 It is 602 p.m. on Tuesday, January 3rd. I'm going to call to order this regular meeting of the Wendyski City Council. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance led by Deputy Mayor Jim Duncan. Thank you. Agenda review. Any changes to tonight's agenda? Okay. Public comments. We don't have anyone in the room. I do see one member of the public attending on Zoom. If you wish to speak about anything that's in tonight's agenda, if you can wait until we reach that, please do. If you're here for to comment on something that's not tonight's agenda, please use the chat or the raise hand feature to let us know. Okay. Seeing no public comment, we will move to the consent agenda. We have our council and liquor control board minutes from December 12. The accounts payable warrant from December 29. Here are warrants from November and December and the legislative priorities that we saw at our last meeting. I do believe there is a correction to be made to the minutes. Yes, I'd like to make a correction to consent agenda item a. There's an address correction needs to be made. It references 72 West Spring Street. It should be corrected to 72 East Allen Street. Thank you for that. Any other questions or comments on consent agenda items. Yes, okay. And Thomas you weren't here for those that meeting. So that went out separately so for item a, do I have a motion to approve the minutes with the correction as Bryn stated. Motion by Bryn second by Aurora all those in favor please say aye. Those abstaining. Thomas. Okay, so then, if there are no questions about items BC and D, do I have a motion to approve those. Second. Motion by Jim second by Bryn all those in favor please say aye. You can vote on that one Thomas. Sorry, I'm coughing I. Okay, motion carries thank you. We are on council reports. Aurora, can I start with you. All right, so there haven't been any meetings between when we last had a council meeting however next week. We have a special meeting on January 12 at 6pm of the inclusion and belonging commission. And on January, January 10, we have a regular meeting of the Council of Congress which is the central issue of the meeting. Was really about how we connected people. And. What we had reviewed previously was just the current budget presentation that ray had presented to council. So we'll have a regular meeting on January 10th at 630. Those are the main items I have. Thank you. December 15th, but we did not have enough commissioners to hold the quorum. Unfortunately, we did have a number of a good handful of residents that were interested in some of the agenda items on for discussion that evening. In particular, the ordinance changes proposed to incentivize historic preservation. So we had at least two additional community members and then a member of the planning commission attended that meeting to just review the those items with the infrastructure commissioners that were present. So there was ample interest as you know we've seen vocalized in the community about preserving our historic buildings, spaces and places and the the additional opportunities to protect those spaces beyond what is included in the ordinance. Again, there was it was just discussion the thing was put up for recommendation or further pursuit at the time. Because we have struggled to meet quorum since the off and on since the start of the fiscal year in July. We actually don't have a work plan that's been approved yet. So we've had joint two joint meetings with the finance committee in October and November and that took precedence over work plan and then we didn't have a quorum in December. We are hoping to have a review of officer roles for January at our January 19th meeting where the chair has decided that he has too much on his plate and needs to kind of step back but wants to stay involved. So that's coming up again January 19th. Another item of interest everyone is the V trans is holding a public hearing on January 12th about the double diving interchange that is in person or online it has been noticed already through our city channels and through from porch forum but please keep a look out for additional reminder notices coming up as well. Thank you. Only one update I joined Burlington Mayor Weinberger in hosting an event with our state reps and senators sharing some of the priorities from the legislative priorities that we just approved that we have been speaking out over the last couple months and tomorrow I will distribute that further to committee chairs once those are set in the legislature. Jim. Only before just a reminder that we have an off cycle housing commission meeting this month on January 9th on January 9th from 6 to 9th. So we haven't met since but will be meeting them for a longer meeting to take into housing quality and maybe potentially some charter change language. That reminded me that planning commission meets on January 12th having further discussions about incentives parking and start preservation. Thomas. Thank you. I just wanted to thank Donald Tomlanowski and everybody who donated either financially or their time to assist in getting the holiday tree and the rotary all lit up. I'm looking really pretty for everybody to enjoy. It was definitely a large effort that just regular residents for the most part excuse me undertook so really just a big thank you to everybody who's involved in that. Thank you. All right. Elaine city updates. Thank you. City updates for January 3rd 2023. As you know we're continuing the fiscal year 2024 budget meetings tonight. Community members are encouraged to be engaged in the process to see the full budget and meeting schedule. Please visit Winowski VT.gov slash FY 24. Do you have questions? Please contact us at 655-64010 or budget at Winowski VT.gov or just get in touch with me or your councillors directly. A many thanks to the public works and public safety teams over the holiday break for their work to keep our streets and sidewalks safe during the winter weather events. Remember you can sign up for overnight parking van alerts by texting Winowski to 888-777 or by visiting Winowski VT.gov slash parking. Also many thanks to our partners at Green Mountain Partner for their tremendous efforts getting our neighbors power back on across the state. If you need COVID-19 test kits they are available for free at City Hall, the library, and the senior center during regular hours. If you're interested in running for a local office on time meeting day which is March 7th 2023 the following terms are up for for election. Winowski City Councilor to your term there's two of those so two City Councilor to your term seats are available. Winowski School District Treasurer and when I say available means you can run for those. Winowski School District Treasurer one of those three-year term and two Winowski School District Trustee seats one is a three-year term and the other is a two-year term. Residents must file a consent of candidate form and petition with a minimum of 30 signatures more are encouraged by 5 p.m. on January 30th 2023 forms can also be obtained at the City Clerk's Office. Visit the City Clerk's Office at 27 West Allen Street or winowskibt.gov slash vote to get your consent of candidate form and petition sheets. You can follow your form and petition at the City Clerk's Office again at 27 West Allen Street Monday through Friday 7 30 a.m. to 4 30 p.m. If you have questions feel free to call or email the City Clerk's Office at 655-641-0 or clerk at winowskibt.gov. And finally there is that January 12th exit 16 double diamond interchange public meeting that Councilor Oakleaf just mentioned by VTRANS the Vermont Agency of Transportation. You can also attend the City Council meeting on January 9th for their presentation on this project to Winowski City Council and any members of the public who wish to attend that meeting. That's all for me. All right thank you. So we're moving into our regular items. Up first for discussion is the FY24 budget presentation for public works and capital improvement plan. Do we have Jean? There you are. And I should say for members of the public that we do invite public comment during each of these agenda items so I'll prompt you when we get there. Great thanks everyone. Happy New Year. Sorry I couldn't be there in person. So I'm going to start sharing my screen. Can you all see that okay? Yes. Great. Can you hear me okay? Yep. Yeah. Good. So this will be the public works instalments of the... Annabel do you want to minimize? Yeah. Thank you. Sorry go ahead John. Yep. So this will be the public works instalment of the FY24 budget. So we'll be covering the what we've been up to in FY23 and what we're going to be focusing on in FY24 and then we'll jump into some of the budget discussions. So this covers the annual public works operational budgets as well as the general fund capital plan budget and that does include all general fund departments. So general fund as you all know but maybe for the public any property tax revenue type departments so public safety, fire, planning, community service, those different departments. And then we'll get into the enterprise fund so that's the water fund, sewer fund and I'll touch on the parking fund capital budget and then just kind of wrap up with some emerging issues that might have budget implications down the road. And I'll pause at the end of each of these sections if you have questions or just jump in if you have a question on something. So FY23 our current year so these are the items sort of above day-to-day public works operations that we're up to. Most the council I think you're all pretty familiar with these but I'll just give a quick update on the two major infrastructure projects the Main Street and Manuski Bridge project. So as you know in 2018 we have a $23 million bond vote approval for Main Street to reconstruct that entire corridor where I think I've said this before but we are finally at the finish line for this project so the main task we've been working on is gathering all of the easements that are required along the corridor so we need a total 63 easements from each of the property owners. We are only in need of seven and they're really just one owner at this point and we're pretty confident we're going to have those so once we have all those easements in hand we can go out to bid and get some pricing on what this project will be to construct. So I expect probably next meeting your next well maybe not the ninth meeting but in January or early February we're going to be coming to you with a proposal for construction bid services and there might be some other agreements that we may have to request to move this project out to bid so we're getting close we're getting the project out to bid and you know hopefully we'll get some decent pricing for this. The other project that you're aware of is the Manuski River Bridge replacement so back in August we received 24.8 million in federal funds to replace the existing Manuski River Bridge so V-Trans is leading this project with our with our partner Burlington who owns the other owns half of the bridge so we've you know today we've really just been working on getting an owner's rep on board which is a design professional to get that process started so there's not a lot to talk about at this point but we've had some interviews with consultants and I believe V-Trans right now is is putting offers out to the the recommended consultant that the team has has chosen so just a reminder on schedule for that one so the main I think one of the big challenges for this project is that we have to be under contract with a with a contractor by September 30th 2027 it sounds like it's a long ways away but in a big project like this that'll come up pretty quick so these projects will we'll move into the next slide when we talk about FY24 focus and then I just want to highlight the other items that are called out CCRPC supported so that's our Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission so we have a lot of grant supported initiatives that we're working on with them that we've started on but they will also continue into FY24 so moving into FY24 looks pretty similar mainly because these are some big projects we're working on so it's gonna it's gonna take a few years but the scope will be hopefully much different so Main Street as mentioned will be in construction assuming we get some decent bits and then the Winooski River bridge replacement will now be on the drawing board so the other project that could be in construction is the Lot 70 City Owned Parking Garage so that's another one so we could see some pretty heavy construction this this coming summer in FY24 budget season and that also includes the VTRANS Exit 16 project that we were just talking about that they'll be coming to the next meeting as Elaine mentioned to VTRANS we'll be giving an update on that project so before I get into the or I get into the some of the budget discussion does anyone have any questions on kind of the highlights from this year and focus on next year? I have a question on the previous slide the wastewater treatment facility 20 year evaluation uh who conducts that evaluation? So that is a requirement of our our updated NIPDs permit for the plant so that was that's being that's in progress by Aldrich and Elliot a consultant we typically use for our wastewater we should be getting a report a draft report back next week on that actually. Okay and so and then one below it phase two stormwater system investigation is that permit requirement? No that one's a permit requirement it's um we've done an initial phase one and that that is that's one of the grant funded projects that RPC is helping us out with it's video inspecting all of our stormwater lines to get a sense of what condition they're in and to prioritize uh replacement work or lining work um or some point repairs so that's more of just good housekeeping type project um we we get it's an 80 percent it's paid for 80 percent by CCRPC and then it's a 20 percent cost to us. Okay great thank you. Yep okay no more questions. Moving on moving on so getting into some of the budget discussions so for FY24 we are not proposing any changes in staffing so here's a picture of our latest this is a pretty recent crew so this is like half the size this summer so we we've been doing some work and thanks to Human Resources for for helping us out but we are as of last week fully staffed up which is amazing we didn't think we would be there by this winter so for FY24 no changes in staffing um this is our organization chart we do split it into kind of two main categories of we call it our street crew and our water resources crew um granted they all work together it's pretty small team but for budgeting purposes and you know for who's doing what scope that's our breakout so for the street crew on the left side we we have six equipment operators one mechanic and one deputy director and then on the water resources side on that right side we have two wastewater treatment operators that's the EO3s that are listed there and then two distribution equipment operators so they're those are the staff that go out and maintain the sewer lines and the water lines and and exercise hydrants and clean catch basins that kind of work and then they're overseed by the utility manager and then of course the city engineer and myself are kind of split in between those two groups as we kind of touch on both of those so this is our current work chart we're not really looking to as I've mentioned add any staff or change anything for FY 24 um getting into the operation operational budgets um so level services and then I would also just you know really say that these are this is what our recommended minimums would be for um operational costs um so this is these annual operational budgets are include all the facility costs so you know utilities and maintenance for all the facilities um all the street costs the annual street costs so sidewalk repairs trees tree trimming um lighting repair grounds and then of course um these salaries and benefits for staffing this is just a slide to kind of show you where um public works lives in the overall budget so the bar graph in red shows the public works budget over the last five years so we were pretty consistently around 1.2 million um this year as you'll see we are a bit higher we're 6.87 percent higher than the FY 23 budget um but yeah we we're typically in between sort of community services and general administration in the the full general fund budget picture John if you can pause there just a second yep um what percent what portion of that um increase is attributed to um being fully staffed um there we budget for fully staffed either way so FY 23 is the budgeted fully staffed I think yeah got it not the actual correct yeah thank you thank you yeah and you can kind of see on this next slide so our year to date FY 23 and projected is is well the salary benefits line is a bit lower um or FY 23 not significantly but it's kind of it's pictured in the actuals so this is just an overview the roll-up sheet that you get in the budget book of our public works budget and it kind of compares the um the last few fiscal years so just to give you um an overview of where some of these increases are so it's um salaries and benefits is probably the main increase for FY 24 so that's mainly due to um just our union contract requirements and then going down that budget increase in that that box or the bolted points so there is a we did budget for 12k increase for road salt that's not quantity that's just the contractual rate for the same amount of road salt we typically use in the year um and then we did increase the budget by eight eight grand for contract road painting so we've as you've probably seen we have some catch-up work to do out there um a lot of it was caused by not being able being able to get materials during sort of the during covid and so now we have some additional painting work to do um this doesn't include the uh 58 000 that we currently have contracted with uh a line painting contractor that they're going to be doing in the spring so this is in addition to that so there'll be some additional crosswalks um and parking stalls and the typical line painting work um we we've also increased the tree budget by about six grand um that's mainly because of what we're seeing an actual work that we've spent um over the years so it's not you know that's just get us right sized for what we're actually spending so we're not just going over that budget thomas has a question thanks christine um john at a previous meeting a few months ago we had discussed um potentially using a new type of paint that was more expensive but would last longer does this budget include using that paint or the paint that you're currently using now yeah it would it would include it would include using the more durable paint so if we're going to have a contractor do it we would have them use the um it's either an epoxy or poly polyurea paint versus the waterborne paint that it lasts less than a season it's it's it's not very useful yep okay great thank you that's really good to know yeah and i will call out we've got one little revenue line that's kind of around the left hand side so we do collect right-of-way permits um those are curb cuts driveways anytime developer comes in that's usually 25 grand that's our one little revenue contribution that that's kind of just public works here um just to show it sort of another way this is just a the breakdown of the different categories of that budget so as you can see most of most of our public works budgets and that salary and benefits line um and then the next highest is the materials and equipment which is 21 percent um so this includes things like road salt um we spend about 77 000 a year road salt um maybe not this year depending on how this weather keeps going but that's probably the biggest um materials item in that that bucket um but also includes like building maintenance and road materials and um vehicle maintenance so um yep um just on the road salt question uh topic um do you know if all municipalities in the state are reliant on roads roads up for treating surfaces or if there's an alternative um substance use yeah for the most part everyone use road salt there are some liquid applications which is i mean it's a brine so it's um it's just salt and water it's like a 22 solution we're looking at that because that could save us um um save us some salts usage um it's it's really effective when we have weather like this where it's kind of rainy and instead of going out and laying down like road salt and it bouncing all over and then it raining going down the catch basin we could put down this this 22 percent solution and if it's lost then it's not as bad so that's one option i i have heard people say they use molasses or some other kind of funky materials but um that hasn't caught on yet yeah i uh that's that was part of what was in my the thought that i had in my head was uh for protection of um storm water and uh surface water um mitigating use of salt um is is something that's utilized out in like western washington and the seattle area um so i was curious about any cost expenses or recommendations from the department of environmental conservation about um type of treatments that are preferable for um environmental protection but um may be um cost beneficial for our interests yeah we're we are actually exploring that right now so the chinning county there's a clean water advisory committee that we sit on um and i've reached out to some of the folks there about um potentially looking at brine um application because they're what we're trying to find this might begin too much in the weeds but yes i'll leave it there we are we are exploring some options great thank you yep um before i move on to capital are there any additional questions on the public works operational budget no thanks john no never mind this is for capital never mind okay all right moving on so capital budget um so i guess first what is the capital budget um i know you all are very well aware but just i guess for the public um this is criteria that's set up in our financial policies the capital plan is a five-year look ahead um for replacing our major assets and and and performing projects so and then what is a capital asset that's covered in these thresholds here so it has to have a useful life of three or more years and then meet these financial thresholds that's in our financial policies so for f y 24 we have um right now a revenue of about 1.05 million for capital um as you can kind of see in those in this table some of those items are dedicated reserves for main street in the mires pool so that third column the 458 000 that was dedicated uh capital funding to support those two initiatives um part of that's local option tax revenue and part of it was the um percentage of the rate increase in f y 19 so um yeah i will say prior to f y 19 our capital uh fund was just those two first rows so come a long way and then um you know we've we've sort of discussed using the maximum 50 percent of the tiff funding to support the main street project as well so that might hit in f y 26 potentially if the once the debt comes into play for a main street john yeah just before you move on to debt service um i know that there has been some review of um well let me let me start um back a little bit further so in may june when the council reviewed strategic priorities um council voted on some of the preferred priorities for f y 23 and um consideration of uh the environmental components of the master plan were um towards the top of those priorities for council um and i don't see anything for capital improvements included uh you know that are proposed for f y 24 can you speak to that um say that again the environmental are you talking like energy efficiency so the master plan um calls out um for the infrastructure side of things various um energy focused and environmentally focused efforts um you know you mentioned that there's some additional funding for um the tree committee and for um some elements that that are in the master plan for that um is there any funding allocated for other um energy related benefits uh or improvements called out in the master plan yeah i would say there's probably not a specific capital project but there's elements of existing capital projects so for example um just say the main street project so there's significant storm water uh improvements in in that that corridor design um that we will have to do so we have gravel wetlands that will be incorporated into that project versus what's out there now where it's just storm water running off in the catch basins which go directly into the winewski river um that lighting will be converted to um more efficient led lighting um so i i don't think there's a specific energy or environmental project more of components of existing projects or yeah okay so that's that's new those are new lighting what about existing lighting the only other lighting that we own is in the downtown those have all been um recently re-retrofitted with leds so that would that's the only other lighting that we own currently the street lighting okay so not the parking garage that is all led lighting as well um i think that was updated and angel may have to help me with this one but it's it's not at its useful life yet no it's it's definitely within the first 10 years of its it's useful life i've heard some things differently um but i can connect with you separately on that okay great um yeah moving on to the sort of the the expense side so in general for fi 24 it's sort of business as usual um for capital there's no major projects that we're budgeting for an fi 24 or um you know new assets for fi 24 we have some vehicle replacements and uh annual street resurfacing so on the expense side we we really have two categories of expenses so there's this the debt service so that's anything that's uh financed it's usually a major cost that we want to kind of um pay off over multiple years and then there's the one time capital expenses which is usually uh the annual street resurfacing mainly or small vehicle replacements so for fi 24 um we have existing 590,709 of existing debt payment that year so roughly a little over half of our revenue is just right there um is just existing debt we're paying off and what we're proposing for f y 24 for new debt is a replacement of an existing 2012 small dump truck so an f 550 dump truck that's that's scheduled for replacement so that's a 82,000 dollar piece of equipment so that is something that we would want to try to break out over um we would we would do what's called a lease and do it over four years so that we have some capacity left in our capital budget to do some other replacement work or or fleet replacement so that's the only item we're proposing for debt service and f y 24 and that would bring the debt service up for fi 24 to 612,809 dollars John I have two questions yeah does this include in the future year maybe Angela too uh the the fire truck is that baked into the future year fleet costs yeah it is in in the budget you'll see a really detailed breakdown of all of the items um and it's not necessarily it's in the fleet for debt service not in the fleet expenses okay and then did you say this also incorporates the annual pavement resurfacing that will be on the next the next slide that's an annual cost yeah the only street resurfacing that you're going to see on this page is anything that's major reconstruction or historical debt service um I think in 2012 we repaved maybe a dozen streets using long term debt thanks yeah so this on the capital expense side so this is the one time cost no financing this is where we typically do the annual street resurfacing work um because we're doing it every year and when makes sense to to to finance that over uh multiple years for you know one project so uh for capital expenses we have the usual annual street resurfacing which I'll I'll get into more detail in the next couple slides on that and then um we do have two fleet replacements one is um annual PD cruiser replacement and then the other one is a small 2013 tractor that we're replacing you you'll see it buzzing around the downtown this time you're cleaning up the pavers um so that's that's really it for expenses and then the total again with the majority of that being annual street resurfacing is about 392,000 um one no um I you know subtracting out what the existing debt and the proposed debt in that last slide um we have about 305,000 left um but we do have some some reserve funding and because we had some savings this year in paving that will cover that additional amount so you've got to just update the the budget book that you all have um with that updated amount um actually before I go on to paving any other questions on some of the capital expenses there is a pretty detailed I didn't include it in this this presentation but there's a pretty detailed um line by line um for each category so for example like parks um that park line if you go the budget book it'll include a line for each of the parks in Manuski transportation includes paving street resurfacing sidewalks um all those items so there's a little bit there's more detail in there John I just wanted to ask if the 297 for annual street resurfacing this is still too low right like you've been recommending a higher number to actually keep up with all of our streets yeah for so for example FY 23 we did a review of um what we should be spending so Manuski we have 15.6 miles of what we call class two class three streets so those are streets we're responsible for they're not the main corridors typically you want to resurface those every 10 to 20 years so assume you're doing a mile or we should be doing a mile a year last year that would have been about 300,000 that we should have spent based on the asphalt prices so that's the other factors asphalt prices go up and down so last year was a high one um and we spent 130,000 um but some of that was we had to adjust just throw another caveat we had to adjust our paving program because the work that we're trying to do was much higher than was much more than we could afford that year so but yes looking and we looked at over the last five years and we um I can send you that graph separately on what we should have what we should be spending for that year and we were always pretty significantly under budget for what we should be spending okay thank you yeah um yeah to talk about paving a little bit more so the these are the streets we're targeting for next summer so these are um it's over in the Myers Pool Landry area so it's Audette streets Pine Street Shepard and Hall um they're in pretty poor shape so that's why the the number is much higher than you know we've we've typically done is they're you know if if you're looking at a condition of a street and you're looking at from say zero to 100 zero being worse 100 being best these are in like the 10 to 20 range they're they're in really poor shape so that requires us to do a little bit more work than the typical resurfacing um and you'll see that sort on the next slide um the other thing I'll just call out here is we have been we have been um improving the network overall so if you look at the it's called the weighted PCI so PCI is a pavement condition index um it uses that scale from zero to a hundred we try to inventory the the street network every two years with CCRPC interns um they were unfortunately tied up last year but we are going to try to get them back in town uh this summer to do another inventory of the roads um in 2016 we're at a 72 which is great but then it it dips down to 66 in 2018 so I don't know if there was some there could have been that crop of interns may have not um I don't know may may have overestimated the conditions of the roads in 2016 um but you know we we did go out and evaluate as well and they were probably around that 66 um mark but we we also have done work like Hickox tree and some we've kind of bolstered the paving program but and we're we're trying to work it back up to a 72 that's that's our goal is for the class twos and threes the the streets that we're responsible for is keep them at that 72 level and that's um that's considered uh like that's considered satisfactory for the network and then this is our entire street network um right now and it shows um our proposed paving work over the next five years so you can see um for simplicity colors green is green is good um red and purple is very poor so you can kind of see for the targeted scope and fi 24 a lot of red and purple streets over there and then we do like to try to bounce between the east side and west side of onuski so one year old d side next side we'll do the west side so for fi 25 we're proposing do some streets over on the east side um and then kind of going back up to like the pine grove area up there crescent ab of that way um one issue that we're we're trying to figure out is um so in f y 23 if you remember we did target the streets over on the the far east side uh florida afgal bernard that are shown uh they're outlined yellow over there but what we found out was that the the curbing really needs to replaced over there as well so that adds significant cost to the project um the curbing work alone for all of those streets was around four hundred thousand dollars um and we have you know we'd budget room i think 200 grand for just paving work so we're still trying to figure out how to fund that project whether it be um chasing some grants through b trans um but that is some work that we're going to have to to do uh eventually um we are also trying to do the sidewalks uh in that that area as well the sidewalks are in very poor condition um so that is um something we'll have to discuss with you all uh down the road and then just uh one of the the important things we look at with these streets is you can see this this deterioration curve so streets are a little different than like say sidewalks and other infrastructure they they don't have a linear deterioration um it's much cheaper to to um to repair them when they're in kind of satisfactory condition before they really deteriorate so what you're seeing in that curve is you want to resurface those streets before they really start hitting that down slope and it costs much more to resurface them and then you're doing like you know you're getting into full reconstruction projects once the road gets really bad so that's that's sort of the game we have to play is try to catch these roads before they get you know too far off and then it costs us a lot more to um to do that work so that's that's sort of the takeaway here um that's all I have on the capital side um I'll pause again if if you'll have any questions I'll also open it to public comment too if you're sending via zoom use the chat or raise hand feature if you have any questions but council go ahead um john about the um the roads that need curving and with the expense associated with that given the proximity um to you know surface waters within our jurisdiction is is there any potential for stormwater grants or funding yeah there there really isn't too much I mean there's you know we did um some bioretention basins like in pangrove terrace um but that it's only a small portion of curbing so it may help a small bit but um you know I think we'd only do a couple of those bump outs um two or three for one of those streets but yeah it's a good thought like that's that's where we're trying to come up with right now is curbing is such a expensive piece of this and we're trying to tie it to the sidewalks because we have to get the curbing in to really accommodate the the sidewalk installation because there basically is no curbing on a lot of these streets on this side of town like these three three or four streets in particular so we have to get the curbing in so we can put the sidewalk at the correct elevation so that's that's what we're trying to angle at for grants I saw Andrew I saw your hand was up and it went down yeah Paul can you bring him over please go forward hey everybody how's it going my name's Andrew I live on pangrove terrace and I just happened to notice uh the nice bright red for my street it's just does that mean that we'll get done in um 2024 uh Andrew unfortunately no your your street is identified like that whole quadrant is identified for resurfacing but right now we have it targeted in f y 26 I can read that correctly so um yeah unfortunately it's a couple years out okay yeah I'll tell my community members and neighbors have been talking about it so I'll let them know that's what what's on the books thanks it's in the queue at least any other questions okay all right moving on to the enterprise funds so starting with the water funds um similar to the general the public works operations this is really kind of the minimum that we should be spending so this is this budget is for operation maintenance of our distribution water system so that's our pipes hydrants valves those things um the main cost for this budget is is actually buying water so we buy our water from our portable water from Champlain water district that is um right around 52 percent of this entire budget and we do have a capital budget with this fund it includes things like water main replacements and you'll see a water tower allocations and then any fleet replacements so for f y 24 we are proposing a pretty large increase um the rate we're proposing is 52 dollars and two cents so that's eight dollars and four cents over f y 23 or 18 increase um for reference for an estimated three bedroom household usage um that 2200 cubic feet is per quarter that's about five dollars six bucks a month additional to that household or um 18 dollars per quarter per billing quarter John what what is the percent increase of the Champlain water district rate uh I can't remember offhand one more than we were expecting though yeah yeah I'm just trying to understand what is under an 18 percent increase for this fund yeah I'll I can go through that for you okay yeah so here is um here's a comparison budget so for we're about a hundred seventeen thousand dollars above the f y 23 budget um 86 thousand dollars of that is the Champlain water district rate increase so it's not only rate increase it's it's um the amount that we're using so we we look at historically how much um usage we have over the over the years and then so that that changes as well um so it is 86 thousand dollars of this this increase of the 117 thousand and then their rate increase for us um going into f y 24 is going to be nine and a half percent yeah and then the other piece of this increase which is about 34 000 is the contract salaries and benefits um for those staff and then the remainder is is the cost of the increased cost of materials mainly you know two percent increases for a lot of the the materials that we're using I'll show that so this is again just an overview of categorically what that budget looks like 52 percent so 81 percent of this budget is is water purchase and our salary and benefits cost so that's where the majority of it is um I'm trying to wrap my head around this the amount of water is costing more because of a nine and a half percent rate increase but then you're buying more volume but like in in theory the customer rate would only be impacted by that by nine and a half percent because if I'm using more water I'm just paying for more water not like a higher rate on top of more water we've also not been budgeting any sort of capital budget other than existing debt service for the water fund for several years now I thought we got both water and wastewater tracking towards this year being in a healthy position where we were rebuilding that reserve and we could do like a more incremental rate increase and then there was a nine and a half percent CWD rate increase on top of us being able to build in that incremental increase to to establish a capital plan again I guess we're looking at 18 percent increase for users only half of that is CWD rates and so the other half you're saying is to back the is inflation and then building capital reserves well we're not we're not actually adding we're not building any capital reserves this is just a balanced budget to pay for the existing capital so there's no there's no money going to additional capital reserves it's just paying off existing capital debt in this in this budget so we are balanced at least so it's paying in this you'll see in this chart it's paying for that 83,474 of existing debt but there's no new capital proposed in FY24 okay that does not align with my recollection but I will follow up on that yeah and I'm happy I'll send along the the detail info that might be helpful John staying on this a little bit longer what water conservation efforts has the city pursued um internally or just in general like internally we we haven't pursued any that I'm aware of besides when we replace equipment it's always going to be you know a higher efficiency piece of equipment um we also have been doing leak detection program to try and mitigate loss in system we do a loss in system calculation every quarter to make sure that we're billing all the water that CWD is invoicing us for yeah thanks Angel we we do partner with USDA rural waters um they they came to town this year to do a pretty uh a city-wide inventory of leak detection um I will say talking with some of the developers a lot of you know a lot of the new form-based code type buildings those are typically low fixtures that are in those new new buildings um so that is one benefit isn't that part of energy code requirements yep yeah so it's not necessarily any efforts that the city is pursuing correct um um so it feels uh reactive um to right it just feels like a reactive um mechanism to you know move forward but upgrade only as needed rather than being proactive saying where can we find efficiencies where can we implement reductions so that we're saving the amount of water saving on the amount of water purchased and the costs related to it just an observation Elaine has sorry Elaine go ahead I'm just thinking if I understand you correctly Brenda um can you hear me okay yeah we can so it seems to me that most of this reduction would have to come from residents and so at least for this year we wouldn't be able to budget for that because we couldn't predict uh what how much they could conserve water John is that accurate that most of the reduction in use would have to come from residential customers or customers rather rather than the interventions there's pretty limited usage on the city side I mean we're we're mainly office space um the treatment plant really doesn't use much in the way of water service so it's it's yeah it's mainly on the residential side and any any savings that we have on what we're buying for the water we're also going to take the hit on the revenue side because we do pay ourselves for water as well um it would be great to put numbers to the purchase what percent goes um is attributed to the city what percent is uh attributed to uh uh customers not non-city users yep yeah that's easy to do but if I understand this I mean we're changing the volume only matters if you then can cut a position because you have enough less demand to necessitate your people running the system to the point that was made originally like if you buy a thousand gallons or you buy two thousand gallons the rate stays the same the only change that we can't change the purchase price from CWD the only thing we can change is I understand it's a big cost driver fears of salaries and benefits of these people so whatever efficiency we can realize would have to result in fewer people working in the waterfront am I missing something here to me it doesn't seem a volume question it's a it's a cost to deliver the whole system question am I wrong I think you're right unless the city has a big water mill right it's that was a municipal use that could be out of position that we could and and city usage would still impact the revenues of this budget right yeah we could cut city service enough to eliminate a position or city use enough to eliminate a position that we could see a change in the water rate but otherwise we start to pay the same rate we're just paying less and getting less yeah yeah so it seems like unless there's a step function where we can get rid of a person which I'm not suggesting but I think that's the only way to change this formula there's not very many people who work for this department in fact no person 100% comes out of this department it's only increments of people I think we have the equivalent of I think it's like 2.7 people working in this department over I'm sorry you had a question I was just wondering the I need a little grace liver I noticed that one isn't labeled is that utilities and fuel or training okay yeah I think I think that's a training one yeah okay perfect thank you great I will oh sorry Thomas so your hand up no worries um I am guessing we're past the point of negotiating that increase with CWD that's not something that we can negotiate they set that increase for the entire county um that memo's already come out all right thank you so I'll move on to the capital side of this so for the water funds um an FY24 we have an annual um cost of $83,474 um that is mainly the make is made up of those bulleted items under existing capital debt so uh the water tower supply allocation that we have um up on water tower hill and cold chester we pay a portion of that space um west canal street reconstruction work water main and then the the recently completed Hickox Street water main replacement and then we are um we are right now estimating that the main street projects will add an additional 53,744 um potentially an FY25 when that project um assuming that project wraps up then annually for um I believe the term on that one the term on that one's for 40 years with USDA and then just the last water fund slide so I do want to highlight this um you know one of the things to think about when I nobody likes to raise water rates but this is something that will be we'll we'll have to look at more seriously um or not more seriously but like it's going to require some real money um our water system is mainly made up of pre 1929 original cast iron water mains um and those are all coming to the end of their useful life so we're we're starting to get to that position where we really need to um look at replacing water mains as part of street work and resurfacing so we did start that with Hickox Street that's number this list uh this priority list is in our uh water distribution master plan that was done back in 2016 so these are the priority water mains that were identified this is based on uh a bunch of criteria they did hydrant flow test to see what you know what how much friction is in the pipe which gives an indication of the age and looked at as built drying so there's there's a few criteria that are they're baked into this list but these are the top 13 um that are recommended replacements so uh I'm I moved this number the estimate up in 2021 that's obviously much bigger now so we're around 15 million in um future needed water main repair work so in the improvements category it shows short term that's um zero to 10 years those should be done and then long term is within next within 10 to 20 years uh of June 2016 so this is something that's in the back of my mind trying to get trying to build some capacity in our water funds so that we can start doing some of this work when um we have we have the ability and the timing's right and we have some grant funding Thomas you might have already answered my question John I was just going to ask if we pursue the EPA drinking water grant to get this type of work done we typically will pursue the state revolving loan funds um there's usually a uh a grant involved with that but um it's it's difficult because it's not these aren't projects that we're just going to do one off it's usually tied to like a full street reconstruction project so that's why Hickok Street even though it's number three on the list we did it because the street was in in poor shape and this is where it needed to work but um La Fountain Street is one we're we're slowly pursuing right now because um that streets will probably need to be resurfaced in the next you know five to ten years um so we're starting to do some work on that and we'll we'll keep an eye out for grants like that the EPA grant when when the timing's right right John how um what's the recommended frequency for these um master plan updates to be reviewed yeah I think we're we're probably going to pursue it next year because there's been a couple changes in the the distribution network that we may want to remodel it um so for example Hickok Street we upsize the pipe um Main Street if we redo that we may want to do some rehydrant flow tests again so I would I suspect in the next one to two years we'll we'll be updating this again and is there any incorporation of system conditions outside of this assessment that helps shift the priority um say that again so if there are any operation maintenance issues outside of the assessment outside of the master plan update does that is that taken into consideration in the order that you that's listed here yeah yeah so for example Platt Street we've had quite a few breaks on that street even though it's not shown on this list um that is a priority for us um that that's just not shown here and when we do the updates that will probably Platt Street will jump onto this list I was I suspect pretty high up just because the number of breaks that we've seen um there in the last since 2016 okay thank you yep um anything else on the water funds before going to the sewer fund no okay all right moving on sewer fund so similar to water funds um difference here is we own the treatment plan so we we're we're not buying water like on the water side so that's that's an aerial view of our wastewater treatment plant um so this this fund does include sanitary sewer distribution maintenance storm sewer distribution and maintenance uh and the wastewater treatment plant operations um similar we are looking at a a larger increase this year to $63.46 um that's 10.6 percent increase over FY 23 again what that means for the average three-bedroom household is about a $5 increase per month or a $13 increase per billing quarter and again this is the comparison for FY 23 versus FY 24 so you'll see here it's about a $43,000 increase from the FY 23 budget um that's primarily due to salary and benefit increases and um you'll see the I believe it's the yeah the the specialty supply line so that's chemical costs for the treatment plant um that rate has gone up there is a decrease on the contract side because we aren't proposing any um any professional service work in FY 24 at this point um no UPWP projects or anything like that so that um we're able to lower that contract to line item and then again this is just kind of the overview um again most of it is uh salaries and benefits um um the BTV biosolids so biosolids um that is sort of the leftover solids from the treatment plant operations that we have to truck that to Burlington they dewater it and then it gets landfilled so that is a pretty significant cost that that we pay for $155,000 $156,000 annually so that's big chunk of this this pie here so for the sewer fund we are proposing some capital expenses this year so we similar to water funds we've been really holding back trying to incrementally increase rates but we're at the point now where we've held back a lot of those capital projects and they just they have to get done um so those are listed here so for FY 24 what we're proposing are two treatment plant projects so one is we have a controller on our disinfection system it it's in need of repair um to quote for that's $25,000 and then the roof over the administrative building that houses all the um the controls for for the entire facility um that roof is in need of replacement um so that's 45 grand and then we have a pickup truck that's really on its last legs it's a 2009 um just regular pickup so those are the three capital projects that we are proposing and then as shown we currently have about $167,000 in existing annual debt this year uh for those items shown and then again Main Street um that's gonna be a uh you know a pretty large chunk of debt that would come on in FY 25 $193,000 so um that's what we're looking at uh on the sewer fund side before I move on any questions on sewer fund no all right last but not least uh parking fund so this one's pretty easy and short so parking fund capital plan only uh it includes on-street Cascades garage future Abinaki garage um no on-street capital this year for FY 20 or no no on-street capital for FY 24 just usually meters um the parking kiosks and then Ab Abinaki garage proposed Abinaki garage we haven't been including that because it's been we haven't had any progress on it for the last couple years so we're like we're not going to include it in this year's budget but as you know we we've had some progress um but until we actually start seeing some costs and have some budget um we're not going to bake that into the budget yet so for Cascade garage the only thing we're proposing is the annual structural maintenance work that's $130,000 um that is just the annual structural work that we do to maintain the decking and the concrete and we have a contractor that comes in the season before and identifies where we need to address some issues so that's that's where that number comes from um these these numbers um are a bit outdated um but this is what we have in roughly it's it's lower now but um that's the way we had in CIP reserves for those specific items I do want to call out the so these this is the one capital budget we've been I that's I think has been budgeted really well and we've we've had some reserves for when things break down but unfortunately the this is the funding that's that's going to get spent down to subsidize the Abenaki garage potentially based on um the modeling that you all saw so that is that is something that we we have some concerns about if there is an emergency in that garage in the cascade garage that you know if we have an MEP issue like HVAC system break something that's unscheduled um we might not have the funding we might not have the funds available pending what comes back from the RFP for the the finances for the Abenaki garage to address something that happens so I just I want you to be aware that that that is a concern that that we have on our end so that's any questions on the parking fund I have a question um what happens if so in in here you're saying there is no proposed budget um for the Abenaki Abenaki garage for FY24 what happens if there's momentum and that would warrant uh a need for funding in FY24 but we haven't budgeted for it um so because this is not a budget that is voted on by the community at large we can come to the council at a later time to adopt a budget once this starts to break ground we have an idea of when it will be operational um it may not be ready for operations until fiscal year 25 okay um John did you uh slide 32 um I don't know if that was the last previous slide that oh yes I think there's a typo in that the presentation I had it wasn't I think it referenced like FY22 yep values yep yep so was that just sorry about that a holdover that should have been deleted cross it out yep all right almost at the end so emerging issues um I think you all know most of these and we talked about them main street construction exit 16 project um a lot of disruption on the main street corridor that we'll have to um work through some ongoing capital needs you know the paving that we talked about the the Winooski-Berlington Bridge work um water mains um one thing I didn't mention during the water discussion is there is some additional regulatory requirements that we're we're having to work through um like on the water side we have to do a lead uh service inventory so we're you know it's uh something we have to I don't think it's going to be a cost per se but it's just resource um time to to put that together and then as mentioned just the Abnaki garage and the parking fund so that um yeah I just want to say thanks for the time um talking about infrastructure and thanks for the leadership team and all their support thanks to Elaine um and especially thanks to the to to my management staff so Ryan and Joe and John for just being um having great knowledge and leadership skills and really appreciate them and of course the staff like hey I I do presentations and spreadsheets but the guys on the streets are the ones that really make things happen and keep the city operating so a lot of a lot of respect for them thank you John um are there any any last questions from members of public okay um I would echo your sentiments to your team and thank you for spending quite a bit of time with us on this um with that I am going to call a five minute recess it's 7 22 on my clock so we will reconvene at 7 27 we are back back in the meeting before moving on to item B a couple of follow-ups for item A um Jim and I thank you Jim we'll see you was able to find notes from previous budget years and the situation with water and wastewater was that we were tapping into reserves for operations and so we had stabilized to not doing that anymore not funding capital so that aligns with what staff just shared thank you for helping with that um I also just wanted to make space for Elaine has asked us if there are scenarios of things we want to see for our January 17th budget discussion that we take votes on that so I just want to take a pause here and see if there's anything anyone wants to bring up um I I not um just trying to go back to the agenda real quick um and to the previous presentation um I do have concerns about underfunding um some operational needs for like we don't we don't have any funding for traffic coming right now um and just knowing that we're there are already a number of complaints that come in we don't have a good mechanism for tracking those right now um but even if we did we don't have a mech a mechanism to respond to those requests um so I I'd like to see a proposal for the 17th have some type of line item that includes um funding to respond to traffic calming because it feels disingenuous to have executed a plan tell people we haven't planned but then not have any money to respond to requests that we get John are you still with us so I believe that we had this discussion before and the thought was that we don't know we're not budgeting that for that because we don't know what the costs are and that those items would be baked into other street projects as they came up versus individual attempts oh John did you hear Brynn's question yep yeah so one recommendation I would have on that so we myself and Ryan are going to be pretty tied up with main street next season given that assuming it's in construction so a line item could be we have to evaluate a street for traffic calming our goal is to do that internally but we would I think the first go around have a consultant do that evaluation and then we would just copy their format going forward um so one thought would be to add five grand in for a traffic calming evaluation but then the cost of actually performing the work is is tricky because you don't you're not going to know until you actually do that evaluation what the correct measures are so for example like is as simple as putting in speed bumps or is it putting in curb bump outs or you know the the measure whatever the appropriate measure is is going to drive the cost and until you do the evaluation you're you're not going to know so and that would get built into the capital plan um is as a as a line item so there's there's two things there's the operational sort of evaluation piece that eventually we will just take over internally and then there's actual the actual construction capital construction piece I find it really hard to hear all the complaints and you know have personally experienced some some very fast driving on the secondary class two class three roads um on crosswalks that have yet to be painted because that budget hasn't been filled for the last couple years for various reasons and then you know we don't have a mechanism we don't have any funding to do an evaluation we don't have staffing resources to do ourselves but then to have an excuse to say like well we don't know what the measure is going to be but we don't and then it comes back to well we don't have a budget to implement any measures we have anyway so it it just it doesn't sit right with me um so I I guess starting it even just having some funding for evaluation and third-party audits is shows some momentum shows some progress you know an absence of anything else so if that's something we need to vote on them I propose we vote on that um is this just something you want added to the excel workbook I I'm I'm just following your lead you said if we needed to vote on something so uh it's it's up to you I guess Elaine how big of a scenario requires voting well so given it's kind of up to you um because given that the increase in my recommended budget is already five percent which is almost double what it usually more than double what it usually is uh just we can include it in the excel workbook but uh it might be helpful for you all to have a sense now whether you would all support even looking at it yeah okay that's fair um I mean personally I I think this is new and addressing it that's a small dollar amount addressing it out of reserve funds makes sense I don't think putting it into a budget this strained is something I support but I'm there are two more people three more people here sorry Thomas you can make them you can make a motion so I propose that we add five thousand dollars to the capital fund for evaluation of street calming um to pay for third-party consultants to evaluate um as laid out within the traffic calming plan adopted FY 23 second there's a motion by Brynn and a second by Thomas all those in favor please say aye hi hi any opposed nay okay motion fails um are there other items on folks minds for this particular presentation um no let's go back because we didn't do this at the previous ones too I want to make that an item for the next we'll do it next time too yeah yeah so if you want to say I have a chance to go back and think about the other presentations we've seen I do want to bring one up from the community services presentation so we had a conversation about the grant funded roles that are being continued in that budget and Jim you had a good way you had a good way of saying this it was like I would like to see the impact if we didn't keep any of those grant funded roles to the core services that Ray mentioned so it was Thrive library garden senior center meals um pool and um soccer I think we're the what ray frame does the core services um so I actually don't know if I'm allowed to make a motion I believe you're I can't okay so I'm going to make a motion to request seeing a scenario of what excluding those grant funding positions would do to the cost and to the delivery of those core services second there's a motion by Cristian a second by Jim all those in favor please say aye those opposed okay motion curious and again you all have some time to go back and look at the past ones and bring to our next meeting if there are other scenarios you want to see anything else on anyone's mind budget wise I do want to make one to do anything more I have one but I think we're gonna talk about it and that's next to Jim in public safety yeah let's hold hold on yeah um I do want to make one statement and I talked to Elaine about this and Elaine please correct me if I misspeak but it's about um the use of ARPA in tip revenues so just to like for all of us to think about this and and for the public what is being proposed includes a buy down of the the tax increase using four hundred nine thousand dollars of ARPA or reserves so I think that that's about half of ARPA still leaves like a million in reserves which is healthy um but it also does force us or pre-commit us to when we receive TIF revenue next year backfill that and so what we've looked at so far with TIF revenue is with the existing obligations and Main Street having about four hundred and thirty thousand dollars of TIF revenue is still available and so moving forward with this budget we are pre-committing almost all of that to what the decisions are we make in this budget without having done a robust public process around the TIF funds so I just wanted to make sure that we all are aware of that and you know we are almost certainly going to see increased expenses as we do year to year with inflation and we are putting some positions on hold and hoping to bring them back so they'll be even additional costs so there has been a narrative that potentially with TIF revenue we could see some flatter tax rate years and that is highly unlikely in the scenario we're considering so just some food for thought I would like to amend or add to that we're pre-committing ourselves to one of two or three solutions one is to be our cuts in a year one is a deep increase in the tax rate in a year or basically no flexibility in my TIF so there are yeah thank you Jim but all none of them are like you said the only one is going to feel easy is the one that doesn't include additional public discussion about how to use those additional funds yeah we don't need to get into a debate about it I just wanted to to make sure that we all are aware of that but if there are any questions or questions from the public okay okay if we are ready then we can move on to item B um Alamo provide us an update on Chittin County Public Safety Authority yes thank you um so I'm going to open that now I'm basically going to be reading from the cover sheet so those of you who have digested that can just tune me out for a little bit so on town meeting day of 2018 Winooski was among the original six cities or towns that is municipalities that voted to create regional dispatch for our region meaning one center that would provide emergency dispatch services for those communities this regional dispatch effort is known as the Chittin County Public Safety Authority or CCPSA the five municipal members as of October 2022 or Burlington, Colchester, South Burlington, Williston, and Winooski in November of 2022 the Williston Select Board decided to include only FIRE which for them includes ambulance fire dispatch services from CCPSA in their fiscal year 2023 2024 budget which is the same year that council is considering now on November 29th 2022 the Colchester Select Board voted to remove all CCPSA contributions from their fiscal year 2023 2024 budget they also notified the CCPSA board that Colchester does not intend to pay the fiscal year 2022 2023 meaning current year additional contribution requested by CCPSA that would have helped meet startup costs for the regional dispatch on December 19th 2022 the CCPSA board discussed whether and how regional dispatch could continue under these funding constraints South Burlington City Manager Jesse Baker said South Burlington was interested in providing dispatch services for other municipalities in the meantime assuming that at some point regional dispatch would be ready to be stood up again Jesse Baker said it would take a few months for them to come up with a proposal the city managers meaning my recommended budget for fiscal year 2023 2024 for Winooski includes the Winooski allocation that was voted on by the CCPSA board at their November 18th 2022 meeting that allocation took into account Williston's condition decision but was before Colchester's decision my recommended budget also includes an amount for administrative support for the police department which is really specifically geared towards records management that we would still need to do for ourselves for police even if dispatch services were provided by CCPSA currently records our records management is done by our dispatch staff at the police department so after regional dispatch services are taken over are taking over our dispatch we would still have that remaining records management need so after consulting with the police chief the fire chief and the finance director I recommend that the regional dispatch related budget items meaning the contribution and the admin support stay in fiscal year 2023 2024 budget to give us some flexibility to respond to a South Burlington proposal to provide dispatch services to Winooski so I wanted to make sure I'm not asking you to do anything right now per se of course happy to answer any questions the reason why I'm explaining this now is so that you have some time to think about it in case you have questions for the police or fire services next week when you receive their budget presentation also to make sure that that there's some public understanding of why I'm still proposing regional dispatch expenses even though there is public awareness of uncertainty that regional dispatch can be stood up in the next fiscal year thanks Elaine Thomas you have a question yeah thank you um just and maybe this is better for next week's meeting but what it sounds like to me is that regional without Colchester on top of Williston that regional dispatch likely isn't going to be financially possible and in which case I wonder does it not just make sense for us to continue our own dispatch instead of signing on to something with South Burlington right that's a good question and fire and police will get can get into more detail next week as you mentioned but right now so are it there are some challenges especially for fire dispatching it's there it's not to say they aren't surmount that they can't be addressed but part of the part of the reason why um council was interested in regional dispatch back in the day and the community my understanding is the community voted for it is because there is the potential for cost savings for Winooski to have regional dispatch for both fire and police through regional dispatch so as long as that's the case then there's a reason to keep pursuing it if that if that is not the case for example if we can't stand up a center without Colchester um and only or potentially only doing fire at a lesser cost then right there there's other avenues that we might need to explore they will probably be more expensive I mean without without some changes in how we've designed the regional dispatch staffing at the very least okay thank you Elaine looking forward to the next presentation is there anything uh fire chief or police chief you'd like to add John or Rick at this time you're welcome to pick it up next week instead I'm all set thanks Elaine can I ask a quick question um will we get more information next week on the kind of content of that December CCPSA meeting um in terms of the kind of options that were discussed aside from South Wellington picking up the operations um it wasn't discussed really with CCPSA I'm trying to think through what I mean honestly the other option was to disband now okay um we've discussed some other options internally but that was what was discussed with CCPSA got it thanks I have a question which this might also lean more to next time thinking about this budget as a level service budget I guess how does this this kind of regional dispatch especially considering the issues arising from it kind of fit into a level service budget similar to the mayor's concerns about continuing ESSER funded positions this feels like it might go beyond this idea of level services especially considering how much of or that it is such an increase on the budget yes actually it is not a I did not recommend a level services budget I it was confusing I you know there's I've presented three scenarios a level service budget what that would look like what um what was the other one I've forgotten the middle one but the third one is actually my budget which is a mix of what we need to be investing in which was really just regional dispatch because of the the near-term commitments some cuts and level and then the rest is like level services so oh the cut budget was the third one the second one or the whole budget if you will so my recommended budget is not actually a level services budget there's portions there's some departments that presented a what a level service the regional dispatch is actually a new piece okay thank you I think that's good clarification for community members too right so you might look back on that slide and from my budget presentation there was like pluses and minuses and red and green and so that that was like of my attempt at a visual representation of what could be considered level because it's in black what's considered a cut or a hold in with a minus in green because it's a revenue you know it provides some capacity in the budget and then the red is adding to the budget another question I have and let me know if this is getting too much into the weeds and again if it should wait until the next meeting is that question if we don't put any money forward is there a chance for this to be postponed yeah it's a possibility so right it is something that council could consider again the the recommendation from me after consulting with the chiefs is to include it but yes it is something that you can consider leaving out for this year my understanding is that south burlington and burlington south burlington wants to move forward and has the resources to move forward burlington has to move forward with some they need they need additional capacity for dispatching so they're going to do something no matter what whether or not our participation in that kind of hopefully a transition phase from the ccpa say perspective whether that's is going to make a difference to them or not i don't know um my guess is we're relatively small players so it might not make a huge difference so we i don't know that us postponing a year would necessarily threaten the viability of an eventual regional dispatch again that's speculation we haven't seen the numbers haven't seen that um opinion from south burlington but if you're just looking from in terms of viability for ccpa say enter if you're just looking at the wanewski budget that's a choice that you you do have available to you okay that's helpful context to adjust kind of how the other municipalities are thinking about it um i'll also mention that willis din has to do well i shouldn't say have to my understanding is that they are expecting to join regional dispatch with police dispatch in three years they had to act now to secure a contract for police dispatching because they lost um state dispatching services for police right i mean they lost state dispatching so they want to sign on with fire they can't afford to do police this year and so they're they can't wait for to wait for police this year so that's why they sign a through your contract for police this year gotcha that's also helpful contract if only all of this could be handled by the state they tried for some time and it didn't work out and that's what we're in this situation and if i haven't mentioned it yet colchester is interested in fire dispatching as well okay interesting so it sounds like like there's several different avenues but it's very unpredictable at this time it is right it's hard to know how the numbers will shake out that and again my recommendation is what i presented earlier yeah and i yeah i guess one of my other concerns is just when you see taking on a burden for towns that have much higher budgets and just the fairness of that to our residents especially considering it affects our taxes but it also affects how we're able to provide fire police that's all true and just to address that concern so the way the the agreement is set up between the the regional dispatch members is that we our budget or our our fee to them is based on our percentage of the calls so when i said earlier we're a smaller burden we're calculated i think that's a 10 percent and we're the smallest share of the total of out of any of the communities wilson is next to 11 i think gotcha though there was this proposal to cover for wilson partially delaying right there was the anticipation that once they joined there would be some sort of refunding going on gotcha that was so like we hadn't even stood it up it just didn't seem worth mentioning at that point because there was so much uncertainty but that is that has been the assumption among the members for some time gotcha so the goal would still be to bounce it out eventually to ensure it would be the good one but you know there's always the risk because if as costs increase it might not show up as the savings or a refund you mean so yeah that's one of the reasons i haven't mentioned it but yes it's been considered at least okay thank you welcome does remind me i mean um so if the cost allocation at least proposed right now is based off of number of calls is there enough predictability in um in our use or our demand so that we can actually budget adequately for it if we are to move forward that is a good question um i don't know if rick can predict what crime rates are going to be but certainly all you know all the steps that they do and the fire department do for early intervention and prevention on the fire side it's community risk reduction activities it's inspection you know public building registry activity on the police side it's community policing building relationships i would say it even goes into community services in terms of like making sure people don't you know feel included and don't feel like they've got a this other avenue you know there's a lot of a lot of prevention activity um that we can help head that off but it is overall out of our complete control right because i as i understand it there's some instances right now where you know we have some under resourcing within the police department staffing um i believe there's some cases that are not that are going uninvestigated related to potential drug crimes in the city um due to lack of resources so just kind of considering resources and how availability of resources impacts the need for and demand for calls um and how that the correlation of factors and just wanting to see if if that demand model is actually um going to be financially um stable and predictable enough rather than a per capita model um or something something some alternative i see right um i'll ask rick to see if what he can say to that um next time um i will say that just to respond a nuance on what you said earlier as crimes are being uninvestigated because of lack of resources that's not perfectly accurate there is investigation and follow-up what there isn't necessarily is the tools the same tools that we used to have to resolve those more quickly so that that means that other resources have to be brought to bear other tools have to be brought to bear that might take more time so i i don't know that it's accurate to say that we were we're just like letting things you know go like maybe in some other communities or more to to be doing it's that following up takes more time um because of some of the prosecutorial tools that we no longer have i think that uh clarification is really important because i think the perception um in the community it might be uh the form rather than the latter so i i do think that that's very full very um important and valuable clarification yep thank you for that opportunity to to explain it here and encourage you to to you know ask work for any details you feel is appropriate to share next week some people have reached out to me directly and i've tried to do that but yeah i think you're right like any chance to explain that nuance is important thank you any questions for members of the public seeing no further questions this is on for discussion we'll move on to item c this is on for discussion approval the just cause eviction charter change voter back petition okay so those who regularly watch council meetings know that council considered at their august eighth and september sixth meetings whether to put a charter change on the ballot that would empower the city to put evictions protections also sometimes call just cause eviction into its ordinances staff advised that we would need to pause other work to be able to advise the just cause eviction charter and ordinance changes so council ultimately decided at the september meeting to hold off directing staff to work on this until uh the housing initiative director position was filled tonight's agenda item is regarding a just cause eviction charter change that was not proposed by city council or city staff i don't know per se who did write the the language per se um the petition signatures were submitted to the city clerk by staff of the nonprofit rights and democracy just in case there's any confusion out there where the source of this language is um as is required by state statute you know regardless of whoever wrote it the city clerk examined the signatures from the petition and accepted it meaning that also by state statute city council is now required to place the proposed charter change on the next ballot which is march 7th 2022 and council is only allowed to make technical changes to the language meaning that they don't change the substance of the proposal also the city clerk jenny wellingham alerted me today that we need to warn the charter change by this friday so if i had realized that earlier we would have warned this agenda tonight a little bit differently but i'll ask you to uh approve the warning anyway so that we can meet that statutory deadline it would be technically well actually no we already accepted the petition so we can't actually delay it at this point so the proposed charter change language is largely the same as what was approved by the vermont legislature for the burlington charter and was subsequently vetoed by governor scott in 2022 so just in case folks have been following this the saga between burlington and or wanooski you've probably seen the language before i consulted the city attorney and there are three technical changes that are needed to the proposed charter change signed by the by five percent of wanooski voters actually more than five percent changing the vermont statute reference in the first paragraph from 24 vsa 2691 would have to be changed to 17 vsa section 2645 this is purely technical um that the 2645 section addresses among other things that municipal chargers may be amended by a petition of five percent of voters in the municipality actually that's just a it's just a uh what do you call it like a prelude to the warrant of what would be the warning so you all don't even really need to worry about that changing the reference the another another technical change that would be needed that for the warning on the ballot that would be changing from vermont state acts of 1949 number 298 that relates to burlington it would be changed to our charter which is acts of 2013 number m-9 which relates to muski and finally the better place to insert the change in the charter is in the wanooski charger is section 304 um that's not i put 306 on my cover sheet so it's actually 304 according to the attorney um 304 is the general powers and duty section and it would be a new subsection of b and it would so it would be number 13 so i emailed this to council a little bit earlier um if you'd like to see it on the screen i can share my screen to make sure that the public has had a chance to see what the changes are um that we would be asking you to warn by friday uh you just need to approve the the warning uh tonight um so again by state statute the city must hold two duly warned public hearings before the vote on the charter change the first one must be held between 30 and 40 days before march 7 so that would be between thursday january 26th and friday february 3rd the second one can't be held later than 10 days after the first public hearing so all that said tonight we have three asks for you one to approve the warning with the technical changes uh to ask you when you want to hold the hearings um for anyone's benefit but also that they have to be in the warning and then finally this is going to be a little bit lengthier whether you want to direct staff to prepare information to present this is it is a little bit dicey between um staff or council are trying to educate the public regards to ballot items that we did not draft because it could be perceived as trying to sway the public one way or the other so it is it's not a straightforward necessarily a straightforward question for you to say yes or no you want to staff staff to prepare information to present if you do um because of those considerations i would ask you for parameters on time and money to be spent by staff on the education effort and i would also recommend that you endorse an information sheet so that we're we're all on the same page about what it is that we're explaining to folks i'm making these recommendations based on best practice again for transparency and accountability to the community as is the case with any matter on the ballot staff have the responsibility to educate the public on the effects of anything on the ballot but ethically we also need to avoid the appearance of unduly influencing the vote for example um undue influence could be like you know um really uh hard-nosed advocacy for or against like if we said vote no or vote yes that could be perceived as um potentially unduly uh influencing just a reminder our for the public um our job is to staff to carry out the will of the voters and part of that is doing the best we can to understand what the will of the voters truly is um and that's why there's an education effort in there potentially uh finally the reminder that if voters pass this charter change on march 7th it would not be in effect then the the effect of the charter change is to empower the city to create an ordinance that protects tenants from eviction so that means that if it if voters approve it then the legislature also has to approve and then the governor has to sign it or allow it to pass into to law without their signature and then council would need to decide whether to take up an ordinance and then they could decide to adopt it or not um even then there is still recourse for the community if council decided not to consider an ordinance or did consider it and didn't adopt it voters could still petition an ordinance in a similar way that um you petitioned this charter change so just some clarification on even if this all passed and voters passed it you would not see the effects right away but again the the questions for council tonight are um to approve the wording with the technical changes when to have the hearings and whether you want staff to to prepare information to present to the public thanks Elaine um so I think we should first take up the wording and the hearing dates and then have a discussion about education outreach um Jenny suggested two dates already January 26th and February 3rd I have problems with both of those dates personally um and so I want to make sure that there is some council availability and also Elaine what is staff availability for supporting those public hearings February 2nd February 3rd but is that right Jenny it was January 26th February 3rd well when you say support could you clarify um so hosting them hybrid host them as as we do or at the community center whatever we choose to do um and then if there were no counselors available would staff be able to field questions and information I guess first I should see if folks have availability on those dates so I would want to advise against a Friday I know that we have limited options in limited time um but I I do think that a Friday meeting is inadvisable if we can at all avoid it um to your other question yes I'm available I can attend and then also I would expect city staff to be in attendance for whatever public hearing is available to answer questions that council is not available not um well versed to answer yeah yeah I we would I'm having trouble picturing a date that we that staff would not figure out how to accommodate because the only one that we wouldn't is council meeting and of course we would just be all together in a council meeting um and then just one last thing I do think that we need to make it hybrid yeah okay just want to make sure we're on the same page I could also probably make both of those dates work I should be able to do both of those dates yeah I can make them work okay um Jenny February third Friday was there is that a strict need um it's not the fifth is actually Sunday which is the 10 days yeah so it could be Saturday or Thursday do folks have a preference um wanting to switch from the third to second or fourth I think I'd rather the second than the fourth I don't have a preference I'd rather the second I know there was I think in Elaine's memo note though that having a weekend date might be better for residents but it also people might also not want to do that on a weekend have we some of our other activities we've seen Saturday morning be a more accessible day okay that was going to be my question if we had any data or any um just from our from our recent engagement meetings um any just pulse on attendance yeah especially the archer listening sessions and paul of jumping if you feel um appropriate we were seeing that conferring with the culture I think it was we conferred with the cultural liaisons and they said yeah Saturday is easier for many people Saturday morning especially I could make the fourth work is anyone else able to I can do before um can we post it later in the morning it's like 11 I have parental obligations in the morning not Saturdays um so if we could do 11 that would be great if it needs to be earlier that's also I can do a lot of work I won't be available on the fourth but it seems like there's enough people available how about you uh I might be able to hybrid in okay so and then the 26 is going to be that's an evening right yeah I should hopefully catch a lot of people um I have planning commission that night so um I don't know depends on the time I guess the given enough notice is it possible to move the planning commission meeting maybe I can ask at the it's like a charter change should take precedent if it's possible to move but that was honestly do we know if there are any other um events or meetings scheduled for the 20 the evening of the 26 that would be a conflict other than planning commission I'm not aware of any um anyone on the team want to chime in I just checked as well it looks like planning commission is the only thing for the 26 okay thank you okay can I get a motion to approve the warning language lane provided warning hearings for the evening of January 26 and 11 a.m on February 4th did I miss something sorry on the warning set include the entire text as technically adjusted yes okay can I ask one question that before we go so um Elaine in your uh first do you say we have to add language that the city shall have the power to but I don't see that in the email version of the language correct because I right so I had put it in 306 which would have required that but the attorney advised it could be in 304 which would not require that okay so that's covered by exactly yes thanks for a careful read okay so looking for a motion to accept the warning language and warn our hearings for evening of January 26 and 11 a.m of February 4th motion by Aurora second by Thomas all those in favor please say aye aye motion carries um so let's talk about education and outreach then um I think what would be helpful then Elaine you mentioned like an info sheet I feel like we could align maybe tonight on what the pieces are of that and then have have you staff bring it back to a future meeting and then so let's talk about that and then we can talk about for like distribution outreach um so we need an FAQ info sheet whatever uh as you mentioned Elaine it needs to make clear the process like what the outcome of voting for this is and timeline estimated timeline estimated timeline um I I would like to see the operation financial impacts like you had previously presented when we discussed this something similar to that does that sound right to folks I'm comfortable with that um and I think also sticking with fact-based content like what information we know like how many landlords are on the registry how many mental units are on the registry evictions data any any evictions data we have um basically any any data that would relate back to a decision um in helping inform the community about the the benefit um that that's sought from this change would it also be helpful to have a little bit of info on what the housing commission is currently working on just to acknowledge that we're due but there's other work going on too yeah I was thinking something similar and I don't I don't know how to present this appropriately but I think also like part of the operational impacts and the housing commission data is like there's a balancing here and we won't do everything all at once but we can't really clearly say what you know so I guess like yes a snapshot of other housing the housing commission other efforts um and I think um sorry I think in in the context of that I'm wondering if it's almost useful to say what the what the recent history of work is this isn't just out of the blue like this turner change has been considered to this body and in that body um for this topic if they considered involved um I think that'd be helpful to have that history though it's not a a new thing that the city is reacting to but something that's been disgusting several times in kind of aligned with that would it make sense to reference kind of what happened in Burlington or just keep it with when you ski facts I can see providing links to news articles about like if that's a useful background context with people but that I think that's yeah that's outside yeah yeah I'd you know I'd lean away from Burlington site yeah I mean but if we're providing a link to the discussion we had you could walk back into that too there I would hope that some of the um some of the data around like the landlord the landlord registry etc would also include some data around just frequency of housing inspections I don't see the connection yeah and my one concern is one reason that this body chose not to progress this on its own is the staff resource costs and the housing commission is currently this this month is a pretty big lift or happy for the housing quality discussion so if you prioritize that the commission and council so I don't want to under resource the discussion of the charter change but I want to be careful that we don't effectively do that by requiring too much additional data analysis for this because that's one of the reasons we said yeah I guess I don't see this data analysis just saying how frequently housing the housing is inspected feels like it's one bullet point to me and I think she has compiled some of that recently for the housing quality discussion um let's see what's going on now could be done well he since there's a pause here if I could so he he mentioned that we don't have eviction data since it's a civil process we don't have access to it just right so I think we can get county numbers I also think it's beneficial to articulate what we don't have so if we don't have it let's say we don't have it yeah but that's different than you're asking about inspection data that's two different things Lane just mentioned eviction data yeah that's still quite to the tie on eviction data and inspection data because it wouldn't really connect is it more just try to illustrate the volume of work already done housing supports yeah yeah essentially in that factor in resource resourcing for context you'll see some of that next week in my presentation I can't get my video to come up so I apologize for that but um you will see some of the workload number of inspections we're doing um categories as as far as the code sets types of inspections we're doing uh meaning the life safety code versus the Vermont rental codes um I'm not sure how those equate to the eviction processes or number of evictions we we've never looked at that data in that in that lens right again it's the resourcing link yeah no I I agree but I think it can be mentioned in the snapshot of housing work other efforts that are happening in that snapshot do we want to provide and this might be the chief in case this um brings some attention um we do have a minimum housing complaint form that can be used both by folks in living in an apartment building is my understanding and if neighbors notice uh housing violation they can submit it would that be helpful information to include in part just as a way to let people know that it's there so would there be a what are the operational supports the city already has in place and then what is the policy context and discussion to date on this topic yeah I think that timeline context current resource pictures yeah that's exactly it Jim would you mind restating that um what are the current operational supports that the city provides related to housing already and then what was it what is the recent policy discussion and context that the city is engaged in around housing I think that's what I said that's helpful and you all have another bite of the apple once you see the draft yeah I think having both of those really will highlight to folks in a way that doesn't feel like we're swaying one way or the other just like here's information maybe even just an opportunity to get information out depending on how things go so those are two categories and there was there also the third category of well four categories there's what's currently operational that we're already doing recent policy discussions processes the outcome of the voting slash timeline and then operational and financial impacts so those I'd say those are the four that I've heard is that are you all in agreement you want to see that draft of those four here okay thank you and then data points on rental units landlords and evictions okay right so that would be a fifth thing thank you I'll say the the charter change commission on the all resident voting put together a nice timeline of how a charter change progresses in a very simple graphic so hopefully that's a critical thing that was good um and then just uh I don't have I don't have any expectations here but is there any additional information that would be helpful to incorporate related to the equity components of this of this proposed charter change if that feels tricky to me because there's could we include them on and there's some potential what do you call it ripple effects yeah that are hard to predict which way it would go like it could promote equity or it might harm equity because I would have I'd be hard pressed to put a factual a factoid around okay I appreciate the feedback I wonder if that might be a place just to include the equity audit so people can just read the and maybe link the pages that specifically talk about housing equity in there because that's just information that we already have for residents and as you said talk about some considerations of how this particular charter change could tie into that as I would lean away from it based on what Elaine said and also potentially this is a handout that shouldn't be too link heavy if we're going to do translation or something that's true no I I again I don't have expectations I just want to make sure that we discuss it I think it's an important plan to bring to you our you know somewhat privileged position as policymakers and not city staff to like we can make that contextually at least how we view this right if we're going to talk about under resourcing or potentially de-resourcing some part of our housing work in order to support this like that could look to us like a reduction in equity for some of our residents and that's I think so that's worth having that conversation and being able to have that conversation so I definitely don't appreciate you bringing it up and when we see those operations financial impacts I think we can communicate what that means because it might just say like oh we're going to change after Easter this for that but what does it mean for what we're providing for the city but what I what do I fear as a you know as a counselor that that community city like that something I think we should be prepared to be able to respond to and think about ahead of time thanks for reporting and I I don't know that this would be of use in time but would talking tomorrow about the agenda for our inclusion and belonging commission special meeting is there any part of this that might be brought to them I don't know if it can because the warning so do we have enough time for anything any feedback from the inclusion and belonging commission before the notice public hearing notices need to go out well so the warning is what literally what you just approved tonight so that I don't have to worry about being able to influence that what you if since imb is meeting next week including and longings meeting next week um they you could potentially ask for their input and then incorporate that into the info sheet I think it um if I can scrounge the time it it feels important to give you a plenty of time with draft so I'm going to try to give you a draft next week um not sure how complete it's going to be but um it doesn't mean you wouldn't have time to consider it and consider other inputs say from inclusion and belonging before you get to that meeting sorry so that's going to be on the 12th um because you only need it oh sorry I guess two different things that I I could see is just bringing the language of the draft or what was approved by council if we do approve something on the 9th to inclusion and belonging so they have that heads up and to kind of continue with another thought of just talking to inclusion and belonging about any ideas they might have about ways the city can reach out to community members and engage people in attending these meetings I think that's probably the biggest thing um and something that inclusion and belonging is already going to talk similarly about the kind of budget presentations I think that's the same discussion because we want to tap them on budget outreach the budget presentation is going to include this charter change right um and I think we need to be do whatever I think we'd be beneficial to do a similar amount of outreach like a line outreach on these two efforts we have this charter change and also this important budget decision to make um so I you you already have a schedule to talk about budget outreach right I would add this to that okay and then if if the timing works out I I would be happy to have them review the draft all right I don't know that we we wouldn't have to approve a draft at the night like you could give some feedback and then we still have the 16th and the 23rd before these hearings exactly right yeah okay and it would be great together I think out before the hearings so yeah that might work out really well if you're able to get a draft together by the ninth that counsel them provide feedback on that then inclusion belonging provides feedback on and then hopefully approve something on the 16th and then have the 23rd as backup if necessary I would love to wait until the 23rd it's first of all around the 17th because of MLK Dave um thank you thank you yeah uh is our housing commission meeting and I think that would also be a yeah I think it'd be good to if possible have that and maybe give you a little more reading in in terms of developing content or having some of their experts in the process and that could be you know there might not need to be a lot of discussion because the content is essentially the same but having a chance to weigh like well this is actually going to be unavailable would you like to have the housing commission share educate what are those key points that they would bring to a kind of a discussion they've never gotten at double tap a consideration on timing um that the mayor already mentioned is translation and how much time might be needed to factor in translation Elaine do you or Paul do you know I can speak to that a little bit I mean you're going to need at least two weeks depending on the volume of what you're translating I mean there's a lot of considerations for this right so if we're thinking about like a one page handout an informational flyer um you know we'll want to distill that information I think you know with this universal reading level is possible once that happens and we get it over to either ALV or a different a different partner it can take up to two weeks to get that kind of stuff done I I can't promise anything but I think even more importantly than getting stuff just translated on on the paper is making sure that that is is delivered in a way that's actually going to reach people you know one-on-one meetings with stakeholders and the winewski school district liaisons and so on and so forth I think that's the other the other heavy piece there too okay but actually I'm not sure if it met like these public hearings are informational the thing is going on the ballot no matter what the way that it was petitioned so like normally when we hold public hearings it's because we're taking input to like change language or change action that's not happening in this scenario so it would be ideal to be able to provide flyers at those meetings but if say we had interpretation available for the Saturday session and and we could get those flyers out through channels over the course of the month of February ahead of voting I think that still meets the purpose because nothing about the nothing about the ballot language is going to change yeah I I actually just had the same thought that if we if we're not able you know given that two weeks time we can still have at least an initial um English version um available and well and be working towards having a trend translated versions um ready uh hopefully by early February so and I yeah I hear I hear your thought on that change as we move up so oh Jenny yeah I just wanted to mention as far as part of satisfying what is required it has to be in a paper at least five days before the year so now we're backing up to hand plan first well just the warning right not this info sheet I don't think it's a warning yes just so yeah there's changes going on there can't be any changes yeah just tell them yeah we they've already made the change that this is the only change they can make and to some extent like this isn't our only opportunity to do engagement on this topic we have to do these two but it doesn't mean that we don't like you that we can do um so I think that also should we have this mandated statute mandated timeline we have to meet it if there's additional if we need more time to produce and then deliver informational material I think we can use additional areas if we need to I I wonder too of even if we have a pretty solid draft that we could provide to any interpreters that could be there either on 26th if possible but definitely on the fourth then they at least have some time with that content and can ask the city any questions about or any clarifying questions they might have I think that's sometimes appreciated so um just to your earlier comment about what the point of the public hearings are of course you're right it's not like a typical where you're looking for input so as to revise but the purpose in this case is to make sure that anyone voting knows what is in the information sheet essentially yeah inform their vote so in that way um if you're wanting to put information out it does matter who receives it and that they receive it yeah but we have four more weeks to continue distribution like we can get information to the school liaisons later we can reach out to the contacts we have in different community groups which we should be doing for the budget process anyway right maybe it's Elaine you're bringing up is that though isn't equitable to these folks because hypothetically other residents would be getting more information and more access to the city before other residents yeah I I personally don't think it's a problem if we're doing additional direct outreach and making ourselves available beyond these two formal meetings so we can call another meeting another hearing in February Jim has a really amazing ability to synthesize conversation I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about this I think we got to be honest with what we can actually do that's my opinion I think we can view a lot by the 26 we can do more about four um and I think we don't have to stop there so I think that's my opinion sorry I we have to produce information we know what information we want to produce we would like to translate it before people have to make an important choice I think that end up we have enough time to distribute that information and so I would prefer to focus our efforts on a later engagement pattern that would get that information most effectively out to the most number of people we have to do something on the 26th so I'd say we do the best we can because any education opportunity is better than none but then we have this additional time to kind of continue to help people understand the choice that they have to make and I think we can we can give ourselves some grace on that 26 and even before that have more opportunities and that'd be my that's how I'm hearing it from between what's what we have to do versus what we would like to do versus be what we would have done if we were designing this process on a different timeline yeah I I totally agree that I think with the the interest of getting inclusion and belonging some opportunity to review by the 12th which is you know little little over a week away housing commission on the 19th and then a week later having the first hearing I mean those sound like two essential elements that counselors have requested an opportunity to have time like eyes on and feedback for dedicated feedback for um so I I think yeah to some education is better than none so I I'd like to I would also like to see that we have something ready for the 26th even if we're not able to have it and translated and and as we would prefer to if we had more time the other piece that I think we could I was wondering about the housing commission in the piece they haven't really taken any votes on position so I was thinking the chair could provide a summary of past discussion so it could be like this in Bushy could be supported by the past work the housing commission without first waiting for the housing commission to look at it um I'm not sure though because it wasn't really uh I don't know that you can speak on behalf of the commission given the way the conversation unfolded so I don't know just amusing there but I I do see there could be some kind of already know where the housing commission stands on this topic um to some extent and I think it's important that they have a chance to provide input but I don't want to hamstring the city staff to wait until the housing commission is met on a Thursday night to try and produce something for the following Monday um so that's that's the only I guess that's my only kind of a change to what I proposed before is maybe the housing commission is taking more of a review rather than a contribution role in this to make sure we can get something on the point there that we can approve which I says but this probably is best is putting a lot on the housing commission I wonder if that at least the invitation could be made for any housing commission members to also attend the inclusion belonging commission meeting Thomas yeah I don't obviously sit on either one of those commissions but it seems to me that there is kind of an importance for the housing commission to see this if we're going to have another commission seeing it and this is housing's realm I don't think we can exclude them to just a review position but I think they've discussed many of these data points in the past I don't think this is a first look for them at the topic and that's that's why I don't I don't know that they need to be the ones to generate fact-based information they could generate a position it wouldn't be unanimous and I would expect it wouldn't be unanimous and they could but we would have put that in a fact sheet I don't think yeah um and they could commissioners could express that opinion until hearings but um so I don't know that there's I don't know how much new they would be providing this conversation so much as sharpening or highlighting some points over others that's what I would see primarily coming out of that can we ask what they prefer if they would want to it's kind of a decision that we'd have to warn right yeah I think inviting them to be IMD would be great um and I don't know that any of them can attend but I think that would be helpful if they see it on the 19 and and you can collect like summary feedback when we vote on it the final one on the 23rd we can incorporate that into any anything we want to change yeah I think it could look like minor tweets versus major red flags yeah significantly can amount of work needed to change it which I don't anticipate yeah I think that would be happening yeah okay so it does sound like we definitely can't do the 16th which definitely puts any um translation probably out of the question because we can't ask for translation three days in advance right I don't think we could have translated handouts for those hearings but we should still pursue them for other distribution yeah we could have it for the fourth we could and not baseball like me the fourth is one day shy of two weeks so it's it's a solid maybe but I think it should be the goal yeah yeah it happens it happens if it doesn't it doesn't I don't think it's possible and thinking about the other question here is how much are funds to funds council to advise staff on the funds to use for these I think probably the biggest would be providing translation of written documents and and interpretation for any in-person meetings yeah and then I think we have a we're going to have to have a follow-up conversation after INV weighs in on outreach to talk about whether there's additional steps we want to take that would have additional financial needs but I think for the purpose of today we could say that funding translation interpretation would be a goal snacks um thinking about location so uh due to hybrid equipment constraints it feels like the 26 should be here ideally both would be hybrid as I mentioned especially with your schedule yeah your schedule conflicts um does it make sense to have both meetings here or to have one at the O'Brien Center where there may be a larger more comfortable space just we haven't talked about location yet it's also I think with the my understanding would be really hard to understand it would be really hard to do interpretation and hybrid without some substantial planning but I think we could be able to wait better way yeah let's us because my understanding is the equipment is not mobile the hybrid equipment is not mobile yeah that's that's correct um so if the if the planning commission is in the chambers on the 26 they will um you know they will be using that that technology that you're using right now I don't know I feel like the we've had more luck with folks who need interpretation on Saturdays we're saying that's where we want it I think it's less important to have that one be hybrid given how events have played out these meetings have played out in the past yeah so 26 here presuming planning commission is moved yeah and fourth at the O'Brien Center we'll propose this to staff right yes I think that makes sense it's the out of the several imperfect solutions this is the least imperfect yes okay um oh any public comment questions folks on zoom use the chat raise hand so Elaine rifled off our five to seven pieces of information for the info sheet earlier we are requesting translated translation of the handouts interpretation for the Saturday meeting we want to run it the draft by inclusion and belonging on the 12th housing commission on the 19th then hopefully a phone on the final at our 23rd meeting and then we're going to have a follow-up discussion at a future meeting after we get the input from i and b on outreach and talk about additional outreach steps we might want to take for both this and budget can I get a motion to approve that tell that so motion by brin second by jim all those in favor please say I motion carries I took notes Elaine so we will follow up tomorrow and make sure we're on the same page sounds good appreciate all that it was uh it was pretty clear I'm just going to make sure we can do it or rather that we do it okay so moving on to item D the all hazard mitigation plan okay so federal law and regulate federal regulations require local governments to develop hazard mitigation plans in order to be eligible for disaster funding from the federal emergency management administration or FEMA these plans need to be updated every five years having and implementing hazard mitigation plans can reduce the impact of hazards when they strike and so can reduce the cost of taxpayers from recovering from natural or human cause damage or just on your own budget as the resident or business owner in remod the state department of emergency management sets the update process our plan is an annex of the countywide plan the document is not a very technical one it is intended to guide city leaders and staff but there's information in it that should interest residents business owners and those who are often in runuski the maps are particularly interesting so for example there's a map on where the critical facilities are like vermont gas service areas there's another map where the flood zone is flood zones you'll see that almost all runuski development is outside the flood zone and some public access natural areas are in the flood zone which is smart there's another map on single family versus multi-family homes where they are which is an interesting data point for a number of reasons not just for hazard mitigation but certainly for that and another map shows where residential and commercial or other non-residential buildings are built were built like when they were built with red being older and green being newer also there's a list of hazard events on in one of the sections those hazard events are an indicator of what we might expect in the future no surprise it's all storms and some flooding the plan shows that there is just one hazard high hazard of concern to runuski which is if the dam on the runuski river failed meaning if it broke note that given the lack of development downstream of that dam it is unlikely to cause loss of human life there could be significant economic or environmental damage however and there's another section on how we ranked the hazard risks for natural risks as you'd expect from the history we ranked storms as high we didn't rank any technological hazards as high the one societal hazard we ranked as high it was crime on another page you'll see the typical vulnerabilities of hazards of high highest concern meaning how and who would be impacted in case of a hazard like funding there's another section on high crash locations and roads which is might be of interest to the public you can also see what technical and fiscal capacities capabilities the city has to support management of hazards and reducing vulnerabilities and then finally you'll see the action plan most of that is really responsible management infrastructure which should be what cities do as a matter of course so that's just a brief overview of what the public could expect to see in a plan in the hazard plan if they chose to rifle through it but with that jim did have some comments i don't know if he wants to raise them now but i'll take any other questions too i can i can raise my comments now thank you elaine the one i two one is there's a reference to the hazards from at 35 crashes in the city um there's you know the most recent one of several was uh two weeks ago you know four words so i think that's worth um continuing to keep an eye on as a hazard to our city that we don't have much control over but certainly will be impacted by their intake off if there was a crash um the and i and elaine i know you provided some context on that so i can let you uh respond maybe what your recollection is there um but i think it's something maybe should be keeping an eye on and tracking as a hazard to our community the other item that i would encourage the city to include next year in the annual update is emerald ash horror uh hazard currently the matrix rates invasive species as a minimal risk um but emerald ash pourers within uh single flight season of when you ski though that's not already here it's going to be here in the next year or two and i will hazard that by the time the next time this hazard plan is updated fully in five years that um many of our ash trees will be dead and falling apart and i think that represents significant risks of life and property in the city as they fail and a huge burden of cost to be removed by the city it's solely in our public areas let alone what people face in the private area private residences or private lands so i think it's something that we should be also recognizing for the the life and property hazard that it is in the city do you want to comment on the f-35 thingaling sure so i did ask um i had a first meeting with the the the commander of the yeah of remond erin ash magarde uh colonel um finnigan and at that time you know i took him at face valley who said that um i think it's like half a million hours of flight time with f-35s and there was one crash over where there was over a million dollars of damage uh something like don't quote me on the details um my notes are in my notebook which are in my office so the based on that i thought that the risk was low enough that we wouldn't mention it but of course it's up to you if it's something that you feel that we should be addressing um i would suggest that it be include if you do want to do that that we do it in the next annual update um just because we're already a bit behind not to any fault of the cities but the state is hoping to wrap up this particular update my recollection from previous discussion is that it wasn't viewed as any different than any plane crash hazard here and so that's why it hasn't been called out historically but we we could ask next year well i think the one one question that arose during the basing decision and discussion afterwards was that there's a fundamental difference of the materials on the plane including exposure to hazardous chemicals should that one of those crash in a highly populated area and it's very it's fundamentally different from a commercial airliner and that those emergency response details were never shared with the city as i understand it so what happens if plane crashes here how do you how many how far does the hazardous chemical exposure spread like we don't as far as i know we've never received that information so i think that that's i think that it is a different crap than anything else that's flying out of the airport at this time i think it's worth it's worth us having an understanding what hazard we're truly facing in terms of life safety for the crash here it's a physical footprint but there's also the chemical footprint i would agree with that and yes the next annual update seems appropriate um and i think it's something that we can i would like to see that become a part of the conversation with the the guard is how their emergency operations will support people in our community if there's a crash so i don't see that thomas um i have a few things um in addition maybe not as consequential as jim's but um page five align it references the church being an emergency shelter but i i don't know which church that is so i'm hoping that can be updated just to indicate which of the few would be that emergency shelter um and then in the history section again very light but it kind of ends on a negative note so i was wondering if maybe we could include some newer history like maybe the like our hundred-year celebration or the election of our first female mayor i think um ending on the dismissal of a city manager i think we've done a lot since then so i'm sorry which page was that on that's on page three i actually noted something else on page he was just coughing um also on page kind of two and three is if we wanted to specifically update um any of the history section um with the specific language we have in our um from our land acknowledgement because i think we have so possibly more updated information that could go in there that would be great too so history um female and later um land acknowledgement i'm sorry it was there was another one you said thomas right yeah on page five it references the church as being an emergency shelter but it doesn't say which church right i did get that amended the history did you have something else for the history oh i was just saying that ends in 2008 and it ends on a negative note personally i just don't think that's a good way to end it we've done some good things since then i recommended that we've elected a female mayor that we've celebrated our hundred years it doesn't have to be either of those things happy for anybody to come up with something else we definitely have bullets in the master plan that are more recent than 2008 and then i just have one more question um and i'm sorry i forgot to write which page it was but at the end of the document we talk about underground electrical on main street um it says that it will cost about 2.6 million i was just wondering if that is a cost that the city would bear alone or if that would be a cost that would be shared by gmp and the other utility line users let's see um john's gone but my historic recollection has always been that there is a cost share with gmp with the utility i've never seen i don't know specifically those numbers i know that the undergrounding of utilities for main street is higher than that number so i imagine that that does include a cost share um having been deducted okay thank you it's also could be a not a date document and i just found the page it was page 60 if anybody's wondering i have one time question i'm hoping on page 26 um it has the municipal office and the fire station overlapping um just wanted to confirm that that's i see it looks like that's what burlington has to but that's just kind of standard for these plans it's right it's incorrect i asked them to correct it and they said they couldn't do it in time this year so we'd have to take care of it okay i wonder if burlington noticed too so um given the uh significant facility improvements of the school um there's no mention in here of solar or any backup energy energy uh resulting from that solar is that is that a capability result that energy sold to the grid i don't know the answer that um my guess though is that it's it's a small fraction of what they need so it would wouldn't like it might add to their resilience but i don't know yeah because i don't recall there being any battery backup um and given this recent holiday storm um and the power being cut uh yeah it just raised the question to me if that i think i got a deal because it all goes back in the grid that's kind of what i was from recalling as well yeah so elaine would you like us to adopt this resolution and then vote on changes for next year uh that would be great okay are there any questions from public public attendees or comments may or if i could i'm not public per se but excellent yeah i just wanted to um give kudos to elaine um this process was um awarded a contract from the state to an out-of-state contractor who did this update it's a new platform that emergency management push push the county into and this is a big big lift um it was through covid so that contractor was not able to come it was all trying to be trying to do it um over zoom um it was very clunky we had an intern manager at the time um so there's a lot going on for us and for elaine to come come here and then pick the pieces of this and i do mean pieces of this up and pull it together to what you see today was a huge lift so i just want to commend her appreciation for doing such thank you john can i don't know without you and john rousher and eric thank you um can i have a motion to approve the resolution as provided so second motion by jim second by aurora all those in favor please say aye all right motion carries and thank you for the comments we'll include them in next year they're useful yeah so do you want me to vote do you want me to run a vote on this um i wouldn't worry about it because you'll see them next time i feel like they're all reasonable so we're happy to put them in the draft they ask that we still do a vote on these given that i may not be able to vote on them next time and can i just add um i have a question to clarify clarifying question um page 28 on the critical facilities the historical markers and historic districts um we don't have any historic markers indicated in winewski and i believe we had recently approved one yeah that actually hasn't been installed yet it's been approved at least we're talking about next year right well fair enough yeah that's a good point let's make sure to remember that part of the and actually that map we don't think that that that um outline is correct so that's another one we'd have to revisit in any case yeah so all right i mean even just reviewing and updating page 28 indeed might be a better way to go about it yeah well it's a good point about the marker right you know it's good to call it those specifics that you're aware of okay um so looking for a motion to for next year update emerald ashmore f35 crash historic section to bring it up to current uh correct the map on page 26 of the city hall and fire correct the historic map on page 28 and note the school district uh renovation with solar um also which church and as a shelter actually don't and then the the history okay got motion by jim yes second second by aurora all those in favor please say aye motion curious thank you thank you all for the attention to detail indeed in a lengthy document yes item e public art spending okay this feels like a little uh luxurious but um that's timely in a way so mostly reading from my cover sheet and arts district is proposed in the city's master plan and economic development plan while public art is not a priority of councils for this fiscal year i'm asking you for direction now because of the potential opportunity this spring anecdotally there was an increase in graffiti in the city during the pandemic credit to councilor oak leaf to point that out to me very early on in my tenure uh studies show that murals can deter tagging and other so-called nuisance graffiti at least one organization is interested in doing this in wanouski the spring which is the opportunity referring to along the riverwalk but other individuals or organizations may also be interested and i would recommend any such work be paid for um so given that and where does that money come from um on august 1st 2016 city council established the kathryn deek dekaro wanouski public arts fund after uh two city managers ago to expand the presence of the arts in the city uses of the fund shall include um reading from um the enabling um art related opportunities from for residents to enjoy installations and exhibits to enhance the cityscape and the use of the arts to promote a sense of pride cultural expression and celebration of wanouski thanks to angela for digging that out and we have no existing procedure or policy to replenish this fund the current balance in the public art fund is five thousand five hundred and one dollars made up of some council pledges and a donation so i have two questions for you tonight if you choose to take them up um there's plenty going on so we'll be understandable if you don't feel like it um a there whether you would like to advance the public art initiative at this time using the current balance and if so whether you would like an existing commission or commissions to advise you on how to spend it thanks lane um this fund was established in 2016 it's never been used right that's far as i know angela um if there's like a community effort that's driving this in low lift to staff i'm not opposed to using this money and then having one of our commissions participate in that yeah i i think it sounds like a great opportunity i think with especially looking at the language of the pride cultural expression and celebration if this might be good for either inclusion and belonging or possibly maybe safe healthly connected people trying not to overload inclusion and belongings plate um or just popped in my mind i wonder even if the library committee might have ideas if maybe they they know folks in the community who might be interested in doing work like this um so those are those are just kind of the ideas that i come i came to mind and i don't know if council wants to dictate that or ask if any commissions would be interested in it and i'm not sorry go ahead okay um actually so unordered district that was proposed as an economic vitality measure so it could make sense there it also fit with me some infrastructure because some of it at least will presumably will be on the municipal infrastructure i was just gonna say i don't there's already somebody proposing something a community effort so i don't think we're like asking a commission to look for ways to use it for this particular instance but to be involved in or to provide advice on on this thing that already is out there yeah so my my impression is supporting the question is do you want to support this opportunity this spring as question one and question two is we don't have a procedure or policy at all do we want to assign something to one of one of the commissions um if any of the commission so that's that's how i'm interpreting what your question is at lane is that is that correct well so a nuance on question one is that there is an organization that's interested and they've a couple months ago they quoted me three thousand dollars that would almost deplete the fund right it would be more than half so part of my question is if you want if you wanted to proceed with that then i'm not sure how much more like christine said i don't know that you need a lot more input from commission and it would be a low lift and it goes on from there right so i'm seeing part of that is do you really want to would you want there to be more of a process rather than spend so much of one fund a one time fund on an organization without even a process of selecting who it is so i i would say that those are excellent follow-up questions um it sounds like this the intent was for this public arts fund to be something that continues well into the future and it and is not a one time but you know i'll say if there's additional history there that i'm missing you know please correct me um so i would almost see a the role of a commission is like how could funding be like two parts how would we want to select assign locations for our installations as well as like how to allocate or propose funding allocations for it um so i i guess i see that second part being in my opinion separate from the first ask i don't see this the second part reviewing the first ask does that make sense i call them okay so the question question one being do we want to do art this spring we already have somebody who has proposed to do a project and has already provided a budget estimate do we want a commission to review that particular project i don't feel strongly about that do we want a commission to review funding allocations moving forward and project like procedures guidelines moving forward sure yes i i do support that side of things i feel i feel the opposite i think we've got this money that's been sitting here forever unused we have someone ready to use it let them use it have a have a commission though have some input on like review their proposal i don't think it's a priority to develop guidelines or funding mechanisms for this fund given all the other things we have happening yeah i disagree well given that we have no plan to re-up it um any policies and procedures we would develop would be solid for the distribution of five thousand dollars which is a lot of some cost for a small pot i would be tempted to put this to the safe of my inclination is put this is a healthy connected people commission ask them to review the project and also part of that review question is is this the best use of this fund at this time or do you want to see a competitive proposal process like i think that could be a part of the review is like is this proposal in itself worth it and appropriate and well thought out and is it so well done that we should just approve it as is or do you think this is like yeah it's good but um it'd be nice to have this opened up to other groups in the community have the chance to pitch in for these funds i think they could be both of those at the same time and make a recommendation back to council because what i hate to do is walk away from the slam dunk and what i'd hate to do is uh just do the first and it comes across because we could so i think that would be a middle ground to um not doing either of those i think uh that would be my preference as well and my sense is that safe healthy connected people does have the would have the capacity to do that work at this moment maybe not this month but definitely next month i agree um two point i don't feel like it's makes sense to create procedures if we're not going to fund the fund um i i would finally advocate that we that we do consider for economic economic vitality purposes for municipal infrastructure purposes safe healthy connected purposes i mean it's it's um those are interconnected value opportunities um and i think it's uh it's something that could be considered um as you know that's something the commission can consider funding opportunities not necessarily that are exclusive to city allocation i'm sorry i'm missing the kind of what would they consider an addition or instead of um so there is not a cap that i know of with the um downtown wanouski allocation i believe that we just approved a five percent and so having a potential cap on um the the city's contributions in downtown wanouski could allow for a percentage of economic vitality funding to be allocated towards the public arts fund but is that the discussion that we need to have right now no it's saying it's something the commission can consider moving forward share it like not right now i i don't think we need to ask them that at all like i i don't think i'm not supportive of trying to fund this in an ongoing way right now like this is a discussion to to parking lot for some future date yeah i don't know right yeah i see it as if it was something to go forward we then start leaning on staff because i could see it being something that would be great to like get donations or grants for but that's a lot of staff work um so like like jim said i think we should take advantage of this opportunity do have a little bit of review process just to make sure you know there isn't i don't know something that comes that is flagged by the state healthly connected people um commission just to have that um second look and kind of float that idea of you know get it yeah if they think we should do a slightly different process for specifically the spring slash summer and then i don't know for some somehow in the existence of this fund for to come up when there might be staff capacity slash funding capacity in the future does that make sense like i love the idea of having procedure but uh also might be ideas taking advantage of an opportunity jim do you want to motion what you described um i move that we refer the proposal to the state healthy connected people commission and ask them to make a recommendation on whether this is a good current use of the funding whether they recommend this back to us for funding i missed the latter part you said whether i would move that we refer this proposal to the state healthy connected people commission for their review and as part of the review ask them to consider not only if this proposal is worth funding but if this is the right time to use these funds for this purpose that makes sense i would like to second i would like to second that motion motion by jim elaine the clarifying yes um this by this proposal do you mean the the the cost and project proposal that i've already received yes that's what i yeah yeah yes yes yeah so the proposal reference in the cover sheet okay motion by jim second by brinn all those in favor please say i hi motion carries thank you thank you on to item f equity update from staff okay so so again mostly reading from my cover sheet the budget recommended by the city manager that's me for the next fiscal year july 1 2023 to june 30 2024 includes pausing the equity director position to help get down to a 5 percent tax rate increase members of the public have asked what this means for equity efforts by the city the most obvious impact of pausing the equity director is that we will not have access to someone on staff with equity expertise and who is intimately familiar with the city in our efforts to create a more inclusive workplace and city however pausing the equity director does not mean all equity efforts would stop the city's first equity director resigned effective july 2022 because during the year she was here she concluded the role was not sustainable and experienced a workplace that was often felt unsafe or unwelcoming equity efforts have been underway before during and since her time with the city many efforts of significance like the equity audit accessible communications and the inclusion and belonging commission were made possible or enhanced by her the need to incorporate equity into all city departments was certainly made clear by her and staff have more work to do on that but many other efforts were initiated and are continued by other leadership team members in every department so i'd like to review those tonight for the sake of transparencies certainly some of these things i don't feel are that obvious to to members of the public so welcome the the opportunity to to share them the activities fit into the categories of accessibility voice miscellaneous welcoming and awareness and these are listed in order of number of initiatives or efforts per category so for example accessibility has the highest number of of efforts so i'll review a few examples a non exist a non exhaustive list some examples from each category that are recent under accessibility improving or adding sidewalks is one effort that has an equity impact we've coordinated with when you ski school district on sidewalk plowing prioritization for underserved households this was a direct result of a recommendation by the former equity director removing unnecessary qualifications from position descriptions this is a common best practice to improve access to to good work good paying work as i would or good benefit work as i'd say local government work is improved access to recreation program registration by reserving half of the seats for paper registrations and then in person support for that type of registration improving readability of public communications by using a reading level review aid continuing to offer hybrid meetings and then even just today the finance director angela d r i the hr director jesse acre and i met with a member of our extended muski community they had commented during my budget presentation regarding the proposed staff pauses with equity impacts and had reached out to me to offer ideas i do plan to revise my budget to incorporate their primary recommendation which is to bring in more representation from the community for city staff to hear and learn from and to compensate those community members for their time this is a model that has worked for that particular individual in their work on equity after hearing the public comments after my budget presentation angela and i had combed through my recommended budget again and did decide we could comfortably add $50,000 of local option tax revenue based on updated projections this year and past experience so $2,500 of this does go to downtown muski by contract as brun had just alluded that would leave $47,500 we can add to the pro the pro i'm sorry the professional services budget in the administration area for the purpose of developing this i'd call it a mediated community voice program this is really about i'm putting it in the accessibility bucket because even though you know it's a voice it just said voice it's really about increasing access to city government by historically marginalized people and i'll also underline that even the fact that this person was willing to spend their time meeting with us is itself an outcome of increased access i had previously met with them in my effort to meet with everyone really hoping for that everyone with a stake in muski which gave them some assure and said i would want to hear their ideas so again i want to underline and commend council's efforts to to get out into the community and and hear from the community directly that sort of effort is important and i think is yielding fruit the second category is of equity efforts i call voice so um those included that we conduct a listing sessions on how to spend one-time money meaning arpa with historically marginalized groups including new americans which were interpreted uh youth and seniors um that was a big effort um led by the equity director and of course the communications director paul starne we considered how to best engage people traditionally left out of planning processes and developing city plans such as in the bicycle and pedestrian plan that's upcoming well we've created and supported include the inclusion and belonging commission to create their own structure and procedures and this body was an outcome of the equity summit of 2019 so that even preceded um as jim reminded me the equity audit or the equity director we are piloting stipends for commissioners include um specifically with the inclusion and belonging commission to support more diverse participation on commissions to respond to a question from brinn unfortunately i had overlooked that council had not approved these stipends before i had to start paying them i was going off a grant agreement of $50 per meeting um i've asked the commission the inclusion and belonging commission to provide some input to council about what this means the per meeting stipend and if there's a better way to spend that and then we would be coming back to you hopefully with those recommendations to formally approve the stipend policy for commissioners um angela i believe we're currently paying them quarterly we are just for um making it worth issuing a paycheck for the the per check fee that we're charged um we are also not seeing every member accept payment um we do have at least one member of the commission that is opting not to take this stipend um and we have only paid out i believe less than $200 to date for the first quarterly payment thank you um so and then so that's that item so continuing in the voice item um or the voice category rather so planning with the equity consultant and the we are planning with um the winieski school district next steps in engaging the public on equity audit findings under the miscellaneous category the police department uh partners with howard centers community outreach team to connect people to social supports were involved in an interaction with the police department we've been reworking the pay plan to value um so-called caregiver positions which have been disproportionately filled by women and people of color and this was in response to the equity audit we've also um looked at allowing experience in lieu of formal education again in best practice and increasing access to good jobs um working with housing commission to propose changes to ordinances to improve quality of rental housing obviously that's been an ongoing effort um we or and I are participating on the city's behalf in ideal vermont which is led by the state office of racial equity it's a municipal learning cohort and participation of city staff as well as council although there's another gen item tonight for that um in the conversation about a school resource officer um that was in response to the winieski student man's for action in the welcoming category the the last two categories are much shorter approving readability of the personnel policy um so that once people are hired in they have a they can navigate that document more easily that's something the hr director is working on um placing the equal o employment opportunity statement at the top of job postings not at the bottom as has been common um I think that was actually a response to the equity audit and then um again in terms of welcoming it's a small gesture but some staff are listing pronouns on our email signatures in the awareness category we are conducting at the leadership team level meaning like the department heads um peer learning on equity topics some of the um other departments are also doing this and then equity workshops for leadership team members that were designed and delivered by the equity director along with partners so again just to close this um diatribe I guess the purpose of this in-gen item was to communicate to the public the types of equity work that are underway and that will continue to that will continue an illustration of what will continue it's not the fullest we do welcome feedback on these efforts and on what else you think we should be doing thank you for outlining that Elaine I see Thomas the same thank you Elaine for um putting that all down for the public I said at past meetings that you and staff are definitely engaging in equity work frequently in your in your daily work so I'm glad that you highlighted that for everybody to know um I wonder if you might have considered already out of that news well not new source of funding but reallocating about $50,000 you had said if for you and maybe other members of city leadership were to take um like an official DEI certificate training I looked one up for example at Bentley it's about $1700 for the training um which you know if you add up all of you and leadership that would still be less money than the full-time position at the moment um and would give you some more of that actual knowledge and trained knowledge outside of just you know workshops that you do here and there this would be an actual program um I don't know if that's something that you would consider for yourself and staff uh thanks Thomas I'm here I'm thinking about this for the first time but um off the cuff I'd say that um I think what I what what I keep hearing from experts because I'm not an equity expert what I keep hearing from experts is that most of us spend too much time training and not enough time doing and that said the ideal um the ideal Vermont learning cohort should provide some of that opportunity because also you're right we do need more knowledge otherwise we risk doing harm when we're trying to do when we're trying to act so I'm hoping I would just in this moment I would say that we should rely on those opportunities to get us some more of that knowledge do more of our own peer learning do some more of our own learning um but it to get to the practical pieces we really need to be listening to our community members and we're not hearing from enough of them so that's why I jumped on this idea from the community member of how we can increase that that I would call it porosity between city hall and what's outside city hall and who is outside thank you and I I like I look forward to your advice proposal with this um suggested program because it does feel like it's action when we have done a lot of talking um and I do think that is really important um and listening when we've done a lot of talking to um I have I have a couple things um this might not be decided yet but or something that you can share but I was wondering about who the equity consultant is that school the city and school are working with to decide how to get info on next steps for the equity audit yeah so we um we Paul and I um had an informational discussion with the consultants that facilitated the equity summit in 2019 under you know with the idea that they already have some knowledge of Winooski and they could build on that more easily um Paul also had a really good experience with a previous with a trainer who um is planning to provide a proposal in partnership with another trainer that Winooski has experienced with so it um if you want names I can provide them but um yeah those those are the I'm just providing the reasons why we started with those two awesome that that makes sense to I think that was something I was curious about if we are utilizing current our relationships that we already have instead of seeking out I think I've heard some concerns that it's just seeking out people who aren't necessarily in the community or don't know us as well too and the importance of utilizing people who have already or are either living in Winooski or are already working with Winooski in some way so right actually that's a good point that's a they the people that we're considering don't don't live here so it might be worth another look it it might delay the event that we're thinking but maybe it's you know that seems worthwhile it would be ideal to reinvest the city's money in in local folks yeah yeah and I think yeah next next best is people who've worked with Winooski before that we know or that the community knows um another thing I wanted to note this is both for the community and also fellow counselors one of the items that you listed is the improved access to recreation program registration by reserving half the seats for paper registrations I think it's really important to know and something that Ray noted in the safe healthy connected people meeting is that a huge reason that they're able to do that work is because of the current admin and outreach coordinator which is a position that was originally funded by Essar so this is a huge both connection to the community and potential losing that position then could put us in a lot you know reduce a lot of accessibility and something that has greatly improved access and connection with the city so I think that's really important to note too is the different staff members who are making this possible especially that item which I've heard is really important Elaine I'm curious what the threshold is for putting out like what what the threshold dollar amount is for putting out an RFP for support for consultation work and professional services that is how I posted on my at my desk but I'm going to look at Angela right now it is $10,000 is required for a formal RFP anything over $5,000 we require written quotes okay is that is that a minimum number of quotes at least three quotes if you're just obtaining quotes RFPs it's public RFPs we don't require minimum number of responses yeah great thank you I would say that this list it certainly is not exhaustive I really appreciate compiling it and I I think there's there's a lot of great opportunity and and benefit to having it be a working living document that that we can continue to add items too as as we take on additional action items outlined by the FID audit but I'm also just amplifying the some of the work that otherwise might not go noticed but has significant impact so you know some some of the relational work that's that's hard to quantify is what I'm thinking right and it's I hope that the public heard especially in representation is what's immediately coming to mind I'm sure there's other examples of how any position in community services is an intervention opportunity yes and in terms of the list like I have the the what because currently the the full list on the on the shared drive and just in compiling the was reflecting oh and the fact that Jim you know to your point Jim reminded me that or alerted me that there was a report from the equity summit and I had not been able to find it I hadn't looked very hard so having when you don't have a when me when it's an area that a municipality is not traditionally um uh doesn't have a traditional department with it takes something like this to turn it into a muscle turn it into a habit and having a listing having you know making sure that you're revisiting you know we have things like master plans to remind us of what the goals of the community are we don't have that sort of thing you know built into our DNA yet so something like this is a start to that any questions or comments from members of the public okay I want to make one final note to actually to your final point barrel lane is that we have in those areas under the master plan we have content experts who are helping ensure that we have that data and we're doing that work so part of having that muscle is having a content expert who's able to help the city ensure that this work is being done especially on the city side and as you mentioned quite a number of these items are in part due to the fact we had an equity director in the past so there is that really importance that equity is part of every single position and all the work that the city is doing but there also is that clear benefit of having someone who's able to have that expertise I see in this document as well I would not thank you we move on to item g this is a related item um city council has also been a part of incorporating more equity efforts into the work of the city very brief highlight here in this memo what I wanted to spend a little time on with you all though was first reflecting on the trainings that we recently completed and then having some discussion about what we need to be doing as a council um so I just I reached out to you all a few weeks ago um and didn't hear any sort of consensus things right so I wanted to ask today you know reflecting on the training that we received it was the same one that staff leadership received if there's any like key learnings you walked away with um that you want to call out so for me what I really took away from the two training sessions and um this also came out in the equity audit was the importance of like outcomes over intent and it's something that I want to keep remembering during decision making because I feel like we often do discuss intentions and we don't always know what the outcomes are um so for me that was a I can take away does anyone else want to share there's one thing that I think kind of saw a little bit to today actually with having folks on our leadership team who are able to be remote for various reasons um is thinking about the way traditional structures kind of support white supremacy and limit access and not just white supremacy but other forms of oppression you know it's not intentional so kind of tying on to what you're saying that outcomes versus intent so that's definitely something that was really highlighted in these trainings for me is thinking about those ways of providing access and the ways that some kind of tied to that too is almost building community and trust to be able to um hold those spaces and to have that accountability and understand and guess you know understand where that people are coming from these different places and that we want to make spaces um that everyone can be able to show up uh and fully participate as themselves for me I think um I tend to take the action oriented um takeaways where um you know council heard as already mentioned there's there's a lot of talking but I think um you know the the summary memo that Elaine put together shows the action behind the talking it shows the um the dedicated effort that city staff um and council are putting into um you know really exercising that um effort that muscle that Elaine just mentioned um of making this part of our day-to-day and and that to me um I think having tangible um actionable items um is is to me what stands out most from those two sessions. So next um I think that it looks like council is about to be sorry Thomas um I I think it was a helpful refresher on some of the ways in which um especially our approach to work and interaction has continued can get wrapped up in white supremacy culture concepts of quantity over quality and uh valuing certain forms of input sort of methods of providing thoughts and opinions about things that we tend to shy away from emotion we want written information so those are good refreshing our refreshers of those types of um just some considerations that have been going into decision making like oh well what should we require any written what should we require be said and how should we respond to difficult comments directed at us I think those are really important things to remember it's it's not something you have to protect yourself from every time especially in public space or position so I think that was helpful to have that reminder and what I took away kind of the place I got to reflect a lot during that training was around um the ways that I listen and then the ways that I'll speak or um try and summarize or reflect back what I'm hearing um and using facts as opposed to impressions and uh listening or the the underlying like why is this important to you why are you raising this issue now why are you saying it this way and does that help me something more about what I'm might otherwise and I said by focus only on the words so I think that was really helpful to have some practice with that and some reminders or some new ways of kind of thinking about those communication skills um yeah I think I kind of just echo a lot of what everybody said I've done so many of these trainings that I feel like what I I take away from most of them is really trying to and the importance of understanding that everybody comes from a completely different background even if you think that their background is similar to yours it may not be at all and then the slightest and that forms the way that people come to a conversation or um just just day to day living and to to understand that as you go into something um and one of the things I mentioned to the mayor is that I think we should do more of these types of trainings no one organization or trainer um and I think the ones that we had came to us that they don't know everything there's no way for them to know everything and this world of DEI and everything that's coming out and evolving um so personally um I'm I'm totally down to do more of them um I don't know about everybody else but um just just keeping an open mind I think is is one of the most crucial things I learned from those and I'm reminded well that's a good segue into the second portion of um the discussion which is potential next steps um and and we're not here to like vote on anything or make decisions that impact budget operations um but I wanted to do some just get a sense of like how so we just saw like a bulleted list of specific actions that staff are taking to incorporate equity into operations and I want us to think about how we incorporate it into policy and community engagement separate from that right so like what what can we do that doesn't involve operations or like staff and financial changes um you know for example I think the community engagement strategy we developed is probably the most important thing we can we have and can do to make more of those connections um I think it's a little loose right now we can get tighter on um actually putting that into practice um and I'm curious what other you know another suggestion I had is um an activity we did at my the organization I worked for was adopting shared statements on what does inclusion mean what does equity mean um to try to kind of ground us together make sure we're aligned so opening it up to to other ideas I like the idea of kind of developing those shared definitions and so put forward maybe thinking about even diversity and belonging I think it's belonging in particular because that's something that we're using a lot um but I think it's even valuable to look at diversity which might seem to have a very set definition but thinking about it in the context of the particular work that we are doing I think can be really important um seen some example when I'm like thinking like how higher ed thinks about diversity stuff like that so I definitely do see the value in that of having a grounding document to come back to as well so I'm thinking about putting in words what we're thinking about so we can ground ourselves as well as kind of be transparent to the community about what we're doing um I think something that you know council has been doing um at least this past year from what I've observed but um should continue to do and and consider expanding on this um you know just making sure that we're attending the public um the the various events and celebrations around the city not just the events that downtime with new ski holds but um things at the school things at the senior center things at the brine center etc um I think those those are areas where um just having greater like we have our own city calendar and links to the school calendar but if um if there are other events that that we hear or know about that um that we can participate in um I know that there have been a couple uh block parties for example and and just like encouraging more of those participating in those um I think that that helps create additional trust and familiarity and is something that's doesn't put additional resources on staff or impacts the operational board. Living with the O'Brien Center directly behind me I definitely see there seems to be some more community gatherings there and I don't know if there'd be a way to possibly get invites I definitely wouldn't just want to show up. Sure of course. Yeah I'm not suggesting no no no I understand I was thinking for those in particular um I think that that's that's a really great point um and some of that might be then making more connections that we can bring back into the community engagement too. I um one item that I would love to see I mean maybe this could come along with the development of a shared statement but I think it would prove us to look at some sort of auditing tool that we can easily and quickly apply to major policy decisions for example we had our discussion around eviction protections and general protections more broadly like there could be some place for a somewhat um I don't want to say objective but a way for us to structure our thinking about how policy is intersected with equity we don't really have that right now but we might have that conversation ad hoc in a given context I think there are templates out there and we don't need to have something perfect but we could have something that's good enough for us to start more structuring our review policy because that's something that can last that outlast any individual counselor's training and tenure on council and I think that's in all of these I would love to see what we can have here that could potentially still be on the website if all of us were no longer on council as a thing that we do right as part of our policies and procedures our standard operating procedure as council that we use these tools and certain steps like community engagement plan or strategy and the like a policy audit tool so those are things that I think would be more I would like to see us direct our efforts there's some of those things that can be institutionalized beyond individuals and that's an I that's one idea I have that seems to be um could outlast us I have collected several of those but I can bring to a future meeting at some point I wonder too if that might be maybe use it use some of those templates but I wonder if that might be even something that Alina and I could bring to the folks that ideal and see is there a Vermont municipal specific one that could be generated so we're definitely looking to bring those things that the LCT is working on but um yeah I think there is actually one used by the state which a couple of municipalities have adopted so yeah all of the above all options I do think it's one of those there's there's likely to be little harm in adopting something imperfect at this point um and and potential gains even if they're not fully as much as we could do we can still make easy effort and I think that's also important to not get hung up on waiting till we have a perfect but to be able to make progress without harm as you were saying the only other feedback Al shares I feel compelled to say this because it has been weighing on me more over the past months is as a parent is it's hard to attend more events um so I think that's something that for me I would like to encourage us to think about what is a reasonable expectation of the counselor especially if we want to have a council that represents the range of community members of the city people with kids and people with kids of in ages between five and eighteen or requirement different type of work and commitment and and attention and I think that's something we gotta keep in mind um that the the ability to participate outside of these meetings is variable for folks in our community as we discuss like Saturday morning being better uh for some folks and then um for people who might consider running for council I think we want to make sure we're setting ourselves up to still be for these positions to be um accessible to as many people as possible in the community I couldn't empathize harder with that not as a parent but like the volume of commitments that we make and I have in the past like I don't know approach it from a more selfish lens more just like I am over committed but you make a very good point like as we as we set up new structures commissions bodies events we need to attend who realists is that shedding people out of of doing public service I think it's a good question to to keep in mind I think there's uh some clarification then that would be beneficial of like an expectation versus something that does benefit and create more trust um and correlates to creating and building more trust and familiarity like I don't I think it it should be um capacity should be part of that conversation of course um and that attending events certainly is a way that it doesn't you know it doesn't um hinder staff capacity or operational needs obviously it factors into council needs council capacity I should say so I think that for me that recommendation is like within within a councilor's capacity yeah I just I think this goes into formalizing this community engagement strategy further having more structure to it and having a bigger picture of what we are all doing or asking ourselves to do and certainly some people have more time for certain things than others but yeah having some visibility into that new council orientation like here's sort of the you know we went through a list of um we did the liaison assignments right and then the airport commission came up but we created another commission um so we just we keep building on that and and we should reflect on what the big picture is one thing that you know hate to bring up with the budget and this feels so far out of reach is and is kind of awkward for a standing council to vote on is but considering young future is compensating the council in a way that is more accessible to people because of the time commitment similar to talking about compensating our commissioners I think that's something to acknowledge too was this is it's a lot of work for little pay and that uh leaves out a huge part makes it very accessible to only certain members of the population who are able to do that which again awkward but I think it depends on what you do this as a paid position or volunteer with stipend I think that's I think that's a discussion we're having but I think to try and maneuvering people for the actual hours spent in service of the as a different model and it's a it's a model that I don't know our community can support right now no no that comes with it yeah but I think it's can be good to acknowledge that there is a cost barrier even if it's not something that is super obvious to doing this work I had one other note but might tie a little bit to what council runner was bringing up to and thinking about ways to kind of continue our own learning and acknowledge that kind of all equity work requires kind of constant no one's ever going to be an expert we're always going to need to learn and I wonder if there's a way to and here's adding more work so um how this might work but adding a way to do something similar to what kind of staff leadership is doing and kind of uh like have a rotating um one counselor maybe once a month brings in I don't know if this would be in a meeting but somehow brings forth a reading or an opportunity um to kind of do more equity learning um in some way so just kind of building that into an expectation um and also um taking hopefully again putting that on the council instead of putting a burden on city staff noting all these ideas right we were not committing to anything yet of course we'll have a follow-up conversation I wonder if it could in some ways also intersect with our liaison appointments like if we could focus our like part of shared level learning that we try and share at back is some expertise we then develop in our commissions as well like I could see that that there's like that that co-benefit right like it's not just the equity benefit but also the benefits of the work yeah that the commission and the council is trying to accomplish in the policy areas um it may be helps founded not founded but like make it more um make like attackable because what is the world of equity I'm going to take into account the list month and like I don't know that I'm not an expert but if I talk about housing and equity I feel like I could find some some folks that I would find motivating to learn about and then share back I think that could be a way to to structure that oh an interesting way to to co-structure that yeah yeah and I think looks like planning and municipal infrastructure and economic vitality those are areas where it's really interesting to explore how equity very much does intersect I think in ways that sometimes it's less off less obvious than say say how we connect to people well unless there are any other burning ideas it's 10 p.m. and we have an executive session that one more yes you can maybe we added goal update for council and community engagement strategy we did kind of have benchmarks and goals listed in there that could be a monetary outstanding monitoring item that we put ourselves to um and even if the answer is well we haven't done anything it at least keeps us honest to that strategy because I didn't think you're right Christine may have that um being engaged in a strategy by some of these some of these structures that we might want already and this could be a good way to monitor it excellent okay thank you oh well last call for public comment any thoughts questions mario did try to raise her hand oh i didn't see it always like into the next comment but i don't want to call it out specifically mario i know it's 10 but if you did have something okay bring her over paul thank you can you hear me yes welcome thanks um i was just going to mention that i think blaine intense at reiby in burlington had made one of those policy added tools that is being used um for burlington it is pretty anyways you can ask her for a copy of it and if you need her email i'd be happy to share that but it sounded like you already had a collection of them there so maybe you don't need them um but i'll add since i'm unmuted that i appreciated having that hearing that conversation live in front of me it's just thank you for being candid um and speaking about about your equity goals and sharing that with the public i appreciate it thanks mario i'll follow up because i would love another example but okay all right so this is the end of our regular agenda we've worn an executive session um i'm looking for a motion to find that pursuant to state statute section 3131 e regarding civil litigation or prosecution we should have this conversation in an executive session so it was not to put us the city at risk so second motion by jim second by brin all those in favor please say aye i'm sorry i'm losing it all those in favor please say aye aye motion carries um am i inviting just elaine and angela i don't think we need it angela oh just you elaine yes oh good for you angela okay um so i'm looking for a motion to move into executive session inviting the city manager elaine wong so moved motion by jim second by brin this time all those in favor please say aye motion carries um we have warned an action coming out of this executive session so we'll move into executive session we're only going to discuss this single topic no other business will be discussed when we come out of executive session we may take a vote on on the remaining action item to adopt a settlement resolution following that the meeting will adjourn we are on item 10a on for discussion approval adoption of the settlement resolution do i have a motion to approve so moved second motion by jim second by thomas all those in favor please say aye aye motion carries this brings us to the end of the agenda do i have a motion to adjourn so moved second motion by jim second by aurora all those in favor please say aye aye motion carries meeting adjourned good night everyone