 I'll go ahead and start here. All right, well, I'm Ken Ballard, Ballard, Kansas, where the consultant on the project were a recreation planning firm. They're just a little bit about who we are, we've been in business for over 25 years. It's kind of what we did, helped communities build indoor recreation facilities involved in 700 venues across 49 states have over 200 facilities open, about 25 plus projects in New England and there's just some of the listing of some of the ones that will be done around here. You may be called for some of you who were here the last time and this is kind of our CAS list, if you will. It's an indoor community center study. There are the things that we're doing and we'll talk about them are the market analysis which looks at demographics of the market areas and looks at the presence of other providers which tells us a lot about the need side of things. We've done a great deal of community input. We did impact them in the fall of October. First community meeting, we had a series of focus groups. We also did some kind of stakeholder meetings and then we hear yesterday and today we did some more focus group meetings and then you may be aware that we've done a statistically valid survey of the community and we'll talk about those results tonight. So that's kind of where we sit right now just through those first couple of big categories and then we're gonna focus a little bit on tonight is so what does all this information mean that we gathered and we're gonna talk about some project options and what meets your particular needs but this is gonna be a big question when we go to the council meeting later this evening. Still it'll be done after we've kind of identified direction for the project is so that if you build this and what's it gonna cost to build and operate who's gonna be the partners as part of this project is for the support as well. So those are the tasks we still have to go. We're about halfway to maybe two thirds of the way through our project right now. I'll just talk very briefly about kind of a demographic piece. We looked at two service areas. The first one's kind of agreed and it showed for a while but that's city of Montpelier right there and then this red area is a much, much larger. I mean just to put it in perspective that's water barrier over here. So it's a huge secondary market area. That is hopefully what you could draw people from but it will depend upon what's in the facility, where it's located but generally any facilities of any magnitude draw from beyond just the corporate boundaries that are there. We looked at a lot of different characteristics in this particular case kind of an infographic that kind of talks to us a little bit about what we know about Montpelier proper and then we kind of took some statistics and put them together from the city of Montpelier and also what we call that red secondary service area. Important things are that we looked at are just the overall population. There's about in 2018 an estimate of a little under less than 8,000 people in the city about 54,500 in that secondary market area. That's inclusive of the city numbers so that's part of that whole number. We know the number of households, the number of families, household size tells us a lot about the presence of children, ethnicity obviously just kind of the cultural makeup of the area, median age and that type of thing and many income levels. So the reason we looked at those is they all have a direct relationship to utilization of record indoor recreation facilities and so the valuable tools in kind of this planning process. So what do we find out out of this? Well, if you're trying to do a facility with any magnitude and it's going to be reliant on just drawing users from the city itself it's going to be pretty hard to make this work. You really don't have enough population in the city so you're going to need to draw well from that secondary service area. If you're going to do anything of any magnitude beyond kind of what's currently in place. Montpelier itself and the secondary service area has a really small household size. In the city, fewer homes with children, it's more kind of the same number as you see in the state of Vermont as a whole in that secondary service area. So there are a few more children there but still generally an older population base and that there's in the next five plus years there's going to be a decline in the youth age groups and a pretty dramatic increase in the senior age categories. That's not unusual. Everywhere you go in the United States right now there's huge jump ups in the 65 and older category that's partly the fact that that's the baby boomers moving through the age cohorts across the country. There's always new numbers in all the senior age categories. Both the service areas have slightly lower median household incomes than the state and certainly in the national numbers not dramatically lower but just a little bit and then the expenditures for recreation purposes are also a little lower than the state and also lower than the national statistics as well. Not a lot of cultural or ethnic diversity in the areas and one of the other key things is that certainly every day in Montreal has an inflow of people that are coming to the community that don't live here but actually work here so that's estimated to be at least 4,000 people a day obviously during the work here. So that's kind of demographics. We looked at that once many times. What do people participate in? We can even translate that into the marketplace. We took a number of different sports activities who looked at the rates of participation. These are things that could potentially occur in a center to try to get some degree of magnitude on the size of the market. Also, and we looked at different characteristics regarding the age income and region of the country to kind of come up with an average on that as well. We did the same thing for cultural arts activities as well, try to get a sense of what the ratios are in terms of population to rates of participation. That's probably still better. Is that better? Yeah. Yes, thank you. Is that better? Perfect. You want that? I'll be sleeping soon so that's better. That's probably a little more visual. Yes. The other key thing is also applying one. It's the problem, is this one right here that's right in front of the screen. So I don't know what we could do. It is the presence of other providers. So we looked at not only one of the public providers there are, and certainly within Montpelier, there's a number of facilities you can see up there, the existing recreation center on Berry Street. You know, the senior center that's across the street, the outdoor pool, Berry, you have the Civic Center, the arena, their outdoor pool, non-profits, swimming hole, it's up in stone. It's pretty well known by a lot of people. The medical center has a little bit, but not a lot, most of the therapy pool. A couple senior facilities, and certainly the private side from Norwich and their aquatics facility, the Civic Center property, and then, you know, a number of private fitness providers such as planning fitness and others. So we recognize there's other providers out there in the marketplace right now. And so they have some impact on the market for a potential new facility. So over the course of my two site visits, we've talked to 11 different individual cyclists. We've kind of listed those that we've talked to and gathered information from. And so what kind of we learned from all of this, and some of you were part of those, that certainly there's a need for more indoor recreation space. The existing recreation center on Berry Street doesn't provide enough space or have enough amenities to serve the community and its current condition. But some consideration should be given to potentially rehabbing that facility, either as is kind of the answer to the question of war as an additional amenity depending upon what else may occur. Site is a major concern. Where would this be, where would this go? And a lot of people talk about a downtown location was pretty important, walkability was pretty important and that kept coming up. Certainly there was a lot of discussion and rightfully so, well what's it gonna cost us for a new facility and how are we gonna fund this? Where did the funding dollars come from and then probably would be a major focus of our efforts moving forward from where we are right now. Partnerships, we'll also discuss a number of the organizations that we've talked to who were part of the discussion was potential partnerships. And that's looking at other governmental units, i.e. other communities, even the state, local businesses and other organizations. And realistically, that's gonna be a pretty important part of any facility that might move forward. Some of the key amenities we had come out of the public, excuse me, the focus group findings were, in Norco, both some competitive, maybe recreational focus even potentially there. Fitness center, gymnasium space, indoor walking track, senior space, some youth space and also just some more general kind of classroom community spaces that could be used for a variety of different types of uses. So that's kind of what we learned out of the focus group findings. Other key aspect was the statistically valid survey that was completed by ETC, which is a national survey company. And that was done during November and December. They surveyed randomly residents of the city. And there, they had delivered 300 completed surveys. They actually got a little over 500. So that's a real good turnout. That's more than we expected. And it's tough to do surveys in November, December with the holidays. So we were real happy with the response rate on that. And again, you can kind of look at what the confidence rate is. Basically, you get sort of about a little over 4% on the answer. So 50% say they said yes to this. In fact, it'd be 46% to the 54% where they're not in the same terms. So let me just kind of give you some of the survey results. I'll go over some of these real quickly. We asked whether people, what they were using now and whether they need fair indoor needs. The biggest response was people using private health clubs. The senior center had a pretty strong response. And so did some of the other facilities. We asked what's most important that they liked about the existing center if they were users and a very small percentage of people, which is not too surprising, actually were users of the existing various street center considering there's not a lot there. That was a response we figured. But it was under 20% of people that utilized that facility and you'd expect that with what was there. And the major reason they used it was for the programs that took place there and the hours of operation. We asked if they had used it, why not? And this was pretty telling because the first one on there was, well, the center doesn't have direct issues, spaces, and equipment that I desire. Not too surprising since it's basically a city of America. And then the center doesn't offer the programs and services that I desire which is directly related to the amenities there. So once again, people are saying, man, it doesn't do a lot to me because it doesn't have really what I need. And that's not too surprising considering that facility. Can I ask a question? Sure. Gene Lauder, are you gonna be the hold? I know you can ask as we go on this part. So can you go back to that? Sure. Because I think it's interesting that, so one of the other questions was, what do you most enjoy and what do you most use there? Yeah. The people most use is the gym. Yeah. Yet they say the thing that they need the most is a gym. Yet it's already there. Right. So how do you break, how do you break itself? Well, I think there's a couple of different things. It's sort of a way to question Gordon where what would you want to see in a new facility? And that gym, okay, it's not large. So can't handle all the pickleball needs that are there. Can't handle some of the other demands just from a side perspective. So yes, you have a gym. It's not a large gym. So it limits the numbers of activities and things like those pickleball players that you get and those types of things. So I think that was part of the rationale for why people are like, well, we have a gym and that's what we like about it, but we also wouldn't sense any more gym space. I just don't think it's adequate for, but isn't that gym certainly the best part of the building but it's no gym in terms of it's pretty inadequate for a lot of how it gets even used now. We also, moving forward, ask people, okay, what was the most, most important thing is to include in a new recreation center. And there were some other things, question before that, what's important. Just ask people in the system rank their top three. So the blue line represents their first choice. The second kind of orange, I don't know what you call that, orangey I guess, is the second most and then the kind of tan or gray line is third. So in this particular case, indoor pool had both the top in terms of most needed and also the aggregate total by over 10% and 48% followed by that gymnasium space and followed by a way of cardio, group exercise space, walking track, on down the line. This response is not unusual. In most surveys, I would say 90 some percent of pool will always be in the top two or three. Almost always fitness is in the top two or three. So the responses here are not that unusual for most beginnings. Those are the things that people participate in. Even in the sections of the report we did on in terms of rates of participation in different activities, swimming is the number of three most popular activities in the United States. So that kind of translates to that's what people do. That's therefore what they wanna see. So it also ties into what we see as the most popular. The other things that are going up in terms of rates of participation have been for the last 10 to 15 years were all fitness related. That again reflects it here. So the fact that these came up as high as they did is not at all surprising. And kind of the regulatory is somewhat weird to be expected. We also ask people, okay, if aquatics is important, what aspect of aquatics do people wanna see and what's most critical in this? This one was a little different. The top one, at 50% of respondents, again, it's most important second, most and third most, lanes for lap swimming, followed by water, warm water area for fitness and exercise and then area for swim lessons. So these are what you would call more traditional uses of aquatics. That's a little unusual. What we oftentimes see down here is the whole question in areas for play and recreational use. In most communities, that's way up here. So what you're looking for is primarily more fitness related aspects of aquatics. And that's fine. I think we can find a little bit about some of the aquatics. An example of what people are looking for. So that one was pretty different than what we see it from a lot of people. What do you think was most needed from a program perspective? Notice what do people want to do there? It did kind of line up, fitness being number one, health and wellness aquatics. Aquatics was the top, amenity, but it was a third on the list of what people wanted to do. But still, fitness and aquatics were those kind of main drivers of this. Some after school programming, obviously focused on youth, sports were the other things as well. Now starting to do, what does this mean? A little bit more beyond just what preferences we asked people if you had the facility with the amenities you've indicated or reported in this particular case and things like fitness and aquatics and gymnasium and space and those types of things, how often would you use the center? Again, 45% of the respondents said they would use it several times a week or more, 17% once a week. The important thing in this is everybody said they'd use it at least, I mean the vast majority of over basically three quarters said they would use it at least monthly and only 13% said they'd never use it. So that's pretty high. Now one of the things, this measures people's intent. It doesn't measure necessarily reality but it's kind of like, well, if you tell yourself at the beginning of the year, you're on there, go walk more and you say, yeah, I'm gonna do that and then here you are, you're gonna have well, I really haven't followed through on that. So it measures intent, it doesn't necessarily directly relate to actual utilization but still very strong it says you provide people with what they want, they will in fact take advantage of that. Yeah, that's a good question. You need to get into this in a minute but I was wondering about the proportion of respondents in the survey, that group were seniors and whether that might, whether that was in balance with the Montpelier area population and if not like that. Yeah, I mean, we'll look at that. I might scan it real quickly. It wasn't, and usually the survey company will balance that out so you won't sit there and say, wow, we've got twice as many senior respondents as the population base or twice as many in the 25 to 45. And I didn't spend a lot of time with that but my initial reaction was, okay, that lines up reasonably closely in terms of the rates of the respondents to what your population distribution is. Now we do, we haven't done yet, we do have the ability in the data to look and say, well, are there any different responses for the different age groups in terms of what they wanna see, what they would use, all that sort of stuff. There are, we call it cross tasks that are by everything from income levels to age to all that type. And we can kind of split the data and look for things that may be different among those different ages. Okay, thanks. Uh-huh. So, one of the things we got down to was, all right, you say you wanna do these things and you say you'd be strong users, are you willing to increase your taxes to pay to get a facility of this nature built? So the first question talked about increasing taxes between $30 and $60 on an average home and home failure property taxes to really, at this point, to renovate the existing Berry Street gym. And that's really would provide that kind of level of funding to do that kind of a tax. Now, obviously, some of the things we talked about in there may not be happening in that kind of a renovation. But in this particular case, 41% of respondents said yes, 27% said no, but we have a huge piece in here, 70% maybe, 15% not sure. That's not unusual when you're in a process like this where people go, well, it sounds not interesting, but I need to know a little more about it. So having a big piece in there that's unsure is not unusual, and obviously that has some bearing ultimately on the direction that a project may go in terms of a voter approval that they're paid in that. But that's a reasonably strong, you know, you start going this way, you can get half of what's down here well over 50%. So that's a pretty decent response on in terms of property tax for making improvements to very extreme percent. Do you have a question or a spell? The next one then was a much higher level, was talking about $200 to $350 a year, and this one was related to building a new facility with the types of amenities that were talked about. That includes things like pools and fitness areas and gyms and other things. So, bigger facility, higher price tag, so therefore the taxing question was higher. Even at this level, this wouldn't potentially fund the entire facility. Now, this is what I'd be expecting when we started to do that, the number started to change. Yes, it went down to 25%, but really now, even the babies and the not-surers now are almost 40%, 22, 19, so big chunk of people, not sure to know, 34%. So, now the ability to take a taxing question of that size to the community becomes not impossible, but it's much more difficult. Yeah. What's the gross on $30 to $60 and $200 to $350? It talks about what they could do, what they could float. Yeah, so the article would say, vote to approve X million dollars. Yeah, it's too gross. It's a little bit of a question in terms of that, but it's gonna be that 30 to 60 is probably in about the two to three to maybe four million dollar range. The 200 to 350 is about 10 to 12 million. So, it says, okay, the bigger facility from a taxing perspective, that's gonna be a little bit tougher sell. That's understandable. We asked people then, so if you didn't support one of these, why not? Well, really importantly, 31% of the people said they wouldn't or you're not sure is, I need more information about the project. Well, yeah, and so that says, that's the big one, that's a little more encouraging. 21% said, I suppose basically any tax increase. At least that's not up here, 31 or higher, that's a little bit better. And then one of the other ones we put in here, one, especially on the higher one, was would you prefer paying a lower amount just to do the improvements? That one, honestly, I thought would be a higher. That one hit 19%. So people were not necessarily saying they wanted to substitute and just do the very street project, but we were trying to ask that question quite well, people really just wanted to do that and that's kind of their appetite. From a taxing perspective maybe, but not necessarily on the direction that they want to go. Then the last question we had is just kind of a more of an anecdotal question. This is so compared to other issues in Montpelier, where does this rate? And in this particular case, high priority, 23%, medium priority, 29%. So we're over 50% right there. Very high priority was 13%. So in this medium to high priority, you're over 60%. Only 28% was a low priority. So this is still an issue that's out there from the citizen's side of things that says, we think this is reasonably important to deal with. It's a good thing that question was asked before Pothole sees it in the video. Yeah, that's always that question. So coming out of this with all the information we gathered through the survey, through the meetings, through the last community workshop that we did, questions of the issues that are out there, and that's where we're going to focus the rest of our time. So what is this? Should we be talking about building a new center? Should we be talking about rehabbing and improving the existing Berry Street recreation center? Where do you get to build a new facility? Where does it go? Does it go downtown? Oh, one of the other things I might mention, we didn't have a slide on this, but people in terms of locational issues, the walkability was a very high response. So citizens in the surveys, I backed up what we heard in the community means and others that said walkability was really important. So where to build it? Is it downtown? Is it on the edge of the town? Is it some other location that may not be directly associated with the town of Montpelier? Who are our potential partners? How do we bring partners to the table with us? How do we fund a project of this nature both capital and operations as well? And what amenities are in the facility? So what are we going to include in this if we're going to build this? And how do we ultimately move forward? So with that, what we've done is kind of boiled this down to three options. And these are three kind of big picture options that are out there. The first one, and these are no order of priority, they're just bigger. It says you rehab the existing Berry Street and graduation center. One of the things that's out there is there's no real option of doing nothing. The existing gym does not meet basic code requirements. It doesn't meet ADA issues. There's basic improvements have to be made in that building to make it even functional in the future. So if you cancel the job or I'm doing it, you have to do something. So the first option is just do the minimal improvements that just deal with those things. What's all said and done is basically the same building, more usable space, you basically have an improved version of what's there now, the gymnasium space, but not much more. The second option is to say, we're gonna do all of that stuff, but then we're gonna make that basement level usable space. We're gonna take the second level, make that usable space as well. So now you're actually getting something out of this. And what we would try to do is factor in some of the spaces that were identified as being important, things like some level of fitness, some community use spaces, those types of things. We cannot get a pool in there. And basically we're working within the existing structure. We can't really expand that building because of the site limitations. So, but you're getting something else out of it beyond just the improvements to the basic code and ADA issue. The second one is building a new facility. And that's going somewhere else, building a new facility. Now we could start talking about things like gymnasiums and certainly the aquatics, but piece of it now becomes more reasonable to use a first site that will support that type of a newer facility. And so if you could do that, the premise would be then, not sure what would happen to very strict, probably wouldn't under this scenario be utilized at all or might be some repurpose for some other use. The third option is basically a combination of the first two. You build a new center and you keep Berry Street in some form, so you have two basic facilities. So those are the three options. Kind of get a little pros and cons, a little bit of assessment what this means just to kind of put this in perspective. So we're talking about rehabbing the existing Berry Street and this is really the full improvement. This isn't just the code stuff. This is doing, fixing up the basement, fixing up the upper level. Well, it's lower cost of building a brand new facility by significant margin. It's in town, it's walkable, it's right there. It's an existing building that the city already knows. So you do have a structure there, you're not starting from ground zero. And it's a little easier to find, partly because it's not as expensive. The cons are, you have really limited opportunities for new amenities, we have a limited space there, not even exactly sure if we look at in a little more detail what all you can do with that bottom level in the upper level. But you're gonna be limited by not only the size of the space, but the configuration of that, you can't change a lot of that. And certainly everything means that this location don't move. Your partnerships are a little more limited, pretty small facility. This one's basically focused as it is now on serving the needs of Montpelier residents and really not anybody else. And you have a lack of parking. Parking is not a huge issue right now, but we make significant improvements to that building and utilization of those two other levels. We expect the use to go up substantially so that it's gonna put a lot more pressure on evenings like tonight and say, okay, where do I park or I'm walking to do that. Capital costs maybe in two to $3 million range if you do minimal just the code issues. Could be anywhere from up to $5 million to do a full improvement. It's always a tough one to price and these are just very basic estimates. Really difficult on renovations until you get in there because you find out that what you think and what the realities are once you actually start tearing into that building or two different things. So it's really hard to price those improvements. And these again are pretty basic. It could swing pretty big. The operation subsidy, when we say subsidy, that's the difference between the expensive operating of the facility and the revenues that are brought in. Who'd be anywhere from basically where you are right now that maybe a little more money because you have more usable space. You're gonna have more use of those areas. So it might go up some so it might increase your current subsidy to maybe $50,000 that you're recently small. If you go to the improved version that certainly now says, okay, we have more usable space now that's probably going up by a subsidy aspect by $50,000 to $100,000. Again, that's the difference between expenses and revenues. That's not just revenue, or excuse me, expenses by itself. So that's kind of the rehab side. So the new center, the pros, well it's now a full center. You can include aquatics and things that rest of the many sides to where they really need to be to service the community. You're gonna potentially bring more partners because it's a more full service and more broad-based facility. It's coming out of the middle of downtown potentially. And it's certainly when you start talking on this type of relationship, it's now much more of a regional facility. So it's not just serving residents among peoniers. It's serving a much larger part. You're back to that kind of that redish area we showed on the demographic analysis. You will have, if you get a new site where you can choose where you're going, you can hopefully have improved access and parking, be able to take care of the higher rate of utilization by planning for a site that's gonna allow that to occur. The cons are high cost of build, a brand new facility, one that's obviously substantially bigger than what's over at Berry Street now. It's likely not downtown. It's just gonna require too big of a site. There's really nothing available when you get it. It costs you a fortune probably just to acquire a site that's larger than the support of the site that used to be in the downtown core. And we'll certainly, for what we're talking about, need an equity partner. And that's directly related to the capital cost number, which could be anywhere from about 12 million, and that's definitely on the low side, 20 plus million dollars. The reality is, if we look at the responses to the question where we said, again, that even people on the, if you get best on the taxing question on the $250 a year on average home, not going to get at best, but 12 million. So we'll probably don't get everything that you wanted in the first phase of the work. So it's gonna need more than just funding from the city to make this occur. There's where I was hired by the eight some other partners bringing dollars to the table to get this over the top. The operation subsidy to penny fund again, what's in the building, the size of those amenities could be anywhere from 150 to maybe as much as $350,000 a year. Does that operations subsidy taken into account any potential revenues? Absolutely. So we have 4,000 people who live, don't live here, but we're here. No, I'm not gonna say that, it's a hard fact to do. Your operating costs on a building like this may be well over a million dollars. So we're saying you could be generating half a million, maybe 700,000 and just rather be generated by users of the facility for programs and other types of things. So yeah, we're already factoring that into the equation. Now again, my caution is a very preliminary number says we get further along with this, we're gonna try, especially on the capital, we're not architects. We don't build these things. So that's a little bit formed us, but we're hopefully, develop a relationship with some architects so they'll be able to answer that question. We also have to define this project. Your operations costs, estimates, they include personnel. Oh yeah, staffing, all the benefits, the utilities, your instructors, it's basically all in budget. Your insurance costs, it's basically to run the entire day. So, and then the final one, which I won't spend much time on is due to both of those. Obviously, you have two facilities, one in town potentially, one out there, but the biggest issue is your costs, both capital and operational, could go up pretty substantially. You don't know that that's really realistic in a perfect world, it's probably maybe an ideal situation, but I don't know that economically the numbers work the world, but it's there, that's the direction that you want to go. So, bottom line is for you all here that I visit, what's really the right option, or maybe it's some variation of what I've shown up there, to meet the needs and the financial realities that are in place here. And really, what do you want to see in terms of the intent? It's kind of laid out a pretty big scenario. What do you all think? What's your question based on what you're talking about? So, I'm curious, did you evaluate an option that had everything else but the pool for a new facility? No, I'm not going to say, I think what if it's, you don't have to look for a capital on an operations standpoint, isn't that the biggest expense? It is. It's the biggest single capital expense in a project by a long shot in operations, and not that I don't want a pool, but I don't just think we're going to lay out the scenarios I think would be interesting to put in the pool of scenarios, a new facility that has the fitness, the basketball, and everything else without the pool. And we may very well do that just because of the need of nothing else to face the project. And that often might happen, this is part of it. So, that may be the case. Well, I know that you had said with the existing center that there's no possibility for a pool, is that just because the weight of the pool would be too much for that business and they'll leave whether you did it in the basement or did it somewhere else? Yeah, I mean, basically, you'd literally, if you were saying you wanted to do a pool there from a construction company, you'd have to do that, but you're not sorry, you couldn't support a pool with that, so you basically, both of those, discard again. That's why, we can get a pool built there, but just the size of that, the pool would be pretty small, we can have, if you can limit a thing, then I don't even know that that would be worth doing. I mean, it just wouldn't be large enough to serve a slush of anything anyway. On that, and the deck space would be real small, and you know, so you'd be spending a lot of money for something that's not all that effective, right? It's just for both of those reasons, it's not really a fact that I need to be kind of just a limited deck that isn't possible. The other reality is you build a pool in a deck that's going to be pretty strong draw on that little issue that says either we need something on it, we're going to be a part of the pool because the utilization of the deck will go dramatically with that, and so now we've got a whole another issue with those effects as well. So on that existing site, either the demolition building really couldn't do a pool of any magnitude, just simply, it's a question to do with it. And everything's supposed to be done. And I guess my other question is, what's your timeframe? Do you guys really have like a five year plan or something like that? I don't know if it's kind of which way you're going on this. There is some sense of urgency from the city. I mean, as I said, doing nothing is not an option. You've been looking somewhat of charmed life into the existing facility in terms of Cody's shoes and also the ADA. Somebody who pushes that, they don't have to really let you stand it. So there's some sense of urgency. We cannot just keep going on here or we're going to get ourselves in trouble in a number of people's ways. So I think some decision has to be made. The reality is the bigger version, the bigger vision, if you will, that takes time before your partners together can find a site of the thing else you're in. Absolutely, everything that's like this year is a minimum of three years. The reality of what you probably are looking at. You guys can find a site for reasonable costs. Well, let me say, the numbers I gave were no site costs. That's all just building constructions. So eight site costs would be on top of the number as I showed. And really the first part of it, you try to find a site that you didn't have to pay for, but it doesn't require a lot of engineering. Not a lot of engineering has infrastructure and utilities to it. And it takes a substantial size. We want to also plan that says, okay, maybe you don't do a pool for a first stage, maybe you lose so many other things, but we have a site to watch it up where that could happen without sitting there and go, well, now you got to go to some other third location. And now that becomes a real deal. So it requires, we've been saying on the top that I don't even know if we can do it minimum. Minimum of probably five years and that could still be part of it. How many sites? There hasn't been more than one site over, we've talked seriously about possibly donating a site whether it's an open site, I don't know. So it's not something I would take the planet that we've got a free site, but it is a legitimate thing to see. Can we think of plans to develop sites and urge them to do so? The sites are huge. Yes, so on that note, I love to be in town, but it takes a lot of sense to be in the pool we live in right here at the high school. And so, again, speaking with not a lot of experience that I have with the community functions about the town that I grew up in, that's how the town pool was. It was a high school. It was functioned as a high school athletic pool. And the rest of the time outside of school, they was also a town pool. And they had a lot of sense that we built it. It seems to me that in your third option, what I was kind of looking for was keep the gym facilities and the kind of program space where it is today on the area screen. But it made some real estate here, city-owned that could be used for a pool and maybe did it that way. I'm wondering if that was an option where I could keep the cost down somewhat as a result? A couple things. We had conversations with the school district early on about the property. There really is limited to no availability in terms of building on this. There's a lot of land here, but most of it's in the flood plain. So we're really limiting how long we can do it. Basically, kind of by city and school district, but we just had no place to put it without taking something out that we already have because even with some of the fields and everything else is not, you can't build one. So despite the fact that what it looks like, it's, we've been told that we can't put it there. We have to look at some flood plain maps and we had quite a doubt about having to go there and everything else. Can I just add one thing to your question? We started about where you were. Yeah. Wouldn't that be fabulous? Didn't quite get by the school, but we had to build up things like redstone properties, walking distance, something on the bike path, so we could just get on the bike path and ride bikes. We're still playing around with ways to prevent this to the school when we make the outside. But maybe not. Like you, our first course, can we be here and just work for it? So, you know, that we've kind of, some of the obvious things like that that could be explored, and I don't know, it's not quite as simple as you think. So sites are gonna be in the district. On the other side, it can't be built in a cool somewhere else. The realities are, buildings stand alone in quality facilities, they're not a good idea. As we say, they're expensive to build, they're very expensive to operate. We co-locate that with other recreation amenities, called dry sites. I mean, it helps a little bit with utilization and dam and the cost recovery. We work, learning, and I showed you earlier that I'm all over the country and we spend a half more time dealing with facilities that stand alone, apply facilities to a lot of communities, or on a school level, they just, they can't hardly afford to keep them open and try to figure out ways to either add other than their students. So, that caution in the community and in the city about going in that direction, it's economically, I think in the long haul, it's not so much the capital, but the operational obligation does pencil out. So, yeah, you know, you could, it's not saying you couldn't do that, but I would say you'd want to put a pool in land, other things with it and help it do better in your life. Jack, a question? Yeah, well, it's a common comment to that end. There's a facility in West Lab that's a community center, a pooled facility, just like you're talking about, that I've been to, it's fantastic. Which one, where is it now? It's in Lebanon, or, let's see, Upper Bethany. It's not the Upper Bethany, it's a different district. Oh, okay, I know, I'm not sure. Yeah, we're up in the Middle East center. Well, yeah, I mean, it's in New Hampshire. Okay. All right, where do you see me? A little bit up there, okay? I mean, what's in the next building? I don't know, but there are other facilities there. That's just a pool. I don't have to look at that one up there. I'm not sure they would do that. You did the plan a month. They put in a $10 million, what's in there, but it's a pool and it's, I don't know what's in there. I think it has, it has some community rooms, I think it has a gym space. It's not a huge facility, but yeah, it does have all the work and just a dozen pools. I grew up in Springfield, after I left, I go to the pool. No, no, no, no, no, no, I don't know if that has more than so, I don't think it's primarily a pool. Well, they had a $3 million apartment, like a base that they were going to check for $300, which was critical to making that happen. That would all be part of what's to happen. I just have to say, I'd recommend also looking, the town's a little different from what's in there. Yeah, I know, we do tons of work, we get a lot of currents, yeah, so I was going to use currents as an example, so this is the thing that is primarily a pool. It's really just a pool without the door kind of, a sort of mash-in on that was always to add the rest of the mattresses to that pool and get the pool in the first space. That building, you know, when you go out the back side of it over there, when you go to the locker room system, that's always supposed to have a gymnasium and a fitness service as well, and that was always kind of planned that it wouldn't just be a pool. Yeah, we know that we do tons of stuff in this pool. So, you know, that facility, that's life. And that pool, it's a half-sized, it's not a pool, a big-sized, half-sized, it's open through about nine a.m. to nine p.m. every day. It was like a dollar for residents and more for non-residents. And it was pretty much full all day, every day. And the lanes for lap-suming were a little bit shorter, but there were always people using them. They used them from always classes. And that's a very good recreational pool aspect to it. It's very much a family. Yes. You know, the destination is a lot of, you know, swimming areas that are really primarily for kids. Yeah. And so for a town like this, I think it could be a really interesting thing. But it's not a huge facility. It has some conference space that nine community groups can make. Also, it has office space for city, parks, and rent people to work out with. And it's a neat balance. And there's a, you know, a ropes course right next to where there is. You know, some of those kinds of things. The big park area, yeah. I mean, it's a lot of, I don't remember, any of these things in front of me. And I was going to add that we talked about the demographics of who's going out this survey and who's in the non-clear community. And I think it's important to think about who one failure wants to be and not just who one failure is. And I've heard a lot of discussion about attracting young families to town and reducing that average age demographic. And I think our representative of this type is a way to do that. And when you look at the survey and it says the number one failures would be athletic, you know, workout space. I forget what it was for. Yeah, fitness. Fitness. I think that's probably reflective of an older demographic filling out the survey. Whereas if you want to build towards a younger community, I would think that an increase in recreation opportunities would be attractive to bringing in fitness. Yeah, and even some of the groups we talked to that have kind of quality of life issues, the ability to track employees to different businesses, all that stuff within that thing in terms of making the reliability of non-linear property that is surrounding Gary. And that's certainly, and you probably, you know, certainly your time in the zoo has saw that. And that's what these facilities typically do. They build a sense of community and provide that on this question. You know, it's time of the year where it's a little bit difficult to engage on that one. Yes, and there's just a couple of comments and then just a question, and I'll start with a question is, partnership-wise, and you may look at addresses, but like YXCA, you know, type sponsorship, partnership, and whatnot. And we've looked into that, or is that just enough, like not even a consideration we can go there? Well, I think the question we have, and really what we're going to back up here with is when we go even to the city council later this evening is, where do you want to go in terms of these options? So if there's a willingness to say, we would like to really keep going with that bigger recognition center issue, then that's a conversation that you can have. I just don't know if it works to that point yet. The one thing is now, YNCA's have difficulty on the capital side, so they're not oftentimes bringing a whole lot of dollars to the table computer, so they're not, they'll help by fundraising and other things, but most of the time they have a million or so, and their big thing is they can kind of put a hill in the new facilities and try to have the operators bring it. But anyway, the short answer to that is, we get a little proof along with that, that is a realistic possible. And the reason why I asked that question first is because I said the comment is, you look at places like plan of fitness, you look at personal fitness in Berlin and whatnot, and I think some families have at least one membership, the one of those places that they've got two. And so first in fitness, you're talking $55 a month, so here I am, I pay my tax bill, which is rather heavy, and now I have membership in personal fitness because their hours are really good and they've got everything to do on that slide. And then like I said, you might join plan of fitness because they're open 24 hours a day because I can't go outside and run a workout or work, you know, do with them, you know, and whatnot. And I'm not saying like, look at me, I'm my own demographic and whatnot, but you know, those are all the same sort of things. And I'm somebody who works at Norwich, you know, as a professor who doesn't have access to those facilities, you know, because they've got their own limitations and whatnot, which is exactly the reason why I chose Montpelier to have access to, you know, to these sort of things that may not actually commute and do that sort of stuff with a limited facility, you know, construct it, so anyways, just random thought and observation. Can I ask, just hold that a minute? Sure. Do you support the bigger facility? Is that what you're... Yes, absolutely. And would you support it in the city when it was up on in the hospital or up by national life? Would that still work? So we've lived all over the country and all over the world. We love the idea of walking and whatnot, but I think that the notion of everyone walking to the old facility and everyone walking to Shaw's town, I think that's a dated notion. Quite frankly, I think folks, if you build it, they will drive. I really firmly believe that. We did a basketball game tonight at, you know, when I pushed the basketball game, they made you go to school. And so Randolph drove here, seventh grade parents drove to there, eighth grade parents drove to there and whatnot. And so, and I think from about November until about March, they're gonna drive to the facility. So, you know, and there's no reason to roll if we had those amenities there, maybe we don't do the mainstream, maybe mainstream. That's something else. And we drive here and that becomes that community sort of up, like, you know, kind of like we're talking about, but yes, I think people are gonna drive considering that, you know, we don't, there's times we drive to, you know, to Berlin, we drive to, you know, Beren to go ice skating, to do that, you know, to do that sort of thing. So I think they will drive. Yes. I mean, it's different, right? You know, so I think that if the facility, I would love to see it, you know, and if the facility has a variety of options that people will like and it requires driving, however, feeling, there'll be a lot of motivation for people to complete their outside training. I mean, it would be wonderful to have it downtown and it'd be part of the construction. There's this, I'd love to have that there and it's beautiful. But if you had it located here, some of the bike paths, then the older people would bike there and that would make it to me just as successful. I feel like I don't necessarily need to be walkable, bikeable, would be nice. Honestly though, whatever it took to have the facility built, it wouldn't be what I would support because I think it's so convenient to be in. It would not only help our community but out. Okay. So from this group standpoint that you're here tonight, I mean, again, we're doing a mini version of this presentation. Council member really focuses on these things. Okay, council, where do you want us to go with this? So what would I say that the community meeting that was held earlier, you all, what should I be telling council from your perspective what we should be doing? I'd like to see some rehab of the existing Okay. Is that still a valuable location? It is walkable because I think it's got to be, I don't know. I'm supposed to still be several million dollars to get that thing up to three years. And that's, you know, you can get a better version of what you have. Other thoughts in terms of what, why do I tell council that you all said that? I'd like to see the city explore the partnerships. I mean, I think it's really hard to have a discussion about two million versus 20 million when you have no clue if there's a private partner who's going to bring to the table a portion of that or the user groups that are going to help fund the operations. I think we need a much better or defined business plan. Well, and that's actually what we need. Which one do you want us to go to? And that's the key word. Which one of these options do you want us to see us explore more because we're not having to find any of these things, but we've got three different things on the table. If there's no appetite to go one or more of these directions, we want to take them off the table. So we're not wasting time. But it's exploring to try to answer some of those questions. I just hope that we are collecting some of those clues. So talking to the conversation with the potential partner, I mean, if you have connections with people who you think that the effort should be talking to, do tell if you want to talk more. We have been talking to some major players. There is some interest. And I think, so one option for us is to pursue and flesh out a scenario that is some large proportion of the city bond and another large chunk is our institutions of different kinds for not starting from zero. We have done something like that. And with some of the ideas we've come to say, we have, as Chris said, we have some indication that it's worth exploring further and not introductory conversations if there are some of those out there. So can I just answer your question? I would say, I don't think you need to choose one or the other to start collecting information on who are the user groups who would pay to use a facility. Who are the people who would invest in a facility? I mean, it's going to be, whether you build a new one or you rehab the existing, some of those user groups are going to be exactly the same. Pretty much the same. Until you add a field house or a pool, they're going to be the same group. So I guess I don't think there's a huge difference in evaluating more than one option. So if I were sitting in front of you saying, don't pick one, let's evaluate both of them because there's not a lot of overlap that's not a lot of actual work. So just from listening to everybody, it seemed like there was more of a incentive to build a new brexit error and try and figure out how we can make that happen. Now, going back to the whole term, for example, I mean, it was nice that they were able to get the $3 million gift from the bank. Is that likely to happen here? I don't know. But obviously that's one of the things that you have to explore because the site cost is going to be a huge part of this. And you'd be in a tax payer. One of the things that I'm concerned about is we just voted two major bonding things, which would be the parking garage and the sewer facility upgrade, the water treatment facility upgrade. And I'm going, okay, we want another $20 million on top of what we've already bought. It's like, I'm starting to get a little scared about tax liabilities and what's going to happen. And just for clarity on it, there is no way that the city has the ability or even we're going to bring forward a bond for 20 for this thing. We can't get there, I would say, on the appetite for this would get something under them. That's why, to even talk about the new facility, if any magnitude beyond something that's just reduced down to probably pulling the pool off as a first phase, it's going to require other dollars beyond what the tax dollars that my peo year could put in to make that happen. That's kind of the premises. Even in a perfect scenario, for the reason we want to do this, you couldn't bond for 20 million on that if you wanted to. You never even get tax liabilities. I don't even know if you have the ability to even bond for that from a bond kept. Yes, but I don't think, again, as we said, I think 50% of the total, unless it's a project, 10 million or less, now you can start having those conversations. But anytime you get up above that, I see somebody else is going to put dollars in the project beyond the city. Although just, I will say one thing, Joe, I think you do speak for, there is a segment of a long period that will say, I'm taxed out. Yes. And I just, unless I love a little money, don't have the ability to do that for me. But can you do raise up a legitimate point? Absolutely. I think that just goes back to my point and this young lady's point over here is, what demographic do you want to attract in Montpelier? Do you want to maintain status quo? If you want to maintain status quo, then just keep the very street center the way that it is and you're going to maintain status quo. If you're going to attract a demographic and you're going to have the vibrancy, you're going to have what it is that we know, that we know what Montpelier is to a certain extent and what Montpelier can be, then I think that that's what you're going to attract. And I think that when you ask the national life people, you ask the UPMs, when you ask the Norwiches, when you ask the major corporations to invest and to advertise and to be a part of this initiative, I think that's appealing and that's attractive to them and I think you're attracting a certain demographic or demographic. But I'm not picking on the pickleball people, but if you want to continue in that direction, then we can easily continue in that direction because that's status quo. And I don't think status quo is what we want in Montpelier. I think we want to move forward. So I think when you go forward to the council, I think that's what you tell them is that we want to maintain status quo is what you have today in present status. So I think one of the challenges too with Montpelier, if you do have an aging demographic, yes, clearly it's also shrinking demographic. We've lost 400 people from the last census. So I mean, that's certainly a concern. Yep, yep. I was just curious maybe you're already looking into this, but what kind of market there would be for hosting like cool tournaments or things like that, in which case does that generate heads and beds and hotel nights and we're changing the demographic. So the community, does that change the tax base? And if those answers to those questions are yes, is it possible to use the same funding we used for the parking garage with like the bird tax down the road, this is gonna generate more taxes and kind of pay for itself kind of concept. So we use that same tax infrastructure for supporting and recreation center. Okay, anything else? One thing that I think I should caution against is if you are building a new facility to not include people upfront, I think you're cutting a lot of your funding that you get for tournaments or things like that, pay your point of lesson, the amount of people that are going to use it. If according to the survey, that was one of the big things, I think you would be kind of cutting off your nose if you didn't put the pool in initially because people are gonna say, okay, well, I was willing to get the money but now it's gonna be 10 to 15 years before I get the pool. That's not how you put it, that's not how you put it. And that's not as a concern because that's been expressed on that. There are some communities that you've done the same thing and the pool's been up there but there just hasn't been the ability to do that. So Dave sat there and said, okay, we can get something but we clearly designed where the pool's gonna go and you haven't said no, you just said we gotta do that later. Not ideal, but that can be done in some cases. And just as a matter of what can you get done and what can you get over the top? You know, even some of the things we've been having some conversation with, partners is trying to understand what are the things that keep their interest trying to understand. Does it need to have certain things? Does it not, you know, what are the things that deal breakers for them and what are the things that make the thing ticell? You try to understand that in terms of other sources so it's a part of what that all means, so absolutely. All right, just a good question from the bill to the new recreation center. Is it your opinion that that was the way to go that there's really no place in town to do that or is there, so does that become a regional question by the fact that, I don't know if it's the fact but it probably was, at least we talked about three site locations, one was downtown, the other one was edge of town. We're probably more on the edge of town category than trying to find it out and build. You know, could you build a facility downtown? Yeah, you probably could, but you will, the cost to do that may never get done. It's nothing's impossible and you could build a facility legitimately downtown, but the cost implication from a site perspective and what you got to do in that building to get it in there, I think at some point you're going, wow, that's just gonna put it out of reach. Traffic. Well, the traffic and then how do we get the people there. The reality is a pool's gonna end up being a regional draw and we stick it in downtown and we just get people going, oh my God, I'd like to go a pool, but I'm not driving down there because it's gonna take me forever and if I can't find a place to park or whatever, it's great. So I think that starts to say, well, now maybe we have to be edge of town. Now we think we get more of an edge of town, I understand, that's pretty necklace, but you have a more impossibility. Place here, for example, is one way to try to do remote things. Yeah, I'm still saying, okay, we're not blinding downtown or we're going to be reasonably still walkable and then after that, you start, okay, now we gotta look for something that's more regional. The other thing is who do you get potentially? It's partners and we've even asked partners, are things, is your potential involvement site driven? It says, if it's here, we're in. If it's not, we're out or this is all okay, that's not okay. So we try to ask questions as it relates to sites, are some of those things feel breakers for potential partners? Haven't heard a lot that's really said or that's put us in a box, yeah. Got a question? I don't know of any examples of this, but I'm just curious, one of the things that, it's going to be a little bit with the parking garages that garages for people who are not from Montpelier, it's for the people who are coming in from out of town and it's going to be the people from Montpelier who are coming in from the garage. Now I'm all about supporting downtown businesses, I don't have to shop with them and eat with them, but that was something I thought a lot about with that question and with the pool, I imagine there would be more Montpelier residents really benefiting from it, but like you say, I think it will also be a regional drop. There's no question and so I'm wondering, how can the region invest in it? There's a 7,000 person tax base or less here in Montpelier. There's some more people, if you look beyond Washington County, how do we leverage the rest of the Washington County tax base, so people who might drive to another town today, especially in the northern northeast of town here, what would compel them to, they're not compelling, what mechanism would there be to tax or raise revenue from people in those communities who are going to end up graduating here? Is there something that we can do with it? Well, I think that's certainly on the table, especially when you start getting talked about in the regional approach. We've had some initial discussions with some of the neighboring communities. They have expressed a lot of willingness to want to tax their residents for that, but I think all of that becomes part of the equation potentially on it. That's what we're trying to figure out. So who is a realistic partner for this and try to answer those questions? You get another entity that's a partner, that has a big impact on site because another tax entity wants something that's close to their community, their tax base, so that starts to dictate a little bit more on where it would go. We've been trying to have those conversations and part of our thing is if you're a regional facility, should it be expected that a community of 7,000, even if you have the ability to do it, should take on the full funding requirement for a facility to serve the population based on four times that amount? My simple answer is no. You need to be getting the people that are going to be using it to pay for that, but that may not happen. Well, I don't need to be speaking too much about it. I'm just saying, the U-32 high school is a large lot, definitely not on the flood line. Extremely close, however, to downtown Longilier. There's really not any further than many other edge-of-town locations. There really has a regional, to be a regional center, again, has the opportunity to provide the sports option for students there. Maybe it can be a shared facility in Longilier and U-32 students for a lot of teams. I just wonder if that could be another, you know. We've actually, we've been out to the U-32. We've got a look at that. I agree with you, in some respects, it's not a bad look at it. I used to work for the state, and what had been going on at first, the business initially moved. I can't remember if it was through the state resources or the SCNA, so we could get a discounted membership through the state, and it's a way to tap into a whole market of people who have not even lived here, but they may be working here. All right, well, I appreciate the time this evening. This is why we're doing this, trying to get some direction out of this. So we're going to see what council tells us tonight, but we still have, regardless of the work to be done on the project, we're just trying to get a little more sense of where we want to go, so your input's been very valuable. We appreciate it. Thanks, everybody.