 That's great. So we should get started. So I'm going to call the meeting to order. The first thing is to review and approve the agenda and we don't have a ton on the agenda tonight. But I don't know of any reasons to change the order or add or subtract anything. Does anybody else have information to suggest we should. Okay. All right. So not seeing that. So without objection will consider the agenda approved. And then onto general business and appearances. So this is an opportunity for any member of the public to make a comment on any topic that is otherwise not on our agenda. And so if you would say your name and where you live, that would be helpful. Try to keep your comments to about two minutes. That's helpful. And that's all of this is true. If you make comments on a item that is on our agenda. And just so you know the structure. Actually, before I do that, if you would change your name to be your first and last name so that we can address you properly and have it be recorded in the record properly. And then also for your comments, generally how we do it is you have a number of either comments or questions you make them all at once and then we will either respond or not pending. And yeah, that's that's how this works. All right, so comments and I see. Oh yeah, to make a comment you can either turn your camera on and wave at us or let us know that you want to speak or you can unmute yourself and let us know that way. Or you can use the raise hand function which is under reactions. On the bottom of the zoom screen. So okay I think that's everything I needed to say. And so Peter Kiliman I see that you have your hand up go ahead. Oh, you are muted still. Okay, now. No, we can hear you. Yes. Okay. My name is Peter come and I live on Mountain View Street in Montpelier. Tonight, I'd like to urge the city council to instruct the city manager to revisit his recent decision to expand the role and title of the community development specialist to include over all economic development. And instead direct him to focus the role clearly on housing and to retitle the position accordingly. The reason for this is quite straightforward. I don't have to tell anyone on the council that housing related issues prevent the greatest challenges that most Montpelier residents face in their daily lives. Yet the city of Montpelier has no city department or staff member devoted to housing, or even with the term housing in their title. Yet any wonder then that the many serious and interconnected housing related challenges listed in my recommendations to city council and to this housing task force continued to worsen for Montpelier. One great place to begin to more effectively address these challenges would be for the city to have a housing development specialist on staff, someone whose primary responsibility would be housing. The specialist would be charged with collecting analyzing and reporting up to date and reliable information on all housing related issues, as they may apply to Montpelier, as well as descriptions and validated findings of model approaches to such challenges taken elsewhere. Just as importantly, the housing specialist would actively pursue every possible avenue to increase the number of homes available for ownership, and the number of well maintained dignified departments available for rent in Montpelier, especially those priced to be affordable for working people. In order to accomplish this, the housing specialist would need to work closely with local homeowners, landlords and large property owners, as well as with reputable developers, architects, designers, engineers and builders who know and understand Montpelier. And critically important with other staff, especially in the planning and community development and public works departments. Sound like too much for one person? Almost certainly. And yet the outgoing community development specialist was charged with pretty much all those functions, except that he also had to do so for commercial development. And now the city manager proposes to layer onto this, the overall economic development responsibilities that the entire Montpelier development corporation struggled to manage for the past five years. And the job description just posted for this position lists 32 essential job functions, quote, intended to illustrate many, but not necessarily all of the duties that the CED specialist may encounter during one's tenure, end quote. Please, I implore you, instruct the city manager to find some way to devote an appropriately staffed and appropriately titled position to the myriad housing challenges Montpelier faces today. Doing so would not only increase the likelihood of making real progress on housing matters, but would also send the right kind of signal to Montpelier residents, homeowners, renters, landlords and would be developers. That message Montpelier is serious about housing. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, good to know. Thank you, Vicki and Lane. Would you like to go ahead. I just have a question. I see chief Pete is on. Is that correct. Are you here. He's here but go ahead and ask your question and let's actually the city manager could. I was just curious about the cruiser that was on Sherwood Drive. Is it dead. Thank you for your question. No, I was just curious about it. Because it got covered with snow. Okay. And chief, do you want to speak to that. Yes. Yes, ma'am. Good. Good evening, everyone. Yeah, no, the cruiser I have it parked to make up for parking spaces because of all the snow around the station, as well as I use that that vehicle for traveling back for emergencies. When I'm on when I'm working late at night if there's an emergency call that comes in. So recently there is an electric short and I have to keep charging the battery every day. Good to know. Thank you. And just to go back sorry. Peter I didn't make a comment on on yours but I want to at least say that your point is well taken and I think it deserves further conversation. So. And then I thought I saw somebody else's hand. But I think their hands down now. Yep. Just checking here. Okay. So, Steve Whitaker, go ahead. I know Peter Kelman's well prepared speech ran well over two minutes, but I appreciate that he got recognized and deserve further discussion, which is something I rarely get from this council, despite the merits of all my arguments. I'm asking that the city manager contract renewal not be done on the consent agenda. That is a nearly million dollar budget item over the next four years. And it is inappropriate for that type of business to be done on a consent agenda. Secondly, missing public records. You're going to keep hearing about them until we address them. They have not been replied to or certified as being nonexistent. The city center bathrooms conditions, the records regarding Montpelier ceasing to become a PSAP in 2008. The axon taser combined taser and body camera proposal, the capital fire mutual aid contract for two years, which are missing and still haven't been produced. The police technology plan, which has not been produced or maybe it has been certified nonexistent, but that's telling it itself and merits further discussion. And the Motorola proposal, which is the subject of budget things, budget items were being asked to vote on and approve when we have not seen what is being purchased with that money. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else. Okay, I am not seeing anybody else at this point. So we are going to move on then to the consent agenda. There was a request to remove the city manager's contract renewal and we could do that but I'll leave that up to the council as to whether or not you want to do that. Is there a motion regarding the consent agenda and then we'll take comments on it. And I'll get to you there. At that point, Peter. Jack. I move the consent agenda as is. I second. Okay, there's a motion and a second. Further discussion. Peter Kelvin, go ahead. You muted. Yeah. Yeah, you are muted sir. That's okay. One of my mute on mute put things works and when the pearly doesn't. Would it be possible to take item D out of the consent agenda the homelessness task force re explanation I mean unless everybody understands that I, I don't understand what this is about. You guys all understand it, but I'm not sure the public does. And maybe the public doesn't need to but I think it would be nice to understand it better. Thanks. I One possibility is that we could talk about it briefly now without removing it, or we could remove it, but anybody like to remove it to talk about it. Okay. I think it's fine to remove it. If there's serious questions, or even public interest. I think it's fine to take it out. Okay. Yes, Cameron, go ahead. I could also as staff representative for the homelessness task force sort of give an overview and if that maybe that will answer some questions and if it doesn't, I just want to make sure that information is is out there. If needed. What do you think, Jack? That's fine. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. City manager. Go ahead and then and then maybe after your explanation, we can decide whether or not we want to pull it off of the agenda. It serves a separate vote. Go ahead. Thank you. Council members in the mayor. I appreciate that. Thanks for your question, Peter. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The homelessness task force is coming back from a recommendation that the council approved back in October of last year. The homelessness task force had come forth with six separate projects, some short term and some long term to council and asked for some additional funding to get these projects done. The city of Toronto has a transit center, so folks had a warm place to go between public buildings closing and the shelter opening. But one of the things that they had asked for with some additional funding to pay a consultant to help the city at large come up with a concrete plan to get us to what our community needs to do. As far as supporting homeless folks, so people experiencing homelessness have said that they would like a day shelter. We've also talked very much about public restrooms in our downtown and the need for things like shower facilities and public bathrooms. So all of those things have sort of come up and bubbled up in a lot of conversation. The homelessness task force wanted to do was hire a consultant to help us figure out what that actually means in concrete terms. What do we need a building? Do we need a partnership with someone else that we just didn't know about? And what is it going to cost? And we don't have that right now. We don't have a plan that sort of built out to give us costs of what we could do within our current capacity and what we should be doing. If we need a day shelter, what does it look like? We need someone to help us figure that out. So this would be in conjunction with a survey that is currently being done by the continuum of care in interviewing the folks who are experiencing homelessness in our actual community telling us what they need in our actual community. Hopefully building off of that to get a recommendation and that would be what the consultant is for. And so council had asked for more clarity on that ask. And so this is the homelessness task force giving further clarity. The funding has already been approved. This is just giving further clarity and sort of asking for permission to move forward with the RFP process, which is yet to be written. So that was a very long explanation. Hopefully that sort of touched on all the points. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Any thoughts from council on removing this item? Okay, I am not seeing any so any further discussion on the consent agenda. Okay. Yes, Jack. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, it seemed to keep jumping in a little late. What one of the things I, I just wanted to mention is that, you know, part of our consent agenda is, is a replacement of a truck for public works is that a vehicle that would have been not possible to, would have been possible to get an electric version of it if we'd had more time. I see you see some shaking heads. No, we don't believe so. And obviously this was due to an accident. And so we've accelerated that if DPW is on and can add more but I understand that there was no electric option. That was what I figured given that it was presumably the size of the vehicle but since we're interested in converting our fleet I always like to be conscious of that. Thanks. Yeah, thank you for that question, Jack. Okay, any other comments. Yes, go ahead, Steve Whitaker. Yep, we can hear you. Being that being that the criteria was necessary discussion and interest for the homelessness item I would support Peter's request that that be pulled off for discussion, because I was form instrumental informing that task force three years ago, two and a half years ago. And secondly, reiterating the request that the city manager's contract million dollar contract which has not been discussed it was only shown in draft appeared in the packet. I got it today, and there's new language in it there's a longer term than prior. And so it's just, it's inappropriate to move forward with that on the consent agenda. Okay, thank you. Any further discussion, or any changes folks want to make. Okay, I'm hearing none on favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, and opposed. Right so the consent agenda passes, and we are going to move on then to our first informational meeting. So for this item. Bill, would you like to or Cameron, do you like to kick us off and then just so folks know how this will go, if folks have comments specifically on the budget. We'll take those comments after. So, go ahead. Yeah, so for for some of you that have been to a few of these this will look somewhat familiar. There's, there are some updates in it but it's the same basic outline of the budget and the bonds. We also have a special more detailed outline on the proposed elks club purchase bond if people, if the council and public are interested in it is included in this presentation as well. So we have those two so I'll go through those as we have in the past and of course, happy to myself and staff are happy to answer any questions about any of the budget items and bonds of course council can answer questions. If you have any comments so I will be sharing my screen hopefully that will work. Can I interrupt you for a second bill. You sure can. So, do you have a separate presentation about the other bonds. Yeah, excuse me so all the, the, the presentation includes the budget overview, and all the bonds. Okay, so maybe in the event in the event that people want a more detailed presentation about the elks club one, we have one prepared but we are necessarily planning to use it unless it's asked for. Okay, so people knew that it was available. That's good and just so I can be clear with the public to. So, if the presentation sort of all together then will afterwards take comments on both the budget and the bonds. Just because you know they had been listed as separate items. So, thank you. I just wanted to make sure that was clear. Go ahead. And if you wish madam mayor I certainly can go through the budget and stop when we get to the bonds. That actually, I would prefer that unless other folks have strong feelings about that. Okay. All right, I think that makes sense that way we can sort of keep keep them kind of separate. Okay go go ahead. Okay I'm just trying to find what I'm looking for right now. Which is always an interesting. Interesting thing here. Where would I, if it's on my desktop camera where would I find it. That's an interesting question on your desktop. It would be there. Can you open your folders and go to a recent. That's what I'm trying to figure out right now. I thought I had this all all set. Hold on just minute. I know. Sorry. Let's see here. I'm, unfortunately, I'm not in my pillar so I can't even get help. Why don't you take five. Sure. Well, I'm trying to think of, like, if we can take up any of the other items. Sure, there you go. Do this. So one possibility is that. We could take up the. Parklet ordinance. Which is. After scheduled to be after those things. And. I think I got it. Oh, did you? Okay. Let's try this. I would say we could do council reports, but. I don't want to say goodbye to J2. Am I up there? Yep. Yes, you are. Yay. Okay. So here we go. So this is the. Actually, third public hearing, we had two in the preparation of the budget. And now this is a required hearing. Within so many days of the town meeting vote, we're supposed to hold a public informational session on the, on the budget and on bonds. So given the conversation this year, it certainly seemed. Nice. Okay. Now, why am I not? Why is this not advancing? I think you got it. Okay. So as we entered the budget, we had specific goals in mind, which included implementing the strategic plan, rebuilding from the COVID cuts. And again, that's a good opportunity for me to remind people that. Last year's budget was actually a reduction from the prior year. So we had a minus budget. So. I know there's been some talk about our budget increasing 9.7% a year. But it is actually a 7% increase from two years ago. So an average of about 3.5% a year, which is not that abnormal for us given various costs. So we are coming back from a reduced budget. Obviously delivering a responsible, responsible services all the way around. Addressing our challenges with revenues. As I've mentioned before, and we'll mention again, it's a little bit higher than this, but in December, when we were making the budget in January, the number was 7%. And I think the council. The fine. Well, we'll get to that. So revenues. We have a full payment in lieu of taxes from the state. Funded. In that it was great news last year that really helped us a lot. We had budgeted for a much more reduced amount and got the full, full payment. Which made a big difference. And again, for those, there is occasionally people do say that we don't get any money from the state for property taxes. And I think it's important to know that we get 1.25 million. From the state for property payment in lieu of property taxes. We have a $253,000 for budgeted for our rooms, meals and alcohol taxes. That's good news in that it's an improvement from the year before. It's still not as high as it was pre pandemic. The highway, state highway aid went up last year and it's projected to stay the same. So again, that is up quite a bit from what we had budgeted. Our building permits are stabilized. So we've got them in at about 75,000. It's still down from about 100,000. Normally. So the net increase for all of these items of 488,000. Some of that is what we may get asked later. What made up that one time 434,000. That we used for capital money in the prior year's budget, but this is that this is one of the benefits. So just covering those increases and getting our budget back to where it was, it is a percentage of increase on the budget, which isn't necessarily a tax increase. So I think people need to under, you know, it's helpful to understand that. So we've mentioned the strategic plan. And I know, we all here understand it, but many people who may will be watching don't. So the city council goes through a process in the fall with where we spend two or three meetings really going through identifying priorities and action steps and specific initiatives underneath all of those. But the main strategies are to improve community prosperity, provide responsible and engaged. And I think that's one of the things that we need to do. And I think that's one of the things that we need to do. And one of the strategies are to improve community prosperity, provide responsible and engaged government, create more housing, practice good environmental stewardship, build, maintain a sustainable infrastructure and improve public health and safety. So when we look at our budget, when we look at our operations, we try to see how they are structured around them. And if people that watch read the city manager's weekly memo, we try to see how they are structured around them. And so that's one of the things that we need to do. And I think that's one of the things that we need to do. So our first one improved community prosperity. We included $50,000 for economic development. And this is probably a moment to slightly address the points that Mr. Kelman raised. We don't expect that that position to do everything with regard to economic development. The $50,000 is to do a strategic plan and also to purchase for economic development. So there would be some real fine work, more detail things that are over our heads. That we currently that perhaps the mobility development corporation used to do, and we would contract out. We would not dump it all on the hands of one employee. So childcare was a high. A high priority. That is included in the feasibility for the rec center, regardless of its location. But currently as we look at the outs club and really see an additional $45,000 for the local health care opportunities there. That's less, less. Talk much bill. There are not as many options at the current site. Because of its site restrictions. We have an additional outdoor recreation proposed. Obviously through our various parks and rec budgets, but also through the Elks club. I proposed out club on. We continued $45,000 for the homeless as task force. The same as last year, we have an additional $45,000 for the community fund. Which supports nonprofit organizations that provide help. Primarily assistance to needy individuals. And individuals in crisis. We maintain 32,600 to Montpelio live to promote our downtown. And we have input in $10,000 for the Montpelio arts fund. That is an increase of zero from zero from last year. It's a decrease from 20,000 in prior years. We have an additional $25,000 for the city council. We have an additional $25,000 for the city council. Providing responsible and engaged government. One of the things that was important to the city council was that we have fully staffed city departments that we do. We have $25,000 for a website upgrade. And I'm just getting some proposals in now to look at that. And we certainly received a lot of. Expressions of concern about that. And we agree. And so we're hoping we can do a lot with that. We have continued 10,000. We have a $30,000 for the city council. And we have a $30,000 for the city council. And we have a $30,000 for the city council. We have a $30,000 last year. We'll probably be 20,000 next year. But this 10,000 and the 20,000. We'll cover an 18 months span until the time we were doing our next month. Budget. So that should work. We have 130,000 in there to. For our ADA transition plan to actually put in projects. And make improvements to make things more accessible for people. We have $75,000 for public communications data. We have a $30,000 for the city council. And we have a $30,000 for the city council. We have a $50,000 for the city council to include a community survey. It includes some software to better explain. Some of our projects for people. And to try to create some more interaction with the public to allow for that. We have talked about equity for people and the, our committee that handles that has recommended that we play a stipend for volunteers on committee. included $15,000 for professional advocacy at the legislature. And essentially our sort of nuts and bolts services are fully restored, police fire, public works, et cetera. So with our full staffing and our funding back to sort of a normal budget, we can't be all things to all people, but we're at what we consider fully functional. So toward the goal to create more housing, we have put in 110,000 for the housing trust fund. Last year, we only put 50,000 in. So in the budget, we've got the full 110,000. And then we are also restoring 60 that was not put in last year's budget from our budget. So basically make last year whole as well as this year's the whole $110,000. In addition, the $2 million proposed bond for the Elks Club is partially to go for housing and the extent to which to be defined as we go forward. Practice good environmental stewardship with included $100,000 to fully implement our net zero plan now that we have one. We've had the goal for some time and now we have a plan and now we need to go forward with it in one of our bonds. We are doing the first major project highlighted in that plan, which is to convert our DPW garage to a pellet heating and save the fossil fuels there. We've got money in ARPA for, and I'd mentioned ARPA a couple of times is American Rescue Plan Act. So that is the one time money that came to states and cities for the pandemic. So $35,000, $4,000 of dam removal seed money. We've looked at wanting to potentially remove some of the dams in the North Branch and in the Wemuski rivers. We understand that the new infrastructure bill, if we ever get guidance on it, we'll have somebody for dam removal hoping we can use this either for studies or matching funds. We've continued to fund the MyRide from GMT at $40,000. And we have in one of the bonds $600,000 to help fund the River Confluence Park. Our key goal is to maintain, build and maintain sustainable infrastructure. We're putting more into infrastructure in this huge budget than we ever have. Our Capital and Equipment Plan funding is at 2.15 million, which is about 250,000 below where we'd like to be on our annual basis. However, it's supplemented with about 2.5 million in ARPA and Capital Reserve funding. And that isn't counting the four bonds. So about $4.6 million capital investment right there and more coming later in the presentation, more detail on that. Improving public health and safety. We have expanded capacity for the social worker for the public associated with the police department. We've included body worn cameras in the FY22 budget included funding for dispatch consoles that haven't been purchased yet. So we're carrying that money forward. Most of the police review committee recommendations have been included. We did just did an update with the council a meeting or two ago about where things were. The crisis intervention training is included in the operating budget. And we have 425,000 identified in ARPA for housing services, public bathrooms. I think more definition will be coming for that but it's to address some of those critical needs in the community. So we talked a little bit about capital improvements and infrastructure. We have a plan, so our capital plan includes our debt service, how much we're putting annually and our equipment and then we basically have a total target. So if you look down, you go back a couple of years to the column for FY20, you can see we're at 2.375 million where it's this total budget. And that was really our target of where we want to be and then let me perhaps slowly grow that by inflation. Then FY21, because of the impact of COVID we had to make some slashes. You can see we cut that drastically by 668,000 and then FY22 that even though on paper the budget went up by 200,000, you can see it was still $400,000 below where we'd like to be in our target. So that led to a lot of delayed projects, equipment purchases and the like. So this year it's back up to 2.15 million essentially. It's increased by 223,000. It still is about 225,000 below the 2.375. So we will be looking to address that next year. So what are we doing with the million dollars that we're proposing to use this year? Take 590,000 of it put on streets and roads to improve the conditions of those, short and long-term rebuild, fix, et cetera. Another 230,000 in buildings and grounds that includes the 130,000 for ADA compliance. 68,000 for parks and trees, 63,000 for sidewalks. Again supplemented with other funds for other projects. This is specifically for sidewalks. Many of the other projects include sidewalks when we're fixing the adjacent street. 27,000 for bridge maintenance, $20,000 for transportation and $75,000 for project management to help that includes technical services, et cetera, to help get all the rest of these projects completed. We also have about $360,000 in equipment. 109 of that is for fire DMS, those are essentially payments on fire trucks and ambulances, $95,000 for two police cruisers, excuse me, $95,000 for DPW vehicles, $76,000 for two police cruisers. And the reason we're getting two is we haven't bought any the last two years. Normally we get one per year, so we are behind and seeking to catch up. $53,000 for our information technology infrastructure, which is real essential for us and $26,000 for parks. So now we get into the ARPA money, the American Rescue Plan Act, money part one. So the first 1.1 million was received by the city this fall and it was very clear that it can be used for lost revenue, which meant basically anything that we could document we had that was lost revenue. And as the prior chart showed, there had been plenty of it. So we've aligned $620,000 for delayed roads, bridges, retaining walls and $420,000 for deferred equipment purchases and $60,000 to restore the housing trust fund. So again, playing catch up from the last couple of years. Part two is the new money, which we expect to get this fall. It originally came with some very tight restrictions for what it could be done. Those have since been loosened and that happened during the bug process. So we've continued with our current plan we may or may not choose to adjust it as we go forward because in my personal opinion, obviously my opinion doesn't really count. It's the council's opinion that counts, but it does seem to address the priorities that we've established for the community. So this is the 75,000 for the community outreach that we talked about earlier, the 425,000 for homelessness issues, housing, public bathroom, et cetera. $50,000 for an electric vehicle charging station for city vehicles. This is not for the public, although perhaps with the more flexible use we could realign that if that's something we saw. And then $450,000 for water and sewer improvements. We know we have aging water and sewer infrastructure and we've been trying to, we have a long-term plan for building that up. And so the plan is to use a good portion of this ARPA money to accelerate that plan and get some more water and sewer lines improved. And then in addition, because as you heard I mentioned we got some revenues in that we hadn't anticipated. So we actually had a reserve in capital funds that had been created because we had budgeted money, cut the projects because we didn't think we were gonna get the money that we got it. So the money was in reserve. So we're adding 180,000 to paving funds to them funds that were already in the budget, bringing us up to a total of 760,000 for road paving. 750,000 per year is the recommended amount to reach the paving level, the street quality level that we would like to be at. Obviously sustained over years, not just a one year but this would be the first time we've actually funded this fully at the Pavement Condition Index target. And 221,000 in equipment and then the aforementioned 34,000 for dam removal. So the two ARPA funds, 2.2 million ARPA funds, the 435,000 here all come into 2.6 million in investment infrastructure above and beyond the 2.15 in our normal budget. So there it is, that's our total capital. As you can see, we've got about 2.3 million going into various infrastructure projects, another million in our equipment and the 560,000 into community-based needs. So about 4 million at all. So that's not including the proposed bonds for community investment. So now I'm at the section on the bonds, mayor. If you'd like, I can pause here and we can talk about the budget. Yeah, I think we probably should if that is okay. So if you wouldn't mind stopping sharing your screen. I wanna just check in with folks. So because this is a public hearing I'm going to officially open the public hearing on this. And if you have comments or questions on this and now is the time, if you would say your name, where you live, try to keep your comments to two minutes. I suspect there may be a number of people who may want to comment. And if you have a number of questions or comments to make if you could put them all together and then we will make a note of that and respond appropriately. Okay, so Peter Kelman, I see you've got your hand up. Go ahead. Did I get my mute right this time? Yes, you did. Okay, first of all, I would just like to say that Bill, I think you've done a fantastic job with this budget. I really do. I wish more people understood that. And that is a problem that I hope we can all work on together in the coming years that next year we don't get these misunderstood issues that we have this year. That said, I do have just a couple of comments. The first is, as you know, because I've written you about this, I don't think you have enough money in there to replace the website. That website is so old and so creaky and so useless that fixing it is not enough. The second thing is that I'm all for pellet furnaces but they are not. They produce carbon dioxide. They may not be fossil fuels, but they're not the cleanest energy in the world. And I just hope that we know what we're doing there. The third thing is that I think you said it's very cool about the charging station. And this is the kind of creative thinking you need to do. Yes, it's intended for city vehicles. But if we're going to transition lower income people to electric cars, how about thinking about that as a kind of a form of subsidy? If they can get an electric car, they can charge for free. In the future, we've got to figure out a way to help lower income people to make the move to electric vehicles. And then finally, I must have missed what the community outreach is, but maybe that's related to my first point. I'm a big fan of Cannes. I participated in Cannes in two different neighborhoods. I've been after Ann about Cannes for about five years before she was mayor. I think they're the key to community involvement, community engagement and communication. We need to really make it more robust. There are not Cannes coordinators in every neighborhood. Some of the neighborhoods are just much too big, but I really hope that you as a city council will model how Cannes can be used. All you city counselors, you should be talking to regularly with the Cannes coordinators in your districts. Get them to put out the news, explain the budget. They can explain the budget maybe to their people, their neighbors and get their neighbors to tell them things, to tell you what they want for their neighborhood. I think that that's my dream for Cannes. And even though it's not strictly a budget item, the budget item is community outreach. And I just hope that you'll have a way to work that can into that. Thanks. Thank you, Peter. Other comments about the budget or questions? You can either raise your hand using the raise hand icon or turn your camera on and wave or unmute yourself and let us know you wanna speak. Anybody else? Okay, I'm not seeing. Oh, Jay, go ahead. Bill, I just didn't, I didn't know if you wanted to clarify Peter's questions in terms of a new website relative to the community outreach piece that's part of the ARPA funds. I think that Peter, you're absolutely right. That initial piece that's in the budget, that's not even close to rebuilding the website. So, but this is, you know, and I think Bill has been looking at ways to improve it and make it more manageable. The money that is in the ARPA funds is in response to something that I had brought to Bill a while ago that would look to move all of the pieces. The city website does a lot of work. Not only is it about engaging with the community, but it also has to be an online presence for doing the business and running the city, right? So the community outreach piece is looking at a way to organize and improve the community outreach part of the website. So looking at a way that where there are issues, where there's development projects and all of these types of questions that happen, all of those could exist in one space that would have a cleaner interface with city staff and with the city website. So that's, it's kind of broken up in pieces. Obviously we don't want to get too far into the weeds on this, but I just want you to know that that's that thinking is figuring out ways to make sure that we have the city as a web presence that can best support the communication with everybody in the community. So Bill, I don't know if you have anything else to add to that, but that's sort of the big picture thinking about those two pieces of funding. Yeah, if I could just follow up on that too quickly. Thank you, Jay and Peter. So we do plan to, I'd say overhaul. I think we plan to replace the website and bring in a new one. Unlike years past, municipal websites are not new now. There are lots of them. And so it is, there is a, I don't know, template's the right word, but there are products that can be had, we have an online. And in addition, we have an IT contractor who manages all of our IT and they build websites for municipalities. And so we are looking, talking to them about, they're already a partner with us. So pulling over our information, rebuilding. So we actually do think we can do that with pretty close to the money that we have, maybe not exactly, but we feel pretty good about that. And we have some room with the 75,000. As Jay mentioned, we're also looking at developing some other ways to talk with the public. One of them is to actually have a full community survey. We did one in 2009 that was very successful and we haven't done it since. And I think this was a good opportunity to update information and really get a sense of people's needs, priorities, how they feel about city services, et cetera, get some reaction and specifically ask questions about where people go to get information. We all make assumptions that it might be the bridge or it might be the types of arguments or it might be front porch forum or it might be wherever. So let's ask people where exactly, where are their priorities? Where do they go to get these things? So that's all part of it. And then looking at, as Jay mentioned, some software that could split out some of the city projects that people could learn more about and or have more interaction functions with people so we could get more real-time feedback from the public. So that's today's world. We're trying to figure out how to move into that with our resources. So those together are really $100,000 toward that end. And I think certainly can is an important piece of that and how we integrate them into that is, you know, so. Yeah, if I can, unless you were not done. I'm done. Okay, I'm gonna piggyback on that as well and say, you know, I'm glad that the capillary neighborhoods is up and running now. And I think the councils as well as the staff's relationship with can hopefully will continue to grow and evolve over time as we sort of get used to the idea that can exist, which is great. But I appreciate you bringing that up and reminding us that we need to be intentionally getting information to can leaders. So thank you very much. Other comments or questions specifically about the budget. City budget. Okay, I see a person called MP, but if you would say your first and last name and where you live, that would be really helpful. Go ahead. Cameron, I'm wondering if this person has the ability to unmute themselves. They should. Okay, so MP, we would love to hear from you if you can unmute yourself. For now though, it looks like maybe we should go to Dee Dee Brush. Go ahead, Dee Dee. Hi, thank you all. I am particularly interested in the bonds and I think I understood from what Bill Frasier said a little bit ago was that this is going to be addressed later in the meeting. Am I correct about that? Yes, that's next. Okay. And the only thing that always, I've been guilty of not being a very attentive citizen as far as the various line items in the budget. But one of the ones that always catches my attention is the equipment budget. And there's a little here and a little there. And I just wonder how does one, how does a department determine the need for more equipment other than, well, we've had it for four years and it needs to be replaced. Or could somebody elaborate on that? Certainly. So we have an equipment plan that is, we have an annual funding level which we are going back up to. We had to cut it. That's why this year you're seeing equipment popping up in two or three different places because we're using ARPA money and reserve money to catch up from prior years. But normally all our major equipment is in our capital plan. It's a little over half a million. And we, it's planned out pretty far in advance. We look at life cycle of vehicles. So it includes, that includes fire trucks, ambulances, police cruisers, information technology equipment, all the DPW various vehicles, the trucks, the graders, the loaders, the sidewalk plows. So the recreation pickup trucks and mowers and parks, when you think about the amount of equipment the city uses for various things that goes pretty fast actually, particularly the cost of that. So each department is responsible for mapping out their needs and the useful service of a vehicle. Some like a fire truck last, the big trucks last 20 to 30 years. So we typically will bond for one of those and they last us for a long period of time. The ambulances are on a five year cycle for the box and a 10 year cycle for the chassis. So that's a set thing. DPW really, in fact, we get more life out of our vehicles and we're usually able to sell them because we maintain them so well that we often have success selling them to other municipalities as 10 year old use vehicles that they're delighted to get because they're in such a good condition. And so that helps us offset the cost of our replacement vehicle. So it's a pretty detailed science and even that, I would say, typically in a budget time, the requests come in and exceed the amount that we have. So we then as a group have to prioritize what goes into the council. And as you saw this year, because we had to cut things out last year we're just catching up on things because they're... I understand. And are the sales of the used equipment shown? I assume it must be shown in the revenue side somewhere. Okay. And often, indeed, to be fair, we don't usually budget for sale of revenue. When it comes, it's part of the factor of buying the next truck or the next piece of vehicle but we wouldn't necessarily budget and say we're expecting to get X for sale. It's just, it's a nice, it helps when it happens. And I sort of agree, last comment, I'm sorry. It's okay. The CAN initiative. As a resident, I was not, oops, excuse me, spam risk. I was not particularly informed about the CAN initiative. And I sort of ran into them as I walked around town. And so I think that if you're finding that it's an effective communication tool, it would be who the city council or the city councilors or the marketing or what have you arm of the city to make that more visible. Because I don't think it's pretty, well, from my point of view, it's not particularly well known. That could be not very accurate. But I also think that the ones that I see around town, they tend to not be very updated very frequently. So if you're gonna do it, it needs to be more robust. And I don't know whether that's a budget issue or what it is, but it's a nice concept, but it needs to be more vibrant, in my opinion. Yeah, thank you. And just thank you for those comments, they're well taken. But just for context, for future commenters, we do try to keep our comments or questions sort of all together, if we can. It's okay, no worries. So just for context or clarification there, anyone else? I thought it was all about the budget, so forgive me. Oh, no, it is. But the idea would be to have your comments about CAN and the equipment sort of together. Yeah, oh, I see. That's okay, that's okay, no worries. Carol Welch, go ahead. Hi, I just need a quick clarification. Is the, I've been looking at it online, probably more than it's good for my mental health, but it's not clear to me whether that the, I seem to understand that the debt service for the four items that we need to vote on separately are embedded in that budget or not. Great, great question and they are. So even though they haven't been approved, the debt service is in the budget. Yes, Carol. And before you answer, Bill, I just want to just check, Carol, is there anything else that you want to add or say? I have, sorry, the other question is another, I saw that you were proposing to spend $100,000 to implement net zero. Is that for the energy coordinator assistant, whatever position that has been talked about recently, or is that for something else? And if it is, where is it in the org chart? I couldn't see it. Great questions, and anything else, Carol, those are great questions. Those are great questions, thank you. Okay, I'm gonna turn it back over to Bill, go ahead. Okay, so on the debt service question, Carol, the debt service for the first year payments that would occur during the next year are included in the budget. We all, you know, we have to do that rather than raise the tax rate even more, you know, because of the bonds. Oh, got it. And obviously, future years, the tax, the amount goes up and those will be in the future budgets, but it is included now. So if the bonds pass, nothing would change in the budget for this coming year. To your second question, I believe that is correct. The plan is to look at an energy coordinator that came up very late, not late, that came up during the budget process. And so it had not been part of the original plan. So you're right, it's not on an org chart anywhere that position isn't fully fleshed out yet. But the idea was to allocate $100,000 to provide staff support to put in the net zero, to implement the net zero plan. Okay, thank you. And yeah, thank you. All right, and Mandy Perkins, go ahead. Hi, I'm Mandy, obviously. This is kind of my first time listening to the town meeting and I've lived here for four and a half years. And my main question is about the budget for like roads and bridges, is it enough? Cause the first thing we noticed when we moved here, we came from New Hampshire is like, the roads in Montpelier are absolutely atrocious. And I kind of laughed something about, I think when Bill said like the, can't think about, what did he say? Something about like the quality of our roads, like maintaining that. I wanted to be like, there is no quality to the roads. I just, what has the previous budget been for that? Cause I just, this doesn't seem like it's enough to maintain the roads in Montpelier. Like when I was driving today, I feel like there's no road that I go down that isn't filled with potholes. And then my other comment to that is, how much money is invested in just filling those potholes for like temporary fixes, like the amount of energy and time and cost because they fill the potholes and then they immediately just break up and that debris is all over the road. So it just seems kind of almost pointless to me until they can actually really fix the road. Like why put the effort and money into it when it's just such a quick fix that goes away really quickly. Thank you, Mandy. Great questions. And anything else that you wanted to ask about or comment on? No, just about bridges. That's fine. And yeah, go ahead, Bill. So Mandy, you hit it on the head. We have not been investing enough in the roads. There's a long story about that. If I can find, our DPW did a great presentation for the council in the fall. I'd have to find the date and it would be worth checking out where they really laid out what the needs are and the funding. So what you heard me say was their estimate was that we needed to put in about $750,000 per year every year to get and keep our roads where we need them to be. So there's a thing called pavement condition index and we have set a goal of 70 which is a technical, you don't need to know that, but that would be a good score for our roads. And to achieve and maintain this 70 PCI, we need to invest about 750,000. So we have 760,000 in the budget this year. That's the first time we've really hit that amount. And so compounding that you mentioned, you moved here about four years ago, not to make excuses, but you are correct. It's particularly the last couple of years because of COVID, not only have we not budgeted enough, we've actually had to cut what we did budget. So we've been really bad on the roads the last couple years. So some of what you saw in the budget in addition to our annual funding is catching up on some of those prior roads. That said, it has been a long struggle here. New England in general, I'm sure if you're in New Hampshire, you would see potholes come. You really do need to fix them because they can actually get worse. If you just leave them open, then they dig even deeper. And of course, damage to the vehicles. I don't have the number of what it costs, but we do track that, we can probably get that for you as far as the cost of potholes. And so for example, projects like East State Street that we'll be talking about later, that's rebuilding a complete road from start to finish and that will be putting in all the proper base, proper paving, et cetera. So we're well aware of it. We have each road sort of mapped out by condition. And I'm going on longer than you probably wanted me to. But the other thing is that there is a little bit of strategy involved in this, which is knowing when we're also gonna be fixing water and sewer lines because it makes no sense to dig up a road, or excuse me, fix a road. And then three years later, dig it up to put water and sewer lines in. So there's a little bit of coordination there. So sometimes roads will be left in not great condition because we know there's going to be a much major, more major subsurface work coming and we don't wanna duplicate the effort. And lastly, there is a science to roads about, well, you know what, I'm gonna leave all that. I'll see if I can find the date of that, I think it was November meeting with DPW and they can explain it a lot better. But it's a great question. It's probably the number one question we get. And one of the reasons I wanted to make a point of emphasizing how much we were spending on infrastructure was so that people knew we were trying to catch up and at least get to the level we need to be with our roads. So long way to answer, I hope it helped. Thank you. Anyone else comments or questions about the budget? Yes, go ahead, Mark Billion. It's Mark Billion Bailey Avenue. I know both the school budget and the city budget are making use of one-time funds, the school budget to zero out the increase. And I assume when you make those decisions, you do so considering the next impact on the following year. What does the city budget look like for next year if we were to prove it as it stands? So great question, Mark. Yeah, great question. Go ahead. Do you want to take that one? I'm sorry? You want to take that one? No, no, I was gonna ask them. So we did not use any one-time money to do any ongoing operations so that it would not have the impact if you saw. We had about 2.4 million in one-time money that's all going to restore projects that we had cut due to COVID or put in back equipment or to do one-time fixes or improvements. For the reason that you mentioned so that we don't suddenly have a $2.4 million budget gap next year. So we did not use it to offset any budget increases if that helps. Great, thank you. Anyone else? And just giving it another couple of seconds here. And I, in DD brush, I see you've got your hand up again. I just wanted to make sure other folks had an opportunity to speak. I don't know if you have a further question, but before you, before I call on you again, DeeDee, anyone else have a comment or question? Okay. So DeeDee brush, did you have anything further? Oh, you're muted though. Excuse me for that. It's okay. I think that the figure that Bill just quoted for the road improvements in Montpelier is seems very, very low, given the abysmal condition of the roads and particularly in recognition of the fact that the East State Street project is budgeted at $7 plus million. Now I understand that that requires sewer and water, et cetera, and a reconstruction, which is different than just paving. I understand that. But as the previous speaker said, it is unbelievable how poor the quality of our roads are, even in comparison to other Northern Vermont roads, which suffer the same frosty issues, et cetera. So I would like to think that the city would put more emphasis on that. I mean, I've been reading on Frontparch Forum, the some owners who are facing car repairs because their car went through a pot hole or what have you. And it's just unacceptable. And I'm not a big infrastructure person, but I do believe that we've sort of gone over the edge as far as the quality of our road maintenance. And I'd like to think that the city would, and the council would consider beefing that up and taking away from perhaps something else that's a little bit less urgent. So that's my final comment. Thank you for that, Dee Dee. And anyone else? Okay. All right, so thank you for all those comments and questions. Those were great. And I'm gonna turn it back over to you, Bill, to talk about the bonds. Yeah. I guess I should close the public hearing, I'm gonna close the public hearing on the budget. I'm gonna open it on the bonds. Okay, go ahead. All right, well, let me see if I can figure out how to get back to where I was, right? I think I can get in there. Okay, can everyone see this? Yes. Great. So city, in addition to the budget that the council is proposing, we're also proposing four separate bond issues. One is East State Street, which is referred to. And I'm gonna go through these in more detail. One is a group of infrastructure projects. One is to purchase the former ELCS property, and one is to upgrade the water resource recovery facility or the wastewater treatment plant or the sewer treatment plant. However, you choose to call it. The official name is the WRF water resource recovery facility. So article 12 on the ballot is $7.2 million for East State Street. This includes $4 million from the general fund. Again, not to play inside baseball. The general fund is the basic city budget. That's essentially what you pay for in your property taxes with whatever revenues are offset. And then other funds include the water fund, the sewer fund, the parking fund, et cetera, that come from other revenues. So that's your lightning round of municipal finance. So the 3.2 million of this would come from water and sewer funds. So this, so again, talk about road conditions. This is in addition to the funds that are already in the budget. This would be a complete reconstruction of East State Street from Main Street to College Street. So the whole thing, top to bottom. All new water and sewer lines installed underneath. A completely rebuilt road base with surface, roof sidewalks, drainage. That road has a lot of problems. It has a combined sewer overflow issue, which again, not to talk in jargon. Way back when cities put all their sewers into one pipe. So whether it was a sanitary sewer from your toilet or your roof drain, which was stormwater, it all went into one pipe, it all flowed into the rivers. And over the years, we were ordered and have separated many of them, most of them, so that the stormwater goes one place and the sanitary sewers we call it goes to the wastewater plant. There are a handful of these left, which of course, none of us like. And we are, they're expensive to fix, but we are knocking them off. So this would address one of them is part of this project to, and this is actually a particularly big one. So this will help a lot with our CSO issue. They're also the parking lot behind the fire station would be improved. And then there has been a periodic odor problem caused by some sewer backup at East State Main that will be corrected. And in addition, this project is funded by another $1.4 million in ARPA, on top of the ARPA money that we've already talked about. So pretty major infrastructure. Mayor, do you want me to go bond by bond or do all the bonds? Let's do all the bonds since they were advertised sort of all together. And yeah, and we'll take comments on all of them for questions. So as I said, that's it, it's been long. This has been a project long in planning and highly necessary. We'll solve a lot of major issues. We'll take probably three years to complete in various stages. I think we're gonna be doing the CSO and the odor and a few of those things first, then the water and sewer lines the second year and then the road reconstruction the third year is the last I heard. Okay, so then article 13 is 1.815 for miscellaneous infrastructure. This is from the general fund. So it includes $600,000 for Confluence Park. That's about half of the cost of this project. The River Confluence Park is located near the confluence of the Winooski in the North Branch River. If you are at the transit center and walking toward downtown, right to the right, there's sort of an open park piece. You know, it's just grassy area that will be converted to a park. We'll have access to the river, some scenic area. And again, that was part of the original plan for the transit centers. If you go back to the source documents from 2000, 2002, this was all part of that project. And so this would be completing that aspect of it. The next part of this is $550,000 for the Main Street and Berry Street intersection. We all know that's a terrible intersection. This will put in signals. We'll also provide some improved geometrics I'm getting in over my head. We'll be some physical improvements to the intersection and the new street lights. The street lights will be synced with the lights at State Main and at Route 2 and Main so that they're what we call smart technology to help keep traffic flow moving as best as it can. Also be converting the downtown street lighting which is starting to fail to LED lighting. This is also an energy saving. It shouldn't increase the amount of light but it should make it more reliable. We've had a lot of problems with our current lighting. So we should have more reliable, steady lighting and it will be at a drastically reduced energy cost. I think we figured it's about a 12. I'm gonna guess 12, but it might be more. If someone on my staff knows the answer to the payback for this, please let me know before I finish this presentation. And then we mentioned the pellet heating system at the DPW garage, fair point made earlier about the emissions. I don't have the answer for that right now. What we do have is an adopted plan for net zero with three major projects for city buildings and then the next part would be converting city fleet. And then of course the last part is getting, well, then there's a whole bunch for the schools which we have no say over and then convert, then dealing with private citizens to try to make the change. But this is the first of the three major city projects that was recommended. And then lastly, we have a, lastly, but certainly not leastly, I shouldn't say it's just the least expensive. We do have a slope failure on Barbra Street which is putting the road in danger and this would stabilize that and rebuild that road so that it can operate safely. So those together are one bond project and that is Article 13. Article 14 is the $2 million for the purchase of the former ELCS project and it is coming from the general fund. That is not the full purchase price has been fully developed. We expect it to be closer to 3 million. Praisal should be coming in very shortly now and any difference will be supplemented by a recreation reserve which has been set aside for a new facility. So again, trying to answer some of the questions that have come up, it would purchase the entire current ELCS club property and the buildings. It may be done in conjunction with private investment a nonprofit group called the hub. And I've noticed there are a couple of folks from the hub on the call right now. So perhaps they'll want to weigh in on this at some point. The parcel size is large, it's close to 140 acres includes obviously it was a former golf course includes room for housing community facilities, parking trails, fields and more. We see it as a large opportunity to meet a lot of city needs. Housing is clearly a top priority in the city and this is a chance of the city to guide some housing development. Will require more money in the future for a new community center. There's no doubt about that. And just as a point of reference the recreation center on Bear Street has very significant problems. We've studied that a lot to renovate that to a kind of minimal use was going to cost six plus million. As I said before, I do have a more detailed presentation available if desired. Also a couple of people I know have seen in the discussion talking about the price of real estate. I just did a little bit of look in terms of what this might mean in terms of property in the city. And in the last three years there have been 49 single family home properties that have sold for $400,000 or more. And the first six, excuse me, the first five, the highest five together total 3.2 million. So five single family homes have sold for the amount of this entire parcel. And so in terms of the city owning land and potentially selling some off that it seems like while we don't wanna get in the speculation business we think there are some opportunities here. As I said, I have a little bit more information on that if desired. Lastly, phase two, 16.4 million dollars for the wastewater, water resource recovery facility upgrade. This comes from the sewer fund paid for by sewer rates. It is phase two of the plant overhaul project. Phase one modernized the plant and it's hard to simplify all of these things in these short bullet points. It completely overhauled a lot of the electrical use, made some very huge upgrades and modernized the plant to accept process commercial organic food waste. It also resulted in increased methane production which we're using to heat that building. It's important to note that bond was 19 million dollars. Although I think we probably ended up, I think letting about 15 million of it. But it didn't change the rates because of the reduction in operating costs and the revenues coming from food waste. So I think that's just an important note that we didn't, the 19 million dollars did not jack up people sewer rates. It was sort of offset on an annual basis. And that is the goal for this one as well as much as possible. So the methane that we have will be used to dry the residuals from the plant. This is called sludge or biosolids. This is one of the problems with wastewater treatment in general. We process everything out. We send clean water to the rivers, not including of course the PFAS which is a relatively newly understood issue that is in all aspects of water treatment, sewer treatment all over the country, probably the world. But these biosolids or sludge is left over. And back in the day, this was the sewer, the septage that got spread on fields. Many of it has fields, but it has been shown to have things in it that aren't great. So it is now processed some more and we truck it to, we pay to have it trucked to the landfill in Coventry. We get a very favorable rate for that in part because we then sell the processing of the leachate from Coventry, which is, it is used for cover. This project here has assumed that we would no longer continue to get revenue from leachate. We may, that is a decision yet to be made, but we've taken the conservative assumption and assumed that we were gonna be paying a higher cost to distribute sludge. Therefore, this drying process will drastically reduce the volume of the sludge or the biosolids so that our cost per time will go down quite a bit and we'll also reduce our trucking costs. So again, offsetting our operations and making it more environmentally sound does not solve the PFAS problem. It will, however, address the increased odor and it will complete the plant upgrade. So while we upgraded a lot of the plant in phase one, this will complete the plant. I got asked a really good question. Why are we upgrading a 40 year old plant? Are we throwing bad money after good? And the answer is actually when this is completed, we'll have a new plant. It will just have been upgraded in place and will be set now for the next long term. But we do have, if anyone who's been down near the plant, particularly in the summertime knows there's an odor problem. We are under an action problem and it does need to be addressed. So that is as quickly as I can explain a very complicated project. And I hope there are folks here that can explain more if we get more questions. So I'm actually now back to the budget. I'll just wrap this up, Mayor. And then we'll take all kinds of questions because there's only a couple more slides should have organized this better. So going quickly, in addition to the city's budget and the four bonds, there are three independent ballot items which the council allowed to be put on the ballot because rather than asking people to petition during COVID. So the Kellogg-Hubert Library request, the annual request is up by $45,000. And that is included when we talk about the tax impact of our budget. Public safety authority is also up 14,000. It was zero last year. So again, that's combined. That is $59,000 added to the city's tax rate that are non-city items. And then the central Vermont Home Health and Hospice items were the same as last year. So those are three independent budget items. So this all adds up to the municipal portion of the tax rate is about 8.1 cents or 6.8%. As we go back to the beginning slide, the goal was to keep within the 7% inflation rate and it just barely does that. And again, that includes those ballot items as well that we just talked about. The education tax for resident is actually gonna drop by 2.7%, 4.7 cents, making the overall residential tax rate this year only going up by 3.3 cents or 1.1%. So important to note, that's the lowest percentage change in overall property tax rate since 2016 and then 2011 before that and a five-year average of 2.7%. So no question, the city's budget has a lot of challenges this year as we try to come back. But fortunately, it's kind of the reverse of where we've been in prior years when the education tax had some big bumps in the city held theirs down. So last slide is saying, reminding everyone that voting is actually already started but your last chance is seven to seven on next Tuesday, March 1st and the early voting, like I said, is underway. So vote early, do not vote often. And that is it. And I think we're happy to take any questions about the bonds, tax rate, even if they wanna, well, I'll leave that to me if they wanna talk about anything else. So- That's fine, that's fine. Great. And so thank you, Bill. And so, yeah, we're gonna now be open up for questions or comments about the bonds or if you have something residual about the city budget, that's fine as well. So, and again, if you would say your name, where you live and try to keep your comments two minutes, if you can, I have feeling probably a lot of folks may want to make comments. Actually, I'm just now remembering that something that I wanted to say, which is that Bill, you said you had more information about the Elks Club bond. And just from checking in with counselors, who would appreciate seeing that extra presentation now? Yeah? Okay, there's a couple. I have a feeling that that may be one of the reasons why a lot of folks are here. So actually, before we go into public comments, I apologize, thank you, Mandy Perkins, for being ready to raise your hand. I appreciate that. But let's hear the Elks Club bond presentation and sort of extension. And we'll go to comments after that. Okay, go ahead, Bill. Thanks. Can I share my screen? Okay, yes. Yes. The second there, it was disabled, but we got it. Okay, so this is really, I probably talked about a lot of this, but it was really just an attempt to dig a little bit deeper into this. This does certainly seem to be the topic of discussion this year, trying to try to answer as many questions. So this is, the purchase would be for 203 Country Club Road, not County Club, sorry, my bad. We're putting $2 million of tax dollars in order for a bond over 20 years, average payment of about $120,000 per year, high of about 145 in the low of about 101 in 20 years. It's a declining payment. So we support the long-permary payment for the purchase of all of the property in all of the buildings. It's currently under a private appraisal right now. We have presented a purchase and sales agreement to the owner. Have not heard, like I said, I'm away this week, so I haven't heard back whether that has been accepted, but we have certainly been talking very openly with them about terms. So we are looking at, so there's been a lot of questions and I'm gonna start right off by saying that this is definitely not the typical municipal project in that we come in with a very specific project and say, here's what it is, here's what we're gonna do, here's where we're gonna do it, here's exactly what it's gonna cost and what it's gonna look like. This is, I think, an opportunity that presents itself and the city is looking forward-looking. So for people who are uncomfortable with that, I do understand that and that may be a reason why they don't wanna support this, I get that. On the other hand, as we've talked a lot about the strategic plan at the beginning, which clearly called for housing, really called for outside recreation and quality of life and I think the council staff felt that this really looked at this. One of the biggest delays, and I'll probably talk about this more later on in this, but just right off the top, one of the biggest delays we have in projects and many people have referenced how long it took to do the transit center project and it surely did. Many years of that had to do with environmental remediation, but many other years had to do with negotiating and securing ownership of that property and related real estate. Once you've identified a specific project on a specific piece of land, the landowner has a lot of leverage because you can't really move your transit center somewhere else. So it can become difficult and it can become expensive. I think one of the things we felt was if the city owns the land, first of all, it's an asset that can be resold. Second of all, it gives us the opportunity to master plan project. So we view it and when I say we, I'm talking about the city council and city staff as a group, not any one person, I'm speaking as the agent of the council. We see a chance to have a community master planning process that would look at housing opportunities and affordable and market rate, a new community center to address our rec options, childcare options, perhaps opportunities for the senior center. There's land for rec fields, parks and trails, perhaps a dog park, more conservative land. There's a lot of opportunities, a big space. It does have water and sewer, by the way. So we would seek for other funds to support this project. And again, embark on a robust public planning process. We can talk about that if people would like, although because the council hasn't made a decision about how to proceed with that, it would just be possible. So what are some of the questions that have come up? How will the city be funding this? As I said, we have the funds identified to support the bond to purchase the land, assuming the bond passed. For the future, we would be looking for grant opportunities to pay for the feasibility studies of different aspects of this, as well as seeking grants for some of the different aspects of the project. Again, we would be looking to sell parts of the project for private housing, so whether it was lots or parcels and future tax revenues from private funding. Again, all of this would be planned out and brought to owners' attention, excuse me, the community's attention prior to anything further steps being taken. Why is there a sense of urgency to purchase the land? Well, like I just mentioned, the biggest holdup is always land acquisition. Property values are increasing quickly and properties of this size do not often become available. We've heard a lot about the need for housing and the city doing something about housing. We agree. The problem is most of this is on private property, so we can encourage people, we can create zoning, we can do lots of things, but you can't control what somebody does or if they do it or how they choose to proceed. If the city owns it, we have a way to sort of get in and involve and maybe influence the market. So, excuse me, so we can direct the type of housing. One of the biggest obstacles to creating housing is purchasing land. If the city can work with someone to create more affordable housing, perhaps we underwrite the cost of the land so that we can create housing that more people can live in. If you look at the economics of housing in Vermont, in general, with exception of Chittenden County and certainly in central Vermont, really you can only support very high-end housing or truly subsidized affordable housing and really not much in between. Here often, where's the home that a firefighter can live or a teacher or a police officer? And it's not there. They're not being built in the market because they don't work financially. So if the city really wants to develop a wider range of housing, basically we need to bring our own resources to the table and some of that is equalizing the cost of land acquisition. We can't make private owners do things that they don't want to do or that are not financially feasible for them. What about consideration for seniors? We certainly have got feedback about how we could include seniors programming into a community center, accessible buildings, perhaps an indoor walking track, pickleball, indoor meeting rooms. Again, these are all possibilities. There is a lot more parking available at this site than there is at the current senior center on Berry Street. Walkability. So it's true that this site is not necessarily walkable from downtown like the current rec site is. We do have a pool and a rec site about $1.4 million, okay, I've been talking too much. 1.4 miles from the state main intersection. This is almost a full mile longer from the state main intersection. It is along the bike path. We would certainly be looking at extending the bike path, have a connector from the bike path up to this property. And our observation is that most of the participants in the current rec facility actually do use vehicles. Young kids get dropped off for practices and events. They get picked up afterwards, other people drive. So while it might be handy for people to walk, it isn't necessarily the current reality. And for people in some parts of the town, it's not that walkable, so they're driving anyway. We don't like to promote vehicle use but really given the layout of our community until there's much more mass transit, someone's gonna be driving. If you're coming from the Tara Street end of town, or if you're coming from the Town Hill section or over across the river off of Northfield Street, you're gonna be driving to our rec center. You're gonna be driving to some facility. What about building the rec center next to the pool? We have looked at that. And it also has site restrictions. There's a lot of facilities that already exist there. And so we wouldn't really be able to develop anything new in addition to what's already there. Parking is already a nightmare at that site. Anyone who's gone to the pool in the summer, particularly on the night of a Mountaineers game knows that it's a free for all. And adding, well, first of all, some of the parking would be taken away by this building and second of all, it would be creating more demand. So it would certainly be something we would need to manage much better than is being managed now. And the cost of renovating the 55 Berry Street, again, we have to get the facility ADA accessible. We have to get rid of the asbestos. We have to change all the HVAC systems. We have to make it so that all the floors are functional. It's anywhere from six to eight million, depending on what we wanted to include in that. Again, it comes with no additional parking and no expansion needs. So while we could do a lot of things there, we certainly wouldn't be expanding our offerings as much as we would like. So in summary, as I said at the beginning, we're looking prospectively at an opportunity to remind people that there are many existing neighborhoods that were once similar opportunities that were open land and somebody made a chance. You know, in the 50s and 60s and 70s, there was a model that worked financially at the time where a developer purchased a bunch of land, built a subdivision, put in maybe paid for the infrastructure and then sold the lots off and got their money back. That no longer works. The cost of infrastructure is completely different. What you can get for housing, the price of developing housing. And so we're really looking back to 100 years ago when cities laid out the roads and built the neighborhoods, the meadow, other, you know, the neighborhoods closer to town were all laid out by the city of Montpelier and then people developed the housing lots on their own. And that really is where I think Vermont is and New England is right now. So it's true. There's no specific project proposal. There is a concept and there certainly would be a planning process going forward. And finally, the property is a real estate asset. If we truly decide that we just don't want to do anything on it, we can sell it. So I think that's really just digging a little bit deeper, trying to address specifically questions that have been raised. I don't know if it really provides any more enlightenment to people, but I think it's a summary of the city's thinking on this to date. That's it. Okay, thank you. Okay, I appreciate that. So again, if folks have comments or questions, Fox, I want to share on any of the bonds or the city budget and now is the time. And again, if you'd say your name and where you live and anticipating that there may be a number of folks who may want to comment. So try to keep them your comments short, two minutes ideally if you can. And yeah, I think that is it. Okay, Mandy Perkins, go ahead. So I live on Wheelock Street and my question is about Article 13. And first I just want to make sure, clarifying question, Confluence Park, that's behind Shaw's, correct? Yes. Across the river, behind Shaw's and across the river. Right, okay. Yeah, that's what I thought. I just want to know why that's part of like the miscellaneous infrastructure. Like I don't think with all, I don't think so we would have to pay 600,000 towards that and then it's going to be matched. I don't understand why we're putting any money towards that. When my observation around town is we don't even maintain the parks very well that we have. The bike path is very rarely maintained where weeds are overgrowing. The same with sidewalks that are not right in town. Like when I walk down River Street, like coming off of Wheelock Street, there's this part where the wall goes up pretty high and that is always like overgrown coming down into where you're walking. So I don't understand why we'd be putting money into like building a new park when we, it seems like we need more money towards like maintenance of Mount Pelier in general. So I'm kind of disappointed that's in Article 13 because everything else made sense except for that one part. I just think that's a lot of money. Yeah, thank you. Your point is well taken there. Anything else that folks want to say about that? Okay. Thank you for that, Mandy. Diane Derby, go ahead. Hi there. Guess I'll start my video here. Thanks so much for the presentation and thanks for hearing us out. I'll try to keep to one minute on the country club property in one minute on water treatment. I think it would have been a lot easier for some of us to maybe get on board if we felt we had heard all of the details of the purchase and sale agreement. I think we don't feel like we've heard all the details and part of that might be because he went into executive session to discuss it. And I think that's a real mistake to go into executive session to discuss real estate purchases where the city taxpayers are paying for the purchase price. So I'll just say that much. I find that disappointing. And I also think, you know to compare it to the rec center on various three we agreed years ago that that was not a solution that that was not an option. We all know and have known for years. And the fact that we haven't moved forward on what to do with that property on Barry street after all these years. It's just sat there for, I used to play basketball 25 years ago at that property and it's just been in the same kind of condition for that long. So I don't know, Bill if you can speak to what the terms of the purchase and sale agreement are but we know that Steve Robolini bought that property in 2016. I think it was a $1.2 million purchase. So we're hearing $3 million now to purchase it. So just to hear the city thinking on why the price has gone up so much on that property in five years time would be helpful. And maybe those facts aren't accurate. So maybe it can help me out there if they're not on the water treatment plan. I think, you know, Bill and I have been back and forth a bit on this. I never heard any talk of a phase one and phase two where it's phase two would include another $16 million ask. And part of phase one was increasing capacity. And, you know, as many of you already know we're the only town or city left standing that's still accepting the leachate from Cosella. And I find that really concerning. And it's not because it's not an envy factor. It's that we're dumping the PFA contaminants into the river. And I just, you know, we've dumped raw sewage into the river for years and now we're dumping Cosella's leachate that can't be properly treated. And that's not an issue for Montpelier to figure out. That has been an issue for Cosella and the state and the EPA to figure out for years. And Bill and I went back and forth on this and Bill said, well, where would you send the leachate? And that's not for us to decide. And I really hope that if we make another really considerable investment in this wastewater treatment plant, it's not to increase our capacity so we can take, you know, untreated effluent and leachate. I just think that's putting a lot on the people of Montpelier. And I'm a user of Lake Champlain. I swim, I sail, I kayak and we have spent millions and millions in federal dollars to clean up Lake Champlain. And we've seen what happened in Lake Memphormegog from the leachate from the Coventry plant. And that they're looking for a crisis designation for Lake Memphormegog, which was pristine, pristine lake. So I just, you can hear the frustration in my voice. I just don't, I'd love to hear an explanation right now about how it was decided that Montpelier would be the one to accept all of the leachate after all of the communities agreed to stop. And why is it up to us? Thanks. Great questions, Diane. Thank you so much for those questions. Bill, do you wanna address any of those questions? Go ahead. Yep. I think I got them in order. So first, regarding executive session, the reason we went into executive session was to discuss the negotiation of a purchase and sale. You know, what might we accept? What might not, you know, so to do it in public would be tipping the hand to the person you're negotiating with. That's pretty common practice. Obviously you can't make any binding agreements without well being public. That said, and we have confirmed that we are still in agreement stage, not signed agreement stage, but the proposal would be up to $3 million, which is the asking point part of the process, subject to the appraisal. So it could be reduced based on appraisal and subject, of course, to bond passing. Those are really the basics. There's nothing else to add to that really as far as the basics of the agreement. We believe based on recent sales that the high twos is the value for the property. He did buy it at 1.3 million in 2016. But as we've mentioned, property sales have really failed. And we have seen even at Saban's half that property purchased recently for $650,000. So that was the basis for that. With regard to the wastewater plant, so again, I'll try not to repeat all that we said to one another day in, but in general, the city started accepting leachate in the 90s and was not the only people accepting leachate. PFAS was not something that anybody knew about at that time, it didn't make sense financially for the city to accept the leachate, also because we got favorable terms on disposing our biocells, which is another product that we all contribute to. Over time, correctly, we are the last one to accept leachate and over the last four years, when PFAS became a much more known topic, the city council's raised it pretty aggressively. We called in the state and Cassella to a meeting in the fall, asking them what their plans were, expressing our displeasure at this and asking them where it was likely to go. And the most likely alternative location was Plattsburgh, which still empties out into Lake Champlain. So in terms of protecting the plant, the lake didn't seem to make that much difference. The city council put a one year deadline and said to the state, figure it out, we're gonna consider not taking the leachate after a year if you're not substantially down the road. And so as I said to your question of, are we building a plant so that we could take more leachate? The answer is no, that is not. I mean, what we can take is what we can take, but the assumption in all the financial modeling is that we will not be taking leachate. Thank you. And I just wanna add to that. In terms of the PFAS question in the leachate, Diane, I really appreciate that part of your question because that was a topic that the council really wrestled with and it was a not an easy decision at all to continue to take it. We were weighing, do we just get out and say this is, we want no part of this. And kind of as you say, let somebody else figure it out and we don't have to be the ones to make sure that it gets better. But it sounded like there were some remediation methods that Cassell would be exploring with the state oversight. And basically if this, if no Vermont plant was taking leachate, then the oversight from the industry of natural resources would go away because there would be no one in Vermont taking it. So in a sense, this was kind of a compromise to both recognize that it needs to be dealt with, remediation needs to happen. And so we wanted to hold Cassell's feet to the fire to say you need to make improvements which might not have happened if it was being shipped to Plattsburg. But as the other side of it would be to say that like you've got a year to demonstrate substantial improvement. And if that doesn't happen, then I think, I mean, I can't obligate a future council, but I think we very well may walk away from taking leachate. So thank you for that. And that was, there was more conversation about this at that meeting. We actually had multiple meetings about this. We had one with the agency of natural resources and then another one with Cassella later on. And I'm sure, I have no doubt that this is something that we will continue to talk about. So any other councilor want to address that? Go ahead, Jay. Yeah, I would just encourage Diane, I don't wanna get into the semantics and take too much time, but Diane, I'd really encourage you to go back to the meetings that we had in the fall and review what the council passed in terms of the deadline and the timeline we were allowing for Cassella to work on their pilot project. So you understand that there is a real deadline. It would have to be a change of direction by the council. So I just wanted to make sure you are aware of what those next steps would look like. So I'm glad that you did. That's great. Thank you. I did, Jay, but back to my original concern is that it's really not up to the Montpelier City Council to be telling Cassella to deal with a statewide issue. It's up to A&R and maybe EPA. And that's really my concern is that we have taken this role on as Montpelier's problem and it's the state's problem. And if I can... Yep, so if you could, cause usually we keep our comments just to like one time, but go ahead, finish your thought and... Well, and just to my question about the second $16 million bonding, I never saw anything in the first $16 million bonding that suggested we'd need to be coming back again for another $16 million. So was that always the plan? And if so, why wasn't it made clear in 2018 when we bonded? Okay. Thank you. And anything further you want to say? I can't answer that. Okay, go ahead. I'll try to answer that as best I can. You're correct. Initially the plan was to try to do power conversion and energy conversion. And it was... So we had a process of studying the alternatives and that proved not really to be feasible as it turned out. We thought it was going to be probably in the $5 million range. They were... Council got several updates over the course of the year and in the end of the day, the plan that is being presented was the recommendation with offsetting costs. So yes, the capital outlay is higher, but also are the savings. So you're right. Certainly it was not going to be a $16 million phase two that evolved over the last year through a series of updates to the city council. Okay. Thank you. Cho Castellano. So you have your hand raised. Go ahead. Yeah, hi. Thank you so much and thank you, Bill and thank you everybody for the wonderful presentation. I just had one question. This is related to the Oaks Club purchase. I mean, I was just doing some rough math and the price paid as 150% appreciation over the last six years, which translates to 25% a year. I mean, I've been a real estate appraiser for quite a long time. I don't think I've seen that level of appreciation outside of San Francisco in quite a while. So I'm just kind of curious on why... I'd love to see the appraisal and see if he can justify a 25% increase per year because that's just, to me, seems kind of excessive. Fair enough. We're waiting to see the appraisal too. You know, the appraisal in the city has to look at the value of it today, what it was purchased at before and why it appreciated. I mean, those are interesting questions, but if we can't part, you know, we're not gonna get it for $1.3 million today, we know that. So it's a fair question and I'm looking forward to the analysis as well, but we have seen some pretty high appreciation here, particularly in open lean. Yeah, I would just be curious. Now, will the appraisal be available to the public or... So before we keep going, so Joe, is there anything else you wanna ask? Cause the goal is to keep all of your questions sort of together. Okay, that's it? Yeah. Okay, all right, sorry. Go ahead, Bill. The answer is yes, it will be. Thank you. Great, thanks. Okay, Peter Kelman, go ahead. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Joe Castellano, look around the corner from your house in our College Street neighborhood. Appreciation over the last five years of property has been in that ballpark. There's a house on Fuller, not Fuller, around the corner, I forget the name of the street. It sold for over $400,000. It was just a house that they probably bought for $90,000. This is what's happening in the city. This is a problem, but it is what's happening in the city. I think you're off base. Thank you, Peter. And thank you, Joe Castellano, for raising your hand again. I'm gonna hold off for a second. I know you wanna respond, but I wanna check it to see if there's anybody else who hasn't spoken yet who would like to comment. I would like to speak. Kathleen Perot. Yes, well, I'm not Kathleen. Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry, I guess the wrong. I am Billy Perot. Oh, okay, go ahead, Billy. Yes. It would be very possible for the city to have a second appraisal done of the property and then to have a third appraiser review the two and make a determination about what that person feels is the fair market value. That happens all the time. I appraise commercial real estate in Vermont for 14 years, so I know that happened. $600,000 for the Confluence Park, sliver of land that is maybe the size of my lot here. I cannot support that. Would someone please tell me what the energy coordinator who's gonna get paid, well, it's $100,000 total, I assume that's salary overhead. What is that person going to do every day, every year, to earn that money? Because I would like to apply for that job. It sounds like easy money to me. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Bill, do you wanna take those questions? I said, I'll be good point. You're right, I've heard of that with the appraisals. Typically what we would do is have our own assessor look at it once we get it, who is also qualified for your appraiser and see if they thought it was a reason for doing that, but good point, Bill. I don't know if anyone from the council wants to talk about the Confluence Park or the energy coordinator. I mean, the Confluence Park, it includes the construction, but there may be others that are better able to speak to it than I am. Jay, do you wanna speak to that? Well, no, I just, it sounded like the question was about the purchase of the land when in reality it's the actual building of the park. Which is what that cost ties into. That's all, I just hope that clarifies things. Okay, and as far as the energy coordinator goes, there have been identified quite a long list of things that they could be doing. So for example, managing the district heat plant, they could be managing the home energy information ordinance that's gonna be taking effect in July. The city currently has a internal green revolving loan fund that helps make energy improvement projects within the city. They could be identifying and managing those projects. We also have a net zero energy roadmap for the city that has identified projects to be completed. And so that person could be managing the completion of those projects. There are a number of other things that were on the list. Those are just a few and happy to talk more with you about that if you are interested. That's, anyone else wanna comment on any, from council? Anyone, council wanna comment on any of those pieces? Okay, thank you. All right, Carol Welch, go ahead. Hi, and I didn't say before, but I live on Valerie Avenue. Not that it matters for my question. When we're talking about this, this is about the Elk's Club purchase. And you said the bond is for like 2 million, but then there is gonna be some money that's currently being held in reserve for the new recreation center or an improvement or whatever. And then some other reserve funds. And I just like to understand a little better, like how much and where are those other funds coming from? So sorry if I was confusing, Carol. The purchase of the Elk's Club is only coming from two sources, the bond and a reserve fund for recreation. I think I was talking about, we had some reserve for capital improvements we talked about. And then for future, we would be looking for other funding sources, including potentially selling lots, but for the actual purchase, there's only two sources of funds. Okay, and the current recreation reserve money is how much? There's about a million in there. Okay, thank you. Thank you. DD Brush, go ahead. Oh, actually before you go, Jack, is this about Carol's question? No, it isn't. I just noticed that it's 830. 30, okay. What I would propose at this point is that, so DD Brush, if you would like to make your comment or ask questions, I'm gonna give you that opportunity to do that. And then we will, as we usually do at 830, we will take a 10-minute break and certainly wanna continue to hear from folks if there are more comments or questions from people. So we'll take a 10-minute break and then we'll come back to people's comments and questions and thoughts. But DD Brush, go ahead. Thank you. Quick question. Has there been any kind of forward motion on the agreement or arrangement between the hub and the city? Should the city purchase this property? What is the arrangement or the relationship between the hub and the city? Does the, and who manages the property? Who, I think so many questions are on an answer that I think people really, really are yearning for a more concrete, specific definitive answer. And was there any other parts? Nope, nope. Thank you. I'll go ahead, Bill. So fair enough DD and I wish we could give you a really concrete definitive answer and there are representatives of the hub here who may wish to speak. We've had ongoing conversations. What we know is that they have a plan for what they'd like to do and it certainly depends on how the ownership of the property pans out as to how they move forward. And then we've had a lot of talks but there is no formal agreement yet. We expect to come to when they've been excellent cooperative conversations and with a lot of good ideas. And I wish I, that's all I can tell you now but I know there's at least two people from the hub that are attending virtually that if they want to weigh in, I'm happy to hear from them. Yep, that's fine. If folks from the hub would like to comment, you may, you don't have to. Oh, okay, Ethan, I can go ahead. I can. Hi, my name is Ethan Atkin. I live on Clarendon Ave and I'm the chair of the board of the hub. For those of you who are not aware of what the hub is, it's a, we are planning to create a community social and recreation center. We're a nonprofit organization. All of the members of the board are residents, mostly from Montpelier, but from all over central Vermont. And we are interested in creating a place for people to come cross-generational, but with a big focus on families, particularly in central Vermont, there really is no place for people to go with their family where they, everyone in the family can find an activity they would be interested in. And that's what we're hoping this center will be able to provide. And we've been in conversations with the city but even prior to that, we have been working on this project for over two years talking to the present owner and talking to the city about it if they were to purchase it. And one of the wonderful things that we see about that particular property, it's 138 acres, there's only one building on it right now. So it's basically a once in a generation opportunity for our city to be able to take advantage of this open land that's available to do all kinds of creative things. And we feel that would be an ideal location for our center to be located. And the synergy that could come out of doing this in collaboration with the city would be great. One of the things I think is important for everyone to understand is that there is both the city and the hub are interested in making sure that all of the facilities that are built up there are accessible to everyone. And that's the sort of thing that we're talking to the city about how do we make that happen? And so I think that it would be great if the city is able to buy that property. It would be great for the city. It would be great for our children. It'd be great for our grandchildren. It'd be great for our great, great grandchildren very much like some of the other legacies that are existing here now. And will be a great asset to the city of Montpelier will attract businesses, will attract residents will attract young families. We all talk about how we're aging out. How do we attract younger families to come into a community? Well, we provide them with facilities. We provide them with housing. So it is the feeling of all the board members that the first step is for the city to get access to this property and the way they do that number one is to pass the Article 14, the bond. So I think that's the main thing. There's a lot of details to be worked out but we've talked about a lot of them and we think we have a very mutually agreeable understanding of how things would work but we don't have any formal agreement in place but we feel very good about how this could help both the city as well as our effort to bring in a facility that will be a great asset to the city of Montpelier. Thank you. And thank you, Dee Dee for that question. Okay, all right. So it is 837 right now. We are gonna take a 10 minute break. We'll be back at 847 and we'll jump back into people's questions and comments and Joe Castellano, I've not forgotten that you might wanna circle back. So okay, we'll see you all in about 10 minutes. Okay, it seems like people are starting to come back which is great, it is 848. And Lisa Moody, I see your hand there but I'm gonna go to our assistant city manager first. Cameron Neeterbinder, go ahead, what's up? Hi, oh, I just raised my hand on behalf of, I do believe Steven Whitaker has been trying to speak but he's has a phone number so it's hard for him to raise his hand. So I just wanted to make sure he was in the queue. Okay, thank you. So we'll go Lisa Moody and then we'll go to Steve Whitaker. All right, Lisa Moody, go ahead. Good evening. I live up on Gallison Hill. I've been here for almost 38 years. And my question is about the Elks Club. What is the, do we have a study or any information as to how much of the property is suitable for building? That's a big piece of property but I know there's a lot of ledge in the area and I have concerns about environmental concerns as well about the wildlife and that the impact on development would have on the property. That's a great question. And I just wanna check before you answer that, Bill. Lisa, do you have any other questions that you wanna or comments you wanna make as a part of this? I guess just what would be the expense to do that? So if we don't have a study, should we do a study and what would that entail as far as financial goes? Great, thank you. Great question, Bill, go ahead. Yeah, so thanks Lisa. The answer is no, we don't have a study. Obviously anytime there's development we have to be cautious of wildlife, particularly in areas where it has been wild. Some of that property is in current use. That would be one of the first things we would do. And you mentioned there are what? Planning grants for feasibility studies for those kinds of things. So we would obviously before we could proceed to anything else to get a better understanding of where things could go and what, you know, fortunately there's enough need that we think we could, we can work around it, but it's number one in our minds too, so good question. Okay, it just seems like cart before the horse to me. Thank you. Fair enough. Okay, okay. And so Steve Whitaker, go ahead. Good evening, Steve Whitaker here. I think this is a case study and lack of due diligence. I will try to be measured in my comments. I believe management city manager is aware that there's access problems. This may be a landlocked piece. We need to question why Steve Ribilini, who is a very competent developer is so anxious to get out of the out from under this piece of property. And secondly, he'd probably be willing to give us the first option at no charge and let us spend a year doing our due diligence before we purchase the property and make sure it's gonna work for what we intend for it. So it's just really ridiculous too. There's a problem with the grade of the road and the railroad crossing. I've been in touch with VTrans. They are not willing to forfeit that spur. They need that spur, so just a few tens of feet in from route two, there's a railroad crossing for those who aren't familiar. And that's a spur that goes another 100 yards up the road and they need that place for parking trains. But that limits the ability to regrade the road to be a safe intersection with route two. And that may be why Steve Ribilini is getting out from under it. But the fact that the city manager went looking at other options to bring a road into there tells me that he's aware there's a problem with that intersection. And that fact that that's not disclosed to the public before they make a bond vote is troublesome. The Confluence Park, the point was well made by another person that we can't maintain the parks we got to spend another 600,000. It's like I said, again, drunken teenagers spending money with their parents' checkbook and no accountability. These pipers are gonna come to pay after y'all have lost your office. And I just think it's time to reign in. I have a question about the bonding because since it seems that the two minute warning which I protest, I think it's a violation of open meeting law, but the what percentage of the two million we're gonna put into paving? What percentage of the overall demand for paving and of the number of feet of sidewalk that we're gonna replace? What percentage of the overall demand? And is there even a plan to actually complete the sidewalks that are a real hazard along both sides of School Street, along Main Street, along State Street? I mean, it appears that we're giving lip service and to these projects that were decades and tens of millions of dollars in the hole. And I'd like to hear an intelligent answer about how we're gonna get caught up on all the overdue maintenance if we keep spending money like it's growing on trees. Thank you. So I don't know if I can answer all of these and I certainly can't speak for Steve Verbalini. I will say that Mr. Whitaker just made a boldly false statement. And if he's not prepared to back it up, he needs to talk about it. I have not looked at a new road option other than to say what could we do to supplement, any property, is there a chance to connect it? We have had no planning for new roads. I don't know where you're getting information but it's time to put up or shut up. Any other comments or questions? Okay, I am not seeing anybody. I do want to. I did make you wait, Joe Castellano. If you would like to come back and respond previously that this now is perfectly fine. If not, that's okay too. I just want to make sure that everybody who had spoken once had the opportunity to speak. So, and I know Joe, your hand's not raised but I want to at least give you that opportunity. I don't know if you're there, Joe. Okay. All right, Jack, go ahead. Thank you. I don't know if you want to have me talk now or close the public hearing and have council members talk after that, but I just want to tell, did you want to say something before I started? You know what? I think I'll close the public comment time on this after council has had a chance to weigh in case folks have further thoughts. Okay, thanks. Go ahead. I just want to say how important I think this development is and what a high priority for the city is it is we know that we have a tremendous shortage of housing in Montpelier and affordable housing but housing for every income level. And it's been identified as the number one priority of our economic development strategic plan specifically because of how important it is for the future of Montpelier. There are no other properties like this that have the opportunity to be owned by the city of Montpelier where we can drive and control the type of housing that gets developed, the location of the housing that gets developed and we can plan for the new neighborhoods that will be developed on this land. What we have now, I've talked to the president of at least one of our larger corporations in Montpelier saying that they have a hard time hiring people because the people they want to offer jobs to can't find places to live in Montpelier. It's not just stores and restaurants, it's companies that pay very high salaries and would bring families with children to live in our community, to revitalize our community and send their kids to our schools. I know that some of the people who are opposed to this development are expressing environmental concerns and they wanna be sure that the city of Montpelier is protecting our environment, but we have people who are working in Montpelier who are commuting from Chittenden County every day and anyone who thinks it's environmentally irresponsible to be developing this land in the city of Montpelier, what do you think about how environmentally responsible is it for people to be driving 40 miles each way from Burlington to Montpelier for jobs when they could be making a short commute within the city of Montpelier? We need a recreation center and the current building will never meet the needs of the city. We have lead and asbestos hazard in that building. We have, it's limited to the footprint, we have no parking there. That will never be adequate to meet the needs of the city. The fact that we're faced with the opportunity to become the owner of 138 acres, to develop housing, develop neighborhoods, develop a recreation center and outdoor recreation and conserved lands all in that parcel is just, I don't call that a once in a generation opportunity. I think it's more like a once in a lifetime opportunity. And if the time comes, if we don't do this now and if this parcel is sold to someone else and we lose control over what's happened to the land, future generations will rightly criticize us for letting this opportunity go. I think it's very important that we pass this bond and proceed with this project. Thank you, Jack. I just wanna add to that. I appreciate the environmental concerns about the Bells Club that is a totally fair question, but I also just wanna observe that any development there would have to conform to our zoning regulations, which do have environmental protections built into them, concerning steep slopes or things like wetlands and other sort of sensitive areas like that. So just something to put in the mix of the conversation there. Connor Casey, go ahead. All right. And has Peter joined us, Mayor? I don't know if I should be speaking about the towns or anything, if he's sleeping. Yeah, he may make an appearance in a little bit. We'll see. All right. Well, I just wanna say, I think it's a testament to the city, the level of public engagement on this item. But like many Vermont communities, I think we're facing a choice. It's like, you're either busy growing or you're busy dying. We live in one of the smallest postage stamps of land in the entire state here. And I think a couple of stamps that like throw out there, the housing task force came and said, we saw less than a hundred homes a year. The average price of rent is $1,600 a year in town. It's not sustainable. If we're worried about affordability, it's not sustainable. So we have a choice here. It's either define or be defined by an outside entity who could come in and do whatever they want with the land. I mean, if we wanna dump like $7 million into an antiquated building on Barry Street, we certainly can, but it's not a forward-thinking approach. In a community where it snows about seven months a year, we need recreational activities. We've done it for decades. We've provided these services and we need it more than ever in the course of a pandemic. I think we're sort of the younger population is looking for opportunities to get out of the house and do something. So by purchasing this land, we can take an incremental approach. We can control it. We can build responsibly. We can preserve wildlife. And I think we can meet the needs of a growing community. So I know it's asking a lot of folks to accept this, but you have our commitment that we're gonna have a robust community engagement process on what to do with the land. But just saying no, thanks. I mean, I think that shirks our responsibility and we lose control of, like Jay-Ank said, once in a lifetime opportunity. So just went the way in there. Thanks so much. Thank you, Connor. Any other comments from council? Yes, Donna, go ahead. Thank you. Great words, Jack. Connor, really appreciate it. And I think it puts the flavor there that the council discussed this intensely and supported it unanimously. And it makes me think back to the days being here some 53 years in Montelier that around 20 years ago, Savins past year, we actually had a bond trying to buy Savin past year. And there was a developer who wanted to put 600 units on it. And the friends of Savin past year got born somewhere in the early 2000s because people didn't wanna see that kind of development. But what happened was we spent a lot of time talking about Savin's past year, city discussions, city forums, staff time, but we didn't own the land. And in the end, any reconciliation, any negotiation with the landowners fell through. Even as recently as since I've been on the council, we had around in 2014, 15, 16, even as late as 2018 was zoning, trying to look at that land, trying to negotiate something that would work for what the city was told by its residents, it wanted for recreation as well as housing and it didn't, it fell through. So I'm thinking, isn't it better to put our time into land once we own it than to speculate when you don't own something? So I feel in this case, looking back in history can be very, very helpful. And I understand all of us approach projects differently. Some of us love the map first and some of us get on the train and then look at the map. I think this is a great opportunity. I really want people to understand this council does expect to do a lot of planning, a lot of research, a lot of community input, but we wanna jump on it because it is a lifetime opportunity to do that which we've already heard our citizens want. So thank you. Thank you for being here. Please consider what we've been talking about and I hope you'll support the purchase of this land. Thank you. Great, thank you. And any other counselors wish to speak? Yes, Jennifer, go ahead. I wasn't gonna say anything but then I just got moved to say something. So everything that I do is through a very cultural lens and the purchase of this land, I think the reason why it resonates with me is because the next seven generations, what's gonna be here for them? I have a nine-year-old and a 10-year-old and this is the only town they've known and this is where they wanna be and when we start talking about buying homes and we might have to move to Barrie or somewhere else, the kids, they can't fathom that because all they've known is Montpelier. And I don't wanna leave. I love it here. I love this little town so much and it's not just my family, it's my neighbors, it's other people in town and people on the other side of the river. So it feels very important to me to at least try. Because we don't know what's gonna happen and there needs to be some space for the next generations that are coming up and that's all I have to say about that. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay. And just any final thoughts from folks, including the public on any of this? I have a thought. Can you hear me? Yes. And would you say your name while you live? My name's Jane Cast. I live in Montpelier in district two. And I'm of the persuasion that an insufficient amount of work has been done to look at planning, specific planning for what the space will be. And let me tell you what's been reinforced about that for me tonight. You might recall when there was a discussion about homeless people tenting in Hubbard Park. And to me, that brings together the biggest clash in poor people and people with resources sharing space. Now, if Jack McCullough can produce a housing plan and show us what affordable housing really looks like so really poor people could live there next to racquetball courts and squash courts and a swimming pool, I'll be the first one to sign on. But I don't think we're there yet. That's it. Thank you. Thank you. All right, Vicki and Lane, go ahead. Okay, I think I wasn't gonna say anything either, but it seems very fruitless to be discussing and making all these plans for things that we don't own yet. Yes, I've been here long enough and I remember the Saban's pastor stuff and all the other stuff. And I just, I think that as Jack said, it is a once in a lifetime opportunity for the city of Montpelier. And I think if people vote this thing down and don't even let it get a chance to start, then they should, like Bill said, put up or shut up. Because at this point, if you're not even going to support the initial, the beginnings of an opportunity for the city residents and voters to decide what they want to do on a piece of property that we will never have the opportunity to purchase again then maybe they should stop complaining about all the other stuff they complain about. And I just, you know, people are always complaining about housing and stuff, and here's our opportunity. They complain about the Berry Street rec center, which I've never been in. It's not feasible for me to be in it. There's no parking. There's no access. Then I don't know, what are you going to do? I just think that people are being unbelievably short-sighted in not supporting this purchase. I mean, we can always sell it again. Maybe we'll get, I mean, look at how much it's supposedly appraised since Steve bought it. So maybe we can make ourselves a couple more times. If we have to sell it, that's all I have to say. Thanks. Thank you. Peter Kilman. Yeah, I just want to say, I didn't quite catch her name, the woman who's disbelieving that poor people and wealthy people can coexist. Montpelier has a long history of building low-income housing in areas where rich people live. And the coexistence has been terrific. There's low-income housing downtown. There's low-income housing off of, quite near the rec center, off of Elm Street back by, forget the name of the road. There's low-income housing on Northfield Street up near, behind Ian Jones, near where Habitat and dispersed low-income housing is a long tradition in Montpelier. And it's way better than concentrating poor people in one area and having wealthy enclaves in one area. So I actually am very hopeful about this. And I don't think it's going to take Jack McCullough to have to design it. You're off the hook, Jack. Thank you. Hi, yes. I am wanting to sort of buzz in for Steve again. And Steve, I'm going to ask that you stop unmuting yourself. I've seen you. I just want your noise to not interact. With anyone else who's speaking. So I've seen you and I'll raise my hand for you. And go ahead, Steve. I think you may be muted. Yeah. She had me unmuted and I muted myself. Okay. I'd like to know why we haven't had any answer to why we just can't get a right at first refusal on this. Property while we do our due diligence. If it's going to work, it's going to work through more planning and more communities abort. We don't need another thing like a garage to divide this community. And $2 million is not pocket change. No matter who you are. And so, you know, to put the put the community in debt for $2 million before, we know whether the road access is going to work, whether we know how much housing it could support, whether we know what, you know, demands the tennis club is going to make or walk away. It's just really irresponsible and premature. So I guess. Why are we not hearing why we haven't pursued a right of first refusal? I mean, the property rather than a purchase. Thank you. Thank you. Bill, do you want to speak to that at all? I'm. Not I mean, I don't have a lot of details. We obviously discussed a lot of things with the land owner. We ended up where we ended up. And certainly we did discuss that possibility and that wasn't where we ended. Okay. ended. Okay, thank you. Diane Derby, go ahead. Thanks. I'm just wondering if we've had any discussions with Down Street about the likelihood of them partnering with us on the project. Great question. Thank you. We haven't talked to Diane to Down Street yet in part because they're in kind of a pretty significant transition right now of leadership. But they are certainly on our list of people to be talking with them. We've got a short list of housing folks. We've done a lot of work with Down Street. As you know, Diane, we did the transit center with them. We did the French block with them. We've done some of the land along Berry Street with them. So we have very strong working relationship with Down Street. Certainly would look to them. We just encourage it because I think we're in a place right now. We're talking all night tonight about affordable housing. And I think we've all seen the stories that the cost of construction is so high right now that nothing's really affordable housing. So I'd really encourage the city, maybe even before our town meeting to the vote to just see if they're, you know, if they'd be a willing participant. But I know it's still pretty preliminary. And just so you know, we're also working with them on indirectly, we're not the lead on the potential Christ church housing. So we've got a lot going and they've got a lot thanks. Thank you. Okay, any further questions? Okay, I'm not hearing any or see Cameron, did you have another? Yes, Linda Berger unmuted, but I'm not sure I don't I hate to put people on the spot. I just want to make sure that folks are being heard. Thank you. Yeah, I agree. Linda Berger, would you like to make a comment? No, and I'm showing myself as muted. So I'm confused. Sorry. It's all good. No worries. Okay. I've got a small human over here, you may be hearing. In any case, so thank you, thank you, everybody. I'm going to close the public hearing. And I would hang on one second. I'm gonna pass. Sorry about that. Okay. So okay, so I'm gonna close the public hearing on that. But I want to thank Eddie, who came out to make comments about this, I think they were really excellent comments and questions and thoughts. And really appreciate everybody taking the time to to participate this evening. So thank you. And so we're we're going to move on now to our the next item, which is the park. Sorry, was that were you? Yes, go ahead, Bill. Just two things, if I may one, just to be 100% clear, I was quoted by Vicki Lane recently, and about the put up or shut up. I want to be clear that was not at all related to any voters or any people participating in this meeting other than one person who made an inaccurate false accusation about me. So I just wanted to make sure that yeah, that's clear. And but secondly, to follow up with the mayor. This is one of the highest turnouts we've ever seen at a budget or bond public hearing over my long career here. And last couple meetings. And so I really appreciate all the comments and the feedback and the questions. And, you know, I know people, some people like this format and some people don't. But it, it's certainly we've had great participation in the last couple meetings. And so I think it's wonderful that folks in the city have tried to get educated and tried to come out and participate. So thank you all. I also want to thank you, Bill, for your participation in the for porch forum discussions, just making sure that folks have accurate information and, you know, keeping up with the questions that come up there. So appreciate that. And so, if you have anything more to say, you keep it short, because we're gonna I just was going to apologize to Bill for, you know, but that phrase just kind of quickly came out. And by the way, Peter did have something to say. You just wouldn't let him. That's true. I was gonna let his papa figure out what he was trying to say. But anyway, all right. Thank you. Okay, so we are moving on. Thanks again, everybody. For that. And so the next item is the Parklet Ordnance, which is to renew the temporary Parklet Ordnance for 2022. I have one comment on this, to have two comments on this just to get us kicked off, I suppose. One is I think we should renew it. Number one, number two, I would like to see us adopt this ordinance permanently into our ordinances, we don't have to keep renewing it as a temporary measure every year. To be fair, I think that might take a couple of meetings to do. But anyway, that's at least where I want to start. Thoughts from either Bill or Cameron to kick us off about this. Anything you want to say Bill or Cameron? Well, my so my only point of bringing this up was even though it's February, you know, I think our the Parklet Ordnance begins in like April or May. So it's coming right up. And I felt like we wanted to give our downtown businesses as much lead time to plan as possible. We, you know, if we're going to do this, you can't actually adopt this necessarily tonight, we would have to go, you know, have have the public hearings, etc. But I wanted to see where people were and I was going to raise the option as this would be the third year. Is this something you want to just do permanently and we could set it up that way. But I was really looking for direction from the council as to whether you wanted to do this at all this year. And if so, did you want to do it temporarily or permanently? And then we put it in the meeting queue. Okay, other, well, you know where I stand on that. And at this point, other thoughts from council and then if there's comments from the public will take comments from the public as well. Connor, go ahead. Now, I've already been contacted by about five businesses on this. And Langdon Street Tavern, so to say specifically, a couple years ago, 80% of their business was actually the Parklet outside. It kept them going, you know. So they really want to get on a front end of this. I think it's been a tremendous asset to the city. I think folks love like the option of having like outdoor dining and like drinks. So I would definitely like support adopting it on a long term basis. I've had a couple of businesses like want to get into the details of it, like loading zones and everything. But I think if we adopt this, like it's at the discretion of the city manager, right, Bill? So like, they can discuss that with you like an individual basis. But long story short, totally supportive. It's a it's a beautiful thing. If I just throw one thing in here that I do think you want to consider as you have this conversation, we've allowed the temporary structures to be what they are temporary structures, based on some guidance from VTRIANS as to what they would allow for temporary structures. The permanent ordinance has a more not restrictive, but a better, better design requires a more permanent design, like what we see a positive pie when we see a capital plaza, a little bit more road safety. So I think we'd want to consider that if we were to go forward, you know, what you may want to do is do the temporary for this summer so that people can do what they've been doing, but move toward a permanent ordinance where people actually have to construct safer structures, more solid structures, you know, they cost some money. So, you know, it's one thing to just throw out a few chairs and you know, some things around and call it a parklet, but there really should be barriers between vehicles and those kinds of things. So there is a difference in what we require for the parklet structures between the temporary and permanent ordinance. And so you want to give some thought as to how you want to handle that because I think at some point, VTRIANS is going to weigh in and say, you know, this doesn't meet road standards. That's fair. And it also seems like if we do a longer or a more robust permanent option that early gives business is time to play sooner, we can do it. Or if we need to forward it, I don't know if it would take more than just this year. I'd be interested in hearing about that as this is as to whether like how long it might take them to go through that planning process. But anyway, that's fair. Other comments or questions? Donna, go ahead. My question is, if indeed it seems that council members are favorable moving forward to this, then do we have two public hearings? Is that how we proceed? I should think so. You know, as with any other ordinance change. Is that understanding Bill? Yeah, because it was an ordinance, it was a temporary ordinance that actually, you know, we set an expiration date. So the temporary ordinance expired. So even if we were to do a new temporary ordinance, we'd have to enact it following the ordinance enactment process for this coming summer. Or if you wanted to amend the permanent ordinance to expand it or however you wanted to do it, that would require the public hearing process. Either way, we're going to have two public hearings. This was really, I just want to introduce the topic and see where you're at because we've, you know, it's coming fast. Hopefully it's coming. The good weather is coming faster than we think. It's fun to think about it anyway. Is this language that you've given us tonight a good place to start? I believe we gave you the temporary ordinance language that you've enacted in the last two years. So if you wanted to do that, yes, that's fine. But if you wanted to, I think part of it is where do you want to go? What do you want to do? We can react language at the next meeting with the first public hearing. So if I wanted to make a motion that we move towards a permanent ordinance, then that would give staff direction. Or can we just all give a nod and the mayor tell you to go do that? Motion is always better. Okay, I do a motion that we do. Do a permanent ordinance, parklet ordinance. And this is just to be clear, this is separate from approving the temporary ordinance for this summer. Yes. Okay. So is there, it's a moving in that direction. Is that right? Yes. Okay. And okay, so there's a second from Jack about this particular thing, the idea of moving towards a permanent ordinance, allowing for parklets. Any further discussion from council? Jack. Thanks. I think that it was that it's really been successful. People have appreciated the opportunities. I don't really know whether we're going to be in a position to address every potential issue to have a permanent ordinance in effect for this coming season. I'd certainly be happy to work toward that, you know, starting with like doing a side by side comparison of what the permanent ordinance is. And because as I think the permanent ordinance is what's in effect right now because the temporary ordinance that we've adopted has been for a couple of years to suspend the permanent ordinance during the time that the temporary ordinance is in effect. But so I think Bill makes some excellent points about the structural integrity of parklets. I know that in years past when the ordinance was originally adopted, it had some maybe stricter limitations on the number of parking spaces that could be taken up, then maybe we think we want, give it a couple of years of experience with a more wide open rule. So I think we should be moving forward. Thank you. Cameron. I'm sorry, I was just raising my hand for Stephen Whitaker. Okay, Steve, go ahead. Yeah, I want to raise a couple issues. I raised back when the temporary ordinance was in place or being renewed that the city manager abused his discretion by granting parklet space in fire lanes. The the ordinance and the temporary ordinance was never, it was made for parking places, not fire lanes. And he granted permission to put to block a fire lane in the truck drivers. And I don't, I didn't see any, I didn't FOIA any feedback from the fire chief on that. But, you know, to hear the truck drivers say that, you know, this has made our delivery process and our ingress you know, dangerous and and haven't been granted. And then this is not just a renewal of the temporary because this grandfather is in anything he prior granted. And I read the proposed temporary ordinance and it grandfather's things in if he if he made a mistake already. So that's just really out of this is the kind of diligence that we've come to expect. So I just raise a real red flag here. And in the context of the downtown core master plan, having been reliant upon the parking garage. And now we need to it's not even in the budget to redo the downtown core master plan. We're forfeiting parking, you know, that we considered so sank or sank. I mean, we really need to do the downtown core master plan without the garage before we know whether it's smart to do a permanent parklet ordinance. So there's some things to chew on. Thanks. Thank you. Any other comments or questions on Donna's motion, which is I guess I'd like some clarification just to make sure I know what you're voting on. I said clarity was kind, but then I'm not clear. The motion was to pursue a permanent ordinance. And so I guess I'm are we talk? Are you talking about a permanent ordinance that would go into effect this summer? So we'd be amending the current ordinance to presumably to expand to at least the types of parking that we have now, not necessarily grandfathering assuming that they met, but that they would then meet the higher standards so that people would have to incur the costs of new construction for parklets for those that don't meet the standard. Now, or are you talking about working on a more permanent ordinance and at the same time re upping the temporary ordinance for this summer while we prepare the more permanent ordinance? So I guess for my motion, Bill, it would depend if you needed more time. If I guess I was pursuit wanting the staff to pursue the permanent ordinance and then the council to look at that and say, OK, it's achievable. Let's do it this year. Or, oh, no, we'll do the permanent next year and we'll do the temporary. But I guess I need to study the differences between the two. But meanwhile, I didn't want the work on the permanent one not to get done. Understand. I get I'll be frank here. I think the issue of the time is less about city staff drafting an ordinance and more about the users of the parklets. So I'm thinking about the business owners here. If if people that have had a temporary parklet and are expecting that again, this year have to now construct what I believe is in the thousands of dollars. I don't know exactly how much they cost. I think it depends on what you do, how fancy you make it. That you know, we might want to hear from them about that in terms of what that impact is and whether they can pull that together in time for this year or whether saying this is your last year at temporary, this is what the rules are going to be starting 2023. That gives people a year to plan and decide whether they want to continue it and know that they need to set money aside or whatever. So I'm actually, I think we can draft an ordinance and we can tweak it over a course of a couple hearings in terms of the city's end of it. I don't think it's that difficult. And some of the questions have been raised tonight. Certainly we would be, we could address. But the users might have a different perspective on it. Maybe my motion needs an addendum. To clarify here that we use the temporary ordinance this year while we work on a Pernum at one. And Jack's okay with that. Okay. Okay. So that's that also makes sense to me, particularly in terms of giving businesses time to plan and get financing together for a permanent Parklet, if that is what they want to do. Yeah, go ahead, Donna. But I do think if there's a, at least a little step or whatever, if there needs to be a step to make things safer, even if they aren't as safe as they ultimately would be, then I think that should be clear to people this year too, though, even if it's a temporary ordinance that we talked to them, the staff talk to them and encourage whatever additions that you feel would make it safer without within the reasonable ability of being temporary. Does that make sense? Sure. And I really don't want to belabor this, but there are very clear, I mean, federal highway and others have standards for these things that and these are on federal, at least State Street, Main Street, federal aid highways, I don't know about Langdon, that they would need to meet, you know, more permanent basis. So it includes all sorts of things. And we have all. So I would I would propose that if we that's where we'd want to go. So what, you know, whatever we can do this year to make them safer, of course. Yeah, fair enough. OK, any other comments from Council or the public? OK. All right. So there's been a motion and a second establishing the temporary ordinance for this summer and pursuing a more permanent one for the future. OK, any for the discussion? OK, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed. OK, so that passes. Thank you, Bill, for getting us on the agenda. I think hopefully our businesses appreciate that as well, because I am looking forward to spending some time outside in a parklet, hopefully sometime this summer. And all right, so I think that is. The the last like, you know, big piece of business that we have. So we are on to Council reports and I'm going to start with Donna. I would like maybe it's more other business to talk about our March meetings. In January, I made a motion to have February meetings remote. And I do feel like we need to do that one more month. The numbers have started going down and that's great. We also just had February break. So and I want to I mean, again, I think it's. I prefer us all to be remote and I would like the mayor to participate and I feel like you really absolutely have to be. So I'd make the motion that we make the March meetings remote and then the last meeting in March assess what the data is and see if we can go forward to be in person. Sorry, you just made a motion. Is that we go remote for the March City Council meetings? The council. There's a motion and a second. To go remote for March. Other thoughts on that. From council or the public. Jack, go ahead. I think people know that I really prefer being in person and being remote. But but we've had some encouraging. Statistics the last couple of weeks and hopefully that continues. But it was. You know, 56 degrees when I got up this morning and that didn't make me think winter was over. And and and last week's case rates didn't make me think that the pandemic is necessarily over either. And so given the fact that there are people on the council with really. Serious and well founded concerns about about their health if they were to have to come back to meetings in person. I think it makes sense to go another month and reassess. OK, Vicki and Lane, go ahead. I was just thinking that maybe that's not fair to whoever's going to be new on the council because they won't get the experience of being able to sit in those chairs and and know what it's like. They'll just it just be another Zoom meeting for them. So I think for the new people. I think it would be good to have them and you actually are pretty far away from each other for the most part on the council. If you don't like breathe into each other's spaces. So but anyway, I just thought it would be better for new people. Thanks. OK, thank you. Any for thoughts on this? What a good. I just want to stand up for the folks that I mean, I can only participate by telephone, but some people can't even do that. And you're, you know, taking actions on consultant studies for the unhoused and your, you know, showers and rec center. I mean, you're disenfranchising folks by technology for your own comfort and we have air cleaners. We have social distancing. We have a public building that we're paying for. We should damn well use it. Thank you. OK, thank you. Any further comments on this? Jay, I guess I'll just add that as the short timer, I do feel a little bit uncomfortable even on somewhat of a small. I mean, not not disregarding how important it is, but I do feel uncomfortable making decisions for for somebody else. And so I'm wondering if it would be possible to at least establish that the first meeting in March would be would be remote. I can't remember exactly what that date would be, but then that would then give the opportunity to revisit the rest of the months. Meetings staying remote. Personally, I I absolutely support it 100 percent to commit to to to the first, you know, to to March, but think that, you know, there it might make sense to have a quick revisit as, you know, it with any new members of the with new members of the council. I'll just throw that in. Thanks. That's a great point. Go ahead, Donna. Well, it's just that if you have health reasons, they don't go away. And and it will be harder on new members. And I can make myself available again to talk to them on phone as I try to do with with new members and meet remote. But I feel the health reasons don't go away. And so for March, they're there. So I feel that it's not a matter of comfort. It's it's a matter of health for us and the people we're around. You know, what's possible, too, is that so even if we vote to go remote for March, you know, New Council comes in for their first meeting on March 9th. They could we could vote to. Yeah, to to go, you know, to be in person for the next week, like they can undo, you know, any decision that we make tonight, potentially, if there's a desire to. So so anyway, just I'm throwing that in for. You know, little context. OK, any any other comments or questions on this? OK, so there's been a motion and a second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. And opposed. OK. All right, so we'll be remote in March unless the new council decides otherwise. OK, so thank you. Anything else, Donna? No, for my council report, I really appreciate Bill taking all the wax tonight. I felt like I didn't want to confuse things, except my little piece about savings past year. But thank you very, very, very much. You did extremely well, Bill. Appreciate it. And Cameron, likewise on your report for the task force and everybody vote on Tuesday, support the budget, support the bond, support the re-election of those council members who are already on the council. Thank you. OK, thank you. All right, Connor. I'll echo the gratitude for city staff. Really good presentation tonight and really thank everybody for coming out. Jay, it feels so hollow having the last meeting with you over Zoom. It's like a prison window where you want to push your hand up against a glass, right? So I really think hopefully we can maybe have a good send off for Jay in person at some point. You brought such a depth of knowledge to the council and really appreciate his service over the last couple of years here. But like Donna said, I hope everybody gets out in boats on Town Meeting Day and look forward to seeing everybody in March. Hopefully. Thanks, Jay. Go ahead. All right, I'm going to keep it quick. It's it's been an honor serving serving District Three. It's been an honor serving with all of you, even Lauren in absentia. I am incredibly thankful for all of you. Council and staff and. I've left very optimistic about our city hearing hearing the presentations from staff tonight and in particular, the the forward thinking and passionate words from my fellow current council members about the importance of not only the small bond, but about how we are thinking about and planning for our city and doing best, not just for the now, but for generations to come. And so I'm not going anywhere. I'm still I'm still I'll still live in downtown Mypulia and I'm still raising my kids here. And so but I'm left optimistic thinking knowing that we have the leadership that we have here. So thank you all very much. Thank you, Jennifer. Yeah, I mean, just like echoing what everybody else has said about staff tonight and I really this meeting felt really good. And it may be my last. I don't know. We won't know until everybody's done voting. And if I am not reelected, I have really, truly enjoy this experience understanding politics more and my neighbors more and how the city functions. And it's been a really great learning experience for my kids as well, which I didn't even think would be a thing. But they, you know, they listen and they're paying attention. And it's been really truly an honor. And if I do get voted to stay on, I look forward to all of the upcoming projects and sitting next to all of these lovely human beings that I've gotten to know over the course of winter. And I will be around as well. So thank you. Thank you, Jack. Thank you to probably just two things. I echo the comments that I've heard. Town meeting day is Tuesday. You still have a chance to vote by early voting before then. But if you're not there, we have volunteers ready to take your vote on election day. Please come out and vote and vote for for Donna, for Connor and for Jennifer. And my dear friend, Mayor Watson, and for all the budget items. And then the other thing I want to say is that we we had the vote to formally extend the contract of the city manager tonight. And I want to say that once again at this meeting, Bill demonstrated why we are so fortunate to have him as a city manager by his professionalism, his command of the vast array of facts of every aspect of city government and and the ethical way in which he conducts the business of the city. And I am very glad that we have been able to secure his services for for another four year contract. And I think the people of the city can be secure that the management of their government is in very good hands. And that's all I've got. Thank you. And so I've got a couple of things on my radar one. Well, first, Jay, I just want to say thank you so much for your time and dedication to the city. And I have appreciated working with you. But also I am up for reelection. And so I want to say in general, I've really appreciated working with all of you. And it's been just a delight. And I hope that I will see you here again on March 9th. And but particularly since Jay is leaving, I just want to make sure that we don't forget that Jay was appointed to the stormwater in utility committee. And as he will, I think we appointed him, you know, knowing that he was on the council and we created one community at large seat. And I think that's filled by Jim Condos. And so, Jay, if I'm not mistaken, you were willing to stay on that committee. But do you want to speak to that at all? Yeah, I'm willing to I'm willing to stay on for sure. Until, yeah, obviously, it sort of has to the committee itself has to establish an identity and figure out exactly what the representation should be. And I'm happy to be a part of it through that transition. And if that means I stay on it longer term as at large or some other capacity, that's fine. But or and then if it means otherwise, if it means that, yeah, the representation should be as it is. And I step off, then that's OK, too. So I'm happy to to be a part of the conversation to manage the transition. Lifetime appointment, man. Lifetime appointment. You're dreaming. You're dreaming, Connor. One possibility is that we can try to if there's an easy solution, we can try to just figure that out right now or we can put it on a future agenda to hash out or know that it needs to be on a future agenda. But or what do you think, Jay? I'll leave it to you to decide. I mean, it's it's going to be in your hands to decide it's a city committee. So you have to decide what the appropriate representation is. So if you're if somebody else wants to step in or you want to however, you want to make it work. So to be fair, one of the things like the press, there is precedent for other committees where if a, you know, if an council member does not want to step on to a committee, then they can have their designee. So potentially you could be our designee. Donna, yeah. But just that the storm water is meeting next Friday. I think it's one to two, isn't it, Jay? I forget exactly. So we won't meet again to decide that before the storm water committee meets. And can he can we ask him to go ahead and attend? I'm attending for the M tick committee, but I'm not the council representative. So can we direct him to attend and he can get his feet wet? Well, sure. And then storm water. Well, well played. I'm sure that's exactly what you meant. So one possibility is that so, so Jay, if it makes sense, you could stay on for that meeting and then we could just consider because we'll need to go through the whole slate of who is on what committee is anyway, again. Of course. Yeah. So that's fine. That's fine by me. Like I said, I'm happy to be a designee for that first one. And we'll go from there, Jack. You had a hand up and I skipped you there. Go ahead. Oh, that's OK. I was just going to say the same thing you said, which is that committee appointments are one of the things on our March 9th agenda. So we can talk about that. And also I finished up without saying anything to Jay. Jay, it's been great working with you on the council and we'll we'll stay in touch in town. Of course. Yeah. OK, so I think that seems like an OK plan, team, unless folks have objections. OK, thank you again. Jay, for even just going to that one meeting, we appreciate it. And I also want to add that I have office hours this coming Sunday at 2 p.m. If anyone would like to join for that, they just need to email me and I will send them a link. And I'm hoping to do office hours on into the future after that. And so that's on going. And I think that is that is it for me. So thank you, everybody. John, Odom, go ahead. Oh, that's all I got. Oh, and and to be fair, if I may pull a little more out of you from that, if people have not requested a ballot at this point, should they or should they just plan on going into City Hall? Well, I mean, you know, you can request an early ballot any time that's early, right? If you want us to mail it to you at this point, you're taking a risk that it may not get to you in time. If you do have us mail you one, my strong advice would be not to mail it back and instead to drop it off. And there is the drop box in the back of City Hall that people are making great use of. OK, we don't stop by and vote, too. Right, people could stop in in person to vote early. Yeah. Great. All right. Thank you. Bill, go ahead. Thank you. First of all, I would like to a little curious how Council Member Casey knows so much about putting your hand up in a prison. Just look, I was never convicted. It's just just a thing. Thanks to Jay. It's really been great working with you and having our weekly phone calls and or sort of weekly phone calls. And you've really been a top notch Council Member very thorough. Appreciate it. It's been it's been really wonderful working with you to all of you up for election. Good luck to all the candidates running for election. Good luck to the voters. Please vote on all of these important issues. The more of you that turn out the better sense of the city we get on the budget, the bonds, the candidates and everything. So that's really helpful to all of us. And thank you to the city council for your continued confidence in me and our staff. And so I really look forward to continuing to serve all of you or most of you and the residents of my pillar, I do love the city. Appreciate the kind words about tonight. I really have to to pass that along to the staff if they did not provide me the information that I need to share. I wouldn't be able to do it. So, you know, I I talk, but it's really they're the ones that inform me. So thanks to all of them. And we'll see everybody Tuesday, I guess, on voting day. Thank you. And there's actually one more thing I want to say. Jay, as you're stepping off and Jennifer, if you don't end up back with us by March 9th, I I want your opinions. Um, if you have thoughts about any future topics, please, please stay in touch. OK, having said that, OK, good. OK, having said that, without objection, we will adjourn the meeting 9 58. All right, thanks, everybody. Have a good night, folks. Before 10. Good night, folks.