 Welcome to In the World of Winooski. It's been a long time since our last episode, and I'm excited to revive things with this episode focused on a recap of town meeting day here in Winooski. I have several guests joining me today. Councilor Jim Duncan, school trustee Alex Yen, both re-elected on town meeting day. Our newest city councilor Bryn Oakleaf, who won with a writing campaign. We also have Mike McCarthy with us from Sun Common. We'll be sharing a little bit later about one of the Bella items that our voters approved. Let's get started by having our newest councilor Bryn Oakleaf introduce herself. Bryn, welcome. Hi. Thank you. I am so honored to have the opportunity to join the council. I've lived in Winooski for closing in on nine years, first as a renter, three different locations around the city, and I bought my first home here in 2015. Coming up on six years in my home already. I'm very excited to join the conversation on moving our capital projects forward, looking at maintaining a level budget as much as we can being very diligent about our expenditures, but also opening up the conversation to how we can improve our diversity, equity, inclusion efforts and our own auditing of current policies in the city to be more equitable and just. Thank you all for the opportunity to offer me the seat. Thank you, Bryn. We'll have plenty of time. Residents, voters will have plenty of time to get to know you over the next two years of your term. Turning briefly to Jim Duncan, glad to have you back serving a second term. You want to just take a moment and share why you're excited to continue serving Winooski? Sure thing. Thank you, Mayor, and congrats again to Bryn on your writing campaign, and thank you to the voters for giving me another chance to serve for two more years. These past two years were not what I envisioned when I started out, but I'm really glad that I was able to be a part of the council and stay on and continue some of the important work that we've got rolling. Some of the areas that I'm really looking forward to continue to focus on, we're really centered on some of our equity work. We've had a lot of progress on building funding and support within the city to move this work forward after a lot of conversation within our community leadership and community members. Continuing to focus on that work, support the equity director and equity audit, and really get towards that goal of developing a meaningful and impactful equity council within the city is really a key goal of mine. I want to make sure that's something we can move forward in the next two years. In addition, I will continue to focus on housing affordability. The Housing Commission is looking specifically at how to support larger numbers of units within the affordable housing stock so we can support more families and larger groups of people to rent and own in the city, and encourage that we don't lose sight of housing quality. That's an important outcome from our housing goals too, so that's something I'll be looking at. Finally, we have a pretty big community conversation ahead of us with the hopeful closure of the TIF in the downtown and the additional budget revenue we'll see from that, and we need to have that conversation at the community level about how we want to spend our new property tax revenues from that downtown redevelopment and what we want to invest in as a community. So I'm really looking forward to coming out of COVID stronger in those conversations and re-engaging with our communities, meeting people where they are, and having more of those conversations over the next two years. Thank you, Jim. I appreciate those highlights. A lot of important issues that we do have coming up in the next year or two. So I want to just take a few minutes to recap what we approved this town meeting day, starting with our city budget. The city budget passed this year with 73% approval, which is a real high mark in recent years. That's exciting. I think it shows trust that we are going in the right direction and funding things the way the community values. This budget, upcoming budget continues to provide essential city services without any major new additions. So the council wanted to be mindful of the economic impact of the pandemic on our residents and keep our tax rate below the cost of living adjustment. So under 2%, I believe it came in about 1.8%. It should be about 1.8% increase on the municipal side this year. So we'll continue to provide our normal services through our clerk's office, our public works, road upkeep, community services, programming, et cetera. This budget does shift some of our capital improvements to focus more on sidewalks. That's a need we've heard, especially if folks have been more at home and more outdoors over the past year. We also have funding that will advance some of our big, already committed to capital projects. So we'll continue moving forward with mainstream revitalization. Finally, opening our pool this summer and getting those operations up and running and supporting the development of the Abenaki garage, the new parking garage in the downtown. So while there are no big new initiatives included in this budget, it does support a new equity director role, as Jim spoke to a few moments ago. We have received a substantial three-year grant from the Boston Fed called the Working Communities Challenge, which will support us hiring a new equity director, standing up in equity commission and working more closely with the community liaisons at the Winnieski School District. Definitely more information on that. We should have that role hired pretty soon here and can start introducing that person to the community. So I do want to mention while we're talking about finances, we also recently learned that the city will be receiving about $2 million in COVID recovery funds from the American Rescue Act. Really excited to be receiving some federal support to help our community grow out of this pandemic, hopefully stronger than before. We don't know yet the rules around how those funds can be spent. It has to be related to COVID recovery, but we think there's going to be some flexibility there and can help us continue to move Winnieski's vision forward. So moving on from finances and our budget, we did have two ballot items that we put on from the city council. Jim, do you want to talk to us about retail cannabis? Sure. So Winnieski has opted to permit retail cannabis operations in Winnieski once the state begins licensing such businesses, which hopefully will be in the fall of 2022. And the measure to pass with 74% of the vote at the town meeting day. Council put this item on the ballot for voters to decide on, but before putting this on, we did have our public safety staff and our zoning administrator review the current policies and rules that we already have that might relate to cannabis sales. And we believe we're in a position to safely support this kind of business in Winnieski. That said, we do intend to do a lot more engagement with residents, with youth, with businesses, and to work with the Winnieski partnership for prevention so that we can identify and address any of the ordinance or zoning concerns that may come up over the next year and a half. But we still have a lot of work to be done by the state to make retail sales reality, and especially a lot of rules that really matter to local governments like ours. So we need to have, we need to track this development of these rules closely and make sure that we're ready when the time comes. But I think we're in a good position to take advantage of this for the community, for the tax base and do this safely and effectively for our community when the time comes. Thank you, Jim. Bryn, can you tell us about our F 35 advisory ballot item? Very happy to. So this item was added to the ballot at the request of many Winnieski residents who wanted a chance to voice their opinion on the F 35 flights over our community. Now that the full fleet of jets are here in Vermont. We have submitted with this ballot item passing. The city has submitted a statement outlining the process leading up to the vote, the public engagement and the vote results to the governor's office as well as to our congressional representatives. We look forward to hearing from their hearing their responses. We've received acknowledgement that they've seen that seen our letter and plan to push those push those responses out publicly as we receive them. So if you're interested in hearing from the governor on our website Winnieski.WinnieskiVT.gov, just click on a how do I tab to learn about the airport noise mitigation to see the letter. Along with other actions, the city has taken an information about the noise mitigation process. And Mayor Lott may have any additional items to add as we were, we are pending a seat on the airport commission. So that's a good point. And we do have a lot of votes from our neighboring communities as well. That's a good point, Bryn. So Burlington voters did approve a charter change to give us the voting seat on the airport commission. Much like the charter change that we approved here in Winnieski last fall, it will have to go to the legislature for review. And so we'll be tracking that. So that's a good point, Bryn. So that's a good point. So that's a good point to that body. So those are the city site items that occurred on town meeting day. I want to shift now to school trustee Alex Yen. He can tell us about the schools votes this. This town meeting day. Thank you, Alex. And thank you for giving the chance to speak on Mayor Lott. And congratulations on your reelection too. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So the school budget also passed, which we, and with a good majority. And I think the, the folks, the, the, the, the, the, our, our budget buddies that kind of came in and help, you know, promote our budget knew that we were very thoughtful and how we were constructing the budget. And we, even though we only have, we only increased the budget 2%. Most of the budget increases that due to. The budget of the school budget. And we're doing our best to manage the salaries, which I think all of us can really appreciate the hard, hard work that our teachers administrators and staff did in the past year. During the pandemic, which was not a very easy thing to do. And, and the other thing that because of smart movement, we actually didn't have to put as much into the capital project, but it gives us now flexibility to figure out how to manage it, the upcoming capital project to even save even more money. I just want to emphasize the hard work of our school administrators to get the USDA loan to help cut down potential taxes in the next couple years because it decreases our interest, supposedly going to save us over $10 million over the lifetime of that loan. And we're looking at other possibilities to keep on saving. The other thing that I think I want to emphasize and why I appreciate that y'all kept me re-elected is that it is really good to see the Howe Foundation, which is the hearts of Winooski, which is giving opportunities for people to donate to our capital project to help the city kind of grow. And it warms my heart, and I want to acknowledge this, the residents of Winooski, it warms my heart to see people who are donating to that fund because it really means that extra investment in that community. And it really works well when you think about the stuff that the city is doing. We're doing it in parallel, and we're really, truly growing together. And I think it's going to make a better, stronger community in Winooski. Well said, Alex. I'd like to turn it over to Mike, if that's all right, to kind of talk about the solar panels that people approve. Yeah, thanks for joining us from Suncommon to talk to us about this project. Yeah, I'm going to share my screen here and show you a little visual so you don't have to look at me while I'm talking. So at Suncommon, we are Vermont's largest provider of net-metered solar. And we believe everybody has a right to a healthy environment, a brighter future, and renewable energy is where that starts. And now the Winooski schools with the passing of Article 7 is going to be the host of a new, about a half a megawatt solar array, which will do a lot for the school. It's going to be financed by a third party that we are partnering with called Sunwell. So there'll be no upfront costs to the school. We've guaranteed the school a 10% discount on the credits. So there's over $10,000 a year in net savings on the school's utility costs for hosting the solar. And that'll save the school district $350,000 a year, probably more than $350,000 over the next 25 years. So the sort of warranty life of the solar panels. The credits from all of the generation will go on to the Winooski schools, Green Mountain Power bills. So they'll show up on the utility bill. And this Article 7 ballot item made it so that you've allowed the voters of Winooski have allowed us to put the solar up on top of your school and make that long-term commitment to renewable energy for your school district. This slide is the last one I'll show. And it just shows the footprint of your huge school capital projects. And I like to say, as I've said to Alex before, I like to think of the solar as being kind of the cherry on top of the big capital investment that you all have made in the future of your school system. And the system that we're going to install, if you were paying cash for it up front would cost about $1.3 million. So it's a big investment. And it has over 1,600 individual solar modules. Thanks for showing that. It's really exciting. I've heard a lot of students at the Winooski School District in the beginning phases of the capital project discussion asking about solar and that it's really a value. And it's also something that's in our master plan for the city of Winooski to help us reach more energy efficiency and green goals. So this is a great addition on top of the financial savings. As Kermit the frog would say, it pays to be green. I mean, it's good to be stuff. So I mean, yeah, so just like that, that capital project, just in terms of updates on the capital project, I think we're almost done building, we're almost in the phase of getting the new sections, the new construction up. And you're going to, some of the children are actually going to be moving into some of the temporary spaces in the new gym, but for the next fall, which is really exciting. And then we're going to be working in the upcoming year on renovating the existing building, which that's where we're keeping our fingers crossed and hope nothing funky comes up as you renovate underneath. So but we are working hard on making sure that we lead also with being green. That's great. And so residents can expect to see much more construction continuing this year. I do want to mention that you know, we have our mainstream revitalization work planned out. The latest update, I think we're targeting Jim or Bryn, correct me. I want to say it is potentially next May that we would start. That sounds right. Yes. Okay. Thank you. And so we are, we do have a member of our staff sitting in the sort of the oversight body with the schools project so that we can keep coordinated on both of those. Yes. And I just like to add from the school side, like, and this relates to the affordable housing and everything, like I think when I joined the school board, I said I didn't want to just build a new school and then gentrify Winooski. Like I've always been strong on saying that we're building the school for the residents of today and for tomorrow and then we're not hoping not forcing anybody out. And so the natural conversation of affordable housing and us working so hard on finding creative ways to finance and find savings by making green is all part of that kind of master plan of the city. And so really appreciate that partnership between the city and the school. We definitely do too. Alex, do you want to share? I think you have some new trustees joining since town meeting day? Yes. We have our first Nepali representative from the school. So we're working hard on kind of diversifying our school board. And then Steven Barbeco is our other school board who kind of subbed in for the last month last year for a school board member who he got elected in there. So we have two new school board members on our board at this time. It is exciting to see a member of our Nepali community joining the school board. It's a big population in our community and in the school as well. So having that access and representation is wonderful. And I apologize. I've mispronounced the name. It's Kamal Dahal. I hope I got that right. Kamal Dahal is our new Nepali kind of serving a three-year term. That's excellent. Are there any other any other big school updates you want to share? Going back to in-person classroom anytime soon. Any plans rolling out? Working hard on that. I think we lead that to the superintendent who is keeping up the date with the state and making sure that we can get that safe kind of roll out. The other big thing that we're doing as a school board is really advocating the new distribution of the waiting formula and how the education funding formula is distributed. We've come to learn that the funding formula actually hasn't been in favor of a new scheme in many ways. It says that we have a thousand students, but if we were to use an empirical formula, we would actually have 1600 students. And what that really means, and this goes back until this kind of affordable cost, is that given the tax rate that we've been approving, we should be getting more money from the state in terms of education funding formula. So you're going to see our board really trying to advocate the state to pass the legislation to implement the new waiting for a new wait system that would make it more equitable in how we distribute our education funding formula. Right now, I've just come to learn that we've it's in the Senate in a past with S-13, but we're trying to get the H-5, the House bill version of it is H-54, and we're trying to merge those items in so that there's a quicker implementation on it. So it's a lot of work. I'm hoping that the residents of Winooski will kind of come in and help out with that and really kind of advocate for our children in our district. Thanks for that update. It certainly would be great to see more equity in the education funding system and would be a benefit to our community for sure. So we are also happy to help with that advocacy. I do want to share one last big piece of news from the city side. If you haven't heard already, our city manager Jesse Baker will be taking a new role with the city of South Burlington in late May. And so we are beginning to embark upon a search for our next city manager. At our city council meeting on April 5th, we should be approving a process to both create a steering committee with involving a number of different stakeholders in our community, including school representation, as well as some partner organizations that we work with in Winooski to help us go through a robust hiring process to find our new leader of operations for the city. And then in the meantime, we will have an interim, either someone we hire externally or from within our existing staff. So more to come on that. We are still, we still have our city manager Jesse Baker until May 15th. And we will be sharing updates on how the public members of the public can engage in that process. It's an important role and we want to make sure that we include a lot of voices in that and we hire somebody who can continue moving Winooski in a really good direction. We have just a moment or two left. Is there anything else anyone would like to add or remind our viewers about? Jim? Yes, thank you, Mayor. I guess you, Brent and I both got to talk about what we want to focus on in the coming years. I'm curious what you're, you have three years ahead of you. What's some of, what are some of your priorities for the next three years? Thanks, Jim. There's a lot of overlap with what you've shared already. You know, when I originally ran for mayor, one of the topics of concern for me that continues to be is affordability in our city. And I think there's several components to that. You know, one is addressing housing concerns. The other is, the other piece of that is generally the cost of living in Winooski. And I think there's a lot of work to be done around just smart growth and development. So we as a community need to see some growth and development in order to continue moving forward, but doing that in a way that doesn't put too much burden on existing residents, too much burden on our infrastructure. So we need to be looking at housing policies, zoning regulations at the infrastructure that we're funding, the projects that we're moving forward. And as you mentioned before, the TIF money. So for folks who aren't familiar, when we invested in the downtown redevelopment many years ago, we took out, we took debt out to do that and spur that private investment. We expect to pay that debt off by 2024, at which time all of the new tax revenue that's been generated down there will stop going to pay debt and will come to the city and the school general funds. So we will have more revenue at that time. And so we need to start having some community conversations later this year about where residents want to really focus those new resources to try to keep our finances healthy here and achieve some of these goals we have around smart growth, around development, around creating more energy efficiency and addressing climate change locally. So much more to come. And Mayor, I wasn't sure if you had any updates on the charter change making its way through the legislature. Yes, great. Glad you asked about that. The charter change for our all resident voting is on a path forward. So the House has been reviewing it and they have basically said that they believe that it is constitutional and it is something that can be done. So I think they're on track to soon move that to the Senate. So then the Senate would have to approve it as well for the full house to approve it. So we may see that move forward before the legislative session ends this year. And we are lucky to have Hal Colston, both on our council and as a representative, he is in the committee that's been working on that and has really done a great job advocating for it. Yes, we're very lucky to have him there too. All right. Well, thank you all for joining me today. I hope this has been informative for our Winooski residents. And to stay up to date on what's happening in Winooski, again, please visit WinooskiVT.gov and WSDVT.org and subscribe to news and updates from both the city and the school. Please also read the Winooski school district newsletter. It's delivered to every mailbox in the city and it contains the latest and greatest information from both the school and information from the city. So it's really valuable to all residents. And thank you all for joining us in the world of Winooski.