 Do we have any agenda additions or changes? Yes, please. I would like to remove the consent agenda item, six D approving village center and neighborhood development area, renewals and put it in business items for discussion. Great. Make that five B. And push everything else down. Anything else? Great. The motion to approve the. Agenda. I also move. Second. Great. Amber. Amber. Without discussion. All those in favor of approving the amended agenda say aye. Aye. I suppose they. Motion passes. Great. And move on to public to be heard. This is the portion of the meeting where members of the public can. Address the board bring comments on anything that is not on the agenda for this evening. Those comments would wait to the appropriate agenda item. So anyone in the room that wants to offer comments. Zoom. Get to the right screen. Not seeing anyone on zoom. So we will move on to the first agenda item discussion and consideration of bubble foundry solar projects. I hope we have enough chairs for you all. So can I just say one intro thing just to let folks know. So this project is actually permitted by the public utility commission. So the permit itself is not a permit that the city issues, but as a process in the public utility commission. Municipalities can have meetings and comments both from the legislative body as well as the planning commission. And the process involves a 45 day notice that a petition will be submitted to the public utility commission. And we are within that 45 day notice type rate. So there's more input. These folks will be gathering, but just want to give a rundown of the process. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. All right. My name is Jake Clark. I'm a vice president of the development team with on core renewable energy here to talk with you about. Two proposed solar projects, separate projects on the global foundry's Essex campus with me from on core. I have my colleague taken Coppler who's a associate project manager. And from the global foundry senior management team, we have general problem. As well. With that, I'll jump in to say, you know, who is on core, a brief introduction on core is a separate project. On core is a solar development company based here in Burlington, Vermont. We've been around for about 15 years. I've been with on core going on five years. We're up to around 35 employees. The majority of them are here in Vermont, although we're also active in other Eastern and New England states. Important to note here on core is a B company, which is our background sort of started in in reclaiming undervalued land, brown fields and landfills. And as a B corp, we sort of try to focus on the triple bottom line. That's people, planet profit. So there's two separate arrays. It proposed. Yeah, go ahead and take in the first one. We're calling Essex a North lot solar. The I'll show we'll show you the sort of the map, but I'm going to go ahead and take it out on the next slide here. You know what, take and you can go ahead to the next slide and cause I'll just talk through this while we look. So this is almost five megawatts AC 4.95 megawatts. It's 12,000 panels. I think this is a type of it's not 1,200 panels across 30 acres of the site. This is fixed tilt racking. There's starting to become some different types of racking out here in Vermont. But this is the typical fixed tilt racking where the roads are oriented to face to the south. The roads run east and west on the low side. They're about three or four feet off the ground. And then at the high side, they're 10 to 12 feet off the ground on fixed steel racking. We're required to have an agricultural style fence, which goes around the array. It's around seven to eight feet high. The fence we used is typically what's used for raising livestock. So it's a fence that doesn't really have much of an aesthetic impact at all. You can kind of see through it as wooden posts. It's not the type weave metal fence that's typical for sort of security installations. And our interconnection will be to existing distribution service along Robinson Parkway, which is this road that you can see here, sort of paralleling the train tracks on the Essex campus. Just as one point, our layout is still evolving as we complete a little bit. As we complete all of the field work that we need to complete to sort of build out the full section 248 certificate of public good petition that will go to the State Public Utility Commission. And there's these two areas of modules that you can see at the Northwest side where it's forested. That is on the Global Foundries Essex campus. Our natural resources consultants are finding that there might be some streams or wetlands in there. So I think it's likely that we will eliminate those two little lobes that are in forest areas from the plans and other more developed areas. So this is the first one, which is almost 5 megawatts. It's on the north side of the railroad tracks that run through the campus. And you might be familiar with Maple Street, which is the road running east and west to the north, and with the police station there, which actually has some solar panels on the roof that you can see in the satellite imagery. The main sort of portion of acreage of this array is a parking lot that doesn't get that much use from Global Foundries right now. So that portion is we'll put the plan is to install the solar array over that parking lot. So we can get into this later, but we're locating the solar on an already built environment in that case that helps us to minimize natural resource impacts for that array. Now the second one is to the south of the railroad tracks in Robinson Parkway, which runs through the campus. And yeah, if you just go to the map, I think that's just as well. This is on the western side of the campus, and this one is entirely, almost entirely located on parking lots. And here where you see the rows, the sort of smaller rows going east-west, that's our typical fixed tilt racking. Again, where it's three to four feet off the ground on the low side and 10 to 12 feet off the ground on the high side. And then the more sort of solid blue, larger modules are parking canopies where vehicles will be able to park underneath those structures. And those are larger structures that involve a little bit more steel, a little bit more foundation, but enables us to sort of keep the land in dual dues for parking and for solar. So, you know, another sort of quick summary here. That one, this array, the separate array is 2.8 megawatts. It's, there's sort of, on the fixed tilt portion, there's 3,000 panels and three acres. And then on the parking canopy portion, there's 4,000 panels that cover about seven acres of parking. Again, we're going to have to have a fence around the fixed tilt portion, which is lower to the ground. The parking canopies won't be fenced in because they're so high up off the ground, they're secure and we don't have the need for insurance or for national electric code to put a fence around the parking canopy portion of this array. We can get into sort of detailed questions about a lot of things, but if you'll just indulge me and I'll carry on through the limited slides that I have, and then we'll take questions if that's all right with you all. Okay. So from a very high level, this next slide, you know, why is Global Foundries pursuing these solar arrays on campus? Global Foundries over the past handful of years, they petitioned the State Public Utility Commission for permission to operate as their own utility. As a part of that, the state did grant them that permission and that permission, with that permission, Global Foundries made a commitment in what was called their certificate of public good to build on-site solar. They made that commitment to the state. So this partnership with Encore to build these various solar arrays on campus is fulfillment of a commitment that was made to the state, to the Public Utility Commission in a previous proceeding. You know, and why did Global Foundries make that commitment to the state? Because Global Foundries supports Vermont's renewable energy standard and they're committed to fulfillment of Vermont's renewable energy standard, which is a probably, that's a little bit, I could get into the renewable energy standard, but I think it's, we don't need to cover that at this interaction today. You know, effectively all utilities in the state have to procure a certain amount of their energy from renewable energy assets. You know, this is, from Encore's perspective and from Global Foundries' perspective, this is a very strong narrative. It's a win, maybe it's more than a win-win. It might be a win-win-win, where we're talking about locating solar generation on an existing developed industrial site pretty much at the point where the energy will be consumed. This has a really minimal impact on the transmission and distribution infrastructure in the surrounding area, in the state at large. We're not talking about shipping energy in from, I don't know, Kansas or something. It's all generated and consumed there on the campus. So it's, as I said, minimizing the impact to the regional transmission system. And because we're building on a developed, largely industrialized campus, we're minimizing to the extent practical a lot of natural resource impacts and aesthetic impacts. Thanks, Tegan. So the next couple of slides sort of talk about where we are in the process, what the state process is. So this is kind of what has happened up till now, and the next slides might be more a look ahead. So up till now, Encore and Global Foundries have been working for months to identify the lowest impact and most feasible sites. You know, there are some criteria that flow from the statutory criteria for the Section 248 certificate of public good to the statute that authorizes the PUC to issue these permits. And then there are other criteria that are sort of more pragmatic. So we're looking at aesthetics. We're looking at natural resources. The natural resources we're looking at are very extensive, very comprehensive. We're looking at habitat, wetlands, streams, buffers, stormwater implications, agricultural soils, endangered species. We're also required to look at historical and archaeological resources. We obviously need the interconnection to be feasible. Here on the Global Foundries Essex Campus there is a lot of transmission and distribution infrastructure that's existing on the campus that we can interconnect to. So the transmission or the interconnection component, we do have to be careful to cite the projects where the interconnection on campus is most feasible. We have to look at site access. We'll end up looking at geology subservice conditions to make sure that the racking will be compatible with if there's ledge or bedrock. And we also look at terrain and topography. So these are all the things that we've been looking at now for several months and we've identified the sites that have the lowest impacts and are the most feasible. And now we're at the point where we're ready to start engaging with obviously the town or the city of Essex Junction with the community. And as Regina said, we sent out the 45-day notice. And the 45-day notice is sort of intended to be a mechanism to trigger this kind of engagement with the city, with the local authorities. So it gives us time to address any concerns that the city may have. And Encore, the 45-day notice, we send the 45-day notice out well in advance of when we really, so it's generally speaking, it's larger than a 45-day window for us to have these types of discussions and interactions. So that sort of covers site selection up until this point. Sort of a brief look ahead from just an operational standpoint, and how we move forward from here. All of those criteria and all of those constraints that we're sort of filtering for, we have to send out a whole sort of host of different consultants to assess the natural resources, the archeological resources, the geotechnical resources. We'll work with the landscape architect to generate an aesthetic impact report as well as an orderly development report, which assesses the project's compliance with the city plan with the town, the city's energy plan. Once we have all of those studies done, it starts sort of with field work, then it moves into office desktop work, and then they generate these reports and memos, and those reports and memos are the sort of the basis, the attachments or the exhibits to our petition for the certificate of public good. So we're in the process of sort of finalizing our field work into the part of the process where we compile all of that into a series of reports with the certificate of public good petition kind of sitting on top. So once we are ready to file that petition, the city will receive the full CPG certificate of public good petition package. Everything that the state gets, the city will get. And if there are any questions that I'm not able to answer tonight, when we have that full package, I should be able to answer any questions at that time. Once we file the certificate of public good petition with the public utility commission, we have very little control, encore that is as the petitioner, has very little control over how long the process takes. It sort of depends on the complexity of the issues that the state wants to take a close look at. So it could take eight months. It could take 15 months. And we're not permitted to engage in any site work, any construction activities at all. No site activities really until after the certificate of public good is issued. So realistically, we're not talking about construction starting until 2025, second half of 2025. We would let you know if that were to change, but that's sort of from a high level what we're looking at at this time. And then just the last slide here is to say that once we do file the petition, the further certificate of public good with the public utility commission, the list of impacts and constraints that they scrutinized is extremely comprehensive. All the other things, all the items, all the constraints that I already mentioned, the habitat, rare threatened endangered species, flood waves, stormwater, wildlife corridors, wetlands, and their buffers, air quality, water quality, soil erosion, prime ag soils, transportation. They take a close look at all of these things. You know, we also, they look at the interconnection, they look at the need for the project, economics, orderly development of the region. The key component for the city or the, yeah, the key component for the city, the criteria on which the PUC really needs to hear from the city on is does the project comply with the city plan in the city's own view? Because for most of these other criteria, the agency of natural resources is a statutory party to the proceeding, agency of agriculture is a statutory party, division of historic preservation is a statutory party. So for almost all of the other criteria, the state process preempts the city or the local municipal ordinances. The city of Essex Junction has an enhanced energy plan which is great. The, the PUC will be really focused on whether the project complies with the enhanced energy plan because now that the city has that enhanced energy plan, they're entitled to a different level of different, different, different burden of care. It's not due consideration. It is substantial deference that you're now entitled to. So that is sort of a look ahead and it also my effort to say the component that the state really needs from the city and the component that it makes the most sense in my experience to focus on is the compliance with the town plan with the energy plan. So thank you for that was a bit long winded. I know I just took up 15, 20 minutes, but thank you for the time and I'll pause there. Thank you. We get Amber back up. We get the Zoom meeting back up. Oh, that's Thanks, Dan. There you go. So there are any questions from board members to start this up? I do. Go for it. Okay. I don't know if we I know you just brought up Zoom. I don't know if we're going to need it, but I'll refer to what's in the packet and is that North project? Yes. So first off as you acknowledged some of that sighting currently as it's tentatively put on there looks like it removes a lot of trees. I was curious about is there plans for replacement? There's also some wide open green space that it's not being utilized. So I'm not sure if there's something special about that particular green space that you can't utilize it versus taking these trees out. Are you replacing these trees? The environmental impact that I'm thinking about that this also you know, just generically because you're taking out so many trees the potential green space underneath. I'm wondering if you've thought about some other aesthetics to that particular to that land underneath as I've seen in community projects they might use pollinator plants things of that nature other things that will also enhance the land not just replace what you're taking out. So I'm wondering if there was any consideration of that. Yep, absolutely. Those are all great questions. It's it's absolutely correct that there is what looks like some open land to the north between where we're planning where we're proposing solar in that parking lot area and Maple Street. There's kind of some open space. That's a class two wetlands under the current Vermont wetland rules the solar is not an allowed use in wetlands or within a 50 foot buffer of wetlands so that area is kind of low lying and flat and it doesn't drain well and it's been classified as a wetland I could we could get into more detail on what makes a wetland but it is classified as a class two wetland so that's why we're sort of keeping out of that one area I we would like to stay out of that forested this sort to sort of forested blocks as well and I think that we will end up staying out of those in our final plan which you'll see couple of options that we do have. Encore has a commitment this is on Encore as a solar developer to plant two trees for every tree that we take down. Now that's not necessarily on site it's a commitment that we're we're refining but we've had in place for several years there's also potential for us for Encore to find ways to conserve land somewhere within what Agency of Natural Resources sort of refers to I think as the same kind of habitat block and it depends on the viewpoint they take but we could if we are going to be taking trees down we could seek to conserve land somewhere in the region to mitigate for that impact but from the perspective of the Agency of Natural Resources forest removal tree removal it really comes down to the value of the ecosystem the value of the habitat that is present there so it'll come down from the Agency of Natural Resources perspective if it's a high level functioning like ecologically functioning forest that's providing a lot of habitat value and yeah and function then there'll be a lot more scrutiny from the Agency of Natural Resources and I think that the problem not the problem I think that what we're finding is that in those two forested areas there are some wetlands and some streams and we won't be able to conduct tree clearing for solar in a wetland area or stream or stream buffer because the solar is not allowed use in the streams of buffers or wetlands or wetland buffers oh sorry let me interrupt you on the pollinator front Encore has also been committed for several years to installing pollinator ground cover wherever it's feasible so in open fields generally speaking it's feasible and we've been doing that for a handful of years we work with we've been working with a business out of Middlebury called Be The Change that's Be With Two E's they're sort of an installer and a maintenance contractor for a number of our sites and I said where feasible to sort of explain that caveat certain sites such as a gravel pit it might not be possible to grow pollinator ground cover in a gravel pit or on a caps landfill we wouldn't be able to alter the vegetative state on a caps landfill or on a site that's a parking lot we might not be able to get pollinators to grow these parking lot sites thank you so let me ask you about two other quick things so just also thinking about the land here whether it's on this north project or on the south project and again I'm going to ask this question which may make an assumption so this parking lot or these parking areas currently have a certain runoff flow because of the nature of how these panels have to go up will it change that runoff flow and if so how are you going to deal with that impact because of the fact that runoff will be need to be adjusted I assume and the other question just out of curiosity is how much you said how much power this is going to produce but I'm just curious about how much power is this going to cover for global foundries quarter of their year is this you know an hour so on the runoff question first the stormwater program resides within the department of environmental conservation which resides within the agency of natural resources and if there are deemed to be any changes to the runoff flow on the paved sites we would be required you know global foundries already has a stormwater permit or permitting regime in place if there were any changes we would have to pursue either a new permit or an amendment to an existing permit for stormwater runoff but the State Department of Environmental Conservation stormwater program they've studied this and in open fields at least not in paved areas as long as there's vegetation on the site the solar panels don't have any material change on the way stormwater flows across the site as long as it's vegetated you know you're still talking about a fully vegetated site that can where the roots will prevent soil from being mobilized which is the core of the problem with stormwater on the on the energy for the global foundries facility there on core and global foundries are planning on building out something on the order of 10 or 15 or 20 megawatts of solar over the next handful of years these are the first two projects that we've got to the point where we're ready to start talking about permitting with the state with the city there are also projects planned on the Williston side of the campus so if we succeeded we're able to reach that 15-20 megawatt goal it would be a very substantial portion of the energy load that global foundries campus has and I'll let Jeff I mean Jeff are we talking about something yeah thanks great thank you just reintroduce myself Jeff Cram from Global Foundries and the senior manager in our facilities group and I do our energy programs we we use at global foundries about 400,000 megawatt hours a year this would come somewhere in the range depending on where we land and the 3-6% of that amount these two these two in the Williston yeah yeah thank you Amber Lane just curious about whether is the property that you're discussing for the solar is that overlap at all with developable property that many years ago I don't even know but developable property that IBM had presented to us as a potential development for light manufacturing many years ago I'm just curious whether that overlaps with that property it seems like not because it's primarily parking lot but I'm just curious unfortunately I don't have the background on what was presented what we have now is for the foreseeable future the north lot is not an area we would be developing obviously that's why we moving forward with a fixed fixed tilt array for that thank you I don't really have any questions I just was flipping through the Essex Energy plan and it needs a lot of things that seems like Amber just on that you mentioned the energy plan as a part of the reporting or the full petition that will provide to you and that will provide to the state we will be required to address from our consultant will address the project's compliance with the town comprehensive plan and with the energy plan so we'll address in particular all of the siting components within the enhanced energy plan and we've already reviewed those in depth and we don't see any issues I guess my only question was exploring that area where these are going in especially the portions of the first section you showed us off maple as it approaches up by the police station and some of that not going on anyone's property but I'm wondering if there's any process for neighborhood notification for comment on this realizing this is a state process and where that would fall I didn't really see visible impact it's also leafed out right now and maple street extension that goes up above the police station across the street does have some interesting views of the plant when it's not leafed out so half the year these do face the other way so my thinking when I was walking around there that would help because those ten I think those are north of this so but I didn't know is there a process for that and what is it couple of things our landscape architect when he's that impact analysis if his conclusion is that there could be sort of an undue impact associated with any visibility of the project from maple street from residences to the north then he would recommend a vegetative screening plan to be installed between the modules and maple street on the global foundries property the vegetative screening is common for our projects typically a mix of evergreens and deciduous trees shrubs and entries we're not quite yet to that point but if that is the recommendation of the landscape architect that will be included in the final package the public utility commissions aesthetic standard is meant to address the use of the project from public viewpoints not from private viewpoints but on poor we're not required to send out a notice to adjoining landowners until we file the certificate of public good but that's really kind of an unfortunate way to try to interact with the public so we as a matter of standard operating procedure we send out a notice that's not required by the state in advance of the filing of the 45 day notice and we're working on those notices right now coming up with the list of the adjoining landowners this is a massive property and a very large campus the intent is to send this courtesy notice to the landowners who could see the project there's lots of landowners around this campus who will never be able to see the project at all and there's not there's not any reason to send this courtesy notice to those landowners but landowners who might be able to see the project that is absolutely something that we plan on doing in the near future I mean I think we don't agree with that the vegetative barrier is that something that we could stay in communication with throughout this yeah the one level I don't have a problem seeing solar panels but I'm one person there are people who do have issues with it yeah and and right now that portion of the plan is sort of naturally buffered and this will change some of it I think especially with the trees closer to the police station and some of that if I'm reading it right now so if there's some openness to working with us or communicating back and forth even if it's questionable on the recommendation from the landscape architect yes and we've on course built this reputation on working with cities and towns and communities and neighbors and the eventually the aesthetic screening plan will reach a point where it'll be approved by the public utility commission at that point our flexibility is diminished but we have plenty of time to work together to figure out a screening plan that works for the town and works for the project okay that's great thank you very much of course is there anything else that looks like an exciting project sure it blows my mind that it's three to six percent sort of I thought it was going to be less little bit but still a crazy number we use a little bit of electricity a little bit but if it wasn't the plan just indulge me how many regular homes would this do on an annual power? just for context I think that five megawatts would power something on the order of four to six hundred homes I could check those numbers that's kind of rough back of math and this is sort of between the two projects we're closer to eight and we are to five so maybe closer to a thousand homes on an annual basis and quick look ahead we've also scheduled meetings with the planning commission and the energy committee I believe here in S6 Junction so we'll be meeting with other town authority city authorities I'm sorry and after we've met with those city authorities typically what happens is the sort of subsidiary committees make a recommendation to the executive authority which is you and then we sort of then we'll be able to notify the utility commission of where we stand where the projects stand with respect to the city's position on the project sounds great typically for something like this we allow, we open it up for public comment so I'm going to see if there's anyone in the room that has anything they'd like to ask of the city council on this project or in zoom land so is there any public comment on this for the city council from anyone in the public not seeing anyone in zoom not seeing any so Greg go ahead yes just identify yourself Greg can you come up to right over the one closer with the chair just watch your head on that yeah nice thank you this is a great project so I live, Greg Morgan I live on Grove Street and actually I'm a member of Essex Rotary and we've been working on pollinator gardens actually so thank you for raising that and actually I spent today with the principal it'd be the change so looking at pollinator projects in the Jericho elementary school in the Westford elementary school and at Essex high school so there's interest in that locally at least from some of us and the question I had is what percentage a lot of it's parking lot and it sounds like you're not taking up the parking lot so I mean there's not a lot of in this case there may not be a lot of pollinator opportunity but it sounds like your background is there and I'm really pleased so if you get a chance and you can do it that would be awesome yes we are considering removal of paved areas we haven't come to a final decision there's going to be a lot of complexity there involving what's the subsurface condition what's the geology what are the stormwater implications what are the cost implications so it's something we're considering but we haven't reached this yet well we're not here to tell you pollinators aren't the first issue here but if that happens then it would be great to see them and then the screening issue to me would depend on I mean if there's a field of wildflowers you might not want to screen them off but that's another issue great thank you alright I'm not seeing anyone else in the room we're in Zoom so thank you both very much thank you all for coming thank you for having us we've been excited to share this for a little while alright so we are going to talk about the Village Center and Neighborhood Development Area Renewals which is now 5B thank you for sorry Regina did you have any warm up for that you can go for it I'm just trying to find it bring it up really I just wanted to pull it out to ask one question and to just sort of plant a seed I'm curious I didn't see in the materials regarding the designations the impact if they're there I did not see them close enough what a Village Center designation or a downtown designation which I hope we eventually get to what that means for Act 250 compliance for development within the designation I had understood that there was some bypassing of certain parts and I don't know if our existing developments that have gone up in recent years have been able to take advantage of any of that but I just want to confirm that there are benefits regarding Act 250 in those designations and whether we are working with the developers within the boundaries to take advantage of the chart there yeah so the neighborhood development area designation is really where that comes into play and you have an exemption from going to Act 250 if your housing project meets the definition of a priority housing project which means there is a percentage of affordable work within to that development and there were some changes to that within S100 but essentially for the most part that's the real that's really the only off ramp there from Act 250 and so it is really a great it's a great program and so I don't know if anybody yet has taken advantage of that but certainly we can continue to have those conversations and promote that as a real benefit to the neighborhood development area designation and I think it's partially why we do ultimately as this memo says want to think about whether it makes sense to expand the neighborhood development area designation boundary I think I was on the planning commission when we first went for the village center and then the neighborhood development and the neighborhood development one I think we just wouldn't say randomly but we just decided a quarter mile from the village center boundary would be a great NDA so let's just go with a quarter mile I don't know that there's any additional logic behind that or not but it was I just over the years I have definitely hounded our previous and director to say we should be communicating with businesses and residents about the benefits that come with those designations so I will say actually at the current moments the neighborhood development area boundaries actually just match the village center boundaries a quarter mile is what the state allows by default as long as you check the other boxes that is likely what we might want to pursue and in terms of whether or not developers are using the benefits right now I don't know for sure if anybody has used it already but I do know in the Chippin County I mean the Chippin crossing and master planning later stages there are plans to to to take advantage of the priority housing the Chippin crossing is where the building is on Mabel Street right now and then back there right the whole the area around around the new room okay okay I mean the fact that the benefit comes when you build with affordable units I would like to think that we would emphasize that for our developers that that is it's desirable for us and it helps with the housing issue and it benefits them and I don't believe any of the buildings that are currently up have affordable units in them so I would love for us to sort of emphasize with developers that like you've got this extra benefit please put some affordable units in there um we talk a lot about building heights and such but if we're just building market-free then who cares how tall the building is it's still not affordable so I just think the designation program is a a what's the word a best kept secret it's it's really something that folks need to know about and for the council I would love to just plan to see it about the designated downtown it's like we're no longer a village and so we technically don't we aren't a village center but we're able to keep the designation I would love for us to at some point at during our strategic planning conversation with the community and as we look forward as to what else we want to do that we put becoming a designated downtown as a goal because with that comes the requirement of a downtown organization and I think we really need that I'm wondering on the timing of our um I'm going to mess up the grants that we've talked about mostly during the LDC process um through I want to see CCRPC transit oriented design projects and I'm wondering how all of these things can come together yeah right um if we're going to be having these intensive conversations around that and that work is going to be done in that part maybe that can help us with this and figuring out those delineations and where it will be the other comment I have on this is a little this little you know as I read the memo and tried to dig into this a little bit and looked at these charts um there really isn't any encouragement in these programs for any support for all of that housing that they're trying to bring to you know there's no support for bringing in pharmacies or grocery stores or laundromats or any of the services that frankly building out an intense amount of housing would seem to require um so I'm wondering you know as we look at all of that stuff you know where do we lobby or where do we look for those incentives that maybe aren't part of this program um and how do we nudge those developers as they're looking at their first floor retail to kind of understand that you know we've identified we I would love to see us decide if that's something we need to push um so anyway it's just that in here there's a lot of really interesting stuff and that's not necessarily what this is but when you yeah if you're incentivizing all of that all of that to come in then you need the associated services to be proximate um it just occurred it's I do want to just mention briefly because it was brought up twice by Andrew I can't speak for him but I remember on two separate occasions in mentioning that the recent projects here in the last few years have not qualified for affordable housing so I'm with you and support you in the fact that whatever we could do to incentivize or at least make sure that the developers realize that they're being incentivized in order to build these kinds of projects yeah I mean we want to see excuse me I'm sorry oh go ahead the only thing we have to offer is our tax stabilization program and that's small frankly and so to bundle it with the incentives that come through the downtown designation we could and those incentives are not coming from us but they would be because they by virtue of being located in our data the timing is curious for me right you know can this happen in time for a chitin crossing and I did think as an aside I did think we had a commitment for some affordable housing in that project yeah of course yeah in the later stages anyway I just wonder we're going to be able to match their timeline to make it beneficial well that's the only spot though yeah yeah and that program the neighborhood development area exemption has been in place for quite a while so for that project that's already kind of gone through a first initial phase they're aware of that and we're taking advantage of it but yeah all right great thank you so I think we need a motion on this oh now that it's out oh right I've got it on the screen here I see the motion here if you want me to I'll move that the city council authorize the renewal application for the village center and neighborhood development area designation please don't sir through the Vermont department of housing and community development designation program we did not take any comment on this would you mind removing I'll hold back my motion until we get a comment we're just racing through so is there anyone in the room that would like to offer any comments on this topic this evening I'm switching over to see the Bridget come on up please I must feel like I'm always here I just want to say I appreciate you being I know I just want to say that I support my support the downtown designation I think we do us a lot of good because what that what that means is we're also going to have to have someone working all the time on that kind of on on our downtown and what it means and on how to develop it well and we I mean for all the years I've been here we've talked about this and we've never and we've gotten close we had a few fledgling organizations that didn't really take off or another one took off and didn't go anywhere so I hope we can find some legs here and do something I really I really support Elaine's suggestion I think it's a great one great thank you yeah anyone that wants to offer any comments on this before we move forward I'm not seeing any hands up so Elaine if you'd like to repeat your motions about that I'll move it city council authorized a renewal application for the village center of the development area designations through the Vermont department of housing and community development designation program. Great we have a motion and a second Amber I can't see you well there you are you're on my screen on my computer sorry hi alright so you're ready so without any discussion all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. All those opposed nay the motion passes. Thank you very much and I think we get to have a conversation so yes. This is discussion of emergency management plans procedures. Welcome. Thank you. See you all again. I think Regina has the has the plan here. Yeah so we're just going to sort of talk through this and chief chime in you want to add anything kind of along the way. Absolutely. This is sort of splitting the slides here a little bit on the screen but essentially we wanted to have this conversation sort of post the July flood events that took place throughout the state and just give folks a little bit of a better idea of understanding what's kind of going on during an event all the different plans that kind of dictate what it is that we do and explain the different roles and who's doing what during those events and just talk about some training opportunities that are out there and next steps. So the plans this is not an all inclusive list but essentially there's a number of different plans I would support this by the all hazard mitigation plan that is done by at the county level or I should say it has been done at the county level for the last four iterations of it. It doesn't have to be done that way but it's been a really helpful thing to have it done at that county level and then there are annexes for each individual community and so that plan really identifies and ranks the hazards from a wide variety of different hazards that we would look at and then talks about different mitigation strategies to put into place to help be better prepared and mitigate those hazards. You also have your comprehensive plan which is very comprehensive in terms of everything in the city that we think about and talk about the all hazard mitigation plan strategies kind of feed into our comprehensive plan and so you'll see things like culverts that need to be upgraded to accommodate the new intense flooding that we see and that's why we've got right now on brickyard a culvert being replaced. Then there's the local emergency management plan. This is much more of a very concise inventory of who does what and what those roles are and what types of equipment we have, vulnerable populations and a number of other things that that defines. Then kind of drilling down our emergency operation plans for much more specific types of things and I also just want to let folks know that there is a actual emergency action plan for the dam here. So the all hazard mitigation I'm just looking at my presentation over here and not moving forward. All hazard mitigation plan these are the communities across the top of this slide and the variety of different hazards that are identified and ranked on the left. So natural hazards and for the most part the high storms the winter storms and severe rainstorms are starting to come up as the highest issues for folks also technological hazards and societal hazards are in there as well. So the one thing I was curious about we can do this later or we can do it now but I was just curious with this chart and the ranking hazardous materials and some of the other categories under here with global and the railroad going through I was a little surprised it was only a 10-year period. Looking over at Burlington and seeing a high I'm not trying to compare to Burlington I'm just saying I was a little surprised especially with the last 10 years of real we've seen it. The rankings on there from my understanding and Regina might have some knowledge on this as well are conducted or taken from historical data and then location data for where those things are and incidents that may have happened in the past that's where they get the rankings from and how they identify those essentially the folks that are doing that plan or it's been hired out by a company that comes in and puts it together but they essentially try to think of every possible hazard that could happen in a community and then they do the rankings like I said by historical data and by location and that type of thing. Is there a lot of coordination with global's experts that are communicating and creating these plans that might indicate something different than this? One of the things that we do every year or actually I can't take credit for it it's actually global that does it they're required to do a tabletop exercise with local emergency operations folks each I believe it's every other year I believe it is I participated in a couple of those now and during those they go over the hazards they have at their facility and the types of dangers that we might see I'm not actually sure how much hazardous material they have there I don't have access to that type of information I would assume since it's manufacturing they do have some and I know they do have a substantial amount of energy going through there as they just talked about. Sorry to jump in. I think they have their own requirements as well to keep track and identify what those hazardous materials are and their plan for it. So then here is just a snapshot from the comprehensive plan that talks about the natural hazards resiliency goals and you can really see some of those mitigation strategies that are listed here that kind of flow out of that so again culvert replacements and some other things that you see there and just to give folks a sense of what the floodplain looks like in the city the this map basically just highlights that for the most part I think one benefit that we had in this last storm is that our downtown is junction and so we are railroad based rather than river based which is not the case for many of Vermont's downtowns and so that is a real benefit but you can see the Irrigoy River going through there and you can see some of those dots are a couple of the culverts that are undersized and are now being increased so that they can handle more of that storm that we see coming through we also have some floodgates up by the high school that we activated on that on that day that was helpful too to keep another culvert right underneath there protected so local emergency management plan so this is the plan that is adopted annually every single year the deadline for it is in between town meeting day and may 1st so it's intended to be once you've got any new legislative body members at the table to adopt this at that time this plan identifies that your emergency management director is the chief and it has the other two points of contact as myself and chief in the fire department so touch on this briefly already but the plan talks about who can open the emergency operation center who staffs it where it's located and also talks about this is not very helpful terminology but what and how many national incident management system resources we have that's really our equipment for the for the most part. And I think the helpful thing of that being such a standardized system is that it can be very easily brought into a database and shared so if a different municipality needs something that we may have it's a method for seeing what those resources are. And just for folks that don't know that it's completed every year and also it gets reviewed by department of emergency management down in Waterbury they also review those. And then once they've reviewed and then they come back for your signatures. So that's the local emergency management plan is really the plan that we go to first. That's where all of the information that we would need for folks to call their phone numbers their contact information what shelters should be opened up who the contacts are for those that's that's essentially the plan that we would go to first. Yeah. So folks know the primary shelter here in the city is at CVE that's the that's the first location. And to bring up a point that's been in the news quite a bit and also to Amber's question when we were adopting this is that there is the opportunity for pets also to to be at CVE because it's definitely a big a big issue when these events happen. I'm I'll move through to the next. Okay. So during an actual event this is depending on the event this is going to be a little bit different as an example we just did a cyber security exit tabletop exercise. Yep. And so some folks might not be monitoring things like Ricky of Public Works or Chelsea at wastewater treatment facility may not be monitoring things right away like they would be in a storm event but so in a possible storm event. So the chief as the EMD follows that local emergency management plan police fire and rescue are like always managing falls that are coming in and they're setting up incident command if needed Public Works is closely monitoring any damage they see and you know I this isn't necessarily these things aren't happening in isolation a lot of times Ricky will be notified that something's going on because somebody called the police department first and so it's a lot of yeah for instance during that week we were talking about there was a lot of phone calls going back and forth between myself and Ricky and Chelsea and the fire chiefs and everybody just monitoring what was going on if they had any reports they needed because it was their responsibility to send those up to the state and if we needed state resources so we were careful about monitoring that and keeping those that information coming in fortunately they didn't have they didn't need a lot fortunately and then the wastewater treatment facility they're not only monitoring the facility itself and what's happening with the river they're also monitoring the pump stations that we've got a number of throughout the city then there are also depending on the size of the event things are happening at the state level so if the state starts opening the emergency operation center there are also direct feedback and information requests from those folks to us to find out what's going on also the regional planning commissions are set up as local liaisons to work between the emergency operation center and their municipalities in their region to find out what's going on in terms of road damage and then B-Trans is also reaching out each district in the region is reaching out to find out what's going on so there's lots of information loops happening before you go on I just want to touch on what our emergency operations center looks like so the primary center as you probably may or may not know is at the police department it's in our community room that we have so that week that we had this event going on in July we had set the operation center up it wasn't activated but we set it up when I say set up we essentially have a location in there for every single public safety agency in the city in the town and they can all send a representative to that center if it was to be activated where they have phone access they have computer access and they have radio access to their people so we've done a lot with that especially since COVID we did some redundancy efforts with that to purchase some equipment during COVID so that way we have not only ability to conduct operations there but we now have the ability to go virtually anywhere in the world and conduct business for emergency operations so if something was to happen to our building we could take a set of equipment that we now have and we could go to another location and set up that same set up for almost with almost the same capability as we have at the regular building yeah and then so Anthony at the police department is the public information officer over there we've got Ashley here as their communication director and so we coordinate and get information out to the public as quickly as we can during this event it was particularly long and scary with rain starting on Sunday and trying to figure out what kind of impact we were going to have downstream by the time it got to us and the on that Tuesday the expectation was that the Winnieski was going to rise to its height from about 12 to 3 p.m. on that day and at the staff level getting information out to you folks was about 1 p.m. on that day so I think knowing and understanding the amount of information that's gathered and collected and who's talking to who in the background I think that is what can be expected we can get information out as quickly as we can gather it so also just so folks know there is an emergency action plan for the Essex 19 dam it was most recently updated in January 2023 and it clearly defines roles in the case of an event it also has a very specific flow chart of a phone tree essentially depending on whether the they have a potentially hazardous situation or a failure is eminent situation and that very clearly is updated and there are recent contact information in there and yes yes yes yep and multiple entities in the city have an actual physical copy of this plan the police department myself fire and the wastewater treatment facility considering their location just downstream of the dam so or on the dam if there was an issue with the dam let's take this week in July that would have been communicated yeah so once identified yes absolutely so the the plan calls for once green mountain power has identified that there's a breach that might be possible they're required to notify us and give us at least what seems like a short time a two hour notice at least in in our case there's only three or four properties that are identified as being in danger of flooding if something was to happen to it in Essex I'm not saying there wouldn't be other dangers down in Winooski and the such but here there would only be like three locations so they would give us about two hours to notify them one of those locations by the way is the wastewater treatment plant right so that they would be one of the primary notifications that something was about to happen during that week I attempted to contact the the main contact with green mountain power I made a phone call to him and left the message but he never returned my call I assume it was because he was more concerned about what was going on down in Waterbury at one point I was notified that there may be there may be a point where they were going to release water from a spillway down in Waterbury and that may cause some more flooding for us but no one ever communicated anything about our dam being in danger at all they were pretty confident that our dam could take the amount of water that we had and is there generally speaking someone present there at the dam especially during an event like that they had someone at every single dam they're responsible for I just saw that come up in the public generally in the conversation people wondering if they were going to hear not everybody's listening to this right now okay so there are there's a significant amount of planning and coordination that goes on there are established emergency operation plans for the fair 4th of July and Memorial Day events there are tabletop tabletop exercises held every year before the fair they test out different scenarios there are daily briefings every morning of the fair as well in terms of coordination between the police department and the folks of the fair we have mutual aid agreements set up for police fire and rescue throughout the county for different there's a whole tree there's a whole tree about who gets called in what type of response is needed it's on the law enforcement side and everybody has their own mutual aid agreements with others so we could call in help from the state level or wherever we needed it and then the CISA cyber security and infrastructure security agency is who sponsored the tabletop exercise for the city and the town on August 15th and really pretty interesting exercise altogether it was a cyber incident plus physical incident combined can I talk about that just a second I had been planning to do or wanting to do an actual tabletop exercise that would test our abilities during the fair not necessarily at the fair but during the fair because that's when we're the most stretched for resources every public safety agency is and public works and everyone else so that was the specifications that I gave CISA and the way we came about CISA they're in charge of cyber security primarily but they also do some infrastructure security consulting and that type of thing they're a federal agency that was created I believe around 2017 or 2018 so they don't charge for their services it's something that the federal government does so that was the parameters that I gave them they have devious minds and came up with a scenario that was if anything like this ever happens I think I'll be turning in my resignation because it's this was there was a lot of components to it and because it was a cyber security their specialty is cyber security one of the things that we wanted to do was we wanted to use that as a starter mechanism so what we did was I won't go into the exact scenarios but certainly Regina was there and is confounded with some of it was that some systems were hacked into based on someone clicking a link that they shouldn't have and that quickly led to issues of both the city's IT and the town's IT and then ongoing with that the fair also had issues with their IT system being hacked into which led to an actual physical event a cause of physical event at the fair so we tried to involve as many of the agencies that were present I part in it and certainly we learned some lessons about especially cyber security and things that we can do and things that we're already doing well but we can do better and it was very well done I was very impressed with what they put on and there will be a whole report that comes out that we can share with the council and see what some of our next steps are on that just never click a thing exactly okay and then the wastewater treatment facility they have their only own emergency operation plans in place in case there's a power outage at the facility or pump station also the wastewater treatment facility is part of this Vermont Warn which is again a sharing of resources and staff so that if something's happening someplace you can kind of call on this network to help get support okay then trainings so essentially there are a number of different trainings that the council can take if you would like to these basic online courses ICS 402 are for folks if you want to get a little bit more training about what this sort of happens in an incident command situation in an emergency operation situation it's a lot of acronyms and very it's a bit dry orange but it is informational so that is out there if you would like yeah so essentially our next steps are to keep on keeping on with these existing strategies continuing to work through those mitigation strategies and the comprehensive plan and the all hazard mitigation plan is updated every five years and so that was just done and then we have I think annual reporting requirements on what we've done on the strategies in that plan and we will follow up with improvements identified in that CISA table top exercise and there's also this helpful guide that one of the RPCs put together after Irene that really kind of just talks sort of walks you through a variety of different things to have in place well before an event things to have in place during an event and we can we will take a look at that and see if there's anything that we can get into place anything else no I think that said I just wanted you have trainings up there so I'll just mention that we're constantly doing trainings at the police department with when it comes to national incident management you know what I took over as chief in 2020 all of our folks are required to have ICS 100 and 700 as a baseline our supervisors have now gone up to the 300 level and we're going to be doing a 400 level class sometime in November for all of our supervisors and myself I haven't been through 400 yet so we're going to be attending that we're fortunate to have a resource in-house at the police department that can teach those classes so if there was something that we that we wanted to put on here we certainly can do that and just taking opportunity again in this last flooding event levels property was still above the flood line yes and I checked in with them during the during the event and what I was told was is we're we're high and dry here they're well well above where the flood stage level was yeah yep there was no danger there great any questions from board members so let's see all of my questions I know this is very good for all of that information you bet well thank you very much then thank you before you go yeah sure any members of the public that have any questions regarding this section of the meeting this evening emergency preparedness I don't see anyone in the room and I'll give zoom a second here I'm not seeing any hands on zoom so thank you very much chief for joining us thank you all have a nice evening great to see you thank you have a good fair oh yes I came from a meeting at the fair when before I came here there's been several this week yeah I bet you yeah all right all right five what is now 5d discussion of code enforcement and rental registry program I think we're gonna hear okay so Chris has a presentation for you he's gonna run through that will basically cover what we've kind of put in the memo but great cool yeah so I know that city council and the residents of this extension have been uh asking for updates and also you know has been interested in enforcement and knowing more about how we're enforcing the existing codes and rules and I just want to take some time today to talk about what we're doing what choices lay ahead and what we can do differently so this this whole conversation is really related to rental registry as well just because of how the budget was made and how code enforcement and rental registry was combined to one person in the budget we'll talk more about how that is envisioned and how that might actually play out but let's talk a little bit more about our enforcement practices right now and if there are any questions along the way please feel free to jump in so who is responsible for enforcement there are several things that my department touches on the land development code or zoning regulations is enforced by community development and municipal ordinances are spread between us police and also fire departments and of course there are state rules that are delegated to municipalities and as a result we have positions like the health officer and also animal control and the regular police and fire departments but how do so in terms of how we enforce zoning how do we how do we actually enforce the rules it often comes at the time of new developments and change of views that's when files come across our table and if we don't hear complaints that's when that's when we check up so plans are submitted by the applicants we check that plans meet zoning requirements we issue a permit a zoning permit and if applicable there is a certificate of occupancy inspection this is for structures where there are people their living space and the CO is withheld until the requirements are held so the rest of the rules that we work on are mostly enforced on the complaint spaces if you see the complaints we direct the complaint to the appropriate departments sometimes it's not us but we do make sure to follow up we conducted a site that if it is on us and we start with an informal warning before escalating with notice of violation of written warnings eventually if the issue is not resolved we have the option of involving the city attorney for potential legal action but for the most part going up to the warning has worked there's also in statute the ability for us to write civil tickets apparently that has not been done before and I asked town if they've done that and they also haven't but it is possible it is something that if it is necessary we can explore but our enforcement system obviously has limitations because it's a complaints driven process we don't catch everything and there are benefits to that too having this complaints driven we have so many specific rules throughout the land development code and ordinance is that if we go and nitpick on everything many people will fail and some of those rules are written so that neighbors get along with each other some of them are for public safety and I think the intent of these rules is really important to consider in terms of how we enforce but for the most part it's a complaints driven process unless it comes from development applications and we do rely very much on voluntary compliance with the threat of legal action but we rarely have to escalate to that step can I ask a question on that a little bit? maybe this is early new development package proposal comes in what if you've got a developer who's proposing something new while being in violation of another property in the city what's our ability to sort of each project is unique I imagine and often we see these as separate LLCs to show probably for various things or to be practical for their purposes but there's no way that we can kind of look at one and say clearly you're in violation over here before we permit this project we'd like to fix this over here yeah I don't I don't think there's any mechanism for that I can I can check on that but I I mean I'd be honestly surprised if there were but I'm curious if I recall correctly in the town on Carmichael street there's the apartment building with the rest that we mose on the first floor that's kind of what's feeding my question the landlord was in violation of health codes and there was a lot of tenant complaints and there is an incomplete road out there that is supposed to be completed so that that landlord can extend this development onto the field that's behind it and the violations regarding health code were so extensive and the landlord was not complying with repeated efforts by the town to comply that they just I think the understanding is that until the landlord comes to compliance there will be no activity on the road so but I don't know if that's specific or for the record I'm not identifying anybody specifically and some of the things that I'm thinking of maybe on one developed property but maybe being the activities identified to extent I'm just curious people at all that example is in my mind a little bit we have a property owned by a very small amount of landowners and potential developers so anyway I just was curious it might not have been relevant right now but before you got too far away from that process of how the applications come in and all of that yeah now I would also say there's another limitation in that so far until very recently there's been no electronic records of of how our enforcement issues are tracked that to me is an obvious first step in dealing with the systemically and there's plenty of off-the-shelf software out there that can do this really well but I also think that starting a spreadsheet is a good process and that is exactly what I'm intending to do we've set up going forward our enforcement issues that the complaints that we get will be tracked on a sheet which will be visible to city councilors will that include the identified health officer reports were appropriate yeah we can put that on as well so yeah so I've worked through in the packet is a summary spreadsheet of some of the issues that we've been grappling with some of the issues that there are big questions about and I'd like to just spend some time to go over these some of them are generalizable as to how we deal with similar issues and some of them are more specific so feel free to stop me any along the way if there's specific questions and we can also have a broader discussion about how enforcement is done for generally afterwards so there are going to be many of these slides Rose Wood Lane knows the question about how somebody was able to put in in addition to property without a permit we treated that as plates and investigated the issue that has since been resolved we have got a permit can I ask you a question on this yep and this will come up a couple times in this list but there's because there's a couple of examples in here where a project is done and we're coming back after the fact and going well here's your permit to be blunt why bother because if we're just going to grant them the permit later and I get the difficulty and also saying tear it down so was there a penalty for this is there a mechanism that we have in the system right now in order to say look we're going to work with you on this we're going to give you this post but you also have a penalty for having violated our ordinance the penalty is that they have to pay double for the the permits and that there's a risk that what they built does not conform to zoning requirements and in that case they have to tear it down there's a question citywide about whether or not fire pits are allowed and the answer to that based on our ordinance is yes but you can only burn wood and the police can be can't be garbage can't be brush that's how that can be remember that and with this as it stands complaints are forwarded to the fire department and police but the police also mostly rely on fire the police are available to support if there's a risk that requires them to be there but I this is an issue that I think is a little bit hard to enforce at times because the fire department is hard time and the response times to a to a backyard fire pit is often to be fast enough to catch it but they do have the ability to write letters just morning letters if they think something has been burned that should be Regina doing there was a general inquiry about what we do with complaints about speeding and noise and I will say this if you treat this as this is both an enforcement issue and a planning issue but as an enforcement issue this falls under police jurisdiction but I will say that and the police do have a dedicated I think a traffic enforcement officer which also works within the town but this is also a planning issue and that's the speeds we get are what we build for there I've seen our traffic calming policy and in my opinion the bar for being able to put in traffic calming measures is pretty high basically we can talk about reviewing that at some point if there is a a desire not tonight definitely not tonight yeah but it is complicated because there are definitely tradeoffs with traffic operations and maintenance but yeah I do think it's worth a policy review this is also a planning issue and there are grants available to do more specific transportation studies that deal with safety and traffic calming that's available basically if we have staff capacity to take on another grant project that is possible and coupled with if we get a future downtown designation there could be opportunities to adjust speed limits and implement more traffic calming with the downtown designation that's the only way you can post speeds speed limits under 25 on this it brings up a question for me is the equipment to do speed studies back from repair are we able to do speed studies again I don't know that answer I will find out we had him here sorry almost kept we had a quick question about pushes and tree limbs within the right of way a new brickyard update for this it's already been dealt with so we send letters to the property owners and they usually respond sorry I apologize in that particular case I think it's pretty obvious I'm thinking right now that west south street split often there's a bush there that often causes trouble seeing around that particular corner I'm not saying that it's in violation but I don't know what the field of view needs to be this is south you know so I'm wondering I don't even know if that's specified but I'm curious because I think about that intersection so this is the intersection of west street and south street when you're coming in on south from park street it forks but if you're coming the other way from say west street or in south street it's kind of hard to see around to any oncoming traffic for any distance because of the fact right on the corner there's a large evergreen I can look into that there are rules about a visibility triangle some things born jurisdiction of public works right away sometimes it's a matter of I can look into it there was a question about sandwich boards along the right way so there was a pause of enforcement during covid there was a start of enforcement well I mean well apparently there have been problems regarding this before but it should also be noted that sandwich boards are allowed under temporary provisions of the LDC the the main thing is that they're supposed to be taken away when the business is closed out for the bank and 15 feet from the front door 15 feet from the front door that's right so thinking of post office plaza on Pearl Street for instance I mean I kind of feel like if the landlord needs a bigger sign permit for all the businesses that are in there that's a different story than five sandwich boards for businesses that are often duplicative and two or three for the donut truck for instance and key bank you know I mean it's gotten to the point where we've got two and three signs for each business sometimes on Pearl Street just as a one one example I read this it's difficult for them to bring that right yeah and we can talk more about enforcement strategy with that I mean I think there's both information and enforcement strategy with that yeah I mean obviously we want to work with them and you know maybe suggest that if there is an issue of signage and that they just need a different kind of sign or second sign for them all for instance but if that's not going to happen and the general problem I have with a lot of this is if we're doing some we're not doing ones that are right under our noses then how are we doing the south so if we're going to someone saying you got to cut your tree back at the corner of west and south your beautiful bush the protection porch from all the traffic how are we like then saying that sex the six sandwich boards two or three for the donut truck are okay at post office pause it I mean some of the stuff we can't do everything like you said at the beginning we would hire eight people and that's all they would do everybody would have to change their property including me and that's not what we're looking for but some of the more obvious things and that this is like low hanging fruit in terms of the aesthetic impact versus what it takes to rectify and I don't know what the calculus is but bringing in a sandwich we're not having it out 15 feet away from the store in which case it's 40 yards from the store in the first place I mean it shouldn't even be out there do we need to change the ordinance do we need to give them a second sign I'm not anti-business just for the record but I'm also expecting to try to keep the community looking as good as it can in a very difficult area of our community to look good I mean you know it's a long I'll stop talking I think this is an important point about our enforcement strategy and the fact that we are on we mostly operate on a complaint spaces but I do think there are areas of focus where we can and not just geographic but in terms of like areas that we can focus on in a more proactive way I think we should talk about that set maybe a conversation another time about what are the priorities, public safety things like that neighborhood cohesion but not tonight but I think it's worth the conversation of like how do we prioritize where we're going to do and then if we're not going to priority something's way down the list doesn't need to hit you there but I think we should have a dialogue I mean like one of the things that stuck out for me is thinking about specifically Pearl Street because you have a place like the donut shop now right now it's different because now they've got frontage on Pearl Street but at one time they were back behind the building and so you wouldn't know that they existed without a sign out there the sports car shop which is on the back side of the building again you wouldn't know without some signage out there I agree with you I wish it would look better is there a way to work with those owners those property owners to improve the signage in order to help those particular businesses versus giving them an exception or allowance which then makes the rules all fog so I think there's a dialogue that needs to happen there with us because again I look at the 15 foot restriction for instance and maybe in the short term let's say a new business moved into the backside of one of these buildings for the short term fine maybe we allow it but hopefully the signage would be improved because they need to be able to promote themselves otherwise their business is going to die because nobody's going to know they're back there I'm pretty sure the ordinance actually has special event exceptions for signage that's out of compliance normally would be out of compliance so if someone's having a grand opening sale doing some kind of special event I think they can even put up those large flags and stuff in that right and I think the difficulty with that though is that again nobody knows whether or not that sign has an asterisk or that one doesn't so whether another business owner is driving on that road or somebody is driving on that road you don't know which one is an exception which one is not so like are we trying to wipe them all out which I think honestly I think it's well no no no no wipe out the signs wipe out those wipe out those kinds of signs I think yes there would be some pleasing it would be nicer if those were all gone but yeah I'm trying to just say that we should have that getting back to like do we need to go back to the land to end up all owner and say it looks like you need to have a second set of signs for all the businesses you have what can we do with you you know and if we have a restriction from that landowner in this case having a second set of signs to facilitate then that's something that maybe we need to rectify and allow to I'm not saying that's the problem that's what we do but that that's a much more logical conversation than this sorry Chris Amber Amber oh Amber I got one screen Amber I'm sorry I don't want to necessarily belabor this issue but I think one of the other things this is one of my biggest pet thieves and one of the things that I think that's been happening is the intention was to allow folks to be able to put out a sandwich board sign to market their business and let folks know that their business was doing whatever and it has now become a situation where everyone on Pearl Street is like watching the next person and saying well sandwich board signs are yours to be legal so I'm just going to put one out and so we've got signs that have nothing to do with the business itself that are popping up from lack of enforcement yeah so I do think we should have a conversation about of course the priorities and strategy and sandwich board sounds like and really general aesthetics along our main streets yeah I just where does that sit in the priorities there was a question about temporary COs and how long they're valid for and they are allowed in the LDC they are generally three to six months and then yeah they would need to either come back for a new temporary CO or and the requirements for that is that the outstanding issues cannot affect life and safety Amber sorry there you are hi Amber sorry part of my part of my question is I guess I'm not sure how much we're supposed to be delving into what Chris is saying to us I have a number of comments about the general situation like how are we looking at temporary and how are we following up but is that for tonight or is that for another conversation because so I'm not really entirely clear what what extent we're supposed to be having for a conversation why don't you try go ahead Regina yeah I mean I think what we were hoping to do overall with this conversation was to give an understanding of the breadth of the issues that are out there and not entirely delve into each of them in a whole whole lot of detail but trying to give an understanding of the different issues that are out there how each of them are addressed a little bit differently and really kind of thinking through what what our next steps are so I think what we could do if some of these are obvious like the council wants to have more detail conversation on some of these we should just sort of flag what those are how does that strike you remember I know we just drove off for a few minutes on the sandwich boards yeah I mean that sounds fine to me I think that on this particular one my questions are more about the process and how if someone is issued a temporary CEO what's the follow up look like you know is there a tickler file that says okay we've got a follow back up with XYZ in six months to see where they're at here or does it just kind of so is the onus on the staff or is the onus on the owner of the property to make sure that that temporary CEO is being converted to a permanent so the onus to a certain extent is always on the property owner because they are taking quite a legal risk if they operate without a temporary CEO many of their insurance products would be would not be very powerful if they were operating illegally but I would say so far there the I don't see a widespread issue of temporary CEOs being being missed and for renewal but it is something that that I'm developing better processes for in terms of tracking development applications throughout from the time of initial application to the issuance of a CEO to me that's an open file and I'm developing processes for that there was a question about on South Summit streets and how there's an accumulation of items possibly health issues about composting that this issue is marked as resolved the health officer has a conductive site visits and addressed it for all streets there's this temporary structure you see here this was allowed as a COVID measure by staff before my time permanent solution is now needed we have sent out communications with the folks there was a question about and this is really a generalizable but site on front street with the accumulation of items and vehicles on private property and this is it's quite different whether it's a rental property or if it's an owner occupied property there's certainly there's a whole additional step when it's a rental property and in this case it was we have notified the owner and they are they have been communicating with the tenants but I'll also say in other cases issues like this could take a while to resolve because the tenants have a landlord relationship and in general if we hear of at least being terminated or eviction proceedings happening we pause our enforcement of those issues because it doesn't seem like it would make any more sense to be penalizing their own food trucks temporary use permits have been issued for all the ones that are out there but they don't they haven't been displaying the zoning sign because we haven't been telling them we haven't been interpreting it that way it's the zoning permits the zoning signs are generally required to be posted during construction of new structures but there's there's nothing that says that we can't ask them to put it up for the whole duration that they're open it seems that these are more they're not so much food trucks as they are temporary establishments food truck for me shows up Wednesday and Fridays these are temporary perfect Amber has your hand up sorry go ahead fine rush Regina's on top of it I guess I'm just curious and we don't have to talk about this tonight but I'm curious about what is involved in what you look at and issue these temporary use permits for the food trucks and then I guess as a side note is the food truck that just popped up in the parking lot of the gas station on Pearl Street is that also permitted food so we look at zoning regulations about land use basically is a retail sale of food permissible in that zone setbacks are obviously not because it's temporary it's not a structure that's not something that we evaluate there's a set of criteria in the LDC that we check off in order to issue these permits so yeah but for example you wouldn't be able to just ask for permits in the residential area to put a food truck and in terms of something by the gas station are you referring to? the one across from Essex automotive I am not aware of that one actually what is do you know what we can figure it out let's put a pin in this for that conversation when we're talking about prioritizing they have a couple other questions that need to be asked here about that there was a question about RV storage at the CVE this might be a can of worms but now that I know about it I will be opening up the can of worms and it does sound like it is something that the CVE advertises as a service that they offer and I will look into it and it might be if it's not permitted it is also something that we can discuss as a policy change so it's different from this this is not the RV storage that I think was referred to it's long term overflow for an RV dealer locally of basically it's rotated around the fairgrounds as they need space and when we reviewed the LDC or approved the last LDC that just wasn't a listed thing they're not an overflow vehicle dealer parking lot now I don't want to impact negatively the fairgrounds but winter storage in their buildings of campers and things is not not the issue it's 20 to 80 for sale RVs that are literally overflow that are rotated around the property throughout the year so these are 365 24-7 I suspect they might be treating it as a related issue though because they do mention RV storage as well but I would certainly take a closer look at question about unregistered vehicles and our general policy there we send letters to the property owners to relocate the cars or to make site plan amendments to create the space for parking the vehicle so but enforced on a complaint basis we can talk about this a little bit okay there was a semi-general question about businesses in residential areas that include vehicles, trucks heavy machinery on the property visible from the front yard so without a specific address I can't I would need a specific complaint of a specific address to do detailed research about it but I have looked at a few sites along the streets and I would say there are many uses of that are grandfathered under previous or at a time when there weren't rules that prohibited such uses but this is something that in terms of enforcing on a complaint basis when a new detrimental when a new use that is detrimental to residential uses comes up we do often hear complaints because people are the issues that people are sensitive to people tend to speak about speak about so certainly if there are specific addresses that need to be looked at and cars online same thing as the unregistered vehicles I do have a question about this though because for me thinking about it and driving around and I know that I've heard numerous complaints and I've had my own concerns about some of this stuff is again enforcement when it comes to am I parking there for an extended period of time or am I being penalized for being there for 24 hours how is that determined you know if there was a I'm thinking about parking enforcement you know marking attire and things like that I don't know that I don't believe we even have a record for it at the moment to try to enforce any rules around that are you talking about parking on streets or private property on residential streets for instance is what I'm thinking of there's only a few streets that we have that are resident only that would have any restriction those are dealt with I think pretty straight in a straight forward way and then there's the winter parking van I think this is more you know there's just a lot of cars in the property and once a one car driveway and people have elected to use the lawn I have a neighbor who graveled up an extra spot they keep it really nice the vehicles they have I think things in this car on lawn or car in the yard or unregistered cars you know the Edgewood we've got three or four F-150 all red growing and sort of seemingly falling into the brook with trees growing through them they've been there so long two vehicles in the front never having been registered in over 10 years and then another property on that street with at least three or four unregistered drunkers in the driveway you know being stored there basically but never so I think that's kind of what that's the tough so we got there's many issues in the car thing which is why I was thinking maybe that we could we'd come back to this in terms of where because there are a lot of issues to this right there's a there's a priority issue then there's the I think is more important right you know what is the need of that family right how can we help them and grappling up a spot and that goes to the whole enforcement conversation that I hope we have at some point too and from from you know even before the warning where are we going where do we start approaching some of these and which ones where we're really just going in there to have a conversation we got a complaint is there a reason you haven't cut your grass in four months you know somebody complained thinking of an actual example and enforcement and the example and the response back to me from the person that brought this to my attention was nobody asked me if I had a lawnmower or I could afford them nobody you know wanted to have a conversation I'm not saying none of us in this room did this I'm not trying to single anybody out or anything it's just an example where where can we start to have thoughtful conversations with in these situations where we're actually also trying to help find a solution for these landowners before we get to far down the even to the warning like where in the process can that happen do we set aside minimal funds for micro grants to help folks with some of the stuff you know with the idea being that we can help them do this and it makes the neighborhood in the community better do we we can go on for this but anyway I think that's part of that conversation you know where can we find ways to help people and for lack of a better term right now coming to compliance but you know and simply ask what would you need because I can think of like if somebody's got six or eight cars in their property and we asked them to move them it's pointless we can't afford to move them so I don't know what you do with that we don't have to go into it tonight but I think those are much deeper conversations about you know no I agree and I think we need to have a discussion around that and that's why I mentioned about the code enforcement because again I can think of an example where there's two older adults who have children living with them but they have a driveway that can accommodate two cars but there are basically four adults there that need their transportation but at the same time I have just as an example I have a driveway that can accommodate a couple of cars but let's just say I had a family gathering and I decided to move my car over so I could allow more cars even to that drive space for a period of time am I going to have somebody knocking on my door to enforce the rule or is this is there something else that's great I'll try to breeze through a few more of these because I think we want to spend just a little bit of time talking about the overarching issue here but sign on commercial vehicles one commercial vehicle is permitted residential vehicle residential areas for a lot we can enforce that as needed Taft Street I'm not even going to talk about this again we can know so much about it already noise ordinance about the Expo and fireworks there has been a suggestion to rewrite the ordinance waivers for large events the Expo is required to have third-party noise monitoring I get those reports and I process those invoices and charge to see them back and the current agreements oh yeah and the current agreement says they are allowed to exceed a certain number of decibels for a certain amount of time for a certain number of years with penalties based on how long they exceeded for and how much they exceeded and that's what sound the third-party sound monitoring does current agreement expires December 31st this year so certainly if there was interest there would be more talk about this health code violation for rentals that's why we're talking about rental registry department building with five stories built when it was approved for four stories well this is certainly something that was caught in the CO inspection process and I started work here just as this was being being reviewed it was it was caught even prior to it but it was during but yeah it's been closed off that's what it looks like it's on the right there are actually stairs behind there so could this have been caught earlier because right now this project stands it's there fine you can't get up there via the stairs but it's there in violation and I well so there's a story limit and there's a height limit they actually they exceed the story limit but if you can't access it but but actually in this case it's a very strange case because generally developers would not waste money doing something that we're ultimately going to make a block off and we didn't see the updated plans that resulted in this if there are approved plans they don't build according to those approved plans they face the financial risks of this happening and in this case that they wasted thousands of dollars building the fifth building which couldn't be opened could this have been caught sooner though if there had been code enforcement officer or if there is a procedure for a building inspection that happens in that process they could have caught this before the sides went up and the roof went up sure in theory yeah we had a code enforcement back then well in theory but in theory we it's pretty obvious when a whole additional program goes up so the yeah I mean we can spend a very long time on this but essentially the building itself is as tall as it was permitted the obvious thing came into play when there was another extra set of windows but that that height was always intended there and essentially my understanding is the state fire code fire marshal was going to require them to sprinkler up above that floor because it's actually space in there that needed to be sprinkled and so they thought we could just we might as well make use of that space since we have to sprinkler anyway and you know for another day when we spend time exploring more about what the rental registry person does if that happens as that program evolves there may be a role for periodic checks for apartment buildings but we haven't even gotten that for yet we don't have any kind of building inspection program like really I don't know like what I imagine someone might show up in process and review what's going on and check off as they're going and I'm not really trying to be too critical about this I'm trying to talk about it more broadly so one thing that is also my understanding longer ago there was more inspections along the way even just from the site perspective inspections and so we have initiated that again that we sort of more proactively be going to look at things along the way as a total aside there's also going to be some new requirements coming down the road for stormwater management construction inspection happening so that will be a new MS4 permit requirement that we're going to have at some point down the line so there will continue to be more reasons why we're actively going to these sites to take a look at them that are not necessarily we're going to start building code there was complaints about current use of chase moving in storage building larger trucks in as permitted I am looking into this but truck traffic is not explicitly prohibited from that area so to see if it was violation this one has been resolved by Grax we put back we have sent a letter out for the broken windows and we'll follow up and this one I believe has been addressed in the up-to-date spreadsheet we also had two things come up recently where neighbors said they didn't see zoning permits posted for something people are supposed to post their permits up and we have these two issues have been addressed yeah there was something about bright lights pointing to somebody else's property this is also something that Terry has sent a letter about to take a look at although it's hard to see in the daytime but yeah I think that's the list things that we need to talk about really in the upcoming months is what policy conversations need to be opened from this for example something that needs to be a priority above other things that we're working on implementing standardized tracking and record keeping procedures that is something that's directly in my course I'm working on that and the other thing is that when we can focus on specific issues and we know what the priorities are we can start with we can do more outreach over enforcement always start with that for example the vehicles on grass there are solutions to that they can put in a site plan amendment to add gravel driveway in most cases but they need to know that's a possibility in how to do it I think if it was deemed necessary council should identify priority compliance issues that require proactive enforcement instead of just relying on complaints and I certainly think related to that there is an opportunity for targeted campaigns about specific issues which where we focus on informing using fliers or whatnot to start before we do an enforcement list and we can do that even without an additional staff member that's focused on enforcement and examples I've seen from other municipalities that there have been campaigns about accessibility on sidewalks being blocked by sandwich forts and things like that where city staff looked at all walked all the driven through the entire community and found all the hotspots and handed out letters that said what the rules were there's overgrown lawns could be done seasonally if that was a priority and also finally there is the option of moving forward with the rental registry program and having the half FTE that's focused on enforcement but really I think the framework of how we enforce things will be important to set up well before we get to hiring such a person so yeah and I have a few more slides I know it's been not quite set rental registry do we want to do this or do we want to save this I mean are you looking at me with such a question is that the look the look is to come to but we have taking full responsibility as a talker the LCT increase how detailed is your presentation much let's it would be nice to have an over if this is what I'm hoping this is an overview of sort of what's been done today yeah and some of the outstanding questions so it's not if it's brief but I'm assuming it's a lot more brief it is and I imagine we'll probably won't talk as much yeah and and this is it's it will be brief because the rental registry isn't really that far but what was envisioned in the budget we talked about one FT split between rental registry and code enforcement and that code enforcement officer role would also be the health officer and this was envisioned to be an enterprise fund so it needed to be cost neutral but only the rental registry part would be expected to be cost neutral so sorry just go back to that so at the start of the start of this essentially we started out with this being one full time person without contemplating a revenue source understanding though that rental registry programs have revenue structure and we would figure out that system so that it would be cost neutral the in the budget process we evolved from that one full time person covered 50% by revenue we tagged it to the lot fund just as a starting place so that we understood that at some point we would sort of shift figure out this program see how it's working but there would be revenue associated with that so as it stands now in your FY24 budget you have a full time employee that is 50% of that paid for in the general fund 50% of that paid for in the lot fund absent a real live revenue stream coming from a program that wasn't yet set up I ask a quick question concerning the cost neutral piece of this when you say that the cost of this position essentially paid for by the rental registry are we talking about will determine what that fee looks like based on this position therefore paying for it or is some amount of that cost going to be expected to come from violations or is it only going to come from registration on this list so I think registration I don't know specifically the level of detail on how other folks have structured that program but I think essentially what we were I think roughly thinking at the time of budgeting was you can assume maybe 1500 rentals in the city and I think we're kind of closer to assuming 2000 rentals so just part of the issue is we don't know how many rentals we have and if you assume something like $100 registration fee which is maybe too high we would figure that out you're at $150,000 in the registration fee alone yeah so we've been working with the planning commission closely to develop a draft ordinance that is not quite brushed up and ready to show you yet but there's certainly the they've settled on some proposed goals of the rental registry program number one is to ensure adequate life safety for all residential rental properties and this is mainly through the proactive enforcement of the Vermont's rental housing health code which we can already do with the health code but right now it's on a plain basis second goal would be to develop an inventory of residential rental properties and as extension and also and finally to improve opportunities to connect landlords to adequate resources for improving the properties in terms of the potential scope of how big of this we're looking at there's the census suggests that there's about 2,000 residential units we don't know exactly but I think it might be a little bit higher now because there's been recent additions but I've actually got a task started with the CCRPC right now a GIS task to come up with a better list to understand your base this can be based on this can be based on the grand list of who owns whether or not the buildings are owner occupied and where the owners currently live that would help us understand kind of the distribution of the rental properties and whether there just a few major giant landlords or they're more spread out there's been I think council has asked about short term rentals and how and what we should potentially do and I think the planning commission certainly thinks that we should start at least start by treating them the same as long term rentals perhaps we get marked differently but we don't have the basics in place yet so we should treat them safely and commercial properties I actually met with the small business advocates from the consumer assistance program which is part of the office of the attorney general and she talked a lot about how small businesses often have trouble dealing with landlord issues because of the power imbalance and this could be an opportunity to for us to be a part of an economic development tool but I also think this might be better for a later phase but we would have the infrastructure to deal with this as well in the future and in terms of how we might what the steps are to implementation I think there's going to be a lot of work right now and start with figuring out where the units are what types they are we certainly have to do a lot of public engagements with targeted outreach towards landlords and renters we'd have to create an ordinance and a fee structure and build a budget a program budget to figure out how high the fee needs to be there's lots of precedent from surrounding communities and we've launched a system and set a deadline for registration beyond which there would be enforcement for non-registration but I think there are a few things that should be considered right now and the first and most important is that this program will raise the cost of renters and based on what we see from other municipalities the cost will be likely around $120 per unit per year how this is split between whether or not this gets completely passed down to renters the economics behind that are at least a portion or much of it would be so is this additional cost to renters and landlords with the long-term benefits of proactive enforcement when we when we don't really I would say we don't really have evidence of widespread rental housing health and safety deficiencies in the city at this point but it is certainly impossible because we don't know and also another thing we need to think about is whether or not it would make sense to spend money on technology and also money on doing significance public outreach before as we're building out to this because if we really want to do a good job we would have to have a really good idea of where these things might be and reach out to both the tenants and landlords and you might have to do multiple mailings as well as an online campaign it would have to be a multifaceted campaign and it certainly costs money and it would be before any revenue comes in so what do you think the realistic timeline then is to be up and kind of running because by what you've put up here by the people that are planning commissions still play outreach all these pieces that have to be done I kind of feel like we're not talking about anything until late 24-25 potentially that's I would say that's it's not it would be it would feel very rushed to have set a deadline to set all the policy and set a deadline within like a year because there's so much public engagement that would need to be done in order to move this out because we've got this position budgeted for this fiscal but do we think based on this timeline that's even where we're going to use it then or are we looking to potentially push this off to the next fiscal budget well I think there there are elements of this we're moving forward like for example like it might not be the person I need the money basically you might need the person too I'm not there are a lot of ways this could play out that half FTE picked up in January or February funded the way you described could do a lot of this work while acting as a health officer while helping us explore intentionally how we approach enforcement even for this program and is it carrot and stick approach to getting it going we're not going to find you for not registering for it I don't know but that person may be needed to help get this started with the understanding that revenue may not appear until the second half of 24 for instance this is just me footballing I'm not saying there are facts in this conversation but it does seem early though it does seem very early it so it's just a thought and I think the other factor and what is helpful to start this code enforcement conversation and the reason why this is all combined together here is trying to get a better handle on what that piece looks like in and of itself outside of even this rental registry program and trying to figure out exactly what are the most logical next steps to put into place because the rental registry program is more involved and not going to happen right away and the thing that we'll be thinking about very soon is developing the FY 25 budget and if we hire a full-time person January 1 on the code enforcement piece with an unknown about what happens with rental registry we are automatically lining ourselves up for FY 25 budget increase for 50% of that full-time employee if we don't have a mechanism for revenue and so those are kind of all the things sort of spinning around and trying to figure out and we have the city planner that is hired now to start on Monday so I think the you know Chris is doing an excellent job thinking through these enforcement issues and trying to figure out how we can manage that better communicate that better stay on top of those in a better way that will definitely help with the third person in that department so I think it's a kind of continued conversation over the next couple of months about exactly what it is that we want want to do and then we'll have the strategic planning we'll have an impact at the same time right and I think the nice thing about the strategic planning thing if all works out as we all hope I think it does is that we will have engagement from a lot of more renters than we're normally used to and it would be really wonderful to get qualitative data to have some really great conversations with people who this is intended to help or work with so it's a lot, it's a lot for timing you know we may lose this position I have to come back to it in a year you know in 26 and fund balance this and figure out a way to deal with that you know just because of how long this I mean there's so many different things that could be done but we are you know just for folks this is sort of why we wanted these positions because we have a lot of these bigger conversations that need facilitation and any research in any time and we we're still the staff we have are still trying to run the city and pull in community development, pull in projects and work through projects through planning and all of those normal tasks and so rental registry we were hoping would operate would move through quicker but with all of the normal workload and the transition workload this is my opinion this is where we are and it's good progress I don't think it didn't proceed nearly as fast as I thought it might but I was probably way overly optimistic and then we have the complications with the health officer we were required to have and we were very lucky for many years with Jerry Furkey doing it whenever he was needed and that is not a normal paradigm for someone paid the minimal stipend that it affords so we also need to cover that position with a reliable with someone that can be there when they're needed and when we also talk about wanting to ensure that the community has input on incoming development and that quality of life issues are taken care of that also requires people to participate in those conversations, interface with developers to talk to the community talk to boards, talk to CCRPC and regional planning you know this is not saying it for us necessarily but this is sort of why we came with the request for the positions we did for this current years budget so just wanted to make that point again that we're really trying to address all of the things we hear when we hear about everything that's impact on the city right now that was a little long winded but I just want to try to explain again this is why we asked for the positions and we still believe they're important and we still believe these issues are important with code enforcement we don't want to just start throwing letters to fines of people we really want to figure out how to do things differently especially since we're such a tight small community I think working with our neighbors and working with our businesses is a much better answer than finding our neighbors and finding our businesses so anyway that's a yeah that's it okay so thank you um Chris for walking us through that and for all that time everybody yeah thank you very much and Chris mentioned this CCRPC seems like they can help us at least get to that initial data question about how many rental units we might have and where they are so we're not feeling the pressure right now about getting some of that software system in place right now to help us get that started so there is no money asked at the moment just checking some chats I think they're clear okay do you Regina, Chris, do you feel like you have what you were looking for from this I feel like I'm aware now of where we are any other board comments or no go ahead thank you so I think at some point I'll need kind of reaffirmation that we want to proceed with rental registry given with the cost trade-offs for renters but beyond that it's going to I'll be coming back with the draft ordinance but I think there's only a point of moving forward to the draft ordinance if I can if we are intending on moving forward well one thing we would need is an estimate, a good estimate or two or three on what that software would cost and so we could weigh it against just that aspect of it we got an idea, I think we have an idea of what a person would be and what are people thinking about we don't have to decide that financial impact we can get back to you with some more guidance soon on where we are with that once we digest this that's good anybody in the room that has any comments on this program I'll see Bridget come on up so I've been scribbling throughout this conversation I think overall what we're talking about here is community enhancement and improvement and we've needed these positions for many many many many long years Lori brought the idea of a rental registry to all of you but when she was at that point trustee maybe eight years ago and then Andrew brought it to you I believe again so here we are probably that many years later talking about it again I own rental property in Burlington and Onuski I pay rental registry fees with those communities I got a letter in the mail saying this is a newly instituted whatever and here's your bill I actually think it's a really good thing and we actually have tenants who said can I see your because you're inspected if you registered you're inspected so can I see your inspection report which is good for tenants as well as for landlords everyone's in compliance so I think the number and location of rental units in this community which doesn't sound like an onerous task I mean could be wrong but if we could do that boom we're there and $100 is not I wish I'd brought all my information I didn't I know it's $100 per unit in Onuski I'm not sure what it is in Burlington and I'm sure there are other communities surrounding communities that have this it wouldn't take but an hour for other communities are doing and I'm assuming you've talked to them right so that's number one I really in favor of this I think again enhancement improvement we need to do this we really do and as a quick aside when you use abbreviation CO I know what that means but there may be people out there watching maybe even people in the room who don't know what that means so it's always good to say the first time you use it to say certificate of occupancy I think it's just a courtesy I guess and also there may be people here watching it don't know what a rental registry is or what code enforcement people do so a sentence about each of those things might be good too so people actually can weigh in if they want to or at least understand and not tune out I mean you know that makes sense so anyway so I have I don't want to I really don't want to go long long about this even in my lovely neighborhood there are so many examples this is the Wild West I wouldn't pound a nail in Burlington without getting a permit you just don't you just don't and it used to be what was his name, Bill he lives here in Essex he was the code enforcer in Burlington and he actually came and spoke to the trustees at one point about all of this and how you could institute it he's great warred, bill warred wonderful wonderful wonderful kind and good man who can explain this much better than I can but here it's the Wild West you I've seen in my own neighborhood expansion of driveways six feet you know without and I actually asked someone about that I said hey did you do that did you had to have have a permit to do that she said no it's my yard I'll do what I want she moved her fence and put another driveway in on the other side of her house and this to say nothing of additions of you know substantial renovations people just do it it's the Wild West we've never had any kind of and now I understand more hearing that it's complaint based I wonder if there's if there's another way to do that for instance with the four to five story building you were talking about shouldn't in I shouldn't say good there have been site visits again in either of the communities I'm aware of there are site visits and they're consistent you know so how you doing here where how far have you gotten and friendly it doesn't have to be you know cranky it can be it can be just hey just checking in when how are you you know that kind of thing and it seems to me we could probably institute that with a code enforcement person pretty easily I don't know take out my glasses read this okay so you said double the permit cost if a permits issued after the fact what is the double the permit cost depends on the permit depends on it depends on what the permit is so yeah it's usually in the range of two hundred bucks okay so that's a problem for me because so somebody will say I'm getting a permit and they catch me I'll pay the hundred bucks I don't care so so maybe we need to make their fines a little bit more maybe we need to think about these things from that perspective you know and and do something about that it seems to me that we could make that we could make that a little bit tougher on people rather than a hundred dollars it could be quite a bit more or it could be by the day they had by the day I think it is in Burlington I mean you know you violate anything you pay by the day fifty hundred dollars a day something like that especially for a defaced property which we've talked about the broken glass and things like that my opinion is that those people should be billed by the day of or not adhering to the standards you know once we get to the enforcement step we have the ability to yeah right I get that I mean so and I wonder if there's another way to approach this besides complaint based what are some other ways that communities do it because you're very unlikely to call out your neighbor or anybody in your community for doing something is there another way do we are there other communities that actually are out on the street are there people I don't know I mean I'm just wondering traffic calming is really hard because in many like on Pleasant Street where I live the traffic this summer I can't even I can't even tell you how it's been because we understand it's for the common good because we understand the construction that's going on around us but kids cannot play anywhere near the streets nobody can do anything it's bumper to bumper full time and there's not much we can do about that even on that street where we need traffic calming anyway and we've talked to we did the yellow lines that it really hasn't worked so what do you do next on streets without curbs you can't do bump outs very easily or things that might actually calm things so we've got some restrictions here in the city that might not be experienced by other communities and that's the same for curb cuts right I mean if you want to if you have a driveway on a curb street and you want to resurface your driveway while you're doing that you can expand your driveway because you're not making a curb cut basically I mean you are but you aren't so there's a lot of there's a lot that goes into that and traffic calming is in my opinion going to come up all the time in the city of Essex Junction you're going to be dealing with this over and over again and I did write to Rick Hamlin a month ago or so because we and Pleasant Street had agreed not only to try to traffic calm our street we also said we would come up with a process whereby others in the community could come to you and ask for traffic calming and we're going to do that in the fall so that I think that that will help and that points to another point of mine which is citizen participation getting the citizen re-involved in some of these conversations I just think it's really important and people have a lot to say and it would be I don't know whether the strategic planning process will approach that but in these kinds of conversations code enforcement rental registries let's get out there with these ideas so that people understand what's being talked about why and what what substandard housing is and although you say you don't see evidence that we have it there is substandard housing in rental housing in Essex and that's unfair to the tenants I mean it's really it's difficult I think for the bushes and the trees C-Clicks fix gets it done in a day okay everybody out there all the five people who are watching if you report foliage in the street to C-Clicks fix it's done seriously it's done in a day our public works department is phenomenal and they are out there fixing that we just had it happen in the corner of one of our streets and really we couldn't see you can't see anything and the traffic so heavy that one particular tree was in the way and it was done in a day so people out there report it yeah I mean a lot of this conversation to me is is about enforcement a lot of it is about how do you do that as a municipality how do you figure out how to enforce your existing rules and regulations and we have fallen way short of that over the past few years and that's why I really believe we need these two positions here in the city and I will really advocate for this because I really feel strongly about it and I think the rental registry should fund at least part of this and I don't think it would be an onerous job to get this going I got no notice in either place where I own property that there was going to be a rental registry so if you're worried about that I mean sure warn people but it's a normal thing people are used to this if you own property you're going to be registered in your community your property will be inspected in Winooski I think if I'm remembering correctly it began as part of the fire department but I think it may have evolved by now there may be a position now that just does this but I could be wrong I mean I know it was part of the fire department in the beginning you know you're generating you'll be generating quite a bit of income once you've identified these properties you'll be generating enough definitely enough income to pay for this person plus so I want to see this get going I hate to see us dragging our heels without you know I identify the rental properties institute the rental registry and let's keep going let's just keep going I'm sorry to make this longer thank you for anyone online that has any comments about this topic tonight only once I don't see anyone we don't need a motion thank you Chris for staying thanks for your presentation thank you Chris wait oh no we've got a comment Annie did not see a hand up says her hand is up yes I promise Raj my hand was up when you were looking but zoom is funny so maybe it didn't show on your side I would like to say that I I support Raj's comment that there is so much grounding to be had for staff and I feel and I mean this with respect I feel that staff has been given an enormous task and the reason I say this is because it's been a little challenging the path that we've all just explored for 35 to 40 minutes has been different than the way things are only presented and my feelings are that if staff was given a very structured starting point and maybe delineated tasks like a timeline by well I mean I don't know I don't want to put that on your genie either but like I feel like what Bridget is saying is so important right and what everyone's trying to do is so important I feel like a field trip to the Brillington planning office or somewhere where you can go and sit down and say to someone we are as Bridget said in the Wild West and starting something from scratch is not easy Christina Polo McLaughlin did that with the preschool and the reason that it looks like it does right now is because of what Christina did Liza Russell crossed it with the Camp Maple Street and the reason Camp Maple Street looks like it that way now is because of what Liza put in starting something from scratch is very large and on top of all the other things that Chris has walked into and has to put structure to this is enormous and so I really think a field trip to the structured starting point and then work your way up from there and I think it's a great idea but I think this is currently overwhelming to staff and I don't think that's fair thanks for letting me talk Thank you Annie Chris we've got one of our members of the planning commission here but we've had people field trip to us during numerous planning commission meetings my understanding on these topics presenting and as the planning commission at least once or twice right? Yeah I think we've heard from Yeah we've had a lot of kind of sessions with the other municipalities and also we've had the UBM project that has helped us for this Okay great Awesome Alright anyone else online did not see anybody we're going to move on to 5E VLCT voting member what is the full VLCT annual meeting voting delegate Okay so I can pull this up but essentially this is new as a since you're a city and we have our own voting delegates that vote on the annual meetings at the town fair so that is for the Vermont League of Cities and Towns we refer to this as passive the property and casualty inter municipal fund and the employee resource and benefits trust so those are three actual sort of meetings that happen within the VLCT annual meeting so the legislative body has to designate a policy to vote on your behalf at that meeting the other thing just so folks know on an every other year basis VLCT also prepares a legislative policy agenda that the municipalities would be voting on at this meeting as well that we're in an off year so that isn't happening right now but in future years we will have an opportunity to have a full legislative body to review that then you define figure out who you want your delegate to be and so that person knows how to vote at the meeting okay I can't see Amber there we go so first question any of our board members plan on attending this meeting Elaine's going I'm going to at least one day first day did you have any intentions to attend and Marcus did you I would like to I'd like to at least attend that first day most of the I'm trying to remember and I guess I'm getting now most of that voting portion of that happens on the first day first day at one o'clock so Tuesday September 26th at one o'clock I had planned on attending sessions but not the meeting because I have to squeeze in one in there too okay does the meeting interfere should have looked at this because I actually does the meeting interfere with the cannabis control board meeting for this okay I mean I'll do the voting if or you can or sounds like Elaine doesn't I can't make it I'll do that if someone wants to make that motion um all right if uh okay I move that the city council doesn't make Raj as the voting delegate for sx junction at the VLCT 2023 annual meeting second thank you we have a motion and a second any discussion hearing none all those in favor these signify by saying hi hi hi I suppose motion passes thank you very much so we are planning to register folks quickly because of the early bird rate Elaine we know you're in for the two days and it's there's a lot of options so we need to know how many days and if you also want the night event on Tuesday and so I'll have Joanne send you the options and so you can decide yeah I can do that tomorrow if I get the information okay awesome I'll return her email tomorrow morning okay so I confirm great uh 5 FY 24 excuse me FY 24 tax rate increase correction and clarification so I can share my screen here apologies for this mistake so essentially all of this documentation was correct through the budgeting process when the tax rate was finalized in the July memo the comparison in last year's memo we sort of carried forward and used the same memo format as last year and missed that the tax agreement was in one of those columns and not in the other so definitely a mistake not a great mistake and certainly apologies so on Monday we put a correction out and then we edited that more completely in this memo that you have in front of you and in the packet today and this was put up as a news item on the city's website today as well also the the documents in the FY 25 budget file including this memo and when we bring the tax rate to you next year has already been corrected and clarified so that we don't make this mistake again Jess is on zoom to Jess I don't know if you have anything that you want to add no just this is totally my mistake I gave you all the wrong information when we approved the tax rate and like Regina said the file has already been fixed for next year so this will not happen again thank you Jess we appreciate the clarification and for folks at home the tax agreement is the agreement with Whitcomb farm to keep land open for use that was just approved at the end of June by this board for another three years with a couple three years of extensions that cost the average $280,000 home about $3.60 I want to say no it's right there in front of me $4.20 cost me $3.60 and that was the line I believe that was missing so I also apologize for not catching this we do strive to put out accurate information it's sort of first and foremost for us so this is incredibly unfortunate and we will discuss internally how we we can make sure that what we're doing is a little more foolproof and so these things don't happen again but can I ask a question on the procedure since we have what we approved the last time was not what is presented to see there was an error do we need to re-approve these numbers just was the tax rate the tax rate different no the tax rate was correct the tax rate the description of a dollar difference was where the error is and that's our description of the tax rate that we approved exactly so no I would think we don't but I don't have that from our boss we're good? yep and this was discovered when we saw some folks conversing about it a couple of us heard from people it took me a week to get my bill once I finally did it was also clear that it was all so again apologies to the community for this we will work to do better any questions about this comments in the room no on zoom anyone on zoom have a comment on this topic back to the agenda thank you Jess for sticking around so long appreciate it no problem thank you we have an executive session first we need to approve the consent agenda motion to approve the consent agenda moved excellent any discussion hearing none all those who all those in favor of approving the consent agenda excuse me we say aye aye those powers nay reading file any other comments just a few questions and we are starting the greatest tree contest on September 1st it's very exciting the greatest tree contest the tree advisory committee is doing this contest they are purposely keeping some parameters off of it because they just want folks to provide their feedback on what the greatest tree might be just two staff announcements Joanne Faff has started as the admin assistant in my office on Monday which is very exciting and Jennifer Marble is the city planner who will start on Monday also very exciting and also just the co-gen facility at the wastewater treatment facility was down quite a bit because we had some engine trouble there very exciting that that is up and running and they are already seeing those savings in their utility costs from that system up and running again so that is very exciting and that unit burns methane produced in the digestion process for the wastewater treatment plant to make electricity to go back in the plant I remember my tour it was awesome tour great I don't have anything considering what time it is anybody else okay executive session motion I don't expect we'll come back out right okay you have in front of you I do bless you I move that the city council make the specific finding that general public knowledge of pending or probable civil litigation or a prosecution to which the public body is or maybe a party would place the city of substantial disadvantage I move that the city council enter into executive session to discuss pending or probable civil litigation or a prosecution to which the public body is or maybe a party pursuant to one VSA 313A1E to include the city council and city manager I'll second both motions great both motions will vote on motion one all those in favor say aye aye motion one passes and we'll vote on motion two all those in favor say aye aye those opposed great thanks for sticking around