 All right welcome everybody to the July 21st DPW commission meeting, the first meeting of the new fiscal year. I as director of the department, Chape and Spencer will be running the beginning of the meeting until we get through the election of officers. So welcome everybody virtually and those who are here in the room. Our agenda is as follows, we have call to order, which I have done, approving the agenda, the election of chair, vice chair and secretary. Then there are a few consent items, no parking zone on Lakeside Avenue, the Cherry Street add 15-minute parking space, Shelburne Street roundabout temporary ordinance change, two deliberative items, the Sustainable Infrastructure Plan and FY 22 draft goals and objectives, approval of the draft minutes director's report and commissioner communications. So we have two new commissioners with us tonight. I want to welcome Zoe Kennedy and Daniel Isit-Motinot. Welcome, we're pleased to have you as new commissioners and we operate with Robert's rules of order so I'd welcome a motion to approve the agenda. I'll make a motion to approve the agenda. Great. I'll second that. Okay second by chair Hogan. Is there any adjustment to the consent agenda? Team, we good? Okay. Great. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Let's see, we have Commissioner Bose calling remotely, is that correct? Yes. Great. So alright, so I'm gonna just go do a roll call Dan Motinot. Aye. Pablo Bose. Aye. Excellent. Brendan Hogan. Aye. Alright Peggy O'Neill. Aye. Alright, Solvei Overby. Aye. And Zoe Kennedy. Aye. Alright, great. The agenda has passed. So moving on to election of chair, vice chair and it says here secretary or clerk, just a quick overview. The chair and the vice chair are the ones who facilitate the meetings annually for the fiscal year that would start this meeting and continue to June and then the clerk is responsible for the minutes. The clerk is allowed to be a staff position and we are welcoming if the commission would like staff to continue with the minutes that you could select Val Dusharm who was our customer service representative. She's not here tonight but she and Holly work on the minutes. So should you all want that to be delegated to staff, you could nominate Val Dusharm for clerk. Any nominations? Question like Val's not here to it feels a little weird to nominate Val without her being here. If we know that she would consent to this nomination then. Sure. I mean if if if friendly you could you could select Rob Goulding as the clerk and he could work with Holly and Val. It is fine for us either way. Rob and Val is that or just has to be one person. Okay Rob you work with Val and Holly. Yeah okay. Okay nomination doesn't need a second. Are there any other nominations? Okay. Hearing none. I will go through roll call again. Commissioner Montenot. Aye. Commissioner Boz. Aye. Commissioner Hogan. Aye. Commissioner Neal DeVanco. Aye. Commissioner Overby. Aye. And Commissioner Kennedy. Aye. All right well congratulations. Congratulations. Rob on that appointment. I'm gonna take the call. Got enough to. All right are there any nominations for chair and vice chair? I'd like to nominate Brendan Hogan as chair. Are there any other nominations for the position of chair? Right. Hearing none. I will any any discussion. Competition. We have to ask whether you're willing to accept the nomination. I would be willing to accept the nomination. Good that is that is helpful. Great. Any other discussion? All right well then we'll go to a vote. Commissioner Montenot. Aye. Commissioner Boz. Aye. Commissioner Hogan. Aye. Commissioner Neal DeVanco. Aye. Commissioner Overby. Aye. And Commissioner Kennedy. Aye. All right we're two-thirds the way done. Congratulations. I would accept the nomination for vice chair. You didn't mean to. All right we have one nomination on the floor. Are there others? Could have worked on my lecture. Commissioner Neal DeVanco you're more than welcome to nominate someone if you would like. That's okay. I would accept the nomination. Okay fair enough. Any discussion? All right we'll go to a vote. Commissioner Montenot. Aye. Commissioner Boz. Aye. Commissioner Hogan. Aye. Commissioner Voneal DeVanco. Aye. Well done. Commissioner Overby. Overby yes. And Commissioner Kennedy. Aye. All right. Excellent. Well congratulations. Congratulations. Thanks. You too. Mr. Hogan. We'll get you yet Pablo. All right well with that I have the pleasure of passing the virtual gavel over to newly re-elected chair Hogan. Thank you director Spencer. The next item on our agenda is public forum. Do we have any members of the public interested in speaking? There is no one here or signed in to zoom to speak. All right. That I will close public forum. Okay. Moving forward to the consent agenda. Three items no parking zone on Lakeside Avenue, Cherry Street, 15 minute space, and a temporary ordinance change for Shelburne Street Rounded. Welcome a motion on the consent agenda. Anyone else? Any client? I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda. I'll second. A motion from Vice Chairman Hogan and a second from Commissioner Muntanu. Very good. Thank you. Is there any discussion around that motion? Thank you, Mr. Charlie. All right. I think we are clear to go to votes on the consent agenda. Commissioner Muntanu. Aye. Commissioner Beaus. Aye. Thank you. Vice Chair O'Neill-Vivanco. Aye. Commissioner Overby. Aye. Commissioner Kennedy. Aye. Aye for myself. The consent agenda passes. Is everyone right? All right. Moving forward to item six, the Standable Infrastructure Plan 2.0. Welcome a staff communication. Yes, indeed we're excited to have Martha Keenan back in her new role as a special projects coordinator. What's the official title? Capital and Special Projects Director. Capital and Special Projects Director up at the Clerk Treasurer's Office. Martha has moved from DPW to serve the entire city through her new role. We're really excited to have her in this new role and she's got a short presentation on our proposed capital plan. I just speak. I don't know if I share my history. Evening everybody, I am technologically challenged. I may have a new position but I still haven't. So let's see if we can do this. I'm confident that we will figure it out. So how do we move that so that you don't see yourselves up there? There you go. Does that it? I'll just go on your presentation. Right here? Yep. There you go. Well, it's kind of late. So my apologies. It's pleasure to be here tonight. I had the pleasure of coming here five years ago to discuss the first capital plan that was brought forward and was successful in creating a bond for $27.5 million to invest in our city's infrastructure. And first five years have flown by. We've gotten a lot done and capital never stops going away as I joke with Norm is that it might stop when the potholes stop in your roads and that's never going to happen. So we have capital forever and the capital plan itself is a snapshot in time. So you can take a look at it and we create a plan. But in fact, it is a living document and it changes and moves all the time. So we had a wonderful rain event last night and capital projects come out of a rain event. So that's one really easy way to explain how how evolving and spontaneous it can be in moving forward. So I'm going to look at what have we accomplished over the last five years? What did we learn from the last five years and where are we going from here? So over the last five years, we improved over 14 miles of sidewalks. Prior to this bond that we received, we were averaging one mile of sidewalk work a year. We have since then been averaging three miles and a more sustainable level is this three miles of sidewalk. We doubled our side our street reinvestment from one million dollars a year to two million dollars a year. And again, this is a more sustainable level. We still have with the weather changes and the climate changes. We have our roads when it freezes and thaws, they deteriorate faster. And so we need to invest more in keeping them going. We have rehabilitated seven miles of bike path. We have just 10% left. It's the North Beach area. There's a bridge there North Beach overpass and that needs to be done to complete the bike path. We've done a lot with facilities. We created a letting maintenance facility, which gave them a home and made it easier for them to help maintain the parks. We did a lot of HVAC envelope and roof work to improve the efficiency energy efficiency of buildings as well as bring them up to standards. Like we still have a long ways to go, but we have been working on those items particularly. We improved our IT infrastructure and this helps both our employees and our citizens and is going to allow us, we're going to have a new system in here for a hybrid meeting so that it is easier for people to attend whether they are able to get here or not. We've done a lot for security. We have instituted an electronic door lock system and we pulled together all of the video security systems into one system and that system is now housed in dispatch at police. So if someone is called in and there's an event, let's say at City Hall Park, we'll use somewhere away from here and the police have to respond. The dispatch can pull up the cameras and they can see what's going on and they can say, Hey, there's a guy in a blue hoodie who's got a knife. He's on the left hand side when you come around the corner and that makes everything easier safer for both the police and the people involved in it. They're walking into something and they have eyes that are helping them know what they're walking into rather than walking into blind and not knowing what's going on. We have created an asset management committee and asset management is a key to our whole capital plan. With asset management, we have an inventory or we will have an inventory of all of our assets and we will be able to input the work that gets done on them, what their condition is and be able to make decisions as to replacement much better by knowing this on an ongoing basis and having it in one location. So this is going to help us maintain our plan and do better on our strategizing of our plan. We have improved on our one area we were sort of missing when we did the original capital plan was the public safety aspect of it. We didn't really include not by intent of excluding them, but the police and fire department and they have a lot of assets in the way of body cams, cameras and radios that help create a system throughout the city to monitor things and to talk with each other. And we just didn't have that included in our plan. And so in our new plan, we're making sure that we include those people in the plan itself. We've done renovation here at 645 Pine and at City Hall. Both of those have improved security and made the systems the visit for the public much better than it was previously. And one of the things that's been really fun for me is we created capital committee that is made up of different general fund areas so that we're looking as a team at what does the city need and it's general fund based. So it's not covering water and BED in those areas, although we do talk and collaborate on things. And this is helping us with asset management to make sure that we're making the best use of our resources that we have. And we also set up and implemented a fleet policy and strategy and that is helping us. It used to be that every department ordered their own vehicles and they decided what they wanted and how many they wanted. And with this new policy, it's all under the fleet manager and he meets with each department, determines whether that's the right vehicle and helps them with their specifications. And as you know, we are moving towards a net zero energy goal. And so he has been doing a lot of research on electric vehicles, hybrids, and where possible, we've been moving in that direction. So it's been really great. Just some pictures and you got a nice sidewalk painting on one side and the bike path on the other. What have we learned out of this? That it's an evolution. And it's, I was at NRG in a previous life and we believed in continuous improvement and lean. And so we are trying to make those changes here and continuously improve on what we're doing, how we do it, the efficiency of it, and to make good decisions that spend money the right way. And this evolution has helped us in that. We also know that when we made our first plan, it wasn't complete and we're still adding to it. Another area we didn't have was bridges. So the city actually has a lot of bridges and they weren't in our original plan. So now we are including bridges and we're including the the radios and the police and fire items. So there's probably something out it's out there that we don't know about at this point. It always seems to show up at the worst time possible. It's when it fails that we find out that there's something out there. We have a better understanding of the overall and competing needs that and are able to better prioritize them. There are tons of capital needs across the city. So we're just going to be speaking on a small part of it. But the overall plan is is massive. And what we're looking at is what do we need in the next three years? And what are the priorities that we should be attending to in the next three years, when there are many more items that we need over the long haul, we have had a lot of deferred maintenance over many decades. And we're trying to catch up at that at this point. And it took decades to get there. It's probably going to take decades to get out of it as well. So it's it's a process. One of the things that we, when the administration put out their 22 budget survey is that we learned that the public has a very strong feeling of import for our infrastructure and taking care of it. So that was a great thing. I always use this little car thing. And it's somewhat silly. But if you buy a car, you have to maintain it on an ongoing. So there's operating expenses to it. And then there's some long term maintenance, like you got to do breaks and you've got to maybe change other things. But then you also have to plan to replace it. And so the capital plan is planning to replace it. But we're helping on those other items at the same time. So if we do our job correctly, we're going to lower the operating costs. And by people doing the correct repairs and maintenance in a timely fashion, they're going to lower our capital costs. So we have to have a collaborative synergistic relationship between our operating and our capital to make it work. So what are our next steps? We're working on presenting our next three years of the capital plan. And I chose and we chose three years at this point, because three years you can truly plan and you have a good idea of what you can do and what is out there. When you go to four and five, you can have plans, but there's a high likelihood that something's going to change in year four and five. And so being really specific in that time period is difficult. And so we're concentrating on three years at this point. I'm meeting with all the commissions, all the NPAs, all of the committees over the summer. On the 9th of August, we'll be meeting with the Board of Finance and City Council to let them hear about all of this. And we're looking from all of these conversations to educate and bring approval to the City Council in September to go for a bond in November. And that will be a special election on the 9th of November. And we have to do along the way, we have lots of needs, we need to prioritize those needs and make sure through this education and these conversations that we are picking the correct needs and prioritizing everything correctly. We can always learn something better and do our job better through communication. At the same time, we have to strategize there's a lot of new funding coming out this year. So there's ARPA funds. ARPA funds, there is an input system that CARA is doing through the CEDO and Community Economic Development that is taking input on that. ARPA funds are relatively restrictive as far as the capital that we do on a day-to-day basis. It's mainly on broadband and water and sewer electric, not electric input. So it has a use and it is a possibility for some, but it doesn't deal with a lot of our capital that we're talking about tonight. The state has two different sets of funding in their budget this year that are potential opportunities for us. One is on infrastructure, which specifically made tied to bridges, our streets and sidewalks. And so if that opportunity arises and we can take advantage of that, then we don't need to ask the voters for money for that. So we want to make sure that we are looking at the opportunities and using our money where we need to and then use other people's money where we can. The same item goes for the climate change funds is that climate change covers a lot of different things. So it could be the HVAC and controls for your building. It could be envelopes, it could be windows. But it could also be EV chargers. And so you can't get an electric vehicle fleet if you don't have the means of keeping it charged. So you need that infrastructure. And for the way vehicles are used in this city, they need to be able to charge relatively quickly. So you need a tier three charger, which can charge a vehicle in a couple of hours. And those are of course more expensive than your other chargers. They're about $80,000 apiece. And so we're hoping that we can get three in this coming year through using this climate change funds and have one in each part of the city. So downtown, north and south and make that available to people. It can also create some revenue because most times you can set up that people can put their credit card in for and charge for it. So if somebody was coming from Montreal or Hanover and wanted to go to the waterfront and they wanted to drive their electric vehicle, they could actually park and charge and be able to get back home again. So we are working on that. And then there's the federal infrastructure bill that originally was $2 trillion. It's being trimmed, but it has it's the first time in probably five years that there has been the dollars available or will be the dollars available from the federal government. And we want to take as much advantage of them as we possibly can. So while we're going through all of this process, we are working to understand what's a sustainable level of investment in our capital? What do we need on an annual basis? And then what are the things that are going to come up that will need a greater investment over time? So here we have broken out the items that we know are an annual investment. And so this sidewalk reinvestment of 1.7 million is three miles of sidewalks a year. And that is what we have determined we need at this point to get to the correct turnover of and maintenance of our sidewalks. On our street, it's an additional $700,000 a year to make sure and that's above and beyond what's in our street capital funding. So there is a tax that goes it's 2% that is put towards street capital every year. And that's about $2.3 million. In order to maintain our streets, we believe properly, we need an additional 700,000 a year. We have our IT infrastructure Brian low before he left gave us a nice three year presentation and budget for what we needed in that averages out at $300,000. For transportation planning, this is an annual budget and prior to our bonding, the transportation planning at $125,000 a year. And as you probably know, Nicole comes and speaks with you quite often. And there are a lot of means and desires to improve our bike pad and our transportation. And this is just the beginning of what is needed like there are other projects. There are two projects that are budgeted this year to do separate streets and that were the public had asked for. And so this is just to keep her going on her projects. She does a lot of CCRPC work and that covers matches, it covers pavement markings, landscaping, traffic calming, traffic calming. Thank you. And so it that's a a small number but it keeps her going and keeps our initiatives moving forward. Capital project management. This covers salaries in parks, DPW and clerk treasures and CEDO. And so this is what we have been spending on project managers for the past three years. And if we want to continue our work, we need to continue investing in the people to do the work. Facilities, parks, projects both have annual needs and we're still refining those more. Facilities has we did a condition assessment in 2017. And so we have one but it's outdated. And so with our asset management, we're looking at updating that condition assessment and having a better number. But we have a number of buildings that need roofs that need new boilers that we didn't have one building 200 Church Street for a number of years and it needs a new roof, it needs a new HVAC system and it needs new windows. So they're they just continue to come buildings are like streets, they have their own potholes. Parks projects. The parks department is great and they have done a master plan and that master plan is goes out 10 years and has for instance just for North Beach about $4 million that needs to be done at North Beach and the master plan. And then they have one for Oak Ledge. And so this is just the items that they feel are most important right now. It would cover the Harbor Marina and dredging it the boat house is sinking. The barge that it's on is sinking and the whole thing needs to be replaced. So it is to keep those items going. In the fleet policy, we have been doing a strategy of master leases each year. Some of the vehicles that we or equipment that we buy have a life of 10 years or more like our snow plows and our sidewalk tractors. And so it would actually be beneficial to bond for those rather than to put them in a master lease that is a shorter timeframe and a higher interest rate. So we're doing a combination of those two items. Our public safety. This is really a larger one time number right here is that the citywide public infrastructure radio system is at end of life and the cost to replace it is $5.3 million. So it's a big number, but it will be once in probably 15 years. They will continue to have some other costs of their radio system and the radios themselves that have to be replaced their body cameras, their defibrillators. I can't say the word that will continue to need to be replaced. But those are not as large as this one item that we have. All these lovely items come up to around $30 million. Our annual need and this is where we're still working on this a little bit. The annual need is really closer to $7 million if you were to average out your facilities, your parks, and it would potentially be closer to 10 million. So we're trying to figure out what that sustainable number is and still working that out. But easily just on these items it's $4 million and right now the capital program gets $2 million a year. So it was started at $1 million in 2009 and in 2012 it went to $2 million and we haven't had an increase since 2012. So we really know that on a sustainable level we need to go to a higher number. There are lots of other capital needs. We try to leverage wherever possible and use other people's money and some examples of that are the Rail Yard Enterprise Project, the Parkway, Shelburne Street Roundabout, the Rail Realignment and there are tons of other little grant projects that are out there in Washington. Barry was one and so we will leverage our money wherever we possibly can and that helps us. Those projects themselves are well over $70 million if you put them all together and we are putting out around $5 million. So that's a pretty good return on your investment. We have a number of master plans. We have the Bike Ped master plan, the Parks one, our Scoping and Corridor studies that we've done and they all have a lot of work that is thought of and are in our overall plan and obviously we can't get to all of these at this time. So we have to really prioritize. There are a number of departments that have been doing large revisioning and other projects. The library has a large revisioning and they just sent out their RFP for their schematic design today. The estimate on that is around $22 million. The Fire Station did a study and they found that they could be as efficient by consolidating two of their stations into one. The Fire Stations, there are two very historic buildings that take a lot of maintenance. The one up on Mansfield Ave is 1895 and it's the oldest running Fire Station in the state and then our Fire Station number one, it was built in 1928 and needs a lot of work to maintain it and the retaining wall around it. So it's built on top of the ravine and so it is sort of settling. We replaced the ramp there and when we replaced it, we found areas where there had been tree trunks before and they had deteriorated and then you have air pockets. So it needs some work. At the same time, there are operational and maintenance needs that go with all of this and we, again, that's that collaboration and synergy that we need to create with pavement markings, landscaping, facilities maintenance, all of those items we have to coordinate it to get the best dollar value for everything that we do. So some considerations. We have a debt policy cap and right now our cap for the general fund, overall our cap is 110 million approximately and 30 of that is available to the general fund and so I'm basically asking for the max that we now have available. And so that's why it's so important that we look at what our other funding opportunities are out there and take advantage of them. We are hoping that we'll request and that the public will be behind a general obligation bond in November and we're working on a strategy that will create a sustainable plan to maintain a vibrant downtown and make people want to come to Burlington and spend their money in Burlington because that is a part of keeping it vibrant is to bring people in and have people enjoy what we have in the city. And the longer we defer our repairs, the more it's going to cost unfortunately and that's part of our problem right now. The schedule. There's a lot of meetings. I'll be coming back to you with a request in August right now. This is just informational and educational. Our goal is on September 13th to have the city council approve going to the voters for a bond in November and a special election on November 9th. That's it. Questions. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Perfect. Any other from the staff side? We're happy to answer questions have dialogue. This is really we want to do a two step process as Commissioner Archibald often like to do. Yeah. And really give the Commission some time to dig into this before next month. We seek your recommendation to the council if you're so inclined to support the request for bond bond vote and bond funding. Okay. Thank you. Let's start on the phone with this one. Commissioner Bose. Comments, questions. Yeah, just just a quick question. So what is going to be coming back to us for the next meeting? The actual that's going to be going to the city council. Is that correct? Yes, that is correct is that we will be requesting that you recommend to the city council going to the voters for a general obligation bond in November for 30 million dollars. And we'll have the language of that request. You will thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Commissioner Mutano. So the term sustainability comes up a lot. In what ways is that the case? It's not just keeping the actual like public, I guess goods in in working order and everything. I mean, I hope it's kind of beyond that. So yes, there are multiple ways of using sustainability. So one side is that we're trying to develop a sustainable plan that we can maintain into and the other is that the city has a goal of being net zero energy by 2030. And so these two tie very strongly together. And so as we are looking at these items, we work closely with BED on our facilities and work and actually with Vermont gas as well. They have a new group of people in Vermont gas who are very tuned into energy efficiency. And so we meet with them on a monthly basis and talk about projects and what we can do and they provide incentives and rebates to us both of them to help our buildings go towards a net zero energy. Our fleet, we're working on that as well of electrification where we can. Some items like there still is an electric snow plow that will work in in Vermont. I think they do have them now. But some of the challenges are that going up and down the hills. And the amount of time oftentimes our plows will work 24 hours at a time. There just isn't an electric battery that's going to keep that going. So we're looking at that and delving into it all the time. There are a number of parking lots that have pervious payment at this point. And so we're looking at that as well. And you will hear when water comes to you because water is in the same boat and is a continuing investment in it. They've been doing a number of green projects to help the rainwater and stormwater go and be useful. And I can't speak more on that because I'm not educated enough on it. But it's pretty fascinating what they're doing. So all of it is to become more sustainable, reduce our carbon footprint overall for the city, become net zero energy. Transportation planning is a part of that. The more we can get people on bikes and walking. That helps using electric buses that and using more transportation of that mean getting people out of cars is going to help as well. Thank you. Anything else in here? No, that's good. Thank you. All right. Thank you. And vice chair. The question about the timing of state federal and federal infrastructure funds and you talked about leveraging those. Any idea how that how you know, are you in conversations with federal delegation on that or the house or state on the local level? So I'm working with the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. So Karen Horn and I speak weekly and they actually hired a person to manage the ARPA funds as well and help municipalities use their funds correctly. Governor Scott was actually in Washington last Friday and met with Biden and was talking about both the ARPA funds and the county funds that Vermont has not yet gotten and also the larger infrastructure bill. So I'm working with all those folks on and I'm working with Cara on the ideas for the use of the ARPA funds at this point as well. So it is sort of a it's squishy because that's very tactical term. But we don't want to go to bond for three bridges and then have the federal funding. And so we're trying to stay right on top of it. And the money that is in the state the state had 160,000 160 million excuse me that's for infrastructure for this year that will be available. And they have not yet put out how we can apply for those funds. They have 59 million for climate change. So both of those items I'm just like constantly and I actually went into their budget yesterday and got lost but trying to maintain and keep contacts I've reached out to the director at the state to see if I can get any timeline of when they'll be making this available for us and what the restrictions and specifications are. So it is a little squishy. It is. But we are trying to keep an open mind to what might be available. Have those sort of in a pile over here. And then the things that we absolutely have to do no matter what are over here and keep that list. Okay. And then just the follow up then so we can anticipate some part of you know, I'm just imagining like these dump trucks of money coming into Vermont electric dump trucks. And so we can anticipate the Burlington having access to some of these state and federal like the big federal infrastructure at some point. So this this bond has nothing to do with that. But in the plan of where we need to kind of prioritize, then that second tier of priorities might be covered by some of this. Okay, absolutely. You said it better than I could. Thank you. Thank you. That's great. That's all. Thanks. Thank you. Commissioner over be I know I've been in communication with you and I'll follow up a little bit on some of the details that you explain just now. I know you're very much a detailed person and this is a very complicated thing to try to do. And I I appreciate your work and what you did, you know, four years ago, five years ago. So I just want to let you know that I I feel like there's a lot of work that needs to be done. And I appreciate your diving in and doing it. And I look forward to getting some of the details behind some of these numbers to clarify some of it. I did have a couple of specific questions. One of the things overall, I'm a little I'm a little bit concerned about the fact that we've got this is a bond that's coming down the pipe. The water resources is going to be looking for money. The high school is going to be looking for money. And if everybody got their tax bill today, like I did, there's going to be some interesting community discussions that are going to have to be had, you know, and to help people out with this. And not that these I mean, I think these are important things. I mean, you know, we look at what happened with the building that fell down in Miami, which was sort of a similar situation of lack of that kind of planning and getting too late in the planning with the catastrophe happening. So I feel like we're sort of I'm the more information and the and the better you can, you know, explain not in giant numbers to people, the important value that is received from what we're paying for, it's going to be so much easier for people to swallow each of those incremental additional charges. And so when the when the when the information is put out for the bond, I think it's probably ends up with something like how much that's going to add to the tax rates for the state having the city's rate, I assume, just so people based on what happened to my tax bill, I'm sure people are going to be in in quite a bit of pain already. So that's just something important that we're going to have to think about not that your projects aren't important, the way you're doing it. So the more they're credible and explainable. That's important. But it could be problematic. Some of those items. So I think we need to do you know, you think about prioritizing, we may need to look at some of those and go, you know, I mean, I don't know. But specific questions about this, you had said that that some of its IT infrastructure is, are you able to now be able to put out year to date balances for the capital projects through the New World Accounting System? Because I know one of the one of the concerns has been money that goes into different places and then comes out of different places. And then there's reconciliation, sort of to, you know, make it look like the money is all, you know, spent the way it was supposed to using spreadsheets. And I have a big concern about the lack of sort of clarity on. So so I'm really concerned. Are you able to? Is that part of this infrastructure improvement to make sure that that happens? And are you able to do that with the work that you're doing now? So we instituted project accounting this past year. And this will be the end of our first year in project accounting, which will allow us to run much better reports. The other part of that is that each different revenue goes in in a different line, and it's fully funded at the beginning of the project. And so if that project is completed, then you close it out and those revenues go back to be spent on another project. Previously, it wasn't as clean as that. And so now we can run balances and we aren't done with our reconciliation for it will probably be October before we're totally done. But we can run reports on each of those projects of what has been spent of which funds and what the balances are for them. So that is a much better step forward. Additionally, we are looking at a capital forecasting software to be able to put all of these projects into and then be able to do what ifs. So if we do this, it will have this effect on us and we will not from that. But we did last time create a document that showed what it would each different vote would do to your tax bill. So if it was approved that for the average median household, it would do this. And I think that people found that very hopeful last time. And so we will be doing that again this time as part of our information. I do see that it could be a real challenge and therefore that's why there's this huge list of people to talk to is that educating people and getting out there and making sure that they understand why it's important and what we're doing and where that need comes from. You know, we can't go back in time. It's where it is and you can't really put you don't want to place any blame anywhere. It just is what it is right now and we need to move forward. And so presenting that and putting the best foot forward that we possibly can and letting people understand we are using their money in the most efficient best manner for the lower cost of use that we possibly can. And so yes, you have very good points and they are true. And I think the details will help people to feel like it's a good investment sidewalks. I don't think anybody complains about but but you know things like dredging the harbor people might say, you know, I don't have a sailboat out there. So that might not be a top priority, but just you know what it means to the revenue earner for the case. Yeah, that's you know, that's one of the things that I have talked to particularly parks about is that they have a lot of different revenue areas. And so if there are projects that they can do that will increase their revenues and help the city, then we should do those projects first and prioritize it in that order. And so, you know, being able to show that the reason we're investing in this is that it's going to increase our revenues by this amount. And therefore the return on investment is that much better that it's key to making it worthwhile. Yeah, that's well that has to be just information to the public so they can get that otherwise it would it would look on the surface of you know providing a service for people that are wealthy and not the rest of the community. So that's you know you've got to figure out how to sell that. The fleet management thing has they the fact that there's a fleet manager making decisions about you know all the fleet purchases has that actually reduced the number of vehicles that we now own and lease in Burlington? Well actually no. It's reducing the growth. It's reducing the growth. We have actually added a couple of vehicles simply because we added this urban patrol this year in for the park areas and we got electric bicycles for them. So we increased we considered those part of our fleet. It has enabled us to turn our vehicles in a better way so we had more money come from trade ins and sales of vehicles this year than we ever have because in the past we have driven vehicles until they have no value and now we are getting we are trading them at a time when they still have a value but they are costing more in maintenance than it's worth. So we're able to do that analysis of is it time to get rid of the vehicle and we're getting more equity for it when we do. So it is helping in that means it's not actually reducing the number of vehicles. When we had a consultant come in and unfortunately there were not a lot of vehicles to get rid of. Is there sharing of vehicles between departments now? Is there more sharing because of this fleet manager role? So that's a good thing that you don't have vehicles sitting around. So that's an important value to that. Can you just explain the debt policy cap? There's obviously it's like when you go to borrow money as a homeowner you have a limit of how much your debt load is. Is it something like that for the city? I didn't quite get what you explained that what how much we're we're we've borrowed already in our debt load and what we we we can whatever legally borrow. So about three years ago when CEO Anderson was here they went to council and created an ordinance for what the ceiling was for what the city could comfortably borrow. And so that is our debt capacity cap. So and I believe it was a $195 million. Please don't. I do have some documents on it but I'm talking off the top of my head in my close shape. And it looks like two hundred and ninety two hundred and ninety something like that. So thank you for not quoting. But that is yes you're right two hundred and nine for maximum city and BSD debt. OK. It's close. Good. Thank you. So it's split between the schools and the general fund for this. The enterprises have revenue bonds so those don't tie and don't go into our debt capacity. And so they set that three years ago as it was Moody's recommendation. And we have been working with that. But we do have some major challenges coming up. And so whether there will be any change to that I can't say. But does that mean two hundred nine million dollars a year that we can borrow each year. Or that's a grand total that we carry for debt. Of general fund borrowing. OK. And so so right now we have how much general fund long term debt. Around one hundred and seven million dollars for a balance of one hundred and three million dollars. But so you're right now we're only halfway to our our debt cap. Correct. However the key issue is that the lion's share of the available debt is within the school district. And that is to accommodate the high school. So we on the general fund side only have an availability of approximately thirty million dollars left until it hits the debt. One hundred and seven of the two hundred nine million sorry to be I'm dense here. So two hundred nine million of the cap for the schools and the city. We have borrowed one hundred nine million. Is that us or the school combination. OK. So. And then the other hundred million you're saying is except thirty million of it is for the school like that extra seventy that was the that we already started. OK. OK. So. So we actually are already approved another seventy million of that limit which we just haven't done anything with. I got it. OK. So that makes sense. We've got. I think I get that. Yeah. OK. So we're just that's where we're you will want to have another approval of the final thirty million that is up to our limit. Correct. OK. And then we can figure out how much that's going to cost us which is what you're going to work out. All right. Yeah. I think for that for the moment those are my questions and I can follow up with more later. Thanks. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Kennedy. So I'm new at this. So I don't have as many in depth questions. But yeah. Thank you for your presentation. And I yeah. I guess the only question that I really have is regarding like the electrification of the city's fleets. It's my understanding that like 30 percent of our electricity comes from the biomass plant and would like though that electricity for the fleet be like taps into the power grid here or would it be like its own supply because how sustainable can that really be when biomass is increasingly so BED is looking at change you know continually like they're looking at whether biomass is going to stay or go they're looking at district heating. The challenge with electrifying your fleet is that it adds to your electric bill. It is not adding to your carbon footprint. However. So you're taking away and you know the best thing would be and is if there were no more gas stations the gas stations you pull up and there's an electrical charging but there's a cost to that as well. It's just that electricity is less harmful to the environment and is less expensive than gas long term. So yes it is going to put a burden on BED and their renewables by increasing the electrical usage overall in the city. That is a correct assumption. Yeah I just I guess that's all I really had to ask because I'm still still learning here but no it's a good question. Thank you. Thank you. It sounds like we'll get another get another look at it next month. Thank you. Just a couple questions on my end. Is your expectation after if this gets approved for a three year balance here. Do you have a sense of where you want to be at the end of that three years. Like is it. Are we caught up at that point and under general funds or never caught up. So that I think that part of my education is that we have a long way to go. And so what we're trying to come up with what would be it would be much easier to have a sustainable amount each year that we get bonded for that two million dollars is not sufficient. So my goal would be is that over the three year period we really firm up what that number is and we go back and get approval for a number on an annual basis that we get to manage the capital plan with. And then if there was a large project such as the library or the fire station or consolidated collection that we go back for that individual request. And that would be specific to the project. But that the normal work would come out of a an annual request that would be approved once by the voters and continue. Yeah. Makes sense. Thank you. And suppose I understand. There's a lot still in the works about the other potential funding. But suppose some of that comes through with overlap of our goals here. Is your expectation that you would then ask for like 25 million instead of 30 or we just do different things with our limit of 30. We would we would probably stay at the 30 million and get to the other projects that we're deferring in this request that we're making now. But that is ultimately guidance that you all and other commissions when you see as Commissioner Overby suggested, you know, the cost for the average taxpayer. We do have to balance this with the additional water needs and the as I understand BED is interested in coming with a net zero revenue bond as well. So there are going to be multiple pressures that we're going to have to balance as we evaluate our move forward. And just I think I heard you that the bonding that our water wastewater and stormwater department is under is from a separate pool and does not count against this. That's a revenue bond and they don't go against our debt capacity. Do you have a sense of the like, for example, the transportation planning budget like looks great now. I guess I don't remember these numbers, but I mean, how does that compare to what we will be spent on the last five year sustained water structure spending the 460,000 a year plus other projects that came along that became construction projects. So many times she will start a project, get it through design, and then it will become a capital project from there. And then that capital project gets funded. So when I was speaking with Nicole in her bike pet master plan, there's over $200 million worth of projects that could be done that came out in the plan. And so again, this 460 is allowing her to go to CCRPC and leverage money there and do design and beginning projects. And then a lot of the quick pop ups and the traffic calming come out of her 460,000. So it's a stepping stone to an actual capital project. Thank you. Yeah, nothing else on my end. Appreciate the back and forth here. We check on public forum. Is there any members of the public? There is nobody signed up. Great. Thanks for the check there. That said, I think we're all set here, right? We are not seeking any action on this item at this time. All right. Thanks so much. I will close out item 6 on our agenda. Thank you. Appreciate the presentation. And as with Solvee, if you have questions, please feel free to email and just copy and shape him so that he knows what you're looking for. He likes to get his inbox filled. Yeah, sure he has no trouble. All right. Thanks all. Thank you. Moving forward, item 7 on our agenda drafts, fiscal year 22 goals objectives. Great. Thank you. Part of our conversation tonight was having quick and snappy meetings. So new fiscal year set new new protocols and expectations, right? So I did hand out and we will be posting online for the public to see our draft goals. My thought tonight is to just give you a really quick five minute overview so you can spend the time between now and next month and then we can have a more substantive conversation next month. These goals for the new commissioners are advisory. They are to help you and the public understand the departmental's priorities. This is an opportunity for you to kind of help direct the priorities of the department. And it's also from what we understand from the commissioners a useful tool when we are evaluated annually. City engineer Baldwin and I are serving in appointed positions and your commission is asked to review our performance and submit comments to the mayoral office and then they determine whether or not to recommend us for reappointment. So if this tool is helpful for that all the better. So I will just share the screen here. And we will make this very quick. So similar to years past. Maybe we want to turn the light off again. Just four. Yeah. All right. Great. So as in years past for some reason I'm trying to scroll up. There we are. Great. We have three operational goals that we have used as our North Stars for for my tenure here. Operational excellence exemplary customer service and a culture of innovation. And then what we've identified is particular annual objectives that we as a department want to focus on in service to those goals. We have also listed in the FAR column here the commission role in those activities. So I will not go through all of them. I think what I'll do is hit the DPW wide objectives which are the top seven or eight. And then we can review the rest at your pleasure and happy to answer any questions. So one of the major initiatives that we are bringing to an exciting watershed moment this year is our asset management program. The capital planning that Martha presented on and the capital reinvestment are matched peas in a pod with asset management. This the asset management is the maintenance of the vehicle once we've already purchased it and then the capital improvements are the replacement or major upgrades of the vehicles. So we are planning to go live with our asset management program this year. We have procured a software. We are in the middle of implementing and training our teams. This is a software tool that will identify every asset within our control from pumps at a sewer plant to vehicles that we have to sections of pavement that we will be able to identify to sewer main segments the maintenance schedule on those assets the age of those assets the condition of those assets and all the work we have done historically on that to give us the information do we need to rely on an asset do we need to replace it etc. So we are launching this new computerized maintenance management system this year. We are extremely excited and that will give us more up to date data that we can share with you in the public much more quickly. Second is something you heard about tonight which was close the capital funding gaps. One of the responsibilities we need to do to ensure the resiliency of our system is to be able to plan for these major upgrades and to help the community understand when we need them and to get approval for those projects. So tonight you've heard about the general fund. Our plan is to be with you in the coming months to talk about the water waste water and stormwater reinvestments. And we have been very successful together in the past five years thanks to the partnership between staff and the commission in making a generational reinvestment. But unfortunately as you heard tonight we continue to need to do that work we are not over the hump. Third is enhanced growth opportunities within the department. It is important to me that we build a sustainable organization and people are its most valuable asset. So how many of our hires for managers working form informant are from within. Are we training our teams are we giving them the support to grow in our organization. We have had a number of internal promotions lately. I'm very pleased with that. But we want to have a clear metric of understanding how many staff are getting professional development opportunities and how many internal promotions are we able to bring every year. Fourth is increased engagement of underrepresented constituencies. Thanks to public information manager Rob Goulding and many on our staff we have done a much better job at reaching out to the public and engaging the public. We also have a new equity toolkit racial equity toolkit that the racial equity inclusion belonging department has developed and so we need to implement our efforts and implement the tool kits use and evaluate each of our new programs before we launch them to make sure we understand that it is not disproportionately impacting any of vulnerable constituencies. Number five here is reduce injuries. We are a department that does a lot of construction work and field work and it's not easy work and many of the positions are exposed to significant risks. So we have successfully knocked down the number of recordable injuries that we have had every year. We about five years ago were averaging somewhere between 17 and 21 recordable injuries last year we were down around 10. Our goal this year is to be at 10 or fewer for this year. So obviously safety is got to be our top priority. Number six expand preventive maintenance program. This is a kick together with the asset management program. This is carrying out the recommendations and to do more preventative maintenance. Some preventive maintenance. We are doing a decent job at it. We have a number of pieces of infrastructure railings fences guard rails that aren't on a regular maintenance program that really need to be. And so while we have a fleet department equipment maintenance focusing on fleet there are different assets within the city that don't have the same attention and care and we need to turn our attention there. Seven provide effective coordination with private projects last division wide goal. We only have so much capacity in the city and we need to harness the energy and the talents of our property owners our residents our businesses so that we can grow together. And we are very fortunate to have a number of large private projects. Cambrian rise Cambria hotel both city place development and and many others. Even the Amtrak project which is being led by the state but we need to coordinate. We need to be an effective partner in supporting those projects. So I won't go through the rest of them but I'm happy to answer any initial questions and what we may have missed or we need to emphasize more as we're looking to FY twenty two. Thanks. Fantastic. Thank you. Bugger the lights lights. Yeah. Well I guess we have paper copies. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Let's open up to questions and dialogue here while we've got everybody. Start with Commissioner Mutano. Yeah. I want to talk about number four outreach to underrepresented communities in what ways does the department currently just reach out about projects and stuff. And sort of how is this going to change in the coming year. Great question. Yeah. So one of the first things that we've tried to do over the last I'd say two years is increase what what our capacity is to do outreach to communities that may have linguistic barriers which is arguably the maybe the largest one we face as well as some some cultural barriers to engaging with government. So one of the things we've tried to do is for really you know citywide let me back up for for events that are kind of regular recurring and that have citywide impact we've tried to take a hard look at what we have the capacity to get materials at least translated into things like snow bands things like clean sweep these are important citywide events but there's also for parking band safety impacts there are also financial impacts that residents will suffer if they don't have the information about a snow band. Now we do have through ordinance the the notification tool which is the lights but you know if you're a new resident if you're a longstanding resident and haven't paid attention to municipal government you may not know about the lights we've taken the opportunity to get all of that material translated into these five or six languages right now we're targeting another four languages for all of our translation material as we've learned a little bit more about some of the best practices and some of the more commonly spoken languages in Burlington working with a couple partners in city government but also with the Burlington school district we have learned and gotten more data about what you know what those really key nine languages in Burlington are like I said we started with five or six so snow bands clean sweep these bring a hundred and twenty five dollar tickets so while we want people knowing about the work we do we also don't want them so so there are tons of projects we would love to kind of translate material distribute material in it's really these things that we just don't want people suffering the financial penalty because of language barriers so we've taken a look at a couple things like that one of the one of the first things we did get translated were our boil water advisories and our mandatory boil water events luckily we've only had two in in recent city history they came relatively close together mostly based on a change in state law that required kind of a different threshold for notifications but once we had the first one which was regional we decided you know we can't have that happen again and not be able to communicate even more effectively with all of the residents so for for the next one which was I think it had become a citywide boil water advisory we were well positioned with those I think it's five or six languages to distribute to the community another thing we've tried to do is take a look at which projects bring a high level of interest or a high level of controversy and so for the Champlain Parkway we've had now two meetings where we decided you know we're gonna have not only are we gonna get the material translated but we're also gonna have interpreters on site and so we had for a citywide Champlain Parkway meeting in September of 2019 I think we had interpretation onsite interpretation for five or six languages that we had identified as being key to the project corridor you know the next step here is director Spencer mentioned is there's an racial equity toolkit that the racial equity inclusion and belonging department has put together that we're evaluating closely and looking at kind of how to implement that with them so that we know how to kind of evaluate what projects need to be looked at from an equity lens potentially bringing in language cultural or other things that we may need to keep in mind there's also a language access plan that was passed by the city council that was mostly spearheaded by CEDO but we're looking and working closely with them which is how we learned a little bit more about which languages we really need to strive for material translation and that's helping guide some of these next steps that we're trying to undertake with respect to what projects and what city wide kind of initiatives we have underway that need translation but I'll be candid and say that the other thing we're really trying to look candidly at is not only the translation piece which is becoming easier as we do it more we know which organizations can turn effective translations around quickly we're learning more about some tele kind of language options so that if folks call into either our water department or here we might be able to in real time work with folks who may have language barriers but there's a distribution problem and so one of the things I think we're always eager for help on is you know how do we get this material out because we can put it on Facebook we can put it on our website we can plead with the media when we do media advisories to share it as broadly as possible on their newscasts and on their websites but I think there's probably more effective strategies that we're trying to learn as we learn on how to distribute material so that's you know that's an area where maybe we have a blind spot right now and I think we want to get better luckily the division directors and director Spencer support this I mean very widely in the project managers are all incredibly supportive of working with me and vice versa to make sure we get better at this so that's kind of a snapshot of how we've tried to get better over the last you know 18 months and hopefully the next year can prove to be even more successful on that thank you commissioner Bose questions she wanted to quickly follow up with that that was a great response and I appreciate the kind of work that the department has put into this one thing I wanted to suggest is building on some of the lessons from the success of the covid vaccination the BIPOC especially with the new American community one of the things that was really effective was partnering with I think it's called the multicultural language liaisons or something like that what they actually put out was a series of videos short videos that were informative and I think that also addressed the fact that you know what I think about some of the communication that goes out from the department you're quite right there's the kind of the regular information about parking bans or street cleaning or different things that comes out sometimes it's also I think really important you know I noticed that when you sent out the little info sheet today about yesterday's I think you sent it out or maybe it was important I can't remember when the thing just went out about you must have sent it out and I was thinking like you know that was such an effective form of communication that was immediate and I remember you doing something very similar when we had the water shut off it was like it must have been in the fall of 2019 when there was the break in the south end and there's a lot of misinformation that especially on social media that goes out really quickly and so I think having like nimble ways of communicating what is actually going on because of course it's so right with people making assumptions or sort of jumping the conclusions and I think having having translated materials is great but of course within certain communities there can also be a lack of literacy even within native languages so that's something that has been effective in the past but I do think that that like timely communication is really really an important part of it so yeah just commending your efforts in that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Kennedy. Yeah I mean that was going to ask the same question that was already asked so I don't have anything at the time moment but I do appreciate that explanation because I'm also new to Burlington so yeah hopefully I'll have more once I get through the rest in further detail. All right thank you. Commissioner Overby. I just had a quick question about what's the name of the software that you're using for the asset management? They asked to manage in software we selected through a competitive process is called ViewWorks. ViewWorks? ViewWorks I think you told me that like a couple of months ago but I just wanted to make sure and is that tied into the GIS data that the city is using? So it's very very yeah very spatially oriented where things are clicked on the item it's like the way the water resources have the fire hydrant flushing where you can look and see where the hydrants are and which ones have been flushed or green which ones haven't or red that kind of thing so it's going to be it'll be very helpful for you and it would be really interesting I think ultimately for the public to be able to again get see the value of their their money so and I'll look this over with in detail. Great norms team is managing the implementation of asset management and Norm do you have anything you want to add? Yeah I would just say that asset management really is the the intellect to informing our capital planning function but it also ties back the maintenance to the capital investment so the idea is between asset management and capital investment planning you ultimately have the highest and best use of the money that's available to us and addresses the highest priorities and concerns. Obviously when it comes to capital there is significant cost to go with operating all these systems and it's not likely that we're going to see all the money that we need to have things a hundred percent in terms of capital reinvestment but if you're doing proper maintenance investment proper capital investment you're minimizing those costs and you're providing the highest value in terms of those systems being available to the public and I think that's ultimately what you want to arrive at is providing the highest value at the least cost while not overburdening the taxpayers so that's the idea is those two together kind of help us arrive at a better place than say where we didn't have all that right information we're investing a lot of money in capital but not doing enough preventive maintenance so the overall cost of ownership is significantly higher so these systems really pay for themselves over a long haul but it does take a significant investment it does take staff time and money to really pull together but I think we're on the right path and so you'll see I guess what I'd say is a brighter future in terms of Burlington in terms of the assets we own and how they're used so it's a really positive thing. I totally agree with you and one of the amazing things about it I think is that you're going to actually know you know those kind of things or those looming big costs in the future this is really I hate to refer to the condo situation in Florida but that really is a problem for when you just do things as they come along so you're going to have at any point in time you should once it's all been front loaded and I know it's going to be a lot of work for you guys but you're going to be able to at any point project those things that are going to be the big the big whack before we have to scuttle around you know three years ahead of time and try to try to borrow the money. You'll see less reactive response to capital challenges you'll see less of emergency response and more of planned or sequenced work but that doesn't mean it won't go away because there's a significant backlog of capital. But the fact of not doing it in an emergency because you really have documented the projections of when the money is going to need to come do and that's where condo associations really there's no requirement of any of those to do that so people can buy a condominium and the association will have no idea which these looming things are depending on how the act how the condo board who are volunteers to it so I really am supported that is a hidden cost. I did and I'm glad you've taken many years to get here I've seen that you're working in your way and so I'm very excited about what you're doing with that and we'll continue to want to see how excited you are about making it work and you can do demonstrations for us at some point. Well asset management system will really inform our staff in real time the condition of situations and systems themselves but also capture the intelligence that you capture when you go and manage those systems or do work on those systems so you know you have one person working on it one day and next day another person is working on it do they know have they talked to each other about what they've done do they are they making the highest and best use of their time these systems will kind of avoid kind of duplication of work or things that didn't get any care at all. So you will have the person who's doing the work can actually make that data into the put the data into the system and then everybody else is informed about it so there they'll get value from other people's input to conditions and how things are really it's just it's it's a complete innovation that's going to make a big difference. Absolutely. So thank you very much for all that work. We're excited to bring it to you in the couple months when we get this thing live. Yep. All right thank you. Vice chair on the VACA. I'm so excited about this asset asset management tool. I really think it's going to be fantastic. Do you have a sense you know I know anytime you start a new technology their hiccups and bumps do you have a sense of when you will be able to like really come back to us or to the public and say this is the value of this tool where we're seeing you know able to capture not just the data but where we were saving you know some money. So there's cost savings but then there is the delivery of the services that the public expects and needs that is that's value and it can't you can't put a dollar value on building that's in service or water line that's in service that didn't fail but certainly there is save cost savings can we put a exact figure on it I don't know but there's value and I think it's it's also using that lexicon how do we explain the value if we get there's not a monetary. Well we're we're trying to put our head around I guess kicking this off and gathering the information and kind of setting the table. I'm six months to do all that metrics but without question those metrics are important to selling the idea understanding the value of that but also just communicating to the public where is their money going what does it what's it done for them and is this is in their opinion the highest and best use of the funds that we have or is there a different set of priorities that want people want us to consider part of it is they just got to have these systems for them to know and understand the decisions they're making when it comes to you know master planning or any of these things what it what goes what costs go with those decisions are you prepared to accept those costs. So it's just more information for people to really soundly make best choices and decisions based on what their values and interests are. Well and then back to the priorities and maybe even back further to Martha's presentation in looking at the deferred maintenance. So with this system how and who helps set the priorities will this help at least maybe identify on some level then what are the priorities that are starting to rise to the surface at least by a monetary value or by this is deferred maintenance is it going to have that capacity. And then where's the human interface with I don't know is it committee or cross section cross division whatever. Well I'd say it's community decisions there's your elected officials the mayor there's council there's the commissions there's members of the public to provide feedback to staff about what their needs and interests are staff and their professional opinions on how to take care of these systems what recommendations they may have so it all feeds into those decisions all those elements feed in those decisions so not one person is making these decisions it's it's the community as a whole with different levels of focus or interest. Right I guess I was getting more to the kind of granular piece of that priority list like yeah so you know how are we moving you know staff would put together assemble kind of I guess a system or a matrix of decision-making you know like when we look at capitol committee we're looking at you know does it avoid costs does it respond to protecting against liability does it use other people's money leverage other money to save costs to the city does it respond to communities of at risk for instance sidewalk system we're looking for a higher priority for senior housing walking to school those sort of things and one of the kind of overlays to the sidewalk system is looking at are we inadvertently missing on disadvantaged communities whether it be a BIPOC community or people of financial disadvantage you know are we are we inadvertently not serving them well so there's a lot of things that that we're trying to do as staff to create policies that you as a commission or any other governing body within the city can accept in appreciating support so I think it does start with staff and how those things are structured and organized we're gonna tell you how many water breaks we've had year after year and not have it take us a couple hours of manual staff time right we're gonna be able to trend the pavement condition index over years and see how are we meeting our 72 pavement condition index ranking you know all that data is really going to help democratize and make transparent you know why we're making the decisions we're making collectively to better our city right thanks great thank you I was gonna touch on the same point but I'm picturing like I don't know the status of the BTV stat initiative is but if that comes up like can you put this story together and it sounds like you're you're thinking along those lines as well let's see the conversation at the last department meeting by the mayor and people are excited to get back into that deeper dive into that yeah and we're working in a direction where we can quantify our emergency costs going down and our productive investments going out and we'll be that long effort of manual time we need a system that's automated that gives us real time data and not have us chasing our tail for data that by the time we generate it it's already moved and changed yeah so I love it and too much time doing the manual counts now and it's not an efficient use of our staff time agreed Mr. Montana so will will that data portal be available to the public as well to analyze and even look at the nitty gritty say pavement conditions on a given street and then correlate it to whatever is all the real conclusions and ask questions yeah some some data will be publicly accessible other data sets public safety sensitivities you know utilities that can't be can't be readily available to the public that put put the public health and safety at risk right so your security issues with some of that information yeah but yes there are large data sets that we do want to be publicly accessible thank you all do we have any members of the public interested speaking all right the parting thoughts from the commission all right seeing none there's no action necessary on this item this time I will close out gen item seven and move forward to item eight the minutes of the June meeting a note on that is that those that are eligible to vote in the minutes are limited to commissioners at that time that were present at the meeting believe even though some of our new commissioners may have been participants in paying attention in that meeting we are in need of a quorum of voters from commissioners that were present commissioner bar is absent us leaving I believe four of us that we're at that meeting and eligible to vote on this so we could entertain a vote yeah is there I would welcome a motion I'll make a motion to approve the minutes from the June 16th meeting motion from from all right we have a motion from vice chair on Ivaco in a second from commissioner Bose thank you very much is there any discussion around that motion all right we will go to a vote then commissioner Bose you commissioner over be I voice chair on Ivaco I I for myself the June minutes have passed four to zero thank you all moving forward to item nine in the agenda the director's report great thank you apologies for it being omitted from the packet this month I did print out copies and put them in front of you let me hit some key points here first a very sad and tragic note that our lead for our recycling program Marcus Westcott passed away unexpectedly about 10 days ago and he was a remarkable man who got more compliments than you think would think would ever be possible for running what is a collection program his relationships with his customers as he called them was very powerful and there have been I think about 14 or so unsolicited memories shared on front porch forum over the last couple of days and we are going to set up do a couple of things in his in his memory one is we are going to dedicate our new recycling truck to him so that his legacy can live on through our recycling program in his son who works for us on a temporary seasonal basis we are collecting money for his ongoing educational advancement and so anybody who's interested in contributing can provide a donation through to customer service here and we want to be supporting his son and his future career growth. So very sad event and don't know I think that the legacy that he left is that in his team the level of support and care and attention to their work and their customer facing approach will far outlive him but a real loss for all of us youth on boards was an item that we had talked about adding to this agenda. I didn't add it to the agenda as a specific item but I'm happy to discuss. It has been put on the city's website through August 27th for youth to apply for this commission as well as other commissions. We did hear from the city attorney that this would be a non voting seat for the public works commission based on city ordinance and charter and that any youth member who's interested in serving can contact Lori Olberg in the clerk treasurer's office. August meeting we like to take off in August usually. We have met in August before where there's been pressing business. This month this year I believe there will be pressing business. One item will be the timely vote on the sustainable infrastructure plan as the plan is to go to council for their final vote before your September meeting. So the August meeting would be the only time you could weigh in prior to that. And second related to the recent city place and 100 bank street settlement that the city was a partner in helping broker. One of the key items of that settlement is a parking agreement that the city would provide to 100 bank for parking in the Lake View and College garage and we would need that approval in August as well. So we should discuss at the end of this whether that August 18th day works for a quorum of the count of the commission. Raleigh Art Enterprise Project. We've got continued good news here. We're going out within a week for the RFQ a request for qualifications to get our design consultant on board. Congressman Welch has tentatively secured two million dollars of funding in the transportation bill. Whether that continues through the House and Senate process remains to be seen but great to have our federal and state partners working to support us. Thanks to your review on the water rates. The council approved that. And as of July one our new water rates are in place with the with the affordability programs and the rebates that you all recommended approving. The Shelburne Street roundabout I'm pleased to report is going to construction and should be under construction by next week. Pre construction mobilization activities are actually underway now around the site. This will be a two year project requesting a bunch of patients. But this is a good lead in that part of what staff is looking at right now is the south end is going to be the center of multiple large transportation projects for the foreseeable future. From the Amtrak station from Shelburne Street roundabout to class one repaving of pretty much all the class one's streets next year to the Champlain Parkway to the Raylard Enterprise project to the main streets great streets project. It is going to be a very difficult period. So what we are working on is a phasing plan for all of these projects looking out seven or eight years to try to figure out the best way to align all these projects to minimize impact. We'll be wanting to meet with you in the next month or two to kind of go over that approach. We'll be talking to council as well to to minimize the impacts especially as the communities recovering from COVID. So stay tuned for that. Do I miss anything? One item Chapin mentioned this within our is performance and goals and objectives is the idea of promoting staff within the department. We fortunately had a promotion within the department where we had Corey Mims who was a public works engineer has been promoted to senior public works engineer filling that position that formerly held by Susan Molzant. So we're happy to have him filling that role. We'll be back filling his position as public works engineer and likely probably another internal candidate moving up from an associate position to potentially this public works engineer position depending on how it plays out. But we're happy to have the organization structure we have to allow people these opportunities and to be deeply invested in what we do. As you saw in Chapin's communication, Corey's hitting the road running. He's got rail yard enterprise assigned to him. He has the Parkway assigned to him. And he also has passenger rail assigned to him and both he and I are working closely together to transition him into that role that Susan formally filled. So obviously Susan's shoes are very big shoes to fill, but I think Corey would do an excellent job and we're happy to have him serving that responsibility. So great. Thank you, City Engineer Baldwin. I will just close by saying that we had a pretty major storm last night. Our wastewater plants, which had received a significant capital upgrade thanks to the voters support in 2018 for the Clean Water Resiliency Plan. Our wastewater plants performed very well last night despite main plant treating over 10 million gallons, a mix of wastewater and storm water. We did have three combined sewer overflows. We have five combined sewer overflow points within the system. And I'm happy to talk to commissioners if you're interested about the detail of the historic development of Burlington and how wastewater and storm water were combined in the same collection system for over 100 years and how that legacy today is something that we are working to improve, to better steward the lake and other waterways. But we have succeeded together to reduce both the number of CSO points as well as the frequency that they go off. And that is a collective work that we have done together, but we are not done, as last night showed. We have more work to do and we look forward to that ongoing partnership with you in the months ahead. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions, and maybe now would be a good time to check in on the August 18th date and whether that works for a quorum of the commission. Thank you. August 18th works on my ends. One conflict I've heard of because you're a candidate. What do others present feel on the 18th? Is that a viable option if we need it? Works for me. I'm going to be out of towns, but I would try to call in if I could do that. That wasn't one of your travel days, like you think you could follow. I won't be on a travel day. I should not be on a travel day. I don't know that for sure, waiting for the for sure, getting across the Canadian border. So I should be in Canada. Okay. Sure. Commissioner, works for me. Commissioner Bose, do you have a sense of your potential availability, August 18? As long as I can get back from Canada, then I should. I get a 20% chance I can. So yeah, no, I should be fine. Okay. Great. Thank you commissioners for that indulgence in August. We'll make sure to be prepared and make it as short as possible. Sounds great. Thank you. With that, we'll go to commissioner communications. Welcome. Just by way of introduction, there's sort of open time to comment on what's on your mind, if anything, or to response, to follow up on the director's report or other items. That said, let's start with commissioner Overby. I just wanted to make one reminder for the people that are interested in the bike path on North Winooski and the process they're going through on the parking management planning. Tomorrow they're going to have a second meeting about the parking management plan because one of the challenges is the parking along that neighborhood and that stretch of North Winooski. There's quite a concern about parking. So if anybody's interested, it is going to be tomorrow night at the conference room downstairs in City Hall. You can actually call in on the website as well to do it, so you have a multiple ways of doing it. But it's going to be tomorrow the 22nd of July at 6 o'clock, 6 to 8. And the website, if you want to get that information, is burlingtonft.gov slash dpw slash winav improvements. And all the documents are available there. I just know I've had people ask me about what that was. And so I think there is interest, particularly for people that live in that neighborhood and are wanting to see the bikes lanes go in. But we need to deal with the way that we're people going to park in the public parking and the private parking. So I just wanted people to know about that. Thank you. Thank you for reminding us of that and getting that word out. Commissioner Kennedy. I don't have anything to add. Commissioner Bose. Nothing for me. Thanks. All right. Commissioner Mutantat. I'm good. Thank you. All right. Vice Chair O'Neill-Vanco. Yeah, just a couple of things. Not to totally geek out, but last night at dinnertime during the storm, the topic of our dinnertime conversation with my kids. And my son's two teenage friends over for dinner was, was there going to be an overflow? And what happens and why? We have combined wastewater sewer service in parts of Burlington. So you at least have three male teenagers who are kind of fascinated by this and then horrified that people actually walk in the water when they're floods. So anyway, we geek out in our family. But really, on a more serious note, I was really impressed that there were only three. I mean, the rain was unbelievable. So I felt like we really saw, while there were some flaws, we really saw the kind of result of the investment and our improvements. So hugs to Megan. This is great. Two minor things. One, just in response to an email from a resident about painting of Sharrows, I think the resident included all of us. And I don't know what the kind of what the timeline is for doing the painting of the Sharrows. I've seen them in the spring. Maybe it comes later. I don't know. But their concern was that that painting comes too late into the biking season. I don't know if we can try to address that. I told them to do C-click fix. But I think for future planning, if there's a way that we can get some of that paint on the ground earlier in the season, that would be great. So to a fair point, we'll get you updates on that. We have gotten our contract with our vendor for FY 22, starting July 1. So we should have those being refreshed imminently, I will confirm. And then one other thing from another resident. And this is, I just feel really sensitive to everybody during the pandemic. I feel like we're all fragile and we just need to be kind to one another. This was a resident who has resident-only parking on Mansfield Ave. And contractors came to the house and he moved his cars to the street. But in the pandemic did not renew the resident parking stickers and got a ticket and was negotiating. The ticket got waived. But he felt that the tone of the form letter during the pandemic could have been different, could have been a little bit more not, it's your responsibility. It is, I think he recognizes that. But that no one was going downtown. This resident is over 60, et cetera, et cetera. I know we do our best with customer service. And maybe this is just a one-time moment. But I think just recognizing the sensitivity of as we emerge from COVID and are emerging, it's a process, right? That some of our communications may need to be a little bit more nuanced or understand that some of the panic comes out is from the past 16 months. So that's all that's all I need to communicate. First statement, we have now taken over parking enforcement and for new commissioners you may not know from the police department is part of the realignment of police services. So while we had historically set up the regulations and installed the signage, the actual enforcement happened with another department. Now that is part of our department and division director, Jeff Padgett, who's not here tonight, is now overseeing the whole soup to nuts regulation of our parking enforcement. So to that end, I will follow up with Jeff, see what we can do. He is trying to work with the attorneys and the other partners within the city to give us that flexibility to be more customer-centered. A lot of our communication is somewhat bureaucratic because it follows ordinance and it needs to be fairly delivered to all members of our community so that we are not treating anybody preferentially. That said, we really do want to be running a program that is understandable and customer facing. Yeah, I mean, I think getting a letter from the city attorney about your parking makes you feel like it's just a parking vehicle. So again, I think that the moment in time and as we transition, what we can do better, we can do better. OK, so noted. Thanks. Thank you. All right. Govindas, thank you. I had a question last time on the status of the detour on Battery Street. That's looking great with the cones there. Thank you. Another sort of similar traffic calming opportunity, if you will, I think it's just on Colchester Avenue. And I'm going to follow up with our planning team and just see what the status is. But I was going downhill towards the city of Manuski recently, turned right on Chase Street. And I sort of knew to watch out for the faded paint ball bouts there and probably the car behind me just hugs the curb and just like there's nothing there if there was ever an opportunity. I know that we have an outstanding request to look into the status of replacement bollards on South Union. There will be a quick build materials going in at that intersection this year. And we'll get a status update. That all sounds great. Yeah, nothing further on my hand, so I will close out to the commissioner communications and go to the last item on our agenda, adjournment and next meeting dates, which go ahead and call it August 18th. Let's do it. Attain a motion to that effect. I'll make a motion to adjourn the meeting with the next meeting date set at August 18th. All right. Thank you for that motion. I'll second. All right. Thank you. We have a motion from Vice Chair Leneva-Vanco, a second from Commissioner Mutanu. Is there any discussion around that motion? I have a comment that's not about before the adjournment. I meant to mention I just want to express an appreciation for the camera person from Community TV, CCTV, Charlie Giannoni, who's here and has and there's been challenges with going from the web-only Zoom system to having Zoom and a live camera and the technology to be able to do that. And I just want to commend him, you, Charlie, for doing that work and how that is so important for the public to be able to see these meetings and their willingness to deal with all the challenges of the new technologies of now not only doing the Zoom and the camera and all of our microphones. So I just really wanted to mention that we're back getting to a hybrid situation, which is far more challenging than it was even though it was very challenging before. So thank you so much for that work. There's definitely a team effort. There's about eight people at CCTV working on it. And it's an ongoing situation. So things are going to change and modify over time. But thank you for saying that. Very important that the public has the ability to watch these meetings. And I appreciate your work and everybody's work at CCTV. So now we can vote on it. All right. So we have a motion to adjourn that has been seconded. Is there any discussion around that motion? All right. I'll call roll for it. Make sure we got everybody. Commissioner Bose. Peace out through the West Coast. All right. Thank you. Commissioner Muntanu. Yes. Vice Chair O'Neill-Vanco. Aye. Commissioner Overby. Aye. Commissioner Kennedy. Aye. Aye for myself. We are adjourned. Thank you all. Good evening. Two hours. Well done.