 Do you want me to wait for Sue? When Tim's here? Oh, good. This conference will now be recorded. All right. Good timing, sir. So Tom, I'm going to call this meeting to order. The South Bronx and City Council meeting, what's the date? October 3rd, 2022. So the first order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Item two is instructions on exiting the building. Thank you for those in the room. There are two doors at the rear of the auditorium. You can go out either one, turn left or right to get to your preferred exit. For those participating online, thank you for joining us. If you would like to make comment tonight, feel free to turn on your camera or message me in the chat and we'll call on you. Otherwise, we are not monitoring the chat for content. Thank you. Looks like Sue is online. All right. Item three, agenda review. Are there any additions, deletions, or changes in order of agenda items? Could we move the doors and street signals to number one next so I could complain about them? Or we can just wait. You can just wait. Okay, I can wait. Okay, Tom, any changes? No, you're all set. All right, so move on to comments and questions from the public, not related to the agenda. Are there any comments? Great. Please come up and make sure the light is on in the, whatever you call these things. The microphone, thank you. I'm Monica Ostby, South Burlington resident, a parent. My youngest is at the high school. I'm here because we're coming up on one year since one of our students was nearly killed in a car accident right on Dorset Street at about 645 when it's getting dark at this time of year. I have, since that time, tried to figure out what we can do as a city to try to make that part of the road safer. I've talked to the bike and ped committee. I've talked about it on the planning commission. And of course, the general answer is always talk to public works, which I also did. And this does not relate to what you're talking about later on the agenda. But basically after my discussion with public works, that's why I'm here. First of all, I've learned some things along the way that by the way, there is a state statute that lets school districts and school boards somewhere in there have decision capacity over safety issues on streets and sidewalks and speed limits and such around schools. But in South Burlington, it's either our charter or an ordinance that says, oh, but not in South Burlington. So in other communities where the school boards can make such decisions in South Burlington, it's you. Student safety is in your hands. I did verify with Tom, who I know is here. So if I say anything incorrectly, you can let me know. But I did verify that since about a year ago, no engineering studies have taken place regarding safety in front of the high school on Dorset Street. It's not on the list. I asked if they could make that a priority. And the answer I was given, and if I understand correctly, is that public works does not have the ability to make that a priority. They don't have a mechanism that allows them to move the order of requests that come in, that I am to bring the request to you to ask if you would make it a priority to study the safety on Dorset Street. And I've given you a picture of Joel who is coming up on his nearly a year since this accident, and it would be really fantastic if you would be willing to make this a priority, make it an agenda item, do whatever you have to do before we get to that one year mark that has a lot of heart in this community. I did look back at a quick review of city minutes and agendas. I don't think that I've seen any conversations about this since October. So I really would hope that you would make this a priority. Joel is Alicia's son, and Alicia's right here. And Joel could have been any of our kids happen to be Alicia's. And what her life has been like and what her family's life has been like in last year is something none of us want to ever have to experience. So I'm here to officially ask request that you add this issue on to an agenda before October 28th, that you make it a priority to look at what we can do to make that part of the high school's Dorset front safer. And in the meantime, I know Tom wanted me to ask this in the right way, and I'm just a resident and a parent wanting safe roads. But I know that there's examples like today you could leave today if you wanted to and ask Tom to put, I don't know if they're called matrix message boards or whatever those are, but we can have a big old sign right now on Dorset saying school's here. Let's remember that Joel was hit by another young driver, a young driver who's not familiar with the area. And when you're heading south on Dorset, you have no idea if you're not familiar, no clue that there's a school there. No idea. So when you're arriving home tonight, if you happen to go that way or if you can go that way, I'd ask you to take a look at that. And while you can make an agenda item to do an engineering study hopefully soon, is there anything else you can do in the meantime? Because we have students running, walking to get food, and the East City Council as far as I have seen has not discussed this. Thank you. Thank you. Could I just share something? Sure. Thank you. Thank you, Helen. As someone who has for years been concerned about speeding issues on White Street right next to Chamberlain School, I am familiar with how long it takes to get attention. And what finally got attention, and it was thanks to Justin Rabadou who told me, a simple letter from the principal of the school written either to Tom DiPietro, copying Jesse, or the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission, is all it took for it to get on the CCRPC's work agenda. And I share that as I would say a speedier way to get this to have a study as opposed to the council. It was a simple letter saying that we would like to have speed issues. In that case, that was the issue. For Dorset Street, it could be a different issue that you want to highlight and have them study. Yeah, it went right past the City Council actually, because it's the study I believe would be a regional study. I'm not going to ask for answers now. It certainly was a regional study. Right. Focused on White Street. So I just, I guess I'm addressing that then to Jesse, to have that be investigated. What is the best way for that concern to get to the office where it needs to get to for a study to actually occur? Would you like to come up and speak please? It's Alicia Moore. As Monica said, Joel was my son. We moved here last August, and two months later his accident happened. He had just started ninth grade as a high schooler at South Burlington. He'd already made a ton of friends and was, and he was used to riding his bike everywhere. He always had. So this was not anything new to him. He actually had been riding his bike so much he had calluses on his hands for months. It took months to fade away while he was in the ICU. Joel is my oldest. He is the oldest of four kids. His baby sister was six weeks old when the accident happened. I was on maternity leave and due to start my new job at a new place in Burlington. He was looking forward to joining the basketball team and trying out for South Burlington. This accident, I mean, we went, he went from being a regular 14-year-old child. Now he, and I think you saw the pictures. This was his prom picture at the facility he's at now. He is now minimally conscious. He suffered a severe traumatic brain injury. He is minimally conscious, unable to do anything for himself. He requires full assist. He has a feeding tube and can barely move due to spasticity in his body. Originally they told me that Joel was not going to live, that there was nothing that they could do. All he was doing was hanging out with friends and he was visiting a friend that was at the apartment complex where the accident happened right across from the high school. He was on his way back home. I lived right off of Kennedy at Manor Woods, so it's not even far from the house. This could have happened to anybody. There was an activity going on at the middle school during this time that was getting out at the exact same time that his accident happened. There are no cameras in that area which doesn't make much sense to me because that is a school zone. You would think that it would be priority that cameras be there to make sure that if something does happen that there is something to show exactly what happens right now. There is literally no surveillance that saw Joel being hit, none whatsoever, which was very surprising to me. That is a very busy intersection. There are kids that cross there all the time and it's right across from, he was hit right across from the high school. Is it the crosswalk? Yes, because there was no camera footage and nobody actually witnessed it. The only witnesses who actually saw the accident and they claimed they saw nothing was the driver and his girlfriend. The police had no other witnesses, no camera footage, nothing to go off of to tell us exactly what happened. The fact of the matter is that I think there's a lot of things that kind of contributed to this but I think that the lighting there could very well may have saved my son's life. There's no way to know that because again we don't know what happened because there was no footage of when he was hit. However, if there's something that can be done to keep another family from having to go through what my family has gone through the last year, my son is in a facility in New Hampshire. I travel every Saturday to go and see him which, you know, I can't have him home because I need to place the handicap accessible and nobody should have to see their child like that. And also, you know, I tell everybody that my son, the kid that walked out of my house that day, is gone. I will never, no matter how much he progresses, it's been a year and he's still in the state, I will never get back the kid that walked out of my house that day. He was, he's at the age right now where he would have been getting his permit. Most likely that will never happen. He will probably, I will probably have to take him for the rest of his life and I just hope that you guys look at Joel and remember that he could be anybody's kid. He could be your child, he could be your grandchild, he could be your nephew. And the other children in this community should feel safe and parents should feel safe knowing that their kids are, if their kids are riding bikes, if they're walking, if they're, you know, jogging. I've seen so many kids jogging and kids should feel safe. Parents should feel like their children are safe. And if there's anything that we can do as a community to make sure that that happens, we should do everything in our power to keep our kids safe because they deserve it. And when, if the town is unwilling to do this and do whatever it takes to make sure that that happens, then it makes me sit there and wonder like how much they care about the people in this community and how much they care about the children in this community if we're not willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that they're safe. Thank you. Thank you very much. Are there any other comments from the public on items not on this agenda? We'll move on to councillor's announcements and reports on committee assignment and the city manager's report. Tim, do you have any? Yes, like yourself and Megan, I attended the, I think Tom was there too, remotely the joint meeting between the planning commission and the city council. Lots of good discussion about the comprehensive plan and I look forward to seeing what comes out of those discussions for future meetings as well. That's all I'm going to say. Okay, thank you. Megan? Yeah, he covered it. Thank you. Yep, that's all I have attended as well. Well, I also attended, I'm sorry, the, I don't know if it's the last, close to the last meeting of the CAP committee and we have on our agenda the recommendation of the plan, a climate change plan and in the write-up that Paul gave, he mentioned that I would share with you some of the comments we heard and I'll wait till it's part of that discussion rather than do it right now. Okay. Can I just add one thing? I just want to say my congratulations to Nick Longo for being appointed the BDV airport director, which I didn't know until I saw it in the other paper. So I think that's a really great choice for that position. I'm so glad that they made that choice. I am too. Alrighty. Does Councillor Chittenden, do you have any additions to make? I do not. Thank you for asking. Okay. All right, then we'll go to the city manager's report. Thanks. So sorry to do this 201 hard thing to another hard thing. As you all the council likely knows in the community, there was a, we had our homicide in South Burlington last night, our last one since 2019. Four hours after the crime was committed, the suspect was in custody. It was really amazing work by both the South Burlington Police Department and the Burlington Police Department. And I just wanted to make sure the council and the community knew that South Burlington is a member of the new Chinden County Gun Violence Task Force and are playing a very active role in that. So really trying to understand the violence that's happening across the county and working together to address things as we did last night. Again, excellent job to our South Burlington Police Department. I wanted the council to know that Ethan has generously offered to come and give his climate action plan presentation that he gave to you all at your last meeting to our extended directors on Wednesday morning. This is our leadership team and our middle managers. So he will be providing that presentation either on a plan that you have adopted tonight or a plan that may become council policy in the future. So really trying to integrate that policy setting into the work that we do every day. I do want to share a couple of public works updates, not to steal Tom's thunder, but we understand that the Wheeler Park and sorry, Matt is not here. Fence will be tentatively scheduled to be installed on October 24th and then following that public works will place the stone at the entrance. So that is on on schedule as we had previously discussed at one of your past meetings. Paving on Dorset Street from Garden to Aspen is currently scheduled to occur Monday the 10th. That was delayed to expire all the rain we got. But once we confirm later in the week with the weather schedule, we will do all of our public outreach on that. And then additionally there we are working on or the developer is working on adding a turning lane onto Kenny from on Kennedy Drive onto the O'Brien Hill Farm Property Development. That's scheduled to be start on this Friday, October 7th and then paving on Monday the 10th. Could you repeat that? I didn't understand what you said. The developer is adding a turning lane from Kennedy Drive onto the O'Brien Hillside Development. So it will be one day of milling and then one day of paving this Friday paving next Monday. That's mid block between Kimball and 116? That's mid block, yes. It will be reduced to one lane both ways, which is why I'm bringing up it will have that impact. And will it just be a right turn? Obviously, yeah, you're not going to be able to cross the right. But will you be able to turn in coming from the other direction? Eventually it will be a signalized intersection. So it's several stages. Okay. So for those online who may not have heard those unmarked comments, it is a right hand turn now onto off Kennedy onto O'Brien and will become a signalized intersection at a point in the future. So this is an initial step in that direction. Did I get that wrong? Okay. The Water Department has a last public works update. The Water Department has a specialty contractor coming this Wednesday to look at that water main leak under the University Mall under the 89 tunnel. So we should have some more information after that investigation. Also want to share with the council that Dr. Mercedes Avila, who is a South Burlington resident and also a nationally recognized expert in DEI work, was with us last week, trained half of our non public safety staff on structural competence and cultural humility to address disparities and inequities. She will be back next week to train the other half of our non public safety staff. And then all of our public safety staff will be trained in November. So she is really interesting conversations coming out of that work and a huge thanks to Dr. Avila for joining us. She is excellent. And then a couple of upcoming things that I wanted the community and the council to be aware of next Wednesday, October 13th, Thursday, whatever October 13th is Thursday, Thursday. Thank you. At six o'clock, we will have our final design workshop here at six o'clock for the bike pad bridge over the interstate. And then that final design following that community feedback will be presented to the council on November 7th. Similarly, on October 27th, we'll have our next city center park phase two public meeting in advance of our bond vote. So getting community feedback on that final design. And more fun news on October 28th, the rec department will announce the Halloween decorating competition winner. We will have a community pumpkin carving activity that evening at the senior center. And on 20 on October 29th from six to eight is our Halloween glow walk at Goose Park. Thank you. Thank you. Consent agenda, we have five items disbursements designate designation of an attorney to assist with required tax sales authorization of the expenditure of just under $10,000 from the open space conservation fund to support the conservation of 500 cheese factory road approved the housing trust fund committee's recommendation to allocate $50,000 of trust fund dollars to the summit at O'Brien farm apartments and lastly approve an impact fee credit for 1068 Williston road, which is what used to be the holiday in for those of you who may not know all the businesses along Williston road in their address. I'll move to approve. Second. Is there any discussion or comment? Tom or just really excited. I can't believe you don't have a question. I just I'm really excited about the conservation easement on Sarah adopts property. So that's really great. Yeah, that's very generous of Sarah and I'm glad we could in a sense kind of match that and make that really happen. We appreciate that. All right. If there's no more comments, we'll have a vote all in favor of the consent agenda as presented signified by saying aye. Aye. Aye. That's four and to zero. So pass this. And just so the public knows, Matt Coda will not be here tonight. I meant to say that earlier. Number seven receive a presentation from the Department of Public Works and Holly Tanner on upgrades needed to the Bartlett Bay wastewater treatment plant and consider a town meeting day bond vote. So we'll have Tom DiPietro as is in Hollywood. So Hoyle Tanner is the name of the consulting. Oh, well, not a person. I'm sorry. Well, I saw you and I thought, oh, they must have just misspelled it and meant Holly. I did see a recent type of Holy Tanner. So what is your name? I am Jenny Oster with Hoyle Tanner. Okay. Jenny Oster. Yeah. Okay. My apologies. So I think if you wouldn't mind queuing it up for us. So for those that don't know me, Tom DiPietro, Director of Public Works with me tonight is Jenny Oster, who's our engineering project lead on these wastewater projects we're going to talk about. Also in support tonight is our water quality superintendent, Bob Fisher is behind me and John Riley, who's another project manager at Hoyle Tanner, working on portions of the overall project here. So sort of in summary, we're here tonight to talk about what may amount to a $31 to $40 million bond vote for upgrades at the Bartlett Bay wastewater treatment facility. The project is made up of three different components. The first component is actual upgrade and rehabilitation of the existing treatment facility. The second portion is upgrade of the wastewater infrastructure that allows us to manage solids generated at our wastewater facilities. And third piece involves upgrade of four aging pump stations that flow to the Bartlett Bay plant. We're going to get into details of all that, but that's sort of a very big picture of what we're here to discuss this evening. Jenny and her team have compiled presentation for you that goes through some of the preliminary engineering work that they've done. And I will turn it over to Jenny and then you'll hear from me again when we talk about rates and things of that nature at the very end of the presentation. Jenny? So, Andrew, I'll work with you on the prompting of the next slide. So as Tom mentioned, I'm Jenny Oster. I work with Hoyle Tanner's here. Thank you. I am Jenny Oster. I work with Hoyle Tanner. I am an environmental engineer. Hoyle Tanner has been working on the wastewater infrastructure in the city of South Brillington for decades, literally. Some of the history, what we're looking at here is to frame what the needs are, why now, and what the plan is to move forward. So we're going to start with a little background on the Bartlett Bay wastewater treatment facility. So it was originally constructed in 1970. There was a project in 1987 to add the sledgeholding tank. And then there was a major upgrade in 1999 where it was an overall process upgrade. So that was the last major point where the majority of the facility was touched was in 1999. So the service areas for the two treatment facilities in South Brillington, we have the airport parkway, which serves the lighter portion of that. It doesn't pick up that great on the slide, but it's the kind of light blue portion. And then the more yellowish portion is the Bartlett Bay service area. So what we're looking at, as I said, Bartlett Bay was last upgraded in 1999. And when we're looking at wastewater infrastructure, the typical lifespan of a treatment facility is approximately 50 years, with upgrades needed every 20 to 30 years. So for the mechanical, electrical and process equipment that lasts approximately 20 to 25 years, noting that currently the majority of the Bartlett Bay mechanical, electrical and process equipment is now 23 years old. When we look at upgrades, it's not only age-related, but it's also incorporated advances in technology and upgrades to meet regulatory requirements. So a little background on Bartlett Bay. So as I mentioned, we've been working with the city for a number of years, specifically on Bartlett Bay. We completed what is called a 20-year evaluation. This is a study that's required by Vermont DEC to do an overall assessment of all of the equipment, the collection system, the pump stations, and the treatment facility that was completed in 2019. That identified enough needs where we expanded that work to complete a preliminary engineering study. These get into vintage jargon, but it's a preliminary engineering report is required by DEC in order to get authorization to proceed to a construction project on the line. So the preliminary engineering study was completed to identify, again, to assess the needs, identify what solutions we wanted to address those needs, and to identify a recommended project. As part of those studies, we assessed all of the components of the treatment facility, and we're going to flash through a table here pretty quickly, which it's a huge table of all the different components that we looked at. But what I want you to see on there is there are three different columns where we're looking at the anticipated remaining useful life on equipment. So we have zero to two years, two to five years, and five to ten years, and this is from February 2022. And what you'll see is the vast majority of the equipment is landing in that two to five years of anticipated remaining useful life. So you can kind of go through all of these, and we're not intending to go through this level of detail, so you can Andrew flip through towards the end. But it's the details of the components to the point where on the last slide, that is the table, you can see there is one component where we're already seeing failure, and I'll go to describe some of that, but that's where already operations are at a point where they are needing to use it in a different way because of failure points on the tank. So this slide is just kind of some general capturing what is visible on some of the age related needs. The first you can see is the it's a drained clarifier tank, so that's where the final part of the process where some of the solids are removed out, you have the clarified water on top. But you can see in this photo that it's a corrosive environment over time, and you can see that the steel within the tank is showing its age. In picture two, there's a leak in the ceiling there, just structural age when you're at this 20, 25 years old, that there's some age related needs to be addressed. Picture three are the sludge blowers, those were put in in 1987, so they're well beyond the anticipated useful life, and the structure there within is in very poor condition. Picture four is the sludge storage tank, and you can see a little gray dot above the ladder, and that's a point in the tank where there's a failure point where they can no longer fill the tank above that point without material leaking from the tank. So some of the critical age related needs that weren't captured in those pictures. So the first is the headworks. The headworks is at the very front end of the trailer facility, and it removes the abrasive and inert solids at the front end. At this point, the grit removal, which is original from 1973 construction, it's an obsolete design, it's no longer what the state of engineering would put in for grit removal. And then additionally, the screening is ineffective, and that leads to quite a bit of downstream issues that even go all the way to airport parkway on the solids handling. So these abrasive solids that should be removed at the front end of the treatment process are making their way through, so it's damaging equipment, accumulating within tanks, creating downstream wear issues throughout the treatment process. Can I stop? Sure. Can I ask you, in this slide here, the picture to the left, that's the UV. That is. Okay, and then where's the grit? So the grit is interestingly enough, it's those two channels there on the right. So what it is, is channels where they, it's faster going in and the velocity is slowed down in those channels, intending to have the grit fall out. I don't think it was ever a terribly effective hydraulic process. And it hasn't, it's not what would be put in now, now it's a little bit more active centrifugal force or rolling forces tends to be what you use for removal of solids. But the sludge storage tank was from the previous slide? Yes. Okay, so what's the picture on the right? That's the grit removal. That's the grit, okay, thank you. So how does it get to airport parkways? So we're going to get through that. So actually, so in the treatment process, you have the treatment process that creates the wastewater effluent that's clean enough to be returned to Lake Champlain. There's a portion of the process that creates the solids, the byproduct of the wastewater treatment that doesn't go into the lake. Those solids are trucked over to airport parkway and need to have solids processing there. And that's the process now? Correct. Yep. It has been for, you just didn't treat them there? Yeah. Because that would be too redundant and expensive? It's a, yeah, it's a both operator energy infrastructure intensive process of handling the solids. So it's consolidated at airport parkway. How many trucks go on a daily basis? I'm going to differ it about. We haul generally three, three loads five times a week. Oh, okay. 15 to 20. It's our truck. And we just replace that truck, correct? Or just order it's on order. So it looks better than the farmer's honey wagons, right? Because I haven't seen anything like that on our roads. Okay, that's good. So the UV disinfection system is no longer supported by the manufacturer. So any issues with controls, part replacements are now at risk. And so if there's a need for that piece of equipment, which is a critical piece, it does the final disinfection before discharge to the lake, that would be difficult to address any needs that would be that could come up. And last, we already hit the sludge storage tank in that the function of that tank is limited based on leakage. So starting here with the existing site plan, and I'll just kind of really briefly hit some of this. So the this is the existing layout. And some of the things to note is we're, for the most part, sticking with the existing infrastructure that still works. So we're replacing the headworks, but the existing biological process, the main tanks that are at the heart of the facility, those are just a refurbishment, the secondary clarifiers are a refurbishment. And then there's some space in the UV disinfection and filtration also refurbishment. But there's some former functions that were at the site that are noticed as abandoned. So there's former clarifiers that have been abandoned in place, there's a greenhouse that's been abandoned in place, and a former operations building that's been abandoned in place. So some of that real estate that is noted there with existing structures is some of what you'll see on the next slide that we will be incorporating into the upgrade. So in going through it, and I'll start with the new headworks building. So as I noted, the obsolete and ineffective headworks, grit removal and screening, we're looking to replace that with a new headworks building. And that will flow to the yellow tankage, which is just a refurbishment of the existing biological process that flows to the blue tankage, which is your clarification. So that's a refurbishment where we're looking at replacing pumping internal mechanisms within the tank, any concrete replacement that flows to the light purple, the lavender, which is where we have filtration and disinfection. So that's a refurbishment, those functions are generally going to exist in the same place. There's a bit of a building expansion needed for replacement of the UV system in order to keep the existing system operating while we put in a new system. There's the red line that is running along the right side to the bottom. That's a section of the outfall that needs to be replaced. The remainder of the outfall was replaced in the previous upgrade. And that is the portion that is on the liquid stream. The other elements that are in the recommended project are the sludge storage. So replacement of the existing leaky tanks with the new sludge storage and sludge handling facilities, chemical feed and storage. So there's chemicals that are obviously used within a wastewater treatment facility. So putting those into a new building that has better access and right now there's some limitations with how many, how much chemical can be delivered at a time. So increased function. And then the existing operations building is quite undersized. It doesn't provide the typical function that you would expect at a modern treatment facility. So looking at a new operations building as well as a maintenance garage and that's the purple. And the other portions there's paving the gray new fence and a culvert that's needed for stormwater on the site. Can I ask a question with the things that you're kind of abandoning or replacing? Do they just sit there or they torn apart and hauled away somewhere? They'll be properly demolished. There may be some opportunities for reclaiming some of those materials if there are interests and there may be some functions within the city that where you're able to do that. Some of it isn't in a state where it probably has much use but perhaps maybe the greenhouse. It's a structure that's okay and there might be an opportunity for somebody to find an opportunity to repurpose that. Okay, thank you. I'm sorry, Tim. What is the outfall? Is that the outgoing liquids from the plant? And how does that, where does that go into Shelburne Bay? Is it piped out pretty far? It has to be pumped out? Yes. It is okay. It's by gravity. It flows by gravity out but it does extend out into the lake. 600 feet out? Okay. And so the airport parkway has that big cooker tank with all the insulation on it. Is this going to have one of those two? No. No. We are going to bring these solids to there to go through the cooker. Okay. That's a final. That's a biosolid. And related to that with the new equipment, will you have a reduction in solids because you're able to, I don't know, shake them out better? You're shooting for better capture. The more efficient your system is, the more solids you're going to capture. That makes sense. Okay. Thank you. The airport has those really high speed blower motor that those fans that are really noisy that were installed back in the late 90s or mid 90s, I think. There's that one building, it's really noisy whether it's you're blowing a lot of air that goes up and it goes down underneath. The 2011 upgrade. Yeah, okay. Will this get the same type of fan or blower? This is a bit smaller facility and the type of blower that you would tend to use for this is that and also there's been technology improvements and blowers but there's, it's a hybrid blower that you would tend to use for this size facility, sound enclosed. So the, the noise on them tends to be for what's likely to be the application here would be lower noise, smaller footprint than would exist in there today. So on the, the salad handling side will hit on airport parkways history. So constructed in 1967 secondary treatment added an 87 chemical feed upgrade to 94 and then the major upgrade that Bob was referring to in 2011. Did we have any facilities before 1967? I mean, what did we do? Did you just go into the lake? Sceptic tanks. Sceptic tanks? The Bartlett Bay wastewater treatment facility was originally constructed as a septic tank but located on the east side of railroad tracks. It was constructed in around 1948 and it had some, it had basic primary, or primary satellite and a basic disinfection discharged to the little brook there that was in Shelburne Bay. Lovely. Okay. But as you can imagine our collection system is good. We've come a long way. How is this side? It's more collected now. It's a lot more collected now than there was much smaller. We were a small town. So the salads handling that we referred to, so as we discussed, Bartlett Bay solids are trucked to airport parkway and then airport parkway produces processes, both sets of solids, both from airport parkway and Bartlett Bay to class A biosolids using that the big two phase anaerobic digest or the two pad process. The analysis of the existing two pad process is the hydraulic capacity is about 64% utilized. The cells loading capacity is about 49% utilized but where the limitations and operations have been has been in the volatile cells reduction and this is really going to get into the process we need. So I'm going to stay as high level as I can. So DEC is requiring the city to document a plan for how airport parkway can consistently achieve the required volatile solids reductions. And what that is is volatile solids are predominantly from your primary sludge. So if you can picture earlier in your process, the cells you remove are more active, more volatile. Further down in the process, they're more inert. So the waste activated sludge, which is at the tail end of the process, that's more inert and you need a blend of those two and you need enough primary solids in order to achieve that blend. So if you have too much inert of the non volatile solids, obviously reducing that becomes more challenging because you have a smaller percentage. So what the challenge that we're looking to address is the volatile solids reduction and creating that balance and operation. So we can get the blend of the primary solids and the waste activated sludge, which the waste solids come from both Bartlett Bay, which only produces waste activated sludge, only the more inert sludge, and then the secondary portion of the sludge that's produced at airport parkway. It's pretty technical weeds. And then the two merge somewhere? Yes. So in feeding, do they do that? So at airport, well, right now, and maybe we'll go to the next slide. So, well, I have one that hits it better. The next one still. So, so how it works right now is because we talked about how there's all the headworks issues where there's poor screening, poor grit removal at Bartlett Bay. So the solids that come from Bartlett Bay are very abrasive and they can't go through the regular process. So what they've been doing is running them through the headworks at airport parkway again and running them all the way through the whole treatment process again. So they get accumulated in the primary clarifiers and then whatever passes along to the secondary clarifiers. So they're going through the whole process. What was intended was if those sludge that was coming from Bartlett Bay wasn't so abrasive and had the issues with the solids, there is a dedicated sludge storage tank at airport parkway that was intended to receive the waste activated sludge from Bartlett Bay. So the intent is for Bartlett Bay solids to go into the sludge holding tank and then that gets blended with the primary sludge and the waste activated sludge from airport parkway. So that operational blend is, they're limited tools right now because it's all going through the same stream. It's also taking up storage space within the primary clarifiers by having all of that run through. So it's functionally very challenging and not as the design was intended. And how does it get there? Do you haul that or is there a pipe? It is hauled. It's hauled. So trucked over. Trucked over. Okay. So part of what we talked about was that need for capturing those volatile solids. So in that circle there you can see that there are three other circular tanks and those are the primary clarifiers. Originally in the 2009 design it was intended to have a fourth primary clarifier that was value engineered out. And what that's led to is a bit of some operational not a bit significant operational challenges. So the flows are such that they cannot take down a primary clarifier. So that's a piece of equipment that obviously has internal mechanisms. It's submerged. There's maintenance that's required within those tanks. They're not able to take down one of those tanks because all three of those tanks are needed just in regular operations. So there isn't that operational flexibility or buffer if something were to go wrong. And then additionally what we really are the, Bob is challenged with is the capture of the volatile solids. So if we get an additional primary clarifier you're going to get better solids capture at the front end of the airport parkway process, which is going to improve the volatile solids percentage, which will allow him to operate the solids handling with more flexibility on creating that blend. So are you saying that the extra clarifier will always be in use unless it's the least unless you take one down. So all four will be used unless you take one down for meetings. Okay. And that's an improvement to your that's an improvement and that well they will have the flexibility to do maintenance just from a hydraulic standpoint. So they're the fourth clarifier would allow for that. But one of the significant benefits is that it will improve the bottle solids capture. So extra clarification extra more more surface area you can picture it you have that on the front end if you're having more more surface area for that capture you're going to do better. And additionally when you're looking at the you know the design guidance for the solids loading and the hydraulic loading based on the flows that you currently have in your design flow, the fourth clarifier was always justified to meet the standard design guidelines for primary clarification. Thanks for the clarity. Thanks. So on the sludge storage as I mentioned, the sludge storage tank was taken out of service because all of the solids from Bartlett Bay that because of the poor headworks were accumulating within the the tank, it was causing downstream issues on getting it in there. So that's where operations were determined that it was better for it to run through the headworks at airport Parkway and goes through the whole treatment process. So in order to get that operational again, the tank needs to be clean, cleaned, there's some minor repairs to put it back in service. But this is going to give the operational flexibility to get that blend primary sludge and was so that's going to allow for better operations. And then additionally, recently there was a need for within that solids processing the two pad system, there was a piece of instrumentation that was required that needed replacement. So that had to be taken down for a time in order to to fix it to put in the new instrument. And there isn't that buffer. So that resulted in sludge being hauled, which is at a cost to Burlington. So provides a more operational flexibility. Inevitably, there's a need to to have additional sludge storage to get in for the system. So it's flexibility and and function that this provides. This is the storage tank that has the hole in it. No, this was this is an the one with the hole in it. That's at Bartlett Bay. And so this is this is a tank that is at Airport Parkway. That is where the solids from Bartlett Bay are intended to be stored when they arrive at Airport Parkway. Because it says BBW at W. Oh, it does. That would be that would be a operator error. So yes, that should be Airport Parkway needs cleaning. Yes. Apologies. And then you said we truck some things to Burlington. That was during a maintenance issue when unplanned maintenance that resulted in that reciprocating collaboration. We paid. Pardon me. Do we ever take theirs just so they can clean their stuff? We left them one of our pumps right now or $40,000 was just on TV. I saw the other day when they showed their two pumps and they're upgraded. We do help other plants. We have the ability or capacity. But in this case, it was a short term thing and we had to bring it somewhere with the Burlington. Right. Well, I would assume that municipalities on this issue and Lake Champlain that they would work together occasionally. We work together with them all the time. We would assist them in any problem. We work with that junction. We all work together. But we pay for that service, right? But there was a fee for this services around $29,000. Okay. Did they raise the price after we turned the valve the wrong way from Eastwood's? Okay, good. That's slowly. Thank you, Burlington. That's good to know. Well, no, I mean, it makes sense for municipalities to help each other and charging what it costs seems reasonable to me as well. The last component of the Bartlett Bay sewer shed needs were looking at the pump stations, the conveyance system. So this is in low points. You've seen around the city low points where the gravity collection system goes to a low point pumps it up to a higher point. So overall, the city has 32 pump stations, 23 are in Airport Parkway service area, and nine are in the Bartlett Bay service area. Can you remind me what a force main is for everybody else in the audience? Sure, sir. The force main. So when you're pumping, that is the flow that has the energy from the pump goes into the force main. So it's pumped flow. It's just versus your gravity, open sewer which it's just moving by gravity down the force main has that force has the pressure from the pipes that have gravity feed down to a pumping station that pumps into the force main that goes uphill until it reaches a point where it can drain. Oh, thank you. Yeah, guys are all going to be wastewater engineers. I love the word sewer shed. I've never seen that before. Sewer shed. So this map here, you can see the pump stations within the Bartlett Bay sewer shed and the one circle there, the four along the lakefront, there's the four that require refurbishment. So when there's a big development, either a commercial or housing, do they build a pump station? Depending on where they are, they may need to, yes. And that's part of their whole the cost of building whatever they're building. Correct. And they eventually turn that over to the city, correct? Depends. Yeah. They have to go back to our specs which are online first of all and then after that. Without getting on a huge tangent, we do have very many pump stations relatives. We think a lot of other communities. We have the most in the state by far. Just because of our topography, I guess. And we have a fairly wide wastewater treatment plant span. A lot of communities will have wastewater treatment plant in a develop, in a kind of core downtown, but doesn't go out so far in the community. Oh, right. Yes. So the four pump stations and buried force mains there have been in service over 50 years. The typical pump station life is approximately 25 years. The city has been seeing some force main failures and repair costs have been increasing in recent years and specifically for these pump stations. Location wise, you saw on the map all four pump stations are located along Lake Champlain within 40 to 250 feet. And, you know, this is a true environmental need. The replacement is needed to prevent raw wastewater spilling into Shelburne Bay. It's also the location of Champlain water districts, raw water intake. So this is a very sensitive area that we want to make sure that we're confident in what is the infrastructure that's in place. What are the force mains made out of the old ones cast iron cast iron or cast iron and those would be corroded at this point and brittle or after 50 years of service and wastewater service, there's corrosion. Yeah. Yeah. So then what would you use to replace them? And they have a longer lifetime longer service life. Okay. Thanks. Well, 100 years is good. Yeah, we won't have to worry about it. Right. So the the four parkway, I hope cement. Do we have cemented airport parkway? We have a lot of variety throughout the city was ever been put in. Luckily, where it's a fairly new system compared like why came from 23% of the pipe for pre 1923. Because we were, you know, basically not a city. So most of our pipes from the 50s and 60s, the oldest would be the late 40s. Yeah, but techno 1980, Dr. Lyon became more commonly is cast iron was kind of phased out in the 70s. And there is also a mix of PVC throughout the service area. All of the bad word these days wastewater treatment facilities and that line, Dr. clay line. Yeah, or ceramic or something like that. Mushy after a while. Well, it's hard. So it's really important for the force mains to be renewed because they have pressure inside those fights, right? Whereas opposed to normal, non pressurized just it's a gravity flow. I guess it's just trickling down. And you'll see some concerns we have related to that in a minute here. Okay. So the pump stations, which are going to be easy to remember Queen City 123 and Bartlett Bay pump station. So the service area is a little hard to see here, but the purple is Queen City one, the blue is Queen City two, the yellow Queen City three. And then Bartlett Bay is on the next one. That's the Bartlett Bay service area there in red. So the existing conditions of the four pump stations and force mains. So Queen City two has had two failures in winter 2022. Queen City one had a failure in May 2022. The force main failures resulted in releasing raw sewage onto public and private property. As we discussed based on the proximity that the age related needs as well, the existing buried steel pump faults have exceeded their anticipated reliable service life that pumps that controls the communication equipment of off who exceeded their anticipated useful life. The as we mentioned the proximity it's there's a risk of spilled to Lake Champlain. So and oh so then the old vaults will be replaced with concrete precast concrete vaults. Yeah. Okay. So this here is a picture of the Queen City one force main failure in May of this year. So the liquid and the ground is raw sewage. And this is where the we're looking to upgrade these to improve the reliability for known aged infrastructure. So the replacement of the four pump stations they don't currently meet the city's design standards. The materials are not what would be used today. The pump designed control and communication are all obsolete technology. And as we discussed the we would look to replace the force mains with new cement line duct lion force means goals pretty clear on this one it's protecting public health perfecting like Champlain protecting the safety and improving the safety for the water quality department staff and ensuring a higher level of reliability. So the one concept that we're working through is that wasn't a straight up replacement. We're also considering the feasibility of relocating Queen City one to the existing Queen City three that's an opportunity to eliminate to combine two pump stations into one. So we're in the process of value evaluating that option. So it may go down from the four that we're looking at to replacing the four with three. That decrease that cost. It would be a cost decision. Yes. So we're looking to that one would be they both provide the same function but looking to see if there's an opportunity for a more cost effective solution. So getting into the cost estimates here. So some things that we took into consideration and developing the cost. So the build American buy America Baba because everything has an acronym requirements require not only American iron and steel but essentially all equipment. So it's an equipment like pumps blowers internal mechanism to clarify to be American made. And so this is this is new within the it's for ARPA and it's for any federally funded project. So anything that goes through the SRF program and it's also for the EGIA the infrastructure and jobs act. So we're also as we're all aware costs have been a little unpredictable unfortunately in the high direction. So we're using current cost recent bid affirmation to try to help inform cost to give its best picture as we can. We also applied a contingency to prepare for those unknowns and supply and demand inflation and contractor markups. We escalated the cost to an anticipated bid date of March 2024. So I tried to estimate what we are anticipating with the crystal ball of inflation to that period. And then our engineering cost estimates it's Vermont D.C. provides an engineering services fee curve based on the construction costs. So the costs in there are not actual costs. Those are estimates based on that that the fee curve is what are in the cost estimates. So in looking at this there's the the portion is broken into three different components and then engineering. So there's the Bartlett Bay construction that's the 22 million 151 thousand. The Bartlett Bay cell is handling at airport Parkway that's one million eight hundred and twenty three thousand. Then then the refurbishment of the four pump stations that's four million four hundred and fifty six thousand. Then the engineering services we put on a half percent for legal permitting and admin to come to a total project cost for all of the recommended improvements to approximately thirty three million eight hundred and thirty three thousand to ask a question. Yes certainly on the previous slide and I want to preface this question by saying this makes sense that we're putting this all as one bundle but I'm curious is there precedent for in the past when pump stations have failed. I know we accept responsibility for them but do we ever localize the assessment with a special assessment on the neighborhoods and houses that are served by the pump stations. Again I'm not advocating for that. I'm just wanting to confirm that bundling this four point four million dollars as part of the total package is consistent with our past practice. Generally we have not Tom. Thank you. So it is consistent. So a little context knowing that that's a that's a big number. So trying to put into the context with other local communities. So Shelburne is planning a thirty two million dollar bond vote in March for their two treatment facilities. They're having age related need for upgrade and they've decided to consolidate or last I knew what I understood was they're looking to consolidate their two treatment facilities turn one into a pump station to the other and that's a personally a thirty two million dollar project for twenty three hundred connections. Vergen's passed a twenty five point five million dollar bond vote last March for collection and conveyance improvements and age related upgrade at their wastewater treatment facility and that's about eight hundred and fifty connections. Middlebury is planning currently has in the clean water RF intended use plan a twenty three point three million dollar age related upgrade of their treatment facility for about twenty two hundred connections. And Burlington is in the process of completing their preliminary engineering study for approximately well not approximately what they anticipate to be more than a hundred million dollars of wastewater upgrades and consolidation within their three treatment facilities for their ninety nine hundred connections. And for context South Burlington has seven thousand and fifty five connections. So this project in looking at that would appear to be within scale of other what other communities are looking for infrastructure needs in wastewater. Well it looks like it's cheap. Well I mean it's three times the number of hookups for the same price. So I guess size volume helps. I guess. So when we're looking at these significant projects obviously funding is a becomes an important discussion. So Vermont DC was distributed the funds federally for ARPA and they have identified which buckets which which places they were going to distribute those within wastewater infrastructure and none of the ARPA funds were designated for age related improvements. For the Egypt funds there was not much increase in the Clean Water SRF State Revolving Fund. So there wasn't significantly more money brought in to the state from Egypt for the wastewater for Vermont DC to distribute through wastewater and what was brought in is really targeted for disadvantaged communities. The better part the more optimistic side. So the Clean Water SRF planning loan for engineering services because you completed a qualifications based selection for engineering services the city is eligible for 50% off engineering services up to $100,000 per project per year. So you will certainly receive some loan forgiveness for your engineering services. The Vermont DC distributes pollution control grants that are up to 10% of the total project cost is probably more expected in the 5% range. It depends on how much is distributed by the legislature and on how high that goes up and how many projects there are during this period of time. The city is looking to reapply for the congressionally directed spending for the energy efficient mechanical upgrade at Bartlett Bay. And lastly there's also a potential for applying for the Northern Borders Regional Commission grant. They received a good boost of funding from the EJA money went into Northern Borders so there's an opportunity there to get into their grant cycle in 2023. And so this is where I take over the explanation and finish it up here kind of what this means for our rate payers. So again we've summarized these costs at the top that contains the contingency and then in the middle piece of this chart you'll see some of the grants that Jenny just talked about kind of with a percent probability how likely we are to get that funding and what that would amount to. The CDS funding I'll note that we presented an application to Senator Sanders office. He moved that through to the committee that actually awards that funding and we found out just last week that we weren't selected this round. But we're going to try again next year. I was encouraging that we got through the process for the Vermont selection through Senator Sanders office. How much could that be? That was 350,000 or up to if I'm remembering correctly. And so we just put a percent probability there 50 percent you know we'll see. But if it was fully funded you could apply for up to 350,000 dollars. Didn't have to be specific as well. So in this case we chose to apply for the heat pumps for energy efficiency kind of other city goals to make sure we get these higher efficiency heating units installed. So that's roughly about 32 million dollars of a bond or a loan needed. Assuming some pretty standard bond rates and terms 2% 20 years that equals about a 1.9 million dollar annual bond payment. I just want to make a little bit of note there too because it's important in our planning that you don't make that first payment until a year after the project complete. So we're going to talk about schedule but generally maybe 2027 if things progress as we anticipate or hope. So let's talk about wastewater rates. So since fiscal year 13 we have increased our rates by about 2.2% annually. We're currently working on a rate study with another engineering firm. So we're going to feed these values into that rate study. We'll be back here to talk about rates overall for both drinking water and wastewater. So a lot of detailed questions about rates we'll have to wait but this project alone so this just in a vacuum and no other priorities or needs of our water quality division or wastewater division. That 1.9 million dollar annual payment increases our sewer expenditures every year by about 40%. So it's a big difference. To reach that we would have to have a six and three quarter percent rate increase for four years running. So 23, 24, 25, 26. Overall what does that mean? So typically we try to give you an idea of what this cost to your standard single family home. So it's about a 71 dollar a year increase over what that steady 2.2% that we've been doing would be about 19% higher cost to the homeowners versus that steady increase. And I think this is another important piece of information related to rates. So Mr. Fisher called around all these communities did a survey to figure out what their rates were kind of standardize them for single family homes and you'll see that South Burlington is all the way on the right. So on an annual basis for a single family home we are the cheapest around at least expensive I should say for the service we provide. That's great except when we talk about now what we've been able to build up in a capital reserve to pay for expensive projects like a wastewater plant. So at the moment we have about 1.9 million in our capital reserve. We always like to keep some in there for unforeseen emergencies you know pump station goes down and we need to spend a good chunk of money to deal with it immediately right. So there's not a lot of money that has been currently built up in our in our reserve fund to pay for this going forward. And just quickly going over schedule so where we are now we've completed the preliminary engineering. Our next steps with some council input tonight would be to start working on bond documents have some public informational meetings coming up after the new year and we're targeting having a bond vote in March 23 to support these wastewater projects. We'd like to do based on this schedule that would put us into the final engineering phase in 23 with bidding in 2024 and then construction running from 2024 to 2026 roughly. And are those dates really firm in terms of when we need to bond for this? And I only asked just because I don't know what the school might be asking for or you know what the other I know we have a TIF bond so it can get challenging if there's so many large bonds whether they're going to affect the tax rate or the usage rate or so. So it is the council's decision when you put a bond forward to the community so that timeline could change. Having said that when that's part of why they did that extensive analysis of the useful life of all of those pieces of equipment that useful life being the two to five year range this timeline lets us address that with some risk you know we're not going to have a new system up in two years. We will be bringing forward to you also a request for a TIF bond vote on town meeting days that has two significant bond votes this town meeting day. I don't believe the school will be bringing forward a significant bond vote this year but I believe that they are working towards a future capacity bond vote so I think the challenges within the next election cycle only one election planned if we push this off another year or another two years then we will actually be lined up directly in conflict with a school bond vote. Well that's good to know that'd be tough competition. And so this is our last slide I think Jesse just answered half the bullets on here so why now why is now the right time we anticipated the need for this upgrade years ago we're actually seeing the need through the aging infrastructure and some of the failures and operational challenges we're having but most importantly that bond vote helps us when we go to look for grants grant agencies and reviewers look at that as a measure of community support so if we say we have a grant application and we have a bond vote authorizing us to spend up to this amount it shows we have the match and we're serious and we're moving forward so that's sort of a more of a as they kind of rank grants helps you get more more points if you will and I just I do want to note that let's say we did have a bond for 32 million dollars and then we do get grants or we do value engineer out a pump station we don't have to spend that full amount and you know our the amount that we borrow right that loan payment goes down in the future so it's not as if we approve the 32 million we only need 28 for example we'd still use the 32 thank you tom do you have any questions because I can't see the at home crowd I do not very well because I build side decks so thank you for that anyone else these are the kinds of investments we have to make to make sure that our effluent is still affluent yes yeah I wish our federal government helped us more but we have to do this if you know we don't the consequences I think are are worse with with that baba clause that you were talking about is that equipment even exists can you even buy the stuff that you need to if it was completely made in the us or can it go ahead I'll I'll say that the the guidelines for meeting the baba standards haven't been released yet so I would imagine some of those questions hopefully will be addressed because certainly the manufacturing capacity for the projects that are in need right now within the us is it's going to be an impediment to for people moving projects forwards and we're hopeful that there are opportunities there to to facilitate projects moving ahead without waiting or accepting a product that isn't perhaps what one would choose so I'm hearing that we should bring you back bond authorization documents yes studies I would agree tom are you I'm in support of that well good well thank you we all learned a lot when do we get our our city council visit at the Bartlett bay wastewater treatment facility I think we need to warn for it as soon as possible and have a meeting there the next meeting should be there probably in the screening room it's a lovely place do you want to come up to the mic is it paid for by all city residents or is if you're not on city sewer do you also have to participate in the bond or for homes that are not on city sewer just that I can answer this the bonds paid back by the rate payers the wastewater system it's not on general tax what percentage of homes are not served by the sep the sewer system in the city do you think uh less than 100 homes or I can find out for you exactly tim it's not the majority are on yeah our system yeah it's less less than 10 percent less than 10 percent okay are there some homes that are that are served by water but aren't served by sewer yes combinations of that too yep okay are there not many but we were talking about that with the billing folks recently so all righty thank you very much okay thank you that thank you great presentation I learned a lot I'm coming to Bartlett Bay soon all right so moving on to item eight approve the dorset street signals contract and financing so tom you're continue to be on the hot seat here so and this was a lot of information I have to say what we got into the roots of the weeds I think so appreciated though but before you start Eric is this your first meeting at the council it is yes I imagine I will be seeing a lot of you and you me in the future so Eric is our new deputy director of public works for capital projects she comes to us from phb and a master's in engineering from UVM as a phenomenal addition to the team has she and tom have really hit the ground running so welcome welcome thank you so welcome erica for those just tuning in tom de petro director of public works and online this evening we have our deputy director of operations adam kate in case there's any kind of current system kind of operational type questions that we get into um yes so as the chair said this can get in the weeds quickly it's a complicated project and there were a lot of bit alternatives which we'll get to I don't want to jump ahead um so stick with me I'm trying we tried to present it in a way that was as simple as possible so let's go here um project overview so basically this revolves on around the replacement or rehabilitation of traffic systems uh with pedestrian improvements uh at intersections on dorset street ranging from kennedy drive all the way to williston road as well as the off-ramp from i-89 that little slip lane that comes in so that is nine signalized intersections generally when we say replacement we're talking about the the mast arms and poles replacing the span wires there's a lot of other pieces of the project in there pieces of equipment but that is generally what we're speaking about um replacement is planned for uh dorset street williston intersection and proposed for dorset street kennedy drive um giving rid of those span wires is very important to us uh folks may recall the failure we had at the williston dorset intersection that was due to the span wire rubbing through a wire caused a short circuit in a small fire in a cabinet a while back um put that in that intersection dark for a while um so it's replacing those and having these mast arms so all those wires are protected inside the poles and mast arms is important so does this not include the signals themselves they're excluded it does wait it does so so the signals are not going to be replaced let me get to those okay before we yeah um and so rehabilitation uh these are some intersections that already have the mast arms and poles and it's a lot of the same equipment uh this includes intersections at the high school san rimo drive garden street the blue mall market street barns and nobles and again that that off ramp um it is putting in a lot of the things you see listed there in the blue box new cabinets and controllers traffic signal heads with the back plates and reflective borders preemption for emergency system vehicles stop bar detection pedestrians signal equipment and signage and poles kind of components of that nature that's the signal itself yeah great yeah yeah um next slide andrew so into some of the complexity of this uh this was set up with a base bid for kind of the must have components uh and the base bid was the is going to be the basis of award to our bidders um and that's how we're going to award the contract it also included 11 alternates um that was set up in a way so that we could kind of pick and choose where what we wanted to do if it came to that due for cost reasons it's been a very uncertain bidding time uh as you may have heard uh pricing's kind of been all over we were a little bit unsure what we would get back um so this really gave us some flexibility to choose what we wanted to do and what we could afford uh with this project and so here's the bid alternates um it looks a little complicated but fairly straightforward there's the nine intersections uh one through nine is at each of those intersections i've got the little boxes in the arrows alternate 10 is just removing existing equipment at kennedy endorse it and then alternate 11 is new software that goes along uh with uh these signals and it gives us some ability to upgrade the the traffic timing and things and in order to make use of the software is the rest important is it necessary because that the software i believe is the original impetus behind the the doors it's at least from the south grollington city council i want to make a distinction between the software so there's a software that is proposed here it's sort of um it's called the mobility versus the adaptive or adaptive so this is sort of the baseline software that goes along with new cabinets and hardware and the controllers and things of that nature so let's change the timing and things like that we don't have to be standing at the box we can do it remotely example it is not the full adaptive where uh computer is watching traffic patterns and then altering timing and things of that nature oh that would be a next step and i hope yeah we'll get there it's in the slides right the adaptive cameras yeah let's let's get to that yeah but but to answer directly your question megan we can't get to the adaptive without upgrading the hardware first right that's thank you was alternative 10 removal of dorsi kennedy like just not touch that at all the span wires that are there currently it's just removing that equipment so if we didn't opt for that bid alternate that could have been included with alt one but it was it was broken out oh but yeah if we replace the mast arms we'll want to remove the whole stuff so you won't leave them up just because it was cheaper okay so um i do have a big chart we're going to look at in a second but before i do that there was a little bit more about the bid alternate so each intersection is different um with the equipment that's there what could be reused perhaps uh we prioritized the intersections from market street to wilson to help that traffic flow get out so when we go to the next slide you'll see a lot of that components in that hardware in the must-have column for those but in others it's in the alternative so we could select it um that and so let's let's go to that next one so yeah this is if i had a feeling this would be hard to read um oh thank you so i don't know how detail you want to get here but like i was saying so for example on um bid alternate one right in the base bid for dorset and kennedy for example we've got new controllers cabinets uh ped push buttons signal heads and poles but that's all that's in the base bid what is in the alternate for that particular intersection would be doing the mast arms stop bar detection advanced detection so we can see that vehicles are coming and anticipate that um and the new signal heads uh preemption traffic monitoring cameras radios and then you know installation of that software that we were talking about so that's the additional cost so that's the bid alternate one yeah um yeah and so i can go through these for each of them i feel like that might be a little too much detail i think it's simple enough you can kind of see again in um alternates six through nine everything's in that base bid because we really were focused on traffic improvements at those intersections getting out again from market wilson along dorset street but the advanced detection that's the computerized so they can so that is a necessary component for someday if and when we go to the adaptive technology okay that's a piece so it sees the vehicles coming so it'd be like a camera or an infrared detector or something something up high pointed down as opposed to radar isn't it yeah right now the plans are calling for radar the stop bar detection is a closer one to just get to know that someone has stopped there and the advanced looks a couple hundred feet ahead of the intersection to know if there's a long line or if it's just two cars and it would be a similar technology just getting farther away is stop bar just a magnetic coil on the road uh it'll it would still be through radar the way you're seeing upgraded intersections um there's one uh market street currently that one's a camera it's a camera um it's a camera but it's a similar something would be mounted on top of the bars and it senses when someone comes up so it's the do the coils go away yeah they do they go completely away yeah because when you mill sometimes they get dug up i'll bet don't they right like i think i saw down on one of the streets recently they're for example um aspen and it's called san rimo the way we've written it here but it's that intersection yeah of san rimo aspen dorset there was detection in the ground there it failed a while ago yeah so we've milled that up okay um and we have to go up with another solution right now that just runs a standard program timing a timing yes so the new lights at tillie drive must detect oh yeah yeah because if i'm on my bicycle and i come up tillie drive and i stop at the intersection i have to wait maybe 25 seconds and everything stops just for a bicycle you know which is great and people are mad it's like that's a bicycle you know and i pull out but then it turns pretty quickly and they get going again so i'm gonna have andrew move past this slide but don't worry we'll come back to it in a couple different ways but the software would allow that to happen or it just is in place for it to eventually happen you said if and when it's the detection i think is what tim was talking about you and yeah so there are two components of detection again not getting too much into the weeds but the kind that sees that you're at the stop bar um and that will is always included in all of these uh during the upgrades everything will have the basic type of detection it knows when a bike or a car comes up to the stop bar and is waiting for a light but the other type of detection that looks farther back that is what's required for adaptive and is included in the alternates so we can look at the queue and figure out whether it needs to keep the light green longer or shut it off because there's only one car that kind of stuff okay yeah but i'm correct oh sorry tom go ahead i'm correct in saying that this phase this hardware and that that sensor technology phase um are the phase before adaptive so nothing in here is adaptive that will be a second phase that we do at some point in the future once this hardware is installed thank you it's a higher level of the software is the way i've been looking at it or i've been describing it then what about okay wait a minute tom tom i think it's in the queue before you since we're in the weeds one thing that comes to mind that that just made me think of there's another way another detection mechanism which is for emergency vehicles and i i know when the fire trucks come through they they send a signal so as to clear the green lights both for my days on the green mountain transit i understand and i'd be curious tom if this is part of your discussions i know i converse with uh justin your predecessor about this some time ago but there's a secondary setting that public buses can use to sometimes uh get priority or have the lights at least detect that it's public transportation and i remember when i was on gmt they said that was not functional especially in this part of south burlington do you know what i'm speaking about and will any of this help our public transportation work through these light systems in a better way so i know that preemption is included tom but i'm going to have to in my mind that was for emergency vehicles uh i did not have that conversation when i took this project over with my predecessors so i'll have to follow up on that one for you that's a good question thank you we have a bus lane so i have another question yes i'm sorry in in the when all the icing is on the cake will these signals like from the blue mall down to wilson road will they be able to talk to each other so that they can get a cascading do they be coordinated especially like on december 23rd when everybody's leaving them all and you want to flush out that parking lot as fast as possible so that is the eventual goal the coordination that would happen at this point would be purely through timing so the plans themselves right now we have not determined a timing plan the way that works is usually you monitor traffic for 30 days look at different times of day and then set your timing plan according to that so the timing would be set up so that it will be as coordinated as possible given set amounts of time but with the adaptive timing plans go away and that is what would be down the future but for now it would be coordinated as just through timing plans to keep going here overall financial picture here of the project so you've got all the engineering costs up top there i've made estimates for construction phase engineering construction inspection we had two bidders our low bidder in this case was engineers construction incorporated their base bid was 1.7 million and all of the alternates added together are 992,000 roughly funding sources we do have a grant for about just over a million dollars to help pay for this through v-trans we have some previously allocated city funding 120,000 dollars through a special projects line item that you've probably seen in the budget for a few years running and then finally i know a few meetings ago Andrew had spoke with you about this and potential allocation of fy-22 surplus to help pay for this project so i tried to summarize to date everything on this slide cost-wise otherwise it's just general fund so the engineer in your packet you'll find his recommendation to award after he's gone through the bid made sure it was balanced and things of that nature like we always do we worked with the engineer stand tech in this case to come up with a couple of different options knowing the cost was going to be a factor here and so i've got them written out here but on the next couple of slides we'll go back to that chart when you know things are crossed out or included you can see specifically what would happen with each option so the first option eliminates the bid alternates at dorset and kennedy which is again the massed arms poles those type of upgrades it also eliminates significant improvements at the aspen sanremo and the blue mall entrances all right and we don't need any additional funding to pay for that piece it includes all the other alternates option two adds back in dorset and kennedy so that would get replaced the entire intersection traffic signals that we get replaced and then option three is everything so i just have a note there about award schedule there's some by america provisions that will kick in if we don't award by 11 14 so folks at vtrans wanted me to mention those so if we go to the next slide uh and you don't know the impact of that on the cost i do not offhand um presumably it would go up i mean by america's by spend more yeah actually we've been working on this project since i think it's fy 18 so you 2017 this has been in design discussion etc um so it's it's been quite a while coming here as i'm sure folks are well aware of um so again this is just a summary of option one you can see we've taken out improvements the bid alternative improvements um at kennedy sanremo aspen and at the blue mall uh so basically those have to have some radios that we get installed there for the that the um sanremo and blue mall so just kind of as a repeater and function as a repeater and then kennedy would just get some controller and cabinet and then some some pedestrian components installed so that was option one no additional funding beyond the 1.1 that andrew mentioned previously if you go to the next slide option two adds back in kennedy so that again intersection mass arms poles signals all the things listed there on the right side and then option three is everything so taking all the bid alternatives putting that in base bid of course everything everything um let's see i just want to go back to that one andrew sorry what i wanted to mention there is if you are going through in detail and you look at stan tex memo you'll see some of the numbers don't match up they didn't have the initial engineering in there so their original contract for design so the numbers don't match up perfectly in that memo with what you see on this chart because what i'm trying to present here is full project costs so next one um and so this i think resumed in we can't see her there we go so uh at the moment this is uh the recommendation or how we'd like to move forward uh and that would be to award the contract with all of the bid alternatives um and the way we could do that would be to uh go with option two there and allocate some additional amount from the f y 22 surplus so that would be about 1.23 million from f y 22 surplus uh that doesn't cover the san riva aspen and bloom all but we would propose to add those in as f y 24 capital projects um and so the expectations this project would stretch out here with the lead times into f y 24 so we'd be able to approve those through our upcoming budget process and kind of move the whole thing forward which is option three yeah okay i mean that's what we'd like to see of course um yeah i think all the businesses along there would do and can you explain why you think the san rimo aspen and bloom all intersections can be held off for is it whether timing wise it would be the same it would just with regard to the budget it would be a little bit of a softer landing primarily it's an imperfect solution for an imperfect situation here right i'd love to just do all of it but if we have to pull something out for budget reasons if that's council's wish or decision here uh those are ones we could pull out and come back to later standalone independent projects would be my plan um and that's sort of why we set it up this way well and it's kind of cash flow we have this money now and then in 24 if we plan in the capital budget right this this additional money it would be there well i'm just thinking about what you said which is how you know dorset street signaling got on my my radar was all the businesses so with the bloom all intersection right fall at the same time that we're doing all of the others it seems the answer is yes from what if we funded all of it yes we would do it but if we had to hold off it would function similar to what it does now until we came back and made the upgrades okay so when do you when do you foresee that the option two work would be done would be completed so let me rephrase that the whole thing takes longer the recommendation is that you fully fund option two now with a 1.3 million 2 3 million from surplus and then build the f y the remaining option three into the f y 24 capital budget right which would allow us to award it all now knowing that we had the money coming starting july 1 yes okay so timing wise there wouldn't be a delay right it would all be part of the same project thank you so this is my analysis of the current state on dorset street besides the fact that they've milled down and ripped up some of the detectors right the worst intersection in there i think right now is trader joe's because there is no detection of the left turn lanes at all and they'll be empty and you still have to wait it's a full 15 second and they always trigger even if they're empty all right so that so trader joe's is a very problematic i think i think it is one of the most frustrating for people because there's a lot of traffic generated down and onto garden street right for for trader joe's and healthy living that's so that's i think it's that's one of the biggest ones market in dorset is also problematic because i can go there and sit at 10 o'clock at night and there's absolutely no traffic going down dorset and i have to wait at least 30 seconds right to turn left i never get a have to wait for a timing or whatever it was right and of course then you know williston road and and dorset is i mean it's complex right because you've got a lot of turn that actually operates pretty well it can get backed up at times but you know there's a lot of things going on there and you've got multiple lanes draining and so i think for the businesses the important thing is the trader joe's intersection that's got to be fixed i think that the barns and noble is not that bad bloom all doesn't have that much traffic it's not that bad it operates pretty well i don't really complain about that but trader joe's and market street and dorset kennedy that one also i mean it seems to work pretty well but tonight you know it just it it queued up trying to go north because i guess people were picking up their kids from the high school and well i went into one lane and it went uh dorset street was in one lane why was going going north north and south this afternoon oh this afternoon maybe yeah but anyway i mean that tonight that i've seen what i've seen there is that the southbound traffic turning left that lane could be empty and everybody's just waiting so i mean the more detection you add the better it gets because then it becomes sort of it it becomes more adaptive to when lanes flush out because people hate to sit there and see a light red when there's no traffic flowing right so i like option too i think that's a good way to handle this okay tom do you have any comments i'm of the same mind i think this is a reasonable path forward i don't like that south rollington's bearing such a large financial cost to this but i think it's necessary for us to do it and it's not just businesses we have to think about the university vermont 500 beds that are coming here as well as just all the existing housing that's now on on market street when garden street opens up we need this the busiest intersection in the entire state of vermont willis to endorse it to be optimized so that we're not burning fossil fuels with idling cars as little as possible so this makes sense the presentation and i support it okay thank you any other comment by council members just one more this this predates this will predate the elimination of the left hand turn lane going on to dorset from williston road is that there's a plan to reduce to remove one of the there's two left hand turn lanes going on to dorset from williston road now when you're going west when you're when you're going oh west this okay is that going to happen before or after signals would signalization would change those intersection changes are scheduled to happen in early next year oh there oh we have part of the reason we i wanted to i would like to have bid this project earlier about we did some coordination with that project and another city project so trying to line all this up okay yeah okay monica you have a comment okay so okay something else that happens would you identify monica ostby resident parent something else that happens when you get through dorset and all the business areas is that when you finally get past rent san rimo you're like thank god i'm out of this mess i'm flying home and people speed up going past a dark area which is the high school so if this is the phase when we're supposed to be paying for the hardware so that later the other stuff can come is there no way we can look at what other hardware might fit into this from that extremely dark area and i don't mean sidewalk lights i'm thinking is there not another are there blinking lights that can be added to this that are not intersection lights i mean you're you're talking about putting the money in for the hardware part now for and i'm and it's so dark there i'm not an engineer i know it's not the study but between san rimo and kennedy there's the the two lights no well the one light after the san rimo it's the one light is at the school that's right yeah and then the next light is the intersection that's it and and people i see it all the time people are exhausted waiting for their light when there's nobody there and they're like finally i can go home and they fly past there but if you're doing this investment now for the hardware i don't know are there a few flashing lights that are added along the way so while they're putting up the big new lights can they not add a few flashing lights i don't know what the answer is but but when we're talking about dorset please don't forget that that big dark area is where joel almost died and where some other student tonight can be in the same situation sure it's yeah i think that safety um conversation is on top of this and what the what the um solutions might be monica but it seems like it needs to dovetail with this thank you yes thank you i don't know were you here for the opening comments from the public i was yes um okay so i'll just i don't believe that street lighting was a part of this project scope again this was initiated back in fy18 okay if it is council's desire for us to spend additional money to do some studies um to make it maybe have a change order to make some changes to this scope of work we could certainly entertain that would that would that slow everything down i don't believe so um that would be like i guess it depends on the scope of what talking exactly i'd like to define that a little better so that i have some clarity as well okay and does the cc rpc have a role to play in that or is it truly our city and staff yep so um as i described in the past so right now we get uh concerns from citizens whether it's stop sign speed limit street light street lighting it's sort of we i have a running list where i maintain all of those requests for studies and we fund them as best we're able our best mechanism for funding those is right now to work with the rpc it's the most affordable we usually get three maybe four projects in for you know whatever the study may be for that year so erica and i are actually working on a way to prioritize some of these requests because right now we just maintain a list and we just kind of work through our list of projects i'd love to come up with a more equitable way to kind of prioritize and address these going forward but in our her few months in my few months we've not done that yet it's sort of just a list in some ways i think it's kind of interesting that they agree to look at the safety issues around only one school in south burlington no no i don't ask them to do that's the that was the request from the white street that was not and is counselor i think paul wants to say something paul what would you do you mind coming up so the kids at home can hear hi folks uh paul connor director of planning and zoning so the role that the regional planning commission play plays they are a part of their jobs that they are a metropolitan planning organization federally funded to assist with transportation planning structurally each november we receive a package of information from them saying what are your requests for the next fiscal year starting in the following july so that's where we compile our staff list we bring it to the planning commission and in january the council signs off on what the requests are understanding that most of them do include a 20 local match so that's the mechanism by which the rpc then evaluates all the requests they try to fund as many as they can we're generally pretty successful with those and then they launch sometime in the july of the following year and that's for basically anything that's uh transportation studies including the this year we're doing um how to connect the bike ped bridge over the interstate to the adjacent areas we're doing a lighting analysis on kennedy drive for pedestrians uh intersections at four different sites of how to get crosswalks in so there's a whole variety of them at different scale but that's the process okay thanks thank you so understanding that a safety analysis might be a separate thing all what i'm asking is while you're looking at budgets to add new lights can you not just add into that two yellow flashing lights that just go 24-7 i mean is there not some within this is there not something where we can just add some flashing lights to the face or whatever we called them cautionary light something a cautionary lights that maybe ultimately will be able to take in your new software that can go at certain times a day or whatever but i guess that's all i'm asking it's not the full safety it's not the full sidewalks and all of that it's just if you're buying other lights that are going to be over for traffic can you not throw a couple of those in in that dark area that's all okay what's the answer i don't know i don't know how to answer her question we're talking about the flashing yellow lights i mean i i've been working on white street for years and i've never gotten the flash i don't want to bleed into our next agenda item here because yeah kind of a it could be the time when we success in that situation that we've got them here now we were able to get the study done and we're going to talk about that in a few minutes um but i can circle back with the engineer to find out what that would take as far as if we need anything in particular from him generally speaking when we add you know stop sign speed limits things of that nature it does require an engineering study and recommendation same thing with the school zone we're going to talk about in a few minutes i would want somebody and i don't know who it is to do an analysis of that stretch of road to tell us what might be wrong with it so that we can understand how we can go about fixing it before we take any actions because i'd like to know that first right have an expert look at it and and let us know so if that's the ccrpc or if it's public works doing something i mean this you mean before we do this whole signaling no no no no i'm talking about you know the request to somehow post that if we were to right attack on flashing lights you would want to study before we do that right we need to understand more before we take any action i know that there's a desire to take action but i'd like to understand what is the right thing to do i don't want to take a year to do it but i think we we needed i mean there might maybe there's some low hanging fruit that we could take advantage of but i i don't know what that is without somebody telling us that first yeah well you certainly wanted to work okay well that could be another ask at a different time do you need a motion on this uh it sounds like it so yeah i'll move to approve the dorset street signals contract and financing with the alternate alternative to and the fiscal year 24 all together does that make sense since it's all a package from what i understand yeah maybe just as presented in the as presented and that yet that includes the allocation of of the city reserve fund fund balance of 1.2 1.2 million dollars second okay is there any further discussion yes thank you we've been waiting a long time for this and the pandemic but put the kibosh on it for quite a while so i'm glad this is starting to get moving again because this is important to all the merchants along dorset street and it's important to the to the commuters and just the travelers you know so well i appreciate the translation and i'm glad we didn't need to go to the one thing that had writing that i could hardly read we're ready if you wanted to and i will say well thank you public work certainly appreciate your support and of this important project obviously all right so but this brings their total to 39 40 million now total for these two and we're next one's much less expensive september um or october um so are we ready to vote okay all in favor signify by saying aye aye great so it passes thank you very much and it was very nice meeting you we'll see you again she's not going anywhere i know you're staying but i'm just okay so now we move on to eight or nine rather excuse me um pardon me let's take a break let's do this one and then take a break okay um resolution 2022-9a which is an update to the resolution establishing speed limits on public streets and highways in the city of south burlington so tom okay so for those perhaps just tuning in tom de petro director of public works uh with me tonight is erica qualin our deputy director of capital projects and this agenda item focuses on an update to the city's speed limit resolution the changes we're proposing uh would allow for creation of school zones within the city of south burlington something this current resolution does not address um once a school zone is established it allows for a speed limit less than that of the adjacent roadway if we so desire it also enables the city to install signage requiring drivers in the school zone to slow down and um it provides a way to enforce the lower speed limit um the revisions also propose to establish a new school zone on white street in front of the chamberland school um in order to do this the city worked with the chitin and county regional planning commission to study the area after learning of speed concerns at all times of day and also of traffic and pedestrian safety concerns during school pick up and drop off a full summary of the summary of the report is available in the memo but very quickly I just wanted to highlight two things that kind of jumped out uh during their study rpc found that even though the posted speed limit is 25 miles an hour uh the 85th percentile speed which is sort of a common benchmark for these types of studies was 34 miles per hour so 85% traffic is doing 34 miles per hour or less the other 15% not um and then our pc also made some additional recommendations related to signage and crosswalks um and it involves establishing of the school zone in this area uh so based on this what we're proposing uh in the ordinance is to reduce the speed limit in front of the school in the school zone to 20 miles per hour during pick up and drop off so that's 7 to 8 30 a.m and 2 to 4 30 p.m uh and this would be indicated by a new speed limit signs with flashing lights on a timer uh so they'd be set to go on during school days uh at those times one last bit here and then open up for I guess for discussion um if council agrees uh with these findings um and votes to update our speed limit resolution um then we would include the purchase of the equipment necessary in our f y 24 capital project budget um these actions could take place sooner if council determines that another funding source is appropriate and we called a couple weeks ago and the equipment the hardware was around $13,000 and it would be installed by public works crew while we're capable of putting this in uh but it would be a two to three month lead time so anything I forgot there legtime said there are a couple of other recommendations in the memo and those have all been addressed so far um the crosswalks were restriped new paintings of school on the roadway a little bit of tree trimming um and moved our little radar speed feedback sign from patching road over to um white street in front of that yeah and it hasn't been working for two weeks the radar someone called that called that in to yeah the office and so I was actually hoping to see the radars here and I don't see it in the plan because I think you know just alerting people that your speed is being recorded um is very effective so the speed speed feedback sign is not proposed as a permanent installation we put there because we have one um and it's a little temperamental uh with batteries um sometimes we can well you can run it dark to to collect speeds but not flash uh but I believe it should be out there flashing speed I'm not sure no it hasn't been working for two weeks someone someone called in so I just yeah I will double check on the I know we got a call about the flashing yellow that's out and that had been repaired the day before school started and got out just in time but um yeah we'll double check on the speeds I see what's going on yeah it worked for the first couple weeks and it stopped so I just have a question in terms of thinking ahead to the high school in the middle school and what that needs and if we were to get on CCRPC's um list you know for um I know this is a guess but do you really think their recommendation would be a whole like a whole lot different than white street what's in here I mean I'm almost tempted to add sub two it says dorset street you know well we we should be proceeding with these things with an engineering study it tells us it's appropriate for the location um and I can't say if it is or isn't and I wouldn't want to predetermine that well I know but I I'm just it's sort of a hypothetical it's probably going to be something similar to this yeah and it's a very different kind of street than white street well that's true I do I agree with Tom that my professional recommendations we need to make these decisions based on data I understand that I just yeah part of me thinks it's going to look exactly like this but maybe not what prevents us from having a radar with the speed of the drivers actually showing is it cost what we well I appreciate this discussion tonight because we don't have a line item in our public works budget to do some of these studies so in a couple weeks when I'm back here in front of you talking about budgets I hope we can come back to this topic of my pitch Jesse but I mean yeah the permanent installations there you know we have a very limited budget to maintain what we have currently um and so to go purchase new installations just this $13,000 that we're talking about for this school zone is in excess of kind of what we have in the budget for this type of thing at the moment so that's why it's a capital project or some other funding source are these flashers going to be solar powered I believe our estimate did show them with solar panels I've had it sitting on my desk for a couple of weeks and I'm pretty sure I remember yeah don't quote me on it um yeah if Adam is still online he may know we looked at with and without is why I'm hesitating I think we have them as well yeah can I make one other comment you may so I noticed that it said that Dorset Street is 40 miles an hour starting a no one farm road to the Shelvern line but the 40 mile hour sign is right across from Wheeler so maybe we could pull that out and bring it down to no one farm road unless there's already one no one farm road I don't know as you go is are you looking to as you leave that as you go south endorse it and you pass Swift brand farm yeah so the 40 mile hour sign is right across from the Wheeler entrance more or less yeah so so really people should be going 40 there they should be going 40 they should go in 35 I'm sure there are some small inconsistencies here because we haven't looked at it in a while we don't know what the signage is in some areas so I didn't I just thought I'd let you know okay thank you yeah that's true okay Monica last time on this I've ever heard a line item be $13,000 normally there's like a few more zeros behind it so we might need to wait a while to do a study to do it right but can't we just do the same thing that we're doing at White Street as a temporary in the meantime because every day that we can get better lighting and something to tell somebody who's driving down that road that there's a school there every single day that we can get that there it might save another kid so can we can we do the $13,000 also here and put it up where we think it makes sense and then wait till we go through the process of doing the study to maybe do it better or maybe end up doing it the same you the this is only going to be blinking when the schools are the students are arriving to school and when they're when they're leaving school I know we'll take it I mean there's nothing we'll take it there's no sign that tells you a high school is there anything if there's a $13,000 there is a sign on the corner of the of Dorset and and Kennedy I know it's when you're coming south when you're leaving all those lights oh true and you're frustrated the other direction there's no indication you're finally like well I'm out of here so I understand and but there's nothing now so if we can at least just get that as a temporary and then reuse the material reuse the goods once the engineering study is done and says well actually you should move it to here and change that you know but that to me seems like an incredibly good the amount of medical dollars that family has dealt with is far more than $13,000 it would be a a very good healthy thing and the community would see it because they would see it happen there at the same time as here and it would be incredibly meaningful even if it's not perfect thank you pardon oh oh oh you're doing unrelated okay painting school on the road that's a good idea I mean is that I can review the existing signage that's out there um and in the roadstriping things of that nature that's a good point taken that if you don't know the community you don't know there's a school there so I think the request at the beginning of the meeting was to put this on a future agenda yes so why don't we deal with what's been warned for tonight tonight and if the council wants we can put this on a future agenda item and talk about options this is just all that this requires is a vote of the council to approve a resolution it's not an ordinance change right um so you can do that very quickly okay is there any more discussion on this then I only just say that I support my radar okay we got it can you hear me yes the only other discussion I'd say is that I do support putting this safety discussion on Dorset Street on a coming agenda if not our next meeting I think it warrants a further consideration of all the possible options especially the low are you okay yep all right well I will move to approve uh the resolution number 2022 dash 9a and update to the resolution establishing speed limits on public streets and highways in the city of south burlington in order to create a school zone on white street second so any further discussion all in favor signify by saying aye aye so it passes thank you very much one clarification for me so I will be back then for our FY 24 budget the way I'm understanding this in which we have budget approval to move forward with this so right now we've approved the changes to the ordinance but you know as far as the hardware I'm the actual putting it out there so it's enforceable um that will come in fiscal year 24 just to be clear okay so what will remain in place until that what is there existing plus the work we've already done so you know so that radar will be there until no so we use that that's the only one of those we have we get a variety of concerns expressed so we move that around the city we're able to try to address some of those concerns okay because I just want to note above 70 miles per hour was was measured on white street in front of an elementary school so I just want that so you know okay item 10 oh we're going to take just a quick break quick break five minutes all right so let me call back to order the south burlington city council meeting of october 10 discussing an ordinance to regulate fuels for heating and hot water and new construction and possibly warning of public hearing for november 7th at 7 p.m. good evening and and uh I'll follow tom's lead and for those watching at home my name is you can't hear nope is is the light on the light is on better yeah you just have to get it closer yeah you're so tall so put it right in that your mouth for those of us watching at home I need to go on my name is calling McNeil city attorney with me is paul conner director of planning and zoning we have this is the heating system and water heating system ordinance that you've reviewed last meeting you suggested a couple of changes and we've continued on our trajectory of talking with people and getting some input on this as as it's progressing its way so we can give you feedback on it so we've made a couple changes to the ordinance that you reviewed last time just to give a quick overview we put the memo together but just from last time to this time we made a couple changes to one suggests that we are you consider extending the date by which this ordinance goes into effect right now is written it would go into effect on january 1st 2023 but because we're progressing the way we are we might want to give the public a little bit more advanced warning to get ready to implement this so we made a comment and suggested document that's in front of you we also amended the definition for multifamily unit in the ordinance and we most importantly is we took your suggestion or council chitin suggestion of the giving a two-year waiver period for multifamily and large commercial we tried to implement that language and that idea that you all support seem to support into this ordinance and incorporate a two-year waiver some of the difficulties we saw in that were that we were able to find a good definition for multifamily that was in the commercial building energy standards but we're unable to find a good definition that would delineate what was what could be what could be considered a large commercial new building so for instance how many square feet what what it took to be large as opposed to not large and so not having a good definition we bring it forward to you for consideration with the elimination of the word large so also we noticed that you hadn't in your recommendation to us of including large commercial you did not include industrial and so for your consideration in this draft ordinance we essentially added commercial and industrial to the two-year waiver with with no size requirement so those are the main components of the ordinance that's that's before you that were changed from the version that you have were able to look at last time questions by the council or do you have more information you want to share i mean that's pretty succinct and to the point are there any questions tom does this meet your approval sure happy to go back to that but i i do see another change in what's presented tonight in the certification section item b i have a page number in my packet of 179 but i don't see a page number on the ordinance but right before section x enforcement i'm seeing all new buildings shall always remain in compliance with their submitted certification in this ordinance could you give us an idea of where this came from in my i just want to make sure that that's consistent with what we can enforce and if for example five years from now we change this and maybe make it even greener we're not mandating that they stay in conformance with the ordinance as it passes today is it can you tell me why did this language came from and what we're trying to achieve with it and if it's consistent with burlington sure it's a you know this would be it's difficult to say whether this component is difficult with burlington because this is this falls under i guess the umbrella of you know we don't have an enforcement mechanism we don't have an inspection program so we had to come up with really our own system in order to make sure that this ordinance could actually be somehow carried out and so we came up with the idea that it would be self-certifying that the building inspector would would basically give an approval upon receiving that that self-certification when we were looking at the ordinance and thinking about it a little bit more and this in that language was in the in the version that you had before you i believe last week during the public hearing but it was new from the original version but we we looked at what constitutes how to be in compliance with the ordinance and so one of the avenues of being in compliance is you can have a system that relies on electricity you can have a system that relies on wood pellets or wood chips you can have a system that relies on renewable natural gas but what happens if you get your you certify that you are renewable natural gas you get your approval from the building inspector and then a week later elect you know this is kind of expensive i don't want to do this anymore so we had to come up with some we were thinking of some way that we could enforce that you have to be in compliance with the certification that you submit and if you're going to change what your system is you have to resubmit a new certification that we can improve otherwise there'd be a way around this ordinance we felt that could be fairly easy to get around and we wanted to come up with something that would avoid that quick follow-up chair yeah yes in your reading of this language call and it's clear that if they say it's five years 10 years now and the ordinance that we pass whenever is still has has been in effect but it changes and this language is not saying that when they change it they have to conform back to what the ordinance was when the new when the building was new this is all new buildings i'm wondering when new is no longer applicable but when they recertify if they change their heating system 10 years from now they will then fall under whatever ordinance we might have at that time is that correct i think that's fair you know i i think what would so if you a new building would essentially be a building that is new as of the date you choose this implementation of this ordinance so right now would be anything that's new after january 1st 2023 as written and if you are going to be a new building after that date you have to be in compliance with this ordinance and so the idea is that you would if you are to change your heating system if you are a new building that this ordinance applies to and if you change your heating system or your hot or your water heating system you would have to come in for a new certification to get that approved by the building inspector and i think um correct me if i'm wrong councillor shittenden but i think your question also is if in the city the if in the future the city were to adopt another ordinance for existing buildings and it's set an even higher bar at that time how would we reconcile that and i guess my recommendation would be that that would be addressed in the future ordinance that would address what is then has become an existing building does that make sense that's there sounds logical thank you okay other comments or questions by councillors tim right so i'm just this is a tech the small technical thing that i want to understand you know under under item two which is the definition for uh to be which is the renewable service water heating systems and we're talking about service not process right process hot waters for manufacturing cooking uh you know large scale whatever but service just means hot water for bathing washing your you know just general domestic service um service i believe is anything that is not for the purpose of heating the building no okay well well what about like a brewery has to super heat water that's not considered service right i believe that the definition of service is everything that's not heating a building well i thought that was a part of the challenge about process hot water versus service hot water in in the past it's not right i don't think that that's what we found in the definitions and that was part of the challenge when uh call in reference that what's the scale of a commercial or industrial building what if you had a small building that was a brewery right and i and that's why the proposal just says for the service hot water that the two-year waiver applies regardless because of exactly that kind of a scenario of it might be a small building that's a brewery or a gargantuan building that just needs tap water right then my my other point was that there's in in uh so it's in two part b part four other renewable fuel used by conventional primary water heating systems including renewable gas blah blah blah if the building owner provides a contract demonstrating that the fuel required by the system is fully sourced from such other renewable fuels for the life of that conventional water heating system renewable gas shall be methane produced by the organic material and sourced from land hill fiddles wastewater treatment facilities and farms is offered under a tariff or supply contract from utilities is a rock gas system so i think today you can choose to pay more to sponsor the you know accumulation of methane from these other sources that would be merged into the vermont gas systems so is that what we're saying here that if you if you opt in to pay a special tariff with vermont gas to promote their you know inclusion of those gas sources that they would then be exempt from this uh if yes they would then be that would be a method of meeting the standard because you would then be paying for renewable energy sources it's not an exemption it's a way of qualifying right but but in reality right i mean they're they're paying this this extra tariff but in reality they're still getting a ton of methane i mean the percentage of methane they're getting from these renewable resources is very very small compared to what's coming out of you know wells up in western Canada correct it represents what they'd be paying for represents the equivalent of but the actual physical gas right just like electricity we can say that our portfolio is fully carbon free but electrons move all over the world and so you know it's we you can say that it's the equivalent of so does vermont gas do we know if they have their if their rate structure includes a maximum cap on the amount of subscription to this particular tariff because they're they can only supply so much yeah the point i'm getting at is that if too many so if somebody wants to get around this right and vermont gas didn't care how many people subscribe to the renewable gas category they could just pay for their renewable gas and still have a a natural gas you know heater for their for their their service hot water i think it's the same heater hmm i think it's the same furnace oh yes the gas arrives right it's just where the gas comes from right so i mean today i think you can pay a premium for your vermont gas because they are they're they're involved in the technological collection of methane from other sources that are renewable right but that amount that's generated i don't know it's probably got a fixed cap right now based upon how much resource they can generate out of it right and the question is can too many people opt into that program and actually then oversubscribe the amount of gas that's there that's possible to be delivered at whatever percentage it is to the whole system and then in effect they've actually diluted the capability of it you know what i mean my understanding is that they're investing in expanding that that bio the cow power right right so so part of this tariff is is that that money then gets reinvested in in more capacity for right later on right okay and i i guess i just love to know like obviously that methane from those renewables resources gets blended into the whole system and what is the percentage right now of i don't even answer that question but i just i know what you but there are very few very few people who are paying the prime rate for the bio fuel okay or what do we call it cow power what do we call it well it's renewable gas renewable gas that's it yeah okay just just one thought yeah i mean i i don't think we're able to answer that that would be a question that vermont gas would have to answer or that you know but i do think there's um you know the public service board is regulates vermont utilities such as such as vgs and right they would have to ensure that they're not people aren't overpaying right for a service that they're not getting but i think one thing to just highlight um the issue that you are talking about people paying more i think you're right uh council i'm right here you're getting everyone's getting the same gas it's the same oven or the same heater as far as as far as i know um but i think one thing we wanted to hit on with the new language that councillor chitin was asking about was that it's just you're paying more to pay for the renewable gas right um but it's just as easy to say i don't want to pay more anymore um and so we needed some mechanism in the ordinance to to allow you to remain in compliance and to say that this ordinance is still in effect so you're prohibited from doing that and what is i didn't i didn't understand what it what is the mechanism for that or do we have a proposal for that it's there is language in in the ordinance that we've included it's it's uh it's red line language that's um is lower down but it's essentially means that the ordinance remains in effect and if you change the heating source uh you have to file a new new um certification um that we would approve uh and so the mechanism that if you're not doing that uh we can then impose fines would we have the ability to uh ask vermont gas to tell us when somebody changes their rate structure like that they that they they stop paying for renewable gas i think that you know that's a difficult i don't know if we can do that or not i mean it's not as written and as as devised this is a self-certification because we don't have the enforcement arm right now um so i i think that um we would have to rely on um on that self-certification and if we found out otherwise right then we'd be able to do something about it but i don't think it's something that we're proactive um at this point okay thanks okay any other questions megan so are are there questions from the public i mean this isn't a public hearing but if anyone out there wants to make a comment oh sarah dawg come down please get those steps in i don't know if this is a helpful comment or not but when you were talking about paying extra for renewable sources isn't this comparable to what um green mountain power did i don't know 15 20 years ago you could opt to pay some extra to promote their research and development of more renewables i did that and lots of people did that yeah no i think they do and i think the reality of um adopting this kind of ordinance um pushes them along to you know invest in more and produce more and make more of their gas renewable i mean there's a market out there if all of a sudden or in two years or whatever all the houses that are built here um require that then that's those are new um clients or customers ethan did you want to make a comment well i i just wanted to share the language from the the vgs tariff regarding renewable natural gas and they do have language regarding what happens if the program gets over subscribed and they have protocols in place that um they'll shut down new customers from joining it if they can't find enough if they wind up oversubscribe they'll purchase carbon offsets and if they still can't keep up with it then they'll notify the customer so that is covered by the the tariff and so enforcement of that relative to vgs's actual operation of the program would be the purview of the public utilities commission and the department of public service thank you yeah good but in that vein do we need to add in any other renewable gases like hydrogen because it's not specified here but it is feasible um or do we we could update that later on i mean it's not available right now why don't we update it when it's available i mean that to me that's sort of like we're putting off the water heaters right because the technology isn't there for a broad application so i mean i think we'll be visiting these things a lot as um more and more um things get developed and become plausible okay yep um isaac did you yeah um i wanted to make a couple of comments i hadn't planned on on chiming in here um but i was i was just concerned about um one just the idea that you know that renewable natural gas is a good thing for us in the state it really it represents a massive capital investment in dairy farms that we're ultimately going to have to transition away from defeat ourselves and they're in them they're really polluting farms and so yeah there could be some reduction of phosphorus and i understand all those numbers but i think there's a huge question as to whether or not that capital investment is a good investment for our state when we're locking ourselves into farms that can't feed us um and then the other concern is just about biomass the vermont climate council has been doing a ton of work on biomass and really struggling with how to approach it and it seems like where they're landing and it's just it's just not carbon neutral and there's a huge question as to whether or not there is a carbon benefit and so they're grappling with that and so i would encourage you to take out the biomass just because it's an open um question right now that's what i got okay so that's back in well we probably don't have to do that tonight unless we feel like we want it because we're going to have a public hearing and um these are um i mean i think that's an excellent point but i think we probably should do that post the public hearing when we have some more information rather than just one person would be my and and adopt or um agree to the changes that the council are proposing does that sound logical to people or do you want to deal with the biomass i'm trying to find where it is yeah i am too well there's there's wood chip and wood pellets yeah which section is that which yeah i don't see the biomass um if you go to section two definitions yeah um it's under renewable primary system okay it's small letters i i and i i i and then repeat it again in the next for the his biodiesel is that what biomass is no i don't see bio mass mass i see biodiesel is it wood chip what we're talking about because that would be no no it's cow power what no biomass is like gasification of wood chips so oh yeah yeah like you heat up wood ships to a point where they put give off a gas and you burn that gas well under the death or any any type of a of a you know carbon based you know product well we it does say renewable gas so mean methane produced by the organic material and source from landfill yeah he said yes i heard would you oops the chat a message went away too quick my apologies if i misheard okay wood chips and pellets okay yeah i i don't see biomass that that language anywhere i i don't know where to strike it if we wanted to right i would leave wood pellets and wood chips alone yeah i would too okay any other comments tom before the we've worn a public hearing do we need to decide on the date this would be effective or would that be decided after the public hearing oh yeah no no we we there's a couple empties in here are blanks that we should fill in i just was referring to changing the biomass thing one i can't find it and two i just didn't wait to hear from other people there there's one other as i was as i was reading it it just shows how much this is has been a work in progress but if you go to page three the new language really relating to the two-year waiver the first sentence there is actually supposed it is underlined and you can't tell what because it's redlined but it's essentially the title so it would draw your attention to it to say renewable service water heating system two-year waiver period for multifamily residential and large commercial new buildings um obviously adjusted it later on but the the large should be removed and it should be commercial and industrial buildings good okay i was good it was an edit we made later later on in the process but never changed the heading okay yeah well that's a friendly amendment that we'll accept right now or correction so let's get to the two-year waiver period beginning when or should we deal with three months it was the three months is what i think i think what what makes the most sense just from um our thinking is that you deal with when this goes into effect first then the two years builds off of that okay so where is the language for as it stands as it's presented it's january 1 23 correct and you're suggesting that we make it um march one or it would probably be march i mean we're looking at november probably right now if everything oh november december january that's february so be february first so the earliest you could have the public hearing is november 7th which means you could vote to pass it that night so three months from them would be december january february march one with three extra months in november of the november or you could do february 15th ish or you could say three months from the date of enactment and then the two years is two years from the date of enactment yeah and just leave it like that yeah you can fill in the dates we could it's we are picking a specific date for you know kind of a cutoff date so if you have your permit in place before the date we might you know just thinking of right to get rid of arguments in the future we might want to just pick a certain date yeah okay february 15th right after valentine's day okay they'll love it is that okay so the it will um take effect february 15th 2023 and then the two year waiver period you know i don't know is that has to to key off that that could just be january 1st 2023 and ending on um december 31st 20 i think i think it should be from the same date that we that we think so yeah yeah yeah just to be consistent i think well one is to allow technologies to develop and we're saying two years is probably a reasonable amount of time the other is giving people three months to get ready to design a new industrial site or a housing development with these requirements i think those are really different because the requirements we're saying are viable they're technologies that exist we're not waiting for another technology in order to it's just the exemption period should start after february 15th right because right oh it's a general ordinance so they should just be relative to okay so you want february 15th 2023 and ending on february 14th is that what you do um 25 okay that works all right i know we're gonna love them up in the beginning and they're really gonna love us at the end and then our planet and there are other changes our children and why don't we just say if there's any other corrections for commercial and large industrial that that correction will be made yeah in the title you find anything else that should be commercial slash industrial and take the large out and you have our okay we'll do thank you i'm just rather than go through it right now is everyone okay with this yeah so all right so do we need to make a motion make the motion to approve these changes and to warn no just to warn with these changes right to warn with these changes to warn a public hearing for november 7th at 7 p.m on this draft ordinance with the changes we've made tonight second okay any other discussion right all in favor say i i i great good okay um okay so we're moving on to item 11 which is further discussion and possible adoption of the climate action plan as recommended by the climate action plan task force and so paul can i just say that you forgot an agenda item tonight about new information about climate change is that on purpose usually we've we've had an item in the beginning i think we only do it every other oh it was now it's every other okay yeah all right because i was going to announce that the leaks from the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines had finally stopped oh those sabotaged pipelines yeah Baltic Sea it finally stopped from the space it was so big sorry to interrupt okay so moving on to the next item paul all right paul connor director of planning and zoning largely so just to recap at your last meeting ethan goldman chair of the climate action plan task force gave you all presentation and the primary purpose tonight was to give the council a chance to for yourselves to discuss you didn't the last agenda was really just a presentation i had a couple of very quick updates for you they're laid out in the menu in the memo the graphic design has been improved there's been a couple of minor corrections made and then we dug in a little bit into the airport subject both we knew that the language wasn't perfect previously and there was some feedback at your last meeting we've communicated with the city of burlington and with the now no longer acting permanent aviation director at the airport they have confirmed that they are working with the firm vhb to the tune of about 175 thousand dollars to do a sustainability master plan which includes an inventory of the direct and to the extent that the data becomes available indirect emissions coming from the airport direct being the ones that they have control over like buildings indirect being things that are not in their individual control but would include aviation to the extent that they're able to get data and they are interested in working with the city of south burlington in a collaborative manner as they proceed with this work so the proposed update would reflect that that's in your packet and there's this option if you so choose to take it a little another step further separate from the climate action plan itself but if you wanted to formalize the effort to to to be collaborative partners in their effort then we could you could direct the city manager to work with the airport on that so those are my updates for this evening and the rest of this is really your discussion and we're here to be a resource for you I just want to make the a couple comments as the liaison at our final meeting there were a number of people largely part of I think the same group that was very concerned with the lack of airport emissions as part of our plan and they wanted for the council to hold off adopting this until the public hearing and they could make the case that the both I guess commercial and military emission should be part of our plan included in the south burlington load of reduction the other thing that they were concerned about was they felt that there was a lack of public engagement and participation in the development of this plan so I'm passing that on along to you as some public input from that meeting I think in Paul's memo kind of outlined the multiple steps that the the task force took to generate information and if we wish to have another public hearing I guess we could but the task force felt that there had been a lot and that the key I think I'm accurate Paul when I say that the the real key for public engagement is really more will be more helpful focused on implementation because it's going to fall on all of us to change the way we live and not argue about the the emission number regarding plane emissions from the military and commercial and when we really don't have those numbers right now I mean you have to really put off adopting a plan in order to include those in the plan and so the climate action task force felt that we should get to work yeah and and so they would like us to adopt this and with the changes I think that the additional language that Paul outlined and then start the real conversation with the public about how do we implement this and what do we do right right well I I tend to agree with the the climate action task force I think that we are taking off a mighty big chunk with the plan as they've presented it to us and for us to take on another municipality's airport and the federal government's base that would be a a chunk I can't even imagine that we could start biting at with any real ease and I I feel the urgency of us responding to the demands of our residents to to act and to take on battles that we have a chance of of making progress on we certainly don't see this as the final step and I I think that the public is right to remain actively engaged and to demand as much as possible so I I certainly want to thank them for pointing out the obvious which are the the biggest polluters in our you know our municipal boundaries but I think that the public is asking us to act and to to make a difference and I I think we have to you know this isn't low hanging fruit but at least it's it's fruit that we can reach for reasonably so I I want us to reach for that fruit okay so I guess before us is the is there further discussion about the climate action plan I mean I love this final addition with all the graphics and explanations I thought it was very readable mm-hmm and and you know I really thank CCRPC for pulling this together and really making it clear I know it's a lot of language to read and there's a lot in this but I from my perspective I you know my concern and I think it was addressed is really make list some of the actions that people can kind of understand and we can start to think about how to do that yep and it's and I think it's here um well written and very clear so I can praise it because I didn't write it so okay are there Michael did you want to say something Michael Mittag yes I concur with what Councillor Emery has said that we need to get this plan approved so that we can move with some alacrity into the implementation phase which is actually what it's all about without getting cracking on that we haven't really done anything other than draw on a roadmap for ourselves so I would I would encourage the council to accept the plan as it is and so that we can move on to implementation as soon as possible okay thank you um Jimmy please did you want to say something yes yes um as far as implementation I think it's a good idea to get started with implementation but I don't think the plan should be approved uh at this point because it fails to include airport emissions and it's unique to the airport every other entity in the city is included but the airport not and the airport is in south Burlington and it's the largest emitter and there really hasn't been a public hearing on the draft plan as completed uh so the public should have a chance to weigh in I don't see why that should take so much time um now the supreme court says that to be an effective plan it has to be specific about what it's talking about and mandatory otherwise it's not really a plan that anybody has to input they can just ignore it now the the the modification proposed to the plan that was on the website really makes things worse because it it it it makes it a city policy that the airport is treated differently from everybody else we don't it's like south Burlington announcing we don't have equal protection we don't have equality anymore somehow this airport just because it's well ownership of all the businesses in south Burlington isn't owned by south Burlington we don't have control over them either so why does the airport get this special privilege it's really wrong there should be a public hearing so that all this can be worked out about the airport and we shouldn't be giving the airport any special privilege that other entities don't have thank you okay um Paul Connor oh Connor I'm sorry I was looking at the screen and I didn't see a ball I think this might be the good a good point for a quick sort of clarification about what is done with the airport and not so the building's accounting that was done is for all buildings in south Burlington regardless of ownership so that includes the schools that includes private buildings that includes homes and includes the airport so there's no exclusion of the airport from that perspective in terms of transportation the way that we measure the decision was made to measure transportation is on vehicle miles traveled on public roads in south Burlington so any vehicle that uses a public road that's what's that's the baseline and that's how it's measured which means that any vehicle that stays entirely and only on a private piece of land doesn't get accounted so it's not about any specific business but let's say a manufacturer has a forklift the forklift is not accounted for the umal has a on site vehicle that just stays in the umal the airport has specialty vehicles they're all treated the same in that they're not accounted for and that's um the metric that was decided to be used was something that we couldn't that was to be measurable had to be something that could we could gather the data on so the piece that is not collected that is unique to the airport is aviation and that's um the reference here that the airport is undertaking that and the city could also undertake a study like that but that is a very significant study to be undertaking and we're in a position where the Burlington International Airport is performing that baseline inventory so just that clarification I thought would be helpful when we talk about what is and isn't accounted for okay thank you Isaac um yeah so I mean I agree that the the aviation emissions should be included in um in the inventory um but my my my larger concern is actually about um the targets that we're using in order to create the plan so we're using the 2018 IPCC report that everyone's using where they said net zero by 2050 they created a roadmap to get there and we're essentially implementing that roadmap um the issue is is that since 2018 we've actually learned that our climate trajectory is much worse and so my my larger concern is that we're actually creating a plan for a problem that is it's larger than what we're planning for it's much larger than what we're planning for and um that means that capital allocations that are based on the the the plan made in 2018 are going to have they're going to be poor allocations and so I think that that's what this plan is setting us up to do is to poorly allocate capital based on a misperception of the scale of the problem because we're working with old data and so uh yeah I just have I have major concerns overall I'm sorry I've been busy in my personal life so I have not engaged with the um the group so that's those are my thoughts okay thank you are there others Ethan um just just want to make one one clarification about the airport question and aviation emissions um the measurement challenge is obviously one of the one of the big barriers that's that's um caused us to need to consider it separately but if we were in a perfect world and we had all the data that we wanted uh and we were to treat the uh aviation emissions in a symmetric way that we've treated other transportation emissions in the climate action plan their scope one emissions within the geographic boundary of the city so we'd only be trying to capture um flights that both start and end in south burlington which is essentially helicopters and sightseeing planes things like that so if we're thinking about how big of a piece of emissions are we leaving out um it's not actually the full emissions of the airport right the full emissions of the airport would be captured under a scope three inventory and the scope three inventory is not consistent with the rest of the climate action plan because scope three then opens it up to all of the induced emissions so every product that was purchased within south burlington we'd be trying to capture all the emissions from creating those products and shipping them to us and um so typically that's not how municipal emissions are done because it leads to double counting from the territories where those goods are produced so it ends up um being cleaner to do scope one for everyone so just to just to be clear though this does um arguably omit the aviation emissions due to the challenges of counting them and the questions about jurisdiction to be able to actually impact them um I don't think that the scale is quite what what has been cited sometimes um if if we were again in a perfect world to be able to have all the data that we wanted it would be a smaller number than I think what's been represented so just to put in context how big of an issue this is and um what priority we might put on it and I completely agree that we should continue looking into this and figure out ways to engage and work on it it's obviously an important problem um but I don't think it's a significant um an issue in terms of our inventory accuracy as uh as it might seem uh Ashley yeah I you know I just um am a guest here looking at this language which I I think really makes the issue worse and I you know we have really in the airport the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in certainly in South Burlington hands down and we're ignoring this very important sector so I I really take issue with downplaying aviation emissions it's the enormity of it the scale of it is something that I think every concerned citizen has a right to know and this is not complicated data to obtain it's something that Nick Longo has at his fingertips as the director of of the airport and indeed the language in this draft indicates that the airport is keenly interested in identifying strategies well if that is the case why not provide the data so that it can be included in this document yeah I think I have a right to know what those emissions look like um I have a right to know what the airport is contributing to the climate catastrophe and I think everyone has the right to know that so this language really kind of um really lets the airport off the hook and really lets South Burlington off the hook and does a real disservice to anyone and and there are so many folks these days who are really really have an interest in this information you know looking at the scope this scope three I don't know what scope three means I have no idea but there's nothing in this language describing what the airport is purportedly going to be putting together themselves there's nothing no mention of aviation emissions at all and yet as a council it's evidently you're prepared to there's this optional adoption of a resolution in support of the preparation and implementation of the airport sustainability master plan why why would you support something that you I mean what does it entail what would you be supporting we have no idea I just I think it was to support that we would potentially work with them and collaborate with them on that as they develop their their plan you know they're in the midst of it I don't know what it will say and and I'm quite certain actually that it really will not be privately held information I think it will be public information I'm not suggesting that I what I'm suggesting is there is nothing in the line in case that they will include aviation emissions so what exactly are you signing off on here I think yeah I think supporting doesn't mean signing off I don't think it's a rubber stamp I think what Helen was saying is it's providing assistance and working with them right that's a it's a different meaning to support so it's not approve right right I think um so but I think everyone in this community deserves this information and I really urge you to hold a public hearing on this final draft so that folks can weigh in okay thank you Tom Chittenden thank you thank you chair really um so I support the language that's been presented tonight the new language and I I see a corollary I don't know how many people know this but there's an island in Lake Champlain that's part of South Burlington the house of House on Juniper Island but I understand from a private chat chat text with Ethan Goldman that we're not capturing emissions from boats and Lake Champlain between here and that part of South Burlington so I support having the airport continue this and supporting their efforts and having them measure it who they truly understand aviation just like we would trust that the Coast Guard or when we start looking at Lake Champlain emissions that would fall squarely to the South Burlington responsibilities but instead to the appropriate federal or agency that knows those those those emissions better than we do so I move I support moving this forward as is okay are there any additional people who would like to comment did you see any okay I did all right comment can you hear me pardon me who is this Jennifer is running this is Jennifer Decker Jennifer Jennifer yeah oh okay I'm trying to turn on my camera but I can't we can hear you so um yeah I just wanted to reflect on the fact that I haven't flown in an airplane in seven years because I am so concerned about global warming and climate change I think we've all seen you know what's happened in Florida this week and you know it's one disaster after the next um it really concerns me dynamically speaking when a body that is elected to represent the people who live here and who are expressing these concerns uses language that seems based in minimizing the voice of the people and in fact argues against the people who are asking for some very legitimate demands which is holding a public hearing I think it is incumbent upon the South Burlington City Council to allow us to have that public hearing to allow us to fully flesh out some of the ideas that we've heard here tonight about the data that we have on climate change being out of date and I'm gonna go on sacrificing seeing people that I love for the sake of future generations even though I myself have no children but for those who are in the space who do have children I'm doing that for your children and I just really ask that the folks on the South Burlington City Council really deeply consider what it's like to come to meetings in spaces where our views are to be represented by our elected officials and we're asking for some very simple things include the current level of aircraft emissions in the South Burlington Climate Action Plan that would make such a huge statement include targets for reduction of aircraft emissions and update the plan with all targets for 2030 instead of 2050 how many more years do we have to watch the news and watch tragedy after tragedy after tragedy species after species going extinct before the people who are living among us will actually hear our voices and represent the people who elected you thank you I would note that the report does include targets for both 2030 and 2050 I also believe and it was it's always difficult to start at a point in time that doesn't reflect what has happened since you even start we even started talking about the the action plan but I'm concerned that if we wait for the perfect we will we will not get something done and Isaac you know you're concerned that this isn't we haven't expressed or illustrated the enormity of the issue and in many ways I agree with you because you can't open a newspaper or listen to the news at night without a new finding about another chunk of an iceberg that can that is broken off or or permafrost that is no longer frozen um in an area where we have no control over but is impacting the whole world but I am convinced that we need to move forward and as imperfect as perhaps some of these goals are I I think this is a document that's will be a living document it will change over time as um new opportunities for reducing um you know greenhouse gases and new ways to maybe reduce our miles traveled um and we will reach some of these goals I mean do I honestly think we're going to reach all those goals by 2030 it's hard to imagine because it's a lot of electric cars to be blocked by a lot of people that don't have money to buy electric cars it's all sorts of things it was hard enough to get an ordinance passed to take a kind of a baby step about new construction so I think this um did respond to a lot of public comment I'm sorry you didn't listen in on the 17 meetings that we had and we did have a public hearing and and frankly it was very disappointing because very few people came to express anything and and so it's disappointing to me to have all these volunteers spend that much time coming up with um some decent goals an illustration of the issue maybe not as dire as they it could be stated but it certainly isn't very positive or hopeful in some ways um and to suggest that they weren't listening to anybody you know I'm I'm happy to support this as a council I'm happy to continue to listen to the public as we try to roll this out and I'm more than willing to work with the airport to help prod them and get them to a climate action plan of their own that hopefully can include at least the the commercial I don't I I think um the air force is a whole nother ball of wax um trying to get that entity in our country to um join in with a community like South Burlington to work on cutting their emissions so um I think this is more realistic is about as realistic as we can can be so I appreciate your comments and I guess I differ on the value of a living plan to help guide us and if I could just add on I I think that um we have to look at what we collectively can do and this step is a collective step forward individual actions are important but without there being collective action such as this plan is is putting into place and the ordinance that I hope we will be adopting soon and again we're starting this is not the end point but we have to we have to act collectively and I I hear and understand um Ethan Goldman who is talking about the different scopes of different plans and that here they were looking at what is happening within South Burlington and I I do take his point that we're not even including all of the you know consumerist products that people have delivered to their door from across the world and so this is this is an important first step and um we have to still like you all here have to remain active and focused on how as a collective um we can move forward to to make more progress and it's but the first step is the important one we have to take it and I I think that sometimes it's the baby step that's the hardest and if this is faulted as a baby step it's a mighty big baby step and it's an important baby step and if we can take it it will lead to more steps and and we have to build on that that's really where I am so I'll move um adoption of the climate action plan as recommended by the climate action plan task force with the additional language that Paul developed around so we have a motion made and seconded to further conversation I think this is we have we've said before that you can't take action unless you understand what you have to have you have to formulate a plan before you can take action this plan gets its arms around the city's emissions and looks forward to the changes we have to make to accomplish our goal getting our hands around things like the airport is more difficult because it's a different entity and it's owned by Burlington Burlington has their own plan as well and they're attacking from their side the military is going to be a tougher nut to crack but I think they're going to get on board with whatever they can do they're going to have to do the same thing as well so I think this is the best thing we can have right now and I'm going to vote for it because it's it's it was a huge effort and it is our best first stake in the ground to move forward with making the changes we need to minimize climate change period thank you you ready for the vote okay all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye that's four zero thank you all right item 12 receive an update on the conservation easement at Wheeler park and provide direction to staff thank you paul thank you paul thanks well I have to say yay we passed a plan yeah yay step yeah it was a huge step we should have celebrated that we had to celebrate it yeah yeah michael is yay from me too well and thank you michael for all that you did on the committee or the task force yep thanks to the task force all right so moving on to another issue that's been around a while thank you and good evening again um calling McNeill city attorney with me is bob hyzer from the Vermont land trust we're here to to talk to you briefly about the Wheeler nature preserve and the conservation easement we've been working on with the Vermont land trust for the preservation of that area in talking with back in 2021 we entered an MOU with the Vermont land trust where we were contemplating entering a conservation easement with them turning it over them for for stewardship and preservation and working through that since that MOU was was entered into we have started to develop that conservation easement documents and some issues have has come up just as part of that process and just wanted to let you know where we are in that which is working toward the goal of getting this preserved and bringing it to you for a vote on supporting the the conservation easement um but but some of the issues that have been raised were when the Vermont land trust was looking at the the parcel itself um it was it was observed that the uh what has been delineated as the homestead area which is where the the house is the dog park etc um a better boundary line than what was originally roughly proposed with the MOU that delineated the 10 acre homestead area a better boundary line identified an 11.5 acre area and so we wanted to come with you come before you to make sure that that was okay moving forward the other component that the land trust has identified is to to really get your input and and have a discussion on whether the what we'll call the leg or the panhandle of the Wheeler Nature Park the approximately 21 acres that was acquired from Jamgolf in a settlement should be included in the conservation easement and I can have Bob speak to that a little bit but there's there's been some concerns about encroachments on that property um and that you'll see just on the map that was provided in your packet the line isn't a straight line it is kind of jagged um and so they had some concerns that were that we identified about just being able to maintain the the conservation of that land if uh if it's we if it's included in the in the easement um unless it is properly delineated um by us and they've asked us if that we intend to include that uh leg parcel in the area that's going to be conserved whether we take some additional steps to mark the boundary lines of that so they they have a better idea of what they're managing when they when they take it over so um did I summarize that okay Bob yeah i'll just do this oh thank you um good evening yeah i'll just add that the um on the leg parcel it had been our understanding that the intent was to include that leg parcel and and that was included in the MOU um we had indicated in that MOU that we did want to get more comfortable through a title search of the third party interest there um and also during that time of doing field work it just became more and more apparent to us on the eastern side the number of butters and um some apparent potential encroachments and potential for future encroachments so having that boundary marked if it's to be included would be important to us to make sure we're not um wading into uh issues and future issues that we would prefer to avoid okay so when i look at the long leg it looks like one whole a butter is the country club but then along um oak creek and butler farms you have 35 butters or however i didn't count the mall but it's a lot so that's probably more the concern correct that's the boundary that we would hope could be marked okay and i would imagine in doing and marking that we probably need to engage some sort of surveyor to make sure the line is correct so when we're talking to the neighbors who um have encroached or not encroached uh we can identify what the actual line is based on a um based on a survey that we've received yeah and that would not be something we'd be able to do in-house that would have to be you don't have a surveyor in-house not in this budget okay and what is that important to to have that survey line done and to prevent those homeowners from crossing over and like dumping a yard waste into that area is that what's it yeah i mean there are different levels of potential encroachments and the ones we would worry about more as built encroachments um a little shed yeah yeah the back of my property oh yeah it's not on my property yeah okay thanks so is so is your request then that we well you have a couple recommended actions so one is increasing the homestead area to 11 and a half acres because that's what you believe is really the accurate or does that need to be um surveyed as well there is an existing survey to the east of that for some prime ag mitigation so having that known surveyed line to us would be we think better in the future to be able to accurately refer to what is included in the conservation easement and what is not given that it's an existing surveyed line we would recommend using that as the eastern boundary of the excluded area is that an active 50 line yes okay so that's already surveyed yeah okay so the only one is the leg correct which is surveyed is it is surveyed it's just when you go on the ground out there there's no indication oh you need the markers and then enforcement of oh here over the mark okay so a wall we're talking money I'm supposing what's the cost of putting marks where the boundary lines lie we'd have to get an estimate the last time we did a project like this I think back to the the mayfair park project we did off elson parkway a number of years ago I believe that ran us into the 15 to 20 thousand dollar range currently the both the stewardship fund and the initial amount that vlt has asked for here is about correct me if I'm wrong calling about 40 40 to 45 000 so this would be on top of that if we were to include the leg again that's not an an accurate quote that's a few years ago but that's my initial thought is the leg wet when it rains no there's a fair amount of wet area in the leg yep so what um is does anyone in the council have another comment or question I mean is this something that we could do in stages so we look at everything but the leg going forward until we can afford to add the the leg because that's a wildlife corridor so it is an important part of the park for land conservation um that's a possibility typically it's more cost effective for us to do it all at once um oh so we are going to be surveying at some to some degree we don't need a survey of the lands that aren't surveyed there are existing surveys on many of the boundaries and we're happy to conserve everything that is not specifically delineated as excluded and and we're not to again clarify that there is an existing survey on that line from when the land I believe when the land was acquired or swapped um so we wouldn't be looking for a new survey there just the marking in the boundary oh so maybe that is in $25,000 I don't know yeah it would depend on the on the surveyor I know they have specific specific professional obligations when they place a marker um to validate that it's accurate we could try and find cost savings with whoever did the prior survey whether they'd still be available okay well could we get that by the next meeting or the meeting after before we well we look uh Michael wants to say something then we need to just give advice or direction to you right we're not voting on that yeah I just have a question since uh this land was um was conveyed this leg by jam or hillside development they must have surveyed it surely they don't just give away land without knowing what they're giving away so whether a survey is by us is necessary and whether if it's already been done by the other party to the land swap well I think Michael what I understand is they it may have been surveyed but there aren't markers so that's what okay the land trust needs in order to um have um correct stewardship over it so they I I understand that but if there is a survey it's a lot easier to follow the survey lines to put down the markers and I mean it's I've had to do this compass in the woods but it's a lot easier to have a survey well is the council interested in um directing the city manager to determine how most cost effectively we can get this surveyed and marked utilize get a quote or get a quote or something you know working with jam finding out who they used and maybe going to that surveyor and say do you remember and will you put the markers down is that enough direction so Colin has laid out here the increase from 10 to 11 and a half acres and your intent to conserve the leg is kind of precursors to that decision and I think that would help you all before survey not not survey or not but as we do the survey with other parts of this so I think it would make sense for you to vote on what your intentions are for those two things and then we can bring you back uh um uh cost estimate cost estimate and contract for survey or at a future meeting isn't that that is correct and I think ultimately what we're what we're asking for is you know what are these final documents going to look like you know we need to we need to delineate what the acreage is of what's being conserved and that's going to have to be included in the conservation so before we set it for we have to go through a process as we're essentially conveying municipal land we have to go through a statutory process but before we do that we have to identify exactly what we are conveying conveying okay and so it's it would just be what what it sounds like is yes you'd like us to go forward with getting a cost to see how much it would cost to set up those boundaries um and then report back to you with that and if that's at a reasonable cost then you would then at that point consider whether um will include the leg or not in the in the conveyance um so I think excuse me Colin the land has to be the leg has to be included it's part of the obligation that the city promised the voters but this I don't think we're going to exclude it this the suggestion I made was to do stages and I understand that it's more cost effective to do it all at once but sometimes spacing it out is just more doable well do we so I guess one of the questions the first one is um do we agree with the increase of the homestead area yes from 10 acres to 11.5 yes tom are you okay all right so I guess we agree on that and then um do we wish the city to conserve the leg portion of the park and I think you make a good case it's a um wildlife wildlife corridor so we would want that conserved and so was there any concern about any from anyone else about including that as part of the parcel for conservation I mean ideally I'd like to see it conserved um practically if I mean the only human incursion into that is is by the bike path that comes over from old cross road I know that there is a bit of a walking path that comes off of the Butler farm path that leads into it where in the winter time people have created their own little path that goes across the green that hits and connects into the gulf cart path but I don't know of anybody that actually recreates in this area other than the kids that skate on that pond who probably shouldn't in the winter time because I've seen them out there fooling around on it you know when the ice is is big is thick enough I guess so I'm just saying that um you know the the the area that it gets the most recreation and it's the most important right is is the original wheel or property the rest of it is mostly wetland and is to me although it's important is less important from a conservationism point of view especially if it's going to be expensive to go survey it but I could be convinced otherwise that's all so you'd be happy just we can you know if we need to because I don't nothing else is going to happen in there because it's you know I mean the yellow line is drawn explicitly to exclude from that area whatever thing is associated with that golf course whether it be any greens any fairways any you know little islands of grass that are that they that they maintain that's why it's so squiggly like that is is to avoid all elements of the golf course whatsoever so just to kind of maybe wrap this you know maybe um bring into it a point where we can respond at least I think the land trust has identified that it would need to be marked in order for them to be willing to take take it on as as part of the the parts that's going to be conserved so we can reach out to survey or someone who would who would mark that boundary see what that costs and then come back to you for that final decision on whether be included or not okay that sounds reasonable tom one question yeah so one question we have to represent it from the blt here and I don't know conservation easements okay so I want to preface the question is there a variation or types of conservation easements that you'd feel more comfortable with 35 residential of butters that would put less onus less burden on enforcement and more of I don't know is there are there variations of how much enforcement you'd want to enact or and assure the south linkedin city council that would make you feel easier about this leg and the different conservation easement on the primary original lot a good question um you know we have a fairly standard easement we use on municipal lands and don't really have a suite of options of lesser restrictions for certain areas that we would expect and and I think whatever the restrictions it would be potentially problematic to have encroachments into them by neighbors so I think the reality for us is really needing to have that marked and to feel comfortable that we could enforce the easement there all right well are you so it sounds like the 11.5 is great and you'll come back to us with a um cost for the leg we'll do so and we can Sarah did you you had your hand up earlier I certainly um approve of moving forward in the way you're going with this I just had the question are there encroachments from private owners now little sheds or what not back there on the east side I mean it seems to me that it's really important we do have an obligation to the voters to conserve that dog leg and I understand it needs to be done in the right way to satisfy the vlt and I would say the sooner the better I mean as part of this package this whole matter has languished for 11 years already and we promised the voters it would be done in six months so I mean there's that but I'm just saying you know the sooner it's defined to any neighbors who put a shed that you know we're formalizing this now and you really have to take this down or don't build anything more or whatever the I think we need to get that slate cleaned and start in the right way with this whole thing okay thank you yes so I can answer part of that question um Bob and I and uh Ashley walked the property a little over a year ago I think it was last last summer that's um and the best we can tell there are probably two to three um two to three very obvious encroachments currently by property owners so that will be a conversation that we'll need to have if we move forward some of it's just you know it's just mowed lawns fire pits those types of things that we that we were seeing I don't remember any any any structures but we have someone who's willing to enforce that that's right but you need to know exactly what you're enforcing so it sounds like we have given you enough direction yep okay Michael last comment I had a question about the 11.5 acres um whether that includes obviously it includes the dog park the dog park was originally slated to be two acres and then it was 1.76 acres I've heard now that it's now down to one acre is that correct oh man I can't remember but it's down but we're working on changing fences and extending it so it's not uh fair to complete but back back to the 1.76 which it should be okay all right so you have what you need thank you very much thank you thank you don't they need a motion on items one to three um no we we are just giving direction to we agreed that to change the um homestead and we it sounds like we would like to have the leg conserved but we want to find out before that's finalized the cost of the um um survey so that understood and we'll be back to you as soon as we have that information hopefully it's next meeting if it uh it might be later if we just don't have it super thank you very much yep thank you okay is there any other business yes the editor of the other paper was hoping that we would start up our counselor corners again so I wanted to bring that to people's attention okay um would people like to send me a month that they want to do january so tim will do january okay we um when is the next uh packed meeting andrew november it's coming out the end of october end of october okay so that'd be good okay so tim will do december i'll do december yeah because i'll probably want to write about the pension okay okay um i really can't do the next month because i'm going to be gone that's a good portion of it someone wanted to do october matt coda does yeah sign him up if he's not here sign him up i don't has he written just one yeah he hasn't written very many if this is good practice i'll find out if he can do october um i'll i'll do november um tom you need to do january that's your grand finale i'm gonna advocate for a pool but okay well you can do february and it really is the blast off but um which do you want january or february is that a negative franking i can give you a lot of bond vote language in either of those months either or i don't care well you get a choice sweetheart just take something other people has a policy against franking but this is this is inverted franking right so okay so why don't you do january and i'll do february i see a cat is that okay yeah and meghan will do february okay all right good enough any other business just one comment yes so wednesday my family drove down to boston to witness my son defend his phd thesis which he did successfully so now he is dr samuel barrett in biology yeah so now he's a postdoc which he'll continue doing the research he's doing at harvard and uh until he decides what he's gonna do next so yeah so they had a nice big uh they had a couple bottles of champagne afterwards and some refreshments and some food and yeah so that's a big deal yeah it was very interesting yeah so we got hooded or is he graduating this december or something say oh yeah he yeah in i don't know when the medieval medieval you know you have to hood people now yeah yeah you join them oh that's great okay well good night all good night i won't be here at the next meeting but i will be at the following one happy anniversary thank you yeah happy anniversary well we've celebrated that but i'm we're going on the night are you gonna cruise yes you know