 Okay. Okay. Well, I'd like to call to order the South Wellington City Council meeting of Monday, August 21st, 2023, and we'll begin with a suit to the flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Okay. Item two, instructions on exiting the building and review of technology options. Thank you. For those of you who are here with us in person, welcome. If there's an emergency, you can go out either side of the rear of the auditorium to the left or the right, and then turn left or right and go outside. For those participating remotely, also thank you for joining us. If you would like to speak during any item on our agenda, you can turn your camera on or you can indicate you'd like to speak in the chat and I'll have the chair call on you. Otherwise, we're not monitoring the chat for content. Thank you. So I just would note, Tyler Barnes is not here tonight. He got called away kind of last minute on business. So item three, agenda review. Are there any additions, deletions, or changes in order of the agenda items? Well, I would like to have, I guess, a discussion about the recommendations that will be forthcoming from the charter review committee. And actually, I would like to request that we have an agenda item added at our next meeting, the first meeting in September to discuss it. I do want to put that under a new agenda item or just have me. For tonight? Yeah, or just have me just to have a discussion and ask my request would go forward to have it added to the September, the first September meeting, or would you rather I just do another my report. I think we can just do that under your report, since we're not going to really be discussing it. Okay. Any other items? All right, we'll move on to comments and questions from the public, not related to the agenda. So anyone sitting in the auditorium who wishes to speak? Okay, not on a something that's not on the agenda. Okay, please come forward and whichever you prefer. And if you push the little button, this conference will now be recorded. The green light gets bright green. Okay. Can you hear me? My name is Kimberly Tavilla. I've been a resident of South Burlington since 1993. And I recently emailed the council about a proposal that I have to amend our winter parking ban. As you know, our winter parking ban is nightly, regardless of snow conditions between December 1st and April 1st. And it's my opinion and the opinion of many community members that I've spoken with, it creates logistical and financial issues for families to find alternative parking for new drivers for holiday visitors in a whole host of reasons. So I'm looking to possibly get our city to serve our citizens better by mirroring the bands that are in effect in our neighboring communities such as Burlington, Winooski, there are snow event only. And that our DPW folks can clear our streets safely when it's snowing and when the roads need to be clear as opposed to the nights it's not snowing. So those are my comments. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? How about who people who are joining by zoom? Okay. Seeing none. We'll move down to council's announcements and reports on committee assignments and the city manager's report. So Megan, do you want to start? Yeah. Um, I would just like to add my voice to our resident. Mr. Villa. Yeah. I think that it would be a good thing for us to consider to have per snow event parking man. And so I just wanted to add my voice of support to that. I also wanted just to again, inquire about the Wilson road markings where, you know, there's the jog to the right. I know that the sign is up, but there are a lot of people who do not know that part of Wilson road at the doors of the street intersection very well. And without markings on the, on those pavement, it becomes very, very dangerous. And I've seen, you know, close calls that I would hope that we could act on that. And so any, any information regarding that would be welcome. I also wanted just to report something on the chart review committee and our past city clerk, Donna Kimville. She wanted to have us in fact, in fact, I think the whole committee did, but she voiced it very, very clearly have us specifically go back with suggestions for what they could potentially follow up on. To meet the goal, which is for the committee to follow up. Yes. Okay. To ensure that voices are equitably represented at policymaking tables. That is, you're going to see that in their report. And so I personally would like that before their final report comes on September 18, I would like us to have a conversation and be able to give them, you know, some some direction at that. Moment when they come on September 18th, something that we've already thought about. And I ideally would like us to really dig into what neighborhood forms are. They are in our charter. And I think that they're kind of one of the best kept secrets that only two neighborhoods have made use of where neighborhoods can actually get the city council's attention on a pressing item that. Affects their particular place in the city. And I get, you know, not just one agenda item, but a series of agenda items for us to really get to the bottom of an issue. And so I think that it would be something that when we see so many residents really eager to have more attention paid to to specific issues that they are seeing, you know, not rise to the level of of our agendas. There's a way to do that. And it's already in our charter. So I just, I think having that discussion and perhaps other ideas that we could be prepared for them to hear when they come before us, I think on September 18th. So that's a request for that first meeting on September 5th, right after Labor Day, I'm assuming. Would we have a report from the committee by then on the 18th? No. So, so it's just kind of what we're, because they only looked, they only looked at how many counselors and then whether we would stay at large or do by ward, okay, or have a mix of by ward and, you know, at large counselors. They did not look into other mechanisms for increasing diversity or for bringing as the charge was bringing, let me find that again, that language. Sorry, here it is. Ensuring that voices are equitably represented at policymaking tables. Okay. Okay. So before going down, and this was down as terms of for going down another rabbit hole, they wanted direction from the council for what other issues besides the number of counselors and the area, whether it be at large or, or by ward. They also looked at ranked choice voting. Combination. I think I also looked at ranked choice. So, yes. So, Jesse, you're the camp liaison. So you can guide this conversation at the council, obviously, but I think that was their hope in bringing you a full report is to tell the community what they've done and then say, these are the other things we could look at. What's, can you give me a little more on why preempt their report? Not preempt it. I would like us as a council to look at our charter and be prepared. Oh, okay. Just to be prepared for that conversation. So not to say we're doing something other than what you have recommending just saying we hear, you know, that you would like more direction. And we have looked at our charter. And I truly would like, you know, I did. I think it's an underutilized mechanism and lever that our residents have at their disposal. And just to put my sales pitch out there a little bit more. I see the word system operate in big cities where it's actually up to the counselor or Alderman to determine whether or not they involve the community in their particular, you know, the chief of power. And so the, the charter through the neighborhood forum actually gives residents the power to say, hey, representatives, you have to listen to us. It's in the charter. So it's not up to the representative. It's up to the residents to, to get the counselor's attention. And then the counselor's attention is gotten right. It's not, it's not coming from the council. It's coming from the residents. It's a really, I think a really powerful thing that people might want to know more about. And then I just had a couple of questions. Helen, I put a question or a couple of questions to you based. I'll address him. Perfect. And then Jesse question regarding how we are supporting Burlington's efforts to house the homeless. So I would not necessarily say we are supporting Burlington's efforts to help the homeless. I think specifically your question is coming off of the end of the or the initial end of the hotel program. Correct. How are unhoused folks showing up in our community and what are we doing to support them? So a couple of things. One, in my opinion, the biggest solution is housing for all that we just need a lot more housing for everybody. And I think South Burlington is certainly doing our part with that with about 440 new homes permitted last year. We have the whole home or now they're calling it the Braber and apartments developed by CHT that will open in about a month. All for folks who are struggling with being unhoused and then are the homes going in an O'Brien farm developed by Summit. So it's over 60 new homes that we will be adding to the market for our neighbors in the next couple of months. We continue to advocate with AHS for not only further investment in housing development in the state, but also ensuring that we are appropriately funding at health service provision and substance misuse provision in a coordinated way through AHS. That's primarily being done through the league. And then of course monitoring what's going to happen when the motel program currently is scheduled to expire again next spring. So working with them on that and looking at how many units are coming in county wide and statewide. We are also seeing an uptick in folks using this space, the library and city hall to meet their basic life needs. So we're working with folks on how to most appropriately use this space and be as supportive as we can. And we are starting to see a slight uptick and calls for service from people who are reporting to see folks living in public spaces. And so again, trying to work with them and connect them to services. That's what we are doing right now. But we are not I would not frame it as we are actively supporting a Burlington effort. Okay, because they are building housing specifically for people who are going to be the modular stuff. I mean, well, we are we are also building housing. But I mean, I mean, it's housing specifically for for those people who have been turned out of the motels. That's the same thing. I think it was 20. Yeah. Okay. All right. Okay. Thank you, I guess. Yeah. I just wanted to thank you for and staff for taking us on the tour of our city center slash neighborhood designation area. Tim. Thank you, Helen. So I attended the almost fruitful night out on Thursday night at Veterans Memorial Park to say goodbye to City Clerk Donna Kinville. Watcher passed the reins on to Holly Reese and a worker with a resolution and it was really nice. Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate, but they at least it waited till after the ceremony was finished. Unfortunately, no fireworks happened. Are they being postponed until this Thursday night? Everybody cross your fingers knock on wood. I also went on this walk today around this neighborhood examining different architecture and hearing ideas and talking about form based codes and possible changes. And looking to the future redevelopment of all of the commercial areas and residential areas in this vicinity, both either within or without the TIF district. So that was very useful and I appreciate it. And I'm sure we'll have a lot more conversations about that. That's all I have. Thanks. Andrew. To echo Tim, the event for Donna was wonderful. Thank you staff for really putting together an amazing, amazing night of recognition. I'm sure she appreciated it. It was really wonderful. I attended an energy committee meeting. They're continuing work on the energy festival, September 30th. The event needs a lot of volunteers. Depending on where the audience would like to volunteer for the energy festival, folks can reach out to MJ Reel. She's looking for volunteers for lots of different positions. And they're working hard on reaching out to folks that maybe wouldn't normally or wouldn't typically. They're reaching out to, I'm sure they reach out to cross-section residents. So there's good participation for the event. We talked about a film series, a climate change film series. People thought that was pretty cool. And maybe we'll have the library help us, you know, set up here. And they're continuing to work on their work plan. And a lot of items that we've already discussed are on their work plan. So we'll look forward to seeing them bring those to us at some point. Okay. I also attended night out and would agree that it was, I think, a really nice send off to Donna Kinville. Hopefully we didn't send her too far. She still lives here. And we're hoping that she will continue to be active in our community. I attended a school city leadership meeting and we talked about updates that we'll be addressing tonight. And that seems to be moving forward in terms of school safety issues, as well as the, we did talk a little bit about the inclusion or how to include the school into the city plan. And if there was any language that would be helpful. And I think we made it pretty clear that the city council sees a great need and supports working closely with the school, the directors and the school department to make sure that we all make decisions that work best for the community. And we're not in our own silos and not communicating well. I also attended the common area for dogs meeting and we went over, they went over their thoughts for inclusion in the city plan and submitted a letter with those. We also talked a little bit about the upgrades at the Farrell Park and that they seem to be moving forward as well. So I think that's all I did. So Jesse. Great. Thanks. I did sign the application for the permit for Farrell Park last week, so that is moving forward. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I forgot. I wanted to address a couple issues regarding the airport and the airport commission in terms of updating the sound mitigation program. The both the pilot and what we call phase one group will is happening right now. It's approximately 20 houses. We had hoped that that would happen sooner because we did receive funding for that. But the company that was building the windows went bankrupt. So we needed to go through the federal process of identifying another vendor and it's a little more complicated and time consuming than one would think. But those new windows will be delivered and installed. They believe in about six weeks. Then we've also received a grant for the next phase phase two, which is approximately about 50 ish houses that are next in line. They'll be getting phone calls or emails or whatever letters. However, the airport can best communicate with them between now and winter, determining their interest in being part of the sound mitigation program. Processes and what the options are with the hope that next summer, the installation and the work on those homes will be started, if not completed. So that would be in the summer of 24. And then in addition on September 14th at 7 p.m. at the Chamber Chamberlain School, the the airport is providing an update for that community or anyone in the community concerning the bike path as well as the noise program. So I think if there are additional questions about the sound mitigation, as well as the noise program and the bike path, that would be a good meeting to attend. Is there a time? 7 o'clock. September 14th at 7. Yes, at the school. Okay. And do you know if residents have been contacted about the windows that will be delivered installed in the next six weeks? I don't know if they've been contacted when the date is. I think they've been in the program. It's, you know, they come and they look at the house and they talk to the owners or first the owners have to agree that they want to be part of the program. Then they the house is reviewed and they make recommendations about what can be funded and done and set up a time schedule. But I don't know if they're people have been waiting for two years and so they've been promised a time schedule. So, okay, well, I can I'll follow up and I'll ask Nick if they've sent letters out, but his belief is that they'll be delivered in the near future and installed in the next six weeks. Okay. Yes. Yes. I think it would also be a good idea if it's okay with you to connect Andy to Nick's communications people. Oh, yeah. Public like broad public outreach about what's going on, not obviously not necessarily just to those homeowners. There's specific outreach that needs to be done to for them, obviously, but just so the full community understands the program. Right. So we can get some more communication going citywide on that. And when I spoke with Nick, he would very much like to come to a city council meeting and address both these issues and answer questions. So I think that would be good for us to set that up on the agenda sometime. No, we haven't heard him for a while. So that would be good. Okay. Thank you. Sorry. I interrupted you. No, that's important. Um, so a few folks have mentioned the tour just for the community's knowledge. We did warn a special meeting right before this meeting where the council and members of the staff team did a walking tour of city center thinking about incremental improvements to the form based code and other changes we could make in the city to make to do more place making downtown and make downtown more of a city. So that's what we were talking about. It was a beautiful day for tour. Also want to thank Donna and those who came out to celebrate our former city clerk last Thursday night. It was really lovely event. Thank you to those of you who participated. We will be doing kind of a retrospective on that event and welcoming Holly Reese our new city clerk in next week's city news. So stay tuned for more information on that on the city clerk vein. Donna did a huge amount of work in partnership with Holly in her last couple of months getting our land records online. So they are now online with a weekly or monthly fee available. They're always free if you come into the office as well, but they are online. If folks would like to pay and look at those as requested at your last council meeting and discussed last fall, we are entering into an agreement with civil engineering associates to stake the wheel or boundary. That's the last step to us doing that conservation easement. Just for council's heads up that will be staking a boundary across people's backyards. So if you get questions that what that's what that is in that land on the other side of the stake will be permanently conserved pending your action, of course. I shared this with the council, but just to put on your radar screens again, CHT Champlain Housing Trust and the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity have asked us to partner with them on a Vermont Community, the CDP community development program grant to do some renovations and expansion to the feeding chinden food shelf in Burlington. We are they are required to go through municipality for that. They are a huge partner with the South Burlington food shelf. The South Burlington food shelf is very much in favor of this expansion. It's a pass through grant from the state that they would be eligible for. So to do that, they will have a public hearing here at your next council meeting to consider that application. So just heads up that that's coming away. We had no other request for funding this round. So we thought it was an appropriate time to open that up for them. Folks may have seen that we are advertising for four council appointments to boards and committees representative to for town meeting TV. Very important. Thank you, Travis and the team. The chinden county communications union district, the muski valley parks district and the development review board. So folks are interested in serving in any of those roles, please submit an application online or you can get it from the city clerk's office. I hope to bring you those appointments on September 18th. I wanted to share a few quick updates on the library. We have a social work intern from UVM starting at the end of this month. She will be working with library staff and supporting residents and meeting their basic needs as they come to the library, which I think is a thanks to Jennifer for her leadership and having that intern here. We also Jennifer shared some really interesting statistics. So in FY 23, so the fiscal year that just ended our checkouts went up 23% from the previous year. Averaging 15,000 items a month that were being checked out. And visits were up 32% for 95,000 visits to the library last year with 15% with borrowers going up 15% and over 10,000 library cards issued, which is great. Yes. And next on the library. No. So next so Thursday night last SB night out fireworks pray for no cancellations. We've had to cancel four weeks in a row. Yeah. Yeah. So and then the Friday following the library is also hosting a library about women in incarceration. So that's at six o'clock and the lot in this auditorium on September 1st. But I did find the email. And it was about the temporary shelter and an email about how we could support temporary, you know, especially, you know, in acute situations. And if you don't mind me reading this, I hope so. So there's a difference between what we're so doing to support Burlington's activities around unhoused people. That email was about asking for us to start a shelter here. And I was saying we weren't working on that. We were working to support their efforts to stand up a shelter. Right. I believe that we are that folks are better served in a shelter where central to where services are provided. And those are primarily in Burlington. How are we supporting them? And that's where we're supporting them through the Chinden County homeless alliance that we participate in and regular calls with their Burlington staff, Sarah. And we haven't been asked for any additional support beyond that at this point. Okay. All right. And what form of support is that through the Chinden County homeless. So we we sit on that homeless alliance and that homeless alliance is actually the applicant in partnership with the city of Burlington. So we are a member of that appointed group. Okay. So just our brainpower kind of our solution, our problem-solving skills. Okay. And also help us with, you know, we just passed that was an ordinance, right? About unhoused, tenting kind of situations. And we adopted rules about that one of which was we would not criminalize. Well, we wouldn't criminalize, but we wouldn't make them move unless there was an opportunity or a place for them to go. And that organization, you just mentioned a way to access that information for the police department or is that a whole different kind of. So you did adopt a policy. We don't we don't need that organization to access that information, but it certainly helps being close more closely connected to service providers. What's going on the reality of what's going on on the ground right now with unhoused people is that that there is no shelter capacity. So our options within that policy would be limited. And yeah, we had an interesting exchange with a woman who works at IDX. And she was wondering if there are places where people could have showers and what do we know about that? Yep, they should go to the shelter resources that are available in Burlington. They can call 2-1-1 and get that information. Thanks. Question for you. You put this on the agenda and do a full presentation. You talked about us kind of like funneling the grant for feeding children. Yeah. So why didn't Burlington take that up? Why did they come to us instead of Burlington? Yeah, that's a good question. So Burlington, so my understanding and I, I'm 90% sure this is, I know this is true. So Burlington is a CDBG entitlement community. So they get direct CDBG funding from the federal governments through a funding formula every year. That's based on their population size and their demographic. They're the only community in the state that is that kind of entitlement community. The rest of us use the funds that come into the state through VCDP. I believe Burlington still can access VCDP in very select cases, but it's far more challenging for them because they have the direct federal funding like from the feds. Thank you. Okay. Moving on then to item six, the consent agenda. We have four items, the disbursements, receiving the June financials, authorizing an application for a buildings community grant for an ADA accessibility project on behalf of Davis Studios and approve a municipal energy resilience program grant application for station two in the Wheeler House. I'll move to approve. Second. Any discussion? All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. So that has been approved. Moving on to item seven, we're going to receive a proposed residential rental ordinance and information on space planning to provide direction and our conversation tonight is to provide direction to the staff. We will not be adopting an ordinance. Good evening. Last time we met, I think back in May on the rental registry, you asked us to take a look at a couple of things. And so the ordinance in front of you does two things. The only changes that were made to the draft ordinance from the last time you saw it is it changes the annual fee increases both the rates by $10 to cover what we anticipate will be the reoccurring annual expense. So basically at these rates as proposed, we anticipate it will raise enough revenue to cover the annual expenses. And we added a provision that would create an exclusion for accessory on-farm businesses as had been discussed. And so that's the only, those are the two changes that we took away from our previous conversation with you. And that's what's been changed in the ordinance. The other part of the conversation was space allocation. And so when we left you last time, we talked about we were moving down a path of what it would be to renovate some space at 577. That is in the building basically that where the parks or recreation parks were using for storage. I think as you all know or aware now, the school is looking to acquire that space so that is no longer an option. And so we had had Dora Whittier look at a proposal that would add on to the north side of the fire station, both some storage space for that room that we're going to lose for recreation parks, as well as about 2,000 square feet for office space or rental registry. That number came in as much higher than what we anticipated. And so we're here for really some, your thoughts on that number and your thoughts on some, and to provide us some direction really on what some of the next steps would be. We would have to bring you back some alternatives. I think as that rent, as that space, the cost it out, it's about 1.8 to 2.8 million altogether for 3,000 square foot of space. And the cheapest way to do the storage space is with a standalone building precast. But that's still 500 to 800,000, so expensive outfit. And so I think we're going to have to have some alternatives, whether that is rented office space. We could look at perhaps some space at 19 Gregory, but again, it's a space that's often used by the public. And so we will need some, I think we need some guidance on what you're thinking would be an appropriate number for us to start looking towards as we look to bring this back to you. I don't know how you can, I guess I'm concerned about passing an ordinance without having an ability to have a team in place. So what are your thoughts about, you would like us to say don't go over a million and a half or something like that? I don't know. I don't, does not need to be that tuned or dialed in, but I do think has to be that you do support spending some money on either office space or some sort of renovation at 19 Gregory. I think those are the two things that jump out at me. I'm looking at Jesse if she has something else she wants to jump in with that. And then secondly, is there perhaps we could take the first issue. Is there anything else on the ordinance that you would want to see changed as as you have discussed it. If you take that as the first topic, provide us additional guidance there. And then the second one, what would it look like? What do you envision setting some money aside, perhaps at a fund balance or some way to to address the space allocations. Why would you take the ordinance? Can I just ask a follow question? So the 1.8 to 2.8 is it how much it does for the rec space and how much is that for the office for the rental ordinance? Yes, so about 500 to a million for the for the recreational space and then about 1.3 to 1.8 for the office space. Okay, so that's not that much different than we talked about last time for the office space. Correct. Well, I think I used I used a number of a million dollars to renovate the space downstairs. And that was a back of the napkin estimate. They're using 500 on the low end to a $750 a square foot for construction cost and then a 30% for add on to that for project for a total project cost time you get permitting and everything else project management. The rec space is kind of a separate discussion right with the school. I mean, I have a separate. Well, the reason this is before you as it is tonight is that when we came to in May we had committed to coming back at this meeting and giving you with the update. And that one of the big things that has changed in that interim was that we were hoping to use the space we are currently using at 577 for this which had about a million dollar price tag. And then we learned that we couldn't do that. And in fact, we had to find additional space and we just got that information last week. So we didn't want to not come back to you with the update, but we also don't feel we like to bring you ideas that are a little more recommendations that are a little more fleshed out than they currently are. Okay. Okay, so I would if you unless you have something to do with the dollars, I would like to do move. I think people in the audience are interested in the ordinance and not whether it costs a million bucks or a million five or I do have money. Okay. And then we'll move on to the ordinance or Steve specifically asked if we have other changes we would like to make and I forwarded to you all over a week ago. Tom gets his email. Tom gets as the CEO of Summit properties and he manages his company manages 1500 units. Is this about the ordinance and yes. Oh, that's what I wanted to move on to. Okay. But good change. Yeah. With regard to money. I mean, he he's very concerned about the cost of building affordable housing and how this. I'm not sure if it's $80 or $90 fee could impact the construction of affordable housing and because all of this is part of an equation in order to just sustain the enforcement. This would this would, you know, be something that we really have to look at, you know, with with our with our bank advisors or whatever. I can't remember the term for that, but really, you know, put pen to paper and more than on the back of the napkin. So he's just gave for an instance $80 per unit per year will have a huge financial impact on affordable housing. And so for his 1500 units, he says that would mean an extra $3760 of annual operating expenses per building for the new 47 unit affordable development. We are constructing on Kennedy Drive and it's very detailed what he gives, but he goes on to just say how this would snowball in applying for federal financing to develop that community and increase of $3760 of annual operating expenses would mean the project would need to apply for an extra $50,000 in grant funding because of the reduction in loan size the project could carry. And so and then he goes on and talks about how often affordable housing needs to be inspected and there are various layers of review. So if you are and again this was all sent to to all of you. But if for instance if you have, you know, the tax credits low income tax credits for affordable housing units that come from VHFA or if you have HUD financed react multifamily housing. Those all have inspection cycles section eight housing I believe is is something that has a different schedule and then they themselves inspect their own their own housing. And because of the sensitive population that they're dealing with. We're talking about a high anxiety moment that these people are having to live through, you know, potentially with our ordinance five times a year. So it's just it's something for us I think to to really think about carefully and we don't need to get our visors out just yet and, you know, but I wanted to put it out there that that would be a change that I would hope we could consider. Well, my understanding is that at least with new housing, there won't be any assessment for three years, right? Because it will have been built a code. Right. That's correct. And a few things I did talk to him because that email came from back in I think may when I spoke with him. Yes. And so understanding those most of the inspections he references are not life safety inspections. So it's not ensuring the units follow fire code. And so and we are also proposing a cycle where if a building doesn't have or has lesser violations or minor violations, it'd be an every five year inspection, not annually. And he proposes random inspections in a building which I would I would I would advocate against. Well, it takes is one unit and a multi unit building that's a hoarding condition. And we don't inspect that one randomly and someone dies in that building. And I don't want to answer that question about why didn't you inspect that build that unit in there. So I'm a firm believer that if we're going to do this, we inspect rental housing to ensure that it complies with the fire code for it's safe for the occupants. So that is why I disagreed with most of what he proposed. And his he is talking about the cash flow problem. And that is a policy decision for you. Right. Yeah. And he did get into the, you know, the hours that would be required to inspect. And I leave that to you to say we can cover those hours. Yeah. Yes. Again, we've looked at this from the number of units. Similarly, the way Burlington has a policy about which the frequency of inspections of apartments depending on the violations doubted the first time. And so they're not all inspected every year. So yeah, we have a pretty in most buildings of Burlington are on a five year cycle because the majority of them are kept up with minimal violations when they are found once you have a process in place. And if I could just follow up. Sure. So if we, if we were to visit every unit, how often would that happen? Would it just be initially and then we'd see which units perhaps need more attention than others and kind of numbers down? My estimate would be it will take you three years to get through the first round. Right. And then buildings will be on cycles. And that's every unit. That's every unit. Yeah. And then on the cycles, it would be every unit or just then we could see the. Well, you'll see it. So again, if you have a building that's not in good shape, we're probably going to, we're going to come back next year. If you have a building that is in that does not have any significant violations, you're not going to see this again for five years unless there's a complaint. Okay. Yes. So I'll say just from the, you know, Steve knows the Burlington example. I know the Winooski example, they had an exception for affordable housing that they are now trying to undo because that what created was a discrepancy between folks who are living in higher income rental had higher life safety standards and folks living in lower income housing had lower self self health and welfare standards. And that that discrepancy wasn't seen as that community value of a discrepancy wasn't seen as equitable. If the financials are the challenge, I think that's a, as Steve says, that's a different question for the council about how to charge those organizations and how much the taxpayers would then be subsidizing. Okay. Tim. So just to clarify, I believe that, that if a tenant applies for section eight and they send an inspector, it's a one time inspection to make sure that the unit complies with their particular federal housing standards. Right. And then they don't, I don't think they inspect ever again, as far as I know. I don't know the answer to that. I think that's probably true. Going back to the ordinance, I just have a couple of comments. They're, I apologize. I don't have my laptop. So I don't have a list of the, there was a block of reasons as to why we're doing this. And I just, this is my bias, but, and I've said before, the number one reason in my mind why I would like to have all of the rental property in the city covered by this registry is number one to ensure that every unit is safe. If somebody is paying money to stay in a room, in a bedroom, in an apartment, in a detached dwelling, is paying money to somebody else, I want to make sure that it's got hardwired, interconnected, photoelectric, smoke detectors with CEO combo heads where they need to be according to fire code. That's number one. So when I saw the list, my bias would be that we take the, I think that was the bottom one that talked about safety. It is. And let's move it to number one because that's the thing that I worry about the most if somebody's staying somewhere and we just don't have, you know, detectors to code and there's a fire and there's a disaster. So the other thing that was interesting to me and I, I just want to clarify this because it caught my attention was that, that in a multifamily building where there is an owner occupied unit. And of course would inspect all of the units that are rented out, but you said you would also inspect the owner occupied unit. And that makes sense to me because it was like, well, why would you get well, of course, if the owner's unit didn't have the hardwired interconnected, you know, smoke detection CEO system, right, it wouldn't trigger the rest of the units to go off, right, and then evacuate the whole building. So I just wanted to point that out that that did catch my eye. And that's a good thing. So thank you. Thanks. So I'm, I'm concerned that the ordinance is a little heavy handed as written. And honestly, I don't know, I don't personally have enough data to understand how heavy handed it is, but I've had conversations with folks that have no kind of constructed their livelihoods on the back of existing law. Some folks live in the city and have a handful of homes and that's how they, you know, pay for their childcare and their food and their shelter. And I just don't see that the city interest right now is compelling enough to upset those settled financial expectations of those folks. What I'd like to do, honestly, is kind of defer the portion of the ordinance that prohibits, you know, short term rentals in buildings that are not unoccupied until we get more data to see exactly who's out there, exactly who are impacting. So we construct a more targeted and nuanced rule to not harm folks unduly. I mean, I'm trying to jump in here fairly quickly. What you may want to do is allow the ones that are already in existence to continue until the property is sold or a change of use is made. But you would still want to require them to register and be inspected so you ensure the health and safety of those occupants. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of different ways you can defer your grandfather. I mean, there's different ways you can do it. You could in the meantime provide you can't have new ones, right? But to me, the most important thing is not to upset people's kind of settled financial expectations. Well, and I would advocate that the most important thing is to ensure the health and safety of the people staying there. I completely agree with that. That's critical in this ordinance. So, yes. Can I just clarify? You're not saying don't inspect them. You're saying don't prohibit them. Kind of get rid of the 30 days portion. Well, I mean, it's cause five C. No individual entity may register a short-term rental unless its own occupied tenant or tenant occupied or an ADU. So I think that that particular provision should not come into force right now. Either grandfather existing folks or just wait until we collect data until we have more data to put in place a rule that in my view would kind of make more sense. So I understand that this is going to be an economic change for some people or financial change for some people. I have to just say that I know that this summer has been a financial train wreck for a lot of people in Vermont and they aren't all going to be bailed out by the federal government and FEMA. They just have to change and reinvent. I think that we are giving them close to a year to change and reinvent. If they are making a living by, you know, renting out single family homes as short-term rentals, they are taking that housing off of the market. That is of concern. We are having even more housing issues since all of the storms this summer. We have an outcry from our businesses who cannot recruit workers because there is no place for them to move into. And I would argue that long-term rental is a way for people to make a living. They cannot make as much, but they can make a healthy living by turning their short-term rentals into long-term rental for six months and a day. And I think that this is something that demonstrates some, I believe, understanding that this is going to require some time for people to rethink. But we are in a crisis of housing. And it is, I think, incumbent on the leaders of cities to respond to that crisis. And when our goal is to bring more single family homes, either for home ownership or for long-term rental, as well as rental units or condos onto the market, we are below the 5% that is the goal that our affordable housing committee wants to see this city achieve. And they put that down as a goal in our city plan that is now in draft form. So just as we are aiming for our climate action targets, we have to aim for these housing targets. And this, I think, is a fair ordinance in terms of giving people time to rethink and to change. It's not, you know, from July 10th to July 12th. What do we do now? They have until April 1st of 2024. So, look, I'd like to see more data. How many short-term rental units are really impacted? What are we talking about? I mean, if you're going to be... I think we have some... I guess personally, Megan, I just don't see the... Look, short-term rental also serves a function of the city. It brings in sale tax revenue. The folks that use those units who don't... They're not going away. Well, but you're restricting it, right? You're prohibiting. I'm just saying, personally, I don't see the compelling city interest in prohibiting, I don't know how many, a dozen, two dozen of these, when people have constructed a livelihood off the back of it to tell them you have to change. You know, you can't... It seems harsh to me. Do you have some numbers that... We do have some numbers. So, we did an analysis back in about March, so it could be a little bit different now. But in March, on average, according to the research that we did through AIR DNA, which is an online service that uses algorithms to look at the two major entities, Airbnb and VRBO, that are 95% of the market, there were about 75 total active rentals on average. Of those, about 60 of them were considered whole units, so as opposed to renting a room. So, 60 that are an entire unit. Of those, about 45 were single-family homes, and about 15 were units in the larger building. So, that's what we have. We don't know exactly from the breakdown whether they're rented part of the year or all of the year. Best I can gather from the data is that it talks about sort of 0 to 90 days, 90 to 180 days, 181, 270, and 270 to 365, about how often it's available for rent. So, I'd say about 65% of them are available for more than 90 days a year. So, you could probably consider those to be full-time. So, it's a lot of numbers. Basically, about 60 homes are being rented, about 45 of those are single-family, and the majority of them, but not all of them, are year-round. And what we know too from data, and there's nationwide data on this, is that once you get a short-term rental in a neighborhood, you're going to get more short-term rentals in a neighborhood. So, I would assume, I haven't studied this map Paul has, that there are several short-term rentals in one road. And that means that all of the other homeowners there no longer feel like they live in a neighborhood. They feel like they live in a place where there are people that come and go, they don't necessarily know who's going to be next door next week or next month, and it creates a very different feel. I think that someone who enjoys short-term rentals when they're appropriate, I think appropriately used, I'm certainly not here to abolish short-term rentals, but I think that for it to take over neighborhoods when we are needing housing for our workers and our families who want to live here year-round, this just is something that is deserving of our attention. And as Sandy Dooley, a member of the four-wheel housing committee, said at our previous meeting in May, let's get this, while it's just getting off the ground as opposed to further down the road, when we have more people who we're going to have to then say, but you've been using for the last three years to make a living, we can't let that go on anymore. And now instead of 60, we have 180 or 240. But I think Andrew is saying you can... But that's not fair. That's not fair. Well, it's a lot of shares in telling people they can't... No. An ordinance applies to all. I'm sorry, by the 60, how many would be impacted? I think it would be difficult to know that because we don't know the level beyond this. The ordinance is fairly tight in that if it's a home, then the only circumstances under which it can be used as a short-term rental are for less than 14 days or if it's an accessory dwelling unit. So I would say probably most of those 60, somewhere north of 50 of them would be my guess. We could have data, but Megan, I guess what I would think we could do is say that we can't have new non-overlocking... I disagree because for every short-term rental, we have five to 10 neighbors who do not feel like they live in the same neighborhood that they lived in just five years ago. I mean, 50 out of 10,000 is a pretty teeny... Andrew, I truly honestly think that our ordinances have to apply across the board. I think that for us to start saying, well, all those existing ones, we're going to just let them go by. That's what you do when people rely on the law. That's what you do when people rely on the law to structure their livelihoods. Yes, you know the law changes Andrew all the time and whenever... When there's a really compelling interest to upset people's livelihoods. That compelling interest is a housing crisis. Well, you two clearly have different perspectives that I think you both articulated them. Did you want to add anything? I have another question about the ordinance. Again, I forgot my laptop. We took that walk I didn't have with me. There was a section that you talked about the different types of ownership for the units, whether it was a private person's name or an LLC. But you didn't mention trusts and I wondered if that was in your mind or whether we wanted to lump that together with... I thought trusts were included. I didn't see the word trust. Did I miss it? It was not purposely excluded. I think it would be intended trust as well. Okay. Didn't it say trust? It said there was... Look for LLC. A partnership. That's where it was. Yeah, the registered partnership agent. The owner is a partnership. That is on page... It doesn't have a page number, but of our packets, it's page 45. Page 45 of our packet. Registered corporate agent, president of the corporation. Anyway, I just wanted to make that point that the ownership of a unit could be a person or a group of persons or an LLC or a trust or a corporation. Maybe I just overlooked because I was looking for it distinctly, but it does say trustees. Okay, as long as it's... Yeah, I thought I'd get that. Other questions or comments from the council? I think we have some people in the audience who would like to make some comments. Raise your hand, please come up. Sure. Okay. Well, the guy in the back, the blue shirt. Please state your name and where you live and then your comments. My name is John Stevens. I live over in South Florida. Is the light on on the... Yes, it's okay. Go ahead and do the mic, please. I'm not 100% of South Burlington following Burlington's example. Andrew, I know you don't agree with this, but they enacted regulations that prevent out-of-state people from buying homes and converting them to Airbnb creating unneeded housing shortage. The subject of severe housing shortage was just expounded upon in other paper last week, and short-term rentals create that problem. We have people in our neighborhood, ones from Texas, other ones from New Jersey. They bought the houses, they reconverted them, and they were charging originally $4,000 a month for a month. Which neighborhood was this? Austin Drive over in South Burlington. They were charging $4,000 a month. Now, both of those places are making between $4,500 and $5,500 a week. They're almost charging four or five times more than what a monthly rate would be. So you think they can't afford that? You don't think they can afford that? When they're making $25,000 a month on a property? Unfortunately, we have one of both sides of us. We have two Airbnbs, both sides. We don't know who's coming. They might be there two days. They might be there for a week. They have dogs with them. They have noise. They've had parties there. I've had one guy chastise me because I asked his kid, or asked him if they could keep his son quiet, and he was yelling all day, and finally after about six hours that I asked him if he could have his son being quiet, they told me to get back in the house and get out of my face. So it's not a pleasant thing having that. And if you don't have one in your block now, you better be careful because you will have one someday because people are making a lot of money buying these houses and converting them into Airbnbs. And it's decreasing the hotels. We can't afford money. They're not getting money taken in. We lived there for 25 years, and we enjoyed the neighbors along with peace and tranquility. And the last two years has been a radical change into a constant flow of strangers, either every two days or every week. We have been unlucky enough to have two Airbnbs on both sides of us. And I said, as you're aware on the board, property taxes are costly, and I hope that not only in our neighborhood, but all neighborhoods prevent other state investors' greed from destroying community unity. It's time for South Burlington to stand up for their full-time residents and enact these guidelines as soon as possible to make room for people that care about their community. And if you don't, as I say, if you don't have Airbnbs in your block at this time, be aware because you could be next. And they are expanding. Burlington has taken the courage and made the regulations, and they have stipulations, and if they think they can do it, I don't know why South Burlington can't. Thank you. Yes. And then the gentleman in gray, and then the lady in blue. No, gray shirt. Your hair is white. I just want to make sure you can hear me okay. Sounds good. Is there a time limit at all? Just curious. Well, I mean, reason. Would you please state your name and where you live? Absolutely. My name is Amy Magyar, and I am not a South Burlington resident. I am a Burlington resident, and the reason I'm here today is because I was very active in working with Megan Tuttle side-by-side for a win-win on short-term rental. So one of the things I just want to bring to your attention is a couple of ways of thinking about short-term rental that maybe feels a little bit less heavy-handed because not all short-term rentals are the same. So for example, owner-occupied partial room rentals in Burlington do not require life safety inspection. They did that because this is somebody's house. For hundreds of years, women who could not afford their houses rented out rooms, what you'll find when you do the data, which is what Burlington did not do, and that's what created four years of us screaming at each other. If we had had the data, if we had asked for people to self-register, how, you know, are you a full-term owner-occupied house, partial unit, all of the information you can ask about gender. Again, people don't have to comment on that, but what you're going to actually see is there is a number. Sure, there are developers that show up, but there's a number of women who cannot afford to live in their homes. What I'm suggesting is look at the ordinance of Burlington. Look at partial units, which only have a registration fee of $80. So it is much less than the 110, but they're willing to get registered. But the full-life safety is actually something that I struggle with, especially for people's houses that they live in, because one of the things if they're using Airbnb as a platform, that's actually part of a checklist that we have to fill in. And so we're getting reviewed as to whether we have our smoke alarms, whether we have our fire extinguishers. So there's actually an incredible amount of regulation that happens within certain platforms. I can't speak to people that are not using the software systems, like Verbo or Flipkey or Airbnb. One of the beautiful things about Airbnb, and most people say, ah, Airbnb, they're awful. They were the first ones to work with cities on actually collecting taxes. So every time Airbnb specifically rents a room, rents a full unit, absolutely you get that tax money. One of the things that was recommended to Burlington that did not go through because of some other decisions that were made were for non-owner occupied is that you could do a housing fee, a nightly fee, so that if there is somebody that has a whole unit and they are not, that's not their primary residence, is that perhaps $5 a night, that money goes towards a housing trust. And other cities have done this. That actually helps build because, understandably, that is going to not be on the long-term rental market. That is one way of delineating if you do actually allow non-owner occupied rentals to actually put some money into your housing trust. The other thing I want to talk a little bit about, and again, I'll be mindful, is one of the things that happens with some short-term rentals. Unfortunately, one of the examples tonight is that this poor man is sandwiched in between two of them. One of the things about short-term rentals is that we are reviewed as hosts. And the guests are reviewed. Long-term rental, I will never become a long-term rental, specifically because of Burlington. I will never become a long-term rental landlord. My hands are tied. I can't walk into the house and make sure somebody's not smoking or somebody's doing something illegal. In my short-term rental, I can walk in anytime, and if they do do something illegal, Airbnb has their credit card and we can charge them and we can get them out. So many short-term rentals will not immediately become long-term rentals, and they sure will not become low income. Now, understand that there's some anger about the fact that somebody may be making $4,000 a week. It's interesting. There's a lot of effort that goes towards my property, making sure that my property is held with a certain standard. Again, I'm reviewed. My house looks better than the house that's two doors down that is a long-term rental and has 25 kids from the University of Vermont falling out of it. My neighbors, I'm in the five sisters' neighborhood. I'm on top of my neighbors and we have not had one noise issue because everybody around me has my phone number that if something happens, they are to call me. Last week, when people started moving into that long-term rental with UVM students, we had nobody to call when there was a huge party. So again, there's some benefits of having that short-term rental as a landlord. We take care of our properties. We're reviewed for a certain standard that is much higher. Unfortunately, in some neighborhoods where you're sandwiched in between, there could be that you have new people coming in and out, but I've got to tell you, they want to be here. They want to experience them. For a lot of them, they're actually testing out to see if they want to live in Vermont. 50% of the people that come to my single-family home want to see if Burlington feels like a good place to be, and I've got to be 100% honest with you right now. Burlington is not a good place to be. South Burlington feels a lot safer, but I still rent to them. The other thing I want you to think about is visiting nurses. Visiting nurses cannot get into long-term rentals because it is about three, four months that they're here. So there's an enormous need for nursing housing, and they are not looking for six-month rentals. They're looking for about three to four, and that is a huge opportunity where in some of these full houses, they have three or four nurses that are staying there, and they get together. So last but not least, God bless you for talking about dogs having rabies. That's not an issue with short-term rentals. That is not the issue that you should be looking at. And I don't even know how you enforce that in terms of a dog showing up and has rabies doesn't have rabies. You person has to prove Airbnb who has a million-dollar policy on my home doesn't care if the dogs that show up have rabies or not, right, or have been had their rabies shot. I just think what you guys are looking at is a little too focused. I suggest that you consider doing some data, asking people to self-disclose and first see what you're dealing with. Then I think you'll have an opportunity to not make the mistakes that Burlington did. And I will say one last thing. The mayor did veto the non-owner occupied in terms of the restriction. And he said, I don't think this is right economically. And unfortunately, there were a few other things that happened where his veto then got changed a couple weeks later. Our ordinance went through. And there has been a drastic decline in tax revenue for the city because they're no longer getting that income from the taxes. And if you do the math really quickly, $4,000 house every week times four, that's good income for you all. I say consider if those are homes that do not have owner occupied, put a nightly fee on it. Get some more money. But do not affect the female who's probably going to stand up and talk about how this is how she can afford her house. I'm suggesting do not inspect her for life safety. Let herself disclose and don't make her pay the higher rate for somebody that is non-owner occupied. Thank you. Thank you. There's a gentleman in the gray shirt. Yes. Hi, my name is Diane Sandy. And I live at 50 Bartlett Bay Road. And I would first of all applaud the city council. Jesse, you've done a great job and the DRB. I think you addressed this very quickly and I think your ordinance is very well spelled out. We live in the same neighborhood that the previous gentleman talked about. And we had in like six, seven, eight houses, probably less, there are two Airbnb's. And this summer we have lived with neither of the owners have ever lived on the property. So that's actually in violation of the Vermont state law that was passed on Airbnb's in 2021, which I'm sure you all looked at, that people had to live in the house for 270 days prior to putting it on short-term rental. And if you haven't, that would be a good thing for you to look at. But neither of these people have ever lived on the property. And this summer it has been a nightmare for us. We have had bachelor parties. We have had three graduation parties from every college in Vermont. And there are rules, but people still do whatever the heck they want. The cleaning people in and out, it's been a nightmare. And you can have up to four dogs. And we have a dog, we have grandchildren, and I totally believe that your rules about getting the dogs, making sure their license is a good one. But we have really resented the intrusion into our privacy because it's not like a single family neighborhood anymore. It's like you're living next to a hotel, and that's very distressing. And in my research, I found that Stowe is one community that have rules, and their rules are that in certain parts of the city, you cannot have Airbnb's or short-term rentals. And so they let them out at the condos and on the mountains or whatever, but they can't have them in the city or in certain neighborhoods. And I would like to propose that as the case. I mean, if somebody was there for three or four months, that would be one thing. We wouldn't be putting up with what we have to put up with a summer. And I would encourage to maybe set some limits either, I'm thinking Lakeshore neighborhood, that they just can't have Airbnb's or short-term rentals there. And, you know, if we have to form a neighborhood association, maybe we'll have to do that. But I would like the city of South Burlington to do what's right for neighborhoods. And I thank you once again. Thank you. Hi, I'm David Austin. I live on Bartlett Bay Road, which is the same neighborhood as Diane and John previously speaking. I have a, I really appreciate that you guys all do what you do, first of all. I did this 20 years ago in South Burlington. I commend you for your patience. I had a couple, so I looked at the ordinance and I had two thoughts about it. One, I think it's entirely appropriate to regulate short-term rentals in a fairly rigid way. Although there may be only 60 at this point. I think Megan's got it about right that to the extent those things look popular, those will increase. I would also say to Andrew's comment that 60 out of 10,000 doesn't seem like much. On that math, you're right. But I suspect if you looked around at where these are located, they're actually fairly specifically designed to hit certain neighborhoods that are more kind of vacation-like. And so what really turns out is that those 60 might actually just be infiltrating a handful of communities that were previously purely residential. And I think Diane said it starts to feel like you're living next to a hotel or basically a hotel or an event place. Well, the city of South Burlington zones for things like that. They don't spot zone and say here in the middle of this neighborhood we're going to allow a little hotel. To my knowledge, that's not how any of the zoning is done. You combine those uses in certain places and you segregate out the residential areas and you say that's just for residential. I hate to tell you this, but Airbnb is not residential. Short-term rental is not residential. And then, so I absolutely encourage you to adopt something soon to address that part of it. On the rest of the ordinance, which applies to all rentals in the city, that part, I looked also, like Tim said, I looked at the, why are you guys adopting that? I was curious. And the only reason cited that related that I could see was it was spurred by an aging housing stock. And you're going to take on a significant new bureaucracy to manage all of these other rentals purely because you perceive you have an aging housing stock. I think that the people who have talked about how the free market takes care of itself have it about right. The city of South Burlington has an awful lot of things on its plate and adding this one seems like a lot and it seems like an appropriate first step. If you think that's an inevitable place you need to go because of the scope of the size of the city, I would start by doing the short-term rental. That's a much smaller population to manage, a much smaller set of inspections to execute, and you would actually learn a little bit about how it is to become an additional supervisor of the property instead of just the landlords or the property managers. And I did see a couple other technical things in there, but I'd be happy to talk about that some other time, but not right now. So thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you. Yes. My name is Kristi Moore. I moved to Vermont a few years ago and I purchased a home here. I love it here. But I'm one of those people that could not afford my home if I did not have rentals within the home. So I'm an owner-occupied home. I love the people that I meet. I actually had a young lady here working with FEMA last week with the recovery efforts. I've got people there now that are just loving it. They're out to dinner every night and enjoying it as well. I'm looking at having nurses rent it in the wintertime when it's slower because I need that income in order to own my home. If I did not have that, I wouldn't be able to live there and I would have to sell it, which would be an unfortunate situation. I did have a home once before that I rented out and I will never do that again on a long-term basis. As Amy had mentioned, you are not allowed into the home after that. You do not have any control over it. They left early and they left $5,000 with the damage to my home. So it's just not an option to do something like that. So I just wanted to kind of voice where I feel and stand with it. And I think it's really important that we do have it and allow for owner-occupied short-term rentals. Can I ask you a question? So you're an owner-occupier and do people stay in bedrooms in your house? Okay. And that's just in one house? Yep. Okay. It's just like having a roommate but not on a full-time basis because I don't really want that. So it's just nice to have people I live alone. And it's a nice comfortable way to have people come and go and not always be there by myself. And that's allowed. I just want to clarify. And that's allowed by this ordinance. Can I ask you another question? Do you have smoke detectors everywhere? I do. Do you have CO detectors as well? I do. Okay. And it's all wired. They're hard-wired and interconnected. Okay. I'm just curious. They drive me crazy. Thank you for doing that. But is the house relatively new and that's why it was like that when you bought it? No. My house is one of the oldest houses in the city. Okay. So thank you for doing that. Okay. Appreciate it. I also like sharing my home with people too because it is such an old historic home. So I think it's great to be able to have people come in and see it, which is fun also. Great. Thank you. Is there anyone else in the audience? Okay. The gallon blue and then bright blue with a mask. And then I think you've Navy blue. Hi. Put that down a little. My name is Ann Obelnicki. And you've heard from me before I've emailed all of you and come to some of the meetings in the past. So I run, I'm a resident of South Burlington. I live in South Burlington. I have two short term rentals here. I, one of them is an in law apartment in my house. And the other one is a single family home or directly across the street from my house. And I bought that property and turned it into a small urban farm. And I rent out the house to be able to afford to own it and also to have income for myself. And I'll, I'll answer Tim's question before he asks it. I went to zoning before I did either of these. I said, what do I have to do? And they said, you have to have an inspected by the farm. And I've had them both voluntarily inspected by the farm. I've replaced windows to make them the right size for egress. I've, everything has hardware smoke detectors. And I passed all the things and spent a lot of money doing that and feel really good about it because I would like people to be safe in the house. And I'm glad somebody else gave me the stamp that said somebody who knows more than me gave me the stamp that said it's safe. I am completely in agreement with the rental registry. I think we're sort of behind on that. And I think we should do it as soon as possible. I think everybody's home should be safe. As far as the short-term rental piece, I shutting down my non owner occupied short-term rental, which although I don't occupy it is directly out my front windows and I can see the entire house from every point in my living room would be a huge financial blow. And Megan has mentioned that, you know, you're giving people a lot of time. It's not a lot of time for people who've put tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars into this business and analyzed every alternative. It's not a lot of time. It would be a huge financial blow to shut down my non owner occupied short-term rental. And I depend on that rental. I'm the only adult in my household. I have a four-year-old and a nine-year-old. And this is my income and this is how I'm available for my children before and after school and pre-school and also make enough to live in South Burlington. And although I also understand there's a housing crisis and I love the idea that somebody else mentioned of having some money from short-term rentals going into addressing the housing crisis by having that funnel directly in, also my livelihood is important and my ability to live here is important. And my kid's ability to be here is important. And like you said, like to buy food, this is how we buy food is by doing a short-term rental. So that's where I come from. I think that there is, you know, you've heard from some neighbors, not my neighbors. None of my neighbors are here. I've never had a complaint about any of the people who stayed with me. I have very strict language and I tell everyone that I am there directly across the street watching them so I don't get people who party. I had the kids who are staying this week happen to be the same age as my kids and they were over in my yard all afternoon playing with my kids. So we've had some really lovely experiences with the people who stay there. But I want to emphasize what some other people have said and what Andrew said, that looking more at the data and what's actually happening, I don't think there are even 50, but I guess maybe the main point is that you don't know how many there are. You don't actually have that data and if you created a registry, you could really easily have all of that data. You could create the registry and ask the questions for what you want to know. You could ask if they're owner-occupied or non-over-occupied, is it part of the year, is it all of the year, are they in law apartments, how many will be shut down. If you made changes, you could ask who owns them. You could ask how many they own. You could ask how they oversee them. You could ask how many locals about how they're overseen and how close the people live who are overseeing them. And some of the stuff in the ordinance is posting phone numbers. There's not currently phone numbers posted. You could require that phone numbers are also given to neighbors, which seemed to be something that worked well for one of the other owners who spoke. You could find out how many locals are financially dependent on these short-term rentals and that doesn't just include the owners. It changed her life that she can make so much money cleaning in my short-term rental for the cleanings that I don't do. I pay another neighbor who runs a lawn mowing business to mow the lawn, which I could not afford to pay him if, well, if I had a long-term rental in that space, it wouldn't even pay the bills, but I certainly couldn't pay the lawn mower guy. I couldn't pay the woman who comes and takes care of the flowers. You know, there wouldn't be this cleaner who's making all this money to maintenance people. The place looks great. I switched to short-term rental from long-term rental. I was able to invest more money in making it look awesome. And all of that money is going to people in the community who are making it look awesome. Again, just re-emphasizing what some other people said, asking how much money is coming into South Burlington and how much would be lost if some of them were shut down because South Burlington does depend on that money that's coming in from the meals and rooms taxes and really has an opportunity to be getting more as well. So that's really all I wanted to say, that it really, I don't, it's not fair to dismiss our knowledge of our own financial situation, that this would be a significant financial disruption to our lives, and yes, other things are important, too, but we can't just shift without losing tens of thousands of dollars. That's what I came here to say. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Jackie, and I'm a Colchester resident. Could you just restate your name, please? Jackie. Jackie Asperdy, yes. He couldn't hear your last name. Jackie Asperdy. I am here tonight as a South Burlington homeowner to humbly ask you to revise the proposed ordinance to allow for non-owner-occupied short-term rentals. I moved to Vermont in 2013 and haven't ever looked back. I absolutely love this area and everything it has to offer. Upon my arrival in Vermont, I moved in with a South Burlington homeowner that I found on Craigslist and shared their space. A few years later, I purchased my first home on Patchin Road. I loved living so close to everything, being able to walk to the grocery store and the airport where I worked at the time. I poured hours of sweat equity into renovating the kitchen and the basement in that house with my dad, and it's one of my proudest accomplishments. In 2021, I sold that home because of a tragic event in my life. I found and purchased a home in Colchester, but I altered my bike route to ride slowly by my first love, I mean house, at least weekly. I've always loved my life with a little extra hustle than the average person, or so I feel. I also may be a little crazy. In January of this year, while planning my wedding and starting a new job, an amazing opportunity came up for me to purchase a duplex on Barber Terrace with my now husband. I spent every waking moment after purchasing that house in February, tearing up carpet, replacing toilets, painting, and traveling. I got to know my new neighbors and spent the rest of my life savings, transforming both sides into spaces that I loved. I wanted to make sure the house was beautiful, as my plan was to place the house on Airbnb until I covered my initial investment, then transformed it into long-term rentals. It has always been my dream to own real estate, and choosing Airbnb and this city was the gateway for me. The initial costs, plus renovation costs, will take approximately five to seven years to recuperate, at which time I will hopefully be able to refinance at a lower interest rate and after paying off a bit more of the mortgage. At that point, I will be adding two beautiful, efficient long-term rentals to the housing stock. Since I started hosting at this location in April, I have met amazing people. A retired couple came to Vermont from the Poconos to ride their bicycles. A group of college friends here for a show on a higher ground and to reconnect. Two sisters who flew in for their brother's 50th wedding anniversary. The list goes on. Almost every one of my guests asks for recommendations, especially ones within walking distance, as many people do not arrive by car. I always recommend my favorite restaurants, all of which are in South Burlington. I love this city and I want to be able to share that love. I want to follow any and all rules that are in place to make this home and the city a better place. I ask that you continue to let me do so. So please remove the proposition restriction for non-owner-occupied short-term rentals in South Burlington. Thank you. We have someone online, Darryl Campbell. If he's still. Yes, thank you. Thank you so much. Appreciate the time. Good evening, everybody. My name is Darryl Campbell. My wife and I operate a short-term rental duplex on White Place. We are currently transitioning in the next few months into retirement. And our short-term rental is a key component of how we will fund that retirement. Thank you for the time today. I first want to express full support for the idea of a rental registry and the associated fees. Full agreement that this is an effective way to achieve compliance with building health safety codes, all of which are critically important. We fully support this. I would propose after hearing some of what we've heard this evening that there may be some ways to amend, adjust the regulatory mechanisms within the registry to ensure that some of the experiences of the folks on Bartlett Bay Road, and I'm so sorry that they have those experiences. That's terribly unfortunate that perhaps there could be some ways to do that through the registry. I think that would help. I am in line with those, however, who find concerns with the owner occupancy requirements. I think they are disproportionately burdensome to existing short-term rental operators. I would ask council and staff as part of the direction to please consider that that is a significant burden. And you've heard from a lot of folks who said that better than I. Look, most of us who operate short-term rentals were ordinary folks. We run a small business. We followed all the rules to get here. We made substantial property investments. We relied on those rules. And now we rely on the income to be able to live within the city and make ends meet. And I find it an interesting argument that I'm trying to reconcile that with a housing crisis and the availability of housing in peril, because we want people to be able to come and live here so that they can support themselves and their families, that somehow it makes sense to displace another group who are already here and are doing exactly the same thing. I would question the wisdom of that. The fact is that the current ordinance as it is proposed with regard to the occupancy requirements would put many of us out of business. And I would ask the council that even if we all agree that the availability of housing in the city is a critical concern, do we really believe that the best that we can do to solve the problem is kind of target a small group of local business owners and solve it largely on their backs? I think we can do better. I did communicate with all of you through an email yesterday. Thank you for taking the time to consider that. I outlined a couple of options, some of which we've heard. So I won't go through them again. I think it does make sense to move forward with a registry. I would strongly encourage us to do that and consider to consider how to make it better and stronger. And to include some limited exception language that essentially grandfather's in existing short-term rentals. I guess at the end of the day I would say this. Let's do what we can to get to the best possible solution. Let's take more time. Let's gather data, review it, analyze it, study all the relevant issues. Let's involve community stakeholders helping to craft a comprehensive ordinance that addresses pertinent housing issues and the things that we're trying to fix here. I think the best and the most effective solutions are those that don't negatively impact anyone. And I think with some concerted effort, getting everybody together at the table, I think we can get there. Thanks so much. Thank you. Is there anyone else online who wants to say anything? I support rental registry and also the, I'm Sandy Dooley. I live on East Terrace. Also the short-term rentals. I believe there are some questions that the affordable housing committee raised and shared with Deputy City Manager Locke a while back following his first presentation that haven't been considered. And also I think the exemption of affordable housing should be explored. I believe Burlington exempts affordable housing from the fees. But with regard to short-term rentals, there's one thing that Mr. Campbell just talked about business owners. And what really troubles me is that short-term rentals, it's not a residential use. It is. It's like a hotel. And the other thing that's a tremendous inequity. Well, I'll just go back at the most recent affordable housing committee, meaning some, I don't know where you can look this up, but someone got online and said right now the average per night fee on Airbnb in South Burlington is $680. That's probably for a whole house. So, so there, you know, there's a fair amount of income that's with some places that are going. And when our tax department assesses a house in a residential zone, I don't think they think it's being run as a business. And so it seems very inequitable to me that someone that lives in a house year round and pays taxes at a level and has no income from short-term rentals. And then the next door neighbor who has a short-term rental, which is a business and not a residential use is taxed at the same level. So it seems to me that the city is really missing out on appropriate tax, taxation, if it were to continue to allow non-owner occupied short-term rentals. Because as someone earlier said, I don't, I have a hard time understanding how short-term rentals qualifies as a residential use of a dwelling unit. So that's what I wanted to point out there. It's not a residential use and there are other inequities that flow from that. Thank you. Thank you for considering it. I just have a question for Sandy in terms of the tax inequity. And my understanding is that our commercial book of businesses actually taxed a slightly lower rate than residential. Is that right? No. I don't know. I don't know. The homestead rate. Are you asking me? Yeah. I don't know. No. Well, I'm not asking you. I make that as a question, a general question, because I'm curious if, I mean, I understand what you're saying, that it's not a residential use. So the income from that home is comparable with, but I don't know how the city would assess more money from a home that's an Airbnb than it does the house next door. I don't know how you could do that legally. So it would be assessed a non homestead tax rate. If you're running the portion of your business, portion of your home that you're running a commercial entity through, whether it's a short or long term would be assessed at the non homestead rate. But the assessed. What if it were a hotel? What if it were a two unit hotel? Sorry. I shouldn't say assessed. The assessed value of the home would be the same as an assessed value of a home, which I think is Sandy's point. Right. It would be taxed at the homestead, non homestead rate. But if you had a two room hotel on Dorset Street, right, how would that be assessed? Would it be assessed on cash flow or be, you know, assessed on, on building value plus land value plus whatever. I'm just curious. I mean, because we had that whole thing that, you know, we're, that was based on profits. You know, an appeal to the particular tax assessment. Yeah. So it can be assessed either way and we can, if, if you want, you can bring in the tax assessor to answer this question, but it can be assessed on the value of the real estate and the land, which is how most homes are assessed, or it can be assessed on an income approach. If the business chooses to disclose their financials. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Well, that answers that. Thank you. Let's see. Nora Seneca. And then. Good evening. Thank you. I think I just wanted to put out the suggestion. I think somebody else has already suggested it is just moving, maybe separating out, and then moving forward on the short-term rental or focusing on that. Primarily for now and then gathering data and or information about what needs to be in place more for the longer-term rentals. And, and so that we can both take into consideration the multi. Just the multi-dimensional aspects of the long-term rental, whether it's people who are roommates, whether it's aging housing. And then we have all the, the lively discussion we had in the affordable housing committee, just about the, for some of the larger apartment dwellings, there's already a lot of oversight on those longer-term rentals anyway. So if we would just focus more for right now on the short-term rentals and get that, get that in place. And then the other, I just want to second that another person had said earlier this evening about, is there any, and this is just a question. I don't have a, a fully formed idea about how, what this would look like, but is there a way to creatively allow, create some zoning around, like, around where, where or how, how much short-term housing there is in certain areas, not necessarily banning it entirely, but maybe you could say, you know, a percentage, you know, allowable or grandfather and people who are already there. Because it does seem like certain neighborhoods are more likely to have people come in and buy houses. You know, when you look at sort of what's available on, on Airbnb, that, that there might be some neighborhoods that are more vulnerable to investors coming in as opposed to others. And, and so we'd want to kind of help those neighborhoods a little bit with, with making, you know, managing that. But that's, that's my only other, my only comments for tonight. Yeah. I just have one little, another speaker mentioned the medical personnel coming in, and that's a, a range of types of medical personnel. They usually have like six, usually about 13 week contact contracts, plus or minus. So it's a little over three months, but so they can, it's a little harder for them to find longer-term housing. They're usually often end up in some shorter-term situation. Thank you. Thank you. Can I just comment on the short-term versus long-term? I appreciate Nora's comment tonight. Thank you. But I mean, I have seen firsthand some long-term housing in South Burlington that was in dire need of any kind of a health and safety inspection above and beyond smoke detectors because of other infractions that in Burlington, would have been said, it would have been not condemned, but they would have been forced to repair all the things that were broken. Right. And so I, I appreciate that we want to look at both, but I'm telling you, there are some long-term rental units out there that I'm sure the tenants would really appreciate somebody coming and telling the landlord to fix some stuff that hasn't been fixed for years. And this is one of the opportunities and, and the advantages of having this registry. Thanks. Thank you. And I'm, I just want to clarify, I'm not against at all the longer-term rental. I, I, or registry, I think that I totally support making housing safety. I'm just wanting to make sure that we get every, we get as many of those long-term rentals, you know, inspected and, you know, we got to, I just want to make sure we're pulling everybody out of the dark out of that, you know, getting as many online as, and in terms of the health and safety. So I think you and I are on the same page on that. It's more of like, how do we get everybody? You know, how do we thoughtfully get every, get it done? Thank you. Donna Laban. And then Chris. Donna, you have your green light on, but we don't see you. We can't hear you. Well, maybe we'll go to Chris and then maybe Donna can join us. Thank you. Tim, thank you for those comments that, that was a nice lead up to kind of some comments from the affordable housing. Will you introduce yourself to the credit? We know who you are. Of course. Chris Trombly reside on Du Bois Drive, chair of the affordable housing committee and some other committees. So this ordinance was a topic discussion at the last affordable housing meeting. And I thought we had a robust discussion. Megan, I apologize if I missed the updates earlier. I saved it for now. Oh, excellent. Thank you. So, you know, the outcome that we're focused on is improving safety for residents. And Tim hit on a point that was a highlight from the committee was that tenants in a housing crisis are concerned about losing that rental that their landlords not going to renew them. And so if they call in that violation or what they perceive as a violation, that would put their renewal at jeopardy. And you know, where would I go? How would I find housing? So that's really the outcome here. We also understand that there are landlords that are trying to do the right thing. Maybe they have some violations that come out of this. We would like to see an opportunity where the outcome is that those are fixed and the outcome is so that the resident can stay there. So we want to work with good parties. There was why we didn't take an official vote asking for action. There was broad consensus asking for an exemption for affordable housing units. That fee would be waived. How that how the math works on how you make up for that piece. The discussion was focused around the fee for a market rate could be passed on to a tenant. Maybe the landlord eats it. You know, that that's their decision. They're not going to pass that on. And so that's going to be an increased caring cost. I think we've seen through our app applications. You know, just kind of the, you know, the small margins and we're trying to do the most they can with, with what they have. It would be fantastic for the council to take action to direct a policy decision to afford that same exemption that's afforded in the city. And so that's going to be, that's going to be a, that's going to be a policy decision to afford that same exemption that's afforded in Burlington. There was also a discussion about the frequency of rentals. And Megan did a fantastic job talking about the frequency of those rentals. And it was helpful to hear life and safety as a differentiator. It is something that's come up with committee members before in discussion that the repeated inspections are going to be done at a time where the, the residents have to be taken into a tenant's life. And so this party said it was good. This party said it was good. Now, why does that, the city have to do that? So if there was an opportunity where we could minimize the impact to the residents where another party has certified that it's, you know, it meets those requirements. What can we do to, just minimize that impact? Cause having somebody come into your home is, is going to be a great way to see the future of your home. And that's what we're going to do in the next five years, but you know, because of the, the period that, that Megan had described. Um, and just the last piece, um, we wouldn't want it, there was a fair application of life and safety across all of the rental products, whether it was long term or short term. There was a life and safety piece. Um, and we would, you know, whether that, um, the tenant protections, even though short-term, that they feel safe where they are. So the big ask, I think, is just is the affordable housing piece and a fee waiver from that. That would be helpful to guide that tonight. Thank you. Can I just clarify? When you say the exemption for affordable housing, is that just for the rental registry fee and they still would be subject to the required inspections? That's correct. Okay. So we wouldn't... Is that... You suggested, Jesse, that Winooski had done that and then reneged on that because they... No, it was the actual inspections. Yeah. Oh, okay. The inspections... But you're not advocating that we just don't inspect them because... No, we're strong proponents of the inspection because even an affordable housing provider can fall behind on maintenance and there's code violations. Oh, for sure. Yeah. So everyone's treated equally to the same rules. It's just the... Who we're passing on to the expense for that. And when we're talking about livelihood here, we're talking not an investment property, but being able to maintain perpetually affordable housing for income-restricted households. Is there any fee or amount that would be, you know, like a recognition that this is an important administrative function of the city and it costs something? So we ought to... Yeah. Yeah. Like a pilot program, that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If the outcome that we're looking for is safe housing, it's not... We want to do... We want to get in your house. We just want you to have a safe place to live. How that program is deployed, you know, whether that's a good will of, hey, we're giving you a lot of notice to get you an opportunity to get this corrected prior to a rollout or implementation or a fee assessment. So that way, when we do come around, there's less likelihood that that's been resolved. As far as the fee, we did not come to a discussion of, hey, what's reasonable amount? Sorry. You know, that's... No, that's okay. Yeah. I just wondered if you had, or if there... Maybe you could consider that, is there some kind of payment lieu of this fee that would demonstrate that we support this activity as important, but also need to have... We have a different bottom line than a for-profit apartment building. We can take that away as some homework if there's not going to be a decision here and we can send some feedback. Feedback's always welcome. Data is helpful. So we can certainly take away that for homework. Thank you. Thank you so much. Is Donna on now? No, she left. Oh, okay. Any other comments? We're running a little late, but... I have some old properties. Who is creating that and who's paying for that? Are the fees enough to pay for that? You know, just because it's an Airbnb, part-time rental, doesn't... That brings a lot of money into our city. We don't have enough hotel rooms for tourists. Our industry is a tourist industry, Burlington and South Burlington. These are things that I think we need to think about the cost about this and also how possible is it? I mean, we have tons of cars on East Terrace and the police don't go and clear them up. They don't, you know, because they're strapped. I don't care personally, and others might. I like the community of college kids, and I think it's wonderful that they're there. But there's a lot of... I think the finance of this really has to be considered, and I haven't heard any of the finance of it, the fact that this is a... We are a tourist area. So we have to provide not only... We've stopped development in a lot of land here in South Burlington. Maybe we should start opening that land to develop so that we can have these houses. But I also see that there's a great entrepreneurial spirit among these people that are doing the Airbnb's. And I think that that's to be commended. And also with Sandy Dooley's thing about their charge of meals and room tax. So when they have their Airbnb, they have to pay for that as well. So I just, you know, we all can get disturbed sometimes by certain, even our own neighbors, right? And so having little fraction disputes at times with certain Airbnb dwellers, we have disputes all the time, period. I mean, it doesn't matter if it's a temporary or permanent home dweller. Those disputes happen. So I just think that all of the components of the financial element should be addressed. And I'm not hearing it. Well, I understand that's how we arrived at those dollar figures for to fund the staffing required to carry out the rental registry. They do not cover the cost of either renting space or building space. Is that correct? Yeah. If you look back at the minutes from the May 15th meeting, the financials are covered in that. If you watch that video, the financials are covered in the May, I think it's May 15th or May 21st meeting, the financials for the program were discussed. And we're based upon, including all units, apologize, ran some quick numbers off the website. And it looks like about a third of the units are considered affordable. So that's a pretty exempting. Those would be a pretty substantial hit to the plan. Can I reply to Cindy? So Burlington has a vigorous, you know, registry and in about once five year inspection service for all the rental units. And the cost is around, I think it's like about $110 per unit per year. And that, of course, then bakes into whatever the rent is, right? I mean, the landlord has costs, right? Property taxes, insurance, the rental registry, you know, cost. But I mean, $110 a year, either for long term rental or short term rental is not a great price to pay. And if you're thinking about an Airbnb very short term rental where $110 isn't even the cleaning fee on a weekend, right? It's really not, that's not a burdensome value. The value in the registry, like we've said before, is ensuring that every rental unit where somebody is paying somebody else to live somewhere for a period of time meets specific safety and fire codes. So that they don't die in a fire because there isn't a proper smoke or CO detector, right? Or that there isn't some other safety hazard in the house. Everybody who rents something deserves that kind of assurance that they live in a basic safety situation residence, right? Yeah, I totally agree. Let me finish, the state has offered to bounce this ball many years and drop and never ever gets it over the goal line, right? And so now we're the next biggest city in the state and we want to take those bull, those horns, that bull by the horns and try and implement the same thing. Because we want to ensure that all people that are renting are getting the same access to a safe place to live. And that $110 for that particular situation, I don't think that's burdensome at all for the type of administration that we have to implement. Yeah, okay, I can understand that. But then also, then what you find and discover sometimes for those landlords, I just know that we know a few electricians and they said that the codes in Burlington are insane. So it's a level of codes as well. So this is a level because- Those codes are pretty much standard for electrical codes. If you're gonna have a rental unit, every smoke detector has a certain position it has to be in. If you buy a new house today, they can't build the house having that satisfying that code. The smoke detectors have to be able to talk to each other over wires and be plugged into 110 and have battery backup. You need so many CO detectors per floor and you need one in every bedroom. I mean, so- So I guess it depends. I mean, when they're going in, what are they inspecting, right? Because the egress windows, those things, those can cost a lot for a- Yeah, but you don't want to put somebody in a basement bedroom and then there's a fire and they can't get out a little tiny window because the- But Airbnb's, they have regulations. They don't require, I'm gonna respond. They don't require the egress at all. And they don't require anything. They don't respect like that. No, no. It's not hard wire. I mean, we have a house in the OVO. It has any home burned down. I mean, you know, I mean- Do you wonder how many fires they had in Burlington back in the 80s where the people had pulled the smoke detectors and how many people died on School Street in 1982? Do you remember that? No, I wouldn't. Okay, but this is how the code progresses to make sure people are safe. Mm-hmm. Okay, well, I just don't want to put an undue burden on people who are trying to make a living. So I just, that's what I want to bring. But there are fair business practices, Cindy. And there will be the first time we do a lot of these inspections. There will be egress windows, there will be exit pass that are too long because these buildings had not been inspected and really forever. And you will hear complaints out of the gate. But that's about, to your point, about ensuring life safety in our, many of these older buildings. And we're responsible for that. Okay. Are there any other comments from the public, either in the comfort of their home or in the auditorium? Okay, seeing them, why don't we take a 10, like a five minute break, and then we'll have our discussion. Okay. I'd like to get everyone back so we can start. So can we have people sit down, you're welcome to leave or you're welcome to stay and hear our conversation? We have before us now a couple of things. I think we've given you advice in terms of about the structure, if in fact we're going to have a rental registry, then we might need the physical space and that issue. But I think before we determine that, we need to decide as a council if we are interested in moving forward, not necessarily tonight, because I think there probably are some edits people might want to make with a rental registry. So are there some? Yeah, just frame that team. So technically the next action for the council would be to come to a draft ordinance that you could warn a first reading on in a public hearing. If you are not there yet tonight with this draft, what would be most helpful is to provide us guidance on how to, if you want to move something forward on how to bring you back a draft that you could, you as a collective body could feel comfortable moving forward. Thanks. Okay. So what are some comments? Mary? So I do have some changes I would like to suggest, but in terms of the owner occupied requirement, I am fully in support of that. I believe that there are affordable ways for people to become small business owners. They can build accessory dwelling units if that's the route that they want to take and their entrepreneurship. I just want to clarify some things before I talk about my suggestions. I had one and only one and it'll be my only one experience with Airbnb. And it was not in this country, but it's an international company where we were going to spend a week in Edinburgh, Scotland. And I had not only myself and my three children and husband, but I had my two in-laws and my brother-in-law and his wife and his children. And so we were a happy bunch and showed up and landed in a squat in Edinburgh with no working kitchen sink. It's stank of sewage. There was garbage everywhere. And so we arrived after my in-laws and my in-laws were calling us when we landed and they said, I come over. This is going to not be a really good experience. And so I spent the rest of that day after an international flight on an Airbnb customer call. She said, then get out of the house. They hadn't inspected it. I got out of the house. Within 15 minutes, there were three cars that showed up full of teenagers that went in there. Okay. What I got was a gift card to go to other Airbnbs for the rest of the week. I will never do Airbnb again. This place had never been inspected. I'm sure there were nothing in terms of safety that we're all talking about here tonight. I'm glad that there are good Airbnb here in South Burlington users. I commend you for it. If you were the rule, Airbnb in my book would have a very different connotation, but I would still approve this ordinance. And why? Because of the housing crisis. Um, so I want to just go back a little bit back in 2022, I believe. I, um, I was the first one to draw up a draft ordinance. I built it off of national best best practices off of data off of what was used and what was useful in cities throughout this country. So I, uh, did not, uh, do that lightly. I spent hours and hours and hours pouring through regulations and we had already had meetings in 2022 as a city council, and it was based on those discussions that our city staff went forward with this draft ordinance. And I thank them for it. So, um, since Airbnb does not hold the host to standards, and I do know that when I did complain, one of my hosts said, Oh, I've never gotten complaints before and I don't appreciate being complained about, and I'm sure I'm going on some black list with Airbnb and that's just fine with me. So we have a multifaceted issue. Okay. Clearly our single family home should not be for students. That's why we are in South Burlington working with UVM and there is going to be student housing built. That's why we are working with the UVM medical center so that we can have visiting nurses, nurses stay right here in this block. Um, we are developing situations, um, uh, in our land development regulations, uh, making situations possible, making the, the, um, you know, the, these developers, uh, and specifically these, these businesses, which are universities and, and hospitals, um, able to house the people that they bring here. Um, and the goal is to free up those single family homes, uh, for people who, uh, need to come in and work for our other businesses in the area. Uh, and I am very glad to see that diversification of our housing stock. Uh, I believe that this ordinance, uh, participates in that. Um, regarding state law, thank you very much. I did not know about that requirement of the first 270 days, um, that, uh, a home should be owner occupied prior to it going on to the short-term rental listing. Um, so here, here are my suggestions. Let's make a generous grace period. If August, if April 1st is too soon for some people, let's, let's make it more generous for those who are already existing short-term rental and non-owner occupied, uh, single family homes. Um, with regard to, um, the fees, I would like to exempt affordable units. Um, and what we could do is, um, the $110, I do not see a big difference in $30, um, if, if you can put in all of those, um, safety features, um, then you can afford $30, um, more to pay $110. I might increase, even increase that to $115 just to cover some of that whole. So who would be 115? Anybody who's going through the rental registry and affordable housing would be zero and, but their market rate units would pay. What I would suggest would be $115. And then the fines, if anybody is fined, would cover, um, some of that, that short fall. Um, I would also, uh, like to really stress what the chair of our affordable housing committee said, Chris Trombley, um, to work with good parties. My experience with Airbnb, they're not a good party. Our firefighters there, our electrical and fire inspectors, they're good parties. They should be doing those inspections. I'm not going to rely on Airbnb for the safety of, of our residents and everybody in the city should know that, that we here as a board are putting that investment into the quality of life of the people who live here. Um, regarding the, the inspections and I live in your neighborhood. I would love that double that you own to become available for a long term rental. I know people who are just trying to get into South Burlington and an affordable house or rental unit. Um, that's the only place the only neighborhood I could move into when I moved to South Burlington, the database, if we could keep a database so that we know which units have been, uh, I'm assuming that this would be some of the properties or, or sampling housing trust or, or whatever entity, the cathedral square, which units have been inspected that year, that calendar year, right? So we don't hit the same unit that's already been inspected three times that year. If there could be that trust, that the inspector who came for HUD, who came for VHFA, no, I'm right, getting a no. I don't think it's possible we don't, to be able to coordinate with different agencies, I mean, I would, I would not want to commit that we could do that under any circumstance. Okay. Well, you're the, you're a professional, so it was just a suggestion. So, but I, I hear what, um, I hear what Jesse had to say, which is that, um, exempting visits is, is something that creates this disparity and quality and in safety. And I'm very sensitive to that. Um, that, that should be our number one priority as Councillor Barrett has said. So those are, those are my two cents. Okay. So you're interested in exempting affordable housing from the fees from the fees. And if there's affordable units within a larger structure, the other unit market rate, the market rate one, ones would be 115. You, you're willing to extend the implementation to allow existing non-owner occupied people to sell their house or something. Make it a generous grace period so they can figure it out. And quickly, just back in the napkin math says you'd have to raise the fee $50 to 160, um, to cover the, the 90 grand you would lose by exempting the 900 units that are affordable. Right. Well, I'm, I'm looking at fines that could potentially cover some of that. And as we, we could also look into upping our affordable housing trust fund that could also be part of this solution. I think we, we do, we do everything we can to stay away from fines, um, because they are seen as very, uh, punitive. Um, and so I, I think it would be setting us up for failure for being able to deliver a system that pays for itself. Um, if we don't go by what the numbers are. Okay. I just want to point out, you know, an article that came out in seven days that the, if there isn't a penalty, people are just going to abuse the system. Well, there is a penalty. There's a penalty and we'll get to a penalty, but our goal is to never have to find anybody is to get to them through, uh, collaboration to get to, uh, a safe and, uh, well constructed. So I miss, so the penalties could cover some of that shortfall. So your, so I think what you're suggesting is we go in, we inspect, we find a violation, we, not only do they have to pay to correct that violation, we add a penalty to it. So it's not a fine for not doing it. It's an added charge to not, to fix it, which may. No, I'm not creating a new penalty. That's not what I intended. So you guys are using, I think, fine and penalty language slightly differently. Um, can you, I should, I think, I think what Steve is saying is we try not to find people in violation of ordinance. We tried to get to yes with them. So they rectify the problem. So, um, folks are better served on the street and we're not finding people. You're saying close this, don't have the taxpayer subsidize. So close the gap. Let the system support full 90,000, but I'm saying increase our affordable housing trust fund to help us close that gap as well. So, so I think that's the, that's the, there's going to be a gap that we have to figure out a close. Okay. And then you said something about a database, but that was, he said it wouldn't work. Okay. So, and we use our affordable housing trust fund to make it possible for summit properties and CHT to build their affordable housing. So, okay. So this is not reinventing the wheel. All right. Other thoughts? Oh, Jesse. Sorry. Can I ask a quick question about? Yeah. When you say exempt affordable housing, so do you have a definition of that or maybe that's in the ordinance and I'm forgetting. So, are you talking, so the way we are currently tracking affordable housing is if it's meeting the IZ requirements in new buildings. So it's some kind of perpetually affordable, federally subsidized affordable housing. That's correct. So just so the council's aware, there's a universe of housing in the city that's naturally occurring affordable housing that just is a lower market rate rent. No. You're not saying that you're just saying that kind of federally defined. That's correct. Just want to make sure I'm understanding the definition. That's correct. Okay. Even if they, I mean, we have some, some that were built 25 years ago, they would be if they're perpetually affordable. I'm responding to the summit property snowball situation. Yeah. Yeah. Where they can't get the loan because they write it just. I'm thinking of all those houses on Queensbury Road. Those are affordable housing that were used with CHT money. Right. 25 or 30 years ago. It's off path. Is it off white or patching? Off patching. So I'm talking about some of them are shared equity, but yes. I'm talking about new. So what about the old affordable housing? Well, it's perpetually affordable. I mean, I don't know how much there is, but I know we have some. We'll have to come up with a definition. I mean, it's clearly a math problem. Right. I mean, that's all. Right. So if you're going to exempt them, then you have to raise the revenue. You have to find a way to come up with the revenue. You use general fund dollars. That's a complete policy decision. So we can exempt those. We can we can change the language to exempt them. We will also bring you the financial impact of what that's going to be. And then you can decide how you want to fund that if you so choose. Right. Other thoughts, Tim? Yeah. I was just, I mean, going a step back from no cost at all, I would say that we should reduce the cost for large scale affordable properties that are run by nonprofits, you know, such as CHT or or Cathedral Square. And and maybe think about if they have their own property management service, I'm just throwing this out there, if they already have a property management service that's that's, you know, owned or operated by these entities that take care of their properties themselves, maybe they could be empowered to do their inspections, these inspections themselves, but they have to attest to it unit by unit on, you know, a form that that is filed with us that would just relieve some of the labor burden. I'm just putting it out there as a possibility. The the other thing is, you know, we've heard some from some landlords and owners who are local owners that they live in the neighborhoods where they own properties that they rent out or they live very close by and, you know, I think I have, I feel a little bit of affinity for them if they're doing a good job versus an out of state entity that just buys houses randomly and then uses some intermediary to, you know, rent them out. And that's what really bugs me is the thought that either Wall Street or hedge funds or somebody is going into neighborhoods and buying, this is not happening here exactly, but it's happened in other cities, like going in after the Great Recession and just wholesale, you know, buying up whole streets of homes and then turning around when things get better and renting them out and raising the cost of living for lots of people. You know, that just really bugs me and it's like, it's like these hedge funds, they look for the where, where are these gross deviations in margins? Where can we make money on margins? Housing is one place because everybody's got to have, you know, has to live somewhere and it just drives me nuts because it makes it more expensive for everybody. If you want to talk about not having generational wealth or income, it's when it's spent on rent, that's one place that it goes just ridiculous, you know. That wasn't like that 50 years ago. So being able to maybe look at out-of-state ownership versus local ownership, somebody that lives right in town and the properties are nearby. And I think I would want to hold off on any limitation on the short-term rental for a period beyond what we're proposing. I don't know what that period is, we can talk about that later and I certainly don't want to affect owner-occupied units where people are renting to people in bedrooms that are in their home. I would even maybe think about if they didn't have hard-wired interconnected smoke detectors and CO detectors, if they just had them and they were in their house, if it was a really old house, I mean, I would entertain that thought that maybe we wouldn't force them to spend the three or four or $5,000 to implement that if it's their own house. But that's not how I felt about all the other properties. I was just bent a little bit by the thought that somebody owns a three-bedroom house, they live there and they help pay their mortgage by renting it to a couple of nurses. So I don't know if that is really the best thing is to force them to go hire a company to come in and do a lot of drilling and stuff. I don't know, it's a thought because you could still have interconnected detectors just, you know. You can't ask us to enforce part of the code in one building and part of the code in another. It just sets us up for failure. And so, but owner-occupied short-term rentals is allowable by the draft ordinance. I wouldn't want to see that get disturbed. And then I guess I'm not tracking how, what you would like us to look at for out-of-state versus a local owner. Because again, it puts us in a bind of trying to pick and choose how we adopt or hold them accountable to a code. And so, I, yeah, I know, I get it. The administrative responsibility goes up exponentially when we're trying to and I understand that. Determinations like that because then you have to sort of lose the LLC, et cetera, et cetera. So, right. So I can, I just putting that opinion out there. Thank you. You couldn't require them to have a local person responsible. So there's a phone number. So the ordinance, the draft ordinance does require if you live outside, if the owner lives outside Chittendon County, that you have property management in Chittendon County. So, right. I did see that. That would help solve that, I think. I mean, at least you get some satisfaction if you live there. Right. You could complain, or the neighbors could have a number to call to say. If that property management person is responsible. You know, is responsive and responsive. Yeah. Get there from that. I'm saying if it's an out-of-state situation. An owner can be unresponsive as well. Yeah, that's true. That's true. You know, that works both ways. That way, too. Well, that's usually a property manager is the owner. And that was my experience in Edinburgh, and the property manager slash owner was not helpful. Sure. Is that it for you, Tim, in terms of, otherwise you sort of like it? In general, I just think we're going to have to tweak some around the edges until we get it right where we want it. And then when it goes, we're going to probably learn some things along the way, and we're going to have to tweak it again and again and again. And I'm okay with that, right? Okay. Andrew? Thank you, Ellen. I'm not going to repeat everything that I said earlier, but it's really clear to me having listened to some folks tonight that, as written, the harm would be really disproportionate to certain owners in the city, and I'm really uncomfortable with that result. I agree with Tim, and I agree with some of the Congress tonight, I don't like what's happening in the Lakeshore neighborhood or Bartlett Bay. I don't like the idea of out-of-state investors coming in and buying up properties. It's just a number of bad things. The owners' reputation is not at stake. They're not here. You don't know who they are. They don't really care. I could see a rule limiting the non-owner occupied to people who live in the vicinity within certain radius, something like that, and we can try and craft a rule like that, but I really think we need data because we may get it wrong, and we just don't know enough yet. Let's collect the data, figure out whose people are. It's easy enough to someone that owns an LLC. We can just tell them. You've got to tell us who the beneficial owners are. People do that all the time in the financial world. Who's the real owner? Get the data, figure out who they are, and then craft a rule that makes sense. That's what I think we should do. And you would go about that just sort of asking people to identify themselves? Yeah, fill it out. Who are you? Whitty-Liff? Who are you? Who's the individual that ultimately owns it? Whitty-Liff? Who are you? Are you a Blackstone? Who are you? So we know, right? We have the data, and then we can write rule that responds to the data. In terms of costs, I think the program needs to cover the operating costs and the capital costs. I think it needs to be self-contained. And again, I don't think we have a lot of data. I've talked with folks, and folks came at the last meeting and told us that for short term rentals across the country, some of the fees are much higher than we're proposing, like 300 rooms, someone threw out a number of like a couple thousand in here. I looked. I looked. No, they're not. Well, I don't know, Megan, because I've not seen any data. I've not seen any comparison. I just don't know. I did it for hours and hours and hours over. Well, I've heard different things from other people, but I have not done the research myself. Yeah. But I think it would be really good to maybe have a bunch of citizens. You know, normally things happen by committee, right? The committee does this research, it presents it, and like we know what we're legislating against. We know the data. Because I think there's a potential opportunity there, and we've heard it here for short term rentals to actually increase the fees to help cover the costs of the program. I just think we're potentially missing an opportunity. Our person didn't know the data. In terms of affordable housing, you know, I agree with Tim, I'm in favor of some reduced costs, but again, I think that the program needs to cover itself. Maybe reduced costs, if it's not a profit, they can't pass the expense on, but then we need to pass that cost over to the, you know, the for-profit folks, and it just needs to balance, and we need to figure that out. But I think zero doesn't sound like the right number. Okay. All right. Well, I'm leaning more in that direction. I think it does need to be, I mean, basically in favor of the intentions and the purpose of this ordinance, I think it does. I mean, I would like to see the grandfathering, if you will, of the current owners until the property is sold. I mean, I think you mentioned that. If that's, I want to do it. If that would, and then continue with the requirement that there be owner operated. So we would have whatever we have now, in Airbnb, or Burbeau or whatever it is, single family units, that number would stay what it is. They'd be able to rent them under the circumstances they rent now and make the money that they have figured out they need for their income and their retirement or whatever it is, whatever their business plan was. But we wouldn't have any more coming in. That's what I would like to see. And I don't know when that end piece is. I think maybe it's when the house is sold. I mean, I don't, it doesn't help anyone just give them five years. But you're, but you'd be okay with, they would stop the register and it would still be stuck. Oh, all the registration, yes. All the requirements, the inspections, the safety part of it. I'm full on. I just am not willing to change people's kind of business partnerships or design. If we find that they're not maintaining the building and it isn't safe or whatever, then we can find them or they can figure out how to go forward with that. I think it's important to have the numbers and the people that you need to contact if you're having problems be within Chittenden County or so that I think there might be some ability for neighbors to make a complaint and register what is or is not going on. Maybe they can register it with the rental registry and say, yeah, we've called this guy 10 times and he keeps running to the same people or, you know, this is not tolerable. But so that's kind of my middle ground. I don't know if you can. We have direction. Yeah, I think we have direction and so I think we will bring you back another draft for you to consider. I'm not totally sure the we have three people yet on the same page for the draft but we might do our best thinking one thing bring you back in draft and close. I feel closer to Tim. There's a spectrum happening. We don't have Tyler's input yet. We don't have Tyler's input yet. So part of me thinks make the numbers work with either a lower fee for affordable units. I know you'd like to get to zero but if we can bring it bring it bring something that works for the fee. I hear a couple votes or grandfathering. I'm not sure where Tim is on grandfathering. I mean that's easy for us to do and I think that's to me that's the easiest things that gets to yes. Wait till you are a grandfather. Just so you know that's a term from the Jim Crow south. Okay. So maybe exempting is a better word. Yes. Sorry. So we'll bring you back another draft. Finances and who just also focused on the capital costs when we figure focused on the numbers. Right. Maybe amortize the capital costs over 10 years or something. Right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So now we're a little bit behind schedule but we're going to review the FY23 general fund surplus and consider making allocation decisions. Thank you very much for coming and sharing your thoughts. Thank you. Thank you. So while Martha Matar our finance director joins us I will say this is we are in a really privileged position with this conversation tonight. We have a significant surplus that's being I'm stealing all her thunder being driven by revenues. I think our expenses came in about $100,000 over budget on a $28 million budget which is very tight. So this privilege is really driven by revenues but I will let Martha take it from here. Hi. Hello. Martha Matar and I hope this will be a shorter discussion than what we just had. We do as well. So as just mentioned this is just an overview of where we are currently FY23 closes June 30th but we left the book open for 60 days as required and the numbers that we are giving to you right now are just estimate of what we think we will be and the warrant that you just approved has the final few actually not a lot few FY23 expenditures in it and that would be the final FY23 in invoices that would be included in any warrant going forward though you will not be seeing any but these estimate is really close to what we think would be where we would be and these numbers are also not audited so they are not quite finals. And as just mentioned this is the biggest surplus I would say in the last two years we've seen surplus over a million but this is the first time we've had over two million surplus at the close of the fiscal year and the main driver for this is in the revenues expenditures were to the budget but the revenues few lines few budget lines actually outperform our budget our budgeted projected numbers and those revenue lines include our local option tax room room and meal plus sale and use taxes those numbers during the budget process FY2021 that was during the budget year and local local option taxes were really low during that period and it was hard to determine what they would be so we estimated what we could during that time and the pandemic end sales went up room and meals went up as well and we have seen over $900,000 increased in in those just for the record we did fix that in the FY24 budget do we know how much of that's from airbnb? how much of that is what? airbnb oh unfortunately not a good company I don't want them doing business in our city no no no there are much better companies than them and yes as you just said we fixed that FY24 budget and I did the numbers the we increased actually FY24 24 by 800 so we are super close on closing that gap a fine electrical inspection in planning and zoning permit fees those significance went up and those are actually also driven by the growth in the city center and I think those are also not every year do we see a lot of building going up or the growth in the city this year we've seen that growth and that's why those fees are as high as they are currently interest on income also went up during the year actually during the budget process for FY23 the interest on our depository account was 0.2 percent it currently sits at 4.28 percent and that's why it went up and it was hard to estimate at the time where the market would go and so as we bring you the subclasses we are also bringing you some of the recommendations for your consideration and we are recommending about 12 and those are few of those recommendations are also in alignment with policy priorities and resources that you approve earlier this year and those are one time spending that we are bringing to you there's 12 of them 11 of those will need your approval with the motion the last one is allocating the remainder of the amount into the firm balance and the calculation that we just did if we put the total amount of the surplus into the firm balance our firm balance would be sorry that's me that's okay I thought it was mine so if we put the full 2.3 million into the firm balance currently would be a 21. 0.3 percent as recommended by the fund balance policy but the total amount of the cost that we are recommending to you is 1.1 million and that leave us with enough amount to put into the firm balance leaving us with 16.61 percent which is the targeted fund balance a percentage by the policy I don't know if you like me to go through the recommendations or so if I can just make the what totally agree with what Martha said just underline the point this is a huge success for our community two years ago we were under the 8% goals so we have we have been able to secure a much more stable financial position for ourselves what this also does by not fully allocating the surplus is it basically parks a little over million dollars in your savings account so if during the course of FY24 you had other one-time expenses that you wanted to fund out of your savings account you would have that 8% room to do that while maintaining the minimum in fund balance thank you so she can walk through all 12 if you would like can I ask one question what is the the deposit rate you're receiving for the interest bearing account that earned the 0.7 million dollars of just curious do you know all right now it's 4. it's over four is yep it's 4.21 that's nice 0.8 no 4.21 4.21 4.28 actually 2.8 yes this was one of the best decisions we made when we transitioned from community bank to TD bank we are banking with TD and any time there is an exchange in the interest rate we get 80% of what the fat increases the interest rate before comparison my health savings account that my employer uses is earning 0.2% right now on the balance well my son just took out a cd I think at 4% so yeah yeah would you like Martha to go over all of the recommendations maybe just quickly or do we it's up to you I don't I don't I read I just had a question a clarification question on two of them and just so I'm clear with the in our current budget we have allocated is it $15,000 to different social services and then your recommending that we increase each of their appropriations by $2,000 is that right so in May when we came here so in the budget is $15,000 as you say so in May we came here with the allocation of that $15,000 to the different agencies that we have located to in the past and there was a discussion of increasing those and that discussion was put aside to be revisited when we close the year so we took that discussion and are just currently proposing $2,000 to each of both agencies and that's up to you whether we increase them by with additional $2,000 or reduce that that's up to you to make the decision okay for this fiscal year so it's $16,000 to distribute among those eight however we see fit additional additional because they weren't even paid out right yes yes okay let me see another oh that's nice bonus and so my I guess my question is did we want to do $2,000 each were there eight I can see a way of differentiating honestly I mean I don't know how you I would say you know food shelf is less worthy than steps or less worthy in common I don't know this is a little arbitrary to differentiate well we did for some of them just because of the number of South Burling Tonians that are served yeah United Way gives it to us um well that's one I don't know I mean obviously the our rec department scholarship funds are all our kids but so I just wanted to be clear that that's what our intention would be that's good for me okay the other question I have is the the first one to another $13,000 to um Trinity Trinity and I I just I know that Dr. Childs is on the phone and what I I read through the accounting of the $13,000 that we gave them or 11 was $13,000 and I was just curious because I don't know what the whole budget is I'm I would be interested to know how much money the organization has actually raised because as we started out three years ago you know it was a 50 she felt it would be a $50,000 project and we didn't gave her $50,000 we gave her $13,000 with the understanding that she would try to raise some money and I just I thought it would be helpful to know how much was raised this year so we got a sense of you know where the deficit is in her letter she did suggest that you know maybe South Burlington isn't the place for this organization I assume because she's not been able to or the group has not been able to raise the kind of funding that they really need to deliver on her vision so I don't know if Dr. Child is able to address that or if we can be provided some additional information and maybe I'm the only one who cares about it I you know she has unmuted oh okay yes so I'm here we have been able to raise $38,000 okay so you have wow so that's great so you have $51,000 budget is that right yes okay yes and and when the next one comes and we've been talking about it I will do a full proposal so you would see those numbers yourself and everybody don't read it okay that would be great I think that would be helpful okay no problem I also want to add that Deputy City Manager Steve and I went to when we received this request when to talk to Dr. Child about this request and how we should be considering going forward we have been so lucky to have surpluses over the last two years in this year to be able to fund this but the main worry is what happened during the year when we do not have a surplus so going forward our suggestion is to be including the request with the budget during the budget process and when we do that we would also we have also asked her that we will need to see the full budget during that process so in October she would be submitting a full budget with the request to the city and would include that in the budget for FY25 okay potentially I mean that's not a fate to complete well we would bring it to you that data for you all to decide yes I think that's important those were those those were my questions the rest I think sounds very reasonable yes Andrew do you have a number three so we're doing a sidewalk inventory now right so I'd love to see that sidewalk inventory and you know get a sense of how bad get a sense of how bad the sidewalks are relative to the new roads that we want to pave and you know make sure that this money is really well spent paving roads as opposed to fixing our sidewalks because some of the sidewalks are really terrible and some of the roads are just like not great some of the roads are terrible yeah but well so but look can we again can we get data right we're doing a road a road study we're doing a sidewalk study before we spend the money and figure out where it's really best used I think public works could tell you which roads are pretty bad we didn't have enough money to pave the worst ones like Swift Street on the hill and there are other ones that are bad too well I think this is going to assign this for this coming year and it isn't going to get spent till the spring right this is for next year's paving so we definitely could get some data around sidewalks and roads don't like cars no okay and right mind we design the you know the whatever the road the sidewalk going to a number how bad is it you know 1 to 10 right if it turns out your road is a seven your sidewalks are two well then do the sidewalk yeah public the public work director is working on it and the data would be available soon I would add though that the paving the road paving and the sidewalk that those are different budget lines and if this is what you need we can also talk to him and say okay 200 has been assigned and it's not just for the road paving you should also consider sidewalks if that's what you like that would be great do we have um do we have where are we with line painting seems like we're always behind is that a function of needing more money or another liner or they have a contractor for williston road oh erica's here good erica qualan deputy director of capital projects adam tom and myself talk about striping on a weekly basis probably the way that it's done is kind of a mishmash of people that do it based on equipment that we have we do things like stop bars and crosswalks and this year as everyone knows it's been very wet so a lot of work has been can't put paint on wet pavement so our internal work has been slowed down a bit and we did contract out a number of large roads to a contractor that's who did the spear street one and we had received a quote for about five other roads fully in length to do the white striping V trans comes through and does all the center lines over throughout the state over the course of the summer but the white lines the fog lines we had requested they came and did spear street and have not been the most responsive since and so we have a number of roads I know they had some issues with their trucks breaking down a few different times so we have yet to receive a status update on that but we had a contract for about four other roads for another at least four or five miles of white lines that has not happened yet but I understand that and I wasn't being critical of what hasn't been painted yet I just remember from years past that there have been certainly complaints that some of the some of the markings weren't done often enough so they were really faded and I and I also understand I'm recalling that there's like two line painters in the state or something and I'm always curious what one of the little machines costs and if maybe we should buy one we do have we do have the small machines that so that's how we do our crosswalks and stop bars the large ones along an entire road are done by large specialty trucks which are expensive and I want to make sure you get through Martha's motions here also because I have more agenda items that's that's a very intriguing regional service question do we go in with other communities and buy a striping truck if you would like us to explore that we're happy to do that I don't think we're going to do that with surplus money tonight I would like you to do that though because if we do have some surplus money that's just hanging out there or there's um you know grants to go after I you know I you drive along and and so even on roads that I drive on all the time I'll forget especially going to the airport and I can remember which line to get into because you can't see the arrows going straight and right until you're right up there and then I'm usually in the wrong one so it happens all over probably not just to me so would you like us to take out recommendation number three and bring it back to you when we have a more defined data driven plan is that what I'm hearing I mean I know I'm comfortable with the thought to take the 200 and allocate it across the different you know ways people travel in a sensible in a sensible way sidewalks roads shared use like whatever needs whichever thing needs it the most yeah so I would I would support the 200 thousand dollars for paving and then we will get back a report about what are we paving yeah or what are we fixing and the pavement condition inventory I received an update today we should have it in about two weeks and then the software we can work with to prioritize roads based on which are the worst and how much area it costs so we will be able to have some more data and that includes sidewalks too right now this one is just roads we've been doing an inventory for ADA compliance on sidewalks looking at all of the intersections and we we had two interns with us for a little bit over the summer and they did a lot of logging issues around our sidewalks so we're working towards that data driven plan for the sidewalks and paths are the next big endeavor okay and we have funding for that to do that we usually do those through the CCRBC they're planning their work program each year any other thoughts about any of these I'm sorry if I can just highlight I don't need to highlight them for you all but for I know there are some folks on the phone from the school board who may be interested in this so I just want to call out that this funding request does include the funding needed to implement a school zone on market street and do the Dorset Street school zone engineering study and the additional funds for the Dorset Street signal projects which may allow us to realign that intersection so I just want to call that out this is the council allocating funds to those school priorities if they so choose yep okay well I if there's no other questions I'm glad that's included in here and that we have this kind of surplus I'd entertain a motion to approve these surplus allocation decisions and the general fund surplus second so as you approved each of the recommendation has its own motions so I don't know if you just want approval approve them all or if we need to read each of the motions are allowed oh I think you can my unless there's an auditing reason not to I think the motion should just be approve the motions as presented in Martha's August 18th 2023 memo so moved should be good enough and seconded okay any other discussion okay nice work all in favor signify by saying aye that motion passes thank you for always happy news isn't it sorry Sean he didn't think he had now we move on to nine approving resolution 2020-15 establishing speed limits on public streets and specifically establishing a school zone at the rick marcot central school before I get I jump into it the next two agenda items the resolutions 15 and 16 are very closely tied so if it is okay with everyone I'll kind of present how we arrived at both and then you could motion separately yes we'll vote separately but you can certainly make that presentation okay thank you great erico qualin deputy director of capital projects for GPW thank you for having me back to talk school zones we have received our study from the ccrpc the chitlin county regional planning commission that was requested to look at school zones it had already been looked at around chamberlain school last year and that school zone was adopted in october of this past year and so the ccrpc went through pretty much the same process and this time looking at central school on market street and orchard school so first let me just give a quick update because there are some school board folks there the if that is okay with council sure very brief and so the orchard or the chamberlain school school zone the foundations for the school zone signs are going in this week one of the school zone sign assemblies with everything we've received it it's been put together and so after that concrete cures for a little bit for the foundation we will put that up and it has to be covered with a bag until the one going the other direction is received but we should be receiving that in september if the manufacturer has given us the correct delivery date so that is progressing okay so that was the big update for that one but moving into the memo that led to the resolutions you have in front of you tonight first looking at market street at central school what was done similarly to white street was went out I'm sure folks saw the tubes across the road for a bit looking at traffic speeds traffic volumes and also turning movement counts looking at how many pedestrians and bicyclists and where the vehicles were going at the intersection during pick up and drop off and pick up times were also conducted and they looked at kind of geometric conditions can you see in all directions what are some safety concerns myself and also the engineer from the CCRPC met with some folks on site to walk around and just get a clear picture of what is going on there and based on all of those different things the CCRPC's engineer has recommended a school zone be implemented on market street and so that is why the speed limit resolution is in front of you today that is where the school zone items fall and so currently market street is marked at 25 miles per hour the school zone would have it signed as 20 miles per hour similarly to white street it would be a time restricted it would be about an hour or so during drop off in the morning and pick up in the evening and that would be signified by the flashing lights and the radar speed feedback signs and that goes it's a few hundred feet in either direction so between garden and the driveway is where it would start on woman and on the other end we're a little stub of Mary street back entrance to get to the Allard square garage that would be about the limits there and the next thing that was done and this is related to the other resolution you have in front of you the stop sign resolution we the CCRPC's engineer ran a warrant process there are a bunch of criteria that can be used to determine if a four-way stop is warranted same way that you determine if a traffic signal is warranted from a traffic engineering perspective under current conditions only one of the eight stop sign criteria are met but there is kind of this little bit of this kind of clause on there about engineering judgment and also taking a look at what will be coming in the area traffic volumes are going to increase and instead of having to turn around really quickly after the next building opens up and doing kind of this from the get-go again we have decided based on recommendations and conversations here that the intersection of market street and the driveways for the city hall parking parking lot and the drive to school become a four-way stop and so that is what is on your other agenda or other resolution that one is 16 is to add that as a four-way stop controlled intersection and that is really us trying to be proactive before any safety conditions get worse with increased traffic and so this would just provide a few more more natural breaks in traffic for pedestrians to cross so I didn't have any questions on that before I jump into the orchard school orchard school one is very simple anyone have any questions about market street was there a turning radius issue for buses coming out of Lissa Lane I call it Lissa Lane but it's so when it was looked at so the configuration was during is the way that it is now when this building went in and was part of that permitting process and the way that they can make the turns is that a vehicle has to be about one car length back so we talked about in the condition of a four-way stop ideally your stop bar is 10 feet or so back from the crosswalk so that you have the most visibility for pedestrians and so there were conversations around pulling that back but that creates just a new set of safety concerns with people stopping once if they stop at that one and moving forward so the plan is to have it configured with everything in its location but adding the stop bars in that one would be in the same location so it is a bit of a it requires a little extra courtesy when the buses are coming in and out certainly and there are some other recommendations in the memo from the CCRPC related to potential options for buses but at this point the configuration would stay the same and understand it's in the downtown area I know there's a lot of the same kind of things with GMT buses and things like that so hopefully people will be a bit more cautious with the new stop sign anyway so okay so very briefly I'm looking at Baldwin Avenue for Orchard School similar data was collected in this area and some field observations were conducted in this area the speeds were really low so the average speed was 15 miles per hour so that is a very good thing the highest near a little bit further up from Shelburne Road the highest average speed we saw was only 19 miles per hour so that is a very good thing but obviously congestion I know people are just driving slow people are just going real slow I think there's a lot of people turning in and out of goodwill and you go into a little neighborhood where the road kind of you know and then there's a stop light so you can't really accelerate going around a corner up to 30 and then a T as soon as you get up at T's right you hit some intersections pretty quickly so there's not much there's not much room to accelerate which is a good thing it's a good place for a school driveway to be but there were some recommendations from the CCRPC about just upkeep of pavement markings like we talked about that say school adding some more signs the yellow green signs to alert people to the presence of a school but there weren't there weren't any indicators that a school zone would improve the conditions and as you just allocated saw and your allocation it cost about $30,000 just for those two signs yeah they're very impressive when they go out I recommend you stand next to one you don't realize how tall these signs are until they're out there but this one with the solar panel will be almost 15 feet tall wow we're talking more than two tims is how we now measure things after the lighting for Hubbard that is how I've been measuring things with a meme so with those things just the last school we didn't talk about here is the middle and high school campus and as Martha just presented and you approved an additional $30,000 to go towards some additional engineering in the planned paving project for the last the next section of Dorset Street from Aspen to Kennedy that $30,000 will go towards figuring out some additional improvements that could be done at the same time so that they wouldn't have to be done separately that's not to say there wouldn't be recommendations that couldn't be done at the same time but trying to combine projects to make it more cost-effective and more timely so if there are no questions I can just present the two motions so just for the speed limit resolution is the only thing that's changing are the speeds around the school all the other speeds are what they were and are so I'm just then I'm just curious about Dorset Street it seems to like be faster northbound and southbound in a particular section is that usual? it also varies a lot during time of day because people are going and the speed limit that's set in the resolution allows you to go 40 miles an hour on a strip road where the cars next to you are going 35 south if I'm reading it correctly you're talking about the old existing the existing Dorset South yeah since yeah so it says that you you should be going 35 from Swift to Nolan Farm Road but the sign says 40 so we have to move the sign down to Nolan Farm Road to some point in the future no it says that you can go like 40 I mean to 1100 I don't know where that is for section north but the parallel cars going south have to go 35 that's what I think that's what it says when you're going no no you go the way that the ordinances are and it's very strange because you do have to specify the northbound direction and southbound versus and or eastbound and westbound and so but they don't seem like they're lined up although unless I'm not maybe I'm just reading they weren't on Heinsberg Road either they're not lined up so but so no why southbound from Williston Road to Nolan Farm and northbound from 650 feet south of Swift at the Wheeler entrance there's a 35 going north and that's the yeah changes from four to 35 going south 35 all the way it's supposed to start at Nolan Farm Road to go 40 but the sign actually is really pretty close to Wheeler just like the 35 so the signs don't match up the resolution no right now but also there are different speeds at different sections of the road but that's for the resolution that's for a future discussion okay I don't just it's just like it's just like a nine so the only the only change that is being presented tonight is on focus on the change is on page three it's item F2 which is new it mirrors the language of White Street which you had approved in October well some of you had approved in October and now being presented to you for Market Street it is in the same time frame 7 a.m. to 8 30 a.m. and 2 p.m. to 4 30 p.m. on days in which school is present so it gives some wiggle room folks that are leaving early leaving late anything like that and like I said 20 miles per hour whereas it'll be 25 on the rest and when outside of those hours it would stay 25 but at some future point I'd like to understand this I mean like yep we can biking north and south it's just it's weird that this BLM is a different right so but it's it's true that way on I-89 itself right it turns to 65 much sooner going south and when you are right because there's an exit yeah so it depends on condition it's also separate I mean yeah here you endorse it seems like I can't measure how fast the cars coming from the other direction are going yeah we'll bring it back to you yeah all right well I would entertain with individual motions the first one so I'll move that we approve resolution 2023-15 establishing establishing speed limits on public streets and specifically establishing a school zone at rick mark got central school second any discussion all in favor hi hi and now I move that we approve resolution can I jump to one other thing there's a there's a second change in the it's more of a something that we noticed wasn't in there that should be in there for your stop sign resolution it involves the four-way stop that I mentioned but it also that same driveway where the school zone ends coming out of the other side of this building it has always served as kind of an implied stop but not an official stop sign it hasn't been on the ordinance which makes it hard for us to go out and put out a stop sign or paint a stop bar so that has also been added here to the stub of Mary street at market street only Mary street only the stub of Mary street would be getting a stop sign okay so that is the other change that's in here okay so then I I'll move that we approve resolution 2023-16 establishing stop intersections on public roads and highways especially establishing a four-way stop on market street and the driveway to rick mark central school and adding a stop sign at mary street and market street second any discussion all in favor say aye aye aye motion carries and thank you Erica we just thank you very much thank you so much thanks for hanging in here um let's see is there any other business there seeing no other business do we know when they're going to be painting I guess on Williston road we are going to be doing some temporary striping out there to at least cover the jog but as part of the dorset street signals project that jog will be going away it will be two through lanes and one left turn lane in the westbound direction and that will become a right into the former holiday in or the interstate so in the end of summer early fall that will be getting restriped and it will be getting restriped with a more durable type of paint wonderful it will not just be waterborne paint that wears off and hopefully there are fewer people driving over them when it shifts very good thank you okay so I would entertain I would entertain a motion for adjournment second all in favor aye aye boy I'm getting rusty on my time estimations well we had a lot of people on that I mean it was practically a public hearing but it seemed like it would make sense thank you for the tour and have a wonderful trip yeah a good trip where are you going now we're going to Wyoming tomorrow morning Wyoming