 get us started, should we wait a minute? Do you think there's maybe participants who are struggling to join? Like did the actual link itself change? You just had to update the page. All right. It is 6.04 PM on Monday, January 4th. I will call to order the Winooski City Council. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance led by Deputy Mayor Hal Colston. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. You're welcome. Next is Agenda Review. Any questions, concerns about the order of the agenda? It's a relatively short one, unlike last time. Moving on to public comment. Paul, did anyone sign up in advance for public comment? We have no sign-ups for public comment as of this evening. Okay, for those who are with us live, if you wish to make a comment about anything that is not included in the agenda, you could do so now. If you are here for an item that's on the agenda, please wait for that time. So if anyone does have a public comment, you can use the chat or raise hand in Zoom to indicate that. All right. We'll move to our consent agenda then. We have our council minutes from December 14th and the accounts payable warrant for December 30, the reward December 12 to 26 and subsequent payout for January 4. Are there any questions or concerns about the consent agenda? Any questions from members of the public? All right, I would entertain a motion to approve both items in the consent agenda. So I'll move. Second. Motion by Mike, second by Hal. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. I forgot to mention this at the beginning of the meeting. For anyone who is in attendance, it didn't realize Councillor Amy Lafayette is unable to join us tonight, which is why we have started without her. Council reports then, I will start with Jim, your first in my screen. All right. So I, a long time has passed, but not a whole lot of official work has been done. So we did have a housing commission meeting in between Christmas and New Year's. The commission was first, or one of the things that they spent some time with was looking at targets for the potential and whether there's a need for targets around the size of units being developed in the city and not just the number of affordable units. So the issue around how many 01-bedroom rentals are being provided versus two and three-bedroom rentals may be better suited for families. Based on what the data that Heather, our Community Economic Development Officer, pulled together, there's definitely differences between Wadiski and the surrounding communities, for instance, being the most similar, but pretty wide disparities in how much of those different size units are being provided in Wadiski versus other parts of the county. So clearly some differences that might merit some intervention, especially if one of the goals is designing affordable family housing in the city and making sure that that's incentivized properly. So with this initial data discovery, the next step is to look at how targets could or goals could be set. So the housing commission would kind of examine that over the coming months to potentially make a recommendation back. So that was a major, the main point of work, but the group also spent some time talking about some of the concerns. So they were asked to do some homework, some homework about what concerns they have for housing issues in the city, things such as housing quality, barriers to accessing certain types and sizes of rental housing and barriers to home ownership or kind of persistent issues in the housing sector and still a concern to the commission. And so they'll be looking to play in a more short-term play of educational role to make sure that Wadiski landlords and tenants are accessing all the programs that come out of any next round of care or coronavirus relief funding that comes down. So that's maybe one area that the commission will be looking at more is how to make sure that our community of renters and landlords and homeowners can access all the funds that they're eligible for because in some of these programs weren't actually fully spent out. So that's also the issue that the commission's looking at. And, Hal? I have an announcement. We're heading back to the legislature on Wednesday. And for any Wadiski residents, we have any ideas for bills now's the time. So please contact me with your idea and think about, you know, what's the purpose of the bill and what are the desired outcomes? And it's in all likelihood, it will be a short form bill which will allow it to get into the process. So that's what I have to share. Thank you, Hal. Mike? First of all, happy new year to everybody. So hopefully 2021 will be a better year for all of us. And just now that the cold weather's here, some positive news were five months away from the Wadiski pool opening. That's all I have. Thank you, Mike. I have a couple of things, you know, what I wanna mention, I think Jesse, our city manager mentioned a few meetings back that staff had reconvened daily meetings with the Vermont Department of Health. So that's been going on for several weeks. We know that cases are rising statewide and also here in Wadiski and just want to let folks know that, you know, the parties, you know, city staff, the Department of Health, our partner organizations like AALV, Wadiski Housing Authority, U.S. Committee on Refugees and Immigrants. We are back in direct contact and have been for some weeks monitoring the situation and getting supports out there and doing what we can to keep things, you know, as best they can be, but reminder to residents that we all have to keep following public guidance, avoiding gatherings, you know, I think the latest state, the like two house trusted household for holidays, that's expired, right? So we are back to spending as much social time in our single households as we can. So I just wanna reiterate that for residents that that stuff is still very important and maybe now more than ever as, you know, we've seen escalation. So those meetings did continue over the course of the holidays and will continue on as long as needed. Couple other things that happened, the school district hosted two safety and security presentation forums that Jesse and our police chief and school resource officer joined as part of the community engagement process on the school resource officer position. I also attended those. It was sort of a, here's where we're at right now for folks who are interested, like the current position. And then in the coming weeks, there will be follow-up meetings for more of a discussion forum for members of the public to share their thoughts and concerns. They have been sharing that out via the school newsletter from porch forum, their social media, and so staff has been participating in that. It was, I think they had been recorded and for anyone who was interested, it was informative to hear more details about the work of that staff member of ours with our youth community. And then lastly, you'll see tonight some follow-up from our master plan progress check-in. In addition to that worked on some next steps coming out of our impact fee discussion, which we will see at a coming meeting. So with that, I will move it to Jesse for city updates. Thanks. Just a couple of more things to share with the mayor's updates. We will be issuing a statement later in the week about our COVID outbreak. So more details for the public then. And I also wanna thank Chief Audie on the call for his work with our lady of providence. That's where we've seen a number of our cases, not the majority, but a number of our cases in the recent three weeks. And Chief Audie has done a lot of work working with them, between them and the state emergency operation center to secure staffing PPE and other support for that facility. And then on the public safety forum front, that the mayor referred to the recording of those two sessions, the chief and the school resource officer and I attended. Those are available at the school website. So if you go to the school website's main page, it's one of the revolving links there. Folks wanna go back and watch that update. Wanna give you two other quick updates this morning. We had a fire and police response to 25 Winooski Falls Way, which is the Spinner Building. There was a sprinkler headbreak on the seventh floor, which impacted a number of units, 12 of the 80 units in that building. It was dealt with relatively quickly and Winooski Falls Way was reopened quickly. We have about six to eight displaced residents, but luckily they will be able to be accommodated in building and other units that were not occupied. Asian Beastrow is also currently closed, but we hope to have it reopened in a couple of days and the chief will continue to work with Redstone, the property manager and residents to secure that building and reopen it as quickly as possible. Chief, do you wanna add anything to that? No, I would just say this is not the same type of sprinkler issue that we've seen in the other two recent incidents on Winooski Falls Way. They're not connected, which is good news. Yeah, thank you. And then I wanna give you a quick update on our progress on the Working Communities Challenge Grant. So as you likely know, the equity director posting is up. We will be start reviewing resumes in the next couple of weeks and engage in the community in that vetting process, hiring process. We will, we're meeting with the funders next week to review our year one work plan. We did not receive the Vermont Community Foundation grant for this work, which over several years was $108,000 in that revenue budget we had previously presented to you. So, Heather and myself and the school team met last week to kind of brainstorm some options for filling that revenue hole in that budget and we will continue to work towards that in the coming weeks. Additionally, the school trustees are now currently considering for their FY22 budget building in funding to make the four of the community liaisons full-time year round within the operating budget. So that there may be a partial solution there as well. So I just wanted to let you know that we are working on it and likely will need to come back to you with some adjustments or requests in the next couple of weeks. And that is what I wanted to share. Thank you. Thank you, Jesse. Moving into our regular items. First up, we have a introduction of our new youth interventionist, Yule Herjok. Ray, will you be introducing us? I will, yeah. And Paul, you're quick. I was gonna say as Paul brings him over, I'll say a few words. But yeah, Yule has been on board here for a couple of weeks. I think it's fair to say given the pandemic and the holiday, it's been a strange start for him but we are super excited to have him on board, had a chance to meet with Yule right before Christmas, had a really good first meeting. And I think anyone who was on that hiring committee just felt really overwhelmingly positive about everything Yule has to bring to the table in terms of his experience. So we are really just super excited to get him here and on board and working with our youth and families as a support. I think it's gonna be a huge boost for the work we're doing. So very, very excited to introduce him to you all tonight. Thank you and welcome, Yule. We are excited to officially meet you and would love to just hear a little bit about you and what brings you to this position. Sure. Thank you for that, Ray. Looking forward to working with City of Boonesky. I've been working with the City of Brownington for a while now. And in the population I've been working for for a while now with the New American community. And when the chance came up to work in Boonesky, I jumped on it right away because I do see in a lot of New American within the community of Boonesky. And I wanna offer my service that I do here in Brownington and to Boonesky's. So I'm definitely looking forward to working with the City and everyone around and the team. Thank you. Do you members, other counselors have any questions for Yule? I'll just say welcome to Boonesky. Thank you. Yeah, we are happy to have you joining the team and look forward to working together. And thank you for coming tonight to virtually meet. Yes, it's nice to meet everyone. Yeah, virtually meet, yeah. All right, thank you for that. We will move to next item B. This is the update on our commission review of our master plan goals, which I am introducing. So I forget if it was our last meeting or the one before, anyhow, we looked at a summary of what our different commission said about our progress on our master plan recently and talked about next steps for our commissions and for ourselves. And so the memo that I've drafted here includes that summary that we already saw with the addition of some next steps that I pulled out of our discussion. So I wanted to bring this forward to the council to make sure this aligns with how you left that conversation and agree on how we'll bring this back to our commissions. So there's sort of three main takeaways for next steps here. And I didn't put them in a very chronological order as I should have. So in the memo, the second item for council is to start sharing updates with our commissions. We talked about bringing, so the council updates we share tonight, bringing those back to our commission meetings so that our commissioners have a better sense of what's happening across the board and don't feel so siloed. That is something I think that we can put into practice immediately and then going forward any commission meetings take the time to do a brief council update for our commissioners. Also make that commitment that if commission feedback comes up in these meetings that we take note of that discussion and make sure that we circle back to them and say, hey, here's what happened with your input so that they know what comes of the work that they're doing. I think the next sort of chronological issue is we had this discussion about our focus on equity, building more equity and supporting our commissions to bring that to the work that they're doing. So I set sort of a timeline in here that we will have a discussion about what that means, like what specifically do we want to do is there a specific approach to training we wanna take that we'll start that discussion after we wrap up our budgeting. So in March, probably. And then third is this idea of council and staff liaisons clarifying for commissions where they have kind of primary ownership versus playing a more supportive role where they might collaborate with other commissions. And the more I thought about that, I think that's something that we should visit this summer when we do that policies, priorities, and strategy discussion. And then we work with staff and chairs to do the work planning. That would be a good time to also reiterate for commissioners like the work plan is focused on this for these reasons. This is your primary role. Here are other ways that you can be supportive. So those are sort of the three I think things that we have committed to do coming out of our last discussion, just wanted to bring that forward here, see if that sounds right, if I've missed anything or misrepresented anything and then talk about bringing this to our commissions. Jim. I can't find the raise hand function. I apologize. Those is my real hand. I just wanted to say, do you think that this is, I think these are good steps. I think it is a bit of work on our part, but I think it's good work to do. And having the privilege of sharing a house with one of the commission chairs and being on a really, you know, focused and effective commission in the housing commission, I think that the things that we're outlining here would be helpful. And I think that they'll make it easier to see impact across these commissions. I think I said at our last meeting, I feel like we can see it here as we hear the input coming in from multiple directions. But I think let's lay out these kind of order steps will help improve that pretty quickly. And I think it's worth, it's work worth doing. So I'm supportive of this. Thanks, Jim. Haller, Mike, any other thoughts or questions or? The only other thought I had was the meetings I have attended for the MIC, we barely have enough time. They're usually go over our agenda. So I'd be, well, I'd be worried about us counselors taking time, you know, like a city update type of thing. I think if the update protocol should be, if it has anything to do with the commission that we're on, I don't think we need to have an update of what we just went through on our meeting. I just, I'd be afraid that if you're getting the weeds a little bit, you're taking time from a subject that we should be spending more time on talking about in the commission. So I don't know how that would work if we'd have to try to limit the time or, you know what I mean? Because usually the meetings that I have attended have been an hour and a half and they're pretty strict on that. Not strict, but that's the layout that the commission wants to follow. It's either an hour and a half or two hours, I can't remember. I do attend some commission meetings that have trouble ending on time. Yeah. So. I think that's a fair concern and maybe it is sharing something written. So, you know, work with staff liaison, like put in the commissioner's packet, something for them to read. I mean, it's a bit of free time to read maybe. That's a good idea. Yeah. As they could ask them. I think I like the layout. I think it's gonna be kind of a work in progress as well. It's certainly somewhere to start with and then see if it can mutate or adapt. I have three commission meetings this month. I would be happy to, the first one is next week. I would be happy to just share with you all, you know, whatever the format, like just how that goes and maybe some tips on how to make it, whatever. We're trying to give them information but not overload the meeting content, right? So I would be happy to share some feedback on how that goes. You know, and I think we can get some feedback from the commission too, again, on how this process can work too and see if they're interested, like the commission chairs maybe gather them together and see how, what their feeling is on it. Well, that's a fair point. Actually, so the, as part of this discussion, wanted to talk about bringing, sharing this memo out with our commissioners and that these are the next steps we came up with. Does it sound right to them and give feedback there? And to take that a step further, I wonder how the new equity director, excuse me, may have influence over what we're thinking right now in paper, have some input about what would be some other ways to, you know, accomplish what we're trying to accomplish. So just wonder. I think, so I will make a note of that when that person is hired that this is something that we might bring their input into. As far as sharing this out with commissions, there's, you know, two ways we could go about this. I think staff liaisons could add it to agenda, like the next agenda for each commission to say, and then council liaisons could leave the item as in, we had this discussion, this progress check, here is the outcome of that work and what the findings were across all commissions. So we would share this full memo with them and the next steps that we discuss based on what, what we heard from you all would be useful. And then we can collect the information, like whatever feedback they have, if you as council liaisons want to share that with me, I can aggregate it and see if there's any takeaways there. Alternatively, I could just email this out to all commissioners that also works and see if there's any feedback. I sort of like the approach of it happening in a meeting with the council liaison as you know, closing the loop on the previous discussion, but I'm open to either or other ideas. Any preferences? I think as a first, so I kind of prefaced this thing coming to the housing commission, I did it fairly quickly. So I think having a revisit to say, like this is what I mentioned last time. And so this is what it actually looks like now that it's approved and how it will work going forward. And that could be part of our first update. Like I see that kind of linking in well. And along that line of thinking about what an update looks like, I think what I'll be trying to do over the next month is be tracking any items that specifically connect to the housing concerns and be like maybe highlighting those more than like every single approval or discussion item that we have. Like those are important to note as well, but like what I would flag is like, this came out of the planning commission recently and it's going to this step next. You might want to know about that. So I think our first, this is a good topic for discussion in our first, in our next meeting when we're starting to debut this process. And I think that could be helpful to have a brief, like this is what these words mean and what I think this means is to constantly is on, is to staff the is on. Mike. Yeah, that's a good point, Jim. Maybe with the staff, the is ons, we have, you know, perhaps the commission's next meeting spends a little time on this process. And then if we have to have another meeting, you know, two meetings this month or next month, whatever the schedule falls, because maybe we should get some input from the commissions and commissioners on this process. They might have some, you know, some ideas that they want to implement into this or add. So I think that's a good idea. Maybe that that should be something we should do. All right. So we'll have our staff liaisons ensure that this memo is added to a commission meeting this month and council liaisons should take the lead in talking through here's what came out of our progress check. These are the next steps we want to implement. Do they sound good to you? What is your feedback? Christine, can I jump in for a sec? Of course, yeah. So I think I speak on behalf of the staff when we say thank you very much for doing this work and for taking a really active role in kind of framing the policy questions and the policy connections for the commissions. It's sometimes hard for staff to do that, feeling like we're doing that kind of outside of the council's policy process. So we really appreciate you guys all doing the work because as councilor Duncan said, it is additional work but doing the work to make those policy connections between the council's work and the commission. So thank you very much for that effort. Any other thoughts on next steps? All right. I will also take ownership of, I will make sure that we have this future discussion on equity training and supports. And when we get further out this year into like policy priorities and work plans for commissions making sure that we resurface this issue of where they had questions about their primary role versus supportive. So I will own those items. Any questions from members of the public on this topic? All right, so this is on for discussion. I think we have our next steps settled. We can move on to item C, which is our FY22 budget presentation for community services with Ray Coffey. All right, I'm gonna try to share my screen here and bear with me for a moment. All right, can you see that? All right. Yes, we can, yes. Now it's, yes. Okay, good. I was able to successfully hide the copious number of icons on my desktop unlike last year when I outed myself as a desktop hoarder. So this is good. All right. So really happy to be here as always. You know, I think this process for all of us as department leaders is really, it's a really positive reflective process as much as it is a looking forward process. I think it's always nice to have a chance to sit and really focus on what's been accomplished and then look to build on that looking forward. So really very proud and excited to present the budget here tonight. Also wanna give just a quick kudos and shout out to the staff from my team that are on this meeting, many of them over in the attendee list, really appreciate them being here. And I've got them here in case there are questions that I don't answer well, they can raise their hand and steer me right as they often do. So wanna jump in just quickly speaking of my team. These are the folks that make the work happen that we do day in and day out. This looks pretty similar to years past. We've got a couple additions and shifts from last year, our youth interventionist Yule who you just met. As folks know, we did do a slight shift in our parks and garden manager and rec director positions and sort of bifurcated those two efforts, but by large pretty similar looking staff team from last year. And again, can't say enough about the work that they do every day. It's a pleasure to lead them and frankly be led by them most days. So I think it's fair to say for everybody, it's been a weird year. We certainly have struggled through a lot in our department, not unlike everyone else in the world. And I think it's just worth note some of those kind of big hurdles that we were all kind of climbing over throughout the year. Certainly lots of furloughs back early in the pandemic that had our department pretty hard. As many of us in the state are really working hard to stay in lockstep with the governor's orders, which obviously in the business of recreation and human services was a huge impact. Our whole shtick is getting people together. And we were pretty explicitly told and continue to be told maybe not so much with getting people together. So we've really had to shift the way that we do business and that has been challenging some days for sure. And then also just wanna highlight too a lot of staff turnover for us in the last year. Some pretty significant departures for us. Amanda Perry, our library director, Margaret Bass, our youth interventionists and certainly Olivia Miller, who was only here for two years was a really big part of our team as the VISTA. So lots of staff expertise and talent that sort of headed out the door over the last year. So lots of things to work through and around. With that said, I think our team has done a pretty fantastic job of managing and sort of delivering through that. I'll start with Barb in the senior center. She really very quickly shifted along with Olivia and now Molly into a real focus on meals distribution. So we have more than doubled our pre-COVID volumes for meals on wheels on a weekly basis. And then the addition of the more than a meal program has another 100 meals a week going out the door to seniors. Say nothing of the weekly phone calls that she and her crew are making to local seniors to kind of help check in and make sure folks are doing all right. So lots of good work happening through the senior center still. Thrive, Kate and I was on here as well. They were really in my mind in a lot of ways the canary in the coal mine as it relates to getting youth programs started again. They were the first youth program in Winooski to get stood up. And I think both the city and the school learned a lot from their first couple of weeks. The team has just continued to adapt and adjust and be fantastic and provide really critical service to residents throughout the pandemic. So really proud of that effort. The library certainly, as I mentioned, Amanda's departure was a big deal for us. We are super excited to have Nate filling those big shoes. He's done a fantastic job so far and Donna and Josh also just kind of holding things down throughout that big transition. Really excited to be where we are right now. I was happy to see on front porch forum this morning and nice kudos from one of our residents about the in-person services that just started back up. Obviously your parks plan, which you guys know well about. And then Halloween in Winooski, really proud that we were able to pull that off in spite of everything and run a large and safe event for the city. Trails and outsourced spaces remained open, I think like many places throughout Vermont, that was a really critical resource for folks' mental health and wellness. So really happy that we were able to do that. Tennyson soccer ran safely. As Mike kind of stole my thunder earlier, we finished building the pool, which is really exciting. Looking very forward to getting that open this coming summer. And then, as Christine mentioned earlier, these kind of ongoing calls around department of health, UVM medical, USCRI, AALV, just continued efforts to sort of be a part of that team that's working to serve our community and keep folks safe throughout the coronavirus issue. And then, oh yeah, we finished the census too. That was the thing that happened. And Winooski really did a great job there overall. Our numbers were pretty strong and we closed out as one of the first communities. So very exciting. So all things considered, I think a pretty good year. As always, I think we like to look ahead and start to think about how we build on that. And I think this budget sets us up well to do so. So a few things that I wanna highlight that are included in this coming year's budget. We'll talk a little bit more in depth about this, a lot more in depth about this, but looking to fully integrate thrive into the general funds. As folks know, that's been operating for many years as a program budget or a separate budget from the general funds. And we are looking to bring that into the general fund for fiscal year 22, along with recreation and our meals program. And then the addition of the $8,600 share retain in AmeriCorps Vista, Councilor Lafayette had asked this question. So I wanna sort of flag it here and respond to it because others may have it. The program that we get our Vistas through Vermont Youth Tomorrow, which is based down in Montpelier, had a lot of savings this year in their program budget because they did not host their monthly in-person trainings. And so they were able to offer scholarships to host sites like the City of Winooski for AmeriCorps Vista members for the current year, for fiscal year 21. So even though we were only budgeted to have one Vista this year, we ended up getting two Vistas for less than the price of one for the current year because they had those extra dollars and were able to scholarship that resource. So this ad basically is a retention of Kate Nicoletti's position, which is a recreation-based youth programs position into fiscal year 22. We're not sure if that scholarship will continue to be available, but we wanted to budget conservatively and be safe and kind of put that out as a consideration for council in the event that those scholarship dollars don't carry into fiscal year 22. My guess is that if things turn around here with pandemic, we will not, those scholarship dollars will not be available after 22. So I think it's us trying to plan ahead and retain a pretty high value position. And Ray, if I can just jump in, our interpretation from the council's goal-setting session was to continue providing the level of service we had previously been providing, since we had previously filled those two positions but had done so with less money, we were trying to maintain those very, very valuable humans on our team to continue to do the, provide this same level of service. Yep, thank you. Again, this is not a new thing, but just wanted to highlight that the youth interventionist position is now encapsulated in our budget, which when budgets were presented last year was not the case. And then just on the program fund side with the senior center, we did take a pretty conservative approach when building that budget, just not knowing at the time that we put it together, kind of what the future would look like for our senior population, given their vulnerability to COVID. So we tried to really be thoughtful about not over-inflating projections there in terms of large group gatherings and getting folks back together in big groups. So you'll see that that budget is scaled down quite a bit. So any high level questions before we kind of dive into some more of the details? Great, I have a question about the recreation program budget debt. Yes. Yeah, can you just elaborate more on that item, please? Yeah, sure. So the rec program for many years was running at a deficit. Some of that was contributable, I think to the fact that we were, the rec program was essentially paying rent to the O'Brien Center when the O'Brien Center was operating as an enterprise fund. And so we were not ever able to get that rec budget to perform in such a way that it could offset the cost of that rent. So an Angela I know is on here and can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we did the math on it and the impact of that rent over the years that it was being charged ended up being about, I think about 30,000 of that $34,000 deficit. And then last year obviously with everything kind of going sideways with COVID, we ended 19 in a pretty bad way in the rec budget. A lot of our fee-based programming just didn't happen, which was challenging for us. So that's I'd say the two primary issues that we've run up against there. And certainly getting fee-based programming to perform well in the past has been a challenge for us. I feel much more confident moving forward that we're gonna be in a good position to do that. I think Jenny already has implemented some great changes for us. And we've got some pretty exciting things coming up here soon in 21. So that's, I don't know if that is a helpful answer there. Yeah, that answers. Thank you, Ray. Yeah, and then- If I can foreshadow one other thing there. So the bullet there, maybe this is stealing later thunder Ray, sorry. One of the reasons you heard me talk about in the overall budget presentation about the move of Thrive into the general fund is to try and preserve the reserves in the community services fund that were specifically raised for the library and the senior center. So with that existing deficit in recreation and the projected deficit in Thrive, we will quickly use those other dollars that were meant for the library and senior center to cover these deficits. So if the, so a recommendation to the councils, the council's prerogative, what you do with reserves ultimately, would be to use existing general fund, fund balance to repay that deficit in order to keep those dollars whole in the senior center and the Thrive and the library reserves. That will be a future action for you to consider. We're not asking you to do that tonight. Thank you, Jesse. Any other questions before moving on? So these are the numbers here and sorry, I'm gonna have to move my zoom so I can see the whole spreadsheet. But, you know, certainly the lion's share of this large growth between 21 and 22 is attributable to the Thrive budget coming in. REC as it turns out did not, all the REC staff were already nested in the general fund so that didn't represent a significant add to our general fund ask for the department. Those staff increases were sort of the natural growth of increases for staff and costs of benefits and then the addition of those Thrive staff members which had previously been in a program budget. So I don't know if there are specific questions people have or numbers here that jumped off the page that needs sort of an explanation, but again, I think most of that growth can be attributed to the incorporation of those two program budgets, REC and Thrive. Does that also apply to the professional services and contracts or is that for the pool? Nope, no, so the professional, well, the professional services and contracts does include the pool. The growth there is, there's about 11,000 that came in from REC, which has offsetting revenue. There was the 8,600 for the Vista which I believe is captured in a contract line and then within Thrive, there were various sort of contractual and professional service elements, training Thrive's contribution to the website. So sort of a few other like one, two, $3,000 items that all sort of added up to that net growth of about, I think it's about 30,000 or 23,000. Okay, thank you. Yep. And just a reminder, people are looking for the line item budgets and you have your budget buckets on page 30, 46 and 47 and 48 of your line item budget books. Right. So as mentioned, Thrive, I think is really the big change for us here this year. You know, again, these are things you all have heard and know of, but you know, recent pressures and challenges that have come along with Thrive, I think certainly as a team making the commitment to invest in becoming a licensed regulated three-star program, that's been a good thing. It's come with some additional costs. The positive thing there is that it, things net out to the good overall. So Christine had asked that question and I will get you the more detailed numbers Christine because we're still working through those with Angela and Jesse, but I think long story short is that we're netting positive because of our stars accreditation. We're not spending more to have that accreditation than we're bringing in. It's not large money, but I think what's, it's really helpful and it also is really, I think a strong sign to the community that we're committed to program quality here. And I think a lot of the changes that we've made over time have really helped with improving the quality of that program. So not, not something I think that we should think about kind of walking back at this point. And as Kate and I looked through stuff, you know earlier today, I think a lot of the investment to get to that third star really came in the first year that we became a star accredited program. There's a pretty heavy lift to kind of get over that first hump. And then from there, there's a lot of maintenance over time. So it becomes less onerous year over year. So I think a lot of those, a lot of that money and sort of investment has already been done in past years when Kirstie was here. You know, certainly I think this is a conversation happening broadly at the state level but reimbursement rates for subsidy continue to fall pretty far below actual operating costs. And that's not, that's not unique to Thrive. That's industry wide been a challenge. There's been drops in enrollment certainly this year that's been exacerbated by COVID but over time we've seen in summer especially some loss of enrollment. And we've got, you know, unfortunately Kate came in her first summer was this past year we had a great game plan for Thrive summer and then there was a lockdown. So I think we've got some good ideas for how to turn the curve there but it's been something that's been an issue for us. And then, you know, especially throughout the pandemic we've seen an increase in the number of families asking for scholarship support in particular our partial subsidy families. So folks who may not qualify for full subsidy from the state and therefore have a copay to kind of cover the difference between what comes in from the state and what the base fee for the program is. So we've seen certainly an uptick in those asks over the last couple months, you know, whether those stay past COVID, I don't know but I think we're sort of bracing for that being a bit of a new reality for us with those partial subsidy families. And then just a couple, you know, things moving forward that we're looking at and we'll dive into a few of these more in depth but certainly when allowable starting to look at increasing enrollment especially during the summer I think that's something we really need to prioritize. And again, I think had a good plan last year and look forward to sort of running that back in this coming summer. Rethinking the way we do summer and being more thoughtful about how we integrate with our rec department and where it makes sense to run a licensed camp versus a fee based camp and how we make sure that we've got a really good offering for the broad community that is also being run cost effectively for the city. Certainly looking at the expanded use of outside funds which we'll touch on in a minute. Again, on rec camps or vacation camps no different really looking at our recreation partnership and how we can do a better job there. Really, I'm very excited about the work that's happening already this year but just trying to figure out ways to connect with families early and often. So I think our library program is a great example of that. I know there's been some playgroups happening. Kate's done a good job of sort of getting those stood back up trying to partner with Howard Center. I know there's a movement or a yoga class for littles right now that's happening with the Wunuski Family Center. So just really trying to get connected to families early so that they know about the services we have available and when their kid does hit kindergarten thrive isn't this like big new scary thing it's something they've been sort of thinking about and excited for over a number of years. At the state level, I think continuing to be part of the conversations there certainly Kate and I have had a lot of ongoing discussion with the folks at Let's Grow Kids who are working at the state level trying to really continue to advocate for and share the challenges of the current structure of the system. I think that's something that at the state level it's not a secret. I think the challenge is how to fund it and how to make that affordable from a tax perspective but those reimbursement rates have continued to lag behind the cost of doing business for running a program. So that's a challenge for us for sure. You'll see this also looking at fee increases over the next few years we're really trying to turn that knob slowly because we've found that when we don't there's a pretty significant impact in enrollment but that's something we know we need to continue to do to stay viable and then as we discuss in more depth in a minute here further subsidization from the city for thrive as that moves hopefully into the general fund. So I'm gonna pause there before we get into more numbers and just see if there are any questions or things that people were curious about. So I'll just call out, you know you referenced some of the ongoing challenges this is something that's been in discussion for the few years that I've sat here that enrollment numbers are too low. We need high enrollment to be more cost effective which is also an interesting challenge given that we hear that, you know there's not enough access to childcare. I suspect part of that is cost burden there's this very difficult issue here with trying to provide the service at a rate that people can actually afford and one that is sustainable for the city to fund. And so I just wanna call that out for any attendees who are watching this and that I know we talked about this last year and as you said, y'all had a plan ready to go obviously couldn't roll that out. I think that is still something that's important to prioritize whether or not we'll be able to do that even this year is uncertain to me. So I just wanted to say that we know we've had these ongoing challenges and that at least for me personally and I think what I've heard here from council is that we're willing to see this play out for a little while longer because this is an important service to our community. Yeah, and I think it's a great point, Christine and I think one thing I wanna highlight too with Kate on the line here is her work over the last couple of months connecting with subsidy eligible families. I think that as a smaller community and given the sort of broader landscape of fee-based camps there's a lot of services for fee-paying families in the summer months in particular that in some cases are more specialized, more soccer camp or sailing camp or things of that nature. And I think for families that are looking for really that purely childcare option that's got an enriching element to it thrive as a great fit. So I think that the work she's done over the last few months with some of the school liaisons in particular to get families that are subsidy eligible need that service and may just may not have known about its existence has been really great. So we've seen a number of new families actually coming on board during the pandemic which is sort of interesting. Total numbers haven't grown but we've seen a lot of new families coming in the door over the last few months which is really encouraging and encouraging signs. So I think continuing that effort of really boots on the ground working with partners trying to really connect the resource with the families that most need it is gonna be a good strategy for us moving into the future. Yeah, I got a question, right? This might be a howl question too. Is there any danger of the state level subsidies disappearing out of the budget? And if that happens, are you prepared to make that difference up? And or is there a way to make that difference up as I should ask you that? I'll answer the easy one first and then kick the harder question to how about, I mean, I think that in terms of being able to make up that difference, I think that the short answer is no, I think that families that would lose that benefit likely would need to disenroll in most cases just cause I think the cost burden for them would be insurmountable. Whether we could then backfill with more fee-paying families, maybe, but I do think we have about a 50-50 mix right now of fee-paying and subsidy eligible families. And so it's hard for me to imagine that that gap would be able to be filled with fee-paying families. And frankly, I think that isn't exclusively the population that needs the service, right? Like I think a lot of the families who do qualify for that benefit are really the families that most need the service. So I think there's a question of mission there too on some level. And then how, I don't know at the state level how you would- Yeah, it's out of my committee's jurisdiction of GOV-OPS, but I just think there's a growing sense and awareness because of retro kids that we need to have more focus on this issue of supporting a sustainable child care system. So I think the will is there, but who knows what's gonna go down with the challenges of COVID that we're still gonna face. But I know that's becoming a more and more hot issue and priority. And the reason I brought it up is because I've heard, you know, gotta balance the budget and things are gonna come up short. And I'm just wondering if that's one of the things that may come up short this year. That's just a question that I don't know who can answer that. But it should be on the radar for sure. I mean, I would say, Mike, I haven't heard that bandied about as a potential shopping block item, but you know, I'm certainly not in those halls and in those conversations. So I think take that for what it's worth, which probably frankly isn't very much, but you know, I think to Hal's point, there has been a real effort at the state level to make some movement around child care support. And it's hard for me to not even walking that back. Well, I hope not. Because the community is such as ours, there's a huge need for it. So thank you. Jim, did you have a hand up? Yeah, I did. Thanks. I guess I just wanna kind of echo on that that I think this really is a, you know, the big solution, the one that'll actually work in the longterm is gonna require the state as a partner. And so I'm glad that you're continuing to connect with the state. And I hope that we as council can support what you need in staff, what the staff needs to make that advocacy work. So if there are ways that council can say, express the need that we have here. I mean, we know that after school programs work, they provide protective factors for kids. They make it for safer environments for kids. They can help close achievement gaps. And all of the three years of increases needed to bring thrive into the general budget results in a modest increase. And it's an increase that we all will have to pay. And so I am curious to see, I'm hoping we can look at some options that can shift some of the burden on to fee paying families a little bit if there's a way to help accelerate that coverage. Cause I think that there is capacity in some of our fee paying families to make sure that we then are protecting the program as a whole and making it sustainable. So I hear you on the concern about dinging enrollment by trying to increase fees too fast. If there's any creative work around like voluntary paying the true cost fee scales or anything like we've seen with some of these other programs allow you to pay at different levels depending on your self assessment of what you need or what you can afford. I think that can help too. But I do, like I've said this before in these meetings, I think this is a critical service that is under recognized for how important it's gonna be for some of our families. And so the fact that we've maintained enrollment with a pretty significant shift in who's enrolling during a pandemic with people making very different decisions about who's going to school and who's going to after school family to family. I think this is a, I guess showing that the need hasn't gone away in the pandemic and I don't think it's gonna go away after the pandemic's over. So I'm, I know this is a big lift and I'm sensitive to the impact but I think that the down the blind what we're giving to our kids in this community at the end of their time and thrive is pretty important to consider. So I appreciate the consideration from council and I appreciate the work that you've done to try and make this happen for another year. Jim, that's a really interesting idea about offering different levels of payment for those who are willing or feel that they are able. I think that's a creative suggestion. So I wanted to recognize that. And just to foreshadow, we will as per usual, come back to council at a future point to set fees for the coming year. And I think that's certainly some, we can kind of factor that into our thinking as we look at that fee model, whether this will be the year that we incorporate something like that. I can't say, but I think it's definitely an approach we could explore. You know, one bit of context I will share as Amy had asked council Lafayette had asked about sort of how our price point stacks up with neighboring communities just to sort of get a sense of like, are we way low balling things here? Are we charging too much? In terms of after school, our current base rate is set at $84 per week. The average we saw with, looked at Essex, South Burlington, Colchester and Burlington sort of the most adjacent communities. They range from 78 bucks in one community all the way up to 90 and another. So I think both our current rate and then the proposed rate, which we'll talk about in a minute, kind of fall in line with those neighboring communities and kind of keep us in a competitive space. And then summer wise, similarly, that ranged a little bit more, but our ask for this coming year would be $160 for the week. And those ranged from, I think the lowest I saw was 165 maybe and the highest was like 220 from again kind of school and rec based programs in neighboring communities. So I think we're in a ballpark summer. Maybe there's an opportunity to turn that knob a little bit more. But again, I think we need to be thoughtful about the ripple of doing that. There's a financial piece, but there's also then the enrollment piece we need to consider. I see you, Jim, but I don't want to steal Christine's thunder. Hal actually did it officially through the summer, let him go. So should I go? Yes, yes. Okay. So, I'm intrigued by this tier fee approach, which I think is important, but I also think even more importantly is how do we change the narrative? This is an investment in our community. This is not like filling in the hole because there's not enough money. I think it's important to think about how do we shift that narrative? Because it really is an investment and it impacts our community and what it's done well. Thanks, Hal. Did you still have a... Oh, yes. I was looking for the raise hand function, forgot what I was doing. Still haven't found it. But my question was, are the fees for after-school-based programs, are those all similarly accredited stars, like three-star, four-star programs, or are we comparing non-stars to three-star? That is actually a great question, Jim. I know those are all licensed programs, but whether they have stars accreditation, I am not admittedly sure off the top of my head. I can find that out. Okay, thanks. Yeah. I do wanna come back to how you were talking about the narrative of this service and is this a critical service to provide to our community? I think, yes. The thing that is on my mind is as we are closing this gap in what... So obviously, this is the bigger childcare problem, right? Is it cost more money to do it than you could possibly expect a family to pay? What is filling that gap? And obviously, yes, we do need to a lot of help from the state in the bigger landscape. The thing that I have been thinking about through this budget is as we bring this into the general fund and we take on more of that gap filling through tax dollars, is it happening at a rate that is sustainable versus like a giant jump in one year? Which I think is, we'll see in an upcoming slide. Yes, yeah. I'm gonna latch on to that segue, Christine, and dive into some of the numbers here a little bit. So again, just mentioned outside resources that we're trying to secure kudos to Kate. That's sort of the point of the slide. She's done a lot of grant writing in the last six months. So, hooray. So we also mentioned the rate increases. So this is, again, this is not something to be voted on tonight, but if the budget kind of moves through, this is something we'd likely come back with in a resolution for council to sort of set fees for the coming year. But looking at slight increases in the afterschool and the full day summer programs, I highlighted over here on the side just from the state, the sort of base rate for subsidy. So this is if you're a licensed program with no stars, these are the reimbursement rates that you get from the state for any subsidy eligible family, full-time subsidy eligible family for essentially this is afterschool and this is for full day, full week care. The reason we opted not to increase the half day program for the summer is that the hours of that program are really more aligned with this number up here, this $84 kind of afterschool hours. It's a pretty comparable number of hours given in a week. So we felt like cranking this one up would start to kind of skew us in terms of value per hour out of whack with our afterschool program and our full week program. So that's why we opted to sort of leave this $100 number static. And for folks that don't know the reason we run a half week or a half day program during the summer is that the school runs for four weeks a free summer school program for the JFK kiddos. So in the past, we tried to sort of compete with that and run program simultaneously and the dollars were not at all working for us because we would have to staff up for enrollment in the morning and a vast majority of those kids would be in the summer school program until noon. So we would have high volumes of staff sort of not serving kids for half of our day. And so instead of trying to compete, we've opted to supplement and sort of dovetail services instead. All right, and then jump. Does everyone, are there any questions before I move ahead on the stars reimbursement piece and sort of how that works or is that fairly clear? And then these, you know, Christine, to steal your thunder back here, this is our sort of phase in proposal. Again, we felt like we didn't want to just drop a big gap on council in one year and instead wanted to work to try to phase this in over time. So up here, what you'll see is, you know, with current projections holding how we will end fiscal year 21 in terms of the balance or the reserves for thrive. You'll see in a later slide that, you know, $45,000 looks great, but that number has been sort of dropping over time in recent years. So that's not a sustainable nest egg for thrive at this point. But we wanted to try to leverage that over the next couple of years to sort of soften the blow of incorporating thrive into the general fund. So what you'll see here is just basically the math to show what that tax rate impact would be in year one. So it's about a half a penny. And then years two and three of that integration would be about a 10th of a penny given that a bigger chunk is kind of coming in early here. And this $14,000 number, this one was, I needed to sort of ask Angela. So I wanna make sure that it's clear for folks. This is what we are currently carrying in the general fund in support of thrive. So folks may know, but 20% of Kate Anderson's time, our thrive director is already nested in the general fund for work around efforts that are not related to thrive. So that $14,000 is already built into the general fund budget. So we wanted to sort of recognize that as, on the revenue side of the equation so that that could be factored in when we brought the whole program over. So I'm gonna pause here and ask what questions folks have about what's here. Cause I think this is really sort of the meat and potatoes of what we are proposing with this transition. So to just to state it another way. Yep. Moving this over is adding that 0.005 to the tax rate this year. But in future years, so this has been moved to the general fund, let's say in future years we're saying that this is thrive is adding 0.001 to the tax rate. When I look at the number in FY24 that's not an increase above and beyond FY23, right? Like that's just the percentage essentially of the, okay, just wanna make sure I was reading that correctly. So the increase in 23 is additional over and above what was raised in 22 and then 24 the same. And it's as a result of the staff increases. So that assumes that we make no changes to the fees that we charge to the families, but that all of the staff still get their step and COLA increases every year. So to put another way, Christine, basically over three years we're building up that's that tax capacity using reserves to offset it. Gotcha. Thank you. Did not mean to do that. Are there any other questions on the numbers here? I asked just a quick clarifying question. Maybe this is mostly for Angela. So the total increase over the total cost of this transition is gonna be a penny on the tax rate or roughly 1.02 cents when you add up these five or these four levels of increase. So the total increase if we weren't factoring in using any reserves would be 0.006 or 0.007. And annually every year we will have some sort of additional increase for staff increases. There will always be some sort of incremental increases to these expenses for those staff changes. Okay. Which is true for all areas of the budget everywhere that we have staff. Correct. I can't see Mike anymore. So I don't know if he... I got a question. What is the deficit from non-payment for this program? Are we talking hundreds of dollars or thousands on year? Angela may have that more at the ready. I know this year we have been much better on collections in terms of Kate's just done a fabulous job of staying in touch with families, making plans. So it's pretty minimal for current year. We have very, very little outstanding balances. We rarely write things off. When a family does have an outstanding balance that they have not paid, it does stay in their account in our civic program and they're unable to register for other programs until they've reached out to the city to make arrangements to have those things paid. And we do have some people who are on payment plans for past due balances. We don't have a lot of a rearage at this point. It's very small, it's less than 10,000. I think it's actually closer to the $3,000 range. So minimal impact then on this. Okay, thank you. I think another sort of along those lines thing to bring up that I think is different about thrives than other childcare settings where young people currently are during COVID is that we don't ask families to pay when they are not in program. Meaning when the school goes remote and thrives and closes, we're giving credits back to the families and not charging them for those weeks. Whereas if you're in some kind of private other supported program, often families are being asked to pay to essentially hold the spot and we are not doing that for families. Okay, now does the subsidy still kick in too? If that happens? There's some limited opportunities to get billing through subsidy for program closure days, vacation days, if kids are out sick, but it's a set number per year that you can bill per child. So there is some backstop there from the state, but it's not like a private program like Jesse said where folks have to pay out of pocket to keep to hold their spot. All right, and this was a question that had come up early what if the city didn't sort of step in here through the general fund to help support this program? What would that impact look like for our families? Based on our calculations here and definitely many thanks to Jesse and Angela for kind of helping that this roughly 35% I think is the minimal increase that you would see year over year for a family if there weren't subsidy or sort of support from the city through the general fund. So pretty significant jump in price that, again, I think it creates this vicious cycle where I think you'd start to price some families out and then you'd have more costs for less families to bear and then that price just kind of continues to ratchet up. So I think minimally that 35% is a pretty, frankly probably a pretty low increase estimate. I think you'd probably see more based on disenrollment and then needing to spread those costs across fewer families. But it's a big jump. But actually before we move on from Thrive any questions, thoughts? So as I say, maybe we open it up to any public comment or questions before getting into the other funds. As a reminder, folks can use the raise hand feature or use the chat if they wish to speak. All right, back to you, Ray. All right, so senior programs budget. This one I mentioned earlier is, looks I think pretty similar overall bottom line wise. We've scaled back some of our projections around just program volume based on some of the unknowns are on COVID and how quickly we will be able to gather our seniors again but continuing to look to run that budget at a break even or better and sort of preserve those reserves that we've been carrying for the senior program. So important to note here too, Barb salary is not included in this budget. This is just programmatically based. So revenues in from programs and then revenues back out for program supplies and supports. And then community gardens very similarly. So no staff covered here in pretty straightforward budget. Again, this is a program that's performed pretty well for us over time. So looking to more or less break even over time sort of build up some nest egg and then invest that in improvements in the program over time. So I think not too, too much excitement here but I didn't know if there are any questions on either one of those two budgets. I'll just share that. I recall during the surveys for the parks and open space plan work with the consultant that community gardens got a lot of love. It seems like it's a very successful program that is really well utilized and enjoyed by community members. Yeah, definitely so. And very excited to have the Landry Garden back online this year and certainly to have Gwynni at the home moving into the season here. We've already, just this morning we're talking about getting registration open in January. So thanks, Frank. Okay, I got a quick question. With the pool, did the gardens expand their area? Wasn't there talks about that? Nope, so the footprints for both the gardens and the pool remain the same. We were able to expand that Landry Garden because there was a large tree that was removed that used to be through a lot of shade. And so we may be able to add some plots now in a spot in the garden that we weren't before but the footprint stayed the same. Okay, thank you. Yep. And then I mentioned this earlier this is just sort of a graphic here to show the tracking of reserves over time for the department or for the various program funds within the department. So again, up top here is that rec budget deficit that we discussed earlier on that would need to be essentially offset by some of these programs that are covering or carrying positive balances. The thrive reserves are here. And then again, if the budget carries as presented that slight reduction here in fiscal year 22 would continue into years 23 and 24 until that program budget is phased out. But this would, as Jesse mentioned earlier allow us to preserve for the senior center their budget surplus here and the library as well those designated funds. Had to get this in here. Very excited about the Myers pool. Certainly looking ahead this is going to be a huge deal for us but wanted to just highlight it here moving forward. So hoping, hoping June 5th will be opening day. Season pass sales should be getting started this month. We're working on some logistics with our rec software to try to make that work a little more smoothly for customers hiring starting in March and then have a full slate of programs announced in the spring. Super excited to have community rentals starting this spring as well. And then the swim team of course returning to their traditional home pool here in Winooski which is very exciting. So lots to look forward to there but definitely wanted to highlight that as a big kind of operational ad for us this year looking into fiscal year 22. And then just globally to end some big emerging issues obviously rebounding from COVID and what that means, especially as it relates to gathering groups, group sizes, restrictions around indoor versus outdoor activities and lots of things to keep in mind as mentioned, opening the pool, continuing to work on the implementation of the new parks and open space plan, childcare we've talked quite a bit about tonight. We are gonna be looking at the possibility of a fourth star for Thrive and what that could look like for us. So that would be a way to sort of as mentioned earlier I think insulate the general fund from some of those costs over time, continuing to expand library services with Nate at the helm and then getting transportation sort of back on a front burner I think given everything with COVID on my team at least that's sort of slipped back. So I'd like to revisit that because that is an issue that comes up pretty regularly for us. And with that, I'm gonna send you off with this hopeful, positive, exciting image and say thanks for your attention and great questions and I'm happy to answer any other questions that come up. Thanks Ray. I will go first to the public this time and see if there are any other questions about the other programs that we just got to at the end there. All right, well, if anything comes up again chat or raise hands any additional questions from council? I got one, I'm sorry. I can't find a raise hand feature either. So I don't wanna sound, I wanna start to say positive it's new year but this COVID mess has me really worried about your budget because what's gonna happen if we can't assemble and gatherings? I mean, right now we can have other households in our house but come, we have a lot riding on like especially the pool and the outdoor things. We have a lot riding on hiring people, training people, sales, is there a plan B you have with if this, say the budget passes, what's gonna happen to this money that's sectioned out for certain things? I mean, once a bingo comes back to the senior center that's not in the budget right now or what happens if the pool can't open for example? Yeah, I think, it's certainly it's, I agree, I've been trying to stay on a more positive note too. I think it's thinking that we are doing, I think hopefully you all have seen and Angela and Alex have seen their treasure as well. Like we've really tried to have very scalable budgets so that when things went sideways, as quickly as we could, we were able to respond and reduce staffing costs subsequently, reduce programming costs accordingly. So I think on some hand this budget has been built as it is every year, frankly to be fairly scalable. If we're not seeing the volume or the interest, we can adjust some of those costs accordingly. You know, the pool I think is a great example where if we find ourselves in a position of really needing to limit group sizes then I think we will have to make some adjustments to the expense side of that budget and think about what that looks like. So it's definitely something we are very much aware of and in tune with. I don't think there's going to be a way honestly for us to be a hundred percent insulated from that risk in the budget as presented. I think it's a valid concern. Certainly one we're going to keep an eye on, but I also think too we've really tried hard to pivot and be creative. You know, I look at the library as an example where we still can't get groups together but we've done a lot of work over the last three months to get the library open and accessible for folks in new different ways. You know, looking at virtual programming through the direct department I think is another example where I think all of us, frankly, may be a little sick of staring at screens but there's ways to use that to build community and get people together and provide services that are of value and that I think people would be willing to participate in. So it's a good question, Mike. I'm just curious, especially trying to, sorry, Jesse, trying to hire people in March when if we're still at, you know, where we are now and try to, I mean, say it comes June and we have to sub out the lifeguards and I mean, are we going to have room in the budget if we have to add some money to that instead of hiring directly? Just because say the governor in April or June or May says, okay, we're back to normal, we can function but I'm just curious on how this is all going to pan out for community services. Yeah, I think, I don't know how to say it better than Ray said. I think that I'm going to be very optimistic and lean into vaccines and lean into the opportunity of, you know, by June or July or August, hopefully enough of us will be protected that we can gather in smaller groups outside in a pool, blah, blah, blah. I think we will be watching that carefully between now and March to figure out how many lifeguards we contract for, how many what level of staffing we put into the pool. I also do feel the need to say that to raise point and I bring this up not to say that we are planning this moving forward or have any inkling about it, but raise T, you'll hear from the treasurer and from the auditors in a couple of weeks about how we ended FY20 and we ended FY20 in the black and part of that was a significant part of that was huge positive financial management that Angela did was also people making the really hard sacrifices and being furloughed and that hit Ray's department much harder than it hit any other department in the city. And those staff people, you know, made use of other programs that were here to support them and many of them came back and we are incredibly thankful, especially the Thrive team who, you know, really sacrificed a lot during the time when they couldn't provide service and we couldn't justify using taxpayer dollars to continue them on staff. So I'm not saying we will do that again. I think with vaccines, we have plans to not do that, but I do think my tier point, Ray's team was the team that made the biggest incremental sacrifice in FY20 to do exactly what you're saying, scale back expenses because the revenues weren't coming in. How? And the only thing I will add, I just have a lot of confidence in Ray and his team because it's a management issue. And I think he has demonstrated over and over that he's able to step up and his team can make those tough choices to make things, you know, get over those bumps until we get to that smooth sailing. And I am optimistic that we're gonna, the new administration get this under control as soon as we can. So I'm looking forward to a more normal year by late summer, you know. Here, here. Yeah. Are there any further questions for Ray? All right, well, thank you again. And we will move on to item D, Vermont Community Development Program, municipal policies and codes with Heather. Hi, y'all. Just to remind you, you gave permission for staff to apply for a Vermont Community Development Program implementation grant quite some time ago. And as part of that process, one of the conditions for awarding those grants is that we adopt a standard form of Vermont Community Development Program, municipal policies and codes, which was included in your council packet. We have been recommended for award of $450,000 of that grant. So I bring this forward to you for your adoption in order to meet those award conditions. The policies contained in the document align with the policies that we as a city have in place. And in many cases, we have a much higher standard in our policy contained in our policies. So for example, equal employment opportunities, drug-free workplace and whistleblower protections is pretty standard content that you're seeing in their policy. And I believe that the policies provided here are really to ensure that there's a minimum standard in place and in most cases, we have a higher standard in place. So it's not directly contradicting our policies instead just ensuring that we do have them in place. So for example, with something like the excessive force piece of this, we have a much higher standard in our policies. And then there are also some policies included here, which are the ethics of the grant administration, which don't correlate with any policies that we have in place. So I recommend that we adopt this so that we can accept $450,000 in support of the Avonaki Garage. Thank you, Heather. Any questions from council? Jim? So I'm reading or I'm hearing that there aren't gonna be any policies that are more restrictive or higher levels of standards in these than what we currently have. Are there any that are more restrictive or more or that go further than what we already have? The only one that I would say potentially does that is the fair housing standards. I think it aligns with what we are trying to do for housing, but we don't necessarily have those standards in place. And since we aren't using the funding for housing, I think that it's just kind of standard policy that they're putting in place because these funds are primarily, they're HUD funds that are primarily used for housing, but I think it aligns with where we're going overall with housing, we just don't have those policies. But so in adopting these, it would be some in some ways setting a floor for future considerations around like our housing trust and disbursement criteria or anything like that. These would come into play for that as well. Yeah, these are aligned with Vermont statutes for fair housing. So it's not that they're out of alignment with what we're already held to by the state. Okay, thanks. Any other questions? Any questions from members of the public? Again, you can use raise hand or just click in the chat if you want to ask a question. All right, so here's no concerns. I would entertain a motion to approve the Vermont Community Development Program Municipal Policies and Codes. So moved. Second. Motion by Jim, second by Hal. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries, thank you. Thank you. This brings us to the end of our agenda this evening. I would take a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Motion by Mike, second by Jim. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries and the meeting is adjourned. Thank you, everyone. Thank you all. Thanks, all. Good night. Good night.