 28th, 2019, are you okay? Sorry. So being six o'clock on Monday, January 28th, 2019, we'll call to order the regular Winooski City Council meeting and we'll begin our call to order with asking everybody to join us for the Pledge of Allegiance led by Tiffany Merritt and Nicole Micks. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. Okay, first up tonight is agenda review. This is an opportunity for council to make an adjustments to the tonight's agenda. I think we've got it plotted out, including a public hearing at 6.15, which we'll try to hit. Any questions, concerns regarding the agenda from council? So seeing and hearing none, we'll move on to public comment. Public comment's an opportunity for members of the public to address the city council on anything that's not on tonight's agenda. You'll find an agenda on the back, in case you're curious as to what's on there. We also really appreciate everybody who attends tonight, taking the time to sign in so that we know who attended the meeting and if you spell your name correctly in the minutes, it's always nice. So this is an opportunity to speak about anything that's not on tonight's agenda. Yes, ma'am. Yeah, that'd be great. If you don't mind sharing your name. Yeah, hi. I'm Elaine Ezrens, and I'm the new communications manager and develop manager for a Winooski partnership for prevention. I just kind of want to stop by and introduce myself as a community partner. We're always looking to provide input with a little bit of city planning and be a partner on providing information about prevention or substance abuse or really any data around marijuana, alcohol, tobacco, prescription drugs, that kind of thing. And in the coming months with me coming on, part of what my job is, is to hopefully implement in the town a policy around point of sale advertising because research shows that frequent exposure to product placement in ads for tobacco and convenience stores is a stronger predictor of use experimentation than what peers think or do. So we're hoping to work with you guys in the future and just some discussions and see if we can move forward on something like that. Because according to our 2018 assessment report, which if you guys want to copy or welcome to read, it's finalized in June. Almost 50% of all Winooski students reported seeing ads for cigarettes or other tobacco products. Most of the time we're always. And so, I mean, one of our goals is just to lower this percentage, the exposure to kids. And the other thing I wanted to do was plug our community dinners. We just had one, but our next one is coming up on February 20th. And then we do have one in March, which we just secured an improv group for. So, yeah, I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to be a resource there as well. So feel free to reach out and hopefully we'll be more on the community, at events, tabling and that kind of thing. So, that's it. Well, welcome. Congratulations. So it's a relatively new position. And it's a wonderful organization. It's great to see the sort of reclassification of what the organization is doing from the Winooski community for a safe, peaceful community. Coalition for a safe, peaceful community for this iteration. The other thing I'll just note is most of this body will not be here, or at least half of it won't be here the next after March, March the 6th. So what I would probably really highly recommend is that you reach out through our city manager or other staff team members and maybe look at setting up a presentation to go through what the partnership does for the new city council. And put those issues and things that you're interested on their radar because it'll certainly be an opportunity to get your message out but also sort of frame that relationship to them as well. Yeah, we would love that. And especially around that policy that we're kind of hoping to implement, have a maybe more formal presentation would be great. It'd be great. Great. Thanks for joining us tonight. Thanks for the public comment, we appreciate it. Any other items from public comment this evening? Yes, sir. All right. So I don't want to preempt a common circumstance here. I'm going to a little bit slide that across the table for you. Good sir. Thank you. I'm going to ask city staff that are here to stand up. I got asked to say a few words on their behalf to you on your final evening here. I guess I'll start by saying you throughout the time I've seen you at this table have always been phenomenal about telling us whatever job we're doing. So it's our turn to turn the table and say it back. You have been inspirationally committed to and passionate about this community. I can say that very firsthand, having spent 10 quality months working very closely with you here during the Interim City Manager phase, but throughout my time here in the city. And we are all going to miss you quite a lot. I know you're not going far away and you'll find some way to twist your arm back and soon enough. But the ways that you've been out as a champion for progress in this community, supportive of the work that we're all doing here and I think just leading this collective charity way forward for the city has been fantastic to see. You are leaving. I think that everybody here knows some huge shoes to fill. But I just think we all wanted to take a chance. It's hard to write everything down in three sentences and a little card because there's so much space in there. But I think just wanted to take a chance in public here to say thank you to you for your time with the city and how much we really appreciate all you've done. Certainly for the city as a whole, that's personally for us as staff too. Can't say enough about it. So thank you. Thank you very, very much. I really appreciate that. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I was just going to say things at the end, but maybe I'll just answer them. 2013, the year the word selfie made it into the dictionary. Candy Crush was created. Donald Trump was overseeing a pageant in Moscow. What was going on in 2013? The first city meeting I attended as a counselor, we dealt with parking and we dealt with the results of a TIF audit. And there's been a lot of time a lot of time passed since then. And I want to look at you guys and say, I am so freaking proud of all that you got done and all that we got done together. There's a lot of expectations when somebody comes into an elected position in terms of what they think that they're going to accomplish and the things that they set out for themselves as goals. And usually it's coming from a really good place. It's coming from a place where you feel positively like you can contribute and make a change as an individual as part of a larger cohort. Hopefully people take that attitude towards it. But when you really get in here and start digging into the work, you recognize I think a couple things that I know smacked me really clearly. The first is it's never about your vision and your dream and the things that you want to accomplish. It's about listening and trying to fulfill the dreams of other people and trying to support them and having the opportunity to live in a community that reflects what they want. And what's so beautiful and so cool about this level of government is that we can actually do that in a lot of ways. We can actually take what people want to see in their community and turn it into a reality in ways that federal policy makers, state policy makers, quite frankly, just can't. And that's really empowering. And we do it without politics in a lot of cases and we do it without, you know, I think with a real sacrifice of personal agendas up here. The second thing that becomes really clear though is that you don't get anything done by yourself. It takes the other four really passionate volunteers up here giving their time and effort and their willingness to again, sacrifice their own personal agendas to make a functioning group that makes good decisions in a way that a community feels like they have confidence in. But at the end of the day, we don't do anything without you guys. You do all the work and you make all those things happen and you bring them to fruition. I can't say enough for the professionalism and the soft touches you guys use with very difficult, challenging issues from F-35s to bacon signs to really difficult things like a drowning or a shooting in town that not only are hard things and challenging things to deal with, but are things that personally affect you and hurt you. And at each turn, you guys have handled them in a way that has helped our community not just get through them and bear through them, but come back closer, stronger and more together. And I'm excited about the next chapter in life, but I can say without a flinch that the last six years I've spent working with you all to try to make this community as good as we can has been the greatest honor of my entire life. I appreciate you very much and I love all of you. Thank you. Okay. Any other public comment? Any other public comment this evening? Okay, so it's... Yes, sir. I just wanna, you've done a wonderful job as a counselor and as mayor for the past few years and it was an honor to serve with you up there and this city has been lucky to have you. I'd be remiss if I didn't say that. Thank you. Sarah Robinson, John Little, Sally Tipson, Brian Corgan, Brian Sweeney, Christina Lott, Eric Covey, Hal Colston, Nicole Mace, all really awesome public service, and Michael Bryant, golly. To serve alongside and thank you, Robert. Thanks for all the time and energy. Again, wouldn't have done all of it without all of you all in all of your work. So thank you. Okay. Okay. Anyone else? No more nice comments, please. Thank you all very much. I appreciate that. I'll look on this later. The water warps really start. Okay, next up is a Consigino. We have one item on tonight's Consigino. We have the city council minutes from January the 22nd, 2019. Any questions or concerns from council in regards to the Consigino? So seeing and hearing none, I'd entertain a motion for approval of the Consigino as presented. So we'll second. Motion by Eric, second by Hal. Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing none, I'll also favorably say aye. Aye. And those opposed, motion carries. City update. All right, I'm gonna try. So first I want to acknowledge that April and Ben are here from North End Studios. I shared with you over the weekend an article that was in seven days about them coming into the O'Brien Community Center and we're extraordinarily excited for the potential partnership with them. We do have a draft letter of intent with them and we'll be bringing that to you on February 2nd but if there's anything else you wanted to share I want to give that opportunity as well. We just want to be here in case there are any questions if anybody wanted to ask us anything in advance of next week. We're also very excited about possibilities where maybe an article came in out a little bit sooner than we all would have liked but we can't control the press really. So we just kept reiterating to them that there was no agreement yet and that we were very much hoping that it will work out and I hope we can make that start happening next week. We've also got a lot of very positive comments from local residents. Things they, it's like jobs they wanted to give us rather. I guess our reputation precedes us and so they're expecting us to pull off miracles like yesterday. But we have heard from a number of organizations and individuals in Maliske anxious to get started on the project. I need to collaborate and do things that I've been hoping to do for a while. That's great. Well thank you very much for being here. A few other general city updates. Last week I shared with you that IXP, the consultant hired as part of the regional dispatch effort was here in the city or here in the county and was meeting with dispatchers. I'm disappointed to announce that that meeting went actually fairly poorly and there was quite a bit of anxiety on the part of our public safety professionals across the art communities around the presentation. So this morning the board met in a special meeting and unanimously approved a motion to request that IXP swap out the lead on the project and appoint a new lead and bring forward a timeline at another special meeting called for February 12th to go over the next steps. So I think we have a good plan. We heard from the chiefs were both there with me this morning and we heard from several dispatchers across our communities, heard some good feedback and some good suggestions on how we could move forward. So I think we have a better, clearer path forward but it is a bit of a change to the IXP contract. We're not changing the contractor but we're changing the project lead. Quick update from the city clerk on the petitions we received to date. Just a reminder for the public but the petitions are due by 4.30 this Friday. So for mayor we've received petitions from Christine Law and Eric Cubby. For the two year council term we've received a petition from Amy Lafayette. For the two year school trustee term we've received a petition from Mac McNeil and for the three year school trustee term we've received a petition from Margaret Bass. So that's where we currently are and what that is public knowledge. Last week we also as a project review committee which is our internal staff group that reviews building projects proposed for the gateway districts under form-based code reviewed a development proposed for 401 Main Street which is the property right in front of the school district at former gas station. So the project does conform with form-based code but there are so it was conditionally approved upon conditions of a complete traffic study. There are as you can imagine with the Norman Street and that location and the school exits there are some pretty significant concerns about traffic patterns. They're also proposing a drive through Duncan's shop so it adds a layer of complexity to that traffic. So public works and the PRC will be reviewing that traffic plan as it's presented by the developer. Just a reminder that the East Island scoping study the East Island project that is looking through the Chinning County Public Regional Planning Commission through our UPWP project looking at potential pedestrian and traffic improvements along East Island Street. The first public local concerns meeting will be held on February 14th here and it'll be a joint meeting of the Planning Commission and the Public Works Commission. We have received three Wienewski small business loan applications which is great our first three to come through. So we are meeting early in February as a loan committee and then hope to bring you recommendations at the second meeting in February. And then finally just a few really fun community services programs updates. Registration for February vacation thrive February vacation camp is open through the website. We have a move play connect play group for our young neighbors starting on February 22nd. We'll be every Friday at 9 30 throughout the rest of this winter and spring. We have an adult public speaking class with Peter Burns starting on February 28th for five Thursdays. And then a ukulele class starting in April. So more information on all of those things can be found on the city's website. Thank you. That's all. Thank you. Okay, council reports. This director's board? Sure. Last Wednesday I got sworn in to the legislature and I can see drinking from a fire hose for a while. Lots to learn. Very fortunate to be assigned to the government operations committee. So some of the issues that may be coming from here to Montpelier certainly will be at the table and looking forward to that. And looking forward to meet with Jesse and her team to understand the priorities of our community and I can best represent in Montpelier. Congratulations, Hal. I know you're gonna be tremendously community as you already are. Thank you. But know that you'll do an awesome job there on behalf of the people at New Ski. So congratulations and you're very fortunate. Thank you. Great. So there was speaking of partnership for prevention, they held a great community dinner the other night where a number of community members and people interested in serving the community showed up. So which are in the room tonight. So that was a great opportunity and a great event for the community and to hear from people who are willing to step up and volunteer their time in interest of serving our city. The downtown Winooski does still have the job position opening for hiring their executive director. It's located on their website. If you are interested or know any for the folks watching at home, anybody who's interested in applying, other websites downtownwinooski.org and they are still accepting applications right now. Great. Thank you. I think the biggest update, I mean I'll leave more for Nicole and that Jesse Nicole and I've tried to stay coordinated on next steps. Issued a school newsletter and in the world of Winooski that kind of started getting the ball rolling on budget messaging and ballot items for folks. So there's at least a couple pieces out there for that, but then we're also transitioning over to the soon to be by the end of the evening Mayor Mace. Yeah, so we, Jesse and I are met with Seth to talk about messaging but are finalizing our budget presentation. We are scheduled to present in a variety of different venues in the month of February. I believe Jesse distributed the schedule last time, but there's a lot of moving pieces to this budget so it's important that we present it with clarity and connect the dots for folks in terms of where we've been and where we're going. So happy to spend my last month serving the city, conveying that message and building support for the budget that I believe we're poised to pass tonight. Great. Thank you all. Okay, next up is regular items. I'm just gonna be pointed and asked, is there anybody specifically here for the 615 hearing regarding the budget items and ballot items? Cause I know we have folks here for the first two items tonight. So as long as we hold that after 615, we're fine and within statute. So I'm inclined to let us just go ahead and work through the agenda and order. So first up, we will have discussion on the goal update for the FY19 policy priorities for strategy and that's around housing. Oh, good evening. So I have included in your packet the regular memo for the housing updates and I have brought with me tonight a couple of members of the housing commission because I thought there would be a lot of interest in where the housing commission is and specific questions about what we've been doing for the last few months. So I have with me Jessica Bridge and Robert Moulard from the housing commission and I believe what I'm gonna do is focus on that section supporting the housing commission for tonight but if you have questions on any piece of the memo, please feel free to ask. So I'm gonna turn it over to Jessica, I think, on what we've been doing recently. Okay, so hi, my name is Jessica Bridge. I'm on the housing commission. I'm also going to deliver a baby inside of six weeks. And so please excuse any mental fog and exhaustion. Just full disclosure. Okay, so if you will focus on the first table under the heading support the housing commission and planning commission to conduct parcel data analysis to understand the baseline of where our median rents are as compared to the Burlington Housing Authority and HUD fair market rents. You'll see that, so we had 70% of reporting back so more accurate than even the last time that I think we met with you, is that? Yeah, that's correct. It's time span. It's slightly more accurate now. And so our median rents are actually below those of the BHA and the HUD fair market rents as reported, which is great and just speaks to the fact that we are doing a pretty great job of supporting the housing needs that have been identified in the city of Onuski. I think that, do you want to stop and chat there at all? Questions on that particular bullet item? I'll just say like yay Onuski on that. I just, I think that's fantastic. I just want to say so the 70% of total rental units the response rate is that, does this incorporate, I think it's no surprise that we have a large percentage of affordable housing. That's not, so I think where the area of interest is, at least I'm not going to speak for others, but for me is when we start to look at the newer developments, so are the newer developments included in the 70% response rate? So the river run and those are off. Yeah, they are. Okay, great. When we get down to the lower chart, that raises other questions. So moving on to the lower chart. So we set a target rate, the housing commission set a target rate of 15% of new rental units being affordable to low income households. And so there are the four currently permitted rental housing developments listed. Cassavan Overlook, which is primarily affordable, which I know that you're all familiar with. And then the others listed 243 East Allen, 401 Main, and then the Wagner Purcell. I guess one thing that I would like to note is that these are currently permitted, though I'm not sure that each of them will ultimately be built, at least in their current iteration. So overall, and I think your concern, Nicole, is that it seems to be some are very affordable or have a high percentage of affordable units and others have none. We are hitting the target of 21% overall, or rather surpassing the target that we said of 15%. So this does come in at 21% again of what is currently permitted. So it's not perfect. Right. Based upon, I think, what your point is and what you're trying to address. Right, and I think it's, again, we should absolutely be celebrating the arrival of Cassavan Overlook as an incredible, step forward in terms of our interest in new development being affordable. And we know that those low-income housing tax credits are not available on an annual basis. So it's like, so I'm just interested and I think this body needs to track and hopefully the Housing Commission needs to track in the absence of a major project like that that draws down substantial tax credits and other, you know, whether funding works, what's the likelihood of other development projects moving forward with some percentage being low-income? I think it's a, like, that's a huge project. It's a great project. What's the Waggoner parcel? Those are the four parcels next to each other by CCV on East Allen Street. So currently it's for sale as a permitted project. So I think that's what Jessica was referring to specifically when she was saying, I'm not sure when that's what's going to happen. Sure. So just to, I think, address your point, Nicole, the margins are slim and I think, you know, we've spent a lot of time trying to bring in expert opinions and, you know, the people that we've certainly consulted with repeatedly are listed on the next page of the memo, many of which are developers, some of which focus exclusively on affordable housing, such as Michael Monty and the Champlain Housing Trust. And so the margins are slim and it certainly makes smaller projects less feasible than larger projects which is what led us to the conclusion that a housing trust fund is probably the next best partial solution coupled with the inclusionary zoning and part of that parking waivers, density bonuses, and then awaited to fund the housing trust fund, which would be a fee in lieu. So more reasonable fees in lieu for smaller projects such that the housing trust funds can remain robust. It's listed in your packet, but it's currently $348,000 in that account. So I think that rather a hard and fast requirement, a hard and fast requirement, discouraging development that doesn't have an affordable component, I think that we're giving a pathway towards both being supportive of developers and also of continued low-income housing, new low-income housing in Williams County. So is it fair to say that the work along around the inclusionary zoning policy is around striking the balance between not shutting down development altogether, but ensuring that there is an appropriate level of the in lieu so that we can build up the trust fund? Yes. I think an important thing to take out of this first page, the existing situation and some of these permitted is there's a sense that we're way behind the eight ball on housing, which doesn't play out when you look at the data. We wanna be ahead of a crisis of a problematic situation and we are and so we shouldn't be panicking. We should be taking the time to work on getting the housing trust fund and the inclusionary zoning and everything that we're working on right. That's what I would encourage people to take from the data as it is. We don't wanna have a crisis situation or a problem situation, but we're not there yet, we're ahead of it. We are. Yes. I'm guessing that because you're pretty early on in figuring out those exact levers within inclusionary zoning to make sure that it's a right fit solution, we might not have what that fee and loo of may be, but it'd be interesting as we start to drill into those numbers to think about what that number would look like if we were to look back at these, you know, that grid of developments that you list and the ones that don't include affordable units, what that might have meant for payment into the housing trust fund and how that number compares to the incentives provided outside of what we have control over as a municipality for a cast event overlook and if they're comparable. Yeah, we are early in the process. We have been through four versions of inclusionary zoning after we had the meeting with Nate Degess who allowed us to run the numbers on his project. It once again was in flux a little. We had been talking about $50,000 per unit. The calculator that we use that was recommended by Michael Monty showed that that could be a potential deal breaker. So still in flux, but ultimately we had written the ordinance so that what will happen is the housing commission will come to city council with a recommendation and it will be set by city council. Not on a case by case basis. No, on a one time, you know. So you'll be involved in that final decision about what that amount will be. Robert, I appreciate your point and I agree we're not in a crisis point, but there is a level of urgency in terms of, you know, we are seeing pretty big projects becoming permitted and I, you know, suspect, although, you know, don't know for sure, but once the budget is approved and we move forward with construction on Main Street, we might start to see other parcels move and so that's why it's important to me to get this cart, you know, underway and so I appreciate the due diligence. I appreciate the interest in getting it right and I think at some point we have to put something in place and if we mess, you know, if it's not perfect, it can be evaluated and tweaked over time, so appreciate the informing the approach and informing the process and having the policy in place that reflects the competing interests and I am personally, you know, look forward to continuing to keep an eye on the situation and participate, however I can, even if it's not in these seats to support continued progress. I agree, I have, it is really nice to see the forward momentum that you all are pushing and working to get us to a place where we can implement a policy, but do share, you know, if we were to take out Casablan overlook from the grid of currently permitted developments, then we'd be, you know, two for a hundred, two units, two hundred non-units-ish, those numbers aren't exact, which would bring us way, way under-target. So I think that really does demonstrate the clear need. This is Adam, I choose my words a little carefully because I'm now very directly involved in this process and I get my work and I can promise you that I'll be here to make comments when policies do come forward, but just having been with the Housing Commission during these conversations, discussion and to reflect on some of the input, I think that is really valuable that they received from, for example, on the IZ conversation is to a person, if you ask anybody involved in affordable housing development, what's the number one barrier? It's always gonna come back as big money and it's always, always always gonna be money related to yes, just getting equity through something like tax credits. It's also gonna be barriers like infrastructure as a huge, huge deal in everything that we do and the rise of costs. And then I just wanna put on everybody's map is this year there's gonna be a cost study done in the state of Vermont to scandalize the difference between affordable housing development and affordable housing versus market rate development and if there are certain cost-driving factors, historically it's come back as being lack of equity products, too many funding sources associated with a transaction as they increase the number of costs and infrastructure expenses. But it's always gonna come back to the limited number of financial tools available. It's always gonna come back there and I hope that that ends up being a real focus on how we do that because eventually at some point this is gonna have to make a commitment if we really wanna fill those gaps, we can have all the policies saying do this or don't do this that we want in the end that infusion of resources is the thing that really changes the game. And I just wanna call out and I'm not going off of my agencies, we wrote a very strongly worded letter on reflecting it. What just happened in South Burlington is that's not something that should happen here in terms of a freeze on voting. That has long range reaching effects and impacts. The cost of construction goes up constantly and opportunity cost is a very real thing. And they're trying to manage their community in the way that they can and totally respect that. It's a complicated conversation but I hope that our community can preempt something like that being the reaction that we have with good policy. So thanks for your work to move that forward. Just interesting, I don't know to maybe pass on the thought for the future iteration of this body and for the work here. I'll do anything. You know we're absolutely on the right path right now. The creation of a pot to hold those resources by which we can incentivize the development that we're looking for. That's the number one need. The policies in place to fund those resources. And then beyond that, I think to echo what Nicole was saying about Casavent Overlook, I think that is in my mind a tremendous configuration that I think makes so much sense for our community that can true mixed income development. And are there ways by which we can utilize those resources to specifically incentivize those kinds of developments? I don't know. And I don't think that's something, obviously that's not the priority right now. It's you're on the track to get in place, the things that we would need to to start diving into that question. But I think it's worth thought in the future. Yeah, I just want to point out one last thing on this and we can move on. In thinking hypotheticals, if Casavent weren't able to work because they weren't able to get those credits, we wouldn't necessarily be looking at a situation where it's the other ones and just too affordable. If we try to push something through that had a negative impact on development, we could very well see none of all of those drop off. And then we have no development, let alone just the two units we have not. So that's something we want to avoid as well. It's not just one of the other. I agree, it wasn't a comment directed at encouraging all the push through a half-baked policy. If you have questions on other pieces of the memo, I'm happy to answer those as well. I just thought probably who would most want to hear from the Housing Commission where we are with our work. And I think the other thing is the expanded relationship with the Housing Authority and other partners developing, supporting affordable housing is going to be a big key for the city going forward. So if I can just jump in actually on that one and not related specifically to the Housing Commission work, but I just wanted along the lines of this can't be solved solely by these big subsidized projects. It needs to be solved comprehensively in the city. But we are working on another big subsidized project with Champlain Housing Trust on a permanently affordable home ownership product at the front of the O'Brien-Camee Center space. So just a quick update on that. As you remember, we signed a pre-development agreement with them in early December. And they have continued to look for that innovation fund as well as start conversations with funders to bring new market tax credits to that project. So they are looking to move that forward fairly quickly as well. So just a foreshadowing of future conversations about that development. And that would be supported by a different mix of tax credits than the residential property. Right. Not low income tax. They will not, well, they may, if the project, if they don't get another kind of funding stream, they may do that in the future. But right now, the idea is to bring new market tax credits to that effort, which is tax credits that are not solely directed for housing, but can be directed for other uses as well. But CHD is really pushing the envelope to figure out how to use them for affordable housing projects. And because this will be a home ownership model that will be perpetually affordable, Mike Monty thinks they apply to that and is putting a funding structure into place to do that. So it will allow us to kind of identify a new subsidy revenue stream that allows us to, as a community, hold the low income tax credit potential for another two or three years out for another project. So in theory, if we can get in a cycle of doing a project every two or three years, we will probably be competitive for that for a while. Right. And pretend he's not sitting at the table. And then I just want to add, just as a parting word on this, too, that through a grant from HUD culturizing communities that CDOVO is managing, there is currently under construction a community toolkit for housing commissions and dealing with housing policy. And just want to comment that a lot of the things that Winooski is doing and have done are being used as an example on how to do this the right way. So kudos to all the work that's gone into it. And you guys are paving the way for it to be easier for the community. So great stuff. Thank you. Heather, it's 100% happy. Well, 99% happy. Here, here. That's a great question. Other questions and concerns, comments regarding the housing, the priorities update, the goal update. Questions, concerns, comments from the public? Yes, ma'am? I've seen lots. Could you spell that? I also, this is good work. I'm glad to see this progress coming forward here. And I just want to make one comment. As someone who was on the Housing Commission has been deeply familiar with the data, I know that when we looked at the landscape here in Winooski there's kind of a pinch point on middle-income housing. So I want to urge the decision-making body and the commission to be looking at the entire landscape of what's out there and not solely focused on low-income for it. Any other questions, comments, concerns from the public? So sitting here and done, thank you all very much. Good job, your work. Thank you. That's a good question. Thank you. OK, next up is the gentrification monitoring update. Yeah, so again, I provided you with the full analysis as part of your packet, but I didn't bring the full presentation tonight. What I do want to kind of look over is the scorecard, which is the overall view. So there were, we are not meeting criteria for gentrification once again this year, but a couple of the, while there's a primary set of criteria by which gentrification would be determined, and those are the median income home value and increase in gross rent, there's also the secondary indicators. And two did meet the criteria of secondary indicators for gentrification. Those are both in track 25. It was an increase in educational attainment and an increase in high-wage jobs versus low-wage jobs, both in track 25, which is basically the main street. I'm sorry. It is the east of Main Street all the way down and then the railroad tracks and below, so the flats and east of Main Street. I will say that because it's a relatively small sample size, having a couple of families relocated across Main Street could account for that swing, and it was primarily in homeowners that this change was made. So I just wanted to bring it to your attention and something that I will continue to watch. Let's open that up to questions, comments, concerns. Sorry, can you tell me the track 25 is, what size now? Well, it's both sides of town. Track 25 is the east side of Main Street at the top and then the railroad tracks and below all the way across the city. It seemed to be a tail of two tracks in some of these indicators. We would see big increases depending on the indicator that they seem to be moving in different directions. Did you see that? I saw that in a couple of the indicators. The two that I mentioned are the two that I primarily saw those differences in in education and in high wage versus low wage jobs. Yeah, I think it's going to be interesting as this goes forward, Heather, to think about how effective the track, the track is how all these measurements are done, but getting to some kind of weighted average in the future may end up being a, and I know you've thought about that and considered it. And I think as much as you can geotarget data, it's generally a good thing. And I know the tracks are saying different things, but it's, I don't know. Like I said, it could be a couple of people moving across the street. So, or one property being developed and one part of town or one business. Yeah, I could certainly, I thought about it. Honestly, when people look at gentrification in cities like Seattle, you're looking at 135 census tracks, whereas the state of Vermont only has 184, something like that. So it may be that I need to realign how we're looking at it. So we're not seeing, it doesn't appear to be a bigger shift than what it is. And I'm perfectly open to doing it in a different way. Something to think about. I think your development corridors or the gateways are split between them. We should see the activity over the focus that we've had around sort of new housing development has been in those corridors and it's split between the two. So it's kind of interesting. It is. But I think the geotargeting in the Chidra was, I think opened a lot of eyes to where quote unquote poverty pockets, poverty pockets do exist in places and spaces that some people might not notice by eye. Correct. Other questions, comments, concerns? New council has a lot to learn. But this is a great tool and it's really interesting data to watch. And I think as you start to scope it out over a couple of years, that's when it's gonna get really fascinating. I agree. And I think when we have the actual census as opposed to the community survey, we may see some differences that are as well. Yeah, and that's something to really think about and note is that there's a lot of questions about what's gonna happen. And a threats thing to look at as a community, I was gonna mention this to the school if they should be thinking about this too at some point, is what federal funding or state funding is available to our community now that may or may not be as a result of any drastic changes in our census data because that's something that I certainly have raised to me by state people before is you might wanna get this in before the census data comes. So, something to think about future people. Any other questions, comments, concerns in regard to gentrification monitoring? Council? Questions, comments, concerns from the public? I have a question. Yes, sir. For enough, I'm wondering, is this report something we should be celebrating? It doesn't say one way or another if it's like a good thing or a bad thing. These are just the numbers. So I'm wondering if this is something we should be celebrating. It seems to me that we wanna shift all the numbers to the right but not necessarily about transitioning people. I'm not suggesting that we should shift people out. I'm just wondering if we should all be hoping they'll lift everybody up. So being to the left or the right of that third, I don't know if that's a bad thing or a good thing or what, and so that's, I guess my question is, if it's a celebration or is this a good report? I don't know if it's next, it's all next. The concept behind it that was flagged in the housing needs assessment is constantly checking back on critical data points that might signal that a change is occurring as quickly as possible. So that if there needs to be some kind of policy response, I would say that the issue with a report like this is we have sort of the items that we think are gonna address some of this already in the works or addressing the concerns that may or may not be raised by it. But it also, again, with a little bit more time, is gonna probably really benchmark where shifts are happening so you can see the curve and say, okay, if we're gonna adopt a policy to try to change this one way or the other, keep balance in the housing stock, affordability in the housing stock, look at why wages are increasing so much between one group versus another, that we have indicators as quickly as possible if that's occurring. So it's trying to get to real as close to live data as possible and if you wanna expand it all upon that. No, I think that's accurate. It's really just about benchmarking. I mean, I certainly think you could have a philosophical debate about whether higher educational levels are good or bad and I guess that really depends on who it is we're talking about. Is it that people increase their education or is it that other people who are more educated came in and just placed people? So that's really what we're trying to get at and it's a, I would say it's a blunt tool, but it's a good benchmarking tool. I think it's gonna be more important after some of the big policy discussions are over to continue. And I don't mean over, because they'll never stop. It's gonna be constant. This issue is gonna be constantly there. But when it's maybe not in as much of the headlights, that it's gonna become really important too because it'll flash it in front of you to make sure that you're aware. Yeah, I mean, the housing needs assessment says that as a city, we're at risk for gentrification. And so, that was sort of a, oh God, you know? So I think it's been really critical to identify what are the benchmarks that we're gonna monitor collectively as a city as we start to put together these policy framework to support housing in this community so that we can sort of check in in terms of how we're doing as a city. So no, I don't think it's a celebration or not a celebration. I think it's just important information for us to be monitoring as a city. Any other questions, comments, concerns from the public? So seeing and hearing none. Thank you very much for that. I appreciate it all. Thanks for all the great work there. All right, next up, we're gonna open up our public hearing that was scheduled for 615 regarding the ballot items and FY20 budget. So this is our required public hearing for public comment on items we have been discussing over the last two months, specifically around the proposed FY20 budget that I have the half of the staff presented on December 3rd, and then we've been discussing since. The Hickok Street Waterwork Bond Vote, which is a $3.7 million bond vote. We're proposing for the ballot on meeting day that would replace the water lines on Hickok and lead to new paving. A $9.7 million bond vote for what we are now calling the Abenaki Garage, which would be a new parking infrastructure on Abenaki Way in the downtown, which is also later on the agenda as well. And then the adoption of local options taxes for sales and rooms, meals and alcohol to fund capital projects in the city, including the Main Street Revitalization Project and the pool. So I'm happy to go into any details about really the task as to hearing from the public. Yeah, right. My inclination following last week's conversations is that everybody's feeling pretty good and sussed out in terms of your questions getting answered. So I think globally we'll open that up. And if there aren't a lot, we will probably move through this in the next few regular items pretty expeditiously. Not in the interest of a non-transparency, but I think if the public's curious, for the last month and a half, we've had extensive public presentations on this material. And in addition to that, we're gonna be doing a full rollout of a whole shock and awe information campaign to ensure folks are as educated on the items in the ballot as possible. So I don't think trying to rehash them this evening is probably the most effective, but certainly wanna open it up to see if there are specific questions or comments from counselors in regards to the four items that are scheduled for public hearing, the FY20 budget, Hickok Street, Bonneville, Abenaki, Bonneville, and the local options tax for sales and rooms and meals and alcohol. Are there questions and comments from the public? Yes, ma'am. I know you have already spoken with like business owners on Main Street, or business owners in general, sorry, about the local options tax, and I wondered if there has been any outrage yet about the garage and the hotel, like any communications out there? Sort of globally, yes, as part of the extensive conversations regarding negotiations around downtown things, including legal matters. There's been a lot of time spent with the business community down there and large property owners and stakeholders in regards to what the plan is to ensure that this is part of sort of a larger collection of things that are taking place to stabilize the TIF and hopefully satisfy a number of needs at once while also creating the opportunity for a hotel. There's never been a survey that the hotel has had a number of public hearings and by and large, at the risk of speaking for people, I would just say that the business community and residents have both reflected very positively on its impact. They just wanted to see things like parking and address, and that's been a pretty consistent thing. And in addition to that, folks have been, that I've spoken with again, I will say totally anecdotally, have been very positive in their reflection of the movement from the hotel of being on the circle in that green to Abadaki. So I'm not aware of any kind of additional official outreach. We did do some of that when the hotel first came out. We held some business-focused meetings. Wasn't a ton of turnout, to be honest with you. And the directed outreach that I'm aware of through the WCP, et cetera, has all yielded either no substantial concerns in regards to its negative impacts other than location and parking issues. Anything else from you guys in terms of your conversations and rounds? Just to underline a few points from staff's perspective, there was a lot of public engagement around the hotel, as the mayor mentioned, in its first round of permitting and a lot of significant concern from the residents and the business community about its location at the bottom of the road around about. So this proposal allows the shift of that location to reflect what we heard from the public to the intersection of the New Ski Falls way and Abadaki way. So I think we've heard from the public that feedback and tried to put forward a plan to achieve that goal. We have presented it to the Downtown Association, the property owners in the TIF district, and they're very supportive as well, as well as a number of the businesses in the downtown. I mean, this, you know, this achieve, this technically was proposed to voters as a bond vote for the municipal infrastructure, but what it also achieves is new public parking for our residents and our visitors who come to our business community, the full build out of the TIF district and the repayment of that debt so it can retire and that money can flow back to the general fund, securing the downtown vibrancy, making sure that moves forward, and realizing the community goal of the hotel that was conceptualized during the New Ski redevelopment master plan. Sounds pretty good to me. Maybe she should do the presentations. I'm just gonna see this. Woo! New way. I'll also just add if for folks reading interest that we did conduct a large scale third party parking study, and this is one of those solutions in terms of how to mitigate the concerns that were expressed by it, and that also included really extensive engagement with the business community and residents. That was an important piece of all this too that informed the need for a garage or the potential demand for a garage. And one other thing to add, you know, I think this, we're talking about this as a joint redevelopment or a full redevelopment of Lot 7D, which is partially the parking infrastructure and partially the relocation of the hotel. There are, what the vote is before the council tonight is the authorization resolution to put the bond vote on the agenda, on the ballot for the municipal infrastructure. What the council will next take up as the permitting authority under the TIFF downtown master plan is the approval of the design. So at the next council meeting, they will be going through the full design review process for that permit application. So certainly well before the voters weigh in on this bond vote, there will be several more attempts to, several more opportunities to weigh in on specifically the design of the project and quite frankly, whether the city wants to be a co-applicant in that Act 250 permit process. And because it's a, both the private development and a public development partnership, it's kind of complicated how these votes roll out altogether. Other questions, comments in regards to tonight's public hearing. So seeing and hearing none, those who are on public hearing as part of the required process will now close the public hearing and return to tonight's regular agenda. First up after that on regular items is the approval of the necessity and reimbursement resolution for $3.7 million bond for Hickok Street Waterwork. So just as a quick introduction to the next seven or eight agenda items, in order to move forward with a ballot on town meeting day, there's a number of steps the council needs to approve to determine the necessity of a bond vote and to pass different rate structures that go into the final passage of the complete budget and putting that budget before the voters. So this first item, and I'll bring John Rouscher up to answer specific questions, is what is called the necessity and reimbursement resolution saying that there is a need to repair the water line along Hickok Street and therefore a need to go to the voters and ask for a bond to do that work. Also outlined here is the breakdown of the breakdown of costs by fund for the project and the project sheet that John has put together for this. An important part about this necessity and reimbursement resolution and the next one is that it does include the reimbursement portion. So between if it is approved by the voters and the time we actually incur the debt because debt can only be incurred twice a year for municipalities, we are allowed to reimburse ourselves for costs incurred in that interim. And you are required to pass a resolution saying that we are allowed to do that. Good. Again, I think of the interest given that these have had a lot of coverage. I'll just turn to Council and ask if there's any questions or concerns regarding this item. No, but I just want to sort of restate. So this is the replacement of a water main that is over 100 years old that is the entire length of pickup street including some of West Lane. West Lane, yep. Has had five breaks over the last five years and is expected to be funded primarily through water fees. So it's not going to be funded through the property tax. Correct. Those are the key takeaways. Yes. We're going to do a major infrastructure project that will improve the water lines in the neighborhood that has not seen a lot of attention paid to infrastructure. At least not this type of attention but band-aids and stuff. And it will not increase property tax. Correct. Correct. I did hear a good thing for that public messaging. This stat you gave when we were meeting the other day that every break costs what, you know, 10 to $20,000 and repair costs and how many of those do we need to go through before it just financially makes sense to invest. Not to mention that disruption to the residents and staff who have to work 24 hours a day just to try to address the problem. Yeah, and I will just add. So we do have sort of a master plan of water main replacements that we've ranked. So this is obviously one that's very high on the priority ranking. So we do have, you know, a full, you know, looking out 20, 30 years. How do we get after all these 100 year old plus water main? So this would be sort of the first in that master plan work since five breaks in five years. It's definitely due for a replacement. Good example this week of how the shop to the conveyor. Not to make light of that. Any questions, concerns from council? Any questions or concerns from the public? So seeing and hearing none. Yeah, just wanted to number right. Thank you. I would entertain a motion for approval for the necessity and reimbursement resolution for 3.7 million bond for Hickok Street Waterwork. Motion by Nicole, second by Eric. Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And those opposed, motion carries. All right, next up is the necessity and reimbursement resolution for 9.7 million dollar general obligation bond for the Abinacke parking garage. So similar argument about the need for a necessity and reimbursement resolution by the council. What is in your packet tonight is, the cover sheet is a 15 year finance projection of the payment of this. This is all anticipated while it is a general obligation bond is modeled to all be paid for by our parking fund. In other words, no property tax impact. That model does make a number of assumptions that I want to take a few minutes just to walk through. So as the mayor said, it's a 9.7 million dollar bond vote. Little over just tied over 9 million of that is construction and design costs. That's 700,000 is soft cost design engineering. We are anticipating $800,000 of down payment onto the project. So that is two grant opportunities that we've identified and actually applied for in the past for this project and been successful at the former locations and gotten good feedback from the grant tours that could transition with an application to a new location. It does anticipate using WCDC reserves to front the finance model. It does anticipate half of the debt on this project being non-taxable and half being taxable, which changes the immunization schedule a bit. And then overall operating assumptions we've met are again the CDC reserve use and then continued annual use to fund the parking fund, therefore to not impact the property tax rates. It assumes that the Abenaki grad will be that half the debt will be tax exempt bonds. It assumes a collection of parking agreements to be fully executed by all the parties with a number of private users as well as allowing for public spaces. It assumes the two grant applications and it makes some estimates about operating expenses for the Abenaki garage. Luckily we have very good experience with the current garage, so we are able to estimate those pretty well. So I will stop there and answer any questions you have. I just wanna reiterate to folks, we discussed this a few minutes ago, but the idea again is to get an additional parking facility that will stabilize the downtime, create the opportunity for the development of a hotel which will also increase the taxable value of downtown property and their poor household with the repayment of the TIF. One thing I'll just add in to Jesse's sort of notes on the funding is that we left some flexibility in the TIF budget to assist in handling additional future debt posts build out and completion of the TIF. So should one of those things not go perfectly, there is a potential forward commitment capacity there for the future, but it would be a couple of years before it came online. So that's just something I wanted to add in there that I've been thinking a lot about in terms of those potential, we'll say risks of one of those things not working out exactly the way that we think. And just to reiterate to folks again, similar to what Nicole did in the first one is because of the revenue from the contracts with those assumptions in place, we expect this to be a net neutral impact to the tax rate and not impact the taxpayer negatively and or the general fund. So voting yes on this will not increase your taxes. That's the whole idea, that's the way it's structured. Hopefully more positively impact the funds we have available to do infrastructure projects in the future because right now, a future agenda item is about the local options, rooms, meals and alcohol tax. We have no rooms currently other than Airbnb's in Winooski and we have not modeled the new revenue stream that would come from a hotel into our capital projections. So that is a new revenue stream that our visitors would pay to help support our local infrastructure. We'll also relieve some pressure on the parking garage for folks that want to visit our downtown businesses, et cetera. We'll make some of those contracts to the CCV contract in particular, to the garage that would be right behind CCV not much better for CCV but freeze up spaces in the downtown for folks who want to be right downtown. And if you're curious about the hotel and initial garage sketching before you see updated ones for next round on the January 14th meeting, there was a presentation done by the hotel developer and the garage developer, sort of giving folks an update about what those look like. So I encourage you to hit that agenda item on the CCV. There's some better pictures in here too. Yeah. Other questions, comments, concerns from council? Questions, comments, concerns from the public? So seeing and hearing none, I'd entertain a motion for approval of the necessity and reimbursement resolution for a $9.7 million general obligation bond for the Abinaki parking garage. Second. Motion by Eric, second by Hal. Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Those opposed? Motion carries. Okay, next up is the approval of the water rate resolution. So I'm going to let John walk through this as well as the memo he prepared, answering your questions from last meeting about the impacts to the users. Just as a reminder though, at the last meeting, you approved a fee ordinance that had us setting utility rates moving forward by resolution of the council. So we're bringing this resolution forward to you now because it has an impact on the budget. If for whatever reason that ordinance doesn't make it through the 30 day grace period, implementation period, we would come back to you with a change and these rates obviously would not go into effect until July one, so I'll let you walk through the memo. Sure. So for the water rates, what we're proposing is a two and a half percent increase over the current $38.67 per 1,000 cubic feet. So that would increase it to $39.64. So what I've done is provided sort of just some highlights on both the water and wastewater rates, providing some historic rate information dating back to 1996, what our historic rates have been, giving sort of an impact review for the typical residential household, what that would look like on an annual basis, what that cost increase would look like, and just kind of a look around to surrounding areas what their rates look like. Just kind of touching back to the sewer, we are also in this budget, requesting a 3% rate increase, so that's $48.57, currently up to $50.03. So just going through the memo, if you look at sort of the historic rates, we've since 1996, it's kind of gone, it's been pretty sporadic. If you average it over the 16 years, it comes out to be about 4.9% total. So what we're trying to do is make it a little bit more uniform, we're raising rates to help with those capital costs and operational costs increases, and not do the shock rate increases, but make it a sturdier increase. Same on the sewer rate side, it was sort of over that 16 year period, it averages out to about a 6.4% rate increase with those big jumps in 2004 and 2006. And we have not seen, sorry, why were the rates raised, I mean, there's all over the place in terms of different times of year, was that like a, I mean, seems extraordinarily reactive. Or that there's not a lot of, but for example, in 2007, the rates were raised 5% in January and another 5% in July. Am I, so 10% in a single year? Correct. I don't know the answer. I can say some on the water side, 40% of our budget is CWD's bulk water purchase. So when they do a major increase, I think that's some of the 2004, 2006, I think they increased the rates. So we got a bill that we needed to pay and increasing rates was the only way to raise the revenue to do it. Yeah. The answer to that. In July, we're pondering it this afternoon as well. That's fascinating. Yeah. But I think a significant takeaway as well is that rates have not increased since 2012. Mm-hmm, yeah. Meanwhile, we have now a pretty, as you said earlier, John, a plan in terms of identifying what the infrastructure needs are and we're only going to get ourselves to a place where we can pay for those needs if we, on an annual basis, see some basically inflationary increases in the rates. Right, yeah, and it is, it's gonna be tough. I mean, we have, most of our water man are 21.7 miles of water man is mostly 100 plus year old cast iron water man. So, you know, engineering-wise, theoretically, they're all due for replacement. I mean, we can hopefully stretch out some life out of some of them pending soil conditions and that sort of thing. But ultimately, we're looking at how do we replace, you know, all that old infrastructure efficiently and how do we do it, you know, effectively with our rates and chasing grants obviously is another way we can look at that. But ultimately, that's what we're trying to do is fund those capital projects. And so, these rate increases for this year are intended to support the Main Street Project, Hickok Street Project and the Pool Project, or is that? No, no, Pool Project is separate. Yep, Pool Project is separate. Yep, so mainly that's gonna be Main Street Project and Hickok Street. But we are still having to pull money out of reserves to fund those projects. So, ultimately, we're also trying to wean ourselves off of the, you know, the fund balance piece of that. And I think, too, philosophically, it's building in debt or investment capacity for the city long term that, again, we don't just do on a project-by-project basis, it's being reasonable in where we get to with rates because, again, what you brought up and provided for us on water and sewer rates, we're on the lower end of the spectrum, we're right in the middle for municipalities. So that's saying that from a elasticity standpoint, you know, if we're trying to be about average and what we're charging people, you know, we're a little bit below that right now and have some capacity to go up. But I hope residents feel good about the idea, in fact, too, that this isn't being done to sort of float just a general fund hole or plug a hole in, you know, general operations. This is being reinvested directly back into infrastructure. And I think that that's key and critical. And again, to Nicole's point, the fact that there's a plan in place of where the investments need to be made, I would, again, hope people feel really good about that, that there's a strategy of what to update and how to get there and we just gotta pay for it. Yep, so kind of looking at the rate impact review, what we've done is we looked at, you know, what a typical household, what would be the impact for these two rate increases. So, you know, we're assuming 90 gallons per day, which is probably a little high for most households. But based on that, you know, for comparing previous rate in the proposed FY20 rate, we're looking at, you know, $12.80 increase for annual on the water side and $19.27 on the sewer side. So, total would be about $32 increase for the year for water and sewer. Questions? The other thing we did in my first council meeting ever was we appointed the water commission. You remember we used to do that. We don't do that anymore, council approves it, but we made ourselves the water commission. I went back and looked at the other questions, comments, concerns from the public. Any questions from the water commission slash city council? Okay, great. So singing and hearing none, I turn to motion for approval. First of the water rate resolution. Second. Motion by Nicole, second by Hal. Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing none, all those favorably say aye. Aye. Aye. And those opposed, motion carries. Some things, especially even added to the wastewater, if we're gonna take that one on, great. So now, any questions or concerns regarding the wastewater rate resolution? Some content we just covered. So singing and hearing none, I turn to motion for approval of the wastewater rate resolution. So, motion by Hal, second by Eric. Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And those opposed, motion carries. Thank you, John. Great work. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks. Exciting work ahead, too. All right, next up is local options tax on sales and rooms, meals and alcohol. So as we have been talking over the last year about the Main Street Rentalization Project and the pool, one of the things we've been talking about is bringing new revenue streams into those projects. So the adoption of the local options tax for sales and for rooms, meals and alcohol would raise about $240, $250,000 annually for the city to be directed towards capital projects. So upon attorney review of the charter where our ability to implement these local options taxes was passed and get granted to the city, the attached resolution is required in order to, again, find it necessary to place that vote on the town meeting day ballot. Great. What we've talked about a lot is trying to, we're investing this back in infrastructure that we believe is gonna support the entire community, but we'll also be supporting the business community and as such, we're trying to share that financial or fiscal responsibility and carrying debt for the city related to these projects with businesses and the patrons who come into the community use that infrastructure on a regular basis and enjoy the benefits that it provides to them with homeowners who are also covering through the general fund a portion of this too. So it's a way of trying to make that equitable. Something that the community's supported in the past and it's something that we've communicated very openly with the business community on and have to say there was, again, at the risk of speaking for people, a collective shrug of, yeah, that makes sense. We're in a donut hole of communities that have this so it's not seen as a competitive disadvantage to many of them and we also talk through with them what the implications would be on the technical application side and it's a very easy thing for them to do functionally. So there was little concern about that and we had our largest restaurant and our largest retailer both come in and have face-to-face conversations about that and both were very in the end supportive in large part because we're committing this towards capital improvement again. We're showing them where it's going. Questions, comments, concerns from council? Questions, comments, concerns from the public? Yes, sir. Imagine Airbnb's, are they affected under current law? They would be affected under current law. It would be, if you, my understanding is if you use Airbnb, it's part of the process that it's a tax that Airbnb collects and sends off to the state. So the individual homeowner would it need to change anything but on the Airbnb side, it would change. There's actually a little thing that says local office tax in the billing. I've seen it before, yeah. I think there may be some changes coming down from a state level in regards to regulation of Airbnb's as well. And just as a reminder to our state officials in the room that of this one, if this is approved by the voters of that 1% collected on both of those taxes, 70% of that 1% comes to the city and 30% of that goes to the pilot fund. Other questions, comments, concerns from the public? Something the voters have supported again and we hope they will, or supported before, hope they will once again. I entertain a motion for approval of the local options, tax and sales rooms, meals and alcohol resolution. Second. Motion by Nicole, second by Hal. Any further discussion? Seeking hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And those opposed, motion carries. I'm so sorry to put a process, but then for some folks who were following, we did have some discussion about whether or not sales tax did apply to groceries and other products and the clarification was that it absolutely does not, which includes basic items like clothing. There are a few problematic things in the list, but that need to be addressed on a state level. I just thought that was a good update. Sorry, I didn't get it right before. Thank you. Okay, next up is thrive rate resolution. So similarly to the water and wastewater rates for the new fee chapter, this is approved by resolution by council. So the values set forth in the resolution are what we discussed during raise community services budget presentation. Yeah, so happy to answer any specific questions here. I think we tried to lay out pretty clearly in the memo cover page as we discussed, it represents a dollar a day increase during the school year and about a $2 a day increase during the summer program. So we feel like it's a pretty reasonable increase and we have not increased rates, I believe since 2015 or 16, I can't recall right off hand, but it's been a few years. So I think it's a pretty reasonable increase for us and again, something we're hoping to see over time to try to help catch back some of that budget deficit. Just for folks, I'm sorry if I missed this, but will this take effect for summer programming? That is the hope. So that it always is a little funky with this program year and the budget slash council year. So we're waiting still on the school to get back to us on scheduling details, but we expect we'll have at least one week of programming in this current fiscal year. So we'll have to discuss whether we have varying rates for those two weeks or how we will approach that, but we'll do that by the books, but we'll have at least a week of programming in June. Just to kind of reflect the conversation here, there's a constant tension between trying to provide the best services while also keeping it fiscally responsible of the taxpayers too and trying to balance the expenditures there with great programming, quality programming. This is obviously a really important service and trying very hard to balance that. Let me upgrade staff in there for several years now so the cost of building increases along for their compensation, I think, require us to increase rates. I would say if there's a rate the same for the summer, I mean, it seems a little... Keep it the same for this coming summer. So just as a point of clarification, the way the resolution is worded, it will go into effect for the start of the summer 2019 program year. So it would be for the fall... Even if it starts before July 1st. Right, that makes sense. Great. And one other piece of clarification, we talked about this in raised budget hearing, but because you brought it up, Nicole, when we did the wage compensation implementation this year, one of the greatest impacted group of people were the Thrive teachers. We had been maintaining them at essentially a minimum wage-ish rate. And so we wanted to treat them as we treat entry-level employees in the city in respect to the very hard work they do. But it did have a negative budgetary impact on this budget. Well, and I think just when you think about continuity of relationships for young children. If we're gonna offer a program like this, it makes sense to offer a program where we're gonna have continuity in some key staff decisions. So... I think to your point, we've had really good fortune and kept staff for a while now, and that's not the universal truth in the field we work in. So it's a really good sign. It's good for kids, good for program. I think co-locating at the school was another big piece of work during the day at the school, and it's an easy transition. I think I do struggle with increasing the fee for this specifically, just for the reason that there is such little in the way of childcare available in the region. And despite this being for fee-paying families, we don't know the economic realities of somebody's situation just by their income threshold. But that said, I do know that the union staff work really hard to take that revenue and put it into really quality programming. So I will, you know, I am in support and will vote to support this, but don't want to be looking, you know, if I am at the table in a year, I would find it really challenging to be looking at another potential increase. That's why you're gonna go for all those grants weeks. So... We're on a roll, so we'll see. Are there questions, comments, concerns from council? Questions, comments, concerns from the public? So the senior hearing done, I retain a motion for approval of the Thrive Rate Resolution. So I'll move second. Motion by House, second by Eric. Any further discussion? Senior hearing done. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. That's right. All right, next up is the FY20 budget and capital improvement plan with $5,728,123.56 to be raised by taxes. So this is the big one. This is the approval of the entire FY20 budget across funds as presented, as well as the city's capital improvement plan. And you have attached here the budgets across funds. And so just a reminder to folks, you know, usually we have a sort of buildup narrative in regards to the budget about what is changing from a service delivery platform and what either programs were changed, added, cut, altered, what new investments were being made in terms of adding staff, equipment, et cetera. This year we started the budget process with the message to staff to essentially come back with what we call the level services budget. We said, do all the same stuff generally unless you think something needs to be shifted around, but make it a dollar for dollar shift if you are, and try to provide the same services that you provided last year and give us the cost for that. You know, that came in roughly 2%, 2 cent increase in terms of just the natural appreciation of the costs with doing that. In addition to that, voters this year voted twice on special items. One was Main Street Revitalization, a $20 plus million investment and a headed total redo of Main Street. That vote authorized the city to seek out bond funding associated with that project. This is now the budget that pays and services that debt. In a similar way, in August, we asked the community to vote again and asked for authority to bond for a new pool, a replacement of Myers Memorial Pool. This budget also covers the debt associated with that bonding. So, by voting for this budget, not only are you approving all the stuff that we do as a city, right? The snow removal, the police services, the fire safety, the community services. You're also authorizing those two projects to move forward and providing the funding to move those forward. This is a pretty big budget and I'm really proud of the work that you all did to make this a reality because there's been a really long conversation in this community over really the last 10 years to put a lot of thoughtful planning together and in place to decide on a direction of where we want to make our investments and how we want it to course out really and chart the future of the next five, six years of our community. I think these have taken that planning and turned them into real action and are gonna become cornerstone projects for what comes next for the community. Before I came into office, it was the completion of the TIFF, right? The completion of the downtown, the downtown redevelopment and the promise that that gave to the city and the opportunities that it created to create a vibrant community that was also financially sustainable. These projects do that and they also entertain an option or opportunity for people to connect via the pool in a really critical community asset to promote health, well-being and connection amongst our youth and all demographics via the pool. And then just the last point I wanted to put on the budget piece too is really proud of the work done thanks to Julie and Jesse especially and Angela and all the work to start to work to get our salaries in line and the wage study and all the work done to get the community to a place where we're appropriately taking care of the people who would take such good care of us and know that that's a step that we're taking forward. We're not done with that but a great step forward on that piece as well. So when voters vote for this budget they're voting for all those things and you don't get to vote on a program-by-program basis and from a council perspective this is the really important thing that we put forward that really sets the direction of what work is gonna get done this year and what we're rolling out to support the community's vision for our future. So the department heads and all staff members are really proud of the work you did to put this together and bring all of these critical projects to fruition. Thank you. And to Jesse, I can't say enough about your support of this process and the way that you've helped bring it together. It's very, very, very impressive to have watched. You should be very, very proud. This is a complicated budget with a lot of moving pieces and parts and a complicated set of planning principles and goals that we set out that you have now helped turn into actionable things that are real and tangible that people are gonna see and they're gonna directly impact their lives. Not just nice planning documents sitting on the shelf. So. Well, it's a true team effort. Let's not be. So that is my thoughts on this budget. I think it's great. I think it's great. I think it's great. I think it's great. But I do wanna highlight that people aren't gonna see things like the pool or Main Street on the ballot again. Voting for this budget moves those items forward. I think that's an important distinction for folks to know. They'll be hearing lots more from Mayor Mace on that. I love that. Anybody else? Any questions, comments or? I just think this is gonna be a budget that we look back at as a historic budget because I think it's gonna mark a positive forward direction in our community. And I think it's gonna attract some of the other assets that we're working on that's just gonna make our community the best place to be. So I think it's an important budget. Any questions, comments, thoughts? Oh, I just have my PSOS meeting. And I don't have plenty to say. Yeah, we're all gonna get sick of hearing you talk about this. Questions, comments, thoughts from the public? Let me see, just make sure. We need a motion and we need it using the recommended action proposed motion. So if there's a willing counselor, if they could use that language in the memo, we appreciate that. I would entertain a motion for approval of the FY20 budget and capital plan to present to the voters. I move that we approve the FY20 budget and capital plan as presented in place on the warning for town meeting day for requests to raise $5,728,123.56 from property taxes. Second, motion by Nicole, second by House. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those favorably say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. And those oppose? Motion carries. Okay. Almost done. All right. So next up we have the warning for town meeting day. So all of those votes you just took result in the warning as presented here. And that outlines the elections for mayor and city council. It outlines the city budget, ballot item, the ballot item to accept other funds, the Hickok Street bond vote item, the Avadak Garage bond vote, and the adoption of two local options taxes. And your approval of this warning is required for us to actually warn the meetings and print the ballots and run the election. Questions, comments, concerns in regards to the town meeting day warning? It's an important detail. An important detail. Yep, and one that folks will be hearing us talk about over and over again too, so that they're familiar with it. There's more items, it's a more, it's a, I think I used the word it's a busy ballot this year. And it is, there's a lot of things on there. So we'll try to make that as digestible as possible. But it's not a random ballot. No. It's very interconnected. That's right. Questions, comments, concerns from council? Questions, comments, concerns from the public? So seeing and hearing none, I would entertain a motion for approval of the 2019 town meeting day warning. Second. Motion by Eric, second by Hal. Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And those opposed? Motion carries. Okay, next up is approval of an appointment of a city councilor for January 29th, 2019 through March the 5th, 2019. So as we mentioned in a public posting on Front Porch Forum as a result of resignations that we've talked quite a bit about here, we decided to appoint a temporary councilor to ensure that there's a four person body in case somebody gets sick and there is an appropriate number of councilors to support the decision making process. Through the public outreach, there was not a ton of interest that came back and forth for folks who asked to serve. We did receive two which are included in the city package. The first is somebody that I reached out to, which is former city councilor, Brian Corrigan, and he expressed a willingness to serve in that capacity. We also received a request to serve on an interim basis for from Mr. Corey Mack, and we have also entered in our package that information. I don't see Brian here tonight. Corey, I think we'd just invite you. If you're interested in saying anything you'd like to say to the council, would they consider this? Sure, I thought it would be a good opportunity to comment and just be part of the council. I was considering running for the one year position on the city council. I haven't submitted my paperwork yet, but I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to jump right in and get on the ballot and really get a good feeling for the waters there. Yeah, I put out my experience and my dedication to the city. I've been a resident for 10 years now and involved in a number of different parts of the city. So I would look forward to continuing my service in whatever way I can help. I think for the value of that. Everything that all four of you do, thank you, Seth, also for... Thank you. And so you mentioned that you may also consider possibly running for one of the open seats. Yes. Is that right? Yeah, that was one of the intentions. If I'm serious about running for the open seat, I feel like I should be serious about jumping in right now. So that was really the decision point for that. Okay. Did you connect with Brian in terms of is it available only for the two meetings? Yeah, I did an intro email. Did you hear anything back from Blaine? Yeah, so I did an intro email where we just noted the dates. I did not follow up past that email though. And it's true, our exchanges were just quickly via email. Just said, hey, this is happening. The thinking was I did reach out to a couple of former counselors, is to just say if there's a willingness of somebody who had done it before, there might be a bit of an ease there in transitioning in. I appreciate your willingness to step up. And I have some hesitancy about appointing someone who's gonna be on the ballot, potentially. I don't know. So, because it feels like it, I don't know if they're gonna be contested races or not, but it sort of provides an entry into the body in a way that others haven't. Teams, because they have a league. I mean, so it just feels a little messy on that front. It's also a little challenging if we haven't gotten a firm confirmation from Mr. Corgan that he's able to attend. I don't quite, I don't have a strong recommendation at this point. And you could, you could tonight do a conditional approval whereby we get confirmation of that and this, because the swearing in, you're not gonna need signatures on anything right away. And you've got three people. So you could do a conditional motion for that pending confirmation that that individual can attend all the meetings. Right. And that you get a response on that and then have the right to bring somebody else back and swear in at the beginning of the next meeting. I don't see anything from a process perspective wrong with that. You could approve it as the first action, open the meeting, approve it, and have that person sit in at that meeting. It can't seem to the procedureally that would stop it from happening and not a deal. But my thoughts, I won't be here. So this is really, this is really more free. You guys is. Yeah, I mean, I absolutely hear what you're saying, Nicole, just in regards, obviously, we have a tremendous community member who has expressed really strong interest in being willing to step up and serve our community in this intro period, which I'm incredibly appreciative of. But it does, there is that weird feeling that Christine had to step out of her seat to run. And this is, if you were, you would be running to fill that seat specifically, so then being appointed to serve for a seat that's open, Nicole, or something, having to step out. To run for office. Yeah. This feels awkward. Yeah, and like a little inequitable. But that, but again, somebody who is willing to give the time, it would be an asset to the council in the intro period, seems when we don't have confirmation that someone else can be here and be present. So, I hear you, I'm up in there as well. Can I interject for a quick second? I would encourage you all, if we, or if and when we do open up the charter next, that we remember this conversation. And the reason why Christine had to step off is a charter-required provision that could be amended to allow the council to fill a council seat if it was vacated. So just something, a governance thing to flag in the future. No, no thumb on the scale about the appointment. Well, yeah, I do understand the concern, yet we're at a critical juncture that we need to, I think, make a decision. And if we had a half dozen candidates, that's one thing. But it's maybe somewhat messy, but I think if Mr. Mack is really willing to step into it at this needed time, then I think we should seriously consider it. I think I'm, I think I'm hearing, I'm in a similar place. Especially since I know Brian was very happy and willing to do it. Whereas we have a community member who's interested in doing it as well. And I know in my most recent conversation with Brian, he is really busy with work changes. And so who knows if there would be a conflict there. So I appreciate you're willing us to step forward. And I'm going to vote, I'd be happy to vote to move to a point, Cory Mack. I'll add something quickly, kind of, not to interrupt. I didn't even consider anything like a charter-like issue about this. So if there is some sort of, I won't feel like you're choosing somebody else just anybody but Cory, that's not, I don't think that's one of those reasons. So if there's some other reason that you want to just offer it to Brian for a sense of propriety or whatever, that's fine. I won't take it the wrong way. So I'm already collecting my signatures and calling them. I'm already made the efforts to run for the council. So if I wanted, if you want me to be your number two, just to give them some space to think, I just want to say too that one of my first memories in a public meeting is being down at CCRPC and arguing about whether or not there should be crosswalks in the roundabout and listening to you speak about that issue so thoughtfully and thoroughly and in such an engaged way. That's even probably like eight, nine years ago that that conversation took place. So I have known you to be nothing but a thoughtful and engaged individual for a long time. So thanks for your willingness to step up and do this. Okay guys, I bought you some time. Thank you. So any questions, comments, thoughts? Or do you have a motion? Well, I don't know. I'd like to circle back around to our future mayor. Moments, moments will end here. Cause I do hear you in that way looking sorry. Yeah, I mean, I think when we were originally talking about this interim appointment, it was to have a former counselor come in just because of somebody who's got some lay of the land and can fill in in that we don't have a quorum. So I am struggling with the notion of appointing a candidate. I don't think that's what was envisioned. I'm outnumbered, I'm outnumbered. It's problematic that we don't know for sure if Brian can observe. Yeah, and I don't know whether we need to make a decision tonight. It was two emails, right? Two emails that basically like, would you be interested in doing this? Yes. And I wrote back and said, I'll connect you with Jesse and Nicole and you guys can talk about dates, et cetera. And he said, great, no problem. And that connection got made. And it's probably just as much on me for not, again, following up the saying, are we all good, are we all good here? Are we all good here? But so it's, again, I think it could do conditional if you wanted to take that step, if you wanted to, you know, put guardrails on a lack of response or those dates not working. But again, I'm gonna sashay away on this one. Okay, all right, given that I think you guys have all said peace, I can go to the public to see if there's any questions, comments, concerns. I'll come back to council and you find it on for a call for a motion. Just wondering, Corey, have you looked at the dates that we would need to ensure that there are any schedule and conflicts? It was just the two in February, right? Yeah, I did. So with that, I would entertain a motion regarding the appointment of a city council for January the 29th, 2019, through March the 5th, 2019. Hi, I move that we appoint Corey Mack to the interim council position of the date stated, January 29th through February, I'm sorry. March. March, March. I'll second. Motion. Motion by house, second by Eric. We'll second with comment. No, it's a roll, but if you have something to say, it's just, I would just apologies to people in the room who that this is inequitable to. And I do think that that is a needed charter change in the future. I wonder if we wanna encourage future leadership, forcing someone to resign from their seat in order to seek that higher leadership goes against a lot of ways. What we have been trying to do from our commission structure up, so I'm sorry that you were in that position, Christine, and hope that we can remedy that in some way. You can never think through every scenario. That's impossible. Oh, absolutely. Why they're living documents. That's right, that's crazy. But you're right, understood. This is exposed it, so. Okay, so I've got a motion by house, second by Eric. Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And those opposed? Motion carries. Congratulations, councilor Mack. Thank you, Corey. Okay. Next item. The swearing in of councilor Nicole Mace as the next mayor of Moosepeak. I'm just gonna say take my last chance here to hold up the process and say thanks, which I've so rarely done since I've been in office. Let me give you a historical lesson of it. I just wanna personally express to a great pleasure it's been surveying along with Senator Nicole as deputy mayor and as city councilor for the last several years. The first time that I met Nicole, well, it wasn't the first time I met her, but the first time we sat down to talk, I went into the coffee with the intention. I was with another city councilor at that time. I went into the meeting with the intention of asking and pushing Nicole to run for mayor because I had seen her a number of public meetings and witnessed what a short person you are and how much you care about the community and your dedication. And the other reassurance I wanna have in case you for some reason don't trust Nicole is that there was just a few things I wanna bring up from before and that's just an extreme appreciation. We did what is one of the most important things that a city council does tonight and we forwarded a budget that staff worked really hard to prepare. The most important thing we do as a council and that's probably the most visual one. The most important thing we do as a council is we select who the city manager, the CEO, the executive of the city is going to be and without pause I can say that the single greatest thing that I've been part of in this council's action is bringing in Jesse Baker as the city manager for the city of Winooski and wanna just compliment you on all of your tremendous work and what a great asset you are for this community. And so as Nicole comes in and I wanna give real acknowledgement I've worked with three city managers right out there in the crowd and I wanna say too that John in his capacity as acting city manager one time we're a tie. He said... But just in those leadership positions in seriousness I've been able to watch you guys grow as individuals and professionals and it's been so cool. Chief Hebert too, you guys are kinda newer but see great potential in you and you as well and the growth that I've seen in all of you and that's supported by you is the chief executive of the city in Carroll. The entire team here relies on you to be the person who keeps the wheels on the track and keeps the vision moving forward and I can't say enough about what the partnership has been like in working with you, how effective you are and yet how really in tune with what it takes to have a happy humming organization here and to make the people who work here feel good. So thanks so, so much for all of your work Jesse and all the other city managers over time because we're getting ready to elect a mayor and she's gonna do an awesome job in that that she's gonna be really successful because of the great partnership with the great executive of the city and the person who really drives things. So thank you so much for all of your work. It's meant the world. Okay, I'm gonna get out of the way now. So up next we have the appointment of, or the swearing in of Nicole Mace for the city of Winooski as mayor. So while they're getting up, I would just like to add and this is again, as everyone knows I am a member of ICMA, this is not about Seth, I can't do it, sorry. I'm a member of ICMA which has a very strong code of ethics and I'm a political and don't get involved with the elections in the city so this is a very non-political statement. What we are about to do is about to break a huge barrier in our community by appointing the first female mayor of Winooski and I think that that's something that should be really recognized and celebrated tonight. Glass ceiling, right through it. One month. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. It's happening. Thank you. Please raise your right hand. You soundly swear that you will faithfully execute the office duty or trust of mayor for the city of Winooski Vermont in that you will bear the legal right and justice to all people, to the best of your judgment and ability according to law. So I'll be back. Thank you. Thank you. Stated previously this evening. Big shoes to fill and it's a temporary appointment but I am looking forward to working with the team to get this budget across the finish line so that we can all continue great work that we started together. It's been a great honor serving with all of you in particular with you, Seth. I've learned a lot and I know you're not going anywhere so I know how to reach you. So thank you everybody. Get to work. You can feel the power. Am I in charge now or are you in charge? It's a sign of the document. Okay, so the next item on the agenda is executive session to conduct the annual review of the city manager. So I would, so we've gone through a process in terms of soliciting input from all the counselors and senior leadership team. And senior, the leadership team and now's our opportunity to go in and have a conversation with Jesse about the results of that feedback. So I would entertain a motion to enter into executive session to conduct the annual review of the city manager pursuant to statutory reference cited on the agenda and we'll bring Jesse with us. So I, so this, we haven't talked about this also. So I would actually, it would be fine with me. It's ultimately the three of your decisions, but it would be fine with me to bring the former mayor, Seth and the former city counselor, Christine Law, as she did also participate in this review and has seen my work in the last year. And I welcome her feedback as well. Great, so whoever's making the motion can include those guests, that would be great. I move that we enter executive session with city manager, Jesse Baker, human resources director, Julie Holberg. Right, is that, is that what you said? No. Sorry, I missed that. And we're inviting Seth Leonard and Christine Law. There we go. Second. Motion by Eric, second by Hal. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. A post. Motion carries. I guess, do I have to? Yeah, me too. Yes, we are in executive session. We will reconvene to adjourn only. Thanks, everybody.