 I would like to call to order the South Burlington City Council meeting of Monday, November 6th, 2023. We're recorded. Good. You want me to say that again? No. OK. So the first item is Pledge of Allegiance. So Larry, do you want to lead us in this, please? Helen, you're putting me on the spot. Yeah, I am. I'm sorry to let you play. I played the Allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God. This conference will now be recorded. Purity and justice for all. And so once again, we'll formally welcome our newest member. We're so glad you have made us whole again, Larry. Thank you. No, my computer screen isn't too big. No, it's fine. OK, item two is instructions on exiting the building in case of emergency and review of technology options. Thank you. So for those in the room, thanks for joining us in the room. If there's an emergency, you can go out either side of the rear of the auditorium and turn left or right and exit outside. For those participating online, thank you also for joining us. If you would like to speak during any item on the agenda, you can turn your camera on and the chair will call on you. You can also indicate your interest in speaking in the chat, and I will have her call on you. Other than that, we are not monitoring the chat for content. OK. Agenda review, are there any additions, deletions, or changes in order of agenda items? Seeing none, we'll go on to item four, comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. Is there anyone? Please come forward. And will you, at the base of the mic, there's a little spot that says push, and it turns the green light on. Nice, bright green. Is it on? Yes, it is. Great. Thank you. So please tell us your name and what. OK. Hi, Erin Sutherland. I wrote a letter recently, so I kind of typed something up just so I would have my head in the right place, and then I can also email it. So that would be great. Remember, so I really appreciate the school zones that you just put in at Chamberlain and at Rick Markott. I think that is really helpful. But I do think we desperately and very quickly need them at Orchard and Tuttle and the high school. It is just truthfully dangerous. Today, I almost hit somebody, and that's a very, very diligent person driving. So I really hope that that is something that can be done soon. I understand that there was a traffic study done on Dorset Street, and I hope that in the next meeting on the 16th when you're rolling out your city plan and thinking about budgeting, that that school safety could be a top priority from all of you. And that will, I think, is going to be something that will help the community. We need to know that that is a top priority. I'm disappointed that the steering committee was not recorded last week. The city and the school collaboration is so critically important right now. The safety of our schools is not just a school issue. It's an everybody issue. And the buildings that we're putting up, left and right every day, are directly affecting the kids. I have children in three of the schools here, and I moved my youngest out because of what's happening and what's happened since the building. It's not COVID. It's the building that we're doing. We need more traffic monitors. We need better lighting, and we need school safety to be taken seriously. That Channel 23 news brief was really upsetting to watch. It absolutely painted the picture that the city and the school are not on the same page. The letter that the city sent to the residents was just downright insulting to assume that carrying people writing to our school board, our city counselors, and our police have somehow linked criminal activity and drug use with the unhoused is just simply not true. Three years ago today, my brother-in-law died of a fentanyl overdose. I am empathetic to the situation, but we need to open up our eyes and look at what is happening around us. We do not have the infrastructure to support the building we're doing. I don't know how we can keep saying we do. We absolutely don't. So I hope at this point we can join forces and make safety the priority because the kids are our future. Thank you. Thank you. I would just like to note at the steering committee meeting we did agree unanimously, both the school board and the city council, to create a special task force to really focus on that safety. And I think all of our conversations that night and discussions I think reflected shared goals and shared solutions. It didn't seem that way from watching it when it says, well, we do have the infrastructure. Let's tell people we have the infrastructure. That was directly quoted on the news brief. And I think that's simply untrue. OK. So thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else who wishes to make a comment? What's channel 23? 22. She said 22. What's channel 22? I think that's what you mean. My shambles. Oh, sorry. Channel 22, yes. Yeah. My shambles. OK. I didn't see that. I didn't see that report either. OK. If there's no other comments, we'll move on to councillor's announcements and reports on committee assignments and then the city manager's report. Andrew, do you want to start? No committee meetings since the last month. OK. No committee meetings as well since the steering committee meeting. But I did take a walk up and visited the cellar hole at Long Drive. It appears to be a point where they actually put down like piece stone on the bottom where they might start pouring a foundation. But I can't, honestly, can't tell whether they had dug the trenches for utilities or not. It looked like they had, but they filled it back in. So I didn't see it anyway. But I take your report. Thanks. Thank you. I've had no meetings either other than the steering committee meeting, which I thought too was very positive. So I'll watch this Channel 22 Champlain Valley news report. And I thought it was a good meeting. I hope that it felt positive on the other right on the school board side as well. I thought it went well. OK. And Larry? Thanks. And I have since the steering committee have not had any other meetings. But I'm sure I will sooner or later. OK. Thank you. And I have no meetings to report as well. So Jesse? I will happily take up all of your time. So a bunch of updates for you tonight. Members of the leadership team on Friday met with Congresswoman Ballant State Director. He was going around doing tours with communities. We talked about city center projects, our gap in funding for some of those projects. As you know, we've put in several federal grants to close those gaps. So it was a great, great conversation. And hopefully he can help move some of those forward. I think the council knows we have a social work intern working with the library this semester. She is fantastic. And she has set up an outreach table outside the libraries from Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. So if folks are in need of services, they can stop by or just stop in and visit with Evelyn. She is fantastic. As the council and the community probably know, the Development Review Board are considering two significant projects, more than that, but two that I will mention tonight. One is the sketch plan for a conservation PUD in a traditional neighborhood at the Allenwood parcel. And the second is a master plan for Larkin Terrace on Shelburne Road. That's the old movie theater location. So those are moving for the permitting process. A couple of updates I want to share about the Dorset Street Signals Projects. Thank you to the community for your patience as that has moved forward. As folks likely have noticed, as you are heading west on Willisons Road at the Dorset Street intersection, the right-hand turn lanes will be closed going into Holiday Inn for a couple of weeks to do sidewalk work. If you have not seen the video that the team did about how those traffic lines will be realigned when it reopens, I'd really encourage you to go to the city's website or Facebook to look at that animation of the new traffic patterns and just encourage folks to be diligent going through those intersections. And Tom, I know you're online. If I say something incorrect here, please feel free to correct me. Additionally, with the new mastheads, poles, and signal hardware at Dorset Street in Williston and Kennedy Drive, that technology is all in place. The signals are going in. There is a 30-day warranty period on that hardware or on the lights. So those will continue as is with the current traffic patterns for 30 days to demonstrate the warranty period. Following that, we will be able to start the programming that will happen throughout the whole district. So it will be February or March when we're able to roll out that predictive pattern programming in those lights. So more to come, but it is moving forward. Also at Public Works, I wanted to share, hopefully folks have seen a lot of these improvements, incremental safety improvements on the ground, a highway, the highway crew installed, the new crosswalk near JC Park, as well as two new crosswalks on Williston Road at Davis Parkway and Pine Tree Terrace and between Victoria Drive and Mills Avenue. Work is also substantially complete on the Kennedy Drive stormwater, Pond 2, and the shared use path connecting East Terrace to Spear Street is being repaved this week. In case folks, especially counselors here, we will also be sending out, Public Works will also be sending out a survey to commercial property owners around their wastewater emittance. This is required as part of our state permit, asking them to provide feedback on what they are discharging into the system. So if folks have questions about that, please feel free to reach out to Bob Fisher or Tom. And then of course we're getting our crews already for winter operations and I'm putting plows on our tracks and things like that. It's a very busy, exciting time for Public Works. That will cause winter to come, you know that. It is November, it's coming. If you deny it, it won't happen. Okay. And then a few fun things. We had 750 folks here for the Halloween Glow Walk at Goose Pond last week, which was really exciting and 50 folks participating in the pumpkin carving. And then Adam, who you'll meet in a little bit, also wanted to invite the council to the annual senior holiday meal on December 8th at 5.30. So if council would like to participate in that, that's December 8th at 5.30. That's all I have. All right. Thank you. Thanks. Next item is the Consent Agenda is seven items. It's a pretty hefty one this week. Clearly there's a lot going on. I would entertain a motion to approve. So moved. Second. Is there any discussion or questions? I wouldn't mind just maybe, Jesse, can you just, or maybe Tom just spent two minutes on items G through G. There's a lot to read there. And I just wouldn't mind just understanding a little bit better what those are about. Sure. Tom, if you are there, could unmute, that would be great. So the two different clean water state revolving loan funds. One is for Airport Parkway. Hi, Tom, do you want to walk through these? He's, Councilor Chalnyx asking about D, E, F and G on the Consent Agenda. Sure. So let me pull up the agenda so I have those specific items. Okay. So item D, yes, this is a loan for Airport Parkway Solids Handling. Similarly, item E is a loan for engineering for the Bartlett Bay Waste Bar Treatment Facility. So in March, we passed a bond for that and a pump station project on Queen City Park. So the bond passed. So this is just taking the first loans against that. Those loans would be through the Department of Environmental Conservation, the State Revolving Fund. I'll pause there for any questions or keep going. Is that good enough? Okay. So they're both related. They just are slightly separate. That's how we're fighting. But this is pursuant to the bond that passed. Okay. I didn't connect those dots. So these are the first steps. Alrighty. Item F is an interim agreement for snow plowing in spear meadows. So the city had a number of roads in the past where we were plowing though these roads remained private. The intent was to turn them over to the city, but that process got stalled or held up or just never finished. So we stopped the practice of plowing these roads with the intent to become public until after the warranty period. That had caused some difficulties in that interim period for folks, understandably so. So Colin and I worked to develop this agreement. We actually borrowed it in large part from our neighboring town of Williston to have this interim agreement for taking care of these streets for that kind of two year period where they're under the warranty. So we don't take them over until after that. Similarly, there's a wastewater pump station out at spear meadows. And so similar agreement, well it's in the warranty period where we make sure everything's working where we're offering them to take care of it and keep an eye on it like we would our other public pump stations. This is kind of a newer thing for us. I think it really will help us sort of move things along as we move forward and make clear who's responsible for what. Oftentimes we'll, well, as soon as the spokes see a city plow on the road they assume it's a city street. So I think this will help clarify some of that confusion. And I'll stop there in case. Ken, go ahead. Well, if I could just add to that, I think it's a huge improvement that Tom and Colin are recommending. It clears up a lot of confusion and sets an expectation moving forward with the private development community. Okay, and then the two assessments that you'll make for this service, is that based on like how many hours it takes to plow those roads or the cost of really maintaining a pump station? Yeah, so the estimate for the pump station and the gravity sewer lines, that's correct for the plowing, I took the value that the state of Vermont would pay us. So if that becomes a public road, the state of Vermont gives us a payment for the maintenance of it. So I use that to calculate how in that case. All right. Thank you. And this is agreeable to the developers, I assume. Yeah, so I spoke with the developer in this case. They are in favor of it. Once we move this one forward, it is likely you may see these in some other developments where we continue to work with folks to take over roads that are kind of intended to be public after the warranty period ends. And usually in that warranty period, there's some things that they have to take care of, whether it's curb or sidewalk or things that kind of come up, so. And just to clarify, perhaps for the public, the design of the roads in these developments are determined by the city. And if a developer doesn't meet those standards, like width or the steepness of the road or turning. The thickness of the asphalt. The thickness of the asphalt, the city is not under an obligation to take it over even after the period of two or three years. Is that right? That's correct. Through deficiencies, I would not recommend the council that we take that road over. So we don't own it until council takes an action to accept the roads. Okay. But we have a lot of things in place, I think, to make sure that once we agree to take it over, it's in good condition or designed to last as long as any other road, I guess. Okay. Thank you. Any other, oh, I'm sorry. There was one more. And that's- Is there one more? Oh, the formula grant? This is just a grant program that was made available to us. It's a formula grant. Our storm water staff managed this one primarily. It's for just design implementation of storm water best managing practices or treatment practices to help us comply with frost first control plan. So you have just grant dollars the state had available and is sort of giving them out in kind of chunks to the different MS4 communities. There's sort of a, the no strings attached to kind of the thing. It's a very great opportunity for us to help fund some of these improvements. And that's $750,000 coming into the storm water fund. Now, do any of that, do we still have an agreement with Shelburne to assist them? We just met on this last week. For the MS4? Oh yeah, so we do. Shelburne is in the process or they're currently advertising to hire a full-time storm water person, which will be great for Shelburne. That person is gonna train very closely and even sit in our office for a little while and we're gonna train and get them up to speed because we have such a close relationship with the folks in our neighbor's south there. And so yeah, that's all moving forward still. So we'll still be helping them out but they will have a full-time person. Okay, so this grant money is not, will not be used in Shelburne? Correct, they would have their own formula grant though I don't know the amount of that one offhand. Okay, any other questions? Are we ready for the vote? Okay, all in favor of the Consent Agenda as presented? Say aye. Aye. Okay, that passes unanimously and we'll move on to seven. Jesse. So I would like to invite Adam and Nick to come down. We have, as you've heard me talk about, we've had some vacancies on our leadership team over the last couple of months and we are thrilled that to welcome these two gentlemen to our team. So I wanted you to have an opportunity to meet them. Adam Math in the white shirt is our new Director of Parks and Recreation. You heard me talk about him at our last meeting comes to us from the baseball world and UVM which is super exciting and a very interesting non-traditional kind of path into municipal service. I was really impressed with Adam during the interview about how he talked about creating opportunities for community to connect and doing that through programming and different opportunities in the city. And then Nick Gingro is our new IT Director comes to us from also the UVM Business School was the IT Director for the Vermont College of Fine Arts and was at Paul Franken Collins most recently. Really exceptional technical expertise. We had Burlington's IT Director actually sit in on these interviews to evaluate the IT expertise that I cannot evaluate and spoke very highly of Nick. So we're thrilled to have both of them here. They are both South Burlington residents which is also very exciting. Yeah. But I thought I would give them a moment to introduce themselves and talk about what brought them to South Burlington if that isn't acceptable. Nick helped me change my passport. So I am forever grateful. So now I can get everything. What was the old password? I can't even remember. I had to write down the new one. Do you want to share a couple words? Yeah, sure. Thanks. Nice to meet you all. Like Jesse said, I'm a local Vermonter and I've been in South Burlington for quite a long time. So it's kind of fun to get to work and help make the city a better place. And when I was at the University of Vermont I worked with Thomas Chittenden for almost 15 years. So I'm quite familiar with some of the initiatives in the city just from working with him. So yeah, so far it's been fun. We unfortunately lost Larry King who was a fantastic member of the team recently. He just moved on to a new job. So we're looking to find a third person to our IT team and then we'll be fully staffed up and ready to go. But yeah, it's been a lot of fun learning the ins and outs of the city so far. So I look forward to working with you guys over the next few years. Well, welcome. Thank you. Okay. Thanks for having me as well. Again, my name is Adam and as Jesse mentioned, I live in South Burlington originally moved to Vermont after school in 2012. And kind of my background and path, I was with the lake monsters for about nine to 10 years kind of on the event side of things there as well as within tickets. And most recently, before coming over here just starting last Monday, I was with UVM in their athletic department as well. And as Jesse mentioned earlier, I'm excited about this opportunity and this position to kind of utilize my experiences in my background and developing ways to bring families together and the community together through events and programs. Great. Nice. Any questions? Yes. Can we get Champ and Raleigh here at the same time? Do you have connections? I think I have some connections. I can probably pretty easily do that. Thanks. Great. Well, welcome. Thank you very much. Thanks, gentlemen. That's wonderful. Okay. Item eight, consider an appointment to the development review board. So we could potentially hold an executive session for the purpose of discussing appointments. Do you want to do that now? You want the motion to go into executive position now? Or did you want to have an open discussion first for the interviews? Are there candidates? There are two candidates. Say we're in the packet. Yeah. Would you like to interview them first? Whatever your pleasure is. We probably should. Yeah. Okay. So I don't see Charles here. And I don't know Gabe is Gabe Simpson. Oh, Gabe is here. Hi. So you could interview Gabe and go into executive session or you could, it's your pleasure. It's a separate floor. It's in the bowl. Yeah. You have to go into the separate folder. Do you want hard copies? Well, Gabe, why don't you come down? You can either stand or sit, whichever you're more comfortable with. Just make sure the light is bright green. Yeah. Okay. And so, let's see. I don't have it in front of me. But why don't you tell us why you're interested in serving on the Development Review Board? Okay. I'm Gabe. I'm 25 years old. And I've been back and forth between downtown and Burlington for about three months. I want to help to come up with maybe new ideas for the community. There's been a lot of over-construction lately. And I have really severe migraines and a lot of other people around me are reacting negatively to it as well. A lot of people have been having hallucinations and almost getting hit by cars with the way they do the roads like frequently. There's times they've been doing construction every day on the same road. And it's been consistent throughout a month and a half. And they don't move on to new sections of the road. So, I was hoping to help come up with new ideas for preventing over-construction in the area. And also, I've noticed Burlington's been South Burlington in particular is lacking a lot of neurodiversity in different animal species with all the air quality. So, I was hoping maybe there was a way to either renovate the forest across from where the housing developments are or if there was a way to make a butterfly garden so that the kids and the adults in the communities could all have different ways of enjoying nature within South Burlington. Are you aware of the role of a DRB member and what they do? I vaguely looked through the website. One gets kind of scatterbrained. But it's basically voting on the development of the community as a whole and the construction and the traffic. Yeah, and there's a whole set of rules that guide them. It's not quite as freelance as you might wish it to be. In terms of some of your ideas, that may not be the committee that could work on that. It might be planning or parks and rat core, potentially. I think it might be a better fit with at least some of your comments. But that's just some advice, I guess. Are there other questions or thoughts? Have you been able to watch any of the DRB meetings to see how they're held and the DRB is an application of the rules and not a changing of the rules? So I saw that you're interested in the Housing Trust Fund Committee as well. Is determining which projects are most deserving of our trust fund, which we add $50,000 to every year currently. So that might be more in line with what you wrote up here in terms of wanting to be inclusive, wanting to make housing available to more people. I don't know what your thoughts are on that. Yeah, I could try that. That works. Are there other thoughts or questions or comments? Just that I appreciate you coming tonight and applying for the position. The DRBs are really structured entity and it acts judicially based upon applications from developers that go through the Planning and Zoning Office and they get reviewed and then the agendas are very set for a particular development and each stage of that development and all the different criteria that they're kind of judging it on. So there's not a lot of room for new ideas. As Megan said, that would be a different committee. So just want to point that out. Okay, thank you. So the other candidate is not here, so we can't. So do you want to, I need to put this off. Did he not know we would interview or? No, he knew. You could table your slightly ahead of schedule, but not very much. So you could table this, go on to another agenda item if he comes interview him later on and they make a decision later in the meeting. Yeah, that's fine. Okay, why don't we do that? Because we are a little ahead of schedule and usually we're not. Oh, if I were a gambling person, I would tune in a little bit later. Is somebody going to communicate with him? So I was just texting with Andrea. She did communicate with him and we can call him. Here comes somebody. Oh, here he is. Speak of the devil. Oh, come on down. Come on down. So Charles does serve on our economic development committee. Right. Hello. Hello. We are a little ahead of schedule, which is unusual. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So you're interested in serving on the DRB and would you like to, you're familiar with what it does. Have you, and you do understand the time commitment? Yes, twice a month. It's for every Tuesday night. Same time as I think every other Tuesday night. Same time as economic development committee, which is once a month. But yeah, I served on a DRB in Monkton before I moved to South Burlington. Oh, you're well aware of how it works. Yep. I've also participated in DRB meetings as a civil engineer. So, and I'm hopeful I will get it this time. Okay. So do you work for an engineering firm now? Yes, Du Bois and King. And are any of the projects that come before DRB, are they represented by that firm at all? We do have to recuse yourself very often. I mean, that is a possibility, I guess, that could happen. I'm not aware of any development in South Burlington that they're doing. I don't work in site and land development. I work in dams. Right. So, yeah. So we probably won't be putting in too many dams. But the company could have something. There is a, technically there are one or two dams at Dorset Park for the stormwater apparently. Yep. Right. See? He knows. Because he's a dam guy. So, okay. I think that also, that's a situation that you have on DRB right now. I think there's two people on it that currently engineering consultants that would have to recuse themselves. So it's not an uncommon situation. Just trying to figure out how much you might have to recuse yourself. I hope not. But it sounds like, okay. Are there other questions people have? He seems to be aware of that. That was the question I had in terms of his engineer, his current employment. But that's fine. Okay. Well, we are familiar with you. Yeah. Are you going to stay on econ too? No. You could just come at five and then stay till seven, except from seven, stay till one o'clock in the morning. It's an easy stretch. I sent the email to Jesse. Economic development is stretching me personally. I don't see it being personally a great wealth of my time. I think there's something important for them to do, and I think eventually they will get there. But I prefer to look for other ways to support my community. Yeah. I do appreciate your accent on green energy, the development of green energy. So you embrace of heat pumps, solar panels, and energy storage. And I would assume that as a civil engineer, you would be sensitive to the placement of buildings and perhaps looking at a plan, making sure that sites are maximized. I'm very into green energy. I work on hydrologic dams all the time. So yeah, I think it's important for our future, not just our local community, but for our country too. So yeah, I know that Brian's development is looking at being independent. I don't know if they're going to be wholly independent from the energy grid. They might need to get energy months in a while, but they're going to be resilient. Yeah. Okay. Are there any questions you have for us? Like, three times is like, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's in my third time, so I don't know if there's others that are applying for DRB. There was just one other person. One other person? How could I convince you that I'm the person? No, I won't put you in that situation. But yeah, if you have any questions, I'm here. I'm available. Okay. Energetic. Well, I don't think we have any more questions. So I appreciate your continued interest and persistence. Thank you. And have a great night. I'm going to head out. We'll miss you on the Economic Development Committee. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So do you want executive session at the end to determine this? Or whatever is most convenient for you? Well, that's not what's convenient for me. It's what we do. Do it at the end? Yeah. And a, okay. So we'll let both of the candidates know tomorrow morning. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. All righty. Let's see. Let's wait. We're going to be flowing through this. This is good. Let's see. Eight or nine, excuse me, receiving a recommendation from the Affordable Housing Committee and Housing Trust Fund Committees. I guess there's two committees requesting additional funding. And you sent us a letter identifying that. All those issues. And we have it in the packet. Good evening. Chris Trombly, Affordable Housing Committee. Darryl and Peters, Vice Chair of the Committee. So thank you for allocating this amount of time. So I forwarded a copy of the recommendation that was approved by a joint session of the Affordable Housing Committee and the Housing Trust Fund. And so just as a table setting, I did, after forwarding the recommendation, I thought it might be helpful for your deliberations later that you saw the entire timeline of kind of how we got to today. But the Affordable Housing Committee has had this item on its work plan for the last three years. And so what kind of brought it to fruition this year was, you know, if we were wowed by the response to the ARPA program and the generosity of the city to donate a million dollars. And out of that RFP program, we were able to catch some fantastic applications of which we were able to fund some of them. And one item that caught the committee's interest was the establishment of a land bank, but we were unable to fund it as part of the ARPA, which is understood. So we're pursuing options of how can we increase the initial $50,000 discretionary contribution to the Housing Trust Fund each year? And what are some methods that we can use to fund that? So as we explored, you know, different options, the first one that was considered was, you know, do we do something similar to bike pad and open space with a tax levy? Do we consider alternative methods such as the city of Brallington where they have a host of different fees? So the committees held a robust discussion and they moved forward three recommendations to share with the Council this evening. The first is to increase the annual contribution to the Housing Trust Fund from $50,000 to $150,000, tied to inflation. I believe my original email still had the old error on it that was the grand list and its inflation. So that's an important clarification. A one-time contribution as seed money of $500,000 to start a land bank as requested with the Green Mountain Habitat for Humanity, ARPA request. So with a land bank, it's important to understand there's either to get a start eating, there's one of two things. You're going to need land donated so that you can build upon that or money to purchase land. There's other models of land banks and this the discussion that we focus on was on a very simple straightforward land bank model that was the concept is that with the purchase or the donation of land that housing is built upon that land, affordable housing, and then upon sale to new ownership that money would be received back into the Housing Trust on almost like a revolving loan fund. And then the third request, and this is an interesting conversation, eliminate impact fees for affordable housing. So it's how can we lower the financial barrier for affordable housing developers to come to South Burlington and build new reburn apartments or just we're surrounded by a lot of projects. But what we've seen testimony is that the cost of moving forward with projects has become increasingly difficult but we can't just raise taxes on everything. So an alternative way would be to reduce the impact fees for affordable housing. We didn't define affordable housing as capital A or small A, so some flexibility there but that was one of a couple recommendations that were discussed is how do we reduce the overall cost. So with that, let me pause and check with Darrell and if I missed anything here. No, I think there's only another. I think there's really only one thing and we apologize for this as committee members. We will give you the exact wording of what was voted on by both the Affordable Housing Committee and the Housing Trust Fund and that's gotten a little muddled in so many communications that have been flying around and Jesse said that we could explain that tonight and that as Chris said but I think the actual wording was 150,000 dollars annually non-discretionary allocation to the Housing Trust Fund and subsequently adjusted for inflation and the reason we said non-discretionary is because we understand that this issue, I mean housing is so expensive now, it's so much more than it was in 2016. So we know both to build and to buy is staggering across the country and in our small town as well. So we wanted to give the Housing Trust Fund the expectation that if they didn't want to make a recommendation in one year, the following year they would surely have 300,000 and that might be enough just to get a project over the line. So they could think about that. It happened just by fate during COVID that they did not make allocations for a couple of years and then had more, a larger allocation than 50,000 to make when they finally were asked when they received a proposal that they could support and recommend to the City Council. So similar to the Open Space Fund? Yes, so that's why we think that that would be a good thing about that particular wording and we're sorry that it's been a little muddled but anyway, that's, that would be the only thing I would add, Chris. Can, oh, do you have some more to? No, hi, Pausen. Well, I just, I'm trying to understand in some ways the difference between the 150 and the 500,000. It seems like they both could be used for the same things. And can you kind of, are they really different? Yeah, so I think the discussion that was focused on that they would be separate funds. Would that be your understanding as well? Oh, yes. Yeah, and the reason for that is the timing of which, so in discussion with some stakeholders who could be potential partners, the timeframe in which to put that money out, purchase the property, go through the application process, develop, sell it, and then the money coming back to three years. And so in that interim period that 150 would go towards other projects and that would build and so that once that 500 comes back, it's now revolving, but we're not at the 50,000. But we certainly appreciate the opportunity to discuss this, but it was intended as separate funds. I still, I'm not clear. I understand the $500,000 gives you a pretty large chunk of money to be able to purchase proper land, raw land, I guess, or housing that you might want to reconstitute into affordable housing and that the, that money can come back to that fund, but only after the thing has been built and people live in it and then at some point, 10 years later, they want to sell it. So you'll most likely spend the, or invest the $500,000 and the revolving aspect probably won't really happen for a while. So just a clarification. $150,000 which might, you know, dovetail with something that CHT wants to do with us and it's, you know, fills that gap. Yeah. So just a minor clarification. So in their discussion with Habitat, for example, there was mentioned that there was two properties that have come up since they have applied that were potential projects that could have been realized with that money. But the difference is, is that the money purchased or the money used to purchase the land would come back to the city after the house that was built was sold to the new homeowner. Yep. So It does come back sooner. Yep. So as part of the closing, we would get a, we would get a check back. That's a, I guess you have to work a little just, but as a, as a lean holder on the property. So actually we'll revolve. Yes. Yeah. So then how would you see investing the additional $150,000? What would that be earmarked for? Yeah, absolutely. So we've seen with the ARPA application that just in that short time frame, we received five applications in that short period of time. And also in discussions with Habitat, they had two projects that have come up. The pipeline of development isn't always as visible to us because it's not something that they've moved forward with planning and zoning and they've officially filed. So they're looking for, continually looking for projects and opportunities that come available. That money, and I wish Tom was here. He spoke to it in our meeting very nicely. It's money that's already committed or that could be committed to the property that closes that gap. So these would be projects that would just, they would happen concurrently. And do you think there's any chance that having, if the city of South Burlington had a $500,000 trust fund, along with $150,000 annual separate trust fund, that some of the partners may think that, oh, maybe we should really work in Hinesburg because they don't have that kind of money to invest or Milton or some other place. That South Burlington has set aside enough money so we don't need to partner or they don't need to invest here because we've made that huge commitment. I'm just curious. Yeah, that's fair. It's my understanding through discussions and hearing from prior folks that it would be the inverse of that, that that money is actually attracting more projects that could potentially come to South Burlington instead of going to a town that may not have the money to make up that gap, the increasing gap due to, you know, cost of supply, shortage of labor, cost of fees. So that's the selling point on behalf of South Burlington. Okay, that's good to hear. Other questions people might have? Yeah, I'm just curious about what is the regional governance structure for affordable housing in Chitton County? I mean, who is there somebody responsible for like a layer at the top that looks down and understands what the needs are in each community and tries to help distribute, you know, whatever there is to distribute? I mean, is that the state? Is that the CCRPC? I mean, who is it, is it the organizations themselves like, you know, CHT and Cathedral Square and Summit? I mean, those are the major players, right? Right now, there's just basically three groups that are doing this kind of work and Habitat. I'm sorry, and Habitat, it's a much smaller scale, but it's really important because it's and COTS. But not in South Burlington yet, right? Okay, all right, so that's COTS does have a contribution to the Summit property. They do have some units. Oh, for the home, for the unhoused, yeah. Yeah, okay. Yeah, so yes, those are some of the major players. I can't speak as a subject matter expert but I know we have an excellent city manager who's versed in this, but you know, when we think about building homes together, and we saw the progress report that came out from October that collectively as a region, we did not meet our goal and you look around to communities that aren't as committed as South Burlington. Sure, they could hold their feet to the fire a little bit more. I think South Burlington has made some impressive moves forward to facilitate those, but there's no accountability. Like you can't go to, all right, we're gonna throw any cities under the bus here, but there's no accountability for it. Hey, you're not pulling our weight. Is that the kind of the foundation of your question? I was just curious about, I mean, from a county perspective, right, how is the problem analyzed? And then I mean, every city or town is different, right? And so they each have their own parcels of land. I mean, Burlington, I perceive, doesn't have as much available land as South Burlington does for new construction, right? Unless they rehab something. So, and then Williston is booming right now, but I don't know how much affordable housing is going into Williston, right? Yeah, so I mean, there's certainly a difference between Burlington where it's mostly developed, South Burlington where our city center where the targeted growth is desired is largely built out. But I think that highlights the need for contributions because redevelopment of existing properties is very costly. And, you know, we continually hear frustration from community members who, you know, as they see unutilized property sitting idle. And, you know, why isn't that being redeveloped? Money comes down to money. That's part of it. We can come back with some testimony supportive of that. But those funds absolutely could be used to move forward a project that may not pencil previously. Could I just add a few things? So I worked with the committee, of course, as my former trust fund membership. And these three items are really distinctly quite separate. So the trust fund has been used very successfully to fill a gap in nonprofit development. Fundraising for development. And providing that very local money that's so important when they go to the conservation board in Apulia or they go to the home loan bank for the funding. And so a $50,000 increment is nice, especially if it accumulates like it did over COVID time. And we actually had some real money, some substantial money that Summit ended up using for their project. So $150 is sort of a reflection of the need to have that available to build from one year to the next so that it could be meaningful for whatever the next project is. And I'm not saying that there's a project that I'm aware of, but it's just very handy to have that cash. The land bank idea really came from Habitat and that was one of the ARPA applications that wasn't funded because of the ARPA deadline because it could but in fact soon after there was land available for them to buy that they couldn't, okay, you know, the timing was just not right. And so there's not really any, there was no discussion of having the trust fund administer the revolving fund. There's really two separate things. The revolving fund would need a mechanism for understanding how the city revolved that, if you will, a loan or a grant or some interaction with Treasury to make that work. Okay. Well, going back to when we created the housing trust fund, I think our initial conversation was a hundred thousand dollars. And then I can't remember what happened, but it was. It was a hundred thousand initially. Yes. And then the original proposal. That was the original proposal. And then we had to cut back as of financing. But so that just for newer members, that was the starting point in 2016 was a hundred thousand bucks, not 50. Yes. Chris, we spoke a little bit about this when we all chatted, but can you just describe, I guess Mackenzie Scott made this really generous donation to the Champlain Housing Trust and how you see that donation maybe intersecting with some of this cash and how you see that donation kind of helping the community meet its affordable housing goals. Yeah. Yeah. So we had a nice discussion of, hey, so CHC just got a lot of money, right? So what do you need this money for? Was kind of the crux of it. Which is a fair question. And I think one of the most eye-opening things for me as an affordable housing committee member is when we visited one of the new projects in Winooski and the cost to develop one unit of affordable housing at that time was $250,000 per unit. So later in discussions with some, I think that cost was actually closer to $500,000 per unit. So it's just, there's a high standard and there should be with affordable housing and to which that's built so it's sustainable, affordable and safe and accessible. But the cost per unit is prohibitive. So if you were to take the $20 million, assume it was just $250,000 a unit. I mean, that's an 80-unit brick and mortar building. That's no supportive services. That's no ongoing salaries to take care of. And so if I can't speak for CHD, but if their service region ranges from Chittenden County all the way up to Franklin County and Grand Isle, that's a large footprint. So one 80-unit building to utilize that with no ongoing funding. It doesn't go very far. I do understand that they are using the funds not for development, but for other supportive services, which is fantastic. It's an area that doesn't get a lot of attention in affordable housing. It's the, you know, okay, you just put two folks in who are transitioning from homelessness, but without those supportive services to help them find success on their path back into home ownership. It's something that just doesn't get a lot of attention in the press. Okay, other? So I just want to know the comment with regard to Tim's question about the region. I mean, CCRPC does a lot of statistical work around collecting the results of building. They don't have a big role in developing in it, but you know that our county system is on the weaker side of that. And if there's, with regard to the CHD money, there is a, Michael Monti did publish a list of how they plan on using that. It's something you'd like to see. I think that, I think it's available. Their cornerstone fundraising luncheon is the ninth. Friday, yeah. Next week. Next week. Next week. Next week. Thursday. This Thursday. Whereas some of that will also be discussed. So if you think about a person like Mackenzie Scott having this available funds to, the CHD didn't apply to her for that. She discovered that them, that's her organization discovers in each state so you know, I think it was a surprise to everybody that this came, but it was, it's pretty well spelled out. And I just want to reiterate what Chris said, it's supportive services in their program. It's beyond just building buildings. They have to staff them up and which is difficult under any circumstance, but to have the salaries for supportive staff, which social work is and other folks like that. Okay. Yes, I have some questions for you, but you go ahead. Oh, for me? Well, yeah, but no, you do your thing. I just want to add one more point to Tim's question, which is CCRPC does kind of the data analysis, the leading building homes together, and then also Vermont Housing Finance Agency and Vermont Housing and Conservation Board really have stringent criteria about how subsidy funds are doled out across the state. You know, when you think about housing just at the Jenning County level, we are not big enough to do that. We need to think about the whole state and how we use those state subsidy dollars because these, as Chris mentioned, these projects are hugely subsidized both at the state level and the federal level. And Andrew, I'm not sure you're aware of this. I'm on the CHT board, so I'd be happy to talk to you more about the McKenzie Scott funds if you would like. I was going to ask in terms of the city, the government ability to monitor or manage a revolving fund. We don't really have any revolving fund. Well, we sort of do, I guess, with the money we take in for water and sewer and the energy. But there, well, water and sewer isn't small, but that isn't really a revolving fund, I guess. So what is the... And it's revolving to us, which is a very different thing. Which is very different, yeah. So what would the city need? What would we have to invest in addition to supporting a land bank in terms of making sure that our auditor doesn't say, oops. So Amy actually just joined us. She would be a great person to talk about the McKenzie Scott money. So there are a number of different ways a structure like this could be set up. If the council moves forward this recommendation, staff would look at how many other communities have revolving loan funds like this. Some do it in-house internally and revolve them out to other entities, other nonprofits or businesses. Some actually contract with a third party entity to revolve them. So they're funded. In this case, it could either of those tools would work. It could also work to just directly fund an organization like Habitat or CHT and grant the money to them and have them manage it. There are a number of different ways we could do it. And I would, you know, if directed, staff would put together some options for you to consider. I'll speak up. I think it is time for us to increase the housing trust fund. I think 2016 was a long time ago. And we have not kept it up with inflation. I certainly understand that we have a lot of big questions to consider when we look at the final budget numbers. But I really expect us to take a hard look at the housing trust fund line. And I am in favor of this land revolving fund. It's something that had been discussed. I know. That was my vision for the million. Right. And it is a nice way for the city to invest in land and invest in home ownership to get people who cannot get into the market rate housing that we have in South Burlington, get them into the market, and then hopefully get them to, you know, to be able to increase their equity. I find that it's a model that has a lot of benefits. And we, as a city, I think see the value in bringing inclusivity throughout the city. So in those areas where there is still the possibility to develop these multi-unit or single-family homes and it could be redeveloped land as well, just like we saw on Hinesburg Road, to bring home ownership into the city in ways that are, you know, smaller developments as opposed to these big putes, I find it to be very attractive. I think it creates opportunities where there are just little parcels or little pieces that the city could be a partner to. So I do hope that we, when we're looking at the use of the ARPA funds that we could consider kind of starting that up depending, again, I know we have a lot to balance, but I certainly see it as something that is worthy of our consideration. Okay. Other comments from the council? I don't know if we have to make a decision tonight, but we should have a conversation. I agree that Housing Trust Fund needs to grow. Pardon me? I agree with the comments about the Housing Trust Fund. The revolver, I think we need to talk about. Yeah, I think that the increases do. The Revolving Fund is interesting, but it's like, you know, the two sources of money, where do they have their most effect? And it seems like the Revolving Fund would be more pointed towards Green Mountain, have to have humanity rights, which would be very small-scale infill development of home ownership, whereas the larger, summit took a large chunk for the two buildings up there, and it eliminated all their, paid for the permits, essentially, plus more. So there's two boxing gloves there. There's a big one with multi-unit buildings, and then there's a small one for Habitat for Humanity, which is really valuable, I think. Smaller-scale? I think it's smaller-scale. Yeah, it's a smaller-scale, and it's home ownership. Diversity, yeah. Right. I mean, it starts to look at that kind of missing middle, although it's, I think Habitat has a relative, I mean, they have an income level, so it's probably not too young professionals, but it's more income than needing to be subsidized on a monthly basis to pay for one's utilities and taxes. I can tell you, it's 80% of the median. 80% of the median, okay. Other thoughts? I mean, I would also agree that I think it's probably time to increase the Housing Trust Fund and I do find it very attractive to think about having a revolving fund with home ownership as the end piece. But I also have to look at the other things we want to use the ARPA funds for, but we also do have some other funds that we have at our disposal that aren't one time. So I would definitely want to include that in our conversation. I don't know what the impact is of eliminating the impact fees, but that is another piece. I mean, I guess I would need to look at those numbers to see, okay, you know, is the Planning Department, Planning and Zoning going to lose 25% of their income needed for personnel and to carry on their work? And then that has to be found somewhere else too. So it does have, and I don't, so I don't know, I understand why you would like to reduce that. Could I just add a clarification on the impact fee because that actually came up in our discussions like, well, if you just waive these fees, you're just raising taxes elsewhere. The intent, and we probably should have captured this in the motion here, is that it's revenue neutral to the Planning and Zoning, so that while the impact fees for whatever threshold that we set would be offset for development on the other end of the scale, so higher end units would pay a higher impact fee. So the intent is that it would be revenue neutral to the city. All right, well, I think that would be important in our discussion. Other thoughts or comments? Okay, well, we would encourage you to come back with the language and work with, I guess, our attorney or whoever writes the language for us. Writes the language for? Well, for us, the actual motion that was passed by the two committees, I thought that was submitted, but we can double check. Okay, great. Yeah, okay. Well, I thank you for your work. Thank you for allocating this much time to affordable housing. Thank you. It means a lot that you had this forum and considered these options. This was one of my favorite discussions that we've had at affordable housing this year along many great discussions, but this was just the camaraderie and just everyone was kind of on the same page of how we're moving forward with this recommendation. So that was great. Thank you for your time. It looks like Roger Goslin might want to say something. Is there anyone in the audience also who wanted to comment on this? Okay. I think Roger's mic just may be on. He's one of our fire staff. Oh, okay. He's just on call. He's hanging out. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Let's see. Item 10, further consider a proposed residential rental ordinance and Steve Locke is going to take us through draft. And I'm assuming a lot of people in the audience want to speak on this. Good evening. Would you like me to speak? Housing people or rental people? Good evening. I'll tee it up and we'll have a conversation and then we'll take a public comment after. It's okay. So we're here again tonight to talk about, you know, our short-term rental registration and rental registry in general. I think this is the fourth time we've been before you made some changes to the proposed ordinance based on previous conversations. And then at our last meeting, we told you that we would bring you back a solution for funding perhaps the building renovation construction cost to allow for this division to be housed within the fire department. So the first kind of phase of that is the two substantial changes which we had talked about at previous meetings, which was the rate charged to permanently affordable units. So earlier versions charged all units the same fee and this version reduces that to zero. So it took away any fee for those units that are considered permanently affordable. And the second was adding an exemption for the existing short-term rentals. Units are being used as Airbnb's and my read of the temperature the last time we were together is that that's the direction the council was looking to go. So we created an exemption until that property is sold and then it would no longer be eligible to be used as a short-term rental. So that's what's before you and this draft. That's the substantial change. And then as well, it is a solution working with finance director to ensure that this was possible was the use of creating a fund, a special fund that would allow us to leverage existing city fund balance but pay it back over a 10-year, 10-year basically through the user fees to cover the cost of construction, anticipated construction for in addition to the fire station. It does include the proposal is a one-time fee of fund balance or at least a 500,000 and then the remaining 1.3 is paid back through the user fees. It is quite possible that either through our growth in units greater than what we anticipate or lesser expenses that that would be done quit more quickly and that would require less fund balance. But this is one option that would allow you to achieve what we believe you're looking for and all within a special fund paid back through over 10 years. It has been approved by our finance director who also checked in with our auditors and she's in the room if you have any questions on how that funding mechanism works. And so those are the two big things, the two big whys that you were asking for and we hope that we have addressed those as you soft fit. So with that, I'll certainly take any questions. I had a question on the assistance fund and it slowly rises and I guess I was thinking that wondering the short-term unit numbers you anticipate going down but the assistance fund stays pretty steady. So I'm just curious who would be assisting. So the the intention of the $5 per unit market rate unit that would go into an assistance fund is to create a special reserve fund that would allow a property owner perhaps who was income sensitized. We'd have to develop some rules around it but needed assistance, perhaps putting windows, escape windows in or some new expense that this ordinance created for them in order to continue to have an apartment. They would then be able to apply for those funds. The reason it continues to go up is because the projections did not show any drawdown over the time but we believe there'd be $5 per unit so of the 2,500 units the first year, there's maybe $12,000 available and if that's all gone one year then it's gone otherwise it would carry over into year two. Right, but I guess my question is at some point since we're not basically we're not allowing any new. So these are for this could be even for even a long-term rental so right now see right now because they're not subject to the rental registry they wouldn't know that they are subject to the code. Okay, if I could just add a sentence to that you know the the point of this isn't to be punitive against property owners it's really to be a tool to ensure all of our rental units meet those health and safety standards. So if the fund helps us provide assistance when a new require when a property owner needs to do an improvement that will help them and help the resident living there. My only fear would be that you'd have to have some really stringent guidelines on who's eligible for those funds right because I mean you have a lot of LLCs that own properties on East Terrace right that are rented out to UVM students right and you wouldn't want to help them. And it's not a big pot of money to be honest right it's it's you know I think it is it would help those that need it the most but it's not a substantial pot of money and today in today's building construction cost it's not a substantial amount of money but for someone to help them get over the finish line it may be just what they need. Would it be like we would help them with the percentage of the cost or revolving you don't know you just it's a pie. It's it's an idea that we felt that you would be attractive to you as part of trying to get to a solution without knowing that this could create for some property owners an additional expense. So one one particular type of like you know a person that owns a house and and they like to do short-term rentals within the house of two bedrooms let's say you know and they need to put in hard-wired and connect smoke detectors something like that right that would. Except for I would correct you to say the long long-term rentals. Long term. Not short-term. We're supposed to allow short-term the grant if it's inside their unit as well. Oh sure as a single family single family owner occupied yes looking yes looking right. So that's the kind of get you want to help out. Yeah no I got that. Not if they own two more houses down the street. Okay other yeah I'd like you to yeah I'd like you to articulate the difference between our rental rules and the home share program just I've heard people talk about the home share program. Sure so I had a good conversation with someone from home share earlier like I said it was later last week and so my understanding of home share that would still fall under the that's allowed that's permissible. It would require under this draft that it register and under this draft would require it to be inspected as a rental but is but it is permissible. And the electrical and fire inspection would all be included. So so home share does not bypass local ordinances. That is correct. Okay but they would have to pay the the the cost per unit or they would have to pay the cost per unit. The annual fee. Yes that's not currently one of the exemptions listed. Oh I get that. I mean I do think that if you saw if I could just interrupt you I didn't give you saw a Councillor Chaldex amendment today. I would I think that that's what I think what you were trying to throw it towards I think that's where you were trying to achieve that that does exempt in that case from that from having to pay a registration fee that would exempt me if I'm renting a room out in my apartment and we're going to share the kitchen I say I have a say I have a home and I'm going to I'm going to share the kitchen and living room but we're going to you get a you get a bedroom and a bathroom that would exempt that property from having to pay the rental registry fee and the inspection. So that's that that is that is not in this draft that is in your email that right so I can explain that a little bit so but can we first maybe talk to Connor who's from home share he might add some additional information for Tim do you have anything to add or would you prefer hearing I mean I'm mostly on a listening tour Stephen and I had a conversation just the other day that was just dipping our toes into this because I didn't I haven't been following the four drafts but and I'm new I'm new to this position but I think it sounds like there are folks looking into this at the at a higher level but I think you know in digging around I did some research and looking at other what other cities have been doing specifically noted with Burlington has sort of carved out an exemption for owner occupied units I guess or yeah I guess we call them units where it's someone living there and they're renting out a room in their home a single family home so I mean from my perspective you know we just talked about how it's 20 250 to 500 000 per unit for affordable housing home share does it for 2700 and that's a really affordable way to house folks who need that housing and so anything that comes up as a barrier or a challenge for that is something that gets on my radar but I don't I didn't come here to speak necessarily as much as to listen but I will just say that that's on my radar as a you know as as a part of the affordable housing picture here you know making sure that we can make sure our units and the folks who are taking advantage of that are you know are able to continue to do that with the least amount of barriers possible because there are a lot already built in okay well thank you so um Andrew why don't you yeah sure would you have another question right so so back up on home share um I so my mother-in-law used home share back in uh 2006 789 before she passed away at Dorset Park and uh there was a woman that lived with her and basically she got her lodging for free in exchange for a lot of hours spent with my mother-in-law you know caring for her cooking taking her on the neighborhood wheelchair you're probably sorry if you were in Dorset Park when being pushed around with her dog sitting in her lap so I'm just curious if the model has changed for that because if if it's sort of like a barter situation and it's not outright payment you know I wonder how that would fall underneath what we're you know drawing up this well maybe Andrew has some language that might address yeah well I'm sure um look I guess my perspective on this is that um you know when we regulate we're asking people to do a lot not just pay fees but potentially spend a lot of money to um you know bring their units up to code and that that could make it be expensive it'd be a lot of work and I think we need to do that with great care and humility you know um and exercise our power judiciously and sparingly and from my perspective if you know someone has a roommate and that roommate you know has you know run of run of the house or there's a home share that it feels to me really intrusive um for a regulatory body you know city to come in um and inspect a piece of the house and charge fees and force that home on a to make changes um I don't know exactly what the home sharing economics are whether it's barter or what the fees are we have the person in line presumably can answer that it's just it feels to me really intrusive honestly and um I see Berlin to carve that out I haven't checked other jurisdictions but it feels to me like something that that we should carve out and not regulate and just so you know we did not count any of those or estimate any of those in any of our modeling so from a number of units inspected we it would be negligible if any so we did not count any of those well I think home shares been around for maybe 30 years yeah we've been we've been around for 40 40 years okay um and so I think the I'll just speak to quickly that the economics are the same so folks will pay uh anywhere between a range of 650 is the maximum for Chittenden county down to zero depending on the amount of services they're exchanging we don't do personal care but it can be just like um I forget I didn't catch the name of the gentleman whose mother-in-law had used the service but um you know it can be everything from helping with groceries helping um with some cooking once or twice a week um you know we have a home share that has been going on for almost a decade that all they really needed was someone to play chess or a scrabble with them once a week um you know this is something that that you know really helps people age in place in a way that is very unique and is definitely outside of what I would call market forces and I think that's what's worth noting about this is the work that's going on at home shares not really entering the market in the way that say an Airbnb or anything else like that would be you know everything even our highest level is well below market rate almost half you know so yeah and that I appreciate I mean thinking of repairs for instance you know people who who take live-in nannies I don't think that there is a process where there's a requirement that the house be up to code um my my level of concern you know and it comes from a personal story um my great-grandmother died in a home where there weren't working fire detectors and she died of smoke in an inhalation so it it is I think also even though it is intruding we are also intruding to provide adequate protection for our residents and sometimes our most vulnerable residents and I don't know where that line should be drawn I I'd really like us to explore it I I don't think that any intrusion should be considered as simply hostile and inappropriate um I think that making sure that smoke detectors work is is something when we are placing um people in the care of other people through our various systems and agencies um we want to make sure that there aren't vulnerable populations that are potentially living in in conditions that um could expose them to you know uh to to outcomes that we would grieve I think that we would really regret and they would regret their families would regret so you know government is is the friend when there's a crisis right so we have to think about that day of crisis and how might we um through our ordinance uh be preparing for that need that might arise um so I I'm sensitive to what to what you're saying and I understand the expenses and I am glad to see that there is a fund there I agree with Tim that it's going to be really really important for there to be very clear guidelines as to who accesses that fund and what time is it available um you know the whole the whole application process should be very very clear and and fair um but I I'm I'm not quite clear that there should be no inspection that I I'm not there I I think that there should be an inspection um I think that we should uh potentially you know create a a second uh you know set of guidelines um you know somewhere in between where Burlington is which is kind of hands off from what I understand with regard to home share and similar situations where we have residents taking in long term renters in their in their homes um I am not quite hands off I'm not quite there um I think that there there needs to be some way for those renters to have um recourse in case something is is not being done correctly um and that you know their their well-being is is potentially you know not being protected fully protected um you know some some people um need to have need to have that assistance so I don't quite know where that spot is so I don't know how to make a distinction between somebody who owns a house that has three bedrooms they live in one and they air B and B out two of the bedrooms you know for visiting nurses let's say how do you make that distinction between that house and the same exact unit the same exact household that just advertises for a couple of roommates on craigslist you know with that or that are not short term there I guess they're long term or as long as the people stay I don't know how you make that distinction distinction right and then since money is changing hands in both situations one's more commercial than the other one I mean you know do you do we then say well I would insist that we make sure that they have hardwired smoke detectors and with carbon monoxide as well well and I think Andrew's thought is this is just yeah but I mean this is much more casual what you were thinking about we used to have people say well this when our kids were gone we had all these bedrooms and we'd have we like people even when the kids are little we would have them live with us and in exchange um they might do some gardening or you know there was no money exchanged it was they were looking for a place to live we had a nice house we like to meet people um they lived with us for a while and did a few things in return but it was you know we weren't inspected I don't everybody's allowed to have house guests right well these were more than house guests they weren't you know related to us true but there was still guests in your house right kind of yeah yeah I guess so but you know so we get some gray zones that have developed here I think you do have some gray zones and I think your language is trying to address that is I don't know that there's a gray zone I think we see them as the ordinance requiring them to be inspected registered and expected the policy gray zones that we oh I'm sorry I'm sorry I know I wanted to make sure the ordinance is written as clear yes okay I just wanted to make sure that um I was understanding what you were talking about gray zones does Dan Albrecht do you did you want to make a comment you have your voice thing on well it looks like you're muted sorry okay try now nope okay all right well so so potential in medium spot is when the inspection occurs that the tenant be made fully aware of the shortfalls I think there needs to be transparency and accountability that the tenant potentially you know would take on you know here if we're going to make an exemption that the tenant would at least have understanding I don't have a bedroom window that the firefighters could crawl into right or right or you know the the smoke detector I'd like one even if it's not wired I want one right in the hallway outside of my room I mean there are things I think that we could do as a city to ensure that that the renters in these kind of middle area properties that are and I've been contacted I was contacted by two people that it's expensive for people to to do all of this work and they're renting out because they they need the the revenue in order to to have their homes at the same time we need to think about who they're going to be bringing into their homes and we need to prepare for that day of crisis and and make sure that everybody knows the situation and that it that they also know that the city is paying attention and and that if there is a situation that the tenant doesn't feel comfortable with that they can bring it to the city council right that they can bring it to the city and say this needs to be reviewed I think that giving them you know a sense that we are are watching we are aware and and that this is something that matters to us your well-being that gives the renters the ability and I understand that it's hard for some renters to come forward so that is the the voice in my mind as I say this but at least there is somebody to contact and then you know this the city can can act so if we look at the language that's proposed that was meant to be responsive to our last conversation are there additional thoughts about that and so I know you have some Andrew and on the on the draft the new language is all in red and if there's other questions people have I think it would be helpful to go through that so do you want to go through we can so in addition to this discussion that we just had and I'm still I still think that it would be really heavy handed to regulate home share and roommates honestly I would like to limit the exemption for existing short-term rentals in two ways one I think it should be effective as of now none of the effective day of the ordinance like let's put a date in there so that we you know kind of so we don't have more right as we speak while we're continuing to work on this ordinance right let's put a date there and I'm date for for additional air bnb's is that which yeah just let's make a date today not to date some point in the future and just so you know we chose a date in the future meaning July 1 to to try to counter off a potential litigation that could say you know we didn't know we didn't have the ability and other people did so that so that was the that was our reasoning I think you know it doesn't make any difference to us we're just want to let you know the reasoning behind it we had the discussion last time that we were going to do that so now this is the second time we have a discussion so people are noticed I mean unless the city attorney tells us we're at real risk I'd like to put a date so I think it would always have to be the date of the ordinance and ordinance being effective no it doesn't have to be it could be the date we pick it could be we're announcing today it happens all the time with regs when the regs propose a discuss to announce that there's often the date in ordinance yeah can you do that I think there's a little bit different I mean I would feel more comfortable with the date that the ordinance goes into effect being that so say we pass it on March 7th that it be March 7th as opposed to an earlier date just because we're having public hearings on that date I think there are some instances where where an ordinance might go into effect ahead of time but there's those provisions are kind of ultimately doesn't get passed or if it also is overturned it goes into effect before the date but that when it goes into effect the exemption would be um for you know air bnb's through uh what's today November 6th they're actually active through today if you someone opens up an air bnb tomorrow that would not be exempted and they're on notice that we're having this discussion right now that's like interim zoning right they haven't we're you know they're on notice ldr changes are kind of like that right yes that's what I meant I'm sorry the ldl so that that's one thing the second thing I'd love to if we can limit the exemption to locally owned and operated air bnb's like maybe chintending county residents or something like that I've you know we've heard a lot of um comments um from folks that I think those comments are valid um about the out of state air bnb so if that's something we can do I think we should do it couldn't that be aliased by somebody's you know creating a local llc no no no they have to you know represent to us who the ultimate individual beneficial owners are and where they live yeah they have to tell us that they went on there we already asked for that in this yeah they have to tell us you know on their form who they are shell games no at the end of the day there'll be someone that actually owns something the concern for me also concerns that there are concerns residents who bought their homes in a residential neighborhood and are finding themselves surrounded by commercial properties I find that they too have a stake that is potentially put at risk through this protection of pre-existing properties and I think that they have they have uh grounds to to become you know I think to bring to our attention that we are not respecting the the residential zoning that we have in place by allowing some areas in town to be if if not majority um at least a good proportion of it being commercial air bnb's year-round air bnb's I think that that has so a real compelling um it's a it's a compelling argument for me well do you think the rules that we are putting in place in terms of not having parties and having someone locally that you can complain to or that the city can complain to if there's a noise ordinance doesn't that help mitigate some of those negative um experiences of neighborhoods oh I think it helps mitigate but I think it doesn't restore a feeling of a neighborhood and I mean it even comes down to a dog barking that can be a real nuisance to neighbors and how do we we're working on noise ordinance uh you know about uh construction noise how can a dog barking uh you know be considered a nuisance right so there there are things I think um that are compounded when you have several properties in one small area that are air bnb's as opposed to you know one per two or three blocks right which so your civilization would be closing down air bnb's in the city ideally I think that they should be owner occupied not closing down but they should be owner occupied or be ad use I last I you know at the last meeting I understood that I was in the minority um and I don't know if people I can see that Andrew's shifting a little bit here um well to the the Vermont based ownership okay I don't remember that from the last time but I think that um okay all right um and I think that um I think that we we have to respond to those those homeowners who are saying that we no longer have the conditions that we bought into and by allowing these pre-existing properties continue indefinitely we are going to have to determine what we do now and potentially you know our our home uh ownership rights are being violated and our land property uh values you know have decreased uh that might be an issue that uh you know they I think could legitimately bring forward to us uh I'm also very interested in knowing um the you know the the legal questions here around pre-existing um is is it something that is going to hold up in court uh you know the fact that we allow some but no new ones um is is that something that we can defend based on precedent uh you know the residents who came forward with concerns they have precedent showing that removing all pre-existing uh single family homes that are air bmbs is in fact what is held up in court um so would you like a response I mean that was one of the things we talked about and I think you've done you've had that conversation yeah yeah absolutely I mean I think that with all uh short term rental regulations um there's litigation ongoing across the whole country and as we know uh the city of Burlington's ordinance right now is being challenged in court and they have similar restrictions to ours about um primary residents requirements and that is being challenged in court um it's been interesting you know there are different rulings and different jurisdictions on these on similar requirements um for instance the primary residents or the requirement that you reside in an area has been challenged successfully in some places um and it's been upheld in other places um so I think that with passage of an ordinance of of this type we're with the law that is not settled because most of these regulations are fairly new um we risk a challenge um so I can't say that we can rely on any particular precedent to say ours is rock solid um and so I think that by imposing regulations requiring residencies um we potentially face um some sort of court challenge and we can't determine the outcome on that really until the U.S. Supreme Court weighs on weighs in on a lot of these questions that have been um raised in other jurisdictions Tim I think so the the key factor for me is that if you live in a typical residential neighborhood in south Burlington right that you can't build a hotel you know let's say three houses burned down you can't build a hotel there because it's not zoned for that so what's the difference between not allowing the zoning of a hotel and somebody running out their place every weekend you know over and over and over again to me I I don't see the difference which implies to me that then planning and zoning has the authority to say that you can't do that with your residents if if you don't reside there you know I mean it seems pretty simple that you in terms of a short-term rental you if it's not allowed in the zoning it's not allowed period therefore you would have to do away with it and I think that we would have the legal basis to do that because you can't run a hotel out of your house it's not allowed Colin do you have any my only response to that would be that this ordinance has been drafted kind of as our general ordinance is not under the not under the LDRs this doesn't come from the planning commission it hasn't gone through that process it's generally a general ordinance that's being adopted by you which is slightly different than the zoning but at the same time I think that that is exactly what we're trying to address is to regulate the resident like what you can use your residents for so we're putting restrictions on on residential ownership and residential use just not to the same degree as banning in the zoning district or unzoning it it's just putting restrictions on the on the use is could someone just confirm or or or correct me correct my memory the the figure of 40 percent of our single-family homes or potentially residences in South Burlington are occupied by out-of-state residents people who are here for less than six months was that a figure that paul brought forward i've not heard that okay i'm not aware of that figure either it was a big number that's all i remember and i have to find it um what larry did yes just a couple of questions i'm sort of new to this discussion and i know it's been going on for a while at first off is there um steve you mentioned your your memo has short-term units listed as 65 is that so currently we know there are through some research there's about 75 units being used in the city as an airbnb as or as a short-term rental right so so i just decreased it by 10 to be conservative okay but and so but the market rate units 2500 so in terms of uh let me just ask this so where this focus of this discussion is on this the short-term rentals has has the oh have we passed an ordinance for all the rest of the apartments that are considered market rate or um or is just the same discussion so in hindsight it may have been better to decouple these two issues uh from our rental registry versus regulation of short-term rentals we are attempting to do create a create a create a rental registry and regulate short-term rentals all in the same ordinance so currently there are more like 3500 units of rental housing and about 900 of those are permanently affordable so that's that's my point is is that we're talking about a relatively small number of issues a small number of units that are causing heartache in the community as opposed to the 2500 units that need to have a system of inspection and that's and this is the basis of what you're going to support a staff to do and i'm not sure why we can't separate those two and and and what not is not to say there aren't going to be issues with regard to the larger number but that might be maybe simpler or we won't have as many variations of the theme here that is is this discussion i would just say i think you're really i think we're really close i think we're just having a little bit of concern over the short-term rentals and how we how we regulate that and i just you know this is i think the fourth time we brought drafts it'd be nice to be able to get this over the finish line versus decoupling it and starting this process back over given that our concern really comes down about how we're going to manage 65 units and what that what that looks like within our community or 75 units put the number but it's less than 100 and and proposed to be declining as as you impose a we impose a hefty fee and people start eliminating there i think that is our hope so is it would it be helpful to go back to the language and if there's concerns about some of the definitions we could start there unless people really want to decouple but i think you've spent so much time it would be nice to be able to try to solve just the plain old generic safety for renters in our community and then this other issue of short-term rentals through air b and b or or other platforms madam chair i think andrew's recommendation does decouple a big problem you know that would be tough to capture those renting out a room in my house we share everything else um you know the fire chief says in me that's we still could have some you you still may have a place without smoke detectors that that's possible but that does take away a probably not a large segment of our rental units and one that's often done i i have a roommate for a couple months or something along those lines so i guess as the fire chief i i would say i can i can overcome that i can feel okay that we're catching the majority of our units and so that language does i think um help you to take away a segment that would be a challenge for us to regularly okay well i think i would support that personally i don't know if anyone else would read those words sure i mean we were talking conceptually but what i wrote was um an exemption for units that are rented to the same tenant or tenants each for 30 or more consecutive days and consist of one or two rooms in a unit in which the tenant or tenants have access to the same shared living and kitchen space as the other occupants of the unit and that would be inserted where in the in the exemption in the section of which units are exempted okay but of 30 days or more yeah that's yeah so again if somebody was Airbnb in their bedroom for the weekend huh i my my language would not exclude them would not exclude them they'd be covered they'd be regulated they'd be regulated okay yeah yeah because the the airbnb figure is the accumulation it's not one client or renter who rents for for 30 days because that doesn't feel to me like a home share or a roommate that if you're air being being for no it doesn't yeah okay yeah i just can i just ask as a fire department member right in in the area um i'm i just like to to review from your historical perspective right i mean we're trying to do the right thing here in ensuring that every homes is safe right and a lot of homes that are new or have been built in the last x number of years are considered to be safe because they meet current code right but from your experience i mean how how many events have there been in the last 25 years where a smoke detector a co-detector you know in south berlington or burlington uh you know was the cause of of either fatality or or severe burns or you know something that was it was traumatic so i mean i can think back to 96 at at the redstone apartments right there was a co event there there was one in 86 on it's burlington right there's always going to be issues there's we cannot control everything and i would encourage you not to let great get in the way of good so don't let what don't let great get in the way of good no no i mean so at this point really you're trying you're trying your best to regulate the most units you can and i think that this is you're getting really close and so i think so that's where i think in my from my historical perspective said you know what i feel pretty comfortable that we're going to catch the majority of units what i'm getting at is is from your perspective from fire safety right how important it is for for these units that we're trying to cover to be up to code right from your experience in in in going to specific events at homes right i guess i don't know how to answer the exception of there are always tragedies that happen and we do our best to catch them i don't know that i have i can't offer you specific examples thanks well i think there's also somewhere i read um different recommendations for the number of units in one of the larger facilities that you actually um inspect i mean our our objective will be to be in all of them eventually but not the first year not the first year so you do you know 10 and then it's a different 10 and so so in a given year it's just sampling and that's standard practice i mean i can't imagine any city being able to inspect every single rental unit on an annual basis okay well that's one and that's under the rental unit exclusions okay what's the feeling i'm not asking you to do this at the moment but given that we are kind of four conversations into this and i think you are close and i think you are um really talking around the edges it would be helpful to give us direction with the vote wait well this i'm trying to get to so there this was an amendment i mean i i'm asking you to go through the red line stuff yeah i think the other two i think the other two big ones or at least the are you um because i sensed from our last conversation that you wanted to move forward with an exemption for existing short-term rentals and i know megan that you we had the conversation i'm concerned about neighborhoods that have um and so this draft exempts them i know uh there is an amendment that would look about chitin county i think we have concerns about that so that this draft doesn't restrict that and um and it increases a pretty hefty fee for existing as as a disincentive to be quite honest um and so i would increase that in some areas because i think some people you know that is a big sum and other people it would not be a big sum so i would i would look at 800 bucks a day no no no we're talking about the the fee to be oh just the fee to to sign up and be right it's about we're proposing we propose the thousand annually i i would propose that that go up to 3000 in some areas of the city helen can we maybe um what puts up like vote on some of this yeah this way the conversation doesn't keep um and then move on to the other pieces so i'm trying i'm trying i'm trying and you're not listening so let's go to this exemption of or the insert what is how do people feel about that shall we vote on that are you ready to vote on that i would like i would like to go back to the list of rights or the the bill of rights for for renters i would like to have a transparent accounting of how that property inspection went uh if if it's not going to be inspected i think it should be made clear to the renter that it's not been inspected i think there should be something but they're exempt this would exempt them from even signing up so we don't even know about them so how do you have a renters bill of rights to someone on our website your friends um you know your son's friend who is coming to town for a job and you're willing to have a rent rent a room in your house i just think that there should be some kind of um acknowledgement that these homes have not been inspected and if it's just on our website find a place in this ordinance to insert that or yeah you know come up with it well i don't know can i make a statement about the process so i just i know there's folks chatting in the chat just want to remind folks we are not monitoring the chat for content we're only monitoring the chat for your interest in speaking right now the council is having their own discussion in public about a potential draft of an ordinance to move forward once they have an idea of where they're going i'm certain the chair will call for public comment on that direction so that is forthcoming and then of course anything that they decide tonight will then need to be warned for a first reading and go through a full set of public hearings so many many opportunities to be heard thank you so are we ready to decide on we're talking about just the insert that andrew offered so i'm fine with that insert and tim are you and i am so and you are not i just like it on the website i just wanted on i mean we're gonna have an agency in the city um doing this kind of rental service and i think it could just be on the website exactly that's all i'm asking i don't know that i mean i'll just say this once we have an operational organization doing this i think adding something like that about what is and what is not covered would be in a faq and certainly could be published so i don't see that i don't think that needs to be added language i think i'll just give you though a verbal commitment that once we're opera operational we'll make sure we have that okay andrew you had some other ones you wanted to go back to the um exemption which a lot of people probably hear to talk about it i'm interested i'm sorry i'm interested in your reflection that you thought it was potentially problematic to limit the exemption to units owned and operated by folks resident in say chintin county so what what are your thoughts on that my thoughts are his thoughts on this one so i'm gonna let call and speak on that i think one of our concerns when we saw that um the definition was the following up on the conversation i had earlier just as to the how this is unsettled frankly um and jurisdictions around the country in terms of what regulations you can put on on short term rentals and that you know the regulation relating to owner occupied has been challenged in a in a jurisdiction successfully not in our jurisdiction but in a jurisdiction in the u.s our thought and looking at this for the first time really this today was that this is a further restriction similar to the owner occupied restriction but that's the restriction would be limited to owners in chintin county and to determine what is the the motivation for that restriction and can that be dealt with in other ways for instance elsewhere in ordinance you're required to have a local person or local entity who's a property manager or person who is available by phone to respond to complaints or questions or concerns about the rental unit um that could be an answer to the concern about having someone reside in chintin county you don't necessarily need someone to reside in chintin county because you can designate a person to respond to complaints who is local um so i don't know if it's the most restrictive um regulation that there is because there's another there's a restriction that addresses similar concerns to it so that that was our initial concern about it that it that it went a little bit it went maybe perhaps one step further than the primary um primary residence regulation well i think we got to that point in our last discussion in to address some of the concerns that um they got an airbnb on either side of them and they have these parties and there's no one to call and even the people and so i think or even when you call the person because the real owner is in texas they just don't care right right i mean that's what was meant to address right to make sure that the ultimate owner cares right and if they live locally they're more likely to care than some out of state fund well yeah but if they at least have a manager that you can complain to and make the fines to set you know prove that this is happening does that work no well that's the person you can call and they have to come over and settle the the issue or meet with the police remember that one owner that had another house down the street and and so she told all the neighbors right there's any problems you come see me and i'll go over there and and take care of it right right that doesn't happen when the people live you know way out of state and there's no way to call so there's got to be somebody to call who can take action on that house if there's a problem other than the police i mean i would be willing to try for the local manager and you know see what happens and if it still is out of control we can always amend an ordinance and say you know what that didn't work i think we're going to find a few things that will work and won't work no matter what we do here what can we always amend or would we be potentially um making it more difficult for us if we have an exemption and then make it tighter you can always amend an ordinance you just have to go through the public process no no i'm i guess i'm thinking about from a perspective of terms of the legal yeah yeah should we go for broke and go to court for the whole enchilada or do you say well this is the the middle ground and we think we're i think i would say i'm wearing a black sport coat but not a black robe i don't know how to necessarily answer that um that's a good answer okay so so do we want to go with the more tentative step and just keep the language i don't know if that addresses the residents concern i mean personally i'd be willing to see what happens address their concerns and you know with someone as soon as we can change ordinance then i i'd like to address the residents concerns about what's the majority here well i haven't heard any residents i'm sure we will so i'm you know i'm and i i tend to uh would i my own inclination would be to go with local um representation yeah and having having because i think that exists quite a lot in in this world of rental world the rental world and as opposed to a strict residential requirement okay well that that's certainly my preference at this point in yours so well you still one out of two now keep going you have some other things so when you get to registration fees in section four is that the next one yeah i would like this program to be self-funded so i know we talked about the five hundred dollars so coming from another source i get my own perspective it should be completely self-funded so i'd like to talk about how we get there mm-hmm well i there are some arabian b single-family homes that are three times at least more expensive per night between 350 and 500 dollars per night in our city compared to just over a hundred dollars and so that's why i would suggest that for the short-term rental registration fee that those particular uh residences be um charged uh three thousand dollars by april first of every year i think that it is a sliding scale that is based on their revenues and i think that can i just a point of clarification right right now the thousand is just for the exempted units so the normal arabian b is still the 150 and are you proposing then just the exempted units is three that's right and the normal air would be remains 150 yes so this can be so i think i think what you're saying is for owner-occupied air b and bs 150 right if it's non-owner-occupied it's a higher amount correct that's the okay that's what we had proposed that's how we had proposed that was a thousand and the 150 yes yes i just want to make sure that i i couldn't tell from the amendment if it was all air b and bs but the thousand and the 150 don't create a fully self-supporting registry it doesn't cover all the capital cost over 10 years oh to build the okay right i mean it does if we come in at 1.3 million if we come in at 1.8 it doesn't well it just it would take longer than 10 years in our auditors or our finance director would definitely like a 10-year limit on the the payback so i don't think you're going to find a uh code enforcement program that pays for itself like i can i can't imagine asking a startup to to do that i i don't see how that you can i'm not sure that the the fees are going to be it's sufficient enough to pay for what yes no but amortize over 10 years which is whether i'm not even talking about building a new building i'm just talking about staffing it up you know i mean but i just can't imagine what the the um i can't imagine the burden on the um the users is going to be sufficient to pay for pay for just the staffing that needs to be the building is a whole nother matter i mean building is is something we need and that's we're going to house the staff so that can be you know raised in the capital in the capital way but i i don't understand how a fee-based program can support building a building we i mean we do uh using conservative projections um you know again it's modeling out based on numbers of known units we have at the at the rates provided it covers the majority of the expense and again we we believe we're conservative we're pretty accurate on growth of units um and the number of exempting those permanently affordable ones for putting their fee at zero so the question then is is whether it's a thousand dollars a year for the um lower end non owner occupied air bnb or rental um and whether you know whether thousand is enough or do you want to make it a little bit higher three thousand seems like a lot to me making they make five hundred dollars a night some of these homes well they don't make that they still have some costs i mean well okay but it they get up to three thousand pretty quickly i mean and the other people make a hundred dollars a night right so and they're paying the same amount as the people making five hundred dollars a night so just put it that way i don't know where you got the hundred dollars a night well i'm looking at the air bnb website i'm looking at what's available in south berlington oh but who who are the hundred dollars so those are people that's some air bnb's yeah yeah so we have we would have a sliding scale i don't know how you do that and i you know it's a tough one please now yeah yeah i mean that would need a whole another actuarial staff i think to figure out or track what's what's the air one is charging and they probably have seasonal rates just keep keep keep in mind that east terrace four uvm students are probably paying close to a thousand a month four thousand a month easy though some of those homes are grossing between 40 and 50 and 60 thousand dollars a year and that's not air bnb right just keep that in mind as well that's true you know so but i mean a thousand seems reasonable to start i mean and we can always change that too i mean berlington has increased their registry fee over the years you know they just probably you know change the ordinance vote on it move on so so if we started a thousand or 15 i don't care which one i mean you know i don't like you go up to 1500 let's go 1500 i just think 3000 sounds like a really large number right well they're making a nice profit so and and some people truly are you know not making the same amount so well that may be true i just don't know how you parse that out with um having a registration fee that's some kind of sliding a sliding registration fee based on what you charge unless you want to do some kind of percentage well i mean that i mean we do do our business our commercial properties pay property taxes based on their revenues right so there is already precedent set for that kind of calculation but these aren't commercial properties in residential homes no they're not they're in double quotes sarcastically yes yeah well i i would go up to 1500 do i hear arbitrary number let's start there and we are collecting taxes on these commercial we are we're receiving we're receiving so we do have some kind of record based on those um taxes no no no no we have no this state gives us the money but we don't know where it's coming from the state doesn't break down rooms meals and i'll call tax it's a lump sum that we receive no you're talking about property i'm talking about air bmbs and you're talking about the rooms the rooms tax the air bmbs supposed to collect the nine percent rooms when air bmb when you are charging right you are paying a tax that's the rooms and meals tax yeah and those homes their property taxes are are based on property residential rate or commercial rate residential residential yeah but air bmb then takes that state tax and sends it to the state and they turn around and send us three quarters of what we deserve i get that all right you're talking about two different things right so rooms bills and i'll call or uh rooms bills on all tax the state collects it they give us a lump sum check we have we don't get to see the receipts of where that comes from four times okay four times oh sorry um the property tax is based on the assessed value of the parcel unless an owner decides to do an income-based approach but that's at their their disclosure they're not required to give us that information but we know which properties are air bmb because we're going to have a registry so it's not at their disclosure anymore we don't know their income though from the property we don't know if they always run out and you know that would be at their disclosure right and they don't always run out i mean it's not like they're full every single day all summer winter spring and fall okay well i'm just saying that the properties that are particularly um um inconvenienced by this pre-existing clause that we have that they are expensive properties and i'm not sure that this thousand dollar fee is going to be uh persuasive it might be you know in the properties in my neighborhood or neighborhoods like mine but maybe not for that neighborhood and i mean i think that's something for us to consider what do we do with those properties that are truly living no longer in a neighborhood it's households but they are living in an area that is becoming a resort kind of area well i think um i mean i don't have an answer to that but i do think we have in this draft ordinance um a number of um requirements or exclusions about how the property can be used you can't have big parties you can't have a wedding you can't have more than two people in each bedroom or something i don't know there was a limitation of how many people that should cut down on maybe the excessive use of um renting it for a celebration that gets out of hand um you know it you might still get a family reunion going but um that's probably a little different than a graduation party so i i think we are trying to address that and i think we can find out whether it works or not after we apply some of those rules all right so you're not seeing that in the property taxes that we could somehow use that as a way to calculate based on um the property value a higher a higher fee registration well there probably is a way to do it meg it i i think it would be expensive and really difficult and probably quite imperfect and i would and similarly to our conversation about chitin county living requirement or for owner occupied or owner owner owners of the dwelling i think we would have concerns about setting or fee based upon the higher your assessed value the higher your um fee it does seem like you're penalizing certain places same it's the same argument that we're concerned about about the chitin county residency you're starting to curve out a certain demographic okay so we're in for 1500 okay we'll try that what's next you wanted to have a small fee on the affordable i thought that is what not zero i could be mistaken that's what we agreed we talked about reduced right not zero i thought it was reduced well i think we had talked about zero but i thought we agreed on reduced well i think we agreed on reduced and zero is reduced perfect we did have a draft that the just at the last minute we moved it to zero um we had we had set it at 40 dollars um just before the economics of changing the number to a thousand but it does yeah there's about 900 units um so it is it's not it's not an insubstantial amount of money so and does would we expect to inspect those units or would we think that because the affordable units already have significant inspector regimes that it wouldn't actually be something that your team would we're inspecting them we are yeah so if we're inspecting them they should pay that's labor yeah right and there should be i mean there are lots of pilot agreements you know for for non-profit uh type you know properties and and so they should be treated like a pilot payment alluv taxes that kind of thing right so otherwise you put in the burden on everyone all the other rental units it's gotta it can be a very low number there should be a number right and just to cover the the cost of the visit yeah are you so we so in earlier conversations before the draft made it to we had it set at 40 per unit that's on an annual basis annually yeah yeah so less than less than four dollars a month yeah well what what's your pleasure who's in for a little bit or who's for zero well i'm for zero okay that's where i was and you were for zero and you guys want a little a little what's the little make it 25 dollars okay i could go with that although we just told the affordable housing committee we're gonna um zero out all the impact fees right so we they requested this might be this could be the housing trust fund being funneled back into the which we wouldn't want i don't think well i'll go with 25 i was actually thinking five but that's probably not very much be more expensive to just collect it well not in the big you know yeah because those affordable units are of course in buildings with market rate units right so it's it's simply exempting those affordable units but the market rate units are well that's true it's not that many how many is it there's 900 units 900 well why don't you put it in at 25 and we'll have a public hearing and maybe we'll change it i mean numbers are easy to change yeah that's in my pay grade pardon me yes i can do that okay what else you don't have any other changes okay all right so we have um a couple people online who would like to comment dan albrecht uh yeah can you hear me okay yes we can um yeah i just uh two things one uh a couple things you know me i can't just give it the two things um the uh the language about existing short-term rental um i was wondering if you might be changed the title to something like absentee owner short-term rental or something because if you just look at it now then you read the definition anyway that's just a suggestion on that um and then i i do i do agree with mr charlnick's proposed uh amendments to deal with especially because as the fire chief pointed out this would be the start of a whole new program and and i think there's a there's a clear distinction between duplexes or four unit buildings eight unit buildings etc or ones with uh you know non-occup non-owner occupied things versus somebody who owns a house and it's a you know ran out a couple bedrooms or um etc i think there's there's clear distinctions on that so and i the only other thing and the chief can answer this whenever he feels like it or maybe the next public meeting about this to get clarity on what an inspection means there's been a lot of discussion about fire detectors uh smoke detectors etc but i think it would be helpful for the public to have a better expectation of what does an inspection entail etc but i guess my only major point of comment is to is to agree with mr charlnick's amendment there about exempting owner occupied type units thanks okay thank you and then gregg dalbeck yes hi can you hear me okay we can thank you awesome thanks um yeah i just wanted to um express um my concern and my wife um we we've been residents here in south brellington since 2017 and um a couple units next door to us have been purchased from outside the state owners and they rent it short term as we've been talking about um so just a couple concerns and i just want to voice this for everyone to hear um we have a couple of young kids and you know there's there's been issues with traffic on a road with people who don't respect their neighborhood and it's the short term renters who drive excessively fast um and it's a little concerning with young kids um the in in that same vein um so we're letting these people next door to us that don't have any sort of a background check you know and it's it seems excessive but i don't know how many of you are parents and have young kids and you want to protect them and there's you know pretty random people coming in next door 20 feet from your house um and like i said it's like there's no way to police that other than you know um i don't know why we're we're going about the the zoning question right because like and and i am not a zoning official so i just maybe want some clarification on this we are zoned residential why are all these discussions happening of letting the short term rentals happen as a commercial business in a residential area can it just be black and white with that i guess it would be my final question okay can may i ask you a question are yes is your um unit does it have an HOA no we are not HOA okay i'd just be curious if some of the HOA's i think they have some pretty strong um rules about who can rent and how you can rent maybe not all of them but you but i think they do unfortunately i guess where you are living that is not the case but um so that doesn't help you yeah which is why i'm reaching out to you guys with my concern as a resident my wife and i you know we live here and we work locally we support the local economy and what my wife works at the hospital so we're we're here we're here for sub burlington and we're hoping that you guys can be here for us well thank you for sharing that perspective thanks are there people in the audience who would like to speak okay when did she start yeah if you will get to the mic and and please make sure the red light is bright red light is that i mean the green light okay it's green lights on okay before i started like that well i'm not sure it is it uh it has to be bright green it's a bright green okay it's not on hello yeah that's better okay maybe i'm not there get a closer tell us your name please my name is john stevens i live over in south burlington on austin drive in fact greg it was talking there is also a neighbor of ours down in that area um by four star i'd like to ask a question um i would like to ask the council to show by hands how many agree with the search engines that airbnb's are business i think they're business okay all right um i recently wrote a letter and delivered it to all the council members with um a case study that was done in a different uh different state i'm not sure which one it was but uh i was wondering if you guys received that okay good um i guess i i uh i delivered a letter asking to enact the zoning regulation uh that requires a zoning permit that only allows airbnb to exist in a mix or commercial zone unless they meet the new draft requirements um for profit business they don't belong in residential neighborhoods and i didn't get an answer about uh greg asked about why businesses are allowed in a residential neighborhood i nobody answered that question and i don't think they should be grandfathers those neighborhoods where airbnb is presently exists shouldn't be discriminated against by allowing them to continue while other neighbors are protected in the future from influx of airbnb's so if you have that grandfather clause we're the ones that got things started but we're going to stay stuck with the airbnb's if your grandfather so everything we've done or tried to do hasn't gone anywhere uh we know them all it's a problem that airbnb's have caused in towns across the nation and this isn't going to improve unless towns take a stance against their proliferation i read the new draft residential unit requirements that came out on november 3rd and then pleased the council's curtailed future airbnb's this is a great step in preserving the future tranquility of citizens in south frillings deserve the only big problem yet is to resolve the grandfathering existing airbnb's i strongly feel that granting this right creates a scenario that we now have no competition of the airbnb's in the future and will have an influx of new reservations so the ones you grandfather have you basically extended them a golden ticket uh they they can do what they want they're going to have higher reservations people are going to have to only book with them they're going to name their price uh and they'll get it um i just doing the research on google about airbnb's i am now inundated with advertisements from different companies to increase your profits on airbnb's by four to six times uh now these people have now a market on the product because you've granted them that and the new ones are going to have a hard time getting established they have a gold mine that they just fell into um which i don't think is quite fair um let me see and the ads that i get are not just from one company i get them from a lot of different companies um and i said basically it's nothing like the town council council giving a golden ticket of a non-compete clause as well as giving a death blow to all residents living next to an existing airbnb that they will never have any facsimile of a normal neighborhood why would the owners ever consider selling their property with a newly granted cash cow it isn't fair to grant them a grandfather's clause when they were operating as residential neighborhood in the first place this is this is a time where we talk about how proper governance is going to protect the sanctity of zoning laws and what constitutes a residential zone we are not asking the council take away their right to rent for 30 days or more but cease the constant turnover that s trs provide if nothing else extend the airbnb existing airbnb clause to hardship cases of Vermont residents only out of state owners are only in our system for maximum profit and don't care about the community or the state just their bottom line and i can vouch for that the ones on one side of this is a house flipper and the one on the other side is a woman from new jersey and owns probably 13 14 15 properties in hawaii all over the country and she airbnb's all of them so she is definitely for the profit there are two articles in the in the other paper and a new draft to show the council support for the rights of citizens of south brunington to not have to endure the negative effects commercial endeavors have on the quality of life one the city backs the resident group in higher ground litigation the city council has actually appealed the supreme court's decision the ruling on allowing the project which i think is a great sign that you have backing of the citizens for responsible zoning and residents this shows great compassion for the neighbors rights to live quietly in their homes without the negativity created by commercial enterprise a second article was well written by megan emory and impressed me with their empathy for the residents of south brunington although megan didn't discuss commercial properties and residential neighborhoods i appreciate her human focus approach to listening to residents concern and aspires to benefit everyone in making planning decisions she referred to how fortunate we are to live in a beautiful place and enjoy governance as a consequence of being good stores the new draft that restricts new air visa is in the future is a good start but is short in dealing with existing rentals i hope the council will continue with good governance and stewardship and protect our community from the consternation of air b&b is both past and past in the future according to the findings of the legal case i sent you three weeks ago the judge decreed that the council has a right and i don't know if you found that in the article but they have a right to uphold the zoning regulations and the existing air and bb's do not have the right of grandfathering as they have basically been operating illegally in a residential neighborhood as the council grants them this privilege that would negate the council's right to govern the proper use of the town's zoning regulations they're presently commercial mixed in a residential district established in the town's bylaws we live in the lake shore neighborhood district which encourages the conversion of seasonal homes in year-round residences nothing is mentioned about lightly rentals and if an air b&b were considered changing this understanding where are their zoning permits signed by the administration required in the regulations as a condition present to the commencement of use does any air b&b have a zoning permit do you know that thank you so none of these are actually i think so none of these are actually running a business legally in the zones area if they don't have a zoning permit and that's the downfall of air b&b if you use that terminology i think you can win your case even if they do come after you another interesting point comes to mind when a commercial property abuts a residential district they shall retain a setback of not less than 65 feet from the residential zoning districts then why should any be allowed actually inside that district so your ability and ability and you butt up against the residential neighborhood you have to have a 65 foot buffer zone to that residential area but yet air b&b's are actually in the neighborhood i don't know how i don't know how that it that flies um all in all we would just like to return to the type of neighborhood of megan emery's which she described as quiet let's work hard to figure out who might want at the right to continue their air b&b air b&b's and those who will end up abusing the golden ticket or this allow all air b&b's that don't meet the town's approved draft thank you very much i mean comment i mean this sort of crystallizes it for me right this is an improper use right in a residential neighborhood i agree this is an ldr problem yes not to to take responsibility away from what you're doing he would like us to i i think i think there's an idea that we need to go back to the planning commission and say they need to crystallize this in the ldr's that this type of use in a residential neighborhood is not allowed period i agree and then if it is used right then you know we take legal action against well that's why i wanted a two-year period to allow people to to to transfer to a different situation whether it go from short term to long term or to sell um and allow perhaps in that time the the planning commission uh to to develop that that language i i have to find that this court case i i know you don't have a black judge's roban but to my mind the fact that we would be you know unleashing a commercial in residential areas to me is a winning argument just as a it's a commercial use yeah it is and and i would have to vote against but that i don't want to shift away from public input yeah go ahead yes thank you good evening everybody it's getting late i'll be brief uh my name is paul spitler and uh my wife and i lived in uh shellburn for 28 years we lived lived up on juniper ridge and there is an air bmb across the street from us for four years plus or minus um we never had a single issue with that air bmb it was owner occupied the owners were there all the time as a matter of fact we didn't even know it was an air bmb for the first year they were doing it um um in october of 2020 we bought a house in south berlington uh about a mile and a half from our old house in a much more off the beaten path neighborhood we're on stanhope road and within 18 months two homes became air bmbs of us moving there the neighborhood changed since the air bmbs have started running their businesses we've experienced outside spotlights left on all night patio lights left on all night the light is shining in our windows in our neighbor's windows and it's very annoying and we have nowhere to turn um you email or text the owners maybe they get back to you in a day or two they're just they don't respond we've seen a huge increase in traffic on our single lane dirt road stanhope is a single lane dirt road and there are a lot of kids in the neighborhood i have chased down drivers and said you got to slow down cut it out and you know they apologize they're generally we'll adhere but this happens weekly we've seen a huge increase in traffic um we've had dogs lunge after our dogs and attack them um fortunately nobody got hurt but i shouldn't feel unsafe walking my dog in my neighborhood where i live um we've had situations where so many cars were parked in a tight two car park driveway they blocked the road and you couldn't continue around the horseshoe so residents in the neighborhood had to detour around other ways to get to their homes i mean and if you approach these people again they're apologetic but it's not the same neighborhood my wife and i moved into three years ago um i have reached out to the owners on many occasions and explained what's going on but there's very little regard and virtually no replies these are businesses that are being run in a residential neighborhood by people from out of state and with little or no regard for their neighbors our neighborhood so i implore the city of south burlington to start implementing some sort of residential rental requirements to corral this issue and i'm totally on board with john i don't think there should be any grandfathering um it's sort of the apple cart has already been rocked let's not take it any further so thank you thank you very much i think there's a lady in the um with the glasses on your head thank you raised your hand yes yes thank you hi um just wanted to introduce um a owner occupied sorry sophia hirsh um i live up at the airport um i grew up in vermont and moved to south burlington in 2017 um and i am an owner occupied airbnb um it literally keeps me afloat i'm a violinist um with the vermont symphony orchestra and i do um a lot of outreach in the community for um arts development but professionally i don't make enough to pay the how the property taxes on my house and and eat so airbnb um has been a lifesaver for me and i i really do understand a lot of the concerns and i appreciate um everyone's uh perspective i think it's the out of state owners um do treat their towns their properties with a lack of respect um and should be curtailed i'd wanted to speak out just about the fee and i i would just like to encourage there to be as much um flexibility to account for various circumstances as possible um i understand if i need to you know apply and explain my circumstances and explain how much i get i think there's some misunderstanding a little bit about the airbnb as well um the for sure some people are getting 500 a night that's a very nice property you're staying in though and mark that's market driven um and uh i i don't mean to allow for the the way that they handle some of those properties but i'm just saying that it is market driven um and i am definitely not booked every night and i have to make choices about whether or not i want to be booked at all and um i i think that airbnb is a company um i've been treated very well by them and i think that they are a solid company in my experience they're um support guests they support hosts my neighborhood all knows that i run the airbnb i have not had any complaints my but i'm unoccupied i'm there um but i just wanted to introduce you to someone in in your community who is literally i would be on the street without the airbnb and i think that they are a good company and it would be great if we could find a way to section it for the various circumstances and if you are out of town you're out of luck i hope i got it that's very confusing all this stuff thank you for listening thank you is there anyone else okay um yes hi hi i'm amy demetruits i'm the chief operating officer at the champlain housing trust and i'm here to speak in favor of the proposed rental registry ordinance because of the importance of it for tenant protection and long-term rentals so i'm kind of shifting the focus a little bit and wanting to talk about what did you say 3000 long-term rentals in the city we see it as an important way to protect long-term tenants it'll assure that tenants have safe code compliance home code compliant homes have clear information about the ownership of their homes a place and a place to turn with concerns about the condition of their home also for neighbors it makes sure that neighbors have a have clear information about who owns the rental properties in their neighborhood and a place to turn with safety concerns i appreciated the recommendation that affordable perpetually affordable housing had zero fee and it looks like that may be changing um and and here's really where the argument is you know the the inspection is really at the heart of this rental registry for long-term rentals um and i know you haven't gotten around to kind of figuring out like what that schedule is going to look like and i think you need to really consider how to maximize the impact of those inspections by looking for efficiencies so for example and here's my argument about going back to zero want the fee for affordable housing um subsidized departments are inspected annually by a number of different enforcement agencies including housing authorities the vermont housing finance agency the vermont housing and conservation board and HUD and so you might consider accepting an inspection from another entity as a substitute for the direct inspection by city inspectors and thereby you're freeing up inspectors to inspect homes that aren't regularly inspected as part of any kind of a compliance requirement also you might consider for larger properties not requiring or requiring that only a certain percentage of the total be inspected again in the say in the cause of efficiency and being able to spread those inspections out to as many properties as possible you don't necessarily want to go into all 40 units in a 40 unit apartment building you might want to do a percentage of those but you can um require that the landlord give notice to the tenants to all tenants and then the day the inspector shows up the inspector decides which units they're going to actually see so that the landlord isn't able to sort of just fix up the units that they know the inspector is going to go into you can also then provide the opportunity for the tenants to request to be included in the inspection or to provide anonymous information about conditions or concerns about conditions that they might have one of the things that I was a little bit concerned about in the ordinance under section six where there's the definition of violations you've included in the included in their noise or unreasonably loud activities whether inside or outside that violate the city's public nuisance ordinance and here in this conversation and understand a lot of the focuses on short term rental you may be able to have um impact and control over what's happening in the short term rental but for long term rentals um the landlord's authority over tenants and ability to um control tenant behavior comes through landlord tenant law and really the only um control is through eviction uh and so it's just it's difficult for a long landlord of a long term rental to have that kind of impact on noise that their tenant is creating and yet you're also saying that it's potentially eight hundred dollars a day for each um violation so that's just something i it'd be great if you could give that some thought maybe making it more targeted to short term rental for example but overall we very much appreciate this effort and and think that it will have um impact on tenants lives and their the safety of their home so thank you thank you okay the gal with the mask on and then the gentleman in the plaid and then the woman with the green sweater oh and then sandy hi my name is an old niki and i'm a short term rental host in south burlington of both a owner occupied and also non owner occupied which is directly across the street and i've spoken uh to you guys before as well i remember so i'm um you know i've i've heard from a couple of people who live near short term rentals and not to do my own horn but none of them are my neighbors and i just want to point out that all short term rentals that are not owner occupied are not shouldn't be painted with the same brush and i think that the issue is how they're being managed not necessarily that they're not owner occupied and if you try and put those issues together and say well if the person's there they'll do a good job managing it and if the person's not there and they don't live in that house in my case i live directly across the street but i don't live in that house um they'll do a you know they'll do a bad job managing it is getting away from the issue of what you really want which is you want them to do a good job managing it and you have put in you know ordinances around sound and you can put in language around other things um like parking and you can have enforcement and people can lose their permits to do short term rentals if they get a certain number of violations and i think that that's appropriate to get the outcome that you want which is well managed properties and you don't have to get rid of all of them i am embarrassed on behalf of the owners who are you know creating the problem in the neighborhood that i that i don't live in um because i because i don't think because i think that a short term rental can be a benefit to a neighborhood and not necessarily detriment um the other thing i wanted to point out is there's never been you guys have talked i've been at a number of the meetings and you've used the air dna numbers to look at how many short term rentals there are and sure um air dna does not differentiate they differentiate by whole units but whole units include includes you know somebody who rents out there's a few months but they live there the rest of time that's unoccupied it includes um accessory apartments that's unoccupied it includes um a duplex that one half is a whole unit and the other half is unoccupied so that number of 80 or 75 that you put down to 65 includes all of those and it's never broken out in any of these discussions how many of them are actually the ones that wouldn't be compliant and those non-owner occupied ones and i think in like last year in march when i went through all of them in south berlington there was about 15 i think now there's about 20 or 25 so you're not talking about 65 that are non-compliant you're talking about maybe 20 or 25 that are non-compliant um that i mean it doesn't matter a lot because i'm sure there'll be more projections but that overestimates the income that you'll get from them on those um fees by about 34 000 dollars that first year but if you change the fee to 1500 that'll change it anyway but i just want to point out that it's not 65 it's not 80 we've never actually established the number because we've never surveyed them all you could have that number if you established the rental registry you would know exactly how many there were but i think it's about 20 or 25 right now not 65 because a bunch of those are would be compliant within the ordinance as it's currently written so those are the two things i wanted to say thank you gentlemen and my name is uh rob chinden i am a long-term south berlington resident i grew up on dorset street and i own a i own a airbnb in starksboro that was my first house little camp that i started airbnb in part time uh to make ends meet and to help with taxes and now i live in south berlington full time so i owner occupy my south berlington house to help offset taxes and expenses and insurance and all those things that we all face as south berlington residents that are astronomically high my taxes when they went up 30 i think it was two years ago when the city reassessed how am i going to make this work i'm going to renovate my house i'm gonna i'm gonna rent it i'm gonna i'm gonna airbnb it if when i looked at doing a full-term rental first of all i'd have nowhere to live and then secondly there's it's bear it's hard to even make to make it work looking at the cost of a house in south berlington and taxes to rent it full time it's it's hard to make any money and even cover expenses so so i looked at airbnb said okay i'll renovate my house i'll dump a bunch of money into it i'll do this long-term planning and and i did that and and you know i'm one of the houses that's listed at 500 a night but i don't get 500 a night all the time i've listed high so i don't have to rent it out a lot i want to be home i want to be there i want to spend time in my house but i also want to offset my 11 000 year tax bill and my you know all the other expenses we all face as homeowners so you know i look at i look at the proposals for you know three thousand dollars a year a thousand dollars a year so jeez my taxes are already 11 000 a year and it's more and now i'm gonna rent it out more now i'm gonna have to justify being gone a weekend and a half you know averaged a month or or you know what if i want to sell it this is my generational property that i my grandmother built a house in 71 am i going to be forced out of living in south berlington because you know now i spent years and years working towards this goal and transitioning to being a landlord and doing airbnb and now the town's saying well we don't want this sell your house you're gonna lose your low percentage mortgage and you're gonna get eight percent somewhere else and i'm gonna spend another two thousand dollars a month somewhere else on on you know percentage rates so i just i see the fees and i see the the town regulation pushing back towards the citizens when we're just trying to make it work we're not all big bad airbnb business owners we're not all out to make cutthroat profit i'll agree with this other lady that you know i'm embarrassed by people that have bad experiences with airbnbers i mean i i treat it like a like a it's not a full-time business but i do treat it like you know income and how do i take care of you know my guest experience how do i take care of my neighbors and most of my neighbors that in starksboro they love my airbnbers they come over for you know butter on a sunday morning everybody's on vacation they're having a great time so you know i feel for some of the residents that have issues with people speeding or not knowing who the guests are but you're gonna have that with long-term residents nobody's doing a background check on the guy moving into unit three people speed down dorsal street every day and that doesn't change because of airbnb so i you know it's i just feel like it's big brother i i feel like it's too much regulation for you know for 25 35 houses in the entire city there's there's 9,093 houses according to google and we're going to write heavy-handed regulations for 0.5 percent of the houses it just doesn't seem like the amount of effort put forth by the town is necessary i just don't feel as though it needs to be regulated uh you know something you guys were talking about earlier was decoupling the short-term rental from the the the rental registration and it's frustrating once you go down a path where you put a bunch of work in and you and you have all the meetings and talk you just want to keep going and just get it done get a project done now just go on the next thing what else we got on the queue maybe it's not a bad idea maybe it should be decoupled maybe maybe instead of racing to regulate it's just well we're not ready yet let's just show that it only affects 25 houses maybe it's not the time so um you know i've just unfortunately i'm late to the discussion here um somebody actually one of the homeowners reached out to me on airbnb i said hey there's a city council meeting come like oh yeah i better this is gonna affect me you know what if i what if i have to sell my house that's scary um so unfortunately i'm late to the discussion but you know i hear some of the concerns that you know you have about smoke detectors and co detectors primarily for the rental registry and you know there's ways that those things can be self reported if you get your you know you want to take a video on your phone and send it into the phone number and somebody in the in the regulatory body can say yep okay they walked in from their house and there's an address and there's a smoke detector and there's a co detector you're good we don't need you know some regulatory body walk in to every single rental it just it just seems like it's just too much and i just don't see i don't see the need for it i just don't see the need to continually regulate and overregulate to the point where now we're trying to pay for the regulations but now the regulations can't feed themselves now i've got to over you know charge our residents more money and i just i'm sitting in the back row going is it necessary why do we have to raise all this money why do we have to do the regulations at all it's just it's it's frustrating on on my end and i'm sure a lot of other peoples as well but you know i think at the end of the day the air b&b owners we're not sitting on a gold mine we're not out to make cutthroat profits some of us are out to keep our property and to not be taxed to death sir well thank you appreciate that thanks and then um the gal and then sandy and then vince is there anyone after that okay you want to take a break after you yeah okay since you're already up there we're needed um well thank you for this um for all the work and effort everybody's been doing on this issue um can you tell us who you want oh yes norah sanicle um south berlington um laura hill orchard neighborhood so i wrote um an email earlier to the to the council with a focus mainly on um uh long-term rental and just keeping the focus on some safe on safety right and not backing off on um keeping that in the forefront of people's minds and some of the discussion tonight has i don't know where it's going to fall in terms of who it affects but i do want to just put up another plug in for funding safety upgrades whoever ends up on the registry for long-term rentals and funding safety upgrades some of them may be um not super expensive but might be meaningful to that person renting and some of them are going to really save lives so i um i just want to um put a plug in for that and so it asks for people's support um the other thing that um and this is just every other issue was already addressed tonight but i just also want to put up um support out for some education on what the safe housing look like um i think um that can come in a variety of ways we've already mentioned it um around putting FAQ on different websites we can do workshops i think i think there's just even simple things that people don't realize or don't know that to ask for or don't know what to look for right if you haven't rented or haven't rented a lot or i think education is really going to be important both of tenants and and of landlords and it was an education for me and i thought it was honestly quite helpful and and i don't feel like it's i don't feel like it's undoable i think part of what i'd like to see around education is like this is what that just give people facts because right now it all feels very overwhelming to people the change feels overwhelming but i think if you just simply get the layout okay this is what you need and they might realize they already have it um and they might realize things that they don't have and that those things can be repaired or fixed so thank you thank you very much now i think we have three more four more four more i mean it you know people keep thinking so we're going to take a um five minute break thank you so i'm going to call back to order the south brilington city council meeting of monday november 6 2023 and and listen to the few final people who would like to comment on the residential rental ordinance understanding that when we go forward they'll be another time to bite this apple but we can um hear from you tonight so i think the next one up was um sandy and then vince and then you too is that it oh no and ryan okay so there's five and then i think everyone in the audience is spoken so okay make it brief please we've heard a lot this is i'm sandy duly i've lived in the city maybe 50 years at um this is a totally new subject um and it it may sound like it's not important but i think it's really needs to be checked out on page two it talks about one of the areas that would be exempt or not considered rental units includes congregate care facilities that is a very broad heading in our regulations that includes congregate housing now i know of three apartment buildings in the quarry hill development that i participated in the drb process this was john dinklage long before kim and others that are were permitted as congregate housing they essentially are apartment buildings for older residents that have a community room they live totally independently these are private their own unless they've changed ownership they're owned by cupola golf coursing which is part of the delori family um i do not i do not think you intend for them not to be counted and i also think there are a lot of them around the city i communicated with paul connor and he couldn't he said it was he he essentially said there is no count of how many buildings are congregate care in the city you'd have to go through the addresses um the incentive for developers to use to especially if they want to serve older people and older people need housing um the incentive to apply for a permit as congregate housing especially if it's part of a larger pud is that the units do not count in the density calculation and and so there has been an incentive for um that means you can put more units in a on a specific um size property lot my concern is two fold one is that you are exempting essentially apartment buildings for older people private some there may be some affordables that are permitted as congregate care and that it's not your intent not to have them included and inspected and the safety things the second thing i'm concerned that that 2,500 number is not good because it probably includes those they're probably at least close to 100 units in those three buildings that are in my backyard um and and so i i'm virtually certain there are more congregate housing um buildings permitted in this city that if they continue to be exempt they won't be paying 150 dollars per unit um and i think it's far more than 100 so i i just want thank you you to accomplish what i think you want to accomplish and i want you to get the money that you think you're going to get okay duly noted thank you sandy hi my name is vince bouldock and i'm a member of the affordable housing committee but i'm really addressing you as a individual citizen um i have um two goals in mind two two issues one is to save the city budget as much as possible let's be efficient and the second one is to reduce um inspection fatigue as much as possible um i can imagine what it would be like to every year um have to go through inspections um especially if i'm in one of those 900 affordable units that as amy referred to i've already inspected by some other different form of organization and they get another letter saying we're going to be doing an inspection sometime between eight and 12 and you know next thursday please be home and you have to take a day off from work um that's that's just exhausting and some of it seems redundant and so um i sent you a letter uh this this morning i thought i'd sent it before but let me just recap uh what it says in order to lessen uh fatigue and save on the budget let's make as much use of scientific sampling as we possibly can especially in the multi um multifamily units which a lot of the rental units are we really only have to inspect a percentage of them every year and we certainly don't have to do all of them for a for a couple of reasons one is they were all built at the same time within that unit of 40 or 100 and they already have some form of professional management working on them so i don't think you know so it'd be easy to just do a sampling of them and sampling as you well know i'm not reminding you of i'm not saying anything new just reminding you how valuable sampling has been since we started using it in the 1950s the department of justice uses it all the time the crime statistics we get are based on based on samples the numbers we have in a number of smokers alcoholics people with people with uh with cancer drug users that's all based on on sampling the department of labor uses it all the time for determining inflation and unemployment rates and they use tiny samples probably less than five five percent on all social surveys use sampling and they use samples of less than than one percent the uh uh political polls all use sampling of very small uh samples as as well um yeah yeah and i heard a cynical comment made about that by you're probably right but at least they're close within a couple of percents um industry uses it for quality control all the time they don't have to test every product coming off the assembly line they just do one one out of a thousand the census uses it for determining the uh the even the the population uh in the inter sensual uh years family income um housing housing value uh income family size fertility expectations uh what we know about uh computer use in this country is all based on samples so anyway i won't go on those are just a few of the obvious things that we use sampling uh for uh you know if you if you find as a revenuers found a vat a big barrel of a liquid in the warehouse they didn't have to drink the whole thing to know that it was moonshine you just need a sip sometime and uh the same is true for the same is true for this so let's use sampling as much as we possibly can save a lot of money save staff a lot of uh effort reduce the fatigue of uh over inspection it just makes complete sense that's that's my only purpose thank you okay and that's what we tend to do i think that's no we aren't going to do same oh okay thank you um yeah okay hi my name is christie i'm owner occupied short term rental i live up on dorset street and um i just wanted to give a little perspective because we've been talking about how much people are charging for their airbnb's and things like that and people always ask me you know now that you have your airbnb can you retire this year i've made eleven thousand dollars that's it and it slowed down i have no more for the rest of the year because it's basically from april until about october that will help me pay for the improvements on my house because my house was built in 1806 so every time i turn around there's something else i have to do to it so it helps me to stay in my house to take care of my house to upkeep my house do i want people staying at my house no i would rather have my whole house to myself but this makes it so that i can continue to live there and take care of the home the way it should be and when it comes to inspections i understand our houses should be safe it is safe enough for me to stay in it so it should be safe enough for people to also stay in my house but some of those things that improvements that would have to be made would be more costly than what i make each year so it's just something to think about that we're all not making 500 dollars a night we're not all booked all the time we have a limited season for the most part and a lot of people that stay there like uvm parents and things like that so it's a good service for the community for people to be able to stay in my home and it helps me out as well so you know just something to think about that we're all not getting rich off of our short-term rentals so thank you thank you yes you and then ryan thank you good evening um dealing with a little bit of laryngitis so i'm going to be brief because of that uh my name is daryl cambell my wife and i uh own a home in south burlington and we've operated a short-term rental for the past 14 months i do want to echo uh gratitude and thanks to the council for your consideration of this this is a tough issue and also to you uh steven and jesse for your work on this uh first i want to express very strong support for the creation of the rental registry for long and short-term rentals uh i was at the august 21st meeting online and i stated this then uh wholeheartedly agree that ensuring compliance with an accountability for adherence to codes uh is vitally important and i think the rental registry is a very effective way to do that the current draft gets this 100 right when it comes to running a short-term rental and you're hearing this tonight most of us are small independent operators people who use the income so that we can live here raise families and in the case of my wife and i so that we can retire here to be with our kids and our grandkids i'm going to retire we're going to retire in four months and this is where we want to be this is where we've always wanted to be i lived in vermont for 23 years until i relocated and now we're coming back and yes that makes me and my wife the evil dreaded out of state airbnb operators right now but i would just encourage council to consider that there's always a number of different stories the reasons why people are doing this we are not real estate developers we are not corporate conglomerates we care about this community we love this community and we intend to work here to be here to work to make it better this conversation has been initiated at least in part because of the housing challenges in in the city um i suggested to council that that there was a way to create balance and meet the long-term goals without imposing any disproportionate burdens the current ordinance as it is now drafted i think takes a very significant and a meaningful step in that direction we appreciate the recognition and acknowledgement that existing short-term rentals can have a place within the scope of a sound and reasonable long-range housing plan there's a requirement that was added an existing non-owner occupied short-term rental property would no longer be allowed to register as a non-owner unoccupied short-term rental once its ownership is transferred or sold we think that strikes a very reasonable balance that makes sense um then some discussion about the fees certainly notice the thousand dollar fee and now it's i guess 1500 um i i think there are a range of opinions on that issue probably but uh i don't intend to argue that understand the rationale and and it makes sense uh to uh to impose a fee like that especially for what it goes to i want to note one requirement then i'll close i think is particularly vital and i for one i'm really glad that it's been included it goes to some of what we've heard tonight um there are indeed some residents in the city um you've heard from several of them tonight back in august and probably in between meetings as well that have some really bad experiences being neighbors of uh of properties that are utilized as short-term rentals excessive noise unruly behavior we heard a lot of that uh but i can tell you that that is extraordinarily disturbing for folks like me and my wife who run a sound good respectful short-term rental we care about our neighborhood we take care of it we have a local property manager who helps us out and i would dare to say that that is the majority of owners i understand that those things still happen though and that that's a problem it really stinks if you have to experience that but here's what's important about the ordinance as it's written under section six and seven of this version of the ordinance entitled violations and enforcement uh respectively the city would now have the right to impose not only some pretty stiff fines but to revoke or suspend what would now be a required registration of short-term rentals for anybody who allows that to happen uh and given that all short-term rentals would have to be registered uh that would effectively put an end to the problem if it is appropriately enforced that's a solution that doesn't exist today and it's an important one to put into place um those of us who don't allow that to happen who take good care uh we act as good neighbors we pay close attention to what's going on in our places i think you would find and we'll find a great deal of support for that in particular in the ordinance in general so in general um and in conclusion i just want to voice my strong support i thank you all for your work in creating what uh at least to me appears to be an overall fair equitable and effective um ordinance to achieve long-term goals thank you for your time appreciate it thank you ryan clean up batter here i'll lower this because i'm short um ryan doil i live in the brookwood neighborhood um i like the progress i've seen in this since the last meeting and andrea's amendment i think was really good to um we get down with these last four speakers like daryl christie and and rob who are whereas we're getting a little closer like this gray area of making sure that what we're writing is kind of protecting this flexibility and housing and affordability and so i just want to try to throw some more highlighting to that and i fit into that category as well i don't use airbnb anymore i just used furnished finder um it allows you to make sub leases so i don't have to you know pay extra fees to airbnb and i'm very unlikely to get a short term renter um but in the case of trying to do that for travel nurses i might have a gap that's three weeks long and still need to make some value out of that spare room just to help cover the costs and so it does get a little bit messy with you know how much are people using airbnb for their listing or not um and how much short term renting they're doing compared to long term renting the the mode figure for the spare room that i rent in the out of the house that i rent on airbnb was 35 dollars a night and that's the mode right so you know somebody books it for six weeks and they get some kind of a discount you know that's really nice i have more consistency i want to charge them less um that's really different from you know the people with fancy houses who are charging people a lot for a couple of nights and i think a lot of these people who also do it in their own home i think like christie said it's not like always fun having people coming in out sometimes there's a great novelty and joy to it um but it's really just try to help meet those costs um and there's also people in this community who rely on it i've had i think 13 or 14 people stay with me for anywhere from three to 20 some odd days because they still had to work or go to school here but their lease either hadn't started yet or had already run out and particularly when we look at people in that grad student range um or just young adults who are still here after college jumping into a hotel situation can be really cost prohibitive um even like the anchorage in which i think is always the cheapest place can still be very expensive while over a hundred dollars for kind of random nights and of course during peak season you know more than 200 and that's the cheapest place around here that i know of so for people to be able to slip into sort of unfilled spaces it's important to keep some of that flexibility in the short-term portion of this document um setting that aside and looking at some of the long-term things um i want to echo some of the other things like norris says about safety um i'll just use my own example of um you know who's responsible for changing the filter on the furnace and what merve rating should they replace that filter with and how often right if you're in a rental situation that's not necessarily a multi-unit with a very set h-back unit um you know you get into these questions of a landlord might never replace the filter or replace it with like a merve five or something like really cheap and so as we get into something like long-term and what is really you know affecting health and safety is getting into a little bit more of these details that make sure that like as norris says there's education to the landlords about being a good landlord but maybe even codifying some of what is a good landlord so that things like filters which greatly affect people's health and obviously will affect the people who can't afford to own uh very specifically um and there's lots of little examples i can send to you in an email i won't take up your whole time with my three pages of notes that i took but um i wanted to sort of keep this ball floating when you look at the long-term side of things and the outreach of how to make sure that the landlords in this town can be the most effective landlords they can be that really help all the people renting be as safe as possible um in ways that are helpful and less um focused on necessarily just the infrastructure like the um fire alarms but the lots of extra subtleties of safe and healthy housing thank you thank you all right one for follow-up make it brief please well we're going to be here a lot later than you no i had two other big topics i understand that i do apologize but for people concerned about the uh the renter retribution the retribution from landlords to renters if they're complaining about their apartment you know the water's not working the smoke alarm doesn't work um they're uh one can understand the problem with sampling because they might not catch those and renters are oftentimes reticent reluctant to approach the landlord certainly not a second or third time for fear of retribution so in the model of sampling say we do 10 units out of 40 in a building um what i think would be an easy way uh around that would be the city sends out a letter saying uh we're going to be doing your building next next thursday we're going to be selecting uh 20 units and before we select those uh if anyone wants to be sure to have their apartment looked at anonymously send us a letter and we will be sure to include you in those 20 and so the person is completely protected and yet you're still using sampling thank you thank you so is there any other thoughts people have yes and i'm going to be quick um so listening to this whole conversation i think where we arrived at was addressing some of the community concerns but not all i'm going to suggest something um which makin suggested earlier was similar which is a sunset so um which is a halfway house between everyone what everyone wants you know maybe a three-year sunset a four-year sunset but at least the neighbors by the lake know like they can count on it right 2020 something this nightmare is over and the other folks have a number of years to you know figure out their lives and you know figure out what they want to do with their other unit and we you know it's not a perfect solution but maybe it is a solution i i support that um i also want to thank uh sandy duly who always points out stuff that i wish i had i had noticed for the congregate care facilities that's where my great-grandmother lived um and where they did not have working smoke detectors um and i want to say that a lot of the language under section three and goes all the way down to three that c one and then roman numeral three um that there are six months there's language about six months and that comes back um later uh in the uh existing short term rental unit that is not owner occupied tenant occupy with permission of the owner there's a six month more than six months so i just want to make it clear if you own the the the home that you are renting out even on a weekend from time to time or a room from time to time you you will remain um under the um the annual fee as opposed to the um kind of the the existing short term rentals by existing short term rentals that refers to more than six months am i correct in that what does that six months have to do i believe the six months you're referring to in the section you referenced is the if you discontinue the use as an existing short term rental you basically lose your grandfather's status um so you'd have to comply with all the other requirements for a short term rental so for instance if you are non-owner occupied and you have a short term rental and you discontinue your short term rental use for a period of more than six consecutive months you no longer can register as a short term rental so how about the owners who say you know in order to pay my property taxes i need to rent out my house for let's just say eight weekends per month per month per per year i'm sorry that's i believe the six months uh requirement that we're talking about only applies to existing short term rentals the ones that are non-owner occupied or non-tenant owners are occupied if you are an owner occupied and you rent out your rooms um and you take six months off that you're still allowed to you still meet the requirements of the ordinance you just you never you don't fall into the grandfathered status of an existing short term right very good i i want that to be clear to people here who are who have been coming forward and saying you know i'm doing this to pay off my my property taxes if you live in your property um you you fall under um you would not lose that that ability that right that status i just want that to be clear i i i have to say that the argument um that the residents on austin and and the the neighboring streets bring forward about commercial versus residential that that is quite convincing to me and it would break my heart to vote against the rental registry um but i i feel that if that argument has has merit that for us to allow commercial to to exist potentially indefinitely in in a residential area um is i mean indefinitely for the people around them i i have a problem with that i do have a problem with that where people find themselves in a resort area so i i am a favor of sunsetting and if three years four years is something that is is is palatable i i that seems like a reasonable time to me but it will allow people to use their their homes in a way just like we said here if they need to rent it out while they're living there you know that that's something they can do so to pay their bills i think we have some direction which is great thank you so but i don't think we're ready to mourn our first reading it so i think we need to bring this back to you one more time with what we've heard tonight um have you provide additional comment and then mourn our first meeting i guess the only i i know you want to move this i do i see three heads nodding towards the sun's i mean the sun's okay all right yeah all i needed i did i saw two but i wanted to make sure i had at least three no but i do think we have in place um some certainly if you are sort of scoffing this and you continue to rent your house to people who are noisy or don't follow these rules you can get your ability to be an airbnb in vermont whether you live in texas or florida is revoked or can be so i think there is there are several ways to get to the the um well that you you almost won't need a sunset because they won't they won't have a license to um rent their home as a bnb and if they can't make the you know $80,000 a year whatever it is on on the waterfront um they'll sell it but we'll have a way of providing relief even during the sunset period yes i think we will you know good relief because that's where you hit them in their pocketbook one quick question yes so the grandfathering and the sunsetting is for existing yes what's keeping people from buying no well how does that address your commercial concern well i think the other piece excuse me is we really need to have um the um planning commission or look at some okay um ldr's that make a distinction between well no going forward it's going to be limited to owner occupied it'd be prohibited on any order we're only talking about the right right going forward this becomes an issue so you'll be able to have some but but the owner occupied is not actually the problem it's the right out of strength right okay super and the sunsetting we're talking about as i understand it is only on the existing short-term rentals it's not on the right regular short-term rent right right okay great and there was also amy dimetrovitz how do we pronounce her name say it again dimetrovitz dimetrovitz where she said that the tenants being penalized $800 a day for noise that that could be something that we could um modulate moderate make more moderate for the long-term rentals as opposed to the short-term rentals i thought that was reasonable okay thank you you're not back to square one it's just a few thank you gentlemen thank you that's why we pay you the big bucks guys okay um moving on to item 11 the draft of the climate action plan so while these guys come and get set up yes in four years the um standalone air b and b will cease to exist in south berlington okay so they could be a long-term rental or something okay let's move on climate action plan just a few table setting things so just as a reminder last fall you adopted a climate action plan we committed at that point to do three implementation plans this is the second one we are bringing to you we had received a grant to do this one put out an rp could not find a consultant there was not a responsive consultant to that rp so we redirected um some of lue our energy project manager's time to put this together and nick um our one of our city planners was very helpful in doing that so they are here to present this in advance the f y 25 budget conversation it was great those uh those of you who have seen me present before you'll recognize that these are not my slides uh fellow named andy bermdahl who was doing a community outreach force on a regular basis put them together and they look a whole lot nicer than anything you've seen from me on the agenda uh very quickly uh these are the things we're going to go through i won't bother to read them off and we'll just click along so let's go to the next one um the climate action plan that you all approved over a year ago now set up a target based on 2019 baselines um they are rather aggressive targets as you can see the point that i want to make with this slide is that the data that was used to put this together is we've very definitely defined we know exactly what it is we can refer to it at any time and what we measure in the future will coincide with this so it's not like there's any fuzziness at all about it um and so forth so the state is all 2019 2019 the year was picked uh and this might have been discussed previously to be before covid so you wouldn't see the impact of covid isn't it in the thing yep yep as you can see the the target numbers are pretty challenging uh where we are right now um the target is uh 95 percent reduction by 72 um right now i i can look at where the technology is and where we can get reductions and out of the 1431 metric tons of stuff that's coming out of exhaust pipes and chimneys i can identify reasonable ways to get rid of about uh 900 of them that leaves that's almost 70 percent but it leaves us some real challenges to go for total by 2050 yep yeah just right now i can see that sometime we can do that when we do it is a matter of funding and so forth but the technique for instance i include in that like an electric pickup truck okay when will we replace the whole fleet don't know but electric pickup truck is in the foreseeable future you know it's gonna happen yeah we'll get we'll get into a little bit more of the timing in just a hundred years old when this happens i don't know why i'm worrying about this it's a long time away so forth anyhow live to see this i don't know yeah um someone will thank you for it well we hope yeah um another point that i want to make is that we took a look at how much money was in the cip in fy 24 that would cover this kind of activity and it covered almost 80 percent of it so it's not like we've got to start from zero and build up to fund all the things that we need to do um the last point on the right hand side of part of the slide is that everything that we've got to do involves equipment that's going to be replaced at least once and many times twice between now and 2050 so if you miss it tomorrow you got a chance to get it sometime later on not saying that we want to but let's look at the plan itself very quickly um this is an outline and we put together and the things that are kind of uh tan light i drafted something real quick that was easy to do we're ready to go we'll tweak the words and so forth the real catch is right there in the middle what are the planned actions that we we need to do so uh let's let's go ahead well let me let me talk procedure just a minute data collection we've been doing that since i came on board which was before 2019 uh status reporting my suggestion is that council get a briefing twice a year once kind at the end of the fiscal year another time this time of the year so it rolls into the budget cycle and hopefully we'll get into a mode where the cip and this plan just dug together and keep going and we're working hard to make that happen real soon um and plan updating this isn't a plan that make an aisle finish up in i think next couple of months and there it is every time you have a review it all to get looked at it all to get changed as we go now let's look at where we are can i say are you are you gonna what are you gonna talk about staff engagement pardon me staff engagement were you gonna do that here no we'll get we'll get there we'll get there no carry on no no problem where where are we right now uh up in the upper left hand corner the city started this work a long time ago you know it it's not something that just started a year ago or something like that we we've done some major things the solar arrays the thermophilic digester that's going to come up again in the discussion because it's a major problem to change it but led lights i put the word everywhere up there if somebody gives me a call and say hey there's a light that's not led we'll get somebody to go change it but there are very few left that we know about it um but since 2019 of the 1431 we've taken care of and i got to look at my numbers here 160 of those we've gotten rid of just building market street helped out quite a bit and the fact that gmp was declared to be um fossil fuel year 2020 uh that helped a lot but other little things um police types hybrid police cars uh just a couple they're buying more uh and an idea that came up just about the time we started this thing was let's get get it so that the people in fire station two down on Holmes Avenue can do up on uh Shelburne road rather than going all the way over the patching road that saves a thousand gallons of diesel fuel a year so um yeah so where are we going in the next couple of years we're going to move around this this graph and to your point about uh when does this happen taking a look at the budget and i'm going to show you a spreadsheet and a couple of charts that says that it looks uh like we can get about halfway around the circle or halfway to the goal for 2030 in the next by 23rd we aren't going to make there we'll be short by a little over 300 times the average cost to do that above and beyond the cip looks to be about six hundred thousand dollars a year where we are right now um i can go through the things that we're going to do you can you can read them uh and in the interest of time i'll just move on down at the bottom why can't we get there faster two major problems getting people to do the work we've gone out on quotes they don't come back etc we've got grants out you folks have approved to go for the grants we've been awarded the grants one signature went in in april just found out today that oh yes tomorrow or wednesday i forget which there's going to be a webinar to tell us how to fill out the application that we need to fill out to send in to make it go forward that kind of stuff is just eating this stuff alive the uh the the second part of that is again we're going to replace these things if we bought a piece of equipment two years ago with a 20-year life i don't think we as a city want to go buy another one to be a little bit more efficient we've got to keep those things in mind so so where do we go after 2030 that moves moves you around the red line down there on the bottom shows you where the 2030 target is um i've done a little bar grappling over on the right hand side if you want to march down and where that fits time wise i don't know before i get the question over on the left side it says 70 confident of meeting the goal in 2050 jessie was right on that real quick i'll tell you the same thing i told her i looked up at the sky i reached in my pocket it's a best guess but what i've been following and it's not just me all the department heads are looking in their areas and so forth and what has taken place in the last 25 years i feel pretty confident that we ought to be able to get awful close to that when it happens now why can't we the thermophilic digester is almost 300 of these metric tons that is a very big investment that's a city made 10 or 15 years ago it is the most environmentally friendly system of its kind in the state that's natural gas look it is running on natural gas it is the biggest natural gas user by far matter of fact i think it's around 60 percent of the total in winter and it's like 90 percent of the total yeah if you got to keep it up to 135 it takes some stuff but and there are ways to change that system but it's another 10 million dollars to do it and you might not produce the same quality sludge that we do now and if we have to ship it far away you're going to have diesel diesel gas four times as much as we're doing now because we produce the best sludge in the state right now yeah well that's the word around well we should check out our biosounds the city the city made a major investment and we we've got to be very careful about how we treat it then maybe we can do some things with it the diesel fleet is another issue i am convinced that there are a lot of diesel vehicles that we have now that could be replaced with electric vehicles but they are special to units we almost had a street sweeper come up for a demo a couple years ago when they had a mechanical problem in the transit vehicle uh adam is planning on having a front end loader come in in the next week or two he's trying to make that a ring why can't we look at a biodiesel and renewable diesel and maybe adjust some of those engines to run on on on solely on that is certainly an improvement that we ought to look at and there's there's people that we're working with with roman clean cities coalition that are big into that okay and so forth but it doesn't it's a little bit and when we when we need that much one problem is distribution in the state uh and so forth and then there's other certain kinds of heat that we're using particularly in the fire engine bays and in the maintenance bays and the technique that's being used now is the best anybody knows about and nobody sees anything on the future so i'll put that on the list so um overhead tubes that have a gas fire in it that gas fires down the tube and it radiates down yeah and uh raised a question with several people and you know yeah get your shields on your lawn chairs so forth so um let's take a look a look at the funding numbers that i've used just go ahead and move it on yep um that's the spreadsheet that we put together i can't read the numbers from here it's uh it's actually it's actually two two sheets and i hope that what you got in your pocket you can read if you have questions uh but let's let's go ahead and move on to the next one and down there in the bottom is then the uh the numbers that uh were were put in the the cip and the comparison to what our numbers roll up to uh and so forth um so those are in millions right everything's in millions i understand you folks talking millions over five years pardon me yeah yeah yeah or five six years nine over five years with 14.6 and a current cip yes difference of 3.3 million that we need to come up with oh okay and the beautiful thing about what lou and nick have done here is build this align to our cip so we can overlay it on top if you are interested in a budget proposal aligned to this we can layer it on top to see how we adjust our current cip to achieve these goals yeah for instance if you buy a new police car and you buy one without any environmental things it costs a certain amount of money another 15 grand gets you a hybrid and those kind of deltas we can isolate okay there's the cip cip capital action plan also addressed the desire to increase renewable energy you've heard me talk over a couple years about the water turbine i won't go into that again solar arrays did a quick look uh using google earth identified 13 sites and since then found another one that's probably bigger than any of the ones on the list but that potential looks like it's almost twice the solar capacity that we have on the roof so we're certainly gonna be looking at that key thing is part of the bay renovation there could be all new buildings new rooms line them upright and there's a lot of space there when we have the restrictions that you've heard about before about being limited as to how much solar we can use through uh i want to say rebate that's not the right word net meter thank you and so forth the state is been looking at that uh several of us on the energy committee sat in on a state sponsored meeting last spring clearly it's being discussed but it ought to be encouraged to do something about those limitations if we move heavily into solar we're net metering into the school system right now it's a good thing to do we'll have to be careful about how we do it and the school was looking at doing some solar work themselves and so we got to we just got to make sure it all meshes together nicely i would point out however that renewable electricity doesn't do anything to get rid of greenhouse gases but it's the right thing to do we will move forward with it we went out to a bunch of people i think we've talked to almost all the employees in the city um got ideas from a whole bunch of people i've got a spreadsheet that lists well over a hundred replies a lot of more duplicates variations we picked out some of the big ones here to put on the list and we call these policy considerations they aren't direct dollars and cents some of them are things that we do already and the point that i would make to myself and to all of us is when we're doing these things we need to tell people that we're doing them so that they know that we're working the issue because the whole reason for having this government operations thing is to be a leader for the rest of the community so what are we doing right now actions underway my next list is to get a written report uh this is not really a draft this is kind of a summary of the draft or let's just see what would be in a draft but to get a draft together and i think uh we ought to be able to take care of that in the next couple of months um field mowers we've had three demos over the last five years adam tells me every time they come back they're a little bit better and we're in a process of putting together a technical spec so we go out and get them bid before it looked like we only had one possible now it looks they're coming do we buy the next thing that's available do we wait two more years for it to get a little better we'll we'll have to to bring that up let me make a point each time we make one of these major investments you folks will be involved in it you know you know so it's not like you sign off on the plan and you just spent 60 or you know 600 000 or so for it um the fleet assessment thing uh we're working with the vermont queen cities coalition um to make that happen uh they accept applications once a year and that time's coming up shortly um charging stations there's no point in buying electric vehicles unless you can charge them we've got a grant it's one of the ones we're waiting for some action on for the police station and public works so forth um let me just close and are you for those um charging stations who you're working with the school department because they've put four electric buses and are planning to do get more and they must need charging stations at the bus barn which is yeah oh yeah uh but one that's the wrong place for public works just to get to them uh i've certainly talked to those people but you don't want to buy those kind of charging stations unless you have to they are big and they are expensive oh okay for the buses pardon me the buses yes so they're specified for that yes they can't be used for other big machine oh yes and then and if we get into big diesel equipment converting we will need those stations and when we look at what we're doing for charging stations in the near future we'll certainly ask the question what's the gross capability and so forth uh you may or may not be aware of it but those buses have the capability of pushing energy back into the grid overnight and when they're parked and so forth so it's uh and that's uh part of the technology that's coming on board um in in wrapping this thing up from my point of view hopefully this plan results in a concrete reduction in greenhouse gases that's what we're trying to do over a time frame that's financially responsible and takes advantage of the anticipated technology advances in the future as they come along and we'll have to monitor it every day every week for the next 25 years any questions or what a surprise um Councillor Chalmick thank you Councillor really um three points um one is and we've talked about this loop but there are as you know really really robust credits so and I'm happy to go over you with some of that detail and spreadsheet but for instance for commercial vehicles you can get up to a $40,000 credit now that had been just available to businesses commercial electric vehicles so some of the um diesel things we're using now they're I know in the world there are electric replacements like Norway uses electric cranes electric dump trucks and those things are eligible for huge credits in the US so let's let's let's keep an eye on those two developments um carbon capture maybe not tomorrow but there's um right now a small scale carbon capture business that works with small businesses that might be an opportunity for the digester and you can get $85 a ton credit from the federal government for every ton of co2 captured that credit could well pay for that something to also think about um yeah that was it okay did you see the article and um I think it was the Wall Street Journal about cement that they're making cement that absorbs carbon yeah that absorbs carbon yeah no the three where the that the commercial the credits Norway has has you know big diesel what had been diesel machinery that's all electric now and carbon capture okay yeah any other comments or thoughts or questions well this when does this start so this is the first and then we'll get it next summer the council will get it next summer yeah you're going to miss you've missed the point you missed the point you were here when it started five years ago all we're doing is starting to document it and put it into a formalized fashion but we're going to receive it twice a year we're going to receive a report so starting well that's my recommendation more than the plans do we need to approve so hold on time yeah yeah so lose absolutely right we've been doing this for years this is just a way to codify and tell the story of how we're doing it and quite frankly to me one of the most important things we've done is engage all the staff and helping us up with the solutions so it is that pulling everybody in the same direction and not imposing on to people how to make these changes you will get the kind of lose document of this plan in writing in a couple of months what you will get more immediately if you give me head nods is this built into the FY 25 budget so if you want to meet meet this this timeline that lose laid out for us we have to start for just this implementation plan not for the transportation implementation plan or for the building thermal implementation plan build up six hundred thousand dollars into our budget every year for the next through 2030 at a minimum that that could even flow as we hire this does suggest I want to call out here on the slide adding staff to do this to do all of the chasing grants chasing rebates those revenue streams could change as we have dedicated people not just our 20 hours of thankfully 20 hours a week of lieu it could change the revenue picture but right now this is the expenditure picture we need immediately to get going and to start making all the decisions within this lens well I would like to see it built into the budget yes I think yeah and my understanding is that industry has responsibility over 50 percent of emissions municipalities have responsibility over 25 percent of emissions and individuals have responsibility over 25 percent of emissions so we're doing our part and we have to educate the public that this is this is not inconsequential every everybody has to do their part it's it's been a while since I was involved in those kinds of discussions but I think here in South Burlington the city the city government part is a lot smaller than the 20 percent you talked about you get into big cities like Baltimore New York etc that may be true but I think the real role is to be the leader can I just point out that on the Champlain Parkway a couple of the foremen use electric scooters to go back and forth up and down the road as they go look at and review each part of the project as it's being completed and to communicate the guy zips up and down back and forth yeah they used to use some kind of a truck right electric scooter it's really fast and excellent yeah neat all righty thank you so much keep up the good work and we won't be here to see it happen but okay moving on to um almost our final um the TIFF so receive an update on the status of the TIFF projects with the focus on right away and financing um let's just start at nine ten we're a little bit well I'm pleased to be here now yes um I took in that a few more times the next couple of just a teaser so uh for the record Alana Blanchard community development director um and if I could share my screen I just have some summary um slides and some updates on the bridge that I wanted to show you um let's see oh wait I showed it sorry I didn't share it to Alana I showed it to your video screen that won't work okay now that should work okay thank you let's see my glasses just to find the little button there we go okay so um so uh so um I'm really glad to be talking to you tonight um because there's a lot of work that you'll need to do um over the next year and uh this winter so um this it made sense um to give you an update now just to really let you know where we are and where the projects are um we're at a pretty critical moment in the TIFF district uh we're coming up on our March 31 deadline to incur TIFF district debt we have one project that is nearly ready to go out to bid the city center boardwalk we are in right away with three other projects um uh in various stages of right away of the walk bike bridge everything is um all the offers are out to the landowners um and then um Williston Road and Garden Street are later uh in the process um and then we're looking at um those bonds um and then hopefully construction contracts so um the city center boardwalk um we expect it to be complete um and ready for use by the public by the end of 2024 it's 100% TIFF district funded uh we have updated not me the engineers updated the cost estimate for this project um and so the estimated cost um and all of the owners cost that's all the engineering costs um and um other design costs uh inspection um this one does not have land acquisition costs but if there were that would be part of the owner's costs um so the entire budget is uh two million um and uh so we'll be using um TIFF district financing as well as existing um impact fees uh in order to cover that um cost and existing remaining funds uh the walk bike bridge um is uh currently the budget is much higher than um it was originally projected in 2021 and that's a big reason to be here tonight and let you know where it is the drivers for that um and we were alerted to this um following the public outreach so during the public outreach multiple members of the team as you knew it was many different firms came together under the leadership of BHB so there was a construction firm um there was a bridge firm and then BHB which has their own structural section so everyone was doing separate cost estimates and they're all like we're fine we're good and then at the next meeting they were like we're not good anymore um so during that year um steel went up astronomically in costs and then there was also um borings that were done so we um learned a lot more about the soils because we had an alignment so we knew exactly where the footings needed to go um and then a small piece of that is that the original grant was a partial grant it wasn't the full grant that we had requested so we started out with a little bit behind but as you will see um our gap is much more significant than that um and then just overall inflationary costs and in construction um so initially when we were told about this there was a lot of value engineering that occurred I wanted to show you um this uh illustration I'm sorry this plan which is uh one that the design team is they're in process of putting together the layout of the bridge so it's narrower than it was but it maintains the 14 foot um travel way and it also includes space for landscaping there's no longer a separation over the bridge between bicycles and pedestrians but there is a pedestrian gathering area um that is between the two landscaped areas this was really important because it allowed us to reduce the steel significantly so there had been two tubs two steel tubs supporting the bridge structure and we went to one um as you can see there's still a lot of space for landscaping um and it we're maintaining the same clear area for bicycles and pedestrians um in this um advanced sort or later version of the bridge design and then uh and this shows um the alignment is very similar to what it was before we the big changes are that the quarry hill access has now been resolved we are still working with the landowners they seem very positive um I will tell you that um it's not going to be may not be um inexpensive um but we do believe it's an important acquisition in terms of the overall usability of the of the um of the structure and then the university mall access was moved north so it had been sort of a standalone abutment from the bridge structure and now it aligns with the existing existing wall that supports the access to the bridge so that you're sort of eliminating one wall um and you have three walls instead of four walls and plus the walls are a lot shorter because you're starting down the slope of the access to the bridge and I can show you I think um is the the building at the top where it loops around is that the um that's the cbs yes that's correct so this is probably why they still haven't done any landscaping up front um I just I I'm not sure what their obligations are so but I do know that um that we will make a lot of changes in that area if we're successful in acquiring the property um because the whole the path that is currently on dorset that same width will be carried around the cbs and there will be a buffer between um between the curb and the shared use path in this alignment so we we are going through property acquisition there's no guarantee that any property owner will provide the land so everything you see outside of that red dotted line um is on private property and because of the obligation and there is a typo in the memo the memo said that we have to complete our right of way acquisition by december 2024 it's by december 2023 so okay essentially next month so so that's so we are um very dependent on the goodwill of the property owners in terms of providing those signatures and the easements in order to get what's called right away clear which is a v-trans review process and that allows the federal obligation to have been met for that milestone so the gap funding our current budget we started out with 14.5 million in 2021 so the current budget is 22.5 million and that is the budget that we developed in this summer with the project engineers and that we have been using for grant grant applications so so far we've applied for four four grants through two applications we have another federal one that we're expecting and we're we've also been talking with partners about potential other opportunities should we not be successful um this is a good time i will say there is a lot of funding because of the bill the BIL federal bill for infrastructure um and there is a good emphasis um within this administration on walking and biking and connecting communities so that has been good but it doesn't mean it's not competitive so um we'll see but we have had strong support um from the uh from our delegation and we also received a letter of support from the governor so that was so is it the eight million that we're looking for this yes so we are looking for eight million in gap funding and we're telling a lot of people so if you see folks let them know see anyone right yeah well also part of why we want to come to is because we're telling a lot of people we thought we should probably tell you too but naming rights naming rights yeah no i don't have that kind of money so um so the Williston Road streetscape um also in right away the budget is 2.6 million that's actually for projects that were at the 60 design level there had been a lot of engineering and we'd also been inflating the costs a lot to get from where they were to 2021 and so the gap was not as large fortunately um so this one has $800,000 federal grant the tip is only 50% so we always knew there would be a gap um and we're we had planned to we had programmed in the CIP to fund that through um through a city grant but at this point we're recommending that we use impact fees for a portion of it and then um apply to the state for their pedestrian bicycle funding for gap funding to complete the project and we'll be eligible to apply for that once we've completed our right away acquisition um so we will put that money back into the impact fee fund we would no it would we would put those two pieces of money together to come up with the gap so it's about I I think it's um 4 480,000 is our gap um and then Garden Street um we uh the city budget is 12.8 million we have the remaining amount of TIF that is available um out of the amount that has been authorized by the voters is 11.1 or 11.2 million uh and so uh we have already used 700,000 in impact fees which are existing highway funds so we've been using that to fund the design cost so that we're not carrying costs as part of this project um and then uh this has been in the draft of the transportation impact fee so we're recommending that that be used for the remaining um the remaining gap that um in order to fund the entire project so that those funds would be brought in at the end as part of the construction all of the impact fees would or grant funding if um if there's no impact fees would be brought in at the end of the project so that would be part of our contingency owner's contingency costs as part of the project budget so and this is the TIF fund that we need on the ballot this March that this is the TIF fund that has already been voted on it's already been voted okay yeah but when we say 2024 TIF fund that means the winter bond okay and here we go we already have votes uh positive votes on all of our debt so we don't need to take anymore out we need to draw down the debt okay that you all will approve but the voters we don't have to ask the voters no convoluted way like this no really isn't your money but we need your approval okay yeah you just say yes the voters have already said yes um so we're going through modeling um and putting together the application for the Vermont bond bank we're also looking at other potential funding sources um and you know making sure that a bond anticipation note doesn't make sense we don't think it does but it may by the time in a few weeks I don't know everything is really strange right now so in terms of markets um the good thing is that the bond bank what they've seen in interest rates for municipal bonds is not or not have not climbed as high as they have for consumer lending so but well it's it's an uncertain time so we'll see we'll be in close contact with them um and we're we're there's some things that are in the model that went to the voters that were adjusting and weighing so the model to the voters had things like level payments we're looking at level principal payments which changes our upfront cost but may reduce the overall cost so we're just looking at all the different nuances and how the model is structured and we'll be bringing that to you on December 4th um and that would at that time or at the following meeting we would be asking for your approval to submit the application to the bond bank um assuming that that is who we are applying to which generally they are the least expensive option uh and then um in terms of right of way um we're as I said um we're looking at acquiring 30 properties plus or minus and so um there will definitely be things that will be brought to you over the course of that process um and uh and may involve the necessity hearing and then in terms of contracts we're really hopeful that we'll bring um contracts to you for city center park and for garden street um this this winter so thank you the necessity hearings I mean condemnation is that is that what that is and and so generally um condemnation is doesn't actually what some many times that doesn't actually happen oftentimes a necessity hearing sort of sets the clock for all the negotiations to wrap up um but uh we will not even go through that process for the bridge for example so what do you mean dorset to bridge so that is the block between Trader Joe's and Healthy Living uh we if we're going to be working on the park we'd like to do all of that work at the same time and since the properties own it's all under the same ownership we don't think that's a heavy lift to get that piece at least going um so it's the bridge to city center park yeah it's the bottom line here we might have to go back to the voters on the bike bike bridge no the bike bridge what if we can't show the gap I mean so that's that's a great question um the there when we when we look at this project we see it as a regional project that has regional benefit and so yeah I think and that's how we've always approached it um it's a great east west connector it's a connector between as much as it connects us to our neighborhoods that are just west I think for most people they really see it as connecting to the hill or connecting to the downtown or connecting those places to city center and so because of that there are many many places we can go for funding um aggressive I would just add again says I think Alana's done a wonderful job really keeping our V trans and VH VHF VHW FHWA federal highway partners close to this project they meet every two weeks together so I think everyone's aligned to we have to figure it out together whether that's through state money federal money institution money so she is being super aggressive going back to the voters is our very very last ditch yeah attempt okay that was the chair thank you the junior high best ball be aggressive be be be HGG RSS IVE okay thank you very much much more to come thank you Alana hopefully aggressive okay item 13 is filling um or or asking Larry to fill in a little bit um tidler had two um openings and I know that you served on natural resource and conservation um and Andrew has indicated that he really liked to continue doing that he did yeah he did to me yes he said to me um but you could certainly show up at the meetings they wouldn't I mean if you had nothing to do that later it's just because that those two committees that Tyler was that's that's the request is for me that that is unless there's some other moving around that people would like to do amongst ourselves um if you wanted I I'd be happy to do bike pad if you want to be the official liaison to NRCC I'm still going to show up to NRCC because I'm very interested in the progress of the tree ordinance so I'd be happy to do that okay as opposed to what was the other committee well um Andrew said he it's bike and pad and then the other one that Tyler had was recreation and park all right so either of either of those is fine well how about you then be the um for the next four or five months the official natural resources and conservation liaison and the the recreation and parks and then Andrew will um he'll do bike pad and you and you unofficially no officially you'll do bike pad no unofficial oh yes and then you'll you're officially energy great I mean any of us can go to any of the me right okay yeah can I just say I think that's a really great plan with the task force we really need the school safety task force and the bike pad committee to be very yeah good job you will be a busy little beaver but that's that's good all right um can you just can you make a motion to approve that oh so moved thank you second all in favor thank you okay um other business we I would like to suggest that perhaps we talk in public right now about maybe voting on Charles Johnston to be on the development review board I'll make that motion I'll second that okay is there any um conversation I mean I I think he seems to have the right credentials and um Gabe Gabe um had some bigger thoughts that um seem to be more aligned with other committees so we can I do appreciate Gabe's courage yeah yeah I do too love yeah really figure out how to engage him yeah I totally agree with the okay all right so if you're in favor of that um are ready for the vote all in favor um of appointing Johnson to the okay hi to the DRB I that sounds unanimous is there any other business I was I was just curious when the um channel 22 interviews were done was it after our meeting on Thursday or it was after our meeting on Thursday Friday it was Friday who was interviewed Jesse the superintendent was interviewed and then I was interviewed so we can watch that yeah certainly can yeah I'd be interested say it was not my best interview oh and yeah I probably should have done it but I had a surprise visit for my daughter and grandson so just got busy with home life um I find it yeah it's it's it's I guess I'm disappointed that that is the takeaway of the community member I didn't watch it but I I read um you know the the script or whatever that and that it that that was the takeaway of the community member because I felt that Thursday we had had a good meeting so did I and I thought we had a plan going forward and and I also thought that I I heard from the superintendent that she wanted us to talk about our our joint successes and I thought that could have been shared in that news report the task force and the could have been seen as a joint success so so they do talk about that they talk about it but it's it's framed in a way that's oh you watch more no there's there's written I didn't watch it but it's it's more of a written thing that you can read the people's comments you know they give the and I are we still are we still you are still we are still on so we should probably um I would entertain well this was other business that was other business so is there any other business so are you finished I I don't know I guess so but I I'm frustrated I know I'm sorry that it didn't come out as the very positive yeah um conclusion and meeting that we had we had a lovely dinner and good conversation and a plan going forward yeah we didn't agree on everything but we did we had a very good so could could that be a joint statement that could be initiated by the two of you to the two school board leaders that we're going to have a joint statement that's something the superintendent asked let's make joint statements of our you know of what we have agreed to do together we certainly can make joint statements it's hard for me to be honest it's hard for me to know how to navigate this when the majority of the conversation with the superintendent has not been through me so if you would like if one of you would like to take a leadership role and in helping politically to make that happen I would be happy to do that I'm happy to try to do that thank you all right and and really you know accepting her offer I'll help you I'll help you with that nice great and accepting I did express some concern about us not not dealing not addressing the immediate issue of construction and children going to central school I don't think that was resolved in a very good way or wasn't resolved at all but I you know there's a there's a short term fix as opposed to the longer term safe the safety school safety designation so although the challenges are a short term experience because once the road is built out you won't have sidewalks that are blocked right exactly you know so it's it's should be sooner than later hopefully well we have done a we have made a huge amount of improvements around Marca in the last six months Taun DePetro and Erica Qualan have spent an enormous amount of time making incremental change we can always do better we can always get safer but we have done a huge amount to make sure that the students are safe going to central school I would encourage the five of you to really think about when you're talking with the community and our partners at the school we employ experts in infrastructure let's center let them let's make decisions based on engineering and data yeah please include them in conversations and we can always incrementally get better and we've made a lot of improvements and is this a perceived problem or a real perception right yeah well not at all the intersections but maybe that's my view but we're making a lot of progress no I think some of the instructors are dangerous even with the button people don't always follow the law they're busy they're complex so okay any other business no all right so I'd entertain a motion to adjourn made and sex second yeah all in favor hi hi thank you Larry our meetings aren't always quite this long how did that happen we're