentioned like the community fund and that we have this due date of August. Is that due date just for the short-term lease? Because you also mentioned about needing a long-term commitment, but I wasn't sure of the date of the long-term commitment. Ethan, you may want to chime in here. Are they synonymous? Are they together? They could be together, it's separate. But it's the short-term and for the long-term we need the site control for the financing. Is that also an August date? No. Okay. That's when the city gets to the point in your planning process where it has identified the best site for both the city and the HUD's recreational facilities. We can certainly start once we have that commitment we can start applying for grants, but until we have that we can't apply. Ethan, just to interrupt, I want to make sure that people at home can hear you as well. So just for future comments if you, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not important right now, it's okay. Right, so when thinking about this conversation, I do want to avoid like negotiating by committee. All right, like I don't think that's, so I think we can boil this down to, should we or should we not move forward with some particular elements of this if we can avoid the conversation about the details, I think that's best left to actually negotiating, which is not here. So the central question for me is about the short-term lease, knowing that we haven't gone through the public process yet, and that is gonna be really important for the future of this space. And I certainly want to honor that process and because it may come out that, we just want to do housing, that's certainly possible. Or to what degree are people interested in recreation or whatnot? So given that we want to honor the public process, do we want to make, how comfortable are we moving forward with some of these different elements? And the central one for me starts anyway with the short-term lease. Are we okay moving forward with the short-term lease while we wait for the public process to continue? Yes, kind of thumbs up from Donna. Okay. I thought you were just getting a good sense of something. Well, fair enough. Yeah. I think, short-term being the key word in this, but I'm actually feeling very optimistic about the way the discussion is going. I see it sort of as a courtship, like dipping the toe in, right? And what I liked about today is it feels like, and staff I think is doing great work with the hub, that there's a more clear delineation between, what is the city doing? What is the hub doing? Because a lot of concerns you get, ah, are we privatizing state functions? It's clear we're not here. And there's a commitment to some of our priorities, like childcare. I've been talking to people, we're paying like $45,000 in childcare. If we can relieve some of that right off the bat, that's a beautiful thing. It doesn't really change the footprint of the current space. And I see there's a constituent on there who's very concerned about the wildlife habitat. And I think that does need to really have a deep dive and look at that. But what this is won't affect it. And we can look at transportation options for the folks who would be using this as the interim, as a trial basis to see how that would work for the whole Kidd and Kaboodle. But no, I like the direction this is going. Other thoughts on Jack? Okay. Thank you. Without, you should rule me out of order if you think I'm talking about too many details. But I wanna, I have some questions about what you're thinking is about this. Since the artist's rendering that you showed us included what I think was the tennis barn there. If we, at this point, if we agree to the short-term lease for the property, would you plan to go ahead and build the, okay, that's not feasible on a short-term basis. Okay. That's right. As John said, that rendering is out of date. That was when we were still talking to city properties, the former owners. Sure, but the way you showed us, that's interior to the building, the restaurant and the ultra sedentary golf program would be part of what you would do on a short-term basis. Yes. Okay, thanks. Okay, other thoughts, Carrie? Yeah, thank you for providing all this information. I have, I'm a little bit later to this process than some of the other city councilors since I just came on board in March. So I've been trying to play catch up a little bit. And I appreciate getting the level of detail about what you would like to see that I've been wondering about that. So thank you for that. I do feel it's very important for us to honor the public process that we laid out. We approved a very clear, very specific RFP to hire somebody to carry out this planning and implementation procedure. And I'm very happy with the thought that was put into that, the work that was put into that. It states in there very clearly that the process needs to be driven by public input. And certainly what I have heard a lot since before the election, as well as after the election is a sense from people in the public feeling like decisions are being made behind closed doors without the opportunity for public engagement. And I know that in the past couple of months the city has been making a really tremendous effort to try to counter that. And I really appreciate that. I would feel that deciding now to lease part of that property before we have gone through that planning process would really undermine our previous efforts to plan what to do with this property based on public input. So I would not be in favor of a short-term lease at this point, whoever it was who was asking. And that's not a reflection on the kind of work that the hub wants to do or it's not an indication of my thoughts about what future relationship we might have with the hub. But I just don't feel like now is the time for that. Okay, Donna. I guess I like the aspect of having the building that exists being used and that tenants for if you count the woodworking. And I like that aspect on the short-term. I don't know about how quick the long-term but I don't feel that violates whatever we're gonna do with the public. That's just a different perspective. So as long as it's staying within that same footprint I'm very comfortable with it. Yes, go ahead. You should know that there are tenants there currently. Yes. So it's in half of that building. So that's gonna be set for a couple of years anyway. Okay, Jennifer, go ahead. Tend to agree with Carrie on this. I've heard from a lot of constituents along those same lines. And I'm not sure how comfortable I am about rushing into something. When we haven't really talked about what to do with that property. And I understand that they're under a timeline. So it makes it really complicated. But I feel like we need to really honor that process of involving the community just because it's been a very long, long process and a lot of conversations thus far. And I would just hate to just throw that by the wayside as it were. Thank you. Jack. Thanks. I'm a little bit torn about this. I clearly the only part of this that I really feel would be any work worth even discussing at this point is the is a short-term lease. We clear none of the other things really strike me as something that we should do until the completion of the public planning process for the real estate. The question in my mind is what's it worth it to the city to say, well, we, this is an asset that we now own. We have the potential to generate some revenue from that asset for the next two or three years while the public process is going on. What's that worth? And balancing that against what Kerry and Jennifer have expressed, which I share, which is that we need to be very clear with the public that anything we do with this land is being driven by the needs and wishes of our constituents. And so that's where I am. Go ahead and even lease the building at this point, but I'm not 100% know on that. As far as the other longer-term things are concerned, I don't think see how we can possibly do that at where we are standing right now. So one, okay, go ahead now, yeah. I just respect, I mean, we're very respectful public input process and feel it's essential, not just important, but essential. Remind people that the council voted on November 17th to have the city go ahead and explore this public nonprofit partnership idea and we've been meeting consistently with the city over the past ever since then, over the past eight months. Also that the voters approved the ballot item which explicitly mentioned recreation as one of the three that would be the focus of the property. Thank you. Carrie, go ahead. In trying to get myself up to speed on this, I did some digging through old city council minutes and watching the video of the November 17th meeting to try to get a sense of what did happen. And it's not accurate to say that city council voted on anything. There was no vote at all, there was a discussion and there was a sort of a general asking, the city staff was asking for direction from council about what to explore and what it looked like to me from watching the video was that the council was presented with three basic options, renovate the existing building, build something new down at the rec field or work with the hub to build something new. And the direction that the informal direction that the city council gave was explore something new, don't spend time exploring, renovating the existing building. And so that was instructive for me to understand that we had kind of given a go ahead to look into this more and to continue to explore these options and that staff said they would come back with updates for us which has been happening, but it's not quite the same as the council decided to pursue a public-private partnership. So I just wanna say that I also wanna say that I am still completely in the dark about what a public-private partnership would look like between the city and the hub, which is not a criticism and not to say that I know there's been a lot of thought about it, but what I hear a lot about is what the hub wants to do and not so much about the partnership between the two. And I'm very interested in having those conversations and it may be that a partnership, I mean, it could look lots of different ways. It may simply be that the city leases property to the hub and the hub does their thing or it could be any number of other things, but I don't have any clear sense of that vision. And so I would be unwilling to embark on a path that commits us to that kind of partnership without having a clearer idea of what it might actually be. Well, thank you for that clarification. I had forgotten that, but rings true in my memory. Yeah, I mean, we don't need to use the word partnership. It was actually Cameron who originally introduced that term. We can call it a collaboration. We can call it landlord tenant. If it is a partnership, we are a very minor partner. You know, we're talking about three to six acres out of 130 something acres. So X, we can, and we should stop calling it Elk's Club property. I mean, we need to work on terminology. That's fair. Donna, go ahead. I do remember that it was a consensus, but I did feel it was a consensus to move forward. And I do want more private public partnerships, except with what I could call integrity of intent until you make those agreements. But when particularly Cameron talked about, and Bill came back about how we could supplement one another, maybe the city would do these courses and maybe the hub would do that. And I mean, I see public partnerships in that land with development and it may not just housing. I mean, I just see, I want more of that because that's how we're going to stretch our talents and our dollars. And it doesn't reduce what I feel is public input. I think it maximizes, it gets us out of our little preconceived notions. And I feel that designating them as stakeholders, I could do that. I could do the short-term lease. I could do relocation clause. Maybe we'll put you in the back five acres. No, and I could even the three to five acres of commitment. I mean, I feel that that's a positive thing because you have three, you have four table legs but you got to move one of them and to have that land sit there dormant or maybe have half of the building with our three tenants. Just doesn't see, it's viable. It doesn't seem energy. I want energy in that place. And I may be definitely seems like maybe a minority but I don't see any kind of forward motion with you at this level with the things you've asked counter to public input at all. So that's a different perspective. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I do want to go to Peter Kilman since you've got your hand raised, go ahead. I think of the last two things that were said are very interesting, Donna and Kerry. What if we started the public input process right now with a series of public charats where you bring in the public to help define what a public private collaboration with respect to the recreation part of this would be. There's no reason why that couldn't really be done. And I think that the hub people have a good point. You already have some tenants. So, and you're not going to be getting rid of them at any time soon. So that the addition of a tenant in the footprint that already exists with an understanding that they could be moved out of that really if the public were engaged in that process very quickly. I think most members of the public would understand that that's a good deal. I think you guys are absolutely right, Kerry and Jennifer and Jack to say we've got to honor that public process. But why don't we do it? Let's do it now. Thank you. Thank you. Well, so on the, so I have a couple of thoughts. One is, so we're hiring someone to do that process. So I don't necessarily see us shorting that process as yet, but I would say, I think you raise a good point that that space already has tenants in it. We're not taking them out. We're making some money off of that. I am comfortable moving forward with a short term lease with the understanding that it's a short term and we're going to let the public process move forward and see what it says and acknowledge that it could just be a short term lease just depending, but anyway, that's where I'm at just so you know. But yeah, other thoughts. The alternative too is that we haven't heard from Lauren and that we could table this and wait till we've got Lauren back with us. That might also give you some more time to chew on this and be comfortable one way or the other. Just putting that out there. What are folks preferences? Yeah, Jack. I'm not willing to decide anything tonight. I am happy to keep the discussion going. Including putting this on for another meeting with maybe a little more clarity for the public of what's being discussed. So people who have concerns, and I know I've heard from some people who are just totally against a private entity being ensconced in this property or operating a private facility on this property. I think having more clarity on what is gonna be discussed for a future agenda seems like a good plan to me. Okay, and so to be fair, I did use the word table but there's no motion actually. So there's nothing technically to table but we could put it on a future agenda. I just want to check in. David Delcore, I saw your hand. I don't know if you have a question or a comment. Just want to make sure that... Just so I'm clear is what's being proposed one short-term lease? And if three penny were to be a tenant that they would be subleasing from the hub or is it two separate short-term leases? It's just unclear to me. And if there's an answer to that, I'd like to hear it. Great. I didn't catch the exact question but what I was gonna say anyway is there were existing tenants that had leases, existing leases when we took over the building and we told them that we would honor their existing leases till conclusion that we were not making any commitments about what happened beyond those leases but that we would not kick them all out on closing day either because we didn't have immediate use of the building. We might also consider renewing it but we didn't. So that was the commitment. We had, city hasn't gone in leased space to anybody. We've taken on leases. Just want to make that clear. And I think to further answer David's question that the discussion right now is really just about a potential short-term lease with the hub. Correct. Right. Yes, our assumption is that we would sublet to three penny but that's to be decided later between if the council approved some sort of motion. Okay. If the council doesn't approve a motion next month if not now, I've got to say that our, you know, I emphasize the Vermont Community Loan Fund letter of intent and their 5% willingness and that has to do with the current footprint the current building and very limited contiguous outdoor facilities. If that goes by the wayside, the hub board has already started to discuss the possibility of looking for a different place and basically starting all over again. So that's a very real possibility and I would just emphasize the synergy that we think is a mutual vision between the city and the hub for, you know, what could be possible in terms of recreation. Well, thank you. Yes, Carrie. Yeah, I'm very sympathetic to that and really understand your need to move relatively quickly and not necessarily on the same timeline as the city. And I spoke very strongly about honoring that public process and I stand by that but I would say that if we were going to continue this conversation and perhaps make a decision to do things a bit differently I would find it extremely helpful and I think a lot of people in the public would find it helpful if you would provide specifics of what you're asking for in a form that is accessible to the public more easily than watching the video of this meeting. So you've given us some things that you would like to see in a short-term lease and verbally it would be just so helpful to have that in writing if you were willing to do that. Just like to comment on that. My hand isn't shining too brightly on the... We would be happy to throw out a lot of different ideas of what might happen. What we're asking the council to do is to authorize the administration to negotiate those details with us rather than trying to negotiate them publicly. And that I think is sort of standard practice in these things. If we're talking about what would the partnership look like? We have a lot of ideas. We've talked with Bill and Cameron and Mike Miller and all the staff. They're all ideas. What would actually come out of it has to be settled. And I don't think that could be settled in a public forum. Ideas can come up. We come up with a a Memorandum of Understanding that both parties can live with. We have ideas of what that could look like. Those are our ideas, as you point out. We're not here to... And most of the ideas we have, we've talked to Bill and Cameron about already and we pretty much have a clear understanding of what it is. There may be details that we need to work out. We would be very happy to talk more about what we hope the hub would become and do a PR campaign around that if that is important. But the whole process is the whole process of making a... I don't think a public-private partnership is a black box. It's pretty clear. A public-private partnership is private component and a public component. And how that's broken out in the partnership. In this case, to make it very simple, I tried to outline it by saying that we have identified what the recreational needs are in the community together with the city administration. We will divide up who will do what, who will create it, who will operate it and who will maintain it. And we have ideas of all of those things. But that hasn't been signed off on yet. So we can do a charrette as was being proposed and the public can get involved in throwing additional ideas out. And we talk about who creates it, who operates that we're very open to. But without knowing that this is actually going to happen on that property, that's a lot of our... We're a volunteer board, none of us are paid. We don't have a staff. So it's all of our efforts and resources and time that we're putting into making this happen. And in asking the council to give the administration permission to negotiate a memorandum of understanding with us, we're saying we need something more than just talking about it. We need something that A, we can take to get the funds that we need, that we are going to invest in that property and we need certainty. We need to know that the efforts that we're making is going to lead to something. And that's kind of where we are. And we're not separating the recreational needs of the community from what we're trying to do. We're trying to meet those needs and the city is trying to meet those needs. Both of those have been identified as important needs. So I understand that there's a lot of unknowns, but those don't become known until we have an understanding of what's going to happen. I mean, a lot of that, it just remains unclear until we have some certainty about, are we going to actually have a place we can build this? And that's where we are. I want to go to Jennifer and then Donna, yes. Yeah, thank you, Mayor Watson. I guess my hesitance is, we keep talking about the recreation needs of the community and from the emails I've received and from my neighbors and my own family, tennis and golf are not the recreation needs that are on the top of our list right now. And so I would like to have deeper conversations about what else besides golf and a sports bar and tennis would be available if people were having a membership and if this moved forward, I would feel better knowing that there would be more than just those two options because for people in my district and where I live, that's not a priority for them. Whereas swimming and exercise classes and other stuff like that that we're not able to access at the current rec center, those are the things that I'm being asked by my constituents. So something to think about, I guess. Yeah, thank you. I'm going to go to Donna and then I see your hand, Daniela Boyzen. Oh, one of the pieces Jennifer, you may not have gotten that came in a late attachment mentions a different variety of things that you might want to look at. But what I really wanted to talk about was when Bar Hill, thanks to Jesse Baker, spent a lot of time thanks to our commitment to give her the time to get Bar Hill here, all we were really thinking about is we had somebody who's going to use water and give us jobs. And look what a social service center that has become. Who would have thought? I'm Barry Street. And that's what I'm looking at. I'm looking at hosts. I can't say that word, energy. So centigrade. Thank you. It really to step back and I just, I got a little pinch when people keep saying I want to honor public input. It isn't that I'm not honoring public input. I just see it as a role that's separate from a tenant in this building. And I see it as building a partnership of only plus energy that I've seen coming out of the hub just like we saw with Bar Hill plus energy. So I'd like people just to sort of step out of front porch form discussions and just think, you know, if you had somebody walking up the street and say we've got $3 million, we're going to put in a land that's going to compliment what you're doing. We're going to work with you to make sure we don't duplicate. I think that's cool. I just, I think it's cool. Fair enough. Yeah, Daniel Boyzen. Thanks Mayor Watson and the rest of the city council, just to make sure people are aware, I am a board member of the hub. I'm also the president of the Undernover Nordic Ski Club and a local advocate of recreation that's not both works. I don't play tennis and I'm under 50 and I'm on the board of the hub. So I guess that makes me unique. Anyway, I wanted to just advocate and respond to councilor Martin's statements on what we were looking at for the hub. This is one component of a larger recreation facility for sure. I mean, and swimming and indoor sports and those sorts of classes and activities are clearly part of that picture. But here we have a nearly ready-made component of a larger recreation facility that's ready to hit the ground. And I think if we delay, we're gonna lose it. We're going to lose that opportunity and it's gonna be down the street and it's not gonna be part of this development. And I think that that would be a real shame. And as I said, I advocate for the cross-entry suite. We've been doing the grooming up at the golf course and I believe the community has been extremely supportive of that activity. For free, it's been a great thing, a great partnership with the city, within our club. And I really think that those sorts of arrangements are crucial to the ongoing recreational use of this property and it clearly has benefits to the future residential use of that property and open space for that matter, maintaining a good open space and one that is used in a passive way. I think that there's just a lot of synergies there as Councilor Bate had pointed out. So I mean, I have a lot of ideas for future use of the property and I just want to make sure that the Council is aware of some of the timeliness on this. I don't believe it's a big ask to enter the MOA on this, on this issue. There are certainly details to Suss out later. And with the ask of even a three to six acre commitment that we're talking, that's 4% of the overall property. So it's really not that big a big an ask. So I really wish you, as we enter this discussion to really consider strongly that this is a very vital partnership for this success of this project. Thank you. Yeah. So I'm also still in this place where I feel like we ought to be earning some further income from this asset but I also just see that we might not be at a place where we can make a decision tonight. Is that, I just want to check in with you, Jack. That's still where you're at. Okay. So I guess what I would, what I think probably makes no sense is to put this on another future agenda item if that's okay with you. Unless, yeah. We need to be the very next meeting, wouldn't it, our first meeting in August? August 24 is our next meeting. I don't know that it has to be the next one. Okay. As far as we're concerned, it does have to be the next one. Okay. All right. Well, I'm trying to think of what else is on that agenda but we can, we'll make it work. Yeah. And I mean, we've just spent 45 minutes plus on this. What would you want from us if it's not a draft of a short-term lease which I agree with Ethan. I don't think that's the way the process usually works. There are three existing tenants with leases. We'd be a fourth tenant. So what would you be looking to us to provide next month? Do we make another presentation that takes a half hour or whatever? I would assume the answer would be no to that, assuming that we're all up to speed on this information. Is there anything additional that would be useful that you can think of? I would say that first of all, to you folks, they're missing a council member tonight. They are missing a council member tonight. So there's a one voice at the table that's not here and I realized that can happen but if it's gonna be three, three, then you need the fourth person anyway to make a decision. So that's a practical reality. I think speaking for them and I have no sort of authority to do so, I would imagine that now that this has been more formally presented, it will be in the public guide. They have more of an opportunity to talk to people and get more input themselves and feedback. We perhaps could do some polling. We now have a new polling thing. We could try putting out some questions to the community and so have a better sense of, because the critical question here and the reason we're here, as I explained to you, is not the terms of the lease per se or is this subjugating the public process which is why I said I can't make this decision about whether it's committing anything further. I can talk to what we want about the terms of the partnership and all those things if it's what the council wants to do. But they're the stewards of the public land at this point and the public process. And so this is squarely a policy call and I suspect they want to have as much comfort with whatever they decide before they do it. And you've been clear about what your needs are. And I don't know, I mean, it's up to you. You can represent yourselves however you choose to, but... Yeah, go ahead. Would it be helpful to give more visuals and have three penny come to explain, you sounded like sort of understanding what might happen might be more useful to you. Is that, would that be helpful? Yeah, I'm looking at... No, I have a pretty good idea what three penny does and would do. So, but I think it would be helpful to, I'm imagining as I'm talking with constituents about this over the next months, when I say that there's been a request for a short-term lease, they're going to ask me, well, what would they be doing there with that space? And so... It would be helpful. It would be helpful. It wouldn't be helpful to get a presentation from three penny, but it would be helpful to have some clear specifics that you're hoping to sublet to three penny. You're gonna have this visual golf. Virtual golf. Virtual golf, sorry. And those are the only specifics that I have heard. So if there are other specifics, that would be great. If not, that's fine, but to be able to answer those questions. So that would be helpful. It would be helpful. Although, please don't bring three penny in for a presentation about running a bar. Maybe you don't mind. Okay, so for now to be continued, I think actually for that next meeting, it probably, I know I said, we were all here, we don't need anything further, but it probably wouldn't hurt to give a very brief overview if there are folks from the public who are participating, who were not a part of this discussion so that they have a little bit of context. Maybe not the whole presentation again, but just some highlights or basics would be useful. Like the five or 10 minute version of the presentation probably. Yeah, yeah. Yes. Oh, Donna, go ahead. So I mean, all the material they've given it, that's gonna be posted on the website. Okay, because there's a lot of information in that already. Okay, good. Okay, well, thank you. I look forward to another conversation at our next meeting. Yeah, thank you. Okay. And yeah, thank you. Yeah. All right. So just being conscious of the time here, I do think that we should try to punch out the rest of these items. I think we can do it. 12 to 16 main. Do you wanna see that one up? Sure. Yes, so we're at our two-hour break, two hours since our break, actually two hours and 15 minutes. Are we gonna break, or are we just gonna go straight through? What would you like to do, team? Would you like to go ahead and learn? I'm the only one with the bladder. I'm happy to break if anyone else wants to break. I don't know. Sure. Okay, so about like five minutes. Five minutes? Okay, five minutes. I'll also be back at 10.34. Just, yeah, right, exactly. We're all back. All right, so 12 to 16 main. Do you wanna tee that one up? Okay, go for it. Certainly well. This has actually been on our agenda for quite some time, waiting to sort of circle back around. For those that are not totally familiar, 12 to 16 Main Street is the lot that used to be Montpelier Beverage and the place for the association for the blind and visually impaired. More recently, the Gerton Park site. It's that combination of lots. There were actually were three lots, 12, 14 and 16. So at the time the city acquired those properties for the bike path project and we all tied in with the one Taylor project, thinking that we were gonna be using all of them for where the bike path goes and where that road goes in. At some point we realized there would be some space left and as part of our negotiations to purchase Montpelier Beverage had reached in a sort of wasn't really a swap. It was gonna be two distinct purchases, but we were going to purchase their property, then they were going to purchase this, what is now the city open land plus that parking lot in the back and build a private building. And we worked that out with the state and literally the day before the closing, they pulled out of it and said, we'll just sell you the land. And so we had to do this because we were already years behind on the project. We had to complete. So we bought the land as is. I won't bore you. There was a snag with the state funding. That's all paid up. So we owned the property free and clear. And the city council had begun discussions about what to do with the land. And we'd actually together a working group which ultimately said, let's do a math, let's fit it into the downtown master plan. And we've copied you that. And ultimately the recommendation in that plan was to develop it commercially. And we were kind of heading that way, waiting until we paid off our, what we owed the state for non-transportation use of the property. And then COVID hit. And so we had other things to tend to and didn't really get around to this. So this was on our agenda to sort of address in a big picture way anyway. Then I think obviously the activity at Gertin Park really called into light that space. So we look at the choices. I've tried to list them here in the cover sheet. Basically just leave it as open space, green space. It wouldn't really cost us much of anything other than mowing it with flowers in whatever. Next step up would be to make it as sort of an open park and rec space. Maybe with a plan for structures or other amenities, maybe a public bathroom could tie it in with the Confluence Park design. So on either side of the river, obviously that would require some design costs and implementing it. Construct a city facility like a public bathroom, possibly a service center, might be something that comes out of the homelessness task force RFP. Again, that's going to have costs and implementations. We could seek proposals for the use of the land with us. Maybe just leasing it. We could ask for certain outcomes. Not sure who want to do a lot for lease, but they might, maybe they'd build a tennis barn there. And then we could seek proposals for the sale of a property with a requirement. So we could say, we'll sell you this land. You could do something, but you have to have housing. You have to have a public bathroom, et cetera. And that we would get the sale revenue. My sense is that with the more restrictions we put on the lower the, we're going to get less price because somebody has to accommodate doing these other things as part of their projects. Or we could put it out to seek open proposals. We could say, create our own scoring mechanism for the proposal, but not make it hard and fast and see what we get based on the combination of price and proposal. And obviously then we would get the sale revenue and presumably the tax revenue from whatever comes. So obviously financially, I think that's the most beneficial to the city. That's the one we as staff are recommending because that was what was consistent with the master plan that was put out a couple of years ago. Now times have changed. So we really should put this, the reason I said consider a minimum bit of 134,000 is that's what the city paid to pay off the state transportation funds over a two year period. So it would be nice to at least recruit that back at minimum, but I would assume if it's truly commercial and open lot, I'm sorry, my hunch is and I'm not an assessor or anything, but that an open lot like that in downtown La Pilar with potentially some parking attached to it might be worth a lot more than $134,000. So those are the choices. We don't have to decide tonight, but it would be nice to get at least a sense of people's thinking. Obviously the more clarity we can get, the more we can start then coming back to you with plans for how to proceed in whatever direction you like. Well, so I so appreciate all your work on this and the clear delineation of the choices. I think that helps our conversation to be clear. I know what I would like to see there, but I wanna start with all of you. What are you thinking? Which option seems best to you? Yeah. I think I'd lean strongly towards a five understanding that it might be somewhat restrictive, but I think that space is custom designed for affordable housing right near Shaw's walk in distance to everything in town here. And to really address homelessness, the best thing you can do is build housing. Public restroom, I'd be really, I don't think we have a clear picture in our heads of what that necessarily could look like. Would it be lockers, would it be showers? And if that were the case, could we run into some of the same issues as did in part given the location that it's out there? So I think we need a more strategic plan for that, but affordable housing, affordable housing. Fair enough. Other thoughts? Okay, go ahead, Jack. I think part of it depends on what our possible timeframe is and part of what I would say that is that when we talk about development of affordable housing or housing of any kind, part that requires a developer with the capacity to do it. And we know there aren't many affordable housing developers developers in the city or in the area and whether they have the capacity to do this on a timeframe given that they may be working with the Christ Church for that proposed idea. I'm just not sure how feasible it is. I think it's worth looking at. I see this sort of as a hybrid of spotting six. I do think something should be developed here. I think if some kind of combination of commercial and housing were to be developed, whether it's affordable housing or not, we need housing, every type of tenure and every price point. And so that's where I am right now. Okay, I think Carrie and then we're gonna go to Jennifer and then Dan Groberg. I would really like to see affordable housing there. And I recognize the kind of obstacles that Jack is talking about. So, I mean, maybe what I'm not sure exactly what he means by hybrid option, but that's kind of where my thinking is going as well to say that we had this very strong preference for housing to be there. Maybe there's a certain percentage of it that we would like to see as affordable housing at a minimum. And then, but too, I just, I wouldn't want the complete lack of interest in that to stop us from selling it at all. You know what I mean? So if there was just, if there's just no affordable housing developer who could come along and do that. Though I guess I'd actually like to consider the possibility that maybe we would need to just wait for that. So I guess I'm a little bit mushy about it after all, sorry. To be clear, and I know there's people waiting to speak, but just for clarity, and I thought I put in there, but you know, we also might want to consider maybe retail on the first floor with some kind of business type thing. We could say, you know, we're seeking proposals for this land. These are the highest, you know, we would weigh this over, you know, even price. These are the proposals and then see what we get. And then we can weigh the price proposal versus the public value. And like you say, then if nobody seeks to do it, I mean, obviously we would reach out to them. I'm just saying you could, we can still ask for what we want, but not necessarily require it. That's what I'm saying. Great. Go ahead, Jennifer, and then Dan, and then Donna, I assume you want to weigh in, yeah. Sorry, I'm going to just see the wet blanket tonight. I feel like we should just leave it green space. Global warming folks, we're going to run out of green space. But if green space isn't an option, I feel like a public bathroom would be aces. That's a really good spot for anybody to stop in the middle of their day and just take care of business. I'm going to just take a little prerogative here. Also my thought, I was also psyched for it to be a park or open space, a green space in downtown, though open to other thoughts as well. That's fine. Dan, go ahead. Hi, everyone. I'm Dan Kroberk. I'm the executive director of Montpilier Alive. So first of all, I want to say that Montpilier Alive is very supportive of outdoor recreation and green space. We serve on the Confluence Park Steering Committee and are working with Montpilier Parks on a work-funded project to promote the outdoor economy in Montpilier. I'll also say that you hired experts to put together a study. They put a lot of work into this, interviewing stakeholders and getting quite a significant public engagement. Actually, I thought it was a pretty well-designed process and they're recommending that the highest and best used for this property is as commercial space. There's demand for housing. As Jack mentioned, there's demand for housing at all levels and more housing makes housing more affordable even if it's market rate housing. It helps to have more housing in the market in general. And I know that there's interest from at least one developer in building a property that would have first floor retail and housing above it. There's also continued demand for commercial retail space in the downtown. So I would encourage you to heed the recommendation of your consultants and go with option five or six. I don't think that saying that it's commercial precludes you from putting some recommendations on the property. I will say that my understanding of the pro forma is that even market rate housing with none of these stipulations is a challenging project. So that's something to think about, but I would encourage you strongly to consider option five or six. Thank you. Okay, thanks. Donna, go ahead. I guess I'm going to mirror the same thing as having that building mirror what's around it that we have retail on the first floor and then upstairs housing. And I feel that it should be a nudge and not maybe an absolute. I don't want to corner ourselves. We can consider and then reject, but that would be my tendency. And I do think we need bathrooms folks on State Street. We have a bathroom with shawls. We have city hall. We have the fire department, but on State Street, there's nothing. So you're saying this might not be the place for the bathroom? It is. It's State Street that has nothing, but private restaurants. Okay. Peter Kiliman, go ahead. Hi, all again. I just want to say a couple of things. One is that that plan was done pre pandemic. That problem was that plan was done pre explosion of homelessness. I don't think we should be referring to that plan. On the other hand, I thought it was a great plan. And I love to see a commitment to the rest of it, which is the development of the river scape and access to the river. And, you know, take a look at that whole plan. This property is not going to make or break that plan. And I don't think what you do with this property should be based on that. And I do think that it is, I think Bill has a good idea. Let's put it out there. Let's tell people what we value. We value housing, affordable if possible. The idea of public facilities, it might actually be more than a bathroom, might be showers as well. But again, this piece of property isn't going to solve the whole thing. So don't, I get nervous when I hear people putting all their chips on this thing. Oh, it can do this. It can do that. It can do, it's going to do a little, let's do this and do the rest of it. The downtown needs a lot of work. Barry Street needs a lot of work. And there are plans, but I think we need to go further with those plans. You guys have been reading about, all the complaining about the Granite Street Bridge. That's part of it too. You guys, I'm sure have heard that the River Street, Main Street, Northfield Street intersection is a death trap. I mean, we don't even have lines that tell people about right turns and straight ahead and left turns. They're erased and they haven't been replaced. And I just want to say, I'm going to stop in a minute. We've got to take care of some very basic things like those intersections. And whatever you're going to do here is going to take a while. Let's take care of some of the other things as well. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Connor, did you weigh in? You did. You did. You did. That's right. OK, I'm sorry. OK, that is late. All right, so it seems like there is at least a majority of folks interested in something, which is fine. Would you like to make a motion about that? I mean, that would be the most clear. Yes, absolutely. It's their motion. Connor. I'll move we go with option five, with a strong preference to housing. Knowing that it may limit the responses. Is there a second? When you say housing, do you mean with retail and housing mix? I think it sounds like it's most realistic that we'll get bids if that's the case. So it would be consistent with our sort of downtown streets. So we'll be open to that. OK, I'll second that if you include. Carrie, so option five speaks to a requirement, but you use the word preference. So. Yeah, yeah. OK, that sounds good. Won't do a requirement, strong preference. Does that make sense? No, can you see? Got it. Wait, did you do you understand? OK, I believe that he was saying, stopped calling it option five. You wanted to put it out for proposals with a strong preference for housing with potential retail. Yeah. Number five stretch requirement, but a strong preference. OK, OK. And. No, no. So it's not no option. It's not officially number five in your second. So it's a preference for housing with retail on the first floor. Yeah, OK. And that's that you're seconding that. OK, further discussion on that option, Jennifer. No, OK. And I assume Dan's hand is still from the last time. OK, so further discussion. OK, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And opposed. Wait, just so I know, Jennifer, which way did you vote? Oh, you voted aye. You voted aye. I'm just just clarifying. OK, all right. So no roll call and and it's unanimous then. OK, all right. So all right, clarity. Yay for clarity. There it is. Awesome. OK, we're going to move on to the parklet ordinance. Anything you want to say about this? Try to be super quick because we've talked about this one before. We have we had a permanent parklet ordinance. We relaxed the standards in conjunction with the state the last couple of years because of the pandemic. What we've learned is that I believe what we've learned is that the more parklets, the more use of parking spaces isn't bad. It's a good thing. People seem to like them. And so when we talked about this earlier, the Council, you had sort of given general direction to that we should incorporate the safety standards of the prior ordinance with the more permissive standards as far as use number of spaces, et cetera, of the temporary. So that's an attempt to draft this for first reading. There is one piece that has to do specifically, ironically, with three penny because their dimensional requirements are the same. So we're going to have to add something in about a waiver. Once that happens, then they have it. We can have that for first reading if that's something you'd like. But really, I basically say is this draft ready to go for first of two readings, too? And one of the, I mean, obviously it doesn't have to go super fast. But the sooner I think that we can tell parklet people that if they want to do it next year, they could actually construct something that they can start planning for it now instead of us enacting this in February. And then, so the ones that just have the orange things or a couple of flower pots and stuff, those will not be considered safe. They will have to be constructed in a way so that if a car, that slow speed bumps into them, no one will get hurt. So would it be appropriate to make a motion that the parklet ordinance as presented move forward to first reading? Yes. That's my motion. With a direct staff to make an adjustment for a variance for occasional variances. So actually, can we talk about it real quick before we have a motion? So I just want to back up a little bit. You're really supposed to do it the opposite way, but go ahead. Yeah, it's all good. Oh, that's true. So the reason I wanted to interrupt is because so you talked about the need for adding a section about a waiver for basically diagonal parking spots. So I guess I just want to put out there that I think it would make sense if possible. We could not make it a waiver situation, but actually just build it in. For diagonal parking spots, this is the situation. It's not necessarily a waiver, which makes it a little more tentative. Because it's possible that Hugo's or some other restaurant in those spaces might want something in a diagonal parking spot. So just making it really clear I think would be helpful. And also, I think it could be useful once a restaurant. Because they are really mostly for restaurants at this point. Invest a lot of money in this. It is helpful to them to know whether or not they're going to be able to use it for multiple seasons. And so I think having some clarity around basically grandfathering, I'm not sure if there's like a better word for that. But do they need to keep reapplying every year? So yeah. Yeah, to that point. The original point of the length of time in the reapplying was because of the limits on parking spaces. There were only six spaces in the whole downtown that were allocated for this. So the idea being is maybe after a couple of years somebody else will want to do it. If that goes away, then really as long as someone's in and they're staying in and they can, I think, the only issue might be if, because we had that once, if somebody goes out of business or sells their business, can the successor take over? But as long as they're meeting these things, then I think it would be for some period of time unless they violated some sort of condition. The only appropriate thing to do next is to either second it or let it die for lack of emotion. But there's no second. But also, I was hoping that I'd interrupt the motion. But we could. What I had was that you said that was my motion. So you said you had said move to go forward with the parklet ordinance as presented. And then I think the mayor said, but before we have a motion. Right. Well, but you're, but you're right. But you're right. So I think the problem is she said that was my motion. So the motion was there. So fair enough. OK, great. Motion in second. OK. And that's the first reading. The staff may have abandoned it. I mean, that is, you will have to further. So we will put those in. Right. Yeah. But like clarity around how does it end or how does it get renewed? So the other key piece in this, just so we're putting it right up there is we have we had prior to the pandemic assessed people the cost of a parking space for the season. And we did do away with that. And this is proposing to go back to that. So if somebody were parking there full time, because we're letting them use the space and we're foregoing the parking revenue. So that would be. So I would think as long as they're paying their fee, they could keep reupping. Yeah, yeah. OK, Donna, go ahead. I want to see unlimited parklets. So at some point, they need to change over. They might need to change over. So I would say to that that we could discuss that at first reading because you'll have two readings. And I say that not to be fresh. But when we had talked about this earlier, we had mentioned not having limits on them. So that's so that was the assumption. That was the direction. So I was trying to follow it. So if you want to change that, great. I understand me. Yeah, go ahead. I understand we talked about in the ordinance, but I also don't like your eyes getting so big that you have unlimited parklets out there. That's all because I think you're pushed back at some point. Well, we can talk about it. Jack, I know that this is not the debate on the proposed ordinance or the public reading, but I just want to make a couple of comments. One is that I. I really like the idea that as a permanent thing, this puts the. Approval business in the hands of the city manager so that applicants don't have to come to city council each time they want us to do that. You know, we have a professional city management for a reason and this squarely within it, I think. The other thing has to do with the. With the period of the of the parklet. Now, a few weeks ago, I was down in Queens visiting my son and it's a he lives in a very vibrant neighborhood. And one of the things that happened during the pandemic down there was that some restaurants built structures that were enclosed and were able to be used year round. So they're open in the winter as well as in the summer. Now that raises real practical issues, including snow plowing. But I reached out to one of the downtown businesses to see whether they that would be of interest and there's at least some interest in thinking about it. So I just want to throw that out there as one thing that we might consider. When we get into the public hearings. OK. OK. All right, so there is a motion. And I don't think we need to end a second. Right. And I don't think we necessarily need to change it at this point. So further discussion. OK, all in favor, please say aye. All right. OK, it's unanimous side there online. Thank you. So that passes. And so we're on to time limits for public comments, which really the question is discussion on whether two minutes is appropriate now to be fair. So you are all I think you are all aware of this, but I don't actually interrupt people until three minutes. And at that point, it's please wrap up your comments. So functionally, it's it's three minutes. But yes. Oh, really? Because I signal you and it takes you. I mean, it usually ends up being more like 3 30. Is it really between one I could give the three and you notice it. And then you have to wait because you're trying to be polite when to interrupt them. So it's going on almost four minutes when we start with two. OK. So there's a little context there, but want to make sure that folks have adequate time to make their comments for sure. I also think that it is reasonable to. I mean, I mentioned this briefly tonight, but I think we could probably do do this in a more formal way. You know, inviting folks to submit written comments because I think that is welcome. And also, there's some other things I want to say about about that, but I'm going to hold on to them for a minute now. We did have one person who was here. Couldn't stay wrote out some comments. I'm going to read that into the record. So you wanted to share that, but other other thoughts, Jack. Thank you. I've been thinking about this. And I think that the tension we have is that we want to make sure that people have a reasonable opportunity to make their points. And we also need to have adequate time in our meetings for us to do the business that we have to with each of our meetings. And so what I came up with as an idea is to do two things. One, give each individual more time to talk. And I would set it at five minutes. And there's nothing magic about that, anything any more than there's magic about two minutes. Although I've heard a lot of people say that they think two minutes is unreasonable. Or like me, I can relate to that. But I would couple that with an aggregate time limit on the general business and appearances. And so my proposal would be up to five minutes per person, but a total of 30 minutes, no more than 30 minutes for general business and appearances, so that if there are more than six people who want to speak, that they would each be cut down so that everyone who wants to speak in general business and appearances in a given meeting would have to fill their time in, fill their comments in within 30 minutes. And I do have a written proposal that just says that. Other thoughts? Carrie. Yeah, I tend to lean towards thinking two minutes is fine. I have heard from some people that they think it's too short. And I've also heard from others who think it's adequate. I think one of the challenges that I see and that I am kind of hearing about when I talk to people about this is the distinction between a public meeting and a city council meeting that's open to the public. And so we're trying to get the work of the city council done here with opportunity for public input, for public comment, for public engagement. But it's not quite the same as a meeting of the public. And it does seem that sometimes we talk about topics that invite a lot of public engagement and people want to not just stand up and kind of make their point quickly, but they want to be part of a discussion. So I think that the Elks Club property is a great example of where people really want to, they want to talk and they want to ask questions and they want to have some back and forth. And so I'm wondering if we might think about some times when we set aside a particular meeting like we did with that one Elks Club meeting to say this is a meeting of the public and the city council will be here and we'll be listening, but then we can be much more relaxed about those kind of guidelines. But that within our formal city council meetings, I think we need to make sure that there is plenty of opportunity for public engagement which includes not allowing a few people to dominate it and take up all the time that means that other people don't get a chance to contribute. So I just want to make sure I'm understanding. So maybe we could have more meetings where I would call it like a single topic meeting, but yeah, a forum, yeah, a public forum on a particular topic to really like get into it with public comments and apparently that's going away. Okay, good. Cool, I like that idea. All right, Connor. Yeah, I think I'd leave comments. I actually think like have a longer comment could be a deterrent to public engagement and I've had people say like, look how bloody long your meetings are. You know, it's 11 o'clock right now. If you look at everybody who would have exceeded two minutes here, we'd be here another hour plus not even with general business and appearances thrown in. So I like a public forum here or there if it warrants it, you know, and we can sit back and yeah, let folks go. But I think two minutes is adequate for getting the job of the meeting done. It took Kerry's point, you know, when we have a public hearing even in our meeting like for an ordinance, I mean, that really, those are for the express purpose of hearing from the public and so maybe we would allow those to go longer, but an agenda item, you know, we can say, hey, we'll take a couple of comments, but we're here, you know, but we have a long tradition here of listening to the public and having, you know, encouraging public and you know, you have to balance it somehow. I'm interested thought to consider that for specifically public hearings that maybe the rules are more relaxed, but maybe not. I mean, in a way that those are the times often when, well, not necessarily like sometimes there are, you know, multiple people that will come for a public hearing, but sometimes the public hearings are, you know, nobody shows up. So anyway, just thinking it out loud here. I want to ask, as you make this decision, how often this has really been a problem or contested occasion with, you know, a couple of obvious exceptions, most people get to say what they want to say and they, you know, every now and then they guide tonight and say, hey, can I just have a couple more seconds and, you know, like, sure, finish up, you know? I mean, I think. Yeah. Do you want to go to Jennifer and then we'll go to Donna. Yeah, sorry, I didn't need to. I agree that I feel like two minutes is probably, two to four minutes is plenty of time. I know for me, when people go longer than that, I start to tune out because I'm ready to go onto the next thing or hear the next person and for me it's an attention span thing. It's not a people thing, but I do feel like most folks have gotten in the year that I've been doing this, most people have gotten their points across pretty quickly and I don't feel like drawing it out is going to help us getting business done. I feel like it'll just continue to track our meanings that just a little bit longer than we would hope for. Thank you. Yeah, Donna. Robert's rules of order was created in 1876 because they were trying to balance some order from the group's process of getting something done and the individual expression. And so council meetings, I'm sorry folks, I want to hear your opinions. I want to have time to sift through them and we're only required by open meeting law to have public comments. We do not have to allow people to talk on every single topic in the agenda. We do and that's wonderful, but I just would like to go back to the basis of we're here for council business and I'd like not to be here and be a little brain dead so late, I'd like to have more compact meetings, hear one another and have input but have it contained. But one of the problems with asking people to give us written stuff or email us or call us is that one, we don't all share our emails, we don't all enter it in the record. So I think we may need to look at that as how do we share emails or put it in the record or give it to the staff to send to us. So then they know it matters that it gets entered. That's my concern. So just want to note, I've got some ideas actually been chatting about with Peter Kiliman about how we can better incorporate written testimony into the, particularly general business and appearances. So anyway, perhaps another discussion for that but I think there's some potential there. I do want to make sure that I read this note from Mary Messier, do you know Mary? Okay, so she says I do not think two minutes is an adequate amount of time for public comment. This said in understanding that giving some limits is necessary so that meetings can move along simply at this time I feel four minutes would give persons a feeling of less pressure in presenting their views and knowing that not every person will need four minutes. People under less pressure of watching time I feel may be better able to present their views in a timely fashion. This directly relates to community involvement. Thank you. And PS this could be tried to see how it goes. So it also makes me wonder if I should be clear that when I at the beginning I'm like, oh yeah, try to keep your comments in two minutes. I don't tell people. I'm actually going to interrupt you at three and really, you know, okay. If you want it more exact, I mean, it's hard. I get involved sometimes and forget to push a button. I missed one person tonight totally because he was all mingled with presenters. And I didn't realize, oh, he's not a presenter. So I mean, if you want it more exact, I can do it. But I usually give everybody a leeway of at least about 20 seconds because I don't always see it right away. There are some places that have like our glasses or have timers. I could set a timer and it goes off and then everybody absolutely. Yep. I think our system is okay. No, I'm just saying. But I'm just saying if you want. Yeah. Oh dear. Okay, well, it seems like there's a consensus to keep it as it is right now. That's the sense I'm getting. Sorry, Jack, but there we are. Okay, great. Fair enough. All right, so we are through our business. Wow, it lists the mayor's report first. So I'm gonna go first, which is to say I'm gonna pass. Donna. Just remind people to vote August 9th. And also there's been a lot of discussion about the Berry Street two-way bike lane and just refer people to the Main Street, Berry Street bicycle and pedestrian study that is on the website. And we did that in September 2019 after we spent a year and a half and we had a lot of public input, but it was a long time ago. So people would read that, they would understand what we're trying to do with this project on Berry Street. Thank you. Carrie. Connor. I think we probably all said it in our own way, but we haven't had a meeting since the passing of Warren Kittsmiller there. And just, you know, I don't think we can say enough about his contributions to the community and just what a kind soul he was. He was a neighbor of mine. It was always a pleasure to see the dog Bodey and just the impact he made on people's lives. So I think we all share that loss collectively. Yeah. Thank you, Connor. Yeah. Jack. I will pass. Okay, John. Couple of things for just so you all know our early voting is very high overall, higher than I thought. It's about a thousand requests. I still only have volunteer needs. I sent out an email to the whole BCA. So I do need some help. Obviously these two can't, but yeah, so take a look at that. And Donna already is. So, and also I wanted to note the passing of Paul Giuliani who has been my great guy certainly helped me out plenty. And he's been a presence in the city and the community for forever. So, yeah. Thank you. And Bill. Well, John, John beat me to my punch about Paul Giuliani. He two of us attended his funeral together yesterday. And Paul not only was, you know, huge presence in the city. He was also a neighbor of mine, but he really around the state from municipal governments. He really was one of the go to people for towns and cities all over. And certainly when it came to financing, a bond financing, but really any general laws working with the league of cities and towns, testifying at the legislature, dealing with charter issues. And I always gave you an answer pretty quick. Those are the things I like about Paul. Short and sweet to the point. Yeah, heck yes, you can do that. So I will miss him personally and professionally. He was a great guy with whom I disagreed with on almost everything outside of work, but we got along famously. That's good. Well, thank you. All right, so without objection, we will adjourn 1119, whoo, we made it.