 All right, you know, Councilor Chittenden is going to be a little late, so we will start on time. So, I'd like to call to order the South Burlington City Council meeting of Monday, December 5th, 2022, and we'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance. Matt, you want to? 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. Instructions on exiting the building in case of emergency? For those in the room, there are exits on both sides of the rear of the auditorium. You can turn right or left to exit in an emergency. For those online, thank you for joining us remotely. If you are interested in speaking on any item on the agenda, please either turn your camera on or indicate in the chat that you would like to speak and the chair will call on you. We are not monitoring the chat for content. Thank you. So agenda review, any additions, deletions, or changes in order of agenda items? So we, yes. Can we please add, we, when we set up this agenda, we were not sure all the planning commission applicants could be here tonight, so we did not schedule an executive session, but now we believe they can, although they're not yet all here. So if we could add an executive session on discussing appointments to boards and committees, I'd appreciate it. Okay. Done. So we'll put B, boards and committees. Okay. Seeing no other changes or suggestions, we'll go on to comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. Yes. Please come up to, up there, yes. Yes. For the record, please state your name and. Good evening. David DeLaurier, Delaware Street, South, Burma, and Vermont, retired veteran, Vietnam era. I come before the council tonight. I've tried to be, I've already told the city manager, I'll try to be on my best behavior. It is not my intention to infuriate or insult anyone, but Megan knows me. Sometimes I get a little animated, so I'll try to be on my best behavior. I would like to take a few moments, comment on two articles, November 10th issue and December 1st. I've spent all weekend rereading these articles and over and over and over again, so I'm prepared to give my comments this evening and or suggestions without anybody else's references or comments. I'm not going to quote any unnamed sources, nothing. These are all my thoughts. First item I would just like to take a moment on is the, if I can find it, well, I'll wing it now. The beautiful design artist conception for your land bridge, going from Corey Hill over to University Mall. I look at the existing mode of transportation being the Williston Road bridge coming over here to South Burma and the questions I have relate to the amount of people that go that way every day because people have a tendency to go in a straight line to try to go the shortest distance. So pedestrians or cyclists who are going from here up there, either go to work, the hospital, university, or they're going shopping, or they're going to visit friends, and then returning. How many times they do that per day, per week, per month, and how many people does that represent for a monthly slash yearly figure? So I look at that, so then I reviewed that beautiful drawing of that land bridge, gorgeous, I mean, absolutely gorgeous, but I view the location as kind of odd, Corey Hill coming down here, and Corey Hill is quite a distance away from Williston Road, myself personally. I don't see a lot of people deviating out of their normal path to go over there to come down that, except for maybe a special occasion, i.e. an event, a bicycle race, a walking, running race, maybe some type of marathon, etc., etc., etc., but gorgeous, I mean beautiful, but man, $14.5 million. Wow, I look at that, I hope you did a comprehensive study with the existing real people that traverse every day to find out where they're going, why they're going there, and then how many people are doing that, so that you could build up a qualitative sample of people saying this is what we project, because you will probably reduce that population load by moving the structure over there. Okay, that said, now I'm going to put on my retired IBM Mechanical Engineers hat. I had a quarter century career. My job was process improvements, mechanical process improvements. I did things, I created tooling, I created machines that improved efficiencies for people doing manual tasks. That was my job, and then in my last five years I transitioned to a high-level IT like Tim Barrett does. I always kept in mind safety, form, fit, function. All IBMers know cost was the paramount. We had to do studies, experiments, justifications. We had to give to management, return on investment figures. We had to prove to them that they're either going to save energy or the people are going to save time. Their job is going to be made easier and the product quality will be improved. That was our mission. My whole career was think, work smarter, not harder. I look at that structure and the artist's conception leaves me with a lot of questions based upon safety that says during the winter months will that be a heated structure? Because if you have ice and snow developing up there on that structure, the wind kicks up, you flip a chunk of ice, a couple pounds or better, that lands down the interstate and that hits a vehicle, truck, car, whatever. Accident resulting, death resulting. The city of South Brunswick will be held liable for all incursions. So I read the part about having LED lighting. Great, beautiful. Like you said, artwork is very pretty, nice, but make sure that it's super safe for anything so there's nothing, no debris coming down off that structure onto the interstate because boy, I've seen stuff fly, go right through windshields and death results. I hope that a team of structural engineers and mechanical engineers will go through the design document with a fine-tooth comb for materials, material strength, vibration, load capacity. It's one thing to have five people going across it. It's a much different thing if you extend the Brownington City Marathon and you've got 500 people going across it or you've got a couple thousand bikes. That's a lot of weight. So please keep all of those. I'd love the council to percolate those kind of thoughts and keep that in forefront of your mind. Safety, safety, safety. It may cost you more money, but it may save a life. Lastly on the bridge, you'll have to incorporate a yearly running expense for maintenance. Either snow removal, humanely, or a heated surface so that all walls and the floor of that thing are heated so that you can't generate ice or snow. Critically important and taking into account the weather patterns around here, especially wind, you have to have, if those, the way I saw that, if those are any way glass panels that are mounted up on that structure back many decades ago in the early 70s when John Hancock built her building down in Boston, do you remember when it was building, when the windows were popping out, due to pressure changes? Because what you have every day, thousands of vehicles setting up harmonic vibration on the road that vibrates all surfaces. We at IBM, I was there working there when they built building 973 and they're trained every day when it came through, caused a sub harmonic frequency that caused all the photo lithography processing tools up on the manufacturing floor to go out of spec. They couldn't lay down photo lithography. Everything was shaking and at that time I was repairing microscopes so I had to help them. The building, they tore down whole outside wall, running alongside the railroad tracks because that boarded the IBM property, they had to go way down in the ground and put in sound, deadening, different layers and materials. They then took building 973 and suspended the whole building on springs and air cushions just like they have at Norrad in Colorado to isolate the whole manufacturing floor from vibrations. I was there. That was the only way they could get it to stop shaking because every time train came through, we wouldn't feel it but the machines felt it. And over here every day with different weight loads going on the interstate, it sets up vibrations, rattles the concrete, it rattles a structure, makes a steel ring when you hear that term ringing steel. That's what that is. Harmonic frequencies of different pitches cause different things to happen. That building will vibrate, that structure will vibrate. You go over the Uski bridge, you ever felt a wiggle over there? That's not a safe bridge. So enough said on that one. That's enough on that topic. I just want to give you some food for thought on that. Switching to the December 1st article which talks about your city council wants to regulate fossil fuel. Now I had a private meeting with a city manager, Jessica, on this past Friday and she assured me that this was not going to go forward but it had not hit press time or mess press deadline. But I read the article for what it is very carefully over and over and over again. All I want to say is I had a lengthy meeting today over at Green Mountain Power and I went and talked to qualified engineers about electrical and electrical grids. They then told me that the city of South Bryant is given every three years the comprehensive plan from Green Mountain Power which incorporates increased usage, workloads, capacity, how strong the grid is, etc. What types of alternate forms of energy may be used, how they're going to adjust it and he assured me they have several layers to their grid. Vermont is pretty well protected. He didn't guarantee it would never happen but he did say that compared to big cities like West Coast, Phoenix, places like that where they do have rolling blackouts, we're pretty isolated from it and a rolling blackout really only happens when equipment fails like the guys down in the Carolinas they're shooting up a whole power station, nice touch, that took 38,000 people right off the grid or equipment fails like a transformer blows, weather, extreme weather, heat will cause and overload, trip off circuits and then when you have an increased demand everybody in California turns on the air conditioning because it's hotter than a pistol all of a sudden boom spikes of power curve and I read that article and read that article and it frustrated me to the point where it was filled with a lot of opinion not scientific data not from qualified sources that are verifiable it was just general opinion and I'm like I don't work like that I work from facts you show me data show me scientific studies show me what we need to do so the thing was which I was hurt when I made the comment about requiring mandating I'll almost be converted to alternative energy source I'll look at myself I'm in now the fall of my life and the way my health is going I'm heading towards the winter of my life pretty quick so I'm not sure how much longer I will be above ground but while I'm above ground not well I want to not have to be put into a situation of a expensive retrofit of my home prior to my death I spent several thousand dollars to put in a brand new furnace that's good for the 20 years I made it 30 before I had to spend several thousand bucks but I don't want to do that again I'm getting kind of elderly I don't pretty presume I'll be there much more than maybe 10 years before my son says okay dad you're going the old folks home you know you can't be there by yourself much longer I fall down I'll break a hip but hopefully the council will take into account our aging population and if they want to go to alternative energy sources and you come up with something great but give it a phased in approach to allow people to transition if they want to or give them a zero sum dollar conversion and make darn sure that you've got some qualified contractors I mean certified not Joe Smith and Bubba who run around the neighborhood scamming people make sure they know how to do plumbing electrical and major housing renovations some homes in south brine and will need to be kind of partially torn apart to get their heating systems out to get something new in there it's an expensive process when you're trying to convert something so I don't have a problem with new construction hasn't been built yet great have a ball and any organization that volunteers but if you're going to do it to the residences especially elderly people you're going to have to give them a you have to sweeten the pot so to speak if it means another you know federal package great but can't just you can't just be put on them to spend 5000 plus unknown dollars to an end point where they will never recover the benefit of that before they pass on thank you very much that's all I want to say and hopefully you'll give it to consideration for future endeavors and one of the final comment market street looks nice I'm a little disturbed there's no no decorations on dorset street which there should be and there's nothing on willowson road so to see pretty decorations among St. Albans who look at their their park because their park is nice I wish we had a christmas tree here thank you thank you very much you made some really good points and I appreciate your food for thought peace and logic and your presentation was very easy to hear because of the delivery thank you didn't get angry no as you know I can yes I know I tried very hard well you succeeded to us I don't feel good but I'm sorry just to top off my resume over at IBM I have two patents on file every project I ever built and I built automated machinery and I use lasers and robots and they're all in production in here roman Austin Texas so everything I came up with to improve people's lives and their jobs worked I did ergonomics and I was successful and then they decided you paid too much you're out of here one month before my 25th anniversary I never got over it lost two-thirds of my retirement so that's my life story thank you well thank you very much enjoy happy holidays as well to celebrate oh once in a while and maybe once a month once a quarter it would be lovely if you would re-institute a coffee clutch coffee and refreshments an hour before the meeting and to engage I wish all south broenten residents would come to this this room should be filled should be filled every council meeting I don't care how mundane the agenda is they should be here to show support for you guys you shouldn't I have to operate and talk to nobody so that's my pitch thank you thank you is there anyone else who would like to comment from the public on an item not on the agenda all right we'll move on to councilor's announcements and reports on committee assignments on the so Tim do you want to I just want to say that thank the city for a really nice goodbye party for Andrew Bullduck at Goodwater last Friday it was great to see everybody and talk to people socialize you know post pandemic so I really appreciate it I wish it could have gone on for a couple more hours but and I Mr. Deloria is right about older homes needing some retrofit to eat get the old systems out I had a 60 year old brown and Williamson original oil furnace in my house on Meadow Road and the guys that came to replace it with the ultra-efficient small natural gas furnace spent like four hours with a sawzall cutting the steel a heat exchange box that was probably five feet high and four feet wide for about into small chunks so they could get it out of the house and put it in their trunk but they had to let it cool for like a three hours before they could touch it because it was still so hot from running that night so anyway thank you okay no reports on any Matt how about you oh nothing just echo Tim's comments about the goodbye to Andrew okay Megan all right and I didn't go anywhere do anything either except go to that um party tis the season I guess so I do thank you for organizing that and it was really fun to have that kind of social time with the staff on behalf of the staff thank you all for coming so I do have some updates to start Paul's not here yet but wanted to share that our committees are hard at work starting kicking off the comprehensive plan and providing feedback to the planning commission on what they would like to see in the next version so you all will see that in your liaison roles and also see our community outreach plan roll out in the next couple of months I think Paul will talk about this a little more perhaps later tonight but as of November 30th of this year we've issued zoning permits for for 421 new homes that is the record of new homes in a single calendar year even given that's only November since we started tracking that data in 1980 we do want to make sure you understand that 378 of those homes are in multi-family buildings and as the year wraps up we will be presenting analysis on what that means for how our mix of housing options for our community is shifting over time I also want to share Tom is here that our storm water team is now almost full Marissa and Monica both started in the last couple of weeks which is great I do want to share that they one of the tasks they quickly jumped into was the overseeing the testing pits at Farrell dog park we've heard a lot about Farrell dog park in the last couple of weeks unfortunately it does look like that it's going to be very hard to infiltrate water into those soils so as a result we're going to have to look at a better engineering solution to actually send the water to one of the storm water ponds so much more to come on that but they have really hit the ground running sorry no pun intended no pun intended thank you Matt it's going to be a fun night guys buckle up folks have probably read in the news that we have gone through quite a rash of odd fire occurrences in the last couple of week or so and our fire department did provide mutual aid to both of structure fires and when you scan Burlington over the weekend and we are happy to offer that support Tim I thought you would want a quick update on charge point we have some interesting data on that in November we had 71 unique users at our charge point accounts down from 83 in October so a little down but we also had a number of big events in October that may have driven some of that use we're averaging about 242 sessions a month um before I get to Holly's fun stuff and Alana's fun stuff I do want to share that I sent you all an email about this but officially announced to the community that Martha Machar is our new finance director she will be taking on some of the roles Andrew played and will also be our city treasurer we did talk with our auditors and they are comfortable with that appointment as well so with your approval on the consent agenda I'm really happy to welcome Martha to that role and then finally a fun upcoming things illuminate Vermont December 16th and 17th here on Market Street in City Hall four to eight those two evenings the team is doing amazing work to line up a really wonderful free event for the community I hope everyone can come out can I just encourage people to volunteer sure you can go online and volunteer I'm helping with um s'mores for a couple hours on Friday night but there's lots of different things to help direct people or yeah there's s'mores yeah I got the last slot however but there's other things that would be fun to do and I think I would encourage people to be part of that um and then on December 20th we are holding our senior holiday light tour there's still time to register for that um and holiday light judging will be on December 20th and you can sign up to be judged I guess as well so thank you very much okay so let's move on to the consent agenda we have three items the disbursements appointing Martha to serve a city treasurer effective immediately and approve a stormwater system maintenance agreement with hillside at o'brien farm eastview I move that we approve the consent agenda second is there any discussion or questions comments okay all in favor of the consent agenda as presented indicate by saying aye aye so that passes four zero the next item is interviewing applicants for the planning commission we have four five four we have six six okay we have six applicants and one won't be here until later in the meeting so okay the ones who are here and then hold table the item okay so we'll start with Charles Johnson if you will come you can either stand at the podium or sit at the table whatever is your preference okay just make sure the green light is a bright green yeah okay good yes we can hear you all right so do you like to be called charles is that what people call you that's great charlie or charlie okay my father was always charles yeah okay um so tell us about why you would like to be on the planning commission yeah i'm looking uh well i'm part of the economic development committee right now i had originally applied to be on the drb or planning commission so i want to reapply for that i'm a civil engineer by trade and i wanted to be in a committee that i feel like i could do a little bit more than just what i'm doing in the economic development committee i'm a little bit more tailored to what i do for work okay and you know the reason i want to be involved in the committees is because i want to be involved in my city government and participate so okay so you work for dubois and king you're damn engineering okay with just one m no n yeah some days it has the end okay all right um you are familiar with um how often they meet and the time commitment it'll be a little bit more than economic development yeah it's actually a conflict with economic development um because it's twice a month i believe on tuesdays every other tuesday um and i believe that conflicts with economic development so if i was to be selected for this position i would probably not be part of economic development committee if that's okay with you guys uh-huh um but yeah i'm aware of the commitment i used to do two nights a month already when my previous time i lived and i did two months two nights a month for their drb okay all right other what time was that mungton yeah that's right okay other questions or thoughts i do recall i'm coming yes i do too yeah yeah appreciate your persistence yeah yeah no i do uh yeah okay i'm trying to apply all right of course you'll create another opening i mean i just for everybody's sake would you would you like to talk about things that you would like to bring to the planning commission uh just fresh ideas you know i know they're doing their comprehensive plan so if there's opportunities to bring some ideas to it i'd love to do that but um have you familiarize yourself with a comprehensive plan to know i've read a little bit of it while we were discussing it with the economic development committee but not the whole thing yeah most people have not read the whole thing but you know if i was to go into it i would become more familiar with it um but i've not read the whole thing what do you think are the most pressing issues um for the city yeah uh well so the city i believe there's a lot of development that could occur in the city um however we're kind of restricted on i think urban straw uh sprawl you know there's some very big natural areas that we want to preserve um but as we develop i think vertically to you know sustain a larger population in the city that creates other issues with like stormwater and water and sewer and transportation um one of the big things that we talked about an economic development committee is with the ARPA funds there seems to be a big uh draw for childcare and maybe amending some of the zoning regulations to allow for more development of that but i think the biggest is is just residential development so that there's more affordable housing in in south berlington okay and vertical i suspect you're yeah well you know if you look at let's say williston road right if we that could be developed similar to like market street right where you have mixed use um housing and and commercial buildings right i think that'd be a great use of that land that's my personal okay yeah well those are thoughts to bring tim yeah i mean are there areas of chitinon county that you've seen recent development the last 10 years that you don't like yeah i mean so not to call out specific places you know specific towns because i work for them but uh let's say you're going north or northwest of south berlington um and there's some major development happening out in that town right and there's you know it's tough to see farmers fields that i remember when i was growing up you know just outside the box stores which used to not be there right disappearing um but if there is a need for development of residential area it's tough to say no when there's you know we're growing up here and trying to find a partner it's tough for me right if that helps lower the cost of living here it's tough to say no to that right but preserving that natural area would have been great you know i know i have friends that used to go hunting out in that area and that now you can't so it needs to be a balance of things yeah okay any matt any questions or thank you very much appreciate it yeah all right well thank you okay next um francis mcdonald so hello welcome um appreciate your interest um why don't you just briefly tell us why now is a good time for you to join the planning commission and what you're what you bring to the table in in that role well i think that the city is is looking at growth i think the city will see growth but i think uh there needs to be a balance between uh how the city grows and the features of the city the natural areas in the city and to um can you bring the mic a little closer okay a little high yeah so i think to bring kind of a balance between the need for growth and the and the need for the natural areas that people value um within our city so those i mean i think that uh you know i favor the open space i favor i guess i value you know the city parks and the open areas and and i see the need for growth but i i think those two things have to be balanced okay are there particular skill sets that you would bring in terms of um i understand you're retired now so i don't i don't think you mentioned what you did as a um career but are there things well uh i i worked as a self-employed as a manufacturers representative i sold equipment to the industrial equipment to industry and lived a lot of my life in massachusetts i moved here about seven years ago and and um i i think the um i don't know interacting with with customers and and you know sales presentations things that you know i'm i'm comfortable with so okay any team kind of building sort of thing or or if if you were in a group like the planning commission what kind you know people always assume like different roles someone's a leader and someone is a listener and someone might be the devil's advocate um what role would you see yourself well i think more of a support role i think in in groups that i've worked in uh i've kind of i look at myself kind of as as an individual contributor rather than i don't see myself as the manager okay i see more myself more as a you know an individual contributor okay other questions from you ask the questions yeah well have you uh is this your first time applying for any kind of volunteer yeah but i mean even in massachusetts or it is okay yeah yeah and you understand the time commitment and yes i think you know there's a fair amount of reading instead to do it at a time it's probably not as bad as the d or b but i'm familiar with the land development regulations and the in the 2016 comprehensive plan but not all of it they're long and there's there's sections of it that i i don't know that much about but i i'm familiar with the environmental regulations and the um you know how the other plans are laid out okay tim just a quick question has your h o way had some interesting discussions about the southeast quadrant and the l dr's in the last year or so we have yeah yeah yeah some of the some of the uh so i followed the environmental regulations pretty pretty closely the uh changes in the land in the l dr's but particularly in the environmental standard environmental i guess standard's part of it and and uh we did have quite a bit of discussion amongst our neighborhood association thanks okay great well thank you very do you have any questions for us okay um thank you for your interest and willingness to um even submit an application and um volunteer thank you um next is john muscatelli is that here am i pronouncing that right close enough what is muscatelli close to the most people get muscatelli well i grew up in new jersey and we had a lot of italians in my house there were a lot of us there weren't there yep so john tell us why you are interested well if uh i assume you have resume in front of you um extensive we moved to uh to the area about three years ago three and a half years ago uh before that i was involved in the local government um actually was one of the elected officials the equivalent of the city council and as part of that i was a member of the planning board along with a number of other things so we were up here and we're kind of settled and i kind of figure i have no interest in elected office but i figured it's good to serve again and good to get involved and the planning board seemed to be a good fit and i saw the seat was open and since i had done that before i figured i would go ahead and throw in an application okay um and you're aware of the time commitment and not a problem all righty um i grew up in mountainside oh no that's westville i thought it was westfield sorry whole south jersey yeah okay um so much of your uh career has been involved in um working for different um oil companies right i did about 20 years in petroleum refining okay so what's your thinking now well after after that 20 years in oil refining i uh during that period i got married and we had kids and we did the nanny thing for a little while and decided we weren't loving that so i've been home with my kids now for 13 years uh recently thought about going back to work and we looked at it and it really wasn't working out for us so i'm kind of committed to staying home and getting the kids through school and i have time available and you know this is something that's um you know it's a good fit and the time commitment isn't a problem uh as far as the the background i'm a chemical engineer by degree uh like i said i did planning board before so i have lots of background in reading drawings and soil reports and drainage studies and all that good stuff um so the the background helps i'm not a civil engineer and that's very useful but uh fairly close okay so is there something else you were going for for the oil thing well i'm just curious in terms of you know your take on like climate change oh it's real it's happening we need to react to it if we don't things are going to be very problematic not so much for us but for our kids so i definitely think it's something we have to look at i was fully in support of the change you just made with the new building heating standard and hopefully the planning board will be able to come up with some more recommendations on things that we can do that will be significant and impactful but not not prohibitive for the community to implement okay any other questions did you have a bumper sticker that said hawk if you passed pkem no what but i did that's a kemi joke kemi insight joke that i heard from somebody once said you know engineers engineering physical chemistry it's yeah it was why i didn't get it yeah so what's going on in the golf course neighborhood right now long drive subdivision is keeping things a little interesting um were you adjacent to the uh hammering two years ago oh yeah and then right behind recently as well yes yes we made more than a few phone calls okay let you guys know that yeah things were really quite unbearable have you gone out and and investigated the stormwater swale at all that burns below it on the golf course i haven't looked at it since they changed their plan and implemented that yeah but i know that the development is moving very slowly and i can't say i'm sad about that okay do you have any questions leave us the others the kinds of things you would bring to the planning commission what would be your priorities or your approach mostly i said i i bring some experience with having done a lot of this before working within the group trying to get the recommendations done i mean obviously the planning board's job is to recommend and that's that's all the planning board can really do is is synthesize the information try and come up with some best practices and make recommendations implementation obviously is left up to you so you have the the harder role in that and deciding what's really put into law um and specifically with regard to south brolington specifically and some of the things i think you heard before and i think it's real is we know development is a thing but having come out of south jersey as a lot of people have you at least driven through new jersey and we don't want this to be new jersey we don't want sprawl the the borough i came out of and south jersey was 2.7 square miles and there was not an open lot anywhere it was completely built out and had been for decades the the arguments were a little different but it was still the same sort of where we're going to put affordable housing and how we're going to manage development and we don't want to get to the point where things are packed in so tight that we have no options right now we still have a lot of open space and i think we need to do a lot to try and protect that and make sure that the development going forward is very smart and focused and that there is a long-term plan as to how we want things to develop and that we're actually implementing what we need to to make that happen and obviously that's the point of the comprehensive plan but i think we we definitely want to make sure that that balance is is very carefully looked at because in my experience developers are there to make money period if the governing body doesn't control that we'll end up with just every lot will be developed and we're not going to be real happy with where we ended up does it answer the question does okay okay do you have any questions for us no okay thank you thank you appreciate your interest cori michael davis and did you all have an attached sheet oh i got it okay sorry okay i have a copy here no i i've got it i thought it was separate but it was absolutely hopefully the microphone is at a good height for me as well yep it's good okay so cori tell us why you're interested sure so hopefully folks saw my application as well my fiance and i relatively new residents here to south broenton living here for the past five months and for me in looking to contribute back to my community i find myself one being a rare millennial homeowner which is incredibly fortunate and as a place and with time and space to give back to a community and try to learn more from folks my own age folks who are younger and really try to make our city a place where people of all backgrounds both financially and ethnically can succeed and can have a place and can have a voice additionally my fiance was trying to encourage me to find other hobbies and give back has our serving in a community capacity has always been incredibly important to me hence submitting my application and also hopefully folks saw so currently i work at shamp plain college have worked in higher ed environments as an administrator for the past 11 years and so for me you know building community in higher ed for our students and our student body is incredibly important and i see this potential role on the city planning commission as a really important part to build community we heard the gentleman earlier at the very at the earlier start of the meeting talking about how nice other towns and downtowns looked and so i think their need for community and drive is incredibly important there for me i'm also trying to you know every south burlington resident who i might know at work i'm trying to say hey do you have any concerns you have any grievances with local government what could i share what could i pass along as a way to make our city a better place to live so if not this particular role then y'all will certainly see me back but it certainly felt like a great way given my knowledge of prior regulatory backgrounds and systems and looking at the future of the city planning commission's work felt like a very natural fit and a good time for me to apply okay and are you aware of the time commitment they meet twice a month and yeah on tuesday evenings yep a couple hours and there's some work before the meeting yep not a problem at all okay good um other questions counselors sure what do you do at champlain so i work in student discipline and sexual violence prevention so a really unique balance of both institutional and kind of more local policy and procedure along with working with regulations within the state of remand and the u.s federal government and a few more gray hairs because it does get a little stressful at times uh is that why you keep it short it's just easier because i don't see any gray hairs but then i wear glasses um i don't know if i have any um well maybe i can ask you in terms of your work at champlain and obviously you haven't been there 11 years so you've worked elsewhere and and hire it um when you go into a group and become a member of a committee or a commission what's the kind of role that you typically play or would bring to the table in terms of you know are you like a natural leader or a jokester or you know what what is your role sure sure so i usually come prepared so i do have some notes here as well along with extra copies of my materials just in case um for me it's somewhat dependent upon the group that i'm joining if i have a lot of prior knowledge i'll leverage that knowledge and bring it to the group if not you know and i see very similar with the city planning commission i don't have a lot of specific city planning experience but it's also important for me to go and learn on my own and bring that to the group and also try to create relationships within the group to learn from other folks who have been doing it for much longer than i have in order to make sure i'm giving the best representation for folks um i'm happy to you know take the lead and organize meetings i do that consistently i did that earlier this afternoon while i was at work and i'm happy to bring ideas if and when needed and i'm happy to you know if i don't have a particular expertise or particular passion for something that might be going on happy to also kind of sit back add ideas if and when desire but also happy to let folks take the lead in their own right okay yes elements of community you said you would like to you know bring that based on your experience at Champlain College to the to the you know the the position i was curious what kinds of things um you would specifically you know envision in what community means with regard to planning a city yeah so a lot of the the commentary as i've been preparing to be here and as we've been settling into our new home is how somewhat divided the city is physically with the highway and the interstate coming through the city and as many of folks have talked about previously considerations of how are we balancing both the need to have businesses and industry and like neighborhoods and residential areas and so i think from my experience of having you know considering public areas in any developed parts of our city to making sure that if we're going to you know build up the market street corridor in the area that's great but when i drove down the the road here coming from Hawthorne Circle it was a little darker than i had imagined and so as those buildings do get built over the next few years making sure that we're thinking about light and maybe gathering spaces and outdoor spaces and then taking that kind of principle from market street and applying it to the development off of Kennedy Drive and those nicer looking townhomes making sure that you know as we look at either developments or more single family homes they were considering what kind of balance of opportunity we're providing for folks both what kind of business opportunities we're providing for folks there could be opportunities or considerations for the recreation department or specific holiday commemorations or events to have maybe local neighborhood gathering points and consideration of areas to really pump up the downtown area and to make kind of the market street area as vibrant as humanly possible thanks okay thank you great thank you for your time folks thank you very much for your interest uh thomas paul more the fourth that kind of ties into the story here i guess hi everyone thank you for okay so tell us why um you would like to be on the planning commission well you know i think it starts really not to go all the way back but i'm originally from texas and i grew up kind of in a family environment that really emphasized service to others and so my grandfather was in the house representatives in texas my aunt was a city counselor in austin and i just you know my dad raising me and just and just kind of emphasizing no matter what you do just be of service and uh and i've i've tried to follow that throughout my personal and professional career which is included um you know obtaining a board certification in behavior analysis which i use to support families and individuals uh who have a child diagnosed with autism uh worked in a few different countries doing that and came back and we've settled here in vermont and uh i've been fortunate enough to go from howard center to the uh uvm medical center and i work now in the community health improvement department and that department is now under diversity equity inclusion excuse me uh at the medical center and so i uh i see my work really aligning well with the requirements and the uh kind of processes of the commission and so far that a lot of uh the work that i've been involved with has has had to do with uh conducting the community health needs assessment which is a needs assessment that comes out every three years and that work entails going out into the community and engaging the community conducting focus groups uh doing research really looking at a lot of data being able to summarize that data communicate that data in a in a way that is helpful and clear which i see as a part of the commission responsibility as they support all of you um and then also uh you know i'm i'm just looking to further expand my involvement in the community uh i was the vice chair chair and chair emeritus of the vermont association for behavior analysis i'm on the board at the community health centers of burlington and the chair of the governance committee and also on the chitin and county homeless alliance and so a lot of my work has to do with housing and homelessness and looking at solutions for that and so i thought to myself okay looking at the comprehensive plan what's required of the commission in order to update that and the involvement that is needed to engage the community i felt very comfortable and excited about that uh conducting research and uh and just working with a great team of people uh and feeling like i like i could contribute to that team in a few different ways great yeah questions anyone tim you sound very busy yeah and we have a one four and seven year old so and my wife supports this fully so that's another reason i'm here and the planning commission meetings tend to go fairly long uh no they're they're pretty good i think they don't six hours or less or six hours definitely less than six hours yeah i mean three ten gets on sometimes at ten okay so it's not when they don't start till seven so right right and that tank is okay with you at those times absolutely yeah yeah get the kids to bed and head out right okay so yeah thanks okay are there other questions yeah specifically i mean i think that you bring a lot of kind of philosophical you know approaches um and how would that transfer to bricks and mortar or spaces for the public or other things that you would absolutely that's a really good question i think um i think that i am i will be one of a team and it won't be solely up to me to make decisions uh i would rely on the other you know commission members um but i think that really grounding my approach my thought process and data and research and kind of looking historically what has taken place or what we need to consider and then translating that into actionable measurable objectionable uh you know goals to hopefully bring to you a solid plan how do you envision a city where the the various housing goals that you have in mind you know would would be realized yeah so you know part of my interest in this too is looking at housing equity and um and you know i i asked myself and i'm curious uh how much the commission may take into account some type of housing equity analysis when they have decisions to be made um i understand that zoning does prohibit certain development that would benefit um you know the homeless population or individuals that may not be able to afford certain housing opportunities right now um for instance what what prohibits that oh just if if say an area can only only allow single family home development yeah versus you know multi apartment building or something of that nature yeah okay other questions so you live on orchard road right yeah so as a hypothetical let's say um an old house there let's say it burned down or something like that it was like a double lot right yeah how would you feel if somebody proposed to put like four small homes on that as opposed to but one single family home where there was there before so effectively increasing like the the number of dwelling units you know density in that area which is that the kind of thing you think would be amenable to that neighborhood or to that neighborhood absolutely yeah i i really feel that way in in fact uh i think i feel like the neighborhood itself is very supportive of one another and and has a certain outlook uh and this is kind of a digression but over the summer we did a house swap with our neighbors across the street and sold our homes to each other which is really beneficial because we had you know we probably couldn't afford the house if it went on the market and so uh they were looking to downsize we wanted to upsize and so we uh they uh you know they were kind enough to consider us and and then we made it work i completely believe that the neighborhood would say that is fine that it's for the betterment of the community and i get that there's there's home values to consider there's safety to consider there's traffic to consider um but i knowing who i know in the neighborhood i think they would be all for it okay thank you very much do you have any questions for us i don't think so okay thank you thanks for your time we're in texas did we went austin i went to school in austin university of texas and i grew up in fort worth uh yeah and my wife grew up in new jersey actually so i heard that earlier i have a daughter in texas oh really west texas though yeah a little special yeah yeah it is okay thank you all thank you so um our our last um interviewee dana laban can't get here till after eight so um just for those who we have interviewed um oops excuse me familiar with the process um tonight we will interview dana and then we'll have um at the end of the meeting we have an executive session where we can discuss and decide and we'll hopefully be able to make a decision and then we'll let you know in the morning sometimes it's a couple weeks but this is we can do that tonight okay well thank you all or y'all okay moving on to item eight the fy 24 budgets so we're going to receive this budget proposal instead of public hearing and you know before you do that jesse i just want to say i thought the presentation that you pulled together for us was just terrific it was really easy to read and follow and very clear and um i appreciate that not necessarily an easy budget and there's lots of um decisions to be made but i think you laid it out in a way that um we'll help us make those decisions so i thank you oh that's a great start motion to approve and um and how did you get paul to wear a tie and i know doesn't have a chance of how did that happen i know that's a suit isn't it it's a serious tonight that's not just a jacket that's a suit all right so i uh have the pleasure of um and the honor to present to you our overall fy 24 proposed budget this is the high level presentation and you'll hear from the experts um throughout the next couple of weeks and months about our fy 24 proposed budget i do want to call out especially for those who are online that we have our entire leadership here team here tonight so we have alana and jennifer and chief burke and collin and tom and greg and mike and chief lock and donna and paul and martha lions and holly and martha mcchar and it's really i have the pleasure of talking to you all tonight but this is really a team effort to put together this budget also our beloved deputy manager andrew whose fingerprints are all over this but who is not here tonight all right how do i make this move there we go um we also presented this budget to our entire staff at an all-staff meeting on friday um which was a really interesting discussion they had really great uh questions so hopefully i've fine tuned the presentation a bit i do want to note for the council in the community that the entire we were doing a virtual budget book this year so our entire budget book is posted on the website if you go to finance budgets and then fy 24 the link is here in the presentation you can find all of the materials if the council's interested in that in that actual physical book i'm happy to make that for you as well so what you're going to hear tonight um this is the overview you're going to hear about needed investments in core municipal services a needed increase in tax capacity for a capital we heard a lot about that at the arpa presentations last wednesday night you're going to hear about our continued effort to come out of lean budget years we're going to give you some options and there's a lot of information here as helen alluded to so i'm going to speed through some of it but please stop and ask questions if i skip over something you're interested in so this process as we said at the all-staff meeting budgeting is actually is really a year-long process we started back in august with martha starting to put together budget spreadsheets and whatnot in september you had a discussion about your goals for this budget you really focused on what's been historically underfunded where our growth has exceeded our ability to meet the service demands of the community and asked for us to give you some options as well as other things so our team spent a fair amount of time looking at service demands and where we really felt like we were not meeting the community's expectations given reductions in our force over the last couple of years given really lean budget years going through covid and we want to highlight a few of those right from the start because you will see them later on so for example in the last 22 years the city has added 20 miles of new roads without adding a new highway position we are not actually prioritizing that this year we are prioritizing a new parks position because that is what we hear about quite quite frequently from the community you heard about it a great deal at the arpa discussion last week for example in our police department in 2020 we did an analysis of the civilian and sworn officer team we needed to meet the community's service expectations we have yet to hit that staffing level so that recommendation was for 40 sworn officers and 10 civilians we are currently under that at 37 and are recommending restoring a number of those positions to meet the community demand real restore some of our specialized services and plan for the future you've heard a lot about the fire department in the last couple of months so we did make some investments in our fire service in fy-23 with the addition of both a fire chief and a fire marshal previously those had both been filled by one person however we still really struggled to meet our minimum staffing of eight firefighters per shift to do that we really need 30 firefighters right now we have 29 staffed and a result as a result we're seeing really high overtime numbers to make that minimum staffing and in fact mandatory overtime which means we are calling people in without their volunteered consent getting to that 30th firefighter will hopefully enable that well-being to improve um yep no finish and then I have a question sure um currently we also staff a single ambulance and what we've seen in our data over the last number of years is that our medical calls are being responded to by non-self-burner Burlington employees in fact 20 almost a quarter of the time somebody dials 911 for medical services in the city a non-self-burlington ambulance is responding so we are making a proposal to address that okay my question was about the overtime and is there ever a time when you don't have overtime I mean can you really staff it's very expensive and I you know we always try to minimize the overtime but both for police and fire it seems like it's part of the design and and I'm just curious if that is the way it's designed and that's where how everybody does it so we can't strive I mean you can strive for less overtime I suspect but sure I'm happy to answer that but chief you may want to start coming down here um so when you are staffing operations that staff 24-7 i.e every minute of every day there are eight firefighters on duty you will always have overtime because one person calls in sick uh you have to staff up that person you have to call in somebody to cover that shift unlike me I call in sick nobody needs to cover me it's it's fine um these guys don't really need me that's the secret they're they're really the experts um so we will always have overtime I think the challenge we are experiencing right now without being fully staffed is that we are um getting to the point where we're not offering overtime and people are signing up for it anymore 84 percent we are ordering somebody in so we are short so short staffed they are so tired they're not volunteering we are telling them they have to stay and that is both inappropriate from a health and wellness point of view for our for our neighbors and our teammates it's also expensive so finding that balance where we can add staff lower overtime costs is the sweet spot but we will always have overtime and police and fire what did I miss you said it well nothing dad so what is the sweet spot then I guess maybe that's what I'm if you I mean you're always going to have some overtime you know 10 the staffing factor which is if you add up a crude leave you know everyone is given so much vacation we know on average how much sick time somebody uses we need 10 people on 10 people assigned to a shift to maintain minimum staffing with a what gets us is the vacancy factor and if you calculate that in you probably need an 11th person per shift in order to maintain a and almost have very minimal overtime you're always going to have some but minimal and I think this point getting to 10 gets us to a life where we have less over a normal amount what the crews would say a normal amount of overtime where they are okay perhaps volunteering to take it now no one volunteer almost no one volunteers to take it it just know it's coming around and I'll just get my turn in the barrel and I'll get it over with okay Matt Chief over the past four years last fiscal year was the highest overtime we've had and already we are if we keep at this rate and we had that for the first three months this fiscal year we're talking about nearly tripling the amount of overtime we had in an historically high year last year is there anything that you're seeing that indicates that that the first three months were an anomaly or are we on pace through the second quarter to meet we just blew through 6 000 hours as a november 30th so no uh so it will get a little bit better in december so as of december first or so we had two employees that started to count towards minimum staffing new employees so they've gotten enough training and count towards minimum staffing that's a good thing that brings a gauge to the right direction we have a gentleman going out for hip surgery next week so i lose an employee um and so you get one you get one you lose one so we were hopeful we feel we're if we have two employees starting january third it'll be march though before they count forward minimum staffing um and then and i know another employee is going to be leaving by march so it's a it long short you're gonna you'll see that number blow through 8 000 hours this year but if nothing changes we're looking at 16 18 000 hours of overtime you're certainly looking at 8 to 10 000 and 84 percent of that is mandatory at double time okay so bearing numbers yes you'll hear much more from the chief during his presentation as well thanks Steve the other thing we focused on was the need to to incrementally increase annually our tax capacity to fund capital investments we again heard this a lot last week at the ARPA conversation so historically the city there are many funding sources that go into funding the capital improvement plan the capital improvement plan is that 10-year plan where we um look at how we invest in our infrastructure over time both the construction of new infrastructure and the maintenance of existing infrastructure um historically the tax capacity we've put into the cip has fluctuated you can see that here and what we're advocating for is that we have been underfunding the general fund tax capacity for cip and we need to get be continually incrementally increasing that over time and i'll talk more about that in a little bit so let's dive into the proposed budget so i wanted to start by saying that we have made some structural changes to how the budget is presented this year you see a lot of that listed here one we've separated out the TIF grand list from the operations grand list historically we haven't needed to do that as much because the increment grand list was still being developed we are starting to see this year we will see an almost 10 percent increase in the TIF grand list which is wonderful news but it means if we don't separate it out from the operations grand list it makes calculating that tax rate very complicated we've integrated our benefits costs into our department budgets which tell which i think paints a more true picture for the community about how our tax dollars are invested in each service area historically there was just that five million dollars health and benefits line item that didn't really tell the full story of how general fund dollars were spent we've pulled the capital expenses in each city budget out of the operations budget to tell a clearer story of in each department how we're investing in capital and we've also presented to you a roll-up budget so you have the line items every single line in every single budget you also have a summary roll-up budget on that spreadsheet and you can see here how they're presented i do want to note that this will make it very challenging for you to compare last year's numbers to this year's numbers because there have been a lot of shifting around so if you as we go through the next couple of presentations please ask us for data on how things compare if that would be helpful to you so as i think the world knows right now we have there are lots of challenges facing almost every sector of our society from a financial standpoint so we're seeing multi-year high fight inflation rates COLA is currently at 6.9 percent that's the cost of living adjustment that's actually the lowest it's been in months which is historic you know in my career you see that if you hit 2.1 year that's a high COLA year this is really blowing that out of the water of course a challenge for us is the continued need to come out of our lean COVID years and meet the community's expectations so always want to call out some assumptions that we make going into this budget so i mentioned the grand list we're assuming a 1.75 percent growth in the grand list that's 1 percent for the operations grand list and almost 10 percent for the TIFF grand list which is wonderful news for the community's vision for city center just as reminder TIFF is our city center district we're seeing increases in costs of goods and services and you'll see that throughout budget presentations we have assumed the ARPA salary step down that the council previously approved as well as proposed a cip step down our health insurance is increasing 6 percent which is actually quite low for the industry that is a result of our captive insurance and our proactive work with marathon you heard last meeting about um due to the good work of our safety committee and a lot of our department heads our casualty workers comp state um new bid contract is saving us about a hundred thousand dollars this year which is a huge win and then we have service partners who have as as significant cost increases as we are having that are being passed on to us so what you have in front of you in the line item and roll-up budget is a leadership team proposed budget that does two things um the one and two is what you see in the line item budget so what we did was start with what is our baseline budget if we were to fund only what we are currently doing without additional capacity to address growth what would that require then we did the exercise of okay if we're going to incrementally over two years invest in core government to restore previous cuts incrementally keep up with growth what would that look like the combination of the two is what we are presenting as our recommended leadership team budget but we are giving you all the data so you can make decisions with it as it becomes your budget and then you asked us to look at what um funding would be needed to implement the city's recently adopted climate action plan so we also put together a recommendation of that so i'm going to walk through each of those individually so first we have the baseline budget um so again this type gets really small and i'm sorry about that but it is linked this whole presentation is linked off the website so people can go and play with it if they would like so our baseline budget assumes an increase of four hundred and thirty thousand in general fund tax capacity to fund the climate the capital improvement plan that represents a 16 percent increase in our general fund capacity from last year that also includes some of our ARPA step down this also assumes restoring an FTE and assessing which is a policy call that we are going to going to shift that funding from a 40 hour a week welcome center person to an assessing staff rely on Donna and her team more in the clerk's office when times are more reasonable to be that front face of City Hall and as they get over they get their capacity ramps up with elections backfill with other staff and that this also includes maintaining the eight hundred thousand in allocations to the TIF capital reserve so that baseline budget results in a two point nine three percent tax rate increase or about a penny and a half which would be forty dollars to fifty nine dollars for the average home owner condo or house owner i thought the funding for the TIF was eight sixty is that just a pass number so it was eight sixty two years ago last year reduced to eight hundred thousand and we're maintaining that and we're maintaining it oh for some reason i thought we had bumped it back up in the spreadsheet alana gave us eight seventy one point yeah okay but it's eight hundred and that's in the current spreadsheet that alana put together eight hundred pardon me eight hundred is okay welcome so the second um portion of this recommended budget is what we're calling our capacity building budget so this restores some of the previous cuts and incrementally keeps up with growth so what's included here is the entire baseline budget so we start with that as the foundation um it is a two-year implementation plan so we're looking at ads in fy 24 and 25 it focuses on core municipal services and it focuses on our ability to be data driven so that capacity building budget bottom line number is a tax rate increase of five point seven five percent or a bit over two and a half pennies and it would be an impact to the homeowners of seventy eight dollars for the year or a hundred and seventeen dollars for the year for the average home owner each year so that's the increase for for fy 24 it would be slightly higher than that with fy 25 because it's uh five hundred eighteen eighty one thousand versus six hundred thirty three but about that for two years and you can see what we are recommending adding here and the reason we're giving you all of this data is that there's a lot here um so we want you to see what your options are so in fy 24 we are prioritizing that parks position and public works um increasing of consulting staff to do traffic studies we are getting inundated with requests for traffic studies um it includes restoring a deputy chief in the police department position which is actually and from a vacant lieutenant position so it's a smaller um dollar figure it includes restoring one police officer in this year it includes restoring one firefighter this year uh i'm going to skip the next one for a minute and it includes um adding or restoring a gis analyst and a policy data analyst this year um it also envisions standing up a second ambulance which does have a quite significant price tag the way we are achieving the inter incremental growth to that is basically starting up staffing january one of 2024 which allows tax capacity to build up halfway in fy 24 and half in fy 25 and the number you see there is the cost for this staff minus the um revenue impact of adding up responding to those 23 percent of calls we are not responding to now can i ask you to translate government speak here sure stand up just means staffing doesn't mean the capital expense correct uh so it means primarily this it's hiring the staff to operate a second ambulance um with the acknowledgement that if we hire this staff for january one 2024 it's going to take them a period of time to get oriented and trained up and ready to be fully operational is that for the second ambulance yes so when do we take delivery on the second ambulance that's a great question oh so we sorry i don't shouldn't be going about it so supply chain is very challenging at the moment so if over the next couple of months if this moves forward um and we are allocated if the council votes to move this forward and the voters vote on it we would place the order for that second ambulance very quickly in the hopes that we get here also we have a backup plan we have two ambulances now and so and we have one on order that is due around january of january to march of 2024 so that would give us three ambulances and then in this capital plan includes funding for an ambulance to replace one of the ambulances so we would keep a three ambulance rotation knowing you need two and two that are staffed one that's available when one of the primary two vehicles are out for maintenance and how old's the second ambulance 2012 is the oldest 2015 so the reality of being able to stand up just the staff without the additional ambulance in the works would be very challenging for us yeah so the january the plan here works out very well with the arrival of the new ambulance keeps it would still our oldest truck would still be a 2015 the truck you would have to use when one was down for maintenance would still be a 2012 um and then this plan would replace that oldest truck so i i have a question about just um don't go away please so i'm a whole level a lot of levels don't go away the responders to ambulance needs are uh so we have uvm and saint mikes and burlington and south burlington is there one for colchester to are those the colchester has has the ambulance uh has the ambulance correct so shall burn oh shall burn right yeah so the guard does the national guard don't know they do not so my question is of all those those services that provide ambulance all those communities or organizations that provide ambulance services so if you had to quantify off the cuff um how stretched they are i mean is is the combination of all those enough to cover all of the calls within the area itself or i mean is there spare capacity if you if you added those all together i'm just curious i'll say this and there was recent late last week there was a you may have seen on the news there was a statewide presentation done to the legislatures legislatures about the emma system in vermont and most in they asked a ton of service providers um what they're what they're one word to describe it and most of them were fragile on the you know ready to break so no we were out of capacity and one thing we don't do is we don't stack calls some places in the in the country they do stack low priority calls we we we are not far from having to do that the hospital uh in the last couple weeks emergency room has been on diversion at times where we're sending patients to non-critical patients to fanny allen so there is no capacity burlington just before i left added a 30 ambulance because uh their capacity was not there and that's exactly what's happening here so no the system is there there are is often you'll see just in our community um two to three mutual aid ambulances in the city at the same time so demand is up everywhere demand is up everywhere and can you tell me like for what types of things i'm just curious i mean i'm sure the chief berk would would uh because many of these same customers interact with both of us uh substance abuse mental health abuse are the two driving factors in an aging pop in an aging population you put those three together and uh it keeps us very busy okay thanks okay thank you so that's our capacity building budget happy to talk more about any of those individual um items as we move forward with the department budget presentations um so the third portion of the proposed budget is the implementation of the climate action plan so a small team of us uh sat reviewed the climate action plan both what we um have been have been tasked with doing as your municipal government but also if how the how the city government could start influencing the 20 000 people that will need to take action to fully implement the climate action plan so this is our incremental recommendation to do that it includes adding two staff people in f y 24 uh consultants for for specialties that we need including that implementation plan funding for public outreach and education um an enforcement team starting in f y 25 to continue on an f y 26 um and just to note that we do believe there's going to need to be additional cip investment in in city infrastructure to meet the climate plan goals but we don't have good numbers on that into future years yet because we are still building that implementation plan so it results in one penny in f y 24 and two pennies in f y 25 and 26 um per our recommendation on top of the yes so what are we up to now so we would be up to almost three for the eight percent about in 24 in 24 and higher in 25 and 26 yep okay so a few other kind of data points to talk about that's that's the the entire proposed budget you have now heard about there's no more big surprises but i did want to highlight some of the other numbers because what we've been talking about thus far is really the general fund budget and as you all are well aware of there are a lot of other revenues uh revenue streams and funds that go into our citywide budget so on the general fund side i do want to call out the on the revenue side of the picture we've been talking about expenses on the revenue side we are trying to really look at those non-property tax revenues we are very well diversified city as compared to other vermont municipalities most vermont municipalities have you know 80 to 90 percent of their general fund budget is on the tax base ours is hovering around 60 so we are seeing some pretty big increases in other revenue streams so about 800 000 increase in our local options receipts those are coming in very strong we are seeing some reductions on obviously arpa as we step that down and some of our recording fees i do want to take a moment to focus on i had a question sure sorry i forgot what the question was so the interest so the interest on investments is that taking into account the most recent fed moves or is it are you just curious those are on deposits right yeah the city holds are we that one so this is why martha is sitting here yes thank you martha line by line expert what interest rate are you thinking is is involved in this those actuals and the budget numbers it does include the recent federal interest rate we do get a portion of that we don't get the whole thing it is prorated power of agreement with the tdb okay thanks no great question um so i did want to spend a few minutes talking specifically about arpa um so what we've tried to summarize here is the arpa investment between uh f y 22 when we first received the funds in f y 26 and what the plans are that are built and assumptions are that are built into this budget so that middle column is what right now the council has already approved you obviously can reallocate unspent funds if you would like um and then in there's a proposed column about what's in this budget that includes that cip step down that andrew walked you through during the council goals discussion as well as the staff restoring the staff step down that we we approve you all approve back in f y 23 so all in this includes um if you were to fully approve the use of arpa funds in this way uh three and a half million dollars of allocation of arpa funds for this salary and cip step down so i want to spend a few minutes talking very specifically about the capital improvement plan and erica was here um erica is our cip genius she it's okay she's okay uh she has done uh erica and martha andrew did an enormous amount of work on the capital improvement plan this year um specifically focusing on the years two to ten and really ensuring that there is logic and a realistic set of assumptions built into the future years of rcip um so what in this budget in the f y 24 budget what you see is 452 thousand of new property tax capacity in capital projects it's about a 16 increase um i do want to note because the bottom two bullets created a lot of confusion with our staff with those two bullets under the 450 thousand are suggesting is that we believe that we need to annually increase tax capacity to the cip that this is not a one and done but as materials and labor continues to get more expensive we need to be keeping up with that within our capital improvement plan so we believe that needs to be at about eight percent going forward after f y 24 if we are taking into consideration the community's interest in building a recreation center if we are not that still needs to be at a four percent annual increase beyond f y 24 um in the f y 24 budget uh we have not funded any money for continued exploration of the community's priority of a recreation center but we have built it into the f y 25 cip with the acknowledgement that um that there are more community conversations to have that we are sensitive to the school's needs for um upcoming bond votes but we want to keep it in the pipeline of a community priority so i've included some highlights here about what's so can i just get some more clarity so the eight percent annually is to fund the planning and designing of a future recreation center and then we'd have to bond for it is that yep so if you look at eight percent means sort of okay what does it mean so if you look at our cip over the next 10 years and you look at the general fund revenue stream each of those 10 years into funding the capital plans that have been identified if the rec center is included in that including engineering planning engineering design and the debt service on the on a future bond vote that would require annually we increase the tax capacity eight percent to fully fund that without the rec center we still need to do that by four percent so about half of that increase um is just to do what's currently in the plan and i will tell you the difference between that four percent and eight percent is about 150,000 so it's it's actually a pretty a big number but relatively close okay so here's some highlights about what's in the the f y 24 cip and again what's not included is rec center this year but is in f y 25 or any funding specifically for capital for regional dispatch but we believe we have a current budgeted and surplus solution for that i totally lied earlier and said there wasn't other big news there is big news on the utility front of things so when you think about our utilities so water wastewater and sewer these rate these are funds that you all approve you don't send them to the voters these are the current rates you're looking at you're going to hear much more about this in detail from tom at your next meeting just a reminder we currently have the lowest rates in the state so you'll you see big increases in both water and wastewater of eight percent which are really driven by the anticipated Bartlett bay wastewater treatment plant bond vote and an upcoming 2024 bond vote for storage capacity which tom will start talking to you about at your next meeting just as a reminder we are doing a comprehensive rate study that what we will come to you with in the spring of 2023 that will drive future decision making beyond this budget and then of course we have 25 other special funds with a projected revenue of 9.7 million and expenses of 9.4 all of those special funds again are linked on the web on the budget website and you can see what we are anticipating in anticipating for both revenues and expenditures by fund there i'm not going to walk through all 25 of them here i always like to talk about fund balances as part of the budget presentation this is your savings account it's easy to talk about the operations the annual the annual budget and know that those are very big numbers i think it's also important to acknowledge that you have about 21 million in your fund balance much of that money is already restricted by our fund balance policies which ensures that we have money on hand in case of an emergency and then you do have some unassigned operating and just a reminder to the council you have taken action over the last two fiscal years to really build up specifically that general fund fund balance and we are now within our policy goals for what that should be to retain our cash on hand so this is a very this is very healthy news for the city's financial picture so don't forget we're also bringing two big bond votes with your consent to the voters on time meeting day you'll hear more about that from a lot of this later in this meeting and from Tom on the Bartlett Bay one on the 19th i think it's also important to note towards the end of these conversations that there are a number of significant kind of emerging issues that are that we are holding in mind as we bring you this proposed budget these could have financial impacts they could not but i think it's important to tell those stories but what you might encounter during this budget year so obviously we have significant transitions in our executive team we don't have additional funding in this budget for regional dispatch but we have plans to do that within existing funds you will see that 2020-2024 bond vote on water storage we are renegotiating our marathon health structure so that could have financial impacts our fire collective bargaining agreement expires at the end of this at the end of this budget year and we are seeing huge wage pressures from our surrounding municipalities you've probably read about that in the news especially within public safety so what you will hear over the next couple of budget hearings is one from your experts you can stop listening to me and and hear from the experts on the leadership team we have standardized our presentation so hopefully that will ease how we're sharing information with you and hopefully we'll hear from the community and this is the schedule of the budget presentations that you all are well aware of so we have three more tonight buckle up any questions about the overview team did i miss anything significant that you all want me to add shaking their heads no okay so should i just keep going yeah do we want to um oh you have to set it up here do you want to um you can yep you can do that i would ask actually i should have said this at the outset we have put on the agenda um to receive this overview presentation and to set the public hearing so you will have um budget presentations from the department heads oh i could stop sharing this um over the next several meetings but we would request that you set the public hearing on the general fund budget and enterprise fund budgets and capital improvement plan for january 17th at 7 p.m obviously this document can change before that night if you so choose you want that motion now so i'll move that we set a public hearing after which we will act to send a budget to the voters on january 17th at 7 p.m second any discussion all in favor say aye so we have set that great so now you could go back to the table item if you wanted to go back to the donna okay um i i think i would like to just go back since donna levin is here she's our final um applicant for the planning commission so she doesn't have to sit through all of this she doesn't get to sit through all of this this is fascinating budget stuff okay so um welcome and thank you for your interest we got your application and um why don't you tell us just briefly why you want to serve and kind of what you bring to the table that is um important yes um donna levin um i've been a 30-year resident of south burlington and um it's not my first time i'm applying for the planning commission but um i hope to be more successful at this point um i've been following the planning commission for quite a long time and i'm very impressed that they've been able to bring some very progressive policies and um they acknowledge both the the need for development of housing as well as the need for preservation of um of natural areas um i think my background has kind of followed along with with what the planning commission does i'm an architect by profession um although i don't do architecture specifically now i have a consulting business which is winding down i'm kind of easing into retirement still doing some work um so i have a little bit more time than i had before and um but i also am very very interested in kind of following the the direction that the that the planning commission has been been able to achieve in um in a fine balancing act really you know it's like the pressure of development in a city like south burlington is obvious um the need to keep the most livable um environment as well as deal with some pressing transportation issues um that you know it kind of all converges and and the the work of the planning commission is is really important in establishing the right policies in the right direction for development and also just acknowledging that we we have to consider sustainability and just kind of ease people gradually into it because everybody kind of fears what they don't know and my background i think in my uh you know i've been an um architect and a member of aia for a long time which brings access to a lot of great resources and i think that's one of the things i've always wished that the planning commission could do more is look at examples of what other cities and what other what other locations are doing and how um density isn't always such a bad word i think one of the things i'd like to try to address is the missing middle in housing you know we've got a lot of um multi-story apartment buildings we've got large single family and you know increasingly very large duplexes and things but there's not a whole lot for the the family who's in the middle and i think we need to really start thinking about um how to achieve that a lot you know and i think the regional planning commissions have helped put together some excellent excellent resource materials so i think we have great direction from them um and being on the practical side you know i understand what developers and builders do um architects direct all of that work typically but in the housing area often there's no architects involved and i think it's it's it's useful to have the perspective of somebody who's who's been in the field for quite a while um as well as understands the practical difficulties that builders face and particularly now in terms of costs um you know how we can actually sometimes ask for too much and i think we have to be careful you know to understand that everything we ask for costs money and understand when maybe maybe sometimes we need to um ask for a little bit less and expect that um co-op with cooperation from the development community that we can achieve something a little bit better than we've been getting at least in terms of the middle housing you know the middle of the housing market because we haven't gotten anything in that area there has been very little in the last uh last five five years five to ten years in that in that area okay i think we're all pretty familiar with i'm a familiar face around here that's different committees are there any other questions people have answered my question i think you answered my questions matt i've been not supposed to do this but i'm a short timer so i'll just say it um i first met donna when i was on the development review board and we had a very large commercial project that everyone sees when they drive on 89 and you very calmly explained to all of us neophytes in the drb what their lighting design would do if it went ahead as planned and you worked with us and the developer to make a better project and i want to thank you for that it was interesting to have a developer call you and say why did you say that and can you help us understand why you why you kind of spoke up and you spoke as a concerned citizen yeah i said it's not a profession you know i mean it's my profession i understand what these numbers mean um and it's it's also interesting now that uh the people from act 250 actually have some training money so we're hoping that they can start to understand more about what the numbers mean in terms of lighting design thank you for that donna you're welcome all right do you have any questions for us okay we're going to make a decision tonight at the end of the meeting we'll have an executive session and um and then let the candidate the selective candidate well all of the candidates know i'm tomorrow okay all right well thank you very much for the offer thank you very much i'm going to stick around this is budgets only and this is so interesting it is exciting but you know well especially with the tiff district very very interesting how that works all righty so let's go back to um i guess we're at item nine we're going to receive the general government presentation yes so again you will hear from me but there are much better experts in the room so this i think this is our standard overview presentation you'll see all of the presentations follow this format so talking about staffing successes the fy-24 budget cip emerging issues in the spotlight so this is who i am speaking on behalf right now and and team definitely pipe up what you want um planning and zoning clerks legal physical plant assessing and tax collection finance and it these are really the backbone of your municipal government these are the folks that ensure that the operations of the city can continue for those out in the community providing direct service and as you see we do have two significant vacancies now deputy manager and the communications coordinator and our new hr director daisy brayton starting in january so we want to start as always by highlighting some of our key fy-22 and 23 successes to date this team um hired over 20 new teammates including a public works director who's here fire chief who's here um deputy director and couple in public works as well as police lieutenant several many many great new teammates across the city all staff after this week with the fire department will have received structural competency and cultural humility training by dr Mercedes Avila who lives here in south berlington we negotiated a number of successful collective bargaining agreements spent a lot of time focusing on cybersecurity and shoring up our it systems to make sure we were resilient and protected we adopted a lot of land development regulations you all adopted a lot of land development regulations with the staff support from planning and zoning and a climate action plan and issued zoning permits for 307 new homes within the form-based code as well as beta n on logic this year on the revenue side of things you um her me says a bit earlier our zoning permit fees are going up quite significantly at 130 thousand dollar project increase in this fy-24 budget on the other side of that equation our clerk's recording revenues are decreasing by a projected 45 000 some of that is offset by our vital records increasing about 13 000 and that's really based on the actuals that we have seen in past years please stop me if you want to talk about it it's fewer homes old donna do you want to talk about that i didn't hear the question the clerk's recording revenue is decreased due to increased mortgage interest rates because fewer fewer fewer change changes in thank you um on the expenditure side of things um uh we are focusing on technical work and relying on our clerk's office to be that face of city hall with the addition or the with the reassignment of the full-time staff and tax collection and assessing this is the restoration of a position that was eliminated several years ago and we will of course backfill the city clerk's office when needed we are seeing in these budgets quite a significant increase in our utility rates as again we are seeing across the nation um the increase in planning zoning staffing we are doing mid-year in fy-23 is reflected in the baseline fy-24 budget um and we're continuing to invest in our it um technology to protect us um and integrate police fully into our uh municipal it team our significant this backbone team significant request to fully support the entire city is restoring this gis and policy and data analyst uh that's about a ninety seven thousand dollar price tag all in with salary and benefits um this gis position was eliminated in 2020 department heads were asked to take on this role um we have a tremendous amount of data in the city that we are not using whether that's calls for service data energy data infrastructure data staffing data um and we really believe that to best meet the community's needs um and to give you the best guidance we can about policy questions we need somebody who's focused on mapping data collection data aggregation and communication is this a little more expanded from the one that we eliminated in 2020 so my understanding and i wasn't here but the 2020 staff was really focused on gis which this we would certainly hire somebody with with great technical gis skills in this role but it is more expansive than that it's connecting that data handling ability data handling um experience with mapping and the ability to say okay given these things that we are seeing with this data on this map or in this analysis how do we best advise on policy on making data driven decisions within city operations so yes it's a bit expanded i will say it's also as i think most of you council know i started a municipal government in a STAT program so this is very near and dear to my very dorky heart but i think we could do a lot of really good work for you all as a council with additional data uh so our cip projects within uh general government focus on upgrading our hVAC and weatherization systems focusing on installing heat pumps at public works and really we wanted to call out with the start of our physical plant team trying to get into a proactive stance with our with our facilities instead of doing all reactionary something's broken and we're going out in an emergency basis and fixing it trying to get ahead of that curve and do repairs in-house when we can when we at all have the abilities to do that i do want to note that our oldest generator was in our heinsberg road pump station 1964 and will be replaced with insurance dollars what happened to it what happened to it did it get hit by some flying mural pieces got hit by some flying mural pieces yes a car ran into it so okay so the generator i didn't realize the generator that was just a building so that was so that's the one that's sitting outside well it is replacement for sorry i'm just curious no it was a backup case the primary power died and you could pump up to the force main to get it to airport parkway is that right that i can't answer because that's wastewater okay but yes the generator itself uh took a direct hit yeah knocked it off this morning yeah and uh it's 64 it's 1964 can't really find parts for it yeah but insurance pays for it insurance is fantastic so that was sort of uh that was an expensive accident tom you want to describe it right it's a rental outside right now and anyone will be outside oh really oh okay propane or diesel or natural gas sure diesel diesel yeah that was you would bring that up okay right so for this team our emerging issues um very similar to what you've already heard me talk about additional ones we uh call in has been working on updating our code of ordinances our code of ordinances which you all work on all the time um are not well codified and editable and searchable so we are working on a large-scale project to redo that our elections as you have heard the city clerk talk about are significantly increasing in complexity with our fifth voting district as well as mail-in options and early voting options and we really need to talk in f y 24 about how best to oversee and facilitate our elections over time especially with whatever change the charter change may recommend to you all and the voters of course we continue to see supply chain issues and demand issues with increased hours of operation complexity of development review and permitting and hopefully a new comprehensive plan so Donna has some exciting things that she will be launching in the first in the next couple of months so i'm just teasing those a little bit you've heard me talk about the success of our safety committee um leading to about a hundred thousand dollars of savings uh you heard paul at our last meeting talk about transitioning to a team approach for development review and then just a huge thanks to mike ma and his team for all the improvements they have made to our city's cyber security posture and that is your administrative staff okay thank you so we don't need to do anything other than ask questions questions okay are there any questions i worry about it security all the time i worry about other you know municipal governments and hospitals and businesses that have had ransomware attacks and have had disruptions to services and and it's happened you know to the medical center as well so it's really really important that we do what we have to to make sure that our it systems are secure and that all of our employees know not to click on attachments that they don't understand right and that they get trained over and over do not click on attachments from external customers and and same for everybody else at home too right because that's i think that's what happened at uvm and that somebody had a laptop that was they they clicked on a link and anyway or they open an attachment but lisa juva they i just have another thing to watch out for is the address where it's coming from because i got an email the other day from our ceo except that it wasn't really from our ceo but it looked legit and what the wording said is you know i i need your help with something but when i looked at that address it came from outside the country so that's another thing which i'm sure with your security training you're probably going to be touching on be very careful yep those phishing exercises where they search for ceo's names and send emails i will never email anyone and ask for help in a one sentence email just for the record so holly we'll do holly do you want me to do the yeah that'd be great so this is like the seventh inning stretch i won't make anyone sing sweet caroline but everyone feel free to get up and move around for a second if you would like to i know you've been sitting for a while there you go you have to put your helmet your hat thing on if you're going to get up and tim has some little halftime entertainment the fun is just beginning um holly reese recreation and parks director um jesse's gonna forward slides for me so i'll just do a head nod i might be dancing too um so just an overview first of all a beautiful view from overlook for our overview we're going to be going over the department staffing which is small but mighty some key fy 22 and 23 successes which i'm sure you're already aware of and hear positive feedback about as well as budget proposals some capital improvement plans some emerging issues and definitely spotlight on staff how did you get that picture drone it is uh travis lad one of our staff members took it you climbed a tree he he did not it's a perfectly situated view with a great camera and you didn't have to stand on anything either wow and i'm pretty sure that island is south burlington it's juniper island right juniper island which is part of south burlington now there's a house out there y'all knocked on it when you campaigned um so we're ready for our department overview and staffing so we are as as i said a small but mighty team um it's made up of two programs staff um which are bret and nick nick was hired a year ago february so he's coming up on his anniversary which is exciting and rebecca who you will know as the senior center coordinator and then travis lad who took the picture also is our operations and events specialist so it does a lot of the x's and o's and sponsorship pieces of our events so this is our team which we're a mighty team of five and extremely busy but happy to be really busy so just as an example this past weekend alone there were three of us at the park doing spark the park which was an awesome event which we'll go into a little bit later and then the next morning we had two staff that were at different gyms facilitating the kick off of basketball and our youth basketball leagues as well as the senior center had a um a freebie day where people brought puzzles and crafts and things in to give away and others shopped around for free goods so we're here there and everywhere and our team works when everybody else plays so hopefully everybody is well known throughout the community as is the sign of any good recreation department so key f y 22 and f y f y 23 successes to date you can see them out and around the town um you know creation of the pickle ball facilities was a huge boom uh well utilized tim was certainly there at the opening we thank him for that um but it was just a really great example of what had been long planned for a renovation and then um you know community support saying hey can we pause let's think more about pickle ball instead of just putting pickle ball lines could we reimagine actually having pickle ball courts and so with a lot of feedback and support from the community we were able to um you know relook at that and give the community what they were looking for and i i can say that those have been very well used and will continue to be well used they're locked up for the winter season now but we'll look forward to reopening them in the spring um in addition we had a lot of talk and um concern from some of our little league constituents and we work closely with them so they proposed several renovations but once we were able to check off the list this year our skinning the softball field at jc which i know we've been talking about for several years pre-covid so it finally got done uh which is exciting so now of our youth softball players have their own facility to to utilize which is great um and it also will help support our adult softball league play um at that memorial we did reconstruction of home plate and pitching mounts so how to um special contractor come in to do that those just got finished this fall um and working with both the library and certainly rotary um we were able to install four free little libraries in some of our local parks and local artistry as as well um and so those have been really popular they are at overlook veterans feral and they crest and then obviously we all know about the wonderful success and creation of the wheeler dog park um i go past the dog park probably four times a day and i usually have to use more than two hands to count the amount of dogs that are in the park so it's a wild success which is great um so those are some of our successes to dates um for parks and for events as i mentioned um you know we kicked off the spark the park last friday night with um s'mores and hot chocolate um and we look forward to the illuminate vermont event december 16th and 17th right here at the location that jesse had already talked about and any community engagement is a success um but we we really love is to be able to use sponsorship dollars and grants to to forward these events um and so these are two examples of those um very thankful for north country federal credit union for their now third year of uh sponsorship for spark the park so we hope that they're on board for next year as well and uh we'll look forward to kicking off the first illuminate vermont just in a couple weeks uh 13 days i think my countdown clock sets so we're going into um revenue um every year we try to really narrow in on the revenue and you'll see from 22 to 23 that's you know COVID year for us so real impacts on what programming we were able to do um and some of the things that you know we anticipate that will continue um the afterschool ski and snowboard program um that was something that the middle school had used us um to help coordinate and now they've taken that in house so we won't be seeing that anymore but still a great program and kids are still benefiting from that um and and we're also trying to really hone in on the adult programming um we are able to support several different drop-in opportunities and some evening classes here in the senior center for adult fitness um but the school space is so limited and so what was a you know a $30,000 revenue stream perhaps six years ago um you know is no longer so we're just trying to be realistic about that and then part of what we're looking at as well is um you know doing a pricing pyramid and and trying to make some of those bigger youth youth programs especially more accessible and I as we started to see those prices creep and we started to now be charged for some weekend facility use at the schools um you know we were seeing a 55 and a $65 registration fee for youth basketball and and that just didn't feel appropriate so we are planning for both for soccer and for basketball of doing a $10 registration fee um so we'll get supports for jerseys from sponsorships um but we're we're just really feeling like those need to be accessible programs for everybody so that's some of the revenue cut that you'll see um and in terms of expenditures as Jesse said the department budgets are now carrying those um what were historically human resource line items and as well for us um as Martha can contest um the recreation of parks budget um really had five different directors in five different years trying to organize it so she spent a lot of time consolidating lines with me so we could really get to a better product um they're fairly easy to read through um not asking for any significant increases for sure and in expenditures other than including those human resource pieces um CIP projects for 24 so two columns uh general fund projects for $100,000 and then rec impact fee projects so for the general fund we've got baseball dugout replacements and those are stepped out so one set each of the four or five years um dogway stations so you also heard about this in the common areas for dogs committee um ARPA request fund so they are proposing an inventory uh added inventory of dogway stations around the community um as well as bleacher replacement so that's you know just um the shelf life of bleachers we've got some that need to come offline for safety issues uh so that's at vet memorial park uh roof replacements um those are both the jc pavilion and the red rocks pavilion those are in pretty significant need of repair and then veterans memorial park the $28,000 would be for the there's a ban shell beam that needs replacement it's rotting out as well as some safety upgrades for lighting and then the recreation impact fees um you know three specific projects the south village recreation amenity um that's been on the list for several years it ebbs and flows um with urgency and and uh we've been working with the developer they're going to be making a commercial property on that corner and on the back of that would be bathrooms to just to sustain the recreation amenity so we're not at a point of constructing that yet but it it stays in the queue matt can i just ask a question about that you the recreational amenity you haven't said soccer field is that is there are you say ebbs and flows could it be something other than so the plan could the current plan is for a youth um soccer field um and as i meant in parking facilities as well as um the the bathroom facilities so those would be something that are part of our inventory that hasn't changed it it hasn't changed yet nope still there um additional dog park creation so the common areas um committee for dogs has proposed that there's a dog park in each quadrant of the city um and so this would support support that um and park signage so as we have both um you know the rye meadows property and and then uh the o'brien hillside property coming on those excuse me two playgrounds that are already there will need to be signed and um so money money in there for that have that have they been deeded to the city yet not yet and before we accept that deed are there um i know you know with streets and things there's a certain level of um construction that we we require and i'm just curious if there's any um i don't know of requirements for a park and the equipment that we then take on because then we have to maintain it and replace it and assume that it's safe and are there those kinds of standards yeah i mean i know tom is in the audience now um so there's something that that we've been working on acknowledging that they need to exist i mean certainly um you know there's playground safety inspection that that needs to happen ahead of that for these two projects the recreation and parks committee was consulted as um to what equipment you know felt appropriate to go in there um but it's a new process for the city so it isn't as as vetted and developed as you know streets or or or those other assets all right i was just curious this is the first i've heard of this and i just wondered if it was i mean i just don't does anyone else remember that and any of the documents and ldr's requiring this and stuff like that paul is there standards within the permits and well if you want to come up and answer that well what i will also say is the this is a little speaking of school but the technology for playgrounds has really increased it really expanded in the last couple of years and there are standards for uh how playgrounds must meet safety recommendations so at a minimum they would do that uh huh i was also thinking of drainage and stuff you know like for all the grass and hi folks paul connor director of planning and zoning so um for the past since 2006 in the southeast quadrant we've had standards that have said that uh there's a uh a target of seven and a half acres of developed parkland per thousand populations so that's what the d r b has had to go with developed has been uh subject to the board's interpretation on a case by case basis more recently this year um on a citywide basis you adopted standards both in the subdivision and then later um with site amenities that give more sort of robust description of what is sort of expected from an amenity perspective it's it's still sort of criteria rather than you know one slide one swing you know it doesn't get into the super specifics but it sort of it gives a sense of like if you're proposing this kind of amenity uh you know whether it's a very urban one or a more residential one that it is its characteristics are supposed to be x y z that that's the approach that we've taken and then um we're pairing that as holly said with um anything that would become public we're putting in the processes into place to make sure that there's a certified playground specialist who's reviewing it to make sure that it is uh installed correctly um and we're involving our rec department and public works folks during the development view process for example with the um O'Brien Eastview neighborhood to make sure that the amenities that going in that are going in if they're going to be public are meeting a community need and that they're maintainable long term you know that it's not something that looks great on year one and then is really really expensive to maintain with all sorts of moving parts on year three unless it's you know right in the core of our community and and is meeting a specific community need thank you my pleasure okay so we're at um emerging issues so as you as you heard both at last year's budget presentation and then at the ARPA presentation as well you know deferred maintenance of our parks is is significant and while we await hearing um the kind of spread of ARPA dollars there is a plan in the stepped out 10 year CIP to kind of catch up on the deferred recreation maintenance so we're happy to present that but just want to you know point out that it's still there um we also have need for a master plan for our park system um as you know as we have this bubble of growing population and have we need to make sure that we're addressing the needs of everybody now and into the future and so the need for work around that to make sure that we have a mapping and a plan um is necessary when we moved out of 577 our storage did not move with us so we're currently still there even though our offices are here um and the school maintains um access of the rest of that building so there is need to move our storage um and the thought was two or three years ago well we'll move that into a new recreation center um so you know the need for storage is still there however that gets imagined just letting everyone know um our summer camp season which I would say you know a decade 15 years ago was the bread and butter of most community recreation programs that's no longer the case when the schools out program kind of increased their inventory to take as many kids as they could which is great in their summer camp program um you know it it alleviated the need for then a tandem program of recreation and so we have always put together a part time camp inventory so either a morning camp or an afternoon camp or a specialty week camp and we are finding when we don't have that anchor of a day camp to then kind of you know do a tennis camp in the morning but then go to traditional day camp in the afternoon um that you know our camps are struggling um and so I think we're just always looking at that with a critical eye to see if it makes sense to continue doing that it's a lot of time and energy and if it's something that you know our community isn't in need of I think that we can spend the energy in other ways so we're still planning a camp season for this year but just something that we're keeping an eye on community garden access is another one so we um you know have significant wait lists at our Wheeler community gardens so we want to make sure that we're you know looking to the future of where else we can put community gardens and that we have staff to sustain those as well as you know equity and and making sure that this ties in with the master parks plan as well but that there's you know an accessible park um within a quarter mile of each residence and that would be the ideal we certainly aren't there right now but keeping in the forefront that need and then you know community facilities you know we talk about the needs for daycare we've talked about the needs for teen centers we've talked about the needs for boys and girls kind of club we've talked about indoor recreation needs and um those needs all kind of converge also with school needs so just it's all part of the same conversation um as an emerging issue yeah jump the gun I'm sorry that's okay you're good we can go to department highlights and so just to do a little showcase of us so we have a flourishing senior center which I would say is a huge department highlight I think it is busier than any of us could have imagined for year one we've got you know 100 visitors that come through there in each day our programs are thriving and and people just look for it as a resource to connect them with other people and other services which is great um and then I would say our other department highlight is you know our staff and this is our halloween costume we were emojis this year and um you know they just they're really passionate about what they do and um we can go to the next slide oh no I guess that's it um staff specifically and so I just wanted to thank them for everything that they do and I'm really proud to to be a part of them thank you are there any questions okay thank you proposed budget on the library we proposed the library and we built it and now this is the budget yes Stacy take the library boards I think our is the green light bright green lights green oh green lights not green there's green and there's green got it yeah that's going to help a whole lot um so um you've got pretty much everything I'm going to talk about right in front of you but um so we'll start with um the staffing overview uh the library staff consists of 20 people um at different levels of hiring so our um uh we are we have 12 and a half FTE that's what comes out of those 20 people um one of the things that's exciting I mentioned here that we have to be aware of um benefits for part-time people and how can we support them um in their employment and one of the things that Andrew has set up before he took off was that um our part-time people who are in 19 hours and above can access some of the resources of marathon so I'm excited about that so um all um the successes that we've had you've heard about through through the year um here is a list of them I'd also like to add that um our summer reading program this summer was very successful uh it was a really exciting thing to see because we've had two years of not being able to really do summer reading um so we had um and this year we also had adults and teens who were engaged more than they had been in the past so we had 61 teens 70 adults and 432 kids participate in the summer program um other things that are of note up there um the um the the ESL groups come into the library that's been a fabulous resource uh the Alex with the markout school ELL group she got a grant so we did one visit with them last year and this year we've had three one from each of the elementary schools and I think she has other funds to do other events but uh I actually got to lead two of those tours of the children's room this year because Kelly was out so it's it's just really wonderful to hear lots of different languages in the library and to watch teachers and parents and students all interacting so that's been that's been key and and it um is one example of the staff really working hard to be inclusive and um so that's another thing I would highlight there so revenue uh the library is not a big revenue producer and what we've been trying to do is figure out what revenue is going to look like in the in this building so we um we're hoping no I think based on our 2023 where we are now the treasurer and I concluded that we we needed to bring our expected revenue down um it's been very interesting that in this building uh we we are not bringing in very much revenue for um copying and printing whereas at the high school and when we were at the mall we did bring in more revenue for those things so there are just some things that we couldn't anticipate and so now we're trying to anticipate so that we're we're ready with what we've got um as I mentioned there we are still bringing in a lot of new library card users from around the area and the ones who are outside of Chittenden County and who live in Burlington do pay twenty five dollars a year for that privilege that has a question hi Jen is there a general theme or entities that rent the space that's about two thousand dollars or so what are they renting it for or who are they uh so let's think about this so I had a long talk the other day with a couple of uh Jehovah's Witnesses who want to rent a space for a special holiday that all Jehovah's Witnesses do on the same day and this was the Spanish speaking group who were trying to use the library for that um tomorrow night we have a business group that's going to be using it the school system um uses it sometimes they might do trainings in in our some of our rooms um and do they rent the school yes so we've set it up so the first two hours for a non-profit or an individual are free and then after that there's a minimum fee with the exception of the auditorium which there's a fee right off um let me think so the study rooms we don't charge for the study rooms so in there we see a lot of people who it appears that they're studying but they could also be doing some business you know using it as their home office um today I heard some people doing tutoring so it's really a wide array okay so there's not a there's not a theme and don't when people are renting it there's not a lot of weddings at our library or just the one so far okay we've had one wedding and two memorial services yeah so so expenditures um our wages and benefits also this year includes um the longer list of benefits which is why that number is a lot higher if we were comparing 24 to 23 without that it would be 716,987 so that if you're comparing them across the line it doesn't look quite so startling we we are not looking for any major increases this year primarily it's we're looking to pay for a lot of the same things that are going to cost a little more um and that includes databases and annual fees for um services and computers and things like that that we cannot control um and so basically it's it feels to me like it's a it's a kind of a break even budget even though there was a little bit of an increase in there so um you heard a little bit about this van when we were talking about ARPA funds but here's a nice picture um this is the only thing that we have in CIP it is not in this year's CIP so it's really it's really going to be a next year's CIP this year we're trying to we'll be working with the foundation and um Holly and try to and you all and to find financing for it um and we started doing surveys with uh daycare centers and adult living centers to verify their interest and um recommit their interest to us and also make sure that we are going to be taking them what they need so as you can see the van has carts that roll in and out it's not a van for people to go on to it's for us to be able to transport different materials or different recreational materials or books to different locations as needed but yeah plan would be to if those the pink and and purple um carts they would be loaded with the materials all the interaction is outside of the van yep okay it's not you mean because some of them you go inside right we used to have a bookmobile yeah and that's when you went on it this one is going to be a little easier to drive um and the the last one was a little unwieldy we could only use it I think eight months of the year um because there was anxiety about bad weather um so yeah we'll take for for us we would take um a cart of books into the building whatever the building was or get it out onto the asphalt if it's a a joint program that maybe the rec and the library are doing and we would pull out books because we still want people to have the capacity to select their own materials because that's really key uh is being able to browse and choose your own um yeah can i make one more clarifying point about this so as as jennifer said this is not in the f y 24 cip if you choose to use arpo funds for it in f y 24 you can absolutely do that we're not saying you can't do it until f y 25 it's just built into the general fund cip starting in f y 25 thank you for clarifying that so um our emerging issues uh are um i saw some place earlier in the presentation that um there are issues about if we're going to increase library hours how are we going to do that with the um the staff that we have who are taking care of the facility so that's an emerging issue that isn't on my list but it's certainly present um what i've got there is just that things are changing as far as technology goes i am not um i'm not seeing that we shouldn't be buying books anymore that's we're not there uh we're not even at a place where we're not buying dvds um you may remember am i telling you that when we built the new library uh the architect from colorado said well what's this area on your picture i said well that's where the dvds and the audiobooks are going to be and he said that's ridiculous take them out of the picture they're not going to be around long i said no way because are because they go up in huge increments 20 25 percent still um year after year so uh it's we're not doing that yet um but there is a higher increase uh there is an increased interest in audiobooks and ebooks e audio and e books and um as i described here they cost a lot more and they can be used a lot less often um the the next item is just um that we are working with facilities and with the police department and with other people in the building um so that we all have kind of a baseline of training and comfort with difficult situations because they happen and um so that's that's ongoing i don't think it's something that we're going to just boom we're gonna we're going to take the training of our lifetime and then it's all going to be set it's an ongoing thing um i've recently committed to my staff that every staff meeting that we have once a month we will be doing something that ties into safety and security and um and i do expect that um we'll be we'll need a little need some more budget money for the library of things so um right now it the nights are beautiful i encourage you to come and check out the telescope so how far can you see i don't know but it's it's a lot better than what i can see from my backyard um for the next one to spotlight i'd like to spotlight um Mira Geffner and Kelly Kendall they're my adult services and children services librarians and uh the three of us all took some american library association training around equity inclusion and diversity and um the two of them are really running with it in an exciting way so um we have we have uh we have improved our collections substantially with some ARPA money that came from the department of libraries after doing a study to figure out where we needed to to change our collections so they've been at the forefront of that as well as defining populations that are not using the library that maybe would like to use the library that might not feel invited that uh and one of the ways that we're doing that is when i meet Spanish speaking Jehovah's Witnesses at the library i take their name down because i might call them later to come in and do some kind of a program or um training in Spanish so so i'm really i think they are doing a terrific job and i appreciate it so that would be my spotlight did you have something to add are you good Stacy wants to add that she's very happy with our social media and that um we have a plan with the advocacy committee to increase it and to make it more effective as far as um making more asks online and also getting more i think that the advocacy committee is also working on a new video uh so that's i think what you're talking about that's exactly what i'm speaking of uh and also the highlight of band book week which was really a great piece in the library that was another spotlight that i would like to bring up as well as bringing local artists work concerts and other programming thank you thank you any questions simple question canopy we're still limited to two movies per month right and the other thing is that if you pause the movie and then you turn off your tv and you come back later that counts as one movie it's a very sad sad situation i mean that's the thing with these electronic books movies is that we do not control the rules but i i'll make a note that we should put more of our funds towards your canopy watching yes it would be great as if we could if individuals could supplement the canopy subscription and pay their own fee towards you know getting more movies if i don't know if that's possible there yeah i've thought of models of looking for models like that with ebooks and e audio books too so it's a good point okay thank you and we are going to take a five minute break right now just to stretch and then we'll come back and start the public hearing on on the tiff fund entertain a motion to open the public hearing so moved second all in favor all right so we are in session okay good evening for the record um Ilana Blanchard community development director and i'm just about to share my presentation that's not what i want to share with you let's see there we go okay um so i apologize to the council uh it's uh some of it is a repeat of what was shared previously i have added a few new items but uh just want to give everyone including the public a good background on the tiff district where we are and the preliminary model which is the same model that i showed you last time we have been working on updating it and it's shifting a little bit but generally the story is very similar in the new model which we will present um at the necessity hearing so i'm sorry at the this one you need to pass the necessity resolution if you are going in that direction so i wanted to start with just an overview of where we are in the life of the tiff district we started in 2012 and we're closing in on the end of the period during which the city can borrow funds in order to pay for projects so we're at a decision point in terms of committing to the last remaining projects conceptually and then the actual commitment would take place at a later date once there is an authorization in place to actually issue funds the final commitment would be when those funds are issued and so this is our last regularly scheduled election coming up town meeting day that is a normal one in the cycle of elections where we can have a ballot item on the ballot for that decision to be made by the by the voters and so it needs to be made by statute by March 31st 2024 and so in order to go through the appeal period and then do the actual documentation to sign the debt this is when we would normally do that and so with the tiff district the city would continue collecting funds or increment that's the increase in tax revenue due to new development within the tiff district until 2023 i sorry 2037 excuse me 2037 so we have we'll have an additional approximately 14 years from now during which we can continue to collect increment so brief status update our tiff district financing plan was re-approved in 2021 several projects that we decided that were not progressing sufficiently in order to complete at a point during which we would want to commit indebtedness to them were dropped and so we have the four projects left we are in the middle of an audit with the state state auditor's office to date 10 million has been issued that's for market street city center park and this building so the senior center the city hall and the library we there is also an additional four million in debt that has been authorized by the voters but not issued and that is for the first phase of gardens street and related costs related costs are administrative costs related to administering the tiff district so we pay for the audits when the state auditor comes we pay for that plus our annual audits and other administrative items so to date 14 million has been authorized we have within our financing plan an eligible amount that we can issue as long as it's approved by the voters which is just over 29 million and we anticipate sort of our everything gets redeveloped that can be redeveloped and within the tiff district an anticipated tax base of 306 million at the end of the life of the tiff district so our last year 20 2037 that's what we would expect the tax base to be if we have if we work really aggressively with our property owners and everything possible redevelopes so this year as jesse pointed out we had a growth in the grand list of 9.6 which is significantly above the overall grand list so more is happening in city center and sort of showing what our efforts have gotten us so far so there are four projects that require voter authorization there's been a slight change in the wording within our draft article so garden street wilson road intersections we're not specifying phase two in the same way that we did not specify phase one for the first authorization we want to make sure that we can mix and match across the bond so that if we have a smaller bond but it turns out we need more we can take some from the first bond or vice versa we can move some from whatever this bond amount ends up being to the first phase and are not quite as restricted so the language is slightly looser it mentions some of mitis drive but this project garden street the wilson road intersection which is essentially phase two goes from mitis drive and white street and a realignment of that intersection over to heinsberg road including installing pedestrian and bicycle facilities along those through on those two intersections and then between those two intersections on wilson road but then the language allows some flexibility so that some of that funding could be spent on the mitis drive portion of the phase one of garden street and this project is the largest budget project so it's $8.3 million and i just wanted to call that out and this is also federal aid eligible and later on i'll talk about that more wilson road streetscape is the south side of wilson road it's a bicycle and pedestrian facility we you know the state language for that is shared use path so it's not really a sidewalk it's not really a cycle track it's off-road and there's a buffer between the the shared use path and the street the street width does not change at all so everything that's in the roadway on wilson road stays the same and this is really just adding this facility amenity to the south side of wilson roads calling it wilson road streetscape this the budget is 2.6 million we have an $800,000 grant federal aid grant for this project it's only 50 percent if district eligible it is obviously federal aid eligible since we have one grant we could pursue another grant for this project and then the east west crossing is the third project this project is a large regional project there's been a lot about it recently it's 30 percent tiff district financing eligible we have a $9.8 million federal grant for it we have a very small gap of about half a million and for which we believe there are several different pots of funds that could be eligible to fund that gap and then we also have permission through all the granting agencies to use federal funds so we could also pursue a grant for this project as well for that gap and i would say this goes all the way from wilson road wraps around the corner by cvs and connects to the existing shared use path on dorset and then city center park phase two boardwalk shared use path connection is is sort of a north south connection to garden street and market street via city center park and it's really a shared use path it'll be lighted and available no salt because it is in a sensitive wetland area but generally plowed throughout the winter and so both access to the park but also north south access to the middle school the high school from neighborhoods to the north and to city center from neighborhoods to the south so this is budgeted at 1.1 million it's a hundred percent this portion of the project is a hundred percent tiff district eligible for financing it's not federal aid eligible and we're at the 60 percent design level so there was recently a workshop on this project and there's additional information on the website so in total the the total amount of financing that authorization that is being sought is 15 million 86 thousand and four hundred and thirty dollars that's essentially what the financing plan allows and it's not necessarily what would be asked of the council to issue for debt but because that's what the financing allows at this point that's what we're asking for the authorization that financing is based on the best information regarding the budget's opinions of cost that we had from engineers and it's fairly recent so that's the amount that is being proposed for the for the question and the question I don't have it yet we'll get to it but just to just to be clear the question is not specific about assigning a specific dollar amount to each budget it's a more general amount so that you know as we know more information there's you know a full year between one the march meeting town meeting day and then our deadline for actually incurring the debt we may have more information by that time and some of these numbers might change a bit so so it's more general I have a preliminary model and this is a model that looks at potential development within the TIP district it's the same model that is required by the Vermont Economic Progress Council and we are I am going through it more with a fine-cuth tooth comb just to make sure it's as up to date as possible working with the assessor on some of the assessment numbers for projects that we know are in the pipeline and just you know making sure we're both comfortable with what it says so this that's attached is the same one that was provided to you in November and hence it hasn't it doesn't have the updated budget numbers so I apologize for that and I wanted to start this off with just talking a little bit about the pipeline and that's that center area which and I'm going to show you a close-up in a moment this outline is the whole TIP district it's 106 acres there's a lot of properties within the TIP district that are either undeveloped or underutilized underdeveloped and maybe the uses that are there may not be the uses that necessarily want to be here in the future so they may find it more convenient to be located at other locations or find that they may want to explore new uses for those sites so that's why would we develop a model we're looking at all 106 acres and then in the preliminary model there's two lines so one is the whole 106 acres not every property gets developed for example the school district does not get redeveloped it stays exactly as it is and then but several properties where we know there might be some change over the next 14 years those are the ones that are shown as redeveloped and then the other line is really just what has developed to date and catamount run I don't have any oh there we go which is the center area and essentially land that has been controlled by South Burlington City Center LLC and is under contract with Snyder-Reverman and so recently there was a huge announcement by University of Vermont that they had partnered with Snyder-Reverman to develop several buildings and I'll show you those in a diagram in a moment but that will result in 295 units which is a huge investment and that's on top of agreements that were already in place to invest from the UBM Medical Center to also invest in buildings and that's that would result in an additional 181 units so those two major investment investors in Snyder-Reverman's project results in 476 more homes that are planned to be open by 2026 which is really super aggressive and we're very excited about that so and I just want to clarify that they will not own the buildings they'll be investors and then those those projects will they'll have some dibs on whether or not students and graduate students or employees are are using the the units first so but they're fully taxable fully taxable and so this shows those projects so Catamount Run are I don't know if you can if your Market Street is labeled on here Garden Street is not it's the cross street to the south of Market Street our building that we're in today City Hall Public Library is also shown as Allard Square and then the two properties that are completed Dover Place and Garden Apartments are in purple and so the red are the UBM buildings and then next to Healthy Living is Prospect Place Apartments and that's a project you'll see that the the developer is putting in the infrastructure now to get started on that project so they've put in some some temporary structures in order to facilitate that construction and then Union Place which is on the south east corner of Garden and Market is sort of getting its final skin which is really exciting we get to watch that happen outside of our windows and so so there's a lot happening and then the pink are ones that are not shown in that tally but that are coming so there's a lot that is happening in the existing development is Catamount Run and the other Union Place even though the residential is sort of ground floor yes I think it works out up to about six to seven thousand square feet of commercial per building that's still in the design that's still in design except for not in Union Place I don't believe that has not Union but in Catamount Run yes and and normally the other pink ones at some point potentially what they are a Prospect Place does have a small commercial space and then daycare so it's about seven thousand six to seven thousand square feet also yeah is there any movement on the property that's at the the eastern end of Market Street that's north of the shank apartments there I we know that they've been had that that site on the market for a while and we have had a preliminary conversation Paul Connor and I we're just regarding the zoning is a little bit it's different and it's fairly unique compared to every other site inside city center I think it it's one of the only sites that has a particular zone so one so a discussion that that we'd like to bring back to them to the planning commission is you know what is the right zoning for the those sites what are you talking about so right it's sort of in the grayed out area north of where Black Bay ventures the the townhouses that are at the eastern end of Market Street just north of there it's your mirror on the other side of the road from the townhouse yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah good question so so this is the model and let's see if I have a there we go okay so so the green line is all all projected so that's all 106 acres properties that seem like they could be developing or we've had a conversation with folks and seems similar like for example the one north of the townhomes we've had a lot of conversations with them existing development and pipeline is really just looking at what exists and then the senator braver man project so you can see in 2018 that's what we were collecting that's what we collected in the first year of the tipped district and this is what we would expect to collect at the end of the tipped district is somewhere between almost six million or three million so three million is our low end and then six million is our high end and then year over year growth and increment is that we're still we still have projects coming online if every single not every single but if many of the lots are redeveloping we would expect you know one or two to develop and take advantage of the area that has built up in that location whereas really if it's just existing development and pipeline that's really just representing any increases in the tax rate so it's no actual change in in value and so at the end somewhere between 30 and 45 million approximately or 47 million so we so as part of the model we show the debt that we that we have taken out to date and then what we would expect to take out and what the annual payments are so looking at it over time across the life of the tipped district and our time periods during which we would need to pay that debt we would expect to have spend about 40 million in expenditures so more than the low line and less than the high line and then this sort of shows you where we would end up just with the tiff fund it would be just over seven million in surplus or just over eight million in deficit with the high line and the low line and then we also model what we the reserve fund and making payments from the reserve fund for the debt that we have incurred or might incur for wilson rose cheatscape and what those payments would be over time similarly just like with the tiff district and the reason that we do that is so that we can look and say okay this reserve that we've built out in in order to smooth out the tax rate how can we make sure that we still have tax flow over the tiff district so over the life of the tiff district in the beginning it's fine we can make all the payments at a certain point though if it looks like we are not getting the development that we would expect to receive we would need to take a hard look at what is being contributed to the reserve fund and make an adjustment and i want to walk that back because you know one of the things that i talked about in the memo for this project and i just want to see what the next slide and see okay there we are so one of the things that i want to talk about when we look at that yellow line at the very bottom and the green line and the difference between those two and then fine-tuning and looking at the pipeline i want to see you know where we end up with that yellow line we really just don't want to be there we want to look at other ways to mitigate that risk and so primarily we want to work with developers and property owners to make sure that we are continuing to receive interest in redeveloping properties and in people making commitments to re-envisioning how their sites are being used or are thinking about whether or not they want to continue where they are and maybe sell their property to someone else who may be interested in redeveloping so we there were a lot of conversations that happened with Snyder-Braverman before they got to where they are today and it's been a you know it's that's a particularly large and complicated property it has a lot of environmental considerations and permitting that had to take place but there are lots of other smaller properties and so we want to make sure that we're doing that outreach to move that forward the other one is that we want to we will be looking for federal funds there are three federal of the four projects through your federal aid and we want to make sure that we are seeking grants for to sort of bring down that overall debt that is required to complete these projects and then the third one is we'll continue to look for structures we we're structuring this that's debt in a way that is using more interest than we need to be and so we'll be looking at other ways to structure the debt so so so just to complete so our total voter authorized I guess this is the bottom of the model we already went through this but but the total the total tip debt to date is 14 million the proposed potential future debt is 15 million which will bring our total to 29 and a half million which is essentially what we're authorized to under the the updated financial plan and an important statement is that when we take out tiff debt it's a general obligation bond so that we are required to pay to pay back that debt regardless so you know that's an important statement and it helps us all keep our credit rating good and and make sure that we're very careful about taking out debt and that it's a very deliberate considerate process this is the draft article like I said there's a change with garden street it's no longer says to everything else is just sort of fiddling with the lists to make sure that they're representative of the actual projects so thank you yeah was there a reason to put them all in one question as opposed to four individual questions that's you do you want to answer it I see you reaching um so that is council's prerogative you could separate them out and list them individually I think the way we have talked about it is that all of these pieces are necessary for their full buildout of the tiff to realize that growth across the district so we have talked about them together but it is the council's prerogative how they show up on the ballot huh but on that point by no means does if this gets approved are we committing to doing all four of these so any one of these might not it just gives the council the bonding authority correct so was the discussion about the too much verbiage on the ballot no no it was more you know we're obligated to print all that a menu as opposed to an ala cart you know oh okay it was just thinking about you know how voters might respond I'm just trying to see what you're thinking was I think the other part of our thinking on that is that with this being the last regular election for us to get voter approval within the tiff district if it if we present it as an ala cart if the if the community wants to realize this full vision and do all four projects and we presented as an ala cart there is a chance that one of them does not pass or two or three or four of them don't pass and then are we calling a special election or are then we scaling back all of our projections within the model yeah no I mean I I support them I'm just thinking about you know opposition to one or two projects could that bring down all four you know I don't know we've had good response to our tiff votes before yeah and I don't think that will I think this the whole package as one unit on the ballot would be sufficient to me my only concern is and I hate to voice this but you know the Tilly drive properties right we're completely purchased by UV medical center right or they are going to be right and so they all are are considered nonprofit all those medical buildings is that no no not at this point or there's a plan for them to build divide them all so I don't know of that plan there's a plan for them to further invest until they drive through the property the current property owner the way they do for some of their parcels there now that are commercial leases and play pay full municipal debt I thought I read a while ago that there was a planned for them to so that's my my fear is that like Kettemount run might be designated to be a full for-profit you know market rate and then two years later they go we're going to change that and that really puts a spear in the heart of our tiff goal so I don't know how to phrase that as a question or a statement but it's just a fear if somebody can can assuage that fear that'd be great but I maybe change it I think that the amount that they're investing is 20 million and I don't I think they would need to invest a lot more in order to achieve that if that was their goal is that's my that's my thought so two additional thoughts on that one Alana is absolutely right the amount they're investing is not purchasable at this point the the developers are maintaining majority ownership and the my understanding of the agreement and certainly we could have them come in and talk to you about this is that while uvm has the first right to the parcels or the homes they will be on the open market generally otherwise they don't have universal soul right to the properties okay in addition I think the worst case scenario with if uvm were to come up with you know many many millions more dollars to purchase them we would enter into some kind of pilot agreement with them all right thanks so that concludes your yes presentation so you haven't had a public hearing I don't know well I said her presentation correct so now this is open for public comment is there anyone in the audience or on um the tv screen that wants to make yes would you please come up to the um what do we call that thing the podium and will you make sure that the light on the it's the green lights is is it bright it's bright okay we can hear you thank you okay thank you thank you very much for the presentation I just uh will you please um tell us who you are my name is Michael scaling I just moved here recently uh and uh I've been planning for six years and I finally made it um I just had a question about uh the the composition uh of the buildings that you were talking about in terms of their usage you had referenced that uh the question had come up about commercial use or retail use for some of the space I was wondering is that is that a when you're talking about repurposing at future date if the demand grows for greater say good commercial use to make it a more of a go-to place besides a place to just a residential is there flexibility in that and is that up to the developers as they see what the market bears just a general question about that since I guess the initial concept was to create a sort of a sort of a downtime dynamic area yes thank you may I answer that yes we will we'll take some we can educate you about that sure paul connor director of planning and zoning so the area along market street where the four buildings that alana just spoke to there the the the four main ones in catamount run the first floor of that is designated as non-residential and that continues all the way to dorset street should there be either buildings like the building we're sitting in right now that's a non-residential or use or redevelopment of the building across the street the or the the other ones as we had towards dorset street so we're agnostic within what is non-residential so that it can be evolving over time but the everything that is facing directly on to market street would be non-residential along market street in the other areas along garden street where the other buildings are proposed where alana discussed the permit that was just issued last week for the large building with 120 homes a coffee shop and a and a daycare we are the regulations are flexible such that it could be residential or commercial throughout that entire building so it doesn't require one or the other but we do have first floor heights that are generally consistent with with commercial activities so that buildings can evolve over time as they so i think the question if i understood it was if it's built now as catamount run as the ground floor is commercial and the upper three it's only four stories right three stories is residential if um the owners decide that they could they really would prefer redoing the inside and making two or three levels commercial and only maybe the top level they can do that can they not correct so through throughout the entire what this is called the t5 district and then the t4 is most of the rest of williston road dorset street the umal property above the first story where the zoning is agnostic so it can be residential or non-residential and can rotate between them so it's really intended to be flexible the purpose of the form-based code district is to let the form of the building be the primary um the primary issue so if the building is well designed then if it happens to be offices on the second third or fourth story or residential functionally it's operating the same way to support a downtown so that addresses your question okay someone else would like to speak ask a question anyone online no one has turned their mic on so if there's no more public comment we can end the hearing i'll entertain a motion so moved second okay all in favor of closing this public hearing the public hearing so what do we do we need another one right we're another public hearing the action for this item will be on your December 19th agenda there oh oh okay great she wants to stay into it again okay thank you very much okay so now we'll move on to item 13 which is another public hearing on amendments to the land development regulations ldr 22-07 to realign zoning districts along the shelburn road corridor and ldr 22-08 to allow municipal uses in the commercial two district and allow the following additional uses within commercial one auto district congregate care assisted living continuum of care excuse me educational facility educational support facilities hospice municipal facility skilled nursing and social services so i would entertain a motion to win yes i'm sorry oh helen just um my company manages the vermont vehicle automotive distributors association i testified at the public planning commission hearing so i'm going to accuse myself from this discussion and vote okay thank you um thank you so uh motion to go into public a tube go into a public hearing second all in favor all right we are in a public hearing so paul are you gonna i am i'm joined by jessica louisos who uh is online as chair of the planning commission uh michael matag of the planning commission is also in attendance so thank you both for joining us um so uh i'm here to give a very brief overview of the proposed amendment and then um it's a public hearing and i'm happy to answer any questions um i thought it might be helpful since there hasn't really been a big public presentation i'll do a very very short presentation with no budgetary numbers in it i promise uh so uh i'm going to talk about the first amendment first to the uh ldr 22-07 so this is the zoning map change so what you're seeing on the screen are the three zoning districts that exist along shelbourne road today the from top to bottom the red one is the commercial one residential 15 district the middle one in blue is the commercial one auto district and the uh the lower one in uh purple is the commercial two district they're somewhat similar commercial two has a little bit more of the light industry um type uses in it the um commercial one residential 15 and the commercial one auto both allow for 15 dwelling units per acre the commercial two allows for seven units an acre the amendment that you just passed two weeks ago allows both of them to go to unlimited density if you buy tdrs though so conceptually they can all be residential um the proposed amendment would this works um would shift this so that the uh same colors um the red which is the commercial one auto would be expanded in the area right here where my mouse is so that's essentially a long shelbourne road between the building uh between the lakeview complex uh that is there and up to and including the citizens banks so where larkin terrace uh new building was built that sort of redevelopment area would become the commercial one residential 15 the commercial one auto area would be uh extended or relocated to uh the former hanaford site and the lowes site and then two properties right here would switch from commercial one auto to commercial two and that's the fire station number two building of the cities and the uh there's two auto dealerships the sheer outy and the one adjacent to it the reason that those are shifting is that otherwise we'd wind up with an isolated island of a district and we try not to have two parcels being in the in a district standing by themselves um so they would continue to be to be an auto dealership if they so yes that's my third slide that's my third slide oh sorry so the last slide here is just showing this is the proposed zoning and what you see with all these little tags here these are all the existing auto dealerships in the city so the along this corridor I should say so the planning commission in looking at this wanted to make sure that any existing auto dealership did not wind up becoming a nonconformity through this so the proposal would be essentially to do a largely um equivalent acreage swap from uh adding to the C1 auto in the former Hanifords and the Lowe's site and um and exchanging it essentially for this area along Shelburne road where we're starting to see mixed-use redevelopment such as the Larkin Terrace building the land immediately north of it where the Citizens Bank and and a number of uh retailers are in the same PUD and under the same ownership as Larkin Terrace so it made sense to keep them together in one consistent zoning district um the second amendment um as uh chair really just read off is to make some uh relatively small changes in allowed uses so in the commercial two district which is the purple one it would add municipal facilities um the main purpose of that is to make sure that our fire station does not become a nonconformity but it would also open up additional opportunities should there ever be a reason along the southern portion of the corridor which is where all of our transit service is um if there's ever a need for a municipal facility then it's the zoning is allowing it in the commercial one auto there's a number of added uses proposed and really the planning commission's objective there was to other than auto sales try to bring these zoning districts closer together in terms of what's allowed so why are cultural facilities allowed in one district but not another they're they're functionally the same corridor and i think uh over time i think the commission is going to be looking at the possibility of um further consolidating districts we have very very many zoning districts in our city and so opportunities to see where if there's not a material difference between two zoning districts why not allow the same uses largely in this case with with the exception of auto six so that's my brief overview um jessica may want to speak a little bit more to process and how it got here or we can go straight to public hearing so i'm going to stop sharing my screen but i'm happy to bring it back at a later time jessica do you want to make a comment um sure i guess just that this came out of our request we received and we um felt like there was an opportunity here to reuse an existing building that's been mostly vacant and you know has not been redeveloped for housing or other uses um so you know the proposal that was brought in front of us was the idea of reusing that existing building um we also felt like shifting zoning seemed like a reasonable approach to not create more land for auto but kind of retain the same amount of land for that type of use um we also saw that at the Fayette Drive intersection with Shelburne Road there was that's one of the locations that in our urban design overlay we had identified that intersection as a primary node which the idea is to kind of have like a gateway or activity hub where mixed use would be happening and we're actually starting to see some of that redevelopment happen on the one street corner so kind of shifting auto sales away from you know some of those nodes along Shelburne Road was consistent with our thinking for the urban overlay districts um and you know generally to support the possibility of having mixed use um you know along Shelburne Road um and the options for having some auto sales kind of off of that main corridor um was consistent with a lot of our thinking for the corridor itself um and then we did have a discussion about uh how this could potentially affect housing um for the most part it's equivalent zoning for housing the C-1 R-15 and the C-1 auto have the same residential density available so that shift doesn't change housing potential the one location that does have a shift in housing potential is the two properties that are currently auto sales and the municipal fire station um where the uh the zoning was changed to the C-2 so that was kind of at the southern end of the map that Paul had shown so I mean that was some of the thinking that went into um bringing this forward okay thank you are there any questions council yeah just and I'll open it to the public thanks um when uh Mr. Larkin redeveloped the Larkin apartment's right uh right in front of the palace nine uh about the same time Eric Farrell was proposing an apartment building just south and to the west a little bit your change doesn't affect the the possibility of building there in that same fashion right it does not change that the that possibility that piece of land that Mr. Farrell had been looking at has actually since been acquired by Larkin so um the that that piece of what what the the the um Farrell estate on the to the east of the railway track is now belongs to uh to Larkin um so no it does not change it and if anything it sends a more clear message that it's the commercial one r15 district and not the commercial one auto district in terms of you know as they look to um you know uh investors that what what the intent of the district is it's very much aligned with what their first building was and what the rest could be okay any other uh process question so I got a call I think it was today um somebody was asking me about if this was fast tracked and uh I remember hearing this first of in April and now it's December and so my question to you is that's six months or so does that seem like in a in any way a fast track and also to that in that conversation I stated um when you've previously been before us on this topic I asked what concerns have been raised by existing land owners and you mentioned one or two and they they seem to be relatively resolved so I made this statement and I'd be curious if you could speak to it that if more concerns had been raised by land owners it probably would have taken a year or a year and a half or who knows whatever would have happened but could you speak to the timeline and how long it's taken to go through this process to get to us tonight sure so uh the request we we were approached um originally at the staff level probably more than a year ago um but they um we invited that if they looking at different sites and different possibilities and uh when the folks who formally did make the request indicate that they were interested in the possibility of zoning change we invited them to write a public letter and they did so in uh the sometime in the late spring um and the planning commission per their policy took up an initial request um and said what do we what do we want to do here uh do we want to put on the work plan do we want to look at it now do we want to say that it's not um really of interest to the community one of the four uh principal goals of the comprehensive plan is to be opportunity oriented and so I think um Jessica you can speak to this more but the commission saw that this was a relatively um expedient lift on their part to be able to analyze this as a contained subject area um there was a little bit of room in their work plan as we were getting started working on the comprehensive plan and it um seemed like an opportunity at the same time there was the standard public processes involved with each of them of planning commissions held a hearing you've held a hearing the commission reviewed it three times before it went to a hearing um so but uh Jessica is there anything you want to add to that yeah I just um you know you I think we're all on the council when we had brought forward our very large package um with all the environmental regulation changes and that was a big big change and it took a very long time there were many moving parts and um we kind of put on a lot of smaller requests on hold through that period um so that was kind of a big chunk and then since then um I think this is actually our third kind of smaller package to come towards you and I think we're we're trying to be a little more nimble you know so it's not years between changes um and you know similar to the TDR program change and then I think another piece of it is that this was a little quicker because um we felt like it was in line with a lot of recent discussions the work for the urban overlay district um and was in line with the comprehensive plan we've had a few other requests in the last number of months or year that um you know we felt like we needed to have a discussion as part of the comprehensive plan to make sure that we were doing something that was in line with that plan as well as um a few things have gotten referred out to some of the other committees for for input first so this felt like it didn't need to go to a committee it was in line with some recent work and um uh in line with the comprehensive plan okay uh Megan yeah does the CCRPC weigh in on this change I asked because our representative sent an email to all of us um expressing some some hesitation because it was land that could be used for residential and that was a goal of a regional goal typically the most of our interaction with the regional planning commission is at the level of the comprehensive plan and um as they develop their uh regional future land use map as Charlie Baker had described at your last meeting they really look to assemble the priorities of each of the communities together um we obviously work with them in a very collaborative fashion on all sorts of things but it's not their practice as an organization to weigh in on each zoning change okay okay any other questions all right are there any comments from the public yes um Scott Pennington the Montenegro Circle uh I want to say that I strongly support this change um I know the zoning change is supposed to be company neutral but uh from my point uh Tesla is my primary interest um it's the premier electric car company in the us if not the world it has innovative manufacturing uh innovative software it's what other car companies are trying to follow these days so um to have them come here I think would be a benefit to all of us to encourage us to use electric vehicles make it easier to acquire electric vehicles if you're going on a long road trip um Tesla and their supercharger network makes it easy to to do that it's an American company but I think we should encourage and it's also in alignment with the climate change goals that we have so um just strongly support the change for those reasons thank you any other comments how about from the public screen I mean I would just say that I've got a ton of emails and almost every single one of them was supportive of this so I think the lack of comment tonight is reflective of oh yes I can't read that oh Robert Hooper uh thank you madam chair uh I am a representative from the great city of Burlington and although I'm visiting you by zoom I I think that we have to recognize that um the economic uh general potential of this uh I'm also a Tesla owner uh if I want repairs I have to go basically to Albany or Massachusetts uh I think that we need to recognize that not only will this be a boom for South Burlington but it will also be an economic boom for Vermont in itself because all of upstate New York uh all of New Hampshire and possibly even some main uh people will be coming here but I really want to emphasize that as a member of the government operations committee we talk a lot about advancing our climate goals potential and that manifested itself in a climate caucus if you would and one of the things that we have tried to do is to get more money in the hands of people directly to buy these cars and I think the big gap that's been missing here even know there are over 5 000 in our area is that you can't put your hands on them you can't sit in the seat which I think a lot of people generally want to do so I I think this would uh read this decision would repay us several fold uh if we took advantage of this opportunity so I urge you to do so thank you very much thank you any other comments do you have any final thoughts no Jessica you all done okay well I'll entertain a motion to go out of um the public hearing so moved second all in favor aye so item 14 is possible action on the changes of these of LDR 2207 and LDR 2208 so I move that we uh approve uh land development regulation LDR 2207 and LDR 2208 second any further discussion okay all in favor signify by saying aye aye carries four zero thank you fair time everyone don't go too far Paul we have um number 15 um a public hearing on a chance a change excuse me a change to the impact fee ordinance and the public and private sanitary sewerage and stormwater systems ordinance regarding timing of payments for fees um for affordable housing project Paul hi folks Paul Conner director of planning and zoning uh Colin McNeill our city attorney is also here um I think this might I mean we're both wearing ties that's we're really doubling up tonight oh but he always wears I know I was just trying to look half as good as he does on a daily basis yeah New York Times said the deal is if you have a colored shirt and a jacket you don't wear a tie that's good thing I took the jacket off before coming up for this item then yeah um so if you want to be in style so I guess never been my strong suit so I probably still wear the jacket first step would be if council were to uh these are public hearings so to open public hearing on the two of them if you have moved that we open the public hearing uh to change the impact fee ordinance and the public and private sanitary sewerage and stormwater systems ordinance regarding timing of payments of fees for affordable housing projects second all in favor all right so we're in a public hearing all righty so as we discussed with you last month this is um just very briefly uh the purpose of this is to um essentially assist with the financing of affordable housing projects to which the city's already involved so um with rising interest rates all fees presently are due at the time of application for a zoning permit that's typically 18 to 24 months before the building is operational and therefore bringing in revenue um we were approached by the folks at summit to which is one of the projects that the city has been involved with both from a Vermont community development program grant and from the city's affordable housing trust fund with um is there any um pardon me and and ARBA funds yes um was there any opportunity to help them to not have to pay all the fees up front because their calculations are somewhere in the neighborhood of forty thousand dollars of that the additional loan being taken out at that time over the uh in order to pay it up front would essentially mean that a that's that's an additional payment just to carry that extra loan the interest payments over the construction period which is essentially equivalent to the money that the city council has voted to put to from the affordable housing trust fund so it's essentially taking that money and giving it to a bank so this is an opportunity to save that money um for them as a partner by having the fees be due at the time of certificate of occupancy um because the city is so deeply involved in these types of projects there's all sorts of fail-safe mechanisms to make sure that we would get paid at that time so that's what this is about okay is there any public members who would like to comment i don't see any there isn't there's only one gentleman in the audience so we close the public hearing all in favor hi so the hearing is closed we can move on to item 16 which is possible action on this change so i move that we approve uh the impact fee ordinance and the public and private sanitary sewerage and stormwater systems ordinance regarding timing of payments of fees for affordable housing projects second is there any further discussion yes i think this is a great idea thank you okay all in favor hi so that passes thanks everyone enough thank you um 17 receive the fy 23 policy priorities and strategies report number one so we this is uh linked in your package we are giving this to you tonight primarily because one we promised to give it to you it's a good activity to report out on our progress also we're doing uh staff updated this in conjunction with doing their budget presentations and their annual reports so trying to get all the reports kind of lined up so i wasn't going to walk you through every bullet that was on this page but i'm happy to answer any questions about details presented are really it's a resource for the council sorry are there any questions i i just an observation you know i this is wonderful and it it shows that you're making we're making progress not in absolutely everything but you know given all that you have the city has to do i think we've made um a lot of progress on almost every area there's a couple but this is the report and lets us know so i appreciate it any other comments okay we got a ditto all right so now we can move on to i thank you very much um item 18 and i would entertain a motion to convene as the south brilington liquor control commission all in favor so we have one license for um delta hotels for a first class and third class restaurant bar license is because of change of ownership yeah i i was just going to ask there was no paperwork but it i i think it refers well the box there's um staff is fully reviewed and have no concerns yeah okay does anyone else all right so um i'd entertain a motion to approve this to move second all in favor hi hi that we come out of the south brilington liquor control second all in favor hi any other business okay we um the last item 20 for adjournment is entering a possible executive session to consider two things a review of personnel and um boards and committee appointment in that executive session we will have the oh you have all who's going to enter okay thank you would like to move that the council make a specific finding that premature general public knowledge of the council's discussions on the appointment employment or evaluation of public officers or employees and confidential attorney client communications made for the purpose of providing professional legal services to this council we clearly place the city at a substantial disadvantage second all in favor hi and so i now move that the board enter into executive session for the purpose of discussing the appointment employment or evaluation of public officers or employees and confidential attorney client communications inviting jessia baker collin mcneill and paul connor into session with counsel second all in favor hi and we will come back no we'll just announce okay all righty