 All right, we're all here, and I'm SPM, I'm the Director of the team, so we will have a call to order this morning at the Lewis and City Council. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance led by Deputy Mayor Donald Trump. 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. Thank you. You're welcome. We are at the General Review. Are there any questions and concerns about the Order of Tonight's Agenda? There are no concerns, and I'll go on to public comment. I know we have one virtual attendee. If you are here for an item on the agenda, please forward it so we can reach that point in the agenda. If you are here to speak to anything else done about the General, please use the race and future. Any members of the public present in chambers room? Not yet? Not yet. It could come. So, on a separate note, since Councilor Koster was not here for this meeting, we now are looking at how the City Council moves from the new record first. Are there any concerns around those minutes? Would someone like to take a motion to move through the minutes? So moved. Second. Motion by Bryden, second by Mike, all those in favor, can you say aye? Aye. And those abstaining? Abstaining. Motion carries. Next up are the Account Scale Awards of November 12th, and your award for October 17th to October 30th. Any questions or concerns about the awards? Anyone who would like to make a motion to move through? Second. Motion by Jim, second by Bryden, all those in favor, can you say aye? Aye. How are you voting on that? No. That's okay. Abstaining. Alright, motion carries. And then finally, we have the Friends and Scholarship Policies, which we saw at our last meeting in the General Committee of the Google Office, and we've never been in touch with anyone. Are there any questions about those policies? Right? Would someone like to take a motion to move through the minutes? So moved. Second. Motion by Bryden, second by Jim, all those in favor, can you say aye? Aye. And abstaining? Abstaining. Alright, motion carries. That's the end of our consent agenda. So we are at council reports. Um, Mike, my second is... Darn. I have another report. Thank you. Thank you. Al? Sure. Um, I attended along with a couple other, um, um, counselors, so the mayor, the joint commission meeting, um, between the state, helping connect the people commission, the municipal and infrastructure commission, and the finance commission. So this was the first time meeting to have, uh, an opportunity to review the capital project plan that was presented, um, for all the commissions to delay, you know. Um, John Roster was there to present along with Angela. Um, the budget for the capital project was, uh, has grown over the years, um, to its current level, a little more than a million dollars per year. Um, also the funds are being put aside for future projects such as the we or she, where we're going to pass British. Uh, these funds will help the 20% match that's usually required by the state and federal funding. Uh, while there was strong support for the plan, there was consistent feedback that the multi-mobile class project could be highlighted. So it was agreed that, um, the quality of lighting in the industry has been improving and having more bike lanes, same sidewalks, contributed to this important value. Um, John also shared how expensive capital projects can be and his strategy to help reduce costs is see how we might collaborate with other local municipalities to partner, um, by coordinating work through using similar or the same contractors. Um, and Angela mentioned that there will be access to the parking lots that can impact these capital projects, but first the community will be solicited for input about how to best spend these funds. So all of all, in this first joint commission meeting, it was felt it was valuable and meaningful and that this approach should be used annually going forward to review the city's capital projects. Um, and the three commissions voted unanimously to support the capital project plan and recommend this passage of the city council. Thank you. Michelle. Jim. Thank you. Um, I continued or finished up my participation of the multi-stakeholder group with the school, um, in the city security recommendations that was, that was finished. Um, and I was, uh, in attendance for that report at school for me, um, by the consultant for the process that tracked us and now I'm a superintendent and move forward. Uh, Hal did such a great job with the summary of the joint commit commission meeting. So I don't really have too much to add the next infrastructure committee meeting will be in December. We're working on setting a date and time for that. Um, and we continue to hear from the community the need for striping and we are certainly looking to leverage those partnerships that Hal mentioned on, um, contracts with our sister municipalities to, to leverage the opportunity to ensure we're, we're maintaining our striping, um, for the multimodal, uh, pedestrian and bikes, uh, bike lanes annually. Uh, the same, the same way that we do with other annual projects. Um, so outside of that, uh, I don't have anything else to add. Um, so I had an introduction to Parkwell, our university planning funding, um, after conversations with staff, so we could look to the preliminary outline for public outreach at that meeting. We are going to pause on doing that outreach until the time of meeting day. And from now until then, our staff will focus on policy vote coverage. Um, we'll play a tag on those funds and I'm going to start it through. You know, we're starting to listen more to our general indications, but these, they were saying, you know, our listeners in the community should they're being, you know, we're going to talk about events, actually what was, now I wanted to say on this morning, for a long time, in the sense of procedure, we don't want to take these, and so we are still also looking at those, you know, if there is something more that we might want to also move forward with that, I also wanted to share, I think it was two years ago, our shifting county regional planning commission posted an equity summit with a lot of folks who were around the county. This was, they worked in consultation with pretty good discourse who also supported us when we did our summit a few years ago, and some of our staff were there as well. And just one thing, one key thing that I thought would be easy to share, so the purpose of that, that meeting was to generate some of the best for our backwards county life and learn from each other what they think is how we are doing. There was a focus in the information share on disparities in housing outcomes, and, you know, we're going to look at housing up to here in this agenda, but there was a data point shared, there's significant racial disparity in homeownership in our 14, about 84% of folks who identified with the shifting county are homeowners versus 36% entered, and for those who identify as lack of equity, I think that's about 17% or maybe 3%. So I wanted to share that with the people we get into as someone who's a part of this. Last thing to share, last night I was able to join our equity director and our institute manager in a meeting with a grassroots community. We did, I don't know, two dozen community members talk about it. They have been meeting on their own. For some time, it invited us to go to the school and just sort of workshop some of the challenges that they are seeing. So there was an issue of very aggressive school, and then we talked to them about community-based accountability with the O'Brien Center being, you know, the people we were going to be testing and the transition from open studios, we heard again about staffing and the issue of outside and public transportation, and a couple of, sort of a couple of words and things that would be available over to staff. Really brings you to get connected to the school. Wendy shared with them some information on all this at O'Brien. We talked to them about that meeting with you. An issue of going out or information coming. I took a post-section one of the positions. Some of the words you mentioned there. That is it for my update, and I'm going to pass it to Wendy for us to update. Great. Thank you, Mayor and Council. First, a COVID update that is hot off the press. This is just from the health department late afternoon. Cases in Chittenden County are up over the most recent two-week period as compared to the previous two-week period by 37%, which is a significant increase. There were 97 cases reported in Chittenden County yesterday. It's the highest number of daily cases reported in Chittenden County since the emergence of the Delta variant this past summer. Now statewide, there were 591 positive COVID-19 lab results reported to the health department on Wednesday the 10th out of a total of 13,822 tests, which is a percent positivity of 4.3%. 591 is the largest number of new cases reported in a one-day period recorded to date. Case rates in Winooski rose sharply over the last two-week period with 15 more cases reported as compared to the previous. Well, it's not good. Rate notes that 15 additional cases in Winooski has a pretty big impact on the rate given the small population. And then on a positive note, there will be a vaccination clinic for young children ages 5 to 11 at the school district tomorrow. The school made sure that those slots were made available to Winooski students. The registration for that has closed. And after I finish the rest of the update, if you have any questions, we can ask Ray, who I think is on the call. So the short message regarding COVID is that it remains a significant issue. We're going to continue to work remotely whenever we can and to require masks at City Hall and other city facilities. More good news. Taxes are due today. So thank you all for coming by those of you who have already. Payments left in the drop box tonight are considered on time. And if it's here before 7.30 or if you make an online payment before 7.30 tomorrow, that payment will also be considered on time. The road resurfacing work at Hood, Russell and Hawthorne is complete, as is the project on Weaver at the City Hall entrance. So that's very helpful for staff. I want to update you on the centennial because things are starting to happen in terms of the centennial planning and action. The legacy campaign is focusing on Winooski's people, places and traditions. They're planning a week-long series of events that begin March 7th, 2022. And that will include photo exhibits. And they've started taking those photos. So if you haven't been part of that, there will be a session this Thursday, the 18th from noon to 3 p.m. in Rotary Park. So please participate and also let people know. The information is on the website, but it would be helpful if you let your neighbors and family know. There's a parking meeting coming up. The Regional Planning Commission will host the 4th Advisory Committee meeting for the Parking Inventory Analysis and Management Plan, Wednesday the 17th, beginning at 6 p.m. That meeting will include a discussion of the draft recommendations for inclusion in the plan before the final draft is prepared and forwarded to City Council. And information about that meeting, including the draft plan, is on the project page on this Regional Planning Council's website. So, and good news, I saved this for last. I'm very happy to announce that Jenny Willingham has accepted the City Clerk position for the City of Winooski. Jenny brings 20 years of experience in Vermont towns, most recently as the Assistant Town Clerk 2 for the town of Essex. She also held Assistant Town Clerk positions in the towns of Milton and Stowe. And in addition to her extensive municipal experience, Jenny brings a passion for inclusive customer service and she's very excited to support Winooski's all-resident voting charter change. She's going to start on December 6, so she and Carol will have lots of time to work together and Carol can share as much of her 40 years of experience as is humanly possible. So, I'm really pleased and will introduce her to you in person sometime soon. So, that is what I have. Oh, and if you have any questions about COVID, I believe Ray is on the call. We can hear you. You won't be seeing me or just hearing me. Investigation by Seven Days in VPR of a substandard housing Winooski was not surprising to me. I happen to know the Winooski family featured in the article well, both as a teacher of their children and as a student learning Swahili from them. I have myself been in that apartment both when they were living there and more recently with a newly arrived family whose children I have taught they arrived last year. This family and this apartment is not the only apartment I've been invited to see from families who don't understand why they're forced to live in such conditions and why no one is responding when they ask for help, why they're being blamed for the infestations that were there when they first moved in. I have also been asked by families who are desperate to find apartments large enough for their families. Families of eight who are housed in a two bedroom apartment directly coming from Africa for the last three years and still searching for housing that they can't afford and doesn't exist anyway. I'm here to ask you to please treat housing as a human right and a priority as these families and their children continue to suffer. I see it both outside and inside my classroom. Thank you. Elizabeth, thank you for your comment and for bringing more like color and detail to the discussion. We are going to be talking about housing issues shortly. Feel free to stay for that portion or if you need to go, that's fine too. But this is, you know, we can address touch on housing quality and size availability during that discussion. Thanks very much. So we are moving to our regular items. And the first one we have is for discussion approval. This is the downtown new ski local option tax request following up on our last meeting. Heather, do you want to introduce what we have added tonight? Yeah, sure. Meredith is coming in to do the presentation on behalf of downtown when you ski at your previous meeting on November 1st city council received a request from new ski for an allocation of 5% of the local option tax revenue. Just as a reminder to the community local options are based on sales and use meals rooms and alcohol receipts which are directly related to our businesses overall success. So they're directly correlated to the services provided by downtown when you ski in supporting our local businesses. At that meeting city council requested further information from the organization including their business plan their plan for business membership, a full budget and list of funding sources beside city based revenue streams, historical budgets and funding the city has provided historically, and we've attached the MOU so you see when it expires and when we'll renew that that was part of the discussion as well. And last of all was a summary or list of infrastructure funding that downtown when you see has helped the city to secure. So to that and I have supplied for you in your packet, the list of state designation program benefits. And we really do go after a lot of these different funding sources. So we've included for you in your packet a list of the words that we've received from 2016 until present. This list of grants. It comes out to $1.9 million that the city has directly received as a result of having this downtown designation. In some cases we're eligible for this because we have a downtown designation. In some cases we have priority consideration because of the downtown designation, but they all relate back to that. So in addition to the grants that I have shown here which are just grants that are from specifically to the city. There's another $1 million that has been allocated for projects that unfortunately were constructed. So there was more funding. And there are also funds that are directly awarded businesses so some of the tax credits for historic rehabilitation facade improvement, improvement technology tax, those would go directly to a business so I didn't include them here just because they wouldn't keep our taxpayers tax bills down. They would go directly to improving those properties which is also a benefit to the city as a whole. With that, I also have included for you historically, what we have given to Windows key on an annual basis, and overall over the last six years. We have provided the city has provided $193,493 and 12 cents, as opposed to the $1.9 million in grants that we have brought in so the cost benefit ratio is one to 10. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Meredith to talk through some of the further information provided as well. Thanks Heather and thank you for seeing hearing us again. Mayor lot and council members. We provided information that you have requested and, you know, honestly very, you know, grateful to have this opportunity to talk to you again. I do think that there, you know, is more was more information that was needed to present and again just happy to be able to provide that just to give a little tiny bit more context to the city funding that has come to the organization. I just wanted to bring attention to the very recent history I think there's been a lot of discussion about sort of the longer history of the organization, the reason that the organization started. We talked about quite recent history 2019. And to now, we, you know, with city staff, basically entirely city staff designed the new MOU that is a new piece of the puzzle that wasn't in place before. The MOU not only showcases what we directly work with on the city, but it also shows just how closely tied downtown when you see is to the goals and the mission and the vision that the city has put forward in the master plan. So I think that's really striking in speaking with other downtown organizations, the alignment is certainly not that strong with other cities for various reasons, but I'm really, really proud of the fact that there's so much direct alignment. And so it really just shows that we, you know, are an independent organization, but that we take what the city's entire goals are very much into into our goals as well. And just in terms of looking at that funding. Before I think it was 2017 was the last time there was a paid staff. And that paid staff was part time. And then when the, the organization decided to take another look at their funding and how the organization would run. They decided to eliminate that position decided to work with city staff, and, and decide to draft that MOU. And in late 2019 or 2018, excuse me, came with the idea of hiring someone full time. So full time staff came on mid 2019. That was me when I was on alert. And I've only been with the organization since summer of 2019. At that time, you know, really was trying to take on the entire MOU and figure out how best to operationalize this wonderful strategic vision that has been full put forward by the previous board and the city staff. And obviously, you know, really took it and jumped in the deep end. And then the pandemic hit and we had to shift entirely. And I do think that we continue to fulfill the mission as best as we could. And I do really grateful to again, city staff and being able to work closely with them, but also being able to prove and provide, you know, our value again to the pandemic, even though a lot of the points that are outlined in the MOU weren't to fulfill the pandemic. And now of course, coming into additional phases of the pandemic, we're shifting again, but really trying to always point back to that MOU, which again is relatively new to this organization relatively new to this relationship with the city. And I think is incredibly strong foundation. So I just wanted to acknowledge that really recent evolution that recent history, and that influx of capital from the city was really crucial, because there hadn't been a strong foundation and sustainability and that's really the entire reason that we're coming to you again, is because sustainability of funding will be essential for us to move forward. And also to grab other funding sources and other grants, a lot of these other grants require additional, you know, matching funds and things like that. And so, again, just kind of coming to you with this really grateful for your time and for your attention to this. And we just hope that, you know, by showing our value and by showing that this recent recent evolution, even just the fact that we now have buy in and backing from so many businesses and partners in the community, both, you know, we've discussed this that we have eight out of our nine board members are voting our business owners or business leaders. And then we have a lot of other partnerships and relationships with people that are not on our board, but that are fully invested in our organization success and really believe in what we're doing. So I think in a very short amount of time, our evolution has has been really exciting. And certainly I can only speak to the last years, but I'm really excited to where we can go and where we can continue to be very closely aligned with the city in terms of what we put forward to the business community into the community at that large. Any questions or a test or Laura, did you want to pop in with anything before we go for question. I'm happy to share just a quick reflection if there's time. I, I thought it was great that a member of the public in the last meeting brought up the history of the downtown organization and reference. Inception coming as part of the establishment of the TIFT district. And it highlights the fact because I know you all have a really difficult job in deciding how to support cities infrastructure investments going forward and that that was a big topic and how you created this stream of revenue. But if you think about that for a second isn't that interesting that the downtown entity was established to help create a tax increment finance district specifically so that the city could take out debt to build municipal infrastructure that would spur on community development. So our history has always been tied to infrastructure since its inception. And the reason why I think that's been explained in materials that Heather provided is because the state doesn't want to drop large scale infrastructure dollars into communities that aren't going to follow that with support to ensure that it's successful beyond just the establishment of large concrete and steel projects. And what's exciting about what Meredith just said is this organization's evolved to be on just being a placeholder to allow us to apply for funds. And that's the success story of downtown Winooski was not always a foregone conclusion. It's very quickly forgotten how tenuous things were. When we first established the TIF and we built it and at first things did not come. And it was a very uncomfortable period of time. And we had a lot of commercial vacancy and at that time the city wasn't particularly welcoming the businesses. We didn't spend money on others position. Our zoning requirements were very opaque to say it nicely as well as our permitting processes in downtown Winooski. A lot of cases stepped in to fill that void. That's the reason why one of the founders of Waking Windows is investing their time on the board because when that was a ramshackle start up the organization stepped in and ensured that the city and that event worked together really well. And it's the reason why we have business owners as far as long as a representative from the Taigen Street District also participating because now it's citywide support too. So just want to encourage that perspective. I think Meredith brought a lot of great history up and I think that the public comments were really supportive actually the idea that the infrastructure expenditure of the city in this organization actually have a long marriage to each other. So I hope we don't take for granted the fact that the business community is giving back to that in the in the provision of this tax. Thanks for your time and consideration. Thank you all. And thanks for coming back with a bunch of new information from our previous request. I also want to note that the request has been revised from our last conversation right so previously there was a request for 5% initially with an escalator, which we've removed and now we're in conversation about just a commitment to the 5% annually. So that's a great question. I think that the information from the formal increases after that would require an additional discussion and approval by the council. I know we all have some questions last time so why not open it up to any of the counselors. You have any questions about details here or if anything that you had raised last time has not been addressed. For how if there's any more background that you need. I'm not sure whether or not to use the zoom screen or not for that. Thank you first and foremost for putting the additional materials together. I think it helps frame up the ask quite well. It I didn't see a list of board members names on in the packet was that included. No, that wasn't included, but I can give you their names just right now you want. Yeah, it's also available publicly on our website. Would you want me to just name them right now or put a list in the chat and listen to chat would be great. Thank you. I noted that the membership fee is is only $25 which. You know, getting a foot in the door feels reasonable, but I guess I also think like as the success of the businesses goes up, presumably, you know, as we emerge from the pandemic, etc. That there should be a measurable ask from business owners to contribute as well. So I would like to see that as a consideration that that is brought forward so that it feels more like equal stake, I guess, or that they're showing that they value the the organization as much as we are looking to invest in it as well. I'm trying to look at my notes here. I also am curious about the reason for a percentage again, and not just an annual contribution amount. We talked about this a little bit last time, but I don't feel like that was necessarily captured in the additional materials. And I can speak to that it's been discussed in the past so when this was initiated Jesse initiated the conversations a couple of years ago. So it's just always been discussed that way I think there is certainly a possibility a part of that is about incentivizing the organization to have businesses to grow. And so that percentage would grow for them, if in fact they are successful in what they're trying to do. So it's really an incentive but I think there's also a possibility that we could do not to exceed number if you were uncomfortable with that. I guess part of me is thinking about what additional deliverables would we expect from an increased dollar amount with it with the success of the businesses. So say we see another looking at the estimates of saying well it could be just under $20,000 or it could be closer to $25,000. So what would that additional $5,000 get us from what was projected I guess. So I'm just curious about how the impact of that additional incentive for sales and marketing and how that would be captured. How would we see that in performance deliverables from the organization? As businesses grow and more businesses come in you are expanding by its very nature the support that is being required of downtown Monusty. So as we have more businesses come in up Main Street they will be expanding services in the number of businesses that are being served or the size of the businesses being served. So if you wanted to have specific new deliverables tied to that we could do that as part of the MOU process so that's something that could be re-evaluated every year as we are going through the MOU again. I want to say to Meredith just your social media post today capturing what the accomplishments were in 2019 like that would have been awesome to have been in the packet. Because I think that a little bit of showing what the metrics are what are the performance metrics. To me when we say like expanding services that's like a catch all that doesn't really mean much to me. But when I see like the number of businesses served the number of visits the number like those data points that to me then equates to like OK this is what that additional $5,000 is going towards. This is why it's useful to have a percentage and not a flat dollar amount. So that's what I'm trying to get at. So in our original documentation that we sent over for November 1st we did include a list of the sort of additional ideas that we had for this funding additional technical assistance that we could provide extension of events different things like that. But I totally appreciate that you know people receive information in different ways and I will definitely take into consideration that a kind of infographic presentation would be helpful in the future so I appreciate that feedback. Yeah I know and it's just an infographic but just really summary to me it was more like just having the performance metrics. What are your goals and what how does that equate to what were what we have what what the organization has achieved so. I was speaking to the social media post today is like that was a wonderful way of capturing that. Thank you for the additional explanations. Thank you. Well I wonder if that is something that we could address when we renew the MOU each year is instead of the MOU runs through like what is being committed to for the next year we could also request the organization presents. Here's what we achieved over the last year as part of that process. It's very reasonable considering that we would like to you know include that information for other funders and also the community at large. So I do think that that is a reasonable request that we include something like that with the MOU. I think that's wonderful and I would be happy to do that. I too like Bryn had a business membership dollar amount seems really small so wanted to hear some background on how that was come to. And then I also wanted to know what the sponsorships line item is in your revenue budget. Yeah so we really kept it small because we wanted the buy-in to be equitable. And we are also going to waive that $25 freely. So it might be zero percent people. That being said the reason why we wanted it to be so small was because we wanted buy-in from the entire community. If we're going to say that we have a business membership we want it to be a business membership of the community we want the representation to be across the board. And so that buy-in we needed it to be pretty pretty small. And then we would certainly in our presentation of that make it very clear that larger dollar amounts are expected from larger companies. You know in our marketing and in our outreach and quite frankly on the actual membership page. The communication will be quite clear that this is an open you know call for people that want to have a voice in the organization want to have a vote. And have an invitation to annual meetings and things like that which hasn't been in the past. We are quite open with our meetings but the attendance is nothing beyond our board. So we want to make sure that those are really open and people that are even paying in zero or twenty five dollars feel super welcome. And also you know that larger companies will get you know the message that this is the baseline and the reason why we're keeping it so low is because we want to make sure that we're being. We also want the opportunity to show value. So if there's a new business or a business that hasn't really you know gotten into the fold but they're interested and they join at twenty five dollars. You know we want them to feel comfortable to join and then see the value and then raise their money that they're donating in future years. So the the doorway we wanted very few barriers but then you know we'll make sure to pull those people in that we think have more capital for us. And we've already received been having conversations with certain stakeholders in the community letting them know that this is coming down the pipeline. And this is why the numbers are the way they are. But that we expect and hope for a larger commitment from them. So is that what the sponsorships are. No sponsorships are for things like when you see Wednesdays. Okay. Things like that. Halloween. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I saw Seth went off me. But just to speak to methodology to in making that decision the board built a grid of all the other downtown organizations in the state and weighed how they approached that fundraising effort and what their thresholds were to get an idea of it. So there and there is a very model but just so just to inform the council that it was a thoughtful conversation that was had that included an analysis of what was going on in other organizations and learning the state. Thanks for all the background. Jim. It's a sector of the thanks for the additional detail and all these materials is really helpful to kind of get a better sense of this proposal in general. I, I think your explanation makes sense and I think it's a smart move to have a low barrier to entry for businesses. So I think just as holographic when we look at this in a year or more to renew, you know, I think we could be making a decision here tonight that obligates taxpayers now, regardless of the values that they might recognize from that so I would be wanting to see that met with business community to that as well so I think I just hope that that's a priority for the membership business member businesses to to support to meet taxpayers to in their contributions to three homeowners together are going to be contributing in more than the base amount for membership and I think that's, then we got to consider in this as well, because this is such a significant portion of the funding. And that, I think is also alleviated by having an incentive based approach where you're getting percentage of revenues, I think the businesses can and will rise to meet that call to grow tax base and thus offset this attack here that I think that you've got a good model and a good case to be made there. We'll just want to be able to see that in a year and a half that that's coming to fruition so that's not really a question just something I want to share along the lines of we're all talking about the membership fees that they've jumped out at me as well. The only other question I had was around the membership model and thinking about who can be a member. I just wanted to clarify it seems to me to imply that individuals can be members and individuals to be anyone who's ever needs to be resident. At this point is that intended the way it's read. Yep. Okay. And can businesses can owners who are residents also be members the other business and as residents. Like to have to both. Yeah. Yeah. I think so I mean I think that we if we come to that that would be a board discussion. I don't see it as like a menacing issue at this moment. But if it comes to that I mean we have I don't think our board would have any issue of kind of addressing that if it becomes a problem. It's hard to envision but I could just curious as I was reading some of the details on the government. And then finally your fiscal year is the same as the cities. Is that correct. It's not we are working right now to make it into a calendar year primarily because of the farmers market. It is a little bit of a too heavy of a lift to flip the farmers market into two. So at this point we are working to have a calendar year budget. Thanks. Like I see your hand. Yes. Hey Marit. You know Marit I appreciate the comment you made about going after additional grants. If this 5% gets passed through the council. I think that speaks volumes on where you're kind of going for and I. I really like the idea of trying to save you know people money especially the taxpayers of Winooski by trying to go for. And the line item that you had about the money that was saved on taxpayers of Winooski through the years 2016 to 21. I think that speaks volumes as well. The other comment I have is the membership fee. I like the fact that you started this solo to get some momentum going and get some excitement going in for businesses and seeing how this is going to progress. I think like a tier program for the bigger businesses compared to a smaller business such as a food cart approach could could work as well as this gets going and you start tweaking it in the future. The other thing I had for this business memberships does this call for any business that has Winooski address that does business in Winooski but outside of Winooski as well. Yep. It does. Good to know. Thank you. Councilor Myers I just wanted to also touch on a little bit back to what Jim was saying about revisiting this in a year. I think this is the kind of thing that we could add to that infographic mayor lot where we say this is how many members we have and this is how many members went above the membership fee. Like, you know, like there's ways that we can show that easily. I'm not saying any more council hands. Are there any questions from members of the public. Is there any in zoom you can use the raise hand feature or chat if you'd like to speak. Fran are we still empty in council chambers. Mike. One more comment. I also would like to add that as us as counselors or city staff or even the downtown district. If a taxpayer resident says something about well this this was supposed to keep our property taxes down. We can actually tell them your line item there about it has saved taxpayer money on this is why we should be getting a percentage back or this is why we're going to get a percentage back. I think that's important to keep in mind on the forefront if people comment on this because we had on our last meeting. We did have a resident discusses saying, you know, he himself didn't have a problem with getting a one time ask. But I think as an annual basis, you could do more with what you'll get for your budget. If I may just say something quickly about that and thank you for bringing that up Mike. If in fact this local option tax that comes into the city is over the $450,000 that we projected it will not cost the taxpayers anything it is just the local option tax itself coming back. And in addition to that I did a very quick back of the envelope calculation. And just in case we hadn't won the $1.9 million. That would be a $497 per year assessment on a taxpayer with a $225,000. So, you know, I think it's really important to keep it in that perspective. Are there any more questions or comments based on all the like hypothetical phrasing. I feel like somebody wants to make a motion to approve this. Second. Motion by his Mike second by how all those favor please say aye. Hi. Hi. I think I heard all eyes so motion carries. Thank you very much downtown when you see friends. Thank you thank you for it. Thank you so much appreciate it. Talk to you soon. So we are going to move on to item B, which Heather will also introduce. This is our quarterly update on our housing goal. Yes, and I want to preface this with two things. First, I apologize. Your document says that this is the third goal update and that is what I get for using an old template for the last time that I didn't update this is actually the first update that we're doing on our priorities for this year. And the second thing I'd like to preface is Elizabeth would brought up a bunch of big concerns about housing and I want to be clear that what we're discussing here is strictly reporting on the priorities that were set for this year. So I think we have much bigger housing discussions to be had and, and I agree with a lot of the things that Elizabeth mentioned and those are things that we're discussing at the housing commission so I invite you to attend housing commission meetings that are held on the fourth Monday of every month and they'll start at 6pm and those are all publicly warned so there's a lot of discussions going on there that probably won't be covered here in this update on the specific priorities for this year. And as Elizabeth said, I have presented you a memo which goes over the priorities for this year and just because this is the first report I'll run through what those priorities are that were established. These are established by the leadership team in partnership with city council for each year for our annual work plan and these are above and beyond regular operations that are going on these special initiatives. So this year, we were tasked with identifying potential funding streams for the housing trust fund, evaluating the effectiveness of the housing trust fund and addressing master plan housing goals and identifying areas for policy changes, implementing the Champlain Housing Trust Development Agreement and supporting construction of Butternut Station, updating the public building registry ordinance, evaluating housing quality and Winooski defined as health and safety of housing and assist housing commission with policy work which is a specific addition that was made by a couple members of the leadership team who are not generally involved in supporting housing. I am the staff liaison for the housing commission so I am always assisting the housing commission but there were specific requests made to Chief John Audie who is our fire chief and our director of code enforcement and to Yasmin Gordon who is our equity director to participate in that so this reflects that. One other item, form based code incentives for affordable housing and for energy efficiency. We're included in our last update we had them listed originally under the economic vitality goal, but since both of those pertain specifically to housing. I recommend that we bring it into the housing updates and report on it there so I've included it here instead and if that's acceptable to city council then that's how I will proceed going forward. So giving you a narrative on all of the priority housing efforts. I'm happy to talk through any of them specifically or answer any specific questions that you have. You'll see that most of them are progressing as planned. Graduating the effectiveness of the housing trust fund is not progressing yet because it has not been rolled out. Part of that is so that we. I'm working with multiple partners in order to roll out the housing trust fund and their trainings that are required. Several trainings that are required. Three trainings at opportunities credit union, two of which have been completed and the third is being completed in November that's an internal staff training so they know how to administer those programs. And then also I will be working with Yaz Gordon, our equity director to ensure that we do trainings with our partner organizations like USCRI and ALV. So they're aware of the programs and the available funds. And so everyone in our community has access to these funds from rollout. So instead of rolling it out and then getting everything translated and you know, making equity a second thought we're doing that part of the initial rollout so it's not you know open season on the funds and then oh also people who don't speak English as a first language you can get this later once we have everything translated so we think that that's an important approach. The other item that is not progressing on the timeline we had expected is updating the public building registry ordinance. And the reason for that is because we are currently in the midst of a grant funded equity audit of the city and housing is one of the three areas being specifically evaluated. So the findings of that equity audit will feed into how we address our ordinance changes. So that I'll take any questions or walk you through any of these items to provide. Thanks Heather. I think based on like the public comment we've heard earlier it might be nice to hear about the effort to evaluate housing quality. And I know Chief Audie isn't here. I know it's like super complicated some of the issues that are coming up with housing quality to the extent that you could share anything. I mean I can share and we also have Robert Malar here who is the chair of the Housing Commission so Robert feel free to jump in whenever you like. Just we've just started this conversation. So we had Chief Audie and Yaz with us at our previous meeting to kind of talk about the complexity of some of the issues with housing quality. People may not know that the city of Winooski has significantly older housing stock than a lot of the surrounding community. So it's about on average 20 years older than the housing stock in the county as a whole. And that comes with its own set of issues. So there's much more lead paint in Winooski. There are structural issues you know there's aging infrastructure in a community that is a low income low resource community. So the costs of making those changes to upgrade and get structures where we want them to be are significant costs for some of our moderate income low income people. So it is a complex situation. There are some issues with sometimes landlords not having resources and supports that they need and tenants not having the resources that they need. So for example landlords and tenants not being able to communicate with each other and not having the support to be able to do so. So I think that you know we've just opened up this conversation and we'll be looking at our code enforcement records of what the most common code violations are in the city health and safety issues that we have in housing and ways that we can specifically address those. When we put together the housing trust fund which involves one program which is specifically for home improvements to bring buildings up to code. We looked at those initial the report for the year on the inspections that were done that year through our public building registry and what the most frequent code violations were. And we use those code violations as priorities in that funding criteria for who would get those loans. So excuse me. So we're starting our work on this but we're early in the development. Robert do you want to add anything. I could but I do also see yes. Yes mean raising her hand. Thanks Robert. I appreciate that. I just wanted to you know to add a little bit of detail around how houses being contributed to in the equity audit. We have connected with IBG who is the consultants that we are the consultant group that we're utilizing the audit. We have connected them directly with the fire chief and they have been going over a slew of quantitative data from the fire department from the firehouse like firehouse data code enforcement violations. All of those things to really take a deep dive into looking at some of the things that Heather was speaking to where some of the where some of the drivers for inequalities have been where they lie with the city of Newsy and then what they're going to do is kind of and then the next step is to we're creating focus groups to we're developing focus groups to bring the community in to talk about their experience with housing. We're looking at access. We're looking at quality. We're looking at safety concerns. We're looking at health outcomes as a result of those four things as well. And so once once the focus groups are done they will do a qualitative analysis and share that share both the quantitative and qualitative analysis with you all and with the community as well to get a feel for whether or not you know whether or not the consensus is that yes this is really what the picture of the Newsy housing looks like. And then to add to that with their final report that's hopefully targeted towards the end of January completed for the end of January they will have recommendations as to how to address some of the issues. Oh and one last step that I have forgotten about before they before they do their final report they are actually going to look at what the gap is between the outcomes that people are expressing and what we're seeing in the data and our policies to figure out if there are any policy drivers that are contributing to the inequality that is happening. So it's going to be really robust and really concise, really excited for it. And I think that we will get at least some answers in January. It's definitely not going to be kind of a magic wand situation, but it's definitely going to aid us in the development of a strategic plan to really address the issues that everyone's talking about. If I can build on that actually I just recently in this last week put into applications for additional resources from the state to assist us in moving forward once we have this equity audit. So the findings from the audit, as if we get the funding will then feed into a municipal planning grant to work with a consultant to create an equitable housing for Winooski. So building on the goals that we have as part of the master plan. This the housing plan will look at things like resource allocation that we need will look at our ordinances will look at specific bylaws that are creating inequities within our city and highlight those for potential changes. And then in addition to that and following on that I've also applied for a bylaw modernization grant so that will deal with the very specific piece of the bylaws that we find may be creating inequities. So the ways that our zoning is keeping creating barriers to us having equitable housing and then that grant would then lead to a consultant doing a very, very broad community process to speak about areas where we could change our zoning that would change the outcomes for housing and and get a sense of the community priorities and the community willingness to make some of those changes in order to be a truly equitable housing. Robert were you did you still have something to layer on? Honestly, after the two of them have been able to talk I don't know what I could really add. You know, these are very key things that they're talking about that we will need to really do work that is apparently long overdue. And I think, you know, I think the thing that I the only thing that I would add is that, although this is a new effort in a lot of ways this is a problem that has been a known problem for a long time and a lot of ways and needs to be more greatly You know, I've prided this commission or our commission prides itself on being very data driven. So I'm really looking forward to what we can get from from as mean and what we can get from the grants that Heather is talking about and all these things so that we can make some more policy changes that can really affect what it's a long standing problem. I mean, that's why we've moved forward with, you know, the rental registry years ago and all of that. And then a lot of ways were miles ahead of many communities in Vermont. And, but we, you know, a lot of that is mainly just data right now and needs to be turned into clearly action, especially as you know, we've seen, perhaps with some particular problem areas. Yeah, and I just want to add a little history to that too, you know, we had a housing needs assessment done a number of years ago. The housing commission over the last couple years from since being formed in 2017. We initially started with looking at that data looking at other city data from the inspections from rental registry and focused spent a lot of time really working on the housing trust one as what was seen as the potentially most impactful policy work that we could do at the time. So having that launch soon will be really exciting. And also just want to make it clear that it's that we have been working on this for a long time. It's just such a massive problem. There's a lot of different tools that you have to keep pressing on how I'll turn to you. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to make a comment. And I just really want to appreciate all of you who've been moving this forward with this comprehensive approach. Housing is a key social determinant. And if we can make that a positive experience for all of our residents, the city will thrive even more. So, so thank you for doing this important work. I also just wanted to add, you know, the in others memo there's the upcoming council role around feedback and guiding to the planning commission, you know, we've been talking about the incentive and form based code for some time. And to the public comment that was made earlier, we know that free bedroom and larger units are unlikely to be built without some subsidy, because they're not, you know, they, you can't get as much money for sale or rent as a cost to build them. So that's something that I know the housing commission has been discussing as something to potentially incentivize and then, you know, partnership with CHT on butternut, whatever it's called now. And those being family size units as well because we know that that's a need. So we, it is something that we are have been making some efforts to move the needle on. I do see a hand in the participant list so we'll open to public comment now, and then we can continue. Hi, welcome. Hi, my name is Suzanne Blaine. I am a owner of a few houses and a landlord here and I'm not sure if this is exactly the right forum but I did want to speak to housing and some of the zoning issues that I've come across. So very briefly, about two years ago we put in an application for a essentially an accessory dwelling unit and it has come before the DRB three times and is now going to environmental court. And one of the things we're coming across is a disconnect is a disconnect between the city council goals, the planning commission goals and then like the DRB and their understanding and maybe they're not trained. I'm not sure what's going on with the DRB. But, you know, we're, we're looking at all of the zoning and looking at it from one perspective and then the way that any sort of additional structures on a property have to go through DRB there and under conditional use of zoning, even if you're in the district so you want two units that has to go before the DRB and then they're using like very arbitrary just sort of their feelings on things rather than any sort of like zoning rules on their rulings is my experience. And so I guess I'm just trying to say that, like, based on what you're saying you're looking at this meeting more like the housing trust goals but I think that there's also some major issues in terms of like parking rules and and some of those other goals like that are happening in the zoning and just from like the more like individual lot experiences that I'm having with some of my properties. Thanks, Suzanne I think that's exactly the kind of thing that we are looking to address in the future is one of these barriers that are coming up in zoning and process that are stopping us, you know, our master plan outright says we want to encourage and incentivize accessory dwelling units. And so if we're actually positioning it to bear to that and that's something that we do need to address. I guess the other two little things to add are that as we're looking at this especially from the lens of equity. We have some kind of outdated language in our zoning policy that one of the factors is called character of the neighborhood with very little definition of how that can be used. So we believe that that's being used quite unfairly in some cases in our city. And the other thing is that yes me and I was amazed at some of the things that you are doing and I'm really excited about that. I think some of the data though that you're going to be using is inaccurate. My experience is just looking at purchasing properties in when you see is that there's a lot of things that are being rented that are not on the rental registry. So I think there almost needs to be like if you're actually going to get data like in a way a door to door. You know property by property like some of the things I've looked at are horrible squalor living conditions and when you see and I guarantee those aren't on the rental registry. And some of my one of my properties when I brought it online as a rental it took over six months and constant like pestering and persistence to get it inspected. So there's definitely like as a landlord a lot that I'm coming across that's kind of clunky and like things that aren't matching across across the different like aspects of the government. If I can just from the Housing Commission I'm have this is Heather Carrington I'm the housing liaison. The Housing Commission has put forward recommendations to the planning commission that they know I'm sorry. We are about to put forward recommendations to the Planning Commission. We have a draft memo for them that will go to them in December that they look at the zoning for great neighborhoods document the guy that was created at the state level that addresses many of the things that you're So we have specific highlighted recommendations for things that could change in our zone. So I think there's a lot more to come in a bigger conversation about that. Okay. And then like the Planning Commission do they then advise the DRB or supervise them. DRB and staff jump in if I start to misspeak the DRB is quasi judicial like they kind of stand alone. They the Planning Commission helps the council create the regulations and then the DRB is tasked with implementing them. Eric if you want to layer in it. I would generally say that's correct. The development review board is a quasi judicial body that reviews very specific applications that come forward for conditional use or for appeals or for other elements such as that subdivisions things of that nature go to the Planning Commission. They don't have a role in the planning process. The Planning Commission itself is the is the body that advises on policy decisions land use policy decisions to city council who ultimately makes the decision on what regulations should be adopted. But they do. We have talked about some touch points between the Planning Commission and DRB chairs, just to share back and forth that there's like, if the DRB is having trouble interpreting certain things or they feel like what they're looking at in zoning is forcing them to make X decision and then vice vice versa Planning Commission can also give you back to say like these aren't working out the way that we intended so like what do we need to date in zoning to address that. That's correct. And Suzanne would be happy to have you come to the Planning Commission when when the Housing Commission submits their recommendations will be in December. I'm not sure exactly what. Okay, I'll be happy to join them. Thank you so much for hearing me. Thank you. And then I see Elizabeth's hand is raised. Hi. Welcome back. Thank you. So I was just listening to Heather so thank you for your report. And I just thought I'd throw out some caution I feel like it's very easy to blame new American families who come with limited English skills as a reason why they may be in the circumstances that they are. And I think it was a family who had a roach infestation so bad that it was in behind the electrical outlets they had leaking roofs that were dripping onto their beds for months. But in when you ski we have a alb we have us CRI interpreters we have community members who are multi lingual. So the idea that language is a barrier in this community is just an excuse putting putting the blame on our families and I think we need to be really thoughtful of understanding where where this is coming from where the blame might need to be put and that not everyone. But they're the intent is there. Thank you. Elizabeth I want to clarify there. We work closely with US CRI and ALB my my issue is the resources aren't there always for them to be able to support as much as they as is needed in our community. So really we're pushing for there to be more funding allocated for there to be more community liaisons possibly at the city so that we're able to provide those services in house. So I think that's what you were hearing when I was talking about their needing to be more support. I wanted to dovetail off of that. Heather yeah it's certainly not a situation where there's any blame that's being even you know even spoken about it's about the lack of resources and the like the lack the missing partnerships the missing opportunities for partnerships that are then causing or contributing to the the reason why it's happening. So it's not necessarily looking at blaming any one individual or any partner. It's really looking at where the holes are and looking to address those so that we can bridge gaps to increase you know to increase the positive positive housing outcomes for the residents. So that's really what we are what we are focused on and there is definitely you know we do work we have partnerships with US CRI with the multicultural liaisons at the school. You know this is something this is a piece a piece of access is what the what the equity audit is really looking at and languages definitely a piece of that and it is part of that is because you know there are not resources that are readily available at all times and also you know landlords who are private entities are not necessarily currently required to provide language services for sometimes tenants are not able to access people that they need to be able to communicate with their landlords in a way that is in a timely fashion to be able to address some of the issues. So those are the types of things we're looking at. We're looking at what supports can we give landlords what supports can we give residents what supports can can we provide as a city to really start to bridge those gaps so that things like that are not happening and so that people feel like they have what they need to be able to form good partnerships between landlords and residents. Thanks Yas. Elizabeth was there anything else you wanted to share or ask? Well I was going to touch on the developers but I think I might just save it for the planning commission meeting. Thank you. Thank you. Mike I see your hand. I have a quick question. Yas you mentioned partnerships or Heather one of you did. I'm wondering where is the refugee resettlement program partnership. It sounds like there's a drop in the ball here somewhere along the lines with the resettlement program where they're not they're bringing folks into places where they probably shouldn't be leaving them and they just kind of open the door and say here you go we're out of here and it's up to the community and City Hall to fix the problems. Is there any work that we need to do there or some follow-up on on those folks? Who has that question? I can definitely speak to that. I think that there's not an answer currently because that is something that the equity audit is looking at. It's looking at how the city partners with these different organizations and how much reliance we have on them to be able to provide services and really trying to lay out how resources can be reallocated on all fronts not necessarily just at the city but really looking at our partnerships and how we're utilizing them and how best to make them more efficient. So that is something that is going to come as a result of the equity audit with some recommendations on how we can address those issues. I heard a comment I think was from Miss Wood where some folks got into an apartment and then they were blamed for the infestation of the apartment and I think that's a real unfair situation for someone who's just trying to get a new start on life and all of a sudden they're kind of being ridiculed on their living arrangement. I think there's maybe some room for follow-up on not just their part and I'm hoping this audit shows that or maybe and I don't want to put it on our code enforcement but maybe there's some more follow-up means on our code enforcement department to make sure that the folks that own these places they get their work done and the time they're allotted instead of having it keep going on and on and on because that's not a real safe situation for anybody. Even for the innocent bystander who has to move out of their apartment because of a situation that's not caused by them. Exactly. This series of planning exercises with the audit will come out with some findings. The municipal planning grant will do that equity plan for housing for the city so that will then specifically look at changes we can make to policy. So whether that be the way that we do code enforcement, whether that be resource allocation so we're sure that our partners have the resources that they need and we have the resources that we need. I think that will all be part of the series of plans. And trust me, I'm not trying to point the finger at anybody, especially our code enforcement, those folks are busy and they do a heck of a job. As a tradesman, I know stuff falls through the cracks sometimes when it comes to this sort of thing, but there's got to be, yeah, we got to have a better plan, I think. Yeah, I think that's why, you know, I really I keep saying I could be on it because really when I want to keep using the term the drivers of inequality because really that's that is what is we are going to find is going to be a good is going to give us the answers so that we can then create the tools to fix them. So whatever those may be, whether they are policy, you know, whether it's within our policies, whether it's in our code, you know, our code enforcement, whether it's in our zoning, you know, we're going to be able to identify those things that we are all kind of, you know, those big question marks that we all have to speak to my. And I think that housing is going to be a great priority that is going to come from, you know, from the results of this audit, it seems like, you know, from now, even with the preliminary data that has been collected that has been analyzed. The data is definitely taking us in that direction. And I'm really excited for folks to be able to kind of see what that is going to look like come January. And I see your hand. Yeah, thank you. I don't want to belabor and get off the topic too much from the intended agenda item so I'll just kind of keep it short. Echoing a lot of what has been said already. I do think that additional as it relates to housing stock and safety and quality I do think that there. To see the recommendations for the planning commission consideration around frequency of inspections. I don't know what the enforcement protocols are and if there's escalating enforcement but it would be interesting to see if that's inclusive of revoking or repealing certificate of occupancy. And I believe one of the recent incidents is from a property owner that has rentals and multiple municipalities. I would be interested in seeing if there's a pervasive pervasive issue of particular property owners and failure to meet code and multiple municipalities and whether or not there are additional repercussions for for failure to maintain adequate housing that could be elevated to a state level state health Department of Health level for further enforcement. Because at some point it's not just impacting one municipality it's impacting folks across multiple municipalities and and I think that does need to be have a ability to be elevated to a higher degree higher level. So I do I do want to make sure we include that policy component in some recommendations. One of my grandfather's favorite sayings is people do what you inspect not what you expect. I believe in that thoroughly and and really support putting more resources into code enforcement because it is a matter of a determinant of health and equity. So I think that it's something that can be underfunded but I think we need to kind of heed the warnings and make sure that we're being responsive. So thank you. Correct me if I'm wrong. I think that's the kind of data that the Housing Commission will be looking at at some point. Yeah. And the audit. Yeah. I'll look forward to seeing that too. Jim. Thank you. And I just want to thank our public who showed up and the comments and kind of allowing this discussion to wander a little field of the intended goal updates. But I think and I also want to thank you Robert for being here. That's encouraging to see our commission chair showing up and taking an interest in this type of discussion too. As our discussion has me entered and the update shows that we have a lot to do in the city and there's only so much that we're going to be able to do. I mean the answer to what do we need to do to fix housing is going to be way more money than we'll ever have and way more attention than we can give because of our size and just because we're dealing with so many competing issues. We're going to have some key discussions that aren't going to be easy coming up over the next two years and so I guess I want to like cement this moment to remember that we think this is a priority and that we're going to have to do some hard work both as council and with our commissions with our communities with our developers because it's going to be all of this doing things together. I love the comprehensive vision. I expect many of the things that will come out of that are going to be things that we wouldn't know already but it'll give us a better sense of how to tackle them and I hope we can be like kind of ready to jump on those and incremental steps rather than waiting for everything to come together to do it all at once. I think we do need to start making steps now. And so I don't want to rush things but I also want us to I guess I'm encouraging us to be ready to step in and do things when we have the opportunity especially with our with the upcoming financial pieces, partnership pieces, larger state picture. There's going to be a lot that we could do and having this comprehensive plan will be good but it's also going to take quick action from us and these issues are things that ideally would have been solved two months ago and it's going to take years but I just I'm optimistic that for this kind of level of attention and care that you all are showing that we've actually do some real good here. So thank you and let's keep going. Are there any more public comments or questions? Reminder you can use chat or the raise hand picture in time. Mike I see your hand. Yes, can I have another topic I want to get on with this housing update. Are we over? Could you hold for a second because I think I saw Hillary's hand in the. Absolutely. Thank you. Second there. Maybe Hillary did you want to speak? Maybe not. It was just there for a second. The other thing that caught my eye was the, has the parking study been finalized yet? I think it's due January, February. Because I was reading the incentives and parking is always one of the things on my mind. And I just want to, I want to know where the parking is going to be as a goal on the housing because as these developers are developing buildings that will not satisfy the parking needs. This all started out as trying to save the neighborhoods from, you know, the gateways and if we have an invasion of parking on off street parking. That's going to go blocks down certain neighborhoods and expect our neighborhoods to stay friendly and user friendly. I'm concerned about that sort of thing and I don't see that kind of an update in this housing update. Does anyone have an answer for me on that? So the recommendations that the housing commission shared with planning already included evaluating parking in the incentive some. They are waiting for more data, but the recommendations aren't. It's to get development that includes the right amount of parking not to under provide. And so we. The preliminary data shows that it's being over provided. And that there is room to reduce, particularly in support of our housing goals. We heard from some area developers, you know, certain types of housing have lower parking utilization. So lower income multifamily units tend to have lower, you know, lower number of cars that a high income single family house. Senior house and tends to have fewer vehicles. So that is part of the evaluation is what tweaks could be made that would still be. Is there any other questions on this update? It is just a discussion item. Okay, thank you everyone for very robust discussion. More to come at some soon to come meetings. We can move on to item C. This is not for discussion or approval. This is an all resident voting implementation updates with Carol and yes. Who wants to introduce Carol, why don't you go ahead? Carol, you're on mute. Sorry. We've been meeting and going over the all resident voting and some of the recommendations that we had brought to you last week. And we had a few changes. And we also have developed a new voter application for an all resident voting. I know that has been being approved by the, our attorney. So with the new city clerk that'll be coming in, we will be reaching out. I mean, going over this update. Probably that's one of the top things that we'll be discussing with her through the all resident voting. And also I have reached out to the Secretary of State's office for the translation of ballots because that is a big job. They have given me a company called language links with that's where they get their translated ballots translated. Carol, do you mind if I jump in just a sec? No, go right ahead. Thank you. Yeah, no, I just wanted to know thank you for the update. And that's great to hear that that the information back from the state's attorney, the state's attorney's office. That's wonderful for the that's wonderful from the state. So we've been, you know, we've had multiple meetings between myself, the city clerks and Wendy, our interim city manager to really make what we feel is a really robust plan for community outreach and engagement for kind of like the pre election coming up, you know, coming up to the election. It involves multiple pathways for folks to get involved. It involves multiple pathways for education in multiple locations. We're really trying to get out into the community to promote registering to vote to promote the resources and the supports that the city is offering to help people really understand what it means to vote and what voting day will look like for new voters. And so, you know, I believe that the document was attached. We did like Carol express we did make some changes she brought the document to the BCA meeting that occurred a couple weeks ago, they provided some input around the actual election day process and around the ballots. So that's also reflected in the changes that are in the document. And we will be, you know, looking to share the document with our community partners, coming up, you know, probably after the holidays, we really start to hear into the outreach portion. So we are going to be leaning on our community partners heavily to be able to get the word out and get the education around but there's a, there's a pretty good plan in place, I think. So, we're putting this together and sharing with us tonight, and also for presenting to the Board of Civil Authority recently to get their input as the folks who run the live action election. I don't have, I had like a couple of suggestions that I've heard pop up, but want to open it up for questions first. Questions from council. Jim. Thank you. And one piece I appreciated is seen kind of the layout of timing and who's tackling which pieces and I think that's really, really laid out. I think one thing that we've talked about before is what our responsibilities as counselors are in this process. And I don't imagine you would commit us to that and a written document like this but I'm curious if you would have any reflections for us that you want us to be actively participating in any of these steps. Those of us who can. Right, you know, I think there are a couple of you who unfortunately aren't able to because you're going to be on the ballot this year so you'll be kind of doing your own things up to coming up to election season. But you know, we would really love kind of an all hands on deck approach, especially when it comes to the community outreach and engagement and you're planning what we call our lovely red coffee has has coined road shows to go out into the community and kind of set up in in targeted locations that pretty much cover the entire city and all of the residents that should be you know that that could possibly be registering to vote to for informational purposes so they'll it'll be kind of like a taking go stand like tabling that that provides community members with translated versions of all of the information around voting and voting day, as well as information around registration for applications for voting and how you do that. And so we'll need we will need some people power to be able to do that because we'd love to have folks there to answer any questions, you know, if people have you know if they're swinging by the market to pick up their bread and they have they see us there. I have some questions for us. We'd love to have people in person ready to be able to provide answers if possible so that's something that I would love for the counselors to be able to take part in. Once we come out with that schedule we haven't developed a schedule yet for what that will look like. So far we've only identified some key places on key locations. And also, you know, we were thinking about utilizing Carol has shared some of the wonderful videos that they did a few years back that they recorded that are informational videos, and we would love to be able to have those running in locations around the city. So, you know, at workplaces in, you know, in all the city buildings possibly in the school. If people are able to set up, you know, if they have a television screen in their front lobby of the business or something like that we would love to be able to have those videos just kind of widespread and available for people to view in passing. So we would love if folks have the ability to do that and they would like to volunteer to have those videos posted in their place of business. We would love for that to happen as well. So please just reach out. And we can, we can hopefully with the help of our communications director get that get that going as well once we start the process. Are those videos, or can they be permanently on our like the how do I vote page on our website. They currently are. They are there. Okay. Yep. If you go to winnerskibt.gov slash vote. They're about halfway down. Another location, we might at least do pamphlets, the food shelf. I mean, check with the folks running that book. And then just wanted to let you all know, I did reach out to the director of the partnership for prevention. You know, pre COVID they used to do a candidate forum and community dinner. So I reached out to her to see if they if they do have like anything at all planned. Or at least get that conversation going. Thank you. I was also, I was curious about how I got to change the zoom screen so I can see everybody. I was wondering about, so videos are exceptionally useful and have some good longevity. What, what type of accessibility do we have, or do we know in terms of internet access computer access. So, you know, it's just what's what is the anticipated distribution or realized distribution of those videos. Well, I think anybody can access them via the links that Paul posted on the website so as long as you have internet access with or a smart phone or device that is connected to whatever, you know, cloud anywhere out there. You can you can watch the videos. And that means that we and I know that Paul can, we can circulate them on all of our social media, including what staff and Twitter. And I know that the mayor just created a what staff account as well that she's able to utilize to send city information. So that's an addition that we didn't have before as well. Do we have a sense for how frequently the community would be able to access the internet or access is there is there a barrier there. So, yeah, go ahead. I can jump in the 2019 census data. We had 77% of households with active internet subscription. I mean, there's certainly some households without. Yeah. I'm just thinking like I know my internet. Monthly internet rates and charges have gone up during the pandemic and I and I'm just thinking about we're creating resources that are available on the internet but you have to have resources to be able to access the internet so. So that's what I'm thinking like. Yeah, recommendation to saying, well, what it'd be great if businesses are multifamily housing it has has these videos available in their lobby and and other locations have these available businesses have these available in their lobbies for for access but I don't I just wonder what the reality of that would be, you know, as having videos available other than just on our website. Well, business. Sorry about that. We are, you know, we plan on having them available at all and all of our city buildings and we are going to hopefully partner with the school for them to be rolling in there, you know, in their lobby with their TV that they have there. And so, you know, we're just we're hoping that with the way that you know the way that people frequent, you know, marketplaces or, you know, people come into City Hall to pay a tax bill or whatever it is that they need that they'll at least be available to see them there. They can play at the library as well which is open, you know, during every day of the week as well so we will widely advertise locations where those videos are going to be available if people want to view them and camp from home. Okay, great. I'll just mention you quickly too and in addition, if I may, you know, videos are just one tool and toolbox obviously, you know, there's an entire plan for printed materials and multiple locations and certainly this is our first go we're really leaving the way in this initiative in the state and quite frankly in the nation. You know, there'll be some learning to do. Obviously, we're going to try to, you know, approach it with a no stone unturned approach like we do with a lot of other big initiatives noble. We can consider, you know, an all all city mailer as we've done before with other initiatives. The other thing I wanted to mention too is that we are going we had some discussion about where the all resident voting information would be centrally located on the website. And at first we kind of thought, well, we could create like a whole dedicated page for getting information on all resident voting but we all sort of landed on making sure that all of those resources and everything is available on the slash vote page so that that's you can enter that page a couple of pages you can get through the how do I menu on the homepage there so how do I and then vote in the new ski. It's also available to the clerk's office and then just it's easy to memorize for slash vote. And then you know the non internet options for folks, you know that's where all the direct outreach comes in, you know when we go through print materials and work with our partners to connect with as many as possible. And it's worth noting that there will be a full page in the windows newsletter that is dedicated in January that is dedicated to all of this information as well. And it's not this piece is not in the plan yet because Paul and I were had just started discussing it last week trying to figure out a way for us to have the translated material that we're going to provide to folks. In QR code versions for people if it's because the newsletter goes out to all households, however, the newsletter itself isn't English. And so we were trying to figure out a way to make that more accessible to non English speakers or English language learners in the form of someone, you know if they have a smartphone or if they have a device or if they want to come borrow a device from the library to click on the QR code and it pulls up the information in the language that they, you know that they speak. And that's something that I just wanted to mention that we are looking at being able to do we haven't quite figured out the details around that yet, but we are working towards that. Yeah, that's a cool idea. I hope you're able to pull together that would be that would be really neat. Yeah, that was all Paul. Well takes a team that's awesome. Sure. And I think, you know, we were having these conversations about about access, you know, every single day I think in lieu of a, you know, an official language access plan or any sort of language study, you know, that's that's more robust than than census data that happens every decade I think, you know, we're going to we're going to try to use every two in the two bucks as I mentioned before. Awesome. Any more questions from Council. Any public comments. Remember you can use the raise hand feature or the chat. Is there any additional feedback here or yes that would be useful to you. Any questions you have for us. No questions. Okay. Um, we don't really need to vote on this but it says approval so. Does anyone want to make a motion to approve the implementation update. Second. Did I didn't hear the motion. Yeah, okay, okay. Motion by Jim second by how all those in favor, please say aye. Hi. Anyone I'm standing. Opposed. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. It's 746. I want to call a five minute break. So let us reconvene at 751. Right is 751. So I will reconvene our meeting. We are on item D, which is on for approval. This is the fundraising policy that we saw at our last meeting. Angela made some changes based on our discussion. And we have included the option for people making a significant contribution of $2,500 or more to have the opportunity to come to council to be recognized. We did leave that as an option so that people could choose to remain anonymous. If they wish. Those were really the biggest changes that were made. And we have included the option for people making a significant contribution of $2,500 or more to have the opportunity to come to council to be recognized. Those were really the biggest changes that were made, but happy to get any feedback. Yeah. So to recap our last discussion. Wanted to make sure this policy was focused more on staff. It's in fundraising and didn't create barriers for community numbers during fundraising. Any questions from council? Does this new version meets. No. No. No. Absolutely. I'm seeing no hand. Are there any questions, comments from the public. On this fundraising policy. Still no public in city hall. Nope. No, there's nobody here. Thank you. Right. Well, you have addressed the concerns we raised last time. I'm hearing no new concerns. Does someone want to move to approve the fundraising policy? Okay. Motion by Mike second by Jim. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you, Angela. All right. So we are now on item E. This is the city manager search firm recommendation update. So at our last meeting, we looked at four different search firm proposals brought forward by staff. Had some discussion about them. And then we came to consensus on one. Gov HR. And then decided to go ahead and interview search for. So, Jim, myself. Yaz and PB, our HR director. And Wendy, our inter manager. Participate in, in those interviews. We met with. MRI. We met with HR. We met with alliance. Holly hire withdrew from consideration after viewing our meeting. We're concerned about some of the conversation and potentially not. Us not being a good fit to work together. And we also reached out to another firm. That had recently filled the manager position. However, they also did not have the capacity to take out my search. So. We shared our, the memo, the linked memo from said the September meeting. That kind of outlined our previous process. Show that with them in advance and the set of questions. To just guide a conversation. So. We have worn an executive session here. To have a discussion to, if you all want to get into like what we learned. How those, how those interviews went. Jim. Yes. Maybe you want to add anything to that overview intro. Because this is part of the. Appointment. Employment or evaluation. Also. You know, in these conversations, we touched on previous search. I think probably these firms also might have. You know, been sharing some proprietary information with us. So. Due to that and state statute section 313. Does someone want to make a motion to find that we should have this conversation? Motion by Jim second by Mike. All those in favor. Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Could I have a motion to enter into executive session? Inviting our interim manager, equity director, HR director to join us. Second. Motion by Jim second by Brian. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Second. Motion. Motion by Jim second. By Brandon all those in favor. Please say I. Hi. I should carry. So we're going to move to another zoom line for the executive session. We're only going to discuss. The search firm recommendation. Then we're going to come back to this line and then potentially. We're in Wendy. You guys are going to get some exercise tonight. Are we? We're having multiple executive sessions. There'll be some more movement. Yeah. Digital exercise. Are those all going to be the same ID and passcode? We're using that same one. Right, Wendy? I believe that's in one. Yes. And I'm contacting the person who will be in the second one to let him know to start signing on. Okay, great. All right. So we're back in from executive. And I am looking for a motion to approve staff to contract with HR for our search firm. And should that not work out to be able to then contract with alliance as a secondary option. Do I have a motion? Second. Motion by Jim, second by Hal. All those in favor, please say I. Hi. Hi. Motion carries. Mayor. May I just ask the question. Is there is the authority, the dollar value. Of the proposals. The authority to contract for the dollar value that was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Wendy. Sorry about that. Okay. I guess should have come out higher. We will revisit that. We are done with the regular part of the agenda. We're now in item nine executive session. So we have another one who discussed confidential attorney client communications. Looking for a motion to find under state statute. Three one three one half that we should have this discussion in executive session to receive professional legal services from our attorney. Second. Motion by Hal. Second by Jim. All those in favor, please say I. Motion carries. So then I need a motion to move into executive session. Inviting our attorney. Of diploma and our interim manager. What the Harrison anyone else, Wendy. That's it. I think that's it. Okay. Second. Motion by Jim second by Bryn. All those in favor, please say I. Motion carries. We will move back into executive session to discuss the. This matter. Um, would it be appropriate? Could I do, could we do two motions and just go over there and do handle both of these items? Or we should come back out. No, we have to come back. You have to come back out if you're going to take. A vote. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know that you will be taking. Oh yes. Yes, you will be. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So we're just going to talk about item B. And then we'll come back here and then we'll do a, another one for the, the last time. So I will see you in the other zoom. Yeah. Yes. I think I was the meeting host and when I left the call ended, could you text Bob? Yeah, I didn't hear the first part of what you said. I believe when I left the zoom meeting ended. So he'll have to rejoin. Okay. If you, if you could alert him, please. Thank you. Sorry for the delay. I'm just waiting to receive our. Really approved language. Wendy, did you get an email yet? No, I haven't. And I'm refreshing frequently. Oh, here it goes. Did you get it? No, not yet. There it is. Okay. Um, so I'm going to read this resolution and then we'll be ready for that. So I would like to get a little bit of a. So we have a meeting of motion. To resolve that the council appoints the mayor and the interim city manager to serve as a litigation committee to provide guidance and direction to counsel on interim steps in the lawsuit brought against the city in connection with the all resident voting charter provision. The committee is authorized to make decisions concerning the concerns concerning the litigation, including any decision to settle the bill. Also resolve that the council hereby ratifies and approves the filing of the motion to dismiss presently on file with the court and all steps taken thus far incident there too. And resolve that the council hereby authorizes council to grant an extension of time to January 7th, 2022 for the plaintiffs to file a response to the city's motion to dismiss. Would someone like to move to approve that resolution? So moved. Second. Motion by Bryn, second by Jim. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Those opposed? Aye. Motion carried. Thank you very much. So we can move on to item C. This is an executive session to receive an update per state statute section 3131A about lot nine and development agreement contracts. So looking for a motion to find that having this discussion open session would put us at a disadvantage, put the city at a disadvantage. And so we should per state statute hold this discussion in the executive session. So moved. Second. Motion by Bryn, second by Jim. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. So I'm looking for a motion to enter into executive session, inviting our interim manager, John Rauscher and Eric. Yes. As well as our attorney Bob DePalma. Can I have a motion please? Move. Second. Motion by Jim, second by Hal. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. We're going to move over to another zoom line for this conversation. We'll discuss only this item and then we'll return to this slide to adjourn. No purpose, this will take place.