 auditorium at 180 Marcus Street. And we'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance. And Jesse, first time out. Why don't you lead? At Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. So if I can take just a couple of minutes to welcome everyone to the new auditorium and for those in the room to give a couple of kind of orientation pieces of information. First, I hopefully since you all got into this room, you would know how to get out in an emergency. You can go out either door at the back, turn left or right to get out of the building. For the council tonight, please do not unmute your mic or mute your mic, leave them on the way they are. They're very sensitive microphones. So also be careful of side conversations. They will be picked up on these microphones. For those on the go to meeting, thank you for bearing with us tonight as we worked out some technical things in the room. We can see you are, you can see you're kind of being projected up here on the screen behind us and in front of the city council. We would ask tonight that you really do keep yourselves muted unless you are called on to speak. We are still trying to fine tune the audio in the room and are afraid we'll get a lot of reverberation otherwise. I think those are the key things I wanted to introduce and we're just so excited to have this first inaugural meeting and thank you to all. We've had a whole crew of very technology savvy folks here today to try and get this room ready to go for us. So thank you each for being here tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So let's continue with the agenda review. Are there any additions, deletions, or changes in order of agenda items? Matt, you okay also? I'm good. Thank you, Helen. You're welcome. Matt's joining us from Cape Cod. He's on vacation with not as, what did we say? We have 220, whatever it is. You said there was so much power here. Oh, 220 megabits per second. Oh, okay. Well, he doesn't have that apparently in East Ham so he can't join us. He's probably like two. Yeah, right. But we thank you for joining, taking time out of your vacation and joining by phone. So seeing no additions or deletions or changes in order of the agenda item, we'll move on to item three, which are comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. Is there anyone who wishes to speak? Oh, Sandy Dooley, you have the floor. Okay, thank you. And congratulations on the new meeting venue. I had sent an email to the counselors for a heads up because I was making a request for information, more global holistic information about the results of the appraisal and especially any shifts in the proportion of the grand list value that is residential versus commercial. And especially because this has been a major issue in the city of Burlington and thinking maybe raising anxiety among South Burlington residents. I understand that Martha Lyon, the director of taxes and appraisal is preparing a report that this point is expected to be released on or presented on August 17th. I hope it includes responses to my questions. And I guess I would encourage that the report is finished before August 17th because that's midway between when people are getting their tax bills and when they're due that the report be made public before August 17th, if that's not possible. But I do think this information is really valuable for property owners to understand exactly what is contributing to any changes in their taxes. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other people who wish to make a comment? Okay, seeing none, we'll move on to announcements in the city manager's report. Announcements, Tom. Nothing to report. Megan? Sure. I attended the board of civil authority meeting. I was the only city councilor there. We are facing 50 appeals which means that we will have a very busy two months ahead of us. So we will need all hands on deck since out of 21. That means that there will be seven visits a piece for each of the BCA members for the house visits. And so I just thought I'd report that back. It's, it starts this Thursday, so. Good, yeah. Thank you. Tim? Nothing, thank you. Can you have a pension meeting? But nothing to report? We did, actually that was, was that last week? That was last week. Tuesday, yes, I came here and we actually had an in-person meeting with Pat Lizard who hasn't been here live for over a year. And we had Andrew there as the new assistant city manager. And so the meeting went very well with a lot of questions and the funds are doing well. We voted to make a small change in the equities portion to take approximately 15% from the standard index portfolio into what they call another type of a managed portfolio. It's not actively managed, but it's a different algorithm that they want to use. And I think it would be better for us. So we voted for that. I don't know how, when that is exactly effective, whether it's immediately or in a couple of weeks, but maybe Andrew will comment on that. Yeah, I just got the paperwork to sign to switch it over. So it'll be effective very soon within the week or two. There was some discussion about some employees, perhaps departing before they would take advantage of the pension fully and how there are trends outside in the country and including South Carolina where that's taking place now. People are tending to depart in certain careers early and going on to do something. And so we had a discussion about that and about the impact that that might have on the pension and also about the decision that we made several years ago to make available a $25,000 lump sum if somebody left early and how that was advantageous at this point. So that's it. Okay, thank you. Matt, do you have anything to report? Yes, Helen, a point of order for a rookie question here. My role on the GMT board, would you consider that a committee assignment? It is, and the pension probably is also... So I'll hold off until 11 and nothing to report for the announcements. Okay, thank you. And I don't have anything to report. So we'll move on to the city managers report. Great, thank you. I have a number of updates for you all. So to start, folks probably saw the news today that there is a substantial COVID spread in Chending County into South Burlington. Closely, our Burlington numbers are actually tracking lower than the rest of the county, although we are still monitoring them knowing that folks don't necessarily pay attention to geographical lines. Just as a reminder to the council, all of our buildings other than this building are currently closed to the public. Tomorrow we will be encouraging, starting tomorrow we will be encouraging all employees and visitors to City Hall in the library to wear masks regardless of vaccination status. And we have restarted our regular COVID EOC meetings with our internal team. So more to come on that. We also really encourage everyone to get vaccinated or have their loved ones get vaccinated. I wanted to address the council in the community tonight on the firefighters union post last Thursday or a Friday morning. And just give you some details about our current fire staffing. So the Twitter posts did that we were down 30% staffing. So I wanna give you some accurate numbers there. So as you probably know, we have 29 funded firefighter and EMT positions in South Burlington of those, we have one additional firefighter position that's currently frozen due to the COVID revenue reduction. So a total of 30, but right now 29 funded positions. Of those, we have 27 employed firefighters. So we have two vacancies, one firefighter left in April of this year and one firefighter left in May of this year. So as a result of those two vacancies, we have started, we posted the position in May. We went through first round interviews a week ago or going through second round interviews in next week and hope to make offers by the middle of August. So that will fill our complement of funded firefighters. I do wanna acknowledge that we have one firefighter currently on medical leave and one firefighter deployed overseas. So we have a full active complement today of 25 active firefighters, which is above the number we need to do to provide minimum staffing to the community. So while we are very excited to bring on two new firefighters this month, we have, I have the utmost confidence in the professionalism of our employed firefighters and EMTs to ensure the public safety of South Burlington residents. I was also lucky enough to do a ride-along with our firefighters, including our union president on Thursday night spent about five hours with them, which was lovely and visited them again yesterday to talk about their concerns and make sure that we are all on the same page. So I just wanted to put those numbers out there in the public. We also, so a couple other quick updates. We were thrilled to receive $250,000 from the library foundation last week. That is the significant portion of what they have committed to this capital project. There's still 150,000 outstanding, but we know that they are doing a lot of fundraising to bring that balance in. And on your behalf, I will be sending them a thank you note and acknowledgement of that donation later this week. You may have heard that the US Treasury issued guidance last week that the county, the Arpa County funds, which were two thirds of the money slated to come to municipalities, the Treasury has decided that counties are not a form of local government here in Vermont and that those dollars will be coming to the municipalities, which we are very excited about. We're still waiting guidance on what that will look like and how that process will flow, but we do expect to receive the two thirds of that other allotment that Congressman Welch shared with us a couple of months ago. This morning, we had a Jinden County Public Safety Authority Board meeting. This is the board that has been established to explore regional dispatch and the board took a vote to adopt a timeline plan that would have implemented a nation of regional dispatch in August 2023. I will share that I voted against that plan. I think we could do it more quickly and I think our dispatchers deserve certainty about that timeline, but it is where the board is currently going. So our staff will be looking at ways we can share services with other municipalities in an incremental way quicker as we look to ensure that we have two dispatchers on at all times. As you probably know, currently there are shifts during the week where we only have one dispatcher on at a time. To just give council a quick heads up between this meeting and next meeting on August 12th, Andrew and myself and Helen, I think we'll be meeting with our state delegation, our senators and representatives just to introduce ourselves, talk about South Burlington related issues, et cetera. We have started milling this week that will continue through next week. There's a whole list of streets paving that folks will see our signage that we, what's it called, a digital signage that we move around. So if you see that on your street, we will be on the street the next couple of days to mill and repave your street. We also received last week $110,000 grant to install two new crosswalks on Williston Road. That's not the full cost of those improvements, but it is part of the VTrans BikePed Award that we received this year and we're very thankful for VTrans for providing that grant funding. And then finally, I wanna share that the senior center has officially opened. It opened on Monday for coffee in conversation from 8.30 to 10.30, Monday through Friday. Our first meal will be on August 25th. So we encourage folks to sign up for that. And then programming will kick off in September. And that is what I want to share with you today. Thank you. I just have a follow up question on the VTrans crosswalk grant. Do we have in our budget the additional funds to match that or to actually put them in this season? Yes, I believe so. I will find that out and let you know. I was just curious what the timeline was. Okay. I have two quick questions. Yes. So the two firefighters that will be made offers, are they gonna come right in as firefighters or do they have to go through training first? They do have to go through our training to become certified. But they're not total brand new, people have never been firefighters before or are they? Well, we're still going through the interview process. It is possible that they are folks that have never been firefighters before. Okay. So they would have, I can't say I'm familiar. I know what the police have to go to a police academy, but is there a firefighting academy? I can't remember. There is not an, we do the training in-house. It is an academy, but we do it in-house here in South Wellington. And the other question was, it's great that we got the funding for the crosslights, but one was crushed on Eastwoods Avenue, I guess last weekend. One of the flashers, you know, on the north side. Was it a car accident or something? I don't know, but it was in many pieces on the side of the road. And I'm sure public works knows about it, but it's too bad because you get the money at one hand, and maybe there's some insurance that can be, if they knew it was the accident, it wasn't bothered. Sure, I'll look into that. Okay. Mack, do you have any follow-up questions? I don't, thank you. Okay. Tom, I'm sorry. So a couple of quick ones, one, I think I heard you say that you're gonna start encouraging or requiring employees to wear masks. And do you want us to put them on tonight just to start the precedent? We will be encouraging, we will not be requiring because our local South Burlington data doesn't actually meet the substantial trans or substantial spread data requirement of the CDC. We are trying to get ahead of it and encourage folks too. And we also have staff who would appreciate that support. So that is the stance we will take now when the data comes out, the town data comes out again on Thursday, we will be tracking it if something changes, we will change our decision at that point. And just really quick, if there are signups for counselors to do right alongs with the firefighters, I'd love to do so, so. A dream unrequited, right? Did you have a question? Yeah, I wanted to know the South Burlington numbers, the COVID per 100,000 I think is what they're counting, right? Yeah, I can send those to you. Oh, okay, okay. Okay. All right, let's move on then to the consent agenda. We have two items. Consider A, consider and sign disbursements and approve the minutes. B, approve the minutes from two meetings, five, 17 and 706. I will move to approve. Is there a second? Second. Is there any discussion? Just noted that there's a stormwater project on logwood that, yeah. I know that Justin's not here, but I was just curious where it occurred and I can follow up with an email. Okay, that's it. All right, so all in favor, I guess, if Matt, if you're gonna vote in favor of this, we can just do a verbal one. So everyone in favor of the consent agenda signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Great, okay. Moving. Madam Chair, can we just back up one second? Did you announce that they closed the Kimmel Avenue Bridge today? I did not announce that they closed the bridge. See that? Who's the Kimmel Avenue Bridge? Yes, we will be replacing, it's actually a massive culvert. They will be replacing that culvert between now and November. So it'll be closed for a while. Take appropriate traffic actions. Yes, there was quite a backup today, as I understand. I, 89, that's really good. I did both today. Okay, okay, moving on to item six then, this is a presentation by the South Burlington Land Trust on a proposal to warn a special city meeting to vote on a short-term tax increase to be used by the city for the future preservation of open space. And Sarah Dopp, are you making the presentation or is Alan? Both of us. Both, and Alan Long. Okay, so Sarah Dopp, this president of the- Strong, strong. Yes, is president of the board of directors and Alan's strong. What did I say? Storm? You said long. Long. Same thing. We have one of the- I apologize. Yeah. And Alan, strong. This is the hot seat, I assume. So, hold on just one second, if you don't mind. No, not at all. So it appears that I am sharing my screen and go to meeting here, but it is not showing up, Jordan. It is sharing the screen, it's not showing up up here. Do you have a sense of why that would be the case? Worked really well. Yeah, it did. Huh, let me try it one more time. Stopping sharing and resharing. Yeah. Can you open it on that other laptop? That would be my next attempt. It's the awkward first date. I'm trying to be happy. But we are going to fall in love with this place. It just will take a few dates, huh? Those take, yeah. Those are the long lasting relations. Jordan, do you? You're not, it's not showing up. The camera is also not showing up. I'm trying to share it here. I can try and share it here with that. Maybe. There it is. Why is that working? So you don't have to be getting any video. Can the, are the folks on the GoToMeeting seeing my screen being shared? Yes. Oh, we are? No. Yes. So if I just go to a meeting and try to rejoin that, maybe? Sure. Or do I need to if it's working here? There you go. This isn't the screen sharing, though. This is just the presentation. But if the, if GoToMeeting is running OK off this computer, then I probably don't need it up here. This does matter. If you want to, do you have each of them? No idea. This is really instilling confidence, isn't it? We're impressed with what you've done so far. We are, except for, except for Mr. Barrett over there. He could, and probably Mr. Chittenden. No 220 megabits per second. That's what my house looks like. No internet. I'd rather share it off here. That's fine. Yeah, that's good. Keep going. You're doing great. Already in. Yeah. Good. So is this now running off of this, though? Yep, it is. It is. So you're going to be here every meeting, right? Actually, we'll be. Thank you. Thank you for your patience. Well, you got it. All right. So do you want to click? Carry on. Yeah. OK. You may recall, first of all, let me thank you, counselors, for allowing us to come tonight and present our proposal to you. And this is indeed a historic occasion where we're part of the very first City Council meeting in the new building. It's very exciting. So we're appreciative of your time and attention. You may recall that we brought a somewhat similar but different proposal to the Council a few years ago. And since that time, interim zoning has been going on, lots of volunteer work has been accomplished in that time. And the urgency of climate change has become substantially increased, which led us to revisit this idea. Since our first presentation, we've also discussed our concept with the Natural Resources Committee, the Energy Committee, and Recs and Parks, and have incorporated their feedback and had good discussions with them. They were largely in favor of the concept. So we're calling this four for four. And the question is, how to raise $6 million for land conservation and climate change mitigation? The $6 million figure may not be exact, but once we all are familiar with what the taxes will bring in going forward, we'll have a better idea of that figure. Next slide, please. So this proposal is to ask the voters through a special election in October to temporarily increase the open space fund by $0.04 for four years to purchase natural resource lands and mitigate climate change impacts. So people will ask why. And I've alluded to it, to respond to key information that came to light during interim zoning and to respond to the climate emergency, drought, heat waves, flooding, fires, even this morning, torrential rains falling here after three or four days of the same. And why now? Well, we believe that we should be proactive and not reactive and leave a legacy for our children. This is really a gift to our descendants. We want to plan now for a sustainable future and finish the work of interim zoning. We have identified the priority parcels, which is information we never had before, but now we have so far no action plan in place to save any of them. Next slide, please. This slide, I think, was part of our first presentation, and it represents a series of surveys that were taken over the years, posing to South Burlington residents whether they would be willing to spend more. In some cases, we asked $100. And in other cases, we asked $250 for the sake of better preserving open land. Some of these surveys were conducted by Vince Balduk, and a couple of them were initiated by the South Burlington Landry. Is that OK? OK. I haven't the faintest idea if that's OK. We're getting a thumbs up. We're good. Just a little musical interlude. Right. OK. In addition to the point made in the main slide, we can also report that in 2018, 82% of respondents said they would be willing to pay an extra $100 in property taxes to tackle climate change in so many words. Sarah, can you get the microphone closer to you, I think, because there's a comment that Sandy can't hear you on the. Oh, OK. It's probably close. I can't hear either. OK. Andrew, is it on? Yeah, is it on? It's on. I haven't touched it other than close to you. There's no audio. Testing, testing. Is that better? They're saying the sound just dropped out for them. Yeah, the musical interlude may have signaled something. Testing, testing. That sounds better from here, but it does sound much louder. OK. Do I need to repeat anything? Or people are seeing the slides, hopefully, in the slides. OK. Can somebody on go to meeting confirm that you can hear Sarah now? Testing, testing. Yes, you're back. OK. We can hear her, but maybe she should repeat what we missed. I'm not sure how much you missed. Where did I drop out? Why don't you start on this slide? On this slide. OK. The point that I was making, I think, was that you had seen this slide before in the previous presentation. It represents a series of surveys that were done with voters, asking them if they would be willing. In some cases, we asked them $100 and other cases, $250, would they be willing to spend this extra money for the better preservation of open land? And some of these polls of voters were conducted by Vince Baldock. Others were a couple of them were initiated by the South Burlington Land Trust. And then I was making the point in the box on the right that, in addition to the question of better preserving open land with extra money, we also asked the question in 2018 to which 82% of respondents responded that they would be willing to pay $100 in property taxes extra to tackle climate change. Next slide, please. So we have here a brief history of the South Burlington Conservation Fund, which was established in 2000. It was initially established to purchase land for open space in natural areas. And currently, it raises about $310,000 annually. Between 2005 and 2018, the city has partnered with others. And this is really a key point. There are cases where the city has paid for the land itself, but in most cases, there are partnerships that are formed with other conservation organizations to put together a package that allows for the price tag of some of the land. And you see some of it listed there with the amount that South Burlington has contributed. Then there were a series of three occasions where alterations were made to the original conservation fund. The city proposed and voters agreed to these three changes, one in 2008, which allowed for the money to be applied to purchase of recreational land, as well as conservation purposes. And then in 2010, for 5% of conservation fund money to be used for the maintenance of the land. And then in 2016, to approve borrowing, and the details are there, $1.3 million over 10 years, and to pay back that borrowing with conservation fund money not to exceed 50% annually. So in other words, the important takeaway from these three alterations is that our current capacity for actual land purchase has been diminished by these three alterations by over 50% since 2008. And at this point, Alan will resume. Next slide, please. And so land conservation is really critical to combating climate change. And as you all just passed a climate resolution, we feel this proposal is a really important first step in reducing carbon emissions and showing that South Burlington can be a leader in combating the climate crisis. This proposal will provide a really strong foundation to the council's work in supporting this resolution. The land conservation also really sits kind of in the center at the foundation of sustainability initiatives. As you can see here, the three legs of the sustainability stool are represented here, the environment, social people, and economics, planet, people, prosperity. And there's many ways to define sustainability, but I think perhaps most famously, the UN's Bruntlin Commission defines sustainability as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. So we see this proposal as really creating a legacy for our children that can help us ensure that we're leaving behind a better South Burlington for future generations. Next slide, please. So climate change has really been at the forefront of the news this summer with wildfires in the West and the unhealthy air quality that sat over Vermont from about 10 days ago. But we've also seen increases in the frequency of extreme weather events. Perhaps most poignantly was the flooding in Manchester this past week, where a large culvert was blown out that was ostensibly set to handle greater water volumes after a tropical storm, Irene. So land conservation is really key to enhancing our ability to combat climate change and its impacts by increasing carbon sequestration, minimizing impervious surfaces and minimizing the heat island effect. As we've seen in Burlington, this is a serious issue for our sister city to the North. It had just been named number 13 of 159 cities with respect to the heat island effect. So the effects of climate change are becoming more and more visible in South Burlington and South Burlington really needs to be proactive in taking a lead on this issue through land conservation. So we also see tremendous environmental benefits from land conservation. We reduce the impacts of habitat fragmentation and provide the opportunity for our natural environment to provide key ecosystem services. Many of these, most notably our wetlands and riparian habitat, are critical for helping mitigate these extreme flooding events that we know are gonna be occurring more and more frequently. In addition, grasslands provide pollinator habitat. Soil conservation is really important for nutrient retention and nutrient cycling and biodiversity is really important for that ecological balance that's gonna minimize the destructive effects of non-native species. And during the pandemic, the importance of the city's conserved lands became really clear and very obvious. Increased visitation to our parks and natural areas was noted by a couple of publications by the Gund Institute for the Environment at UVM. And there were a wide range of reasons why people were using these natural areas. Exercise, nature watching, stress reduction. But as we look at the myriad ways in which humans interact with our natural areas, there's just a wide range of benefits that land conservation provides to people, including spiritual benefits, mental and physical health benefits. Our city's conserved lands, whether the parks or natural areas are critical legacies that we're leaving behind for future generations. And lastly, the importance of conserving land has really important economic benefits which are really highlighted by these critical ecosystem services that the nature provides. Some of these are really as simple as plants that provide the oxygen that we breathe but other functions such as flood mitigation, nutrient cycling, water filtration, carbon sequestration. All of these are really essentially irreplaceable services that nature provides to us. As you can see from the slide, the earth economics report which was commissioned by city council showed that 20 of the priority parcels that were identified in the interim zoning open space report deliver between five and $15 million annually in ecosystem service benefits. And if you essentially stretch that out to a 20-year period, you're looking at $73 to $240 million. And a study probably maybe five years ago, a Vermont study found that for every dollar that was invested in land conservation returned $9 in natural goods and services. So really quite a great investment. A recent study showed that wetlands in the Otter Creek watershed provided up to $450,000 annually in flood mitigation to the city of Middlebury. And as we mentioned earlier in the meeting right here in our backyards repairs to the Kimball-Emmoning Bridge or Muddy Brook. It's a climate change casualty and it's gonna have a significant economic price tag. We also know that city services are stretched thin consistently and promoting development closer to service centers means less stress on the ability to provide community services for our citizens. So with that, I'll pass it back to Sarah to talk a little bit more about the proposal. Okay, next slide. Great. So in essence, these are the bullets that describe the proposal. We're proposing to add four cents for four years which would accrue to approximately $6 million or at least a large number to be used for land acquisition. It would provide the city money to purchase some of the high priority lands if they come on the market. This would not happen all at once, but over time. But in between any withdrawals from the fund the money would continue to grow and individuals who might want to give over and above or after the four years could also help grow the fund for the future. And I mentioned funding partnerships which would further extend the capacity of the fund to purchase land. It signals very importantly that South Burlington is serious about land conservation and it also gives landowners more options for their land. It steers future development to city growth areas. It minimizes sprawl, traffic congestion and disproportionate demands and city services which was already mentioned. It does not stop development but places it in the areas of the city where it makes the most sense. The South Burlington Land Trust is willing to partner with the city to help the public understand the proposal and to advocate for voter approval. Next slide, please. What will the cost be to city taxpayers? The additional four cents we calculate to create an increase of $33 median condo tax per tax bill or $99 annually. And if you own a single family home the median increase would be $52.60 per tax bill or $158 annually. This equates to less than $9 a month for condo owners and less than $14 a month for single family homeowners. And again, I stress that it is temporary only for four years. In conclusion, South Burlington has conducted a rigorous three year process to identify natural resource lands and ways to conserve them. The Open Space IZ Committee identified the highest value lands to conserve but to date the city has no plan on how to conserve these priority lands. Purchasing land is feasible and it's fair. Most of all to the landowners whose life investments may lie in the land. The South Burlington Land Trust requests the council use the democratic process and allow the voters to decide. We do not ask you for your personal endorsement of this proposal, though we would like it. What we ask is for you to be committed to put it before the voters. South Burlington can be a leader in the climate crisis and conserving land creates a cleaner more affordable and healthier future. And we believe it's now time to ask the people. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any questions by the council? We'll comment. I'm gonna stop sharing this so we can see. Yeah. Yeah, Alan, could you please tell us more about nutrient cycling? It's a term that I think goes in one ear and out the other ear. And it would I think be useful for us to have a fuller explanation of it. Sure. I mean, if you think about, I guess a couple of the key nutrients that we are obviously concerned about here, just nitrogen and phosphorus. Phosphorus obviously being the big one in terms of eutrophication of Lake Champlain. When you actually have plants that can take that up or can help that be bound in the soil with their roots, it enables those nutrients to basically stay in place and essentially be used over and over again. Plants like legumes, which are nitrogen fixers, which enable us to take nitrogen out of the air, continues to create healthy soil environments for lots of other plant species as well. So the idea that the nutrients essentially stay put and can be recycled by natural ecosystems as opposed to falling onto pavement or sidewalks where essentially we just lose those nutrients and wash them into streams, ultimately wash them into Lake Champlain is sort of a kind of a key ecological process. Good. And key two, if you could just finish that thought. Key two, food production, key two, keeping things out of the lake, key two, all of the above. Yeah, all of the above I would say as well as sort of healthy productive ecosystems just our forest ecosystems as well when you have a healthy understory that continually traps leaves as opposed to one that's sort of manicured with grass underneath, you just don't have that same ability to bind up those nutrients to allow just more of those, more of it to stay put as opposed to just essentially be lost. Other questions or comments? Tim. So the total would be six million collected approximately over the four year period, right? So with the parcels that have been designated, do you have any idea roughly like what percentage or what acreage might be possibly acquirable if you wanna call it that over that period of time? If you had that money, I mean, so the question boils down to is like what owners are out there? Which ones are sympathetic to this cause, right? How much would they be asking and would it be a discount from whatever fair market value is? You know, the questions are like if they were thinking of developing it, is it possible or not possible depending upon how the land is zoned, right? And then if it is possibly developable saying that the city had some offer that they could make that was maybe less than fair market value but absolute in its offer as opposed to having to wait for a developer to go through three years of Act 250 and finally get a permit to do something and then finally give the landowner a sizable payment. So there are a lot of questions that are involved there. And also, I mean, would this money be possibly used to pay for TDRs, right? So that we don't actually have to buy the land. We could just buy out the TDR so that it really can't be developed at all. What other partnerships are available to use with the money that's raised between Vermont Land Trust, the South Rain Land Trust, other situations like with dirt capital and other organizations that are looking to preserve land. So I'm trying to understand how the $6 million could be magnified because what I'm concerned about is that we raise this money from the city and we wanna make sure that we get a fair deal from the landowner and that they want this land to be conserved in this fashion. So it has to end up being a fair exchange, right? Cause we don't wanna go out there and over bid for something when we don't have to, right? But on the other hand, we wanna make something desirable for somebody who was sympathetic to wanting to conserve land. So there are a lot of possibilities here and I just wanna just say that I haven't received my tax bill yet, but I know some people that have and I think some people are getting some surprises. I mean, I know when they got their reappraisal that there were some surprises, right? And we have this long list of appeals to go through over the next couple of months. So it's an interesting time for this proposal, but you're probably gonna tell me that there's no time that isn't a good time for this proposal, right? Just with regard to the property tax reappraisal, our house value increased 26% and we did get our tax bill today. And I believe that 26% was the average and our tax bill didn't go up. It was the same. So I'm assuming that if some went up, others will go down. And for the 26, it was a wash, but if you're so, just some numbers. We'll hear from them. Would you like them to answer some of your questions before you answer more? You articulated the issues, Tim, very well. The last response about the taxes that Burlington saw a burden shifted from, again, from commercial to residential because residential values went way up, right? So those bills went way up. I mean, and the people in Burlington are really displeased. I think that in South Burlington, they won't be as displeased in Burlington, but it's just a factor that you have to keep in mind. Yes. You know, I think just to touch on the many issues you raised, it's really complicated. Yeah. It depends on what fair market value is determined to be per acre at any point in time. Sometimes during the negotiations for a deal like this, the landowner is sufficiently motivated by the idea of conservation that he is willing to sell at more of a bargain price. And then I think something else that comes in to play very strongly there are the partnerships because the city doesn't have to do it all in every case. You named a couple of partner organizations that have been used in South Burlington and there's certainly others, the Nature Conservancy, Lake Champlain, Land Trust and others. So I mean, what's to do when a situation arises and I think another point to make is that they're not all going to arise at the same time. So that this fund will be there and tapped from time to time being growing in between. But when the time does come to consider somebody's issue that they want to sell their land, then it's a process. Sometimes a fairly long process, not as long as act 250, but sometimes takes a while to be sure that everybody's needs are met and that nobody is paying too much or receiving too little. It's not an easy thing to just answer. Yeah, that answers my question. I want to emphasize that there are opportunities for not just the six million but from other funding sources as well. And those can be people that are motivated within the community and outside the community in Shelburne as well. If something becomes available to donate to a land trust or donate to some other nonprofit that would help make a purchase possible above and beyond what the taxes are. Yeah, we have a model for that in this building really, the fact that citizens could contribute to the library. That could be true of open space as well. Okay, before I take comments from the public, are there other comments from the council? Tom? I have a question, but I want to preface it by just standing from the outset, something I told all of you and I want the community to know as well. I do support putting before the voters another penny in perpetuity next March. I think that makes sense. I've seen the same polls. I think it's fair to ask the voters if they want to commit more money, just like we currently have twice as much money to both support recreation acquisitions as well as land acquisitions. Where my pause is, is around this four year period and the six million dollar figure. So the four year period, I'll come back to that, but the six million dollars, did you come to that conclusion that that's the number before or after the reappraisal? Because I think it's important for us as a council to realize, I was speaking to the deputy city manager before the meeting today, with the reappraisal, that's a penny on top of all $100 assessed value and our grand list went up about 26%. So we can expect from my back of the envelope math without confirmation that we're gonna get another 90 to $100,000 in the open space fund already with the new reappraisal. So it was like 320 or so last year and with the increased grand list, we can expect a 30, 26% or so increase or more money that we can also borrow against as we did with the Underwood acquisition. So my understanding with the Underwood acquisition, and this is important to frame the question about the six million dollars and when we collect these monies, the Underwood acquisition, we didn't have all the money on hand, but we borrowed, I understand from ourselves, as is do allowable, as long as we charge our self an interest rate counting on the future revenue streams from the open space fund. So there are ways to do it without putting four cents on current taxpayers for four years, because then I expect distortions in the marketplace. Why would the University Mall, somebody wanna buy the University Mall, which I believe it's still and going through different processes, they'd wanna wait four years because then they're not on the hook for paying those that additional cents on their $50 million assessed value. So I would be a hard sell in that four year timeframe when I think the tools are there and I fully support asking the voters to double our tool to ask for another penny for parks and so on, but I can't see the four year and the six million dollars. If you wanna try to sell me on the six million dollars and why that's the figure we need to have on hand when we have other mechanisms, especially with what I've seen in my seven years on council, we have the resources and the tools to acquire the properties if they become available because we can borrow against our other funds against future open space revenue streams. It all depends on how the offers come in. If you had two or three really key properties up for sale at the same time, you'd be putting a real strain. We've been lucky up until now to be able to gerry-rig these little deals that made things possible, but that might not be possible in the future. We had to guess at an average price per acre when we thought about this and actually six million would not buy all of the priority parcels, nor do we expect them all to come on the market. So I think we used perhaps $20,000 per acre as an average figure. Some sales have been more than that, some have been less, but just to get some kind of figure and by applying that, we came up with the six million dollars, but we don't pretend that that would buy all of the priority parcels that have been identified, but it would give an infusion of a large amount of money to give us a cushion for flexibility to be able to react when sales are imminent. Are you, is that okay? Matt? Yes, and then Matt has a question. So the other thing you said was that March, you would support putting it on the ballot in March. I just want to point that out that that wasn't discussed at all because they were asking for an October vote, which has a cost to it, which I think the town, the city clerk is here who could tell us it's probably right, 3,000s, no, it's less. 10,000 is it 10,000? Because we have to mail out ballots? 10 to 20, no. We have to mail? Here comes the, I don't know if we have to mail, but. I was talking with 799. Can you come up so the folks online can hear you, Donna? Thank you. I'm sorry. Well, I mean, part of the conversation, I guess. Hi, I'm assuming that with the 79 appeals that we have before the Board of Civil Authority, not the 50, the numbers grown. 79? Yeah, right, 79 now. Our Board of Civil Authority is going to be very tired. Could we've got to get these done before August 2nd, October 2nd. So now you're looking for a vote in October. I don't know if I have the capacity to do it and I don't know if you guys have the capacity to actually work the election as well. So I may have an issue of finding workers on top of that, not saying against anything. But so I'm assuming that we're going to go with a tabulator count because I can't imagine after doing all these 79 appeals, we want to sit there and count yes and no at the end of the night by hand count. So I've done both, but I'm assuming a tabulator. So if you imagine 4,000 people coming and we use a tabulator, it is going to cost us just short of $10,000 if we do not put return postage on the envelopes that come back to us, which 70% get dropped back to us and it really is a waste of money. So yeah, that's about $10,000 is the cost with a tabulator, 4,000 ballots, having to buy the envelopes now because the state will not supply us with them. Programs, machines, paying the workers. So Donna, is it required now for every single vote, whether it's a special election or a regular election to mail out ballots? No, but it is an option if you so wish it. So every November, the state will be mailing out ballots to every resident at their expense. Any other votes that the city does, they have the option of mailing a ballot to everybody if they so wish, but it's at the city's expense. So if we chose not to mail them out, is it less than $10,000? No, 10,000 is if we only mail out those to people who requested them. So I'm assuming I've assumed 4,000 ballots, maybe 4,000 people may vote. It is getting very popular to vote by absentee. So imagine up to 2,500 to 3,000 of those people may request an early ballot. So that's why I kind of did my numbers on it. Thank you. Okay, does that answer your question? Okay, thank you. Thanks, Donna. May I ask one quick one? Yes, and then I'll let Matt have the floor. Donna, the additional cost of adding a ballot question on the March election? Minimal, nothing. Nothing. Well, it's a little bit more for the programming is probably less than $100. Thank you. Okay. So Matt, Coda, you have the floor. So thank you, Helen, and I apologize to members of the South Burlington Land Trust. I couldn't be with you today. I do want to disclose that I am a dues paying member of the South Burlington Land Trust, and I did attend a meeting with several members of the South Burlington Land Trust to discuss this issue earlier in the summer. And I'll say what I said to them, then I'll say it now, which is I do not support a special election in October. I think you'll have the most voters come out in March on Town Meeting Day, and there'll be the least cost. And that, so I wouldn't support a October special election. I'm willing to consider, because I think it is an important discussion that the community has with how we are going to protect these important natural spaces in our community that we all want to protect. How do we do that? Because as Sarah Dopp very artfully said, we don't have a plan. So here's a plan. You've brought it to us, let the voters decide. I can understand that, but I'm not willing to do that in October special election, but I will consider it for March. And we don't have an election scheduled for November, right? So it's between March is the next one that's on the original schedule. Could I ask a follow-up? You certainly may. Is that all you have to say, Matt? Are you done? Yeah, that's it. Thank you. I would just like to hear you respond to October versus March, as well as what Tom Chittenden brought up, Councilor Chittenden brought up about the increase in the appraisal values already bringing in potentially 30% more on the scent that we currently collect. Right. Well, on that point, that's true, I expect, but currently what we have available that comes in is less than half of the total amount for actual land acquisition. So it's not as large as it might seem. The point is a fair point, but it really would not seed the fund in a large way going forward. What was the first question? The October versus March. Well, I think our point is, A, we want to show the citizens that we are being responsive to a climate crisis that's very real and becoming more real by the day. So waiting another six months to take an action that might mitigate that seems to us to fly in the face of the urgency. The other thing is that it focuses the mind if a voter has one issue to pay attention to rather than burying it in a list of others. So I think those are our two key reasons for wanting to move it forward, to highlight it and to highlight it because it's urgent. And I think that the third point is just that November presumably is gonna mark the end of interim zoning as well, so. Still no plan. Right, yep. So in your mind, this would provide a plan or it could if the public agreed to an increase. Could provide a plan for some of the information that we've learned through interim zoning and then it dovetails of course with global warming and that crisis and I would agree with you to keep putting solutions off for six months continues to put us and the earth at risk. I mean, we certainly can do it. We're not gonna change the whole earth in South Burlington but we certainly could potentially make a difference here long-term in terms of our sustainability with land and how we can respond to climate changes and climate crises like rain and all sorts of things. And health too, I mean, it's, and again, I'm not the expert Dr. Strong is, but I think that when you look at, I was just at the Isham Farm where they talk about the four B's. So it is bees, birds, butterflies and bugs in general and how they're really critical for the health of the world that we live in and we live in this world. And I think with regard to disease, with regard to food production, with regard to the temperature, all of that is local. And we have to think in terms of that. And I do believe, the policymakers who do say that the most important change is that any policy body is gonna make is gonna happen at the local level. I do believe in that. I think that I hope that I will be eating my words. I think the federal government, it's gonna take much longer than what we need. And we need this to be a swift action. And I think it's gonna come down to the local level. And I think we are the frontline. So yeah, Tim? I have a question. So one of the, you know, not the problems, but one of the discussions is October vote versus a March vote. The March vote is the education and the city budget, right? And as well as a couple of city council races, right? So is it feasible, whatever the number of pennies it might end up being, right? Is it feasible to actually have that on the March ballot and still be able to have a number for, I mean, you can't have a ballot, a budget proposal, and then also have another ballot item saying it's X pennies because you won't have an actual budget number at that point, right? Or, I mean, is that feasible to do that in March? So I think what you're, I think what I'm hearing you say is if it were on a March ballot, what I would recommend is the budget to, you know, the amount of tax dollars to be raised to provide municipal services would be one item. And then there would be a second item saying we are going to raise an additional four cents on the tax rate for this if it's passed. So it would be, you'd have a tax rate you'd set for the grant, for the general fund, and then you'd have a tack on a four cents to that. And then that would be for FY23, I think? That would be for FY23. Okay, because that's the- I'm sorry, go ahead. No, I was simply going to say that it is a separate line on your tax bill. It's not buried in the- Right, right, right. And it's assessed just against the city budget. The one set now is separate. It's not your whole tax liability. It's one cents on the tax, the municipal tax rate. The municipal tax rate, yes. Which is pretty small. It could be a line item and still be- Be relatively speaking. Affable to FY23. That's why only raised is $300,000 if we were adding another cent on to the school tax. We have plenty of money. So I do want to clarify the intent of the vote in October would still be for implementation in FY23. I don't think the land trust is suggesting we do a mid-year tax increase to folks. So either way it would be, if approved, it would go into effect for FY23. That's correct. That's correct, and what that means is, meanwhile, we're losing more time. I mean, it's necessary, but- Well, either way, if we passed this in October, it still would not be assessed until the following July. Right, right. So we're still putting it off seven months. Yeah, that's what I was trying to say. Truly, so in that respect, it probably doesn't matter whether it's October or March. The collection of these pennies won't happen until the 23 budget. So coming back to their argument, which it was for the penny for paths as well, that was the argument, was that this is on people's minds, this is part of our education. That's a separate, this is something that people, who bike and who are concerned about it, it would be foremost in their mind. So there is something that would help the education as we come to the conclusion of IC, as we come to the end of our harvest season. There's something to it. For sure, yeah. But the actual collection wouldn't occur, yeah. Tom. So just two points, the penny for paths, they tacked on to the August primary. So it wasn't a special election, and that's why I fully supported it because it made a lot of sense. And then I agree with the point you were making, Chair, really, I just think it could be interpreted in two different ways. It doesn't matter in that if we passed in October or March, it still doesn't kick in until July. So in that respect, it doesn't matter, but the October does have a financial impact as well as a labor and other resource impact. So I think there is a consequence, the cost is a matter for considering an October special election. But if we consider the cost, we have to consider also the six million versus the 10,000 versus the up to 243 million, was it? That we could collect over 20 years. So it's a virtual drop in the bucket if you think about what these 20 parcels represent to the actual landowners and the property tax payers here in South Burlington. But two? I mean, it's an optics thing, right? I mean, you think that the optics are better for you in October, but it actually gives you more runway to advertise and make your case to the community for a March vote. So I think that it can go either way, but to Councillor Chittenden's point is that if some land comes up between October and March, we have a way to, we have monies that we can lend ourselves if something came up to supplement what's in the open space fund now to purchase something or to work towards it. So I mean, there's no real benefit to doing it in October that I can see other than just that you see it coming at the heels of the end of IZ and that there's some traction that you would gain there. Well, and I think there's a connection there because it is a solution to an issue that has been raised through IZ and the reporting. So the timing for that and the clarity of people's understanding could be beneficial to a positive vote. Matt, would like to say something? Yeah, I just wanted to add just to, I mean, you heard what I said before, I'm not going to repeat it, but just one thing I didn't say was March is the chance that we have the most participation of city voters. And as I hear from everyone that this is such an important issue, and I agree. So let's make sure that the most voters get to decide, let's wait till March. March usually isn't the largest turnout to be quite frank. Sadly, I wish it were, but... In a non-presidential election. I don't know. I don't know, okay. Well, we would certainly work hard to try to elevate the public's understanding of this for an October vote or a March one, but we had that in mind as part of our package. Okay. Any other comments from the council or questions? Okay, we had... Just one more. So I'm in general support of this. Four pennies add to one is five pennies. So it's like a five for one type deal. I think you may want to start thinking about that you might not get a full four pennies by March, that you might want to think about less, right? Depending upon what the tax rate implies, as people see their tax bills. So just keep that in mind, right? Four is a goal. It may end up being less, but that's a possibility, right? If I could just respond to that. We certainly internally had a lot of discussion about the moving parts of this. And, you know, this is the proposal we came up with. So, I mean, this is our proposal to you. We understand that you folks have the final decision making about when this vote might occur and how it would be crafted ultimately. So I'm not sure if I'm hearing from you that one of your responses to us might be, yes, you can do it in March, but you have to rethink the amount. You know, I don't think we're inclined to change our proposal unless we're told that we must in order to have it voted upon. So even in March, you would want to keep four cents for four years. Yes. And not have an additional penny in perpetuity as Councillor Chittenden suggested. If I may. Yeah. So I think I saw on Jesse's new planning document for the council, which is great, by the way, that we're going to discuss this more on August 17th. So what I love about the March discussion is we can collect more perspective, get some more concrete numbers and have these discussions and flesh out four pennies versus a penny in perpetuity. So I think we have time to discuss this over the next couple of months as we lead into the March ballot. Well, we want to put it on in October. We don't have a lot of time. We could make a decision on the 17th. Right. So what Councillor Chittenden is referring to is as an internal leadership team, we've developed a document to track what's coming up on future council meetings for the council, just so we don't lose issues. So I had put this on the August 17th meeting because council has to take proactive action to call for a special meeting. So pending your direction to staff and the land trust tonight, there may be follow-up work for us to do before the 17th to bring something back. I wasn't quite clear if I could ask you a question about what you meant, Tom, about the one cent. I mean, the one cent in perpetuity is there now. Right. This would be another penny. So it'd be two cents. Oh, you're one cent that you were proposing, in other words. I talked to any guy that knows, any gal, any person that needs two cents. Any person that understands finances, the one cent in perpetuity is worth a heck of a lot more than four cents over four years. And I think it's a much fairer way to collect revenues to acquire these properties. Otherwise, you're really putting all this burden on the people that own these properties during this one four-year window. I think it's much fair, especially with our acquisition trends over the time of the Open Space Fund, that the one penny is the right way to accumulate resources or put a bond out there for really big assets. I'm not sold on four cents for four years. I just don't see that as sound financial logic, but we just have more discussions at another night when we have our deputy city manager to show us some spreadsheets and we can dig into it. Yeah. And I'm happy to do that. I think that's really worthwhile. I just wanna make it clear that the amount of money that they're asking from people is not an undue burden for, according to the polls that have been out there, it's closer to $100 per year than the $250 per year for the median home. So it's not over four years, you're not putting a child through college, right? Just to be clear, if I may ask a question, maybe if you know the answer, these pennies apply to commercial properties as well, correct? Correct. So the airport, the Erlington International Airport, the University of Vermont land, all those lands. So you've got it in the average ones, but this would be four years where every property owner in the city is gonna pay, do the math on a $50 million parcel. It's like a $50,000 hit for four years. And that's real money, that's an FTE. So my point is for a four year period, you're gonna create distortions in the marketplace when I just don't see the need. I don't see us needing $6 million in the bank based on our acquisition historical trends. I'm not sold on the fourth sense over four years. You got me for a penny. I said that in perpetuity, but... Well, hold this to it. And again, we're not looking for your personal endorsement just to get this on the ballot. Okay, we have one person in the audience and a couple of people lined up on GoToMeeting. So Rosanne, why don't you, since you're here, yeah, please. Yeah, Rosanne Greco and please give your name. Yeah, Rosanne Greco, I'm a member of the South Burlington Land Trust Board of Directors and to respond back to some of the questions that Tom raised and that Tim raised. And I think there's a bit of confusion. It's not that we were trying to raise $6 million. Actually, if you look at the number of acres in those 20 priority parcels, and by the way, some of them have already been gone, it's about 1,000 acres. If you assume each acre goes for 10,000, then you need $10 million. But realistically, some are gonna go for more, some less. If they go for 20,000 acre, you need $20 million. So it's not that we were trying to raise $6 million. We were trying to think of something that was feasible, doable at a relatively small cost for a very short period of time and how much you would raise. And the four for four would bring in $6 million. But that's not what you need to raise if the city is interested in, if the landowners are interested in selling to the city. If you put this on the ballot and the voters approve it, it gives a real big signal to landowners that money is going to be coming in. And even though it won't take effect until the June, the July new year, if the voters approve it in October, any landowner that has landed wants to sell to the city to conserve it will know it's gonna be coming into the city. So I just wanna make sure you know, we're not trying to raise $6 million or we're not trying to tell you $6 million is all you need. You need a lot more and it depends on, it depends on the landowners and who wants to sell and when they want to sell it. Go ahead, Megan. No, no, no, I don't mean to interrupt you. Excuse me, Sam. So the issue of October is twofold. We're in a climate emergency situation. We should be acting as if we're in a climate emergency situation. And to just wait until the next opportunity for voters to have their say, which is March, doesn't treat this like an emergency. I mean, that's what Greta Thurmburr was saying. We're not acting like we're in an emergency situation. Having a special election tells you this is out of the ordinary. And the other thing is interim zoning. You've gone through the process, you've identified the parcels. As Alan said, this is the first time that we've ever actually identified the parcels of land that have the highest natural resource value. But there's no plan to do anything with those. And if there's no plan put in place, then landowners are gonna have to do, if they need financial money for their land, there's only one option pretty much. And that's to sell to a developer. So if you put this to the voters and they approve it, then landowners will know that there's an opportunity should they wish to sell their land. And the only other question I have to Jesse and Donna is the cost of the special election. And the land trust has treasury money that we could put to that if it is legal. And I sense it's not, but if it is, or private donors, that would be a way to defray the 10,000 or so cost. And one last thing you were talking about, I think Tim was asking about partnerships. It was just in the paper two days ago, the Heinsberg Forest that you may have read about. Well, that actually they, the Vermont, not Vermont, the Land Trust for Public Land, they partner, they help bring this from Digger, help municipalities acquire and raise money for land that requiring that they remain undeveloped. So there are entities out there, they just did it in Heinsberg. And we do know that there are private donors that are willing to contribute over and above to the open space fund should it happen at a considerable amount of money. Hey, I did have a question for Rosanne. Okay, and then I'd like to give to the people who've been very patient on go to meeting. Because I do recall in a conversation with Rosanne that there are grants currently available because of the climate emergency and that there is a match required, right? And that this funding that we would provide locally could be used as a demonstration of our commitment in order to make applications, submit applications for those grants. Correct, and that's what these organizations look for. They look for the municipality being interested in doing it. They're not gonna come out of the blue and give you money. It's they look for interest from municipality if there's interest and the voters. This is all about the voters. If the voters wanna do it, they don't wanna do it, they don't wanna do it. But if it shows that this municipality, their voters want to preserve land, conserve land, then they come in with their grants and they're matching and such. Yeah. And so we would not only be getting six months ahead of schedule on what the change is coming ahead, but also on the applications for these grants. Sure, we could reach out if the voters approve it, and that's what the land trust is offered to do, to do a lot of the legwork, going out and now finding these organizations, contacting them, saying the voters approve this, will you contribute as well, as well as reaching out to private individuals for contributions. That's what we are committed to do. If the voters okay. This is all about the voters. I mean, we'd love to have your support, but it's really about the democratic process. Yeah, I mean, that's what we're asking you to. Thank you. Thank you. We have two people who have asked to make comments and then there's a number of questions. So why don't we go to the people who wanna make comments? Chris Trombly first requested to make a comment and then after Chris, we have Linda Bailey. If you're online and would like to make a comment verbally, please put it in the chat. Please invite that you would like to speak in the chat. Okay, Chris. Thank you. So this is a two-part comment and it's brief, thank you. So as chair of the affordable housing committee, just wanna bring to the attention of the council that our committee did pass a resolution back in January and that motion essentially was that we opposed this going on to the ballot seeking approval for the addition of the current 1% for the open space. But largely I think the biggest focus was based on the fact that the committee is requesting that the council establish an annual procedure under which city committees and citizen groups present their proposals for new spending that the council would use in setting priorities in addition to the property tax or new bond spending. So that was a unanimous motion and this was not speaking against the merit of the request, only that we questioned the process of how the council weighs one initiative against competing initiatives. And first in line doesn't necessarily indicate highest priority. Second, we're sensitive to the financial burden of any new spending initiatives. It may not sound like a lot of money to some, but that is meaningful money to others. And there is other expenses going on at this time. So the timing may not be right. Lastly, we're waiting for the results of the new environmental protection standards from the planning commission as interim zoning comes to an end this fall. Okay, so that's my role as chair. I wanna take that hat off and speak as a resident. I just don't feel good about adding new taxes. Well, at the same time, we see property tax increase due to the reassessment. While the reassessment is revenue neutral, commercial property values are down while shortfalls redistribute to residents. I think it'd be prudent to demonstrate sensitivity to this new expense for household budgets. Should the council advance any new taxes, it would ask that we not call a special election to decide a single such issue that any new taxes are spending such as this be put on the town meeting day ballot. It's good governance to ensure that we ask for new spending with the highest possible turnout and given the voter a full and transparent view of both municipal and school spending requests. And just find, I think I heard you speak about the expense of a special election. So thank you for acknowledging that. Thank you, those are my comments. Thank you. So Linda Bailey and then Vince Baldock after that. Linda? Hi, have I figured out how to put this on? We hear you, we can't see you though. Oh dear, I can see a little picture of myself. Let's see, did that do it? There we go, you got it. Hi everyone. I'm also a resident here, not a member of any committees or boards or anything. And I had several questions. Though the first thing I wanted to say is I very much agree with Chris. If you hold a special election for just one item, one, you'll get a low turnout on it. It's my experience of such things and two, it's not giving people the full picture of everything that's going on in the city. And I think that makes it very difficult for voters to give a true answer. Anyway, questions that I had. I heard the people talking about priority properties, but I'm afraid I didn't pick up anything on where any of those properties, general area of any of those properties. Can you answer that? That would, they were identified in a summer study. Dr. Strong was the chair and Councillor Emery was part of that committee. He was one of the IZ committees. And I believe almost all of the 20 properties were in the Southeast quadrant because that was the focus for the IZ. No, they weren't. They're all over the city. Oh, they're all over the city, excuse me. Yeah. Oh, okay. My understanding, go ahead. Oh, I was just gonna say, in addition, we had an economics firm called Earth Economics review those 20 parcels and assess them for their value to our city. And over 20 years, the what we call natural infrastructure would provide to the city $240 million up to that. I saw those pieces. Yeah, I was surprised. I'm surprised to hear that without someone correcting me, you felt that most of them were in the Southeast quadrant because I understand that, oh, I'm gonna lose the amount. But something around 50% of the open area there is already conserved one way or another. But anyway, you also mentioned that in 2018, you did a survey of people about if they'd be willing to put more money into this type of thing. And you mentioned a percentage, like 82%. I was wondering how many people actually answered the survey, because if you had 10 people answer, and eight of them said, yes, that's 80% on only 10 people. Well, in spite of what has signed up to answer to, make comments next, and I think it was his survey. Was it not? So he probably can answer those questions for you. It was as people finished voting, I think, he, as they exited the voting booth, he asked them to answer. It was a survey with a number of questions. That was just one of them. Okay, great. Mr. Baladouk, if you'd answer that for me when you're on, I'd love that. I had another question that showed that the city has spent something over $4 million in the last number of years purchasing, they're purchasing or being partial purchaser of land. What are we doing with that? As there are places where I could put in a garden, take my grandkids for a walk, what are we doing with that $4 million investment? Well, there are, there is a public gardens Wheeler National Preserve, so you could get a garden there. Yes, and I have in the past, but they become very hard to get. And Hunderwood, you can- Or in the other places? Yes. Yes. Yes. We would be happy to provide that information to you. I don't have it all listed on my head, but- Places to- To garden. To raise a garden down, to take children, to ride bikes, to actually use it, not to visit someone's farm. Right. If I could just add one thing, I think the city has a dream of the Eau Claire property that you helped very generously, helped to conserve that some day it will take time, but that there will be public walking trails there. So that would certainly be a public amenity that would be helpful for kids. Hubbard Park certainly has quite a few trails for you to take your children or grandchildren. Absolutely. I was just thinking about the ones that you were partial buyers for and stuff like that. Yeah, good idea. But it won't- Yeah, good idea. But it won't- Yeah, good idea. But it won't- Yeah, good idea. One question to- I was just going to say that the city has a great information on their website in terms of parks and natural areas. Definitely worth looking at that. Yes. One other question. Housing is an incredibly needy thing. We are in the heart of all of the most populated, most businesses area. Every time we don't have any space. And I absolutely agree that we need green space and trees and nature around us. But anytime that we foreclose everywhere from having homes for people, we're simply pushing them farther away. So they have to commute farther. So new services have to be provided for them in another town away from us. What balance is the Land Trust Committee looking at to make sure that there are places for new housing? We believe that there are lots of places that would be more suitable for housing than the rural areas of open space. We include a long transit. A long transit. Sorry. We live in South Burlington. It's not rural. There are more rural areas to South Burlington. Where we're sitting right now in city center is one of the places where we intended the council intended to concentrate development and housing and a long transit lines along Shelburne Road and Rolleston Road. So I mean, and there are lots of commercial properties standing vacant right now that could be repurposed for housing. So we think there are lots of opportunities. I agree with some of those things you're saying. I also think that there are areas down Doris Street and stuff that would make lovely places for nice concentrated housing areas that could be done beautifully. They're filling up fast. Well, I think the Planning Commission is working on some planned unit development designs to address the needs that you've identified. So I don't think this proposal excludes or precludes any kind of additional development. It's not. I'll be looking forward to seeing the information on where your priority properties are. I'm interested. It should be online. It's online. It's online. We came out in early 2020 with the results, Ms. Bailey. And you might be interested too in our special meeting tomorrow night on land use and equity. It starts at 6.30, which we'll get to housing as well as the balance with the environment. It could be of interest to you. Good, because I'm very concerned to keep the housing concentrated in the heart of where all the businesses are. Thank you very much. Appreciate everyone listening to me. Great. Vince. Yes, thank you. Just a point of information, but now it looks like a couple of points of information. The answer to her about how large the survey was was 431 out of about 15,000 actively registered voters. So it was a good number and it had a small margin of error. A second point I hadn't planned on making, but Megan, I think you said that the high priority conservation properties were all over the city and that is correct. But almost all of them are in the Southeast Quad if I'm not mistaken. If there were 20 we identified and of course I was on that committee with you, Megan and Alan and many others. I think there were just two or three that were not in the Southeast Quad. But that's a fact. At least four or five as I recall. At least four or five as I recall, but my memory is only seeing four or five. There could be more, I don't recall. Yeah, I'm not sure, but it certainly is a factual question that we could answer. The other point I wanted to make having to do with the survey and I was happy to see it quoted. We asked hypothetically, would you be willing to pay an extra $100 in property taxes per year to support the following? And we gave them that list. And one of them was as was quoted, permanently preserving more open and undeveloped land in our city. And as you saw from the slide, 80% of South Burlington voters at that time said, yes, they would. But the very next question was, would you be willing to pay an extra $100 to support the construction of more affordable housing in town? We'll never guess what that percentage is. It's 80% is precisely the same. So that was just a point of information that I wanted the council and the public to hear. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you. And I think there are six parcels outside of the Southeast Quadrant. I have the map pretty clear in my mind. Was it six out of 20 or 25? I didn't hear him, sorry. Out of 20 or 25? Out of 25. Out of 25. Six out of 25. Okay, thank you. 20 were evaluated by Earth economics, but we actually identified 25. 25, yeah. Okay. Okay, we have some comments or questions. Sandy Dooley also wanted to see. Sandy Dooley, and then do you have the questions? How are we gonna? Well, then there would be more than six if I include those 25. Oh, okay. So Sandy? Yeah. It would be seven or... I just want to, I raised the question. This discussion, it leads me, gives me the impression that at least some counselors and the land trust believes that the most impactful thing the municipality of South Burlington can do in response to climate change is to purchase land. And well, one thing that occurs to me is that we could raise money to convert all of our vehicles that we own, probably not fire trucks or ambulances yet, because the technology hasn't done it, but the police and any other cars we own to electric vehicles. Anyway, I just, is there some research that you can share with me that says, that concludes that the most impactful thing that South Burlington can do to address climate change is to purchase land. That's just the question and a request. I've seen that research, Sandy, but you asked the South Burlington land trust, so I don't know if there... I was asking city counselors as well. I would say that... Anyone that hasn't... The research I have seen Sandy, electric vehicles and planting trees, we will fall far behind what we need to do in order to address climate change. So I go back to a presentation I heard given by an Abnaki native who said, indigenous needs being one with the land. And that is the direction that as a civilization, the world needs to move back to. And so just going electric vehicles and planting trees is not enough. We need to think more holistically and preserving the land is definitely part of that. Preserving and living locally is part of that. Having enough housing, but housing that preserves the land, there's a whole balance that needs to be just recalibrated in order for us to be prepared for the future. And I mean, I don't have the studies here at hand either, but I've been reading extensively. Tom, with all due respect, I wasn't asking for a narrative. I was asking for somebody to give me a link to research. And I know we have to do all kinds of things. So I know we're over on time and the chair probably wants to move us along. But I do share many of your concerns there, Sandy. I don't know if this is the best use or the best way to address climate change to take land away from areas that are already served by public utilities like water, sewer, data, public transportation, natural gas. I also would argue that these dollars in a more regional context would go a lot further in more rural parts of the state. You look to Heinsberg or elsewhere, the cost per acre is going to be less than what it's gonna be near where there's already capacity for our utilities. That being the case, I support us acquiring strategic open space lands for both recreation and perpetual access for all of the great reasons that we all support. But your concern is very valid, Sandy. And I think it needs to be a very present in future discussions. But again, we're over on time. And I think that's exactly how the money would be focused. They're looking at purchasing these really sensitive and important natural resources that were identified. And that's how I see the way we would use the open land fund, whether it's for cents for four years or two cents for forever or if we continue with one cent forever. That's how we use those dollars. It isn't to, I don't know, sneak in before an investor and developer gets there just so that there's an open space. Yes, is there someone else who needs to speak? Not, no one else has indicated that they want to bring up, speak publicly. I would like some direction for staff on what you would like to see on the 17th. And I can provide some guidance on that if you would like. Okay. Okay. Well, I think it would be helpful to if you can generate a better sense of what one cent will raise with the new values in the city, the grand list. So we have that context of where we might go and how much we might wanna increase the sense to have a meaningful amount of money for purchase. Does it make sense for us to see what kind of grant, grants are available to us? Is that something? That feels premature to me. I think that is too. I think that's too much data to be useful now. I mean, I think it's... That's one tool to use should we get to the point of being able to robustly build the fund. Can you find out if the land trust can pay for a special election? So yes, I can find that out. My off the cuff answer is the city can receive donations at any time for anything. So it may not be directly to fund that, but I will let sure that former city attorney agrees with that issue for you. There's lots of optics with that. I mean, how would we feel if Walmart came in and said we really want you to hold a special election to change your regulations on one thing or another? It's a discussion to be had, but I just... You don't have to accept the funds for that purpose. That's right. And you have to determine who they're received from. And I think that's... My immediate reaction is that community organization is a little bit different than Walmart. I mean, I don't see that as a... So it's a precedent. Has councils changed? Other questions? Yes. So in terms of staff guidance, a few other questions staff had was, if the, do you want us to bring you a timeline of what it would look like to get something on an October ballot because it is very close. That would be helpful. Do you want us to, at some point, you all are gonna have to consider actual bond language or actual ballot language. And so we would need some direction on what that ballot language would look like. Does it do the, are these dollars solely for acquisition? Are they for maintenance as well? What's your intention about maintenance of additional lands? Is that built into future budgets? Things like that. And then in the, so in the ballot language, is this authorization just to raise funds for acquisition or is it to raise funds for maintenance or something else? So those are the questions the staff will be asking as we move forward with this process. Okay, good question. Sarah? I was just going to say, I know it's your decision on how that language gets crafted and what it's included, but our proposal is for this additional money to be exclusively for land acquisition. Okay. That's your intent. Okay, thank you. Are we satisfied? I think so. More language, more direction? I don't think I've come to support an October ballot. So if that was part of there, I as one counselor would not support it's escalating this timeline to get language to be considered for a special election. I just don't see it. This is Max Oda. I agree with that. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. So three of us, I think agree on that. I don't see the need to rush an October vote for that. So I don't think we need to rush that. But I think the important discussion is how much? First of all, do we all support it? The second one is the question is how much? And then I would love to see, maybe that's something that's going to happen tomorrow night is or not, right? But is a nice layout of these parcels and what the probability is, whether they're purchased or not, whether they will relatively stay conserved in some fashion or another, whether they'll stay wild and open in some way or another. I mean, if some spot it has 10 acres and it receives two houses versus us buying it and there are no houses, the question is if we don't buy it and there's two houses is that really that bad a thing, right? So there are going to be trade-offs that you're going to have to ask yourself, right? Do you want to have the $6 million? How much can you do with it over time versus, if you did nothing at all, would you still have as much open space or like 94% open space without doing anything wrong? And those questions happen at the time of acquisition, usually with the landowner. There's the time of negotiation and- Well, my point is- I think that's a hard question. How do you answer that? Some of the land that if it's not very developable, is it worth us spending money to purchase it in the first place, right? So- Well, we've had people, you know- To develop wetlands. And I didn't think they were developable, but lo and behold, it's happened. Relative to the density is what I'm talking about, right? So that's all I'm getting at. Is the density issue? Well, I still don't know how to answer that question before the actual conversation with the landowner takes place. So the question, the no one farm property was highly developable, right? And there would have been a large amount of open space that would have been taken for a lot of housing there, right? Now that has been stopped because some private investors, right, decided to purchase that property themselves, right? But there are other areas where probably the land is zoned differently. So it couldn't have been that dense. And if we did nothing and let it get the two or four or 10 houses, would it really make that big a difference? And then we haven't spent the money at all. And it's still relatively open, even though it belongs to somebody privately and we don't have access to it. I don't know if we really care. I think that six million, compared to what some of these parcels are gonna sell for is not even gonna cover what some of these parcels are gonna sell for and that they're highly developable and highly attractive. So that's the kind of thing that I wanna see on the map. I can show it to you, sure. Okay. That's part of the discussion, right? Well, that's part of the discussion. And I think Chris Tromboli's comment about having a sense of what are all the funding needs out there is important as well. No matter how we generate that by the 17th, but there certainly are, we haven't gotten a proposal, but we certainly have in the past, at least I have asked the Affordable Housing Committee to come up with some plans about, so how do you incentivize affordable housing beyond just inclusionary zoning? I mean, we have that. And to me, that is such a small step that it's great, but that's never gonna address the issues that they're trying to address. So what are some other ways that we could incentivize affordable housing, whether it's helping with mortgages for smaller homes and less affluent people to, or I don't know. There's gotta be something out there that they can think about. Maybe it's reorganizing or redeveloping places in our community now that are not viable for business, but I haven't seen that. So until someone comes and says, well, here's another way we could raise a penny for whatever to address this issue, then it's hard for me to address Chris's concern that there's all these competing needs. Yeah, I know there's competing needs, but you need to tell us how are we gonna address those and what are the vehicles and what do we need to do in terms of policy to make that happen? And not just bring our hands and go around, around circles as if there's not enough housing. I get that, I agree. So not to drag this out, but to pick up on Councilor Barrett's point, I really think that we need to crystallize where the $6 million figure came from and looking at the 25 parcels and really sizing up the likelihood. I just think the $6 million to me, what I've seen so far is somewhat arbitrary and I don't mean that pejoratively at all. It just, I'd like to understand why we might need $6 million raised and where this four cents came from and that's where I usually look to my good friend Tom Hubbard, but we don't have Tom Hubbard anymore so I'm hoping Andrew Balduk and Bullduck is going to fill that in too. So I think that's future discussions to looking at those parcels and how much money we actually do wanna have on hand or need to be on hand based on our understanding of the marketplace. And I think if we hadn't just gone through the reappraisal, we might have gone for a better justification of that, but there was no way we were gonna do that now. Okay. Well, I appreciate your coming forward with this, the work you have, and we'll see you, I guess, on the 17th. Thank you. Thanks a lot. So there's nothing else. Okay. So we can move on to item seven, receive the warning of unlicensed dogs and cats. I know, I looked over the list. Phew. We know some of these people. I was on it once and I got off in time and now as soon as you put that first, and I called a few people as well, I said, did you know? You're on this list. Did you do that this time too? Yes, I did. Okay, yeah, cause I, yeah. Called a couple of people. Yeah. Hi. Donna Kinville City Clerk. And as part of my statutory requirements to do my job, I have to report to you on a yearly basis and give you the warning for the unlicensed dogs and cats since we do cats here in South Burlington. This year has been a little different and challenging, shall we just say, between 2020 and COVID, although we get, by the time everything shut down last year, we probably had about 70% of our cats and dogs registered before everything shut down. This was the last couple of weeks that we kind of missed out on. But still, so we were, it gets me because we worked so hard and getting our numbers up every year and they kept going up and up and up and up every year and then COVID hit and they dipped, but they didn't plummet. So that's good. So this list is a little bit longer than it normally would be. And that is because of the fact that some people didn't re-register their pets last year and for whatever reason have not done so again this year. So there's a little bit more than what we would normally have. And the reason I bring this to you is because I've kind of run out of my, it's kind of hit the edge of what I can do. I'm not enforcement, I'm just registration. And we can put out reminders to people who can do everything we can try to do. To get the word out, we use front porch form, we use emails, we collect emails whenever we register a dog or cat. We send them reminders, you know, those front porch form, Facebook postcards, we sent postcards to the people that are on this list. We called them, we sent, we tried everything. It's kind of got to the point where me pleading and going forward is just not going anywhere. So in the past, we've done a number of different things. I mean, you can take this report and you can file it. And that is the case, that is the end of it. I know one year we did have the police, they allowed me to use their litter head and their envelopes and then we sent out the notice, the police letter head and we did get responses back. You know, that is entirely your call. At this point in time, like I said, we've kind of reached the end of our enforcement that we can do. What would the notice say, Donna? I mean, not that we're going to come and see Spotter Fluffy, right? Well, no, I can force you. I mean, it did say that it is not the intent of the city council to take away your pet. However, it is state law that you shall register. Okay, yep. I think that that's worthwhile our consideration. I think that no consequence could lead to letting it go blow up next year. And as long as we're not saying we're going to come seize your pet, I'm comfortable with the police letter head. It will catch their attention. Yes, it should, yeah. And yeah, I only know six people on the list so I could never make it through all of them but I can certainly let people I know. It's fun reading just to read the names actually. Yes, and that's one of the reasons many years ago we increase the late fees and people come in when they pay those late fees. They're like, oh my God, I gotta make sure next year I get it in on time. Yeah, you're right. Before it used to be just $10 more, no matter. So they were playing the game of waiting to get caught. And now, okay, I'll pay $10 extra but I may get five or six years of not having to pay. So it was worth it. But now they get caught and it's substantial. Okay, I'm not opposed to the police letter head. Is that, Matt, how do you feel about that? Is your dog registered? I don't think I saw a code on him. Yeah, that's it. Juniper is registered. Juniper is registered and police letter head is fine. Fine with me. But maybe I missed it, Donna. If your dog or cat passes away, is there a box you checked that say the dog passed away or is there what's the protocol? There is a spot or a section on the letter that says if you've moved or if your pet is no longer with you we try and phrase it very nicely. But please contact the office. We can take you off our list. Thank you. As long as Chief Burke's comfortable with it, I'm fine with it too. Have you asked him yet? I have not asked him yet. Okay. Should we put a picture of the police canine on that letter head? That's good. Yeah, please join me. Don't let your friends register. Now make it a nice thing. Canine, so cute. Okay, so is that enough direction for you? Right in front of us. Okay, I appreciate the report. Yeah, thank you, Donna. Yeah, and I will make some phone calls too. Or just seeing them walking my dog. And fortunately, people don't understand why. Why is important? And it is all about the health and safety of your community. Yeah. Someone gets bit and we can't find that dog that bit somebody. That person goes through some very serious shots. And so it is truly, there's a reason for it. And I don't think the public really understands the reason. You might have to try and educate them. They don't know the reason. We're not going to vaccinate them. We're just kind of... Although they do have to be vaccinated. That's the law. That's the law, yeah, okay. And they can't protest that. That's right. It is important, because I thought I saw in Vermont Digger come through today, there's an area of Vermont right now with rabies, an outbreak, like 10 cases of rabies. So we need them to register because that ensures that they've all been vaccinated from rabies. So this is important to know. Rabies, wow. Don't want rabies. No, you don't want rabies. Alrighty. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, number eight. We're almost back on track. Yeah, these will be quick. So number eight, and I believe Dr. Childs is with us on the phone is bring back for your consideration, the grant agreement that you approved at the July 19th meeting. Following that approval, Dr. Childs did request two minor changes to this grant agreement. Both are on page two. One is in number six, that once funding is, once full funding is secured, then the organization will partner with us on promotion and cross training or cross programming. And that's fair considering she's still doing a lot of work to stand up her organization. And then the last change was eliminating number nine. Again, given life circumstances and the challenge of starting up a brand new organization felt like that clawback was unfair. So staff has reviewed this and we are comfortable with these changes pending approval of the council. Would Dr. Childs like to comment or do you want the council to comment first? I'll move to approve the changes. I'll second. Okay. So we have a motion to approve these changes. So Dr. Childs, if you'd like to make some comments, you may or you can just let us vote. Well, I just wanted to say thank you. Okay. Well, thank you for putting in this kind of time and energy to a really important activity, I think. So we appreciate that. So we have a motion that's been made and seconded. You ready for the vote? Okay, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. It was passed five zero. So thank you very much. Moving on to the library ARPA grant application. So I see, you can't see the public when you sit way back there. Lurking in the shadows is our wonderful librarian. Yay. Jennifer Murray library director and this grant is came to us from the department of libraries. It's almost $28,000 which goes through department of library. So we send them the application. They look it over, make sure it meets the criteria and they send it on to the federal government. We want to use it for technology for the public. And this is a rare grant because it also offers some technology for staff. We just found out that a plan we had to reuse some of our computers for staff isn't actually going to work. Those computers are not possible to change over. So the timing of this is great for us. Mike has been, has looked at the list. And so we want to put it forward to you guys to make the application. That sounds like a good, I'm like, great use in your time. I'll move that we approve the grant application. Second. Okay, is there any discussion or question? What are the odds you can get this grant? Pretty darn high. Over 50%. I believe so. Over 90%. I don't know for sure. Yes, I think it's very high. Very high, okay. Great. I do just want to clarify, really appreciate Jennifer going after this funding through the Vermont department of libraries. And while this is ARPA funding, it's not the municipal ARPA dollars. It's a different funding source. A different plan, great. Matt, you have your phone is green. Did you want to make a comment? No, I'm just happy to vote aye. Okay. Just getting ready to vote. All right. So if there's no further discussion, all in favor of approving the ARPA grant application for technology upgrades, say aye. Aye. Aye. Great. So it passes five, zero. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Jennifer. Are you still just so giddy about next door? I'm pretty giddy. Yeah, I know. So am I. It's a pretty, still very exciting and people are super happy they're coming in and just, just they're thrilled. Yes. I've had so much positive comments. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for asking. Yeah. You're always smiling every time I see you. Okay. Item 10, this is review and provide direction to the staff on the city council rules of procedure policy. And just the city manager will go through this with me. She did go through this with me earlier this week. And I think it reflects basically how we tend to do things. Nothing was new, except formalizes it. And that's probably a really positive thing for her as well as the council. And when we get new council members, it would be a good thing to read to understand probably all of us to read it once a year sort of like, oh yeah, that's how we do that. Tom? Are you ready for comments? Well, can I make a few? Yeah, I think Jeff would like to just, yeah. So thank you for considering this just by way of table setting. This is based on a model policy from the Vermont League of Cities and Towns that I have adapted to use in several communities. It's a, I have founded a very helpful tool for me to help support the council in doing your good governance work. So I thank you for considering it. So as Helen says, much of this is pulled straight from the city charter. There are a couple of things I do wanna draw attention to because I think they may be slightly different from how you have operated in the past. So I just wanna call those out since it is a bit of a lengthy document. Specifically on article six, it conceptualizes council meetings as meetings of the body in public, not necessarily public meetings. So what that means is that council meetings are for you all to do your work and hear from all residents as you make decisions, but it is not actually a time for public education, public feedback, public debate. I think there is an appropriate time and place for that for many of the things we talk about and do, but in terms of good governance and allowing you to move forward with difficult decisions, clarifying some of this I think will be useful as we go through the next months and years together. So what that means in practice is that as agenda items come up, the staff or the lead on an item speaks first, the council then has debate amongst themselves and then you hear from the public. You actually did that in a very prescriptive way this evening. It also calls for members of the public to be addressing the chair or the body as a whole and not getting into direct debate with one counselor. It also requests that public members identify themselves in public comment, indicate their connection to South Burlington and that comments are not made anonymously. I'm also recommending that we disable the chat feature because I think it is creating a false perception that feedback is being taken in that manner. Whereas I think, especially as we hopefully continued to meet in person, if people have comments they need you to hear, they should articulate those to you and then it also from an equity perspective does call for as you did tonight, go through everyone who would like to comment in public comment and then go back if people would like to make a second comment which really enables all of those voices to be heard in the conversation. So those are the specific changes I wanted to call out. I'm happy to answer. Oh, and one other Sandy Julie actually pointed this up to me, I think there is an error here. So if you are open to approving this I will bring it back to you with this correction. If there is only a quorum of the council i.e. three members here, an affirmative vote still needs to be three members. So I think that is misworded on this document. So I will update that if you would like me to bring this back to you. Yes, Tom. So first of all, this is great. I love this. So excellent. That was my first of four comments I wanted to make. If you mind if I do them real quick, just they're pretty quick. Not at all, go ahead. So an article for agenda item A, first item I. I like this, I would want some clarity is I feel that we only need to vote on adding something to the agenda if we want to take action that night. I feel like we at function where we add things to other business for discussion at the beginning of the meeting, but we don't need to take a formal vote as to whether or not we're going to discuss it. I love the formality if we're going to add something that we will act upon that was not otherwise warned. But that's just my impression of how we function and I think it works well and I don't think the language reflects that perfectly. Well, I guess I would just wonder my understanding is that we really can't take action, vote on something unless it's been duly warned, but we certainly can add an item for discussion purposes, but I don't believe even with a vote by the council that it's the best plan to then be able to act on it. Because we haven't let the public know that we're going to take action on a particular item. I think it's perfectly okay to have a discussion. We need to talk about, I don't know, wearing masks or something. Let's get the information on that because we want an update. And then if we were to take a formal action that they're required in this building, I think you would need to wait to the next meeting. I would prefer it to be that way unless it's some emergency issue and then you can always have an emergency meeting the next day to have it duly warned. So that's, Tom, I just said, but I just, I didn't see that in this language. And I've also seen some issues with other neighboring municipalities where they have added things on to the agenda that night and then there's been controversy over them doing so. So I agree with what you said and that's how we operate. I just didn't think the language was as tight as it could be. And I think that if, I think it's happened to me where I brought up something for other business and maybe it was Helen or somebody said, maybe that could be held off for another time. Just that descent was enough for me to say, oh, then that's enough, right? So I think that although we haven't had a formal, we all agree there's always been the opportunity for someone to say, could that, you know, maybe be held off for another time. I'll raise this as an example, not because I had a concern with it. I think it was completely fine, but I think there was one time where we appointed, it was either Councilor Emory or Councilor Barrett to one of those ad hoc planning commission meetings committees, it wasn't warned. I was completely fine with it, but that was an action that we took on something that wasn't there. I just think if we want to add something de minimis, something, I would argue small, to that that wasn't otherwise we could then vote, we'd have to vote if we're going to take a small scale action that we're all comfortable with that wasn't warned, but just adding something to other business for discussion like you described, I don't think we need a formal. I guess I'm thinking more of policy to add someone because we need a counselor to attend a meeting is not a policy statement. To require mass and city hall is a policy. So there's the difference. The other ones are smaller, shorter. I would say article four, item five, it doesn't say pledge of allegiance. I don't know if we want to harden that. If you want that there, we do usually have that. Which one? Vs, five, A5, A5, yeah. It says each agenda will contain the following and does not say the pledge of allegiance. Oh, okay. Another new thing that's new to me, but maybe this is a rookie mistake after seven years, in article five, item F, I fully support it. It's great, but this states that we will default to Robert's rules of orders. I remember getting on council originally, we never actually embraced Roberts. I am fine with it. I think I don't think it's gonna get messy if we pull out our Roberts rules manual, but I love the addition. I wanted to highlight that. Yeah, you may need another chair if you really want Roberts rules followed specifically. I've got other marks where I just say great. And then the last one is on the page four, or maybe it's page five, page five, article nine. So this is quasi important. Article nine, it's a second sentence. It currently says counselors must speak on the counselor's behalf only if authorized to do so by the council. As I read and understand the intent, I really think that must should be a may. May, yeah. But those are my comments. Great work, love this. Good, those are good catches. Any other comments or thoughts? Matt? This is fantastic, Jesse. I agree with all of Thomas's comments and wish I had caught them, just to see that. Well, you're on vacation. Okay, you're excused from homework. I'll bring this back to you. You'll bring back a clean copy for us to approve. Yes. Okay. Thank you very much for your consideration. Now we have reports from counselors on committee assignments. So Matt, I think you want to tell us about the Vermont transit. Yeah, so meeting the Green Mount Transit want to bring up a couple of things that you may have heard or may not have heard. One is that there's a couple of small things. One is there is a new GMT maintenance manager who's doing great things. And we get to meet her and talk about what's happening next. The other thing was we, there's issues with the two electric pro-terra electric buses. There's a low voltage battery drop issue, but we're working on those issues and hopefully they'll be back working as they should be after our consultant has brought in. But the big thing that you may have seen in the press, which is the union vote on an authorization of a strike. And while I can't talk about these things, I can say that GMT general manager, John Moore, said that GMT is actively negotiating and mediating for a new labor contract with Teamsters 597. We look forward to continuing to work with Teamsters 597 in a collaborative process towards an agreement as we had done since March. So that's what's happening at GMT. Okay, great. Thank you. There was a strike last time, right? There was a strike. Six years ago. Yeah. It was in March. It was just before I joined the board and yeah. Right. There were split chefs and pay. Okay. I did go to an airport meeting and my understanding is that there will be a final decision regarding Jean Richard's leave of absence. Probably by this week, they went through a process and they're close to the end of that. I have no idea what the process is. It's a personnel issue. So I'm sure we could... Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Sure we could find that out, but it's just a typical process when there's a grievance or whatever. Unmuted. And that should be completed by the end of this week. I, that's all I know. And that only involves Burlington's lawyers, right? Correct. Okay, and Eileen Blackwood retired, right? Yes, she did. Is my understanding. And then just other news at the airport, people are really flying. So they're back to 2019 numbers of flights going out. They're packed to the guild, I guess, because they still have smaller planes and there's some, you know, my understanding is most of the airlines are having a challenge getting enough personnel to work both behind the counter. So you get your bags through or just enough staff to fly the planes. But it's looking good in terms of people wanting to fly out of Burlington and to fly into Burlington. So financially, that's looking a little bit better for the airport. And they've added those two nonstop flights this winter, which is good, because that's, I mean, kind of surprising in a way. So that just bodes well, I think, for the airline. And if you wanna go to Dallas or Miami, is it Miami or Orlando? I can't remember. Some place in Florida, nonstop, you can. So. Is the parking garage full? Have you heard anything about that? Well, someone told me it was full the other day. I had to go in for some, I had to pick up my granddaughter's iPad that she left in a car rental. So there were plenty of spaces. So the income from the parking garage is very much down. Okay, you all saw the email from the resident on Peterson. Yes, with all the people. Still parking, not in the garage, but on the streets. Yeah, I will follow up with Nick Longo on that. Cause my understanding is that it's not full. I mean, the revenue from it is way down. So if it was full, the revenue would be looking better. And it's not. So once we know, and if he confirms that, we might consider a no parking sign going further into the neighborhood. Okay. Yeah, no, I think that even if it's full, I don't think you should be parking your car in front of somebody's home and going on a, getting on a plane and going away for a week or even if it's just overnight, personally, I mean. Could we put that then on an agenda for the future consideration? Can we do that? That would be great. I will follow up with Nick and find out. I know they had some issues with Ubers and lifts, parking on side streets, waiting for a call customer. Yeah. Tom. So related to the airport commission to which you're talking, maybe it can be a future agenda item, but I want this body to know that I am working and drafting an amendment to the charter chain from Burlington in order to advocate for the voters voted on adding a Burlington seat and a Winooski seat. I think that is one step forward, and I also think it's two steps back. And so I am advocating for that, that fifth, that new seat that right now is being proposed for Burlington with the voters voted on actually be given to Williston who is directly affected by the operations of the airport and the use of our airspace. So I'm hoping to have some hearings on that this coming January. I think it does affect South Burlington's voice on the council. So I just thought it'd be useful to raise here. I am also... Where do you want the hearings to take place, Tom? In my other role in the Senate Transportation Committee and possibly Governor Ops. I also am trying to find a way and I might need to talk to former Senator really about this to bring in additional legislation related to this to have the state organize and conduct and assessment of governance options. This is something that Mata Townsend has been putting forward over the last four years but also importantly was one of the conclusions of the 2012 Blue Ribbon Panel studying the airport. They concluded that Winooski should have a seat and that governance options should be evaluated by the state and that has yet to happen. And that's what Representative Townsend has been advocating for. So I don't know if that needs to be a future item. I didn't mean to bring it up out of the context but when you raise Airport Commission I just wanted you all to know that these are topics on my mind of late. Okay. I can share that with the commission as well with that's pending. Yeah, what would this, what would this council do though in our discussion? We are one of the current five seats and so this is the proposing a change to the composition of that to go to seven seats. So how do we present it to your committee? If you'd want to speak. I need to, I don't speak for the committees I serve on. I'm just a lowly member. I'm the clerk of one, that's something but I would be happy to if as January approaches if you have an interest to speak on the matter. I work to. That would be worthy of our discussion. Right, yeah. Oh, so I have another item actually worthy of our discussion I think. But before you leave the airport. Oh yeah, sorry. The pilot of the beta technologies helicopter walked away from the crash on the causeway. That's all I know, which is good. Yeah. It's always good when you walk away from the helicopter. And it also it wasn't one of their electric. No, it was a convention. It was just a conventional. Yeah. Yeah. So that was kind of a relief. I got an email asking for making, what's the word? You identify a small town America's civic volunteer award and they're they're looking for nominations. Barb service. She's right there. Well, actually, that couldn't be her though. I don't know if you can do it posthumously, but I was thinking of Jennifer Kogman. But but what you can win is so I'd like to discuss this and sort of open it up to maybe some ideas about other. And I think we have a lot of individuals and it's for towns, 25,000 people or less. The grand prize is I think $10,000. And then you get some training and support for whatever you're volunteering. But we have so many wonderful volunteers. And I read this stuff. I'll forward this to you. But I just think it would be worthy of a little thought and maybe the council giving me some ideas and we can write something up and submit it. Because I think, you know, we might win. And it just is a nice way to recognize we have so many people that have given so much. Is this an annual thing? You know, I don't know that. I don't know. Actually, the highest award is $20,000. You know, so you can really do something for a small organization that you work on. You sure could. Painting boxes, you know? It's national since we're competing with all of us. Yeah, yeah. Interstate abundance underpasses. Yes, exactly. Okay. So are we ready to adjourn? Is there any other business? All right. I have a note. I have a note in the chat. I'm sorry. Michael Mitag? I have a note in the chat. He says Jennifer. Oh, he has a note in the chat. Which actually, if I may, on the other business, I'd love to see this chat. I know we don't want to part of the public record, but if we're going to allow people to type, I'd love that we could just turn the chatting off so that they can't even leave the messages, but is there... Oh, sorry. I'm reading it over here on this screen. I didn't realize it. Sorry. No worries. You want to see this for tonight? I don't want to create chores for our staff, but this would be very valuable to me, to Peru's. That was that. If we're going to allow it. If we're going to allow it to the end. Let me see if I can copy it. I'll put it into an email to you. You can. I also support turning this off. Burlington turns it off. Other communities turn it off. They just don't allow open chat. But if it's going to be enabled, I don't know if it's possible, but if we're going to do it, I'd love to see this. I don't see Michael's comment. Came through my mind. He said Jennifer Cokman is a great idea. Oh, okay. We got off internet again here. Okay. All right. Great. Good enough. So, all in favor of adjournment? Aye. Thank you, Matt. Enjoy the Cape. I hope you have good weather. Thank you. See you soon. Bye-bye. Well, I think we went okay. Yeah.