 Six o'clock on Monday, December the 10th, 2018, we'll call to order the regular Winooski City Council meeting. And we'll start off by asking everybody to please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance, led by Acting Deputy Mayor Eric Covey, a 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. OK, up first tonight is agenda review. This is an opportunity for council to make any adjustments to the agenda, being as long as it is, and I'm guessing we're OK with this. Any questions or concerns? OK, so seeing and hearing none, we'll move on to the public comment. This is an opportunity for members of the public to address council about anything that's not on tonight's agenda. So anything that's not related to the general government presentation on the budget or the equity training, this would be your opportunity to address that issue with council. So seeing and hearing none, post-public comment. Move to our consent agenda. We have two items on tonight's consent agenda. We have the approval of the Lunisca Community Development Trust Board of Trustees and City Council minutes from December the 3rd, 2018, and the warrants for the payroll, 1118 and 12118. Any questions or concerns in regards to the consent agenda that's presented? So seeing and hearing none, I would entertain any questions or concerns from the public. So seeing and hearing none, we'll entertain a motion for approval. Some of them. Motion by Christine Second, by Eric. Can you fill the discussion? Seeing and hearing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. And those opposed, motion carries. City update. Just a few quick updates for tonight. First, I want to let you know you may have seen in news that we did not get the billed grant for Main Street. That was the big federal, formerly known as a Tiger Grant application for municipal funds. Four applications went into the federal government from Vermont, and only one was awarded for rail bridge improvements in southern Vermont. So we got very good feedback from our delegation's office on our application, and this is the kind of grant that communities are often awarded after they've applied a couple of times. So we will continue to apply, apply in 19. Pretty much this offsets the general fund potential for Main Street. So with the phased approach, we could still apply next year and use it for the project. But we did get Ryan Lambert really carry the water on that application and got really good feedback from the delegation on his work. So very proud of his work, and we will continue to apply. On the flip side of that, we did get awarded the Municipal Planning Grant from the state for Wayfinding signage project, which capitalizes on our branding work we've done and also looking to improve signage in the downtown and relate to parking and whatnot. So for those keeping track, that's three Heather's applied for and three she has gotten. And I think our success in getting those is not only work, but also Aaron's work and our follow-through to deliver on what we've committed to in the past. So good job to the team. Wanted to let you know that Junior is original, which is the on the other side of Fodang at 348 Main has opened. So if people are looking for a new restaurant to partake of the Onizki that has opened. And then just a reminder again that on Thursday evening here, the Planning Commission will be holding their public hearing on the master plan update. That is a required public hearing before it comes to you. So if people are interested to come and hear about that plan, please do. And if you can't attend but want to provide feedback and go to our website, there's an online document there where you can actually make suggestions and provide feedback right in the document. That's all I have. Thank you. Now move to council reports. All right, none. I don't either. Well, actually the Public Safety Commission is scheduled to meet tomorrow, but at this point we're unsure if they're gonna have a forum to be able to do so. I think more will be coming on whether or not we'll actually be meeting. Great. Just a heads up, we sent out an invitation. Heather sent out an invitation last week for business owners to come in and ask questions and engage in regards to the potential sales tax, 1% sales tax issue. So we were trying to proactively provide an opportunity for individuals and business concerned businesses to come in and express some of those concerns in a setting that's appropriate for business owners. So if there's additional steps or feedback necessary there other than the public meetings, some of the idea is that it's a little challenging for businesses to express opposition or factual arguments in a public setting because it can sometimes make them feel like their business is pitted against public good. So we're allowing that opportunity tomorrow at city hall. So we'll report back on how that goes. And then just reiterating on Thursday night, it's a big night if folks show up is the unveiling of where we are with the master plan for that public hearing. So the folks can join for that. It's also the JFK elementary school winter concert Thursday night. So that's where I'll be. Yes. I don't have anything else to report. I'll just report that the public works commission is also not going to meet this morning. Just one other thing is, I went to speak to a Boy Scout shoe last week and they all think that you are very cool. They wanted me to show that to you. And what you're doing is very cool. So that makes you feel good. Okay. So with that, we'll wrap up council reports and move on to our regular items in tonight's agenda. So first up tonight, we have discussion of the FY20 general government presentation. All right. Thank you. So tonight we are focusing on the general government portion of the budget. Obviously happy to answer any questions, but over the next couple of meetings, you'll hear specifically from community services, public safety and public works. So this is everything that's not related to those three. So these are really the folks and the resources we have to run the city to make sure not necessarily do the big fun things that are aligned to strategic vision but make sure the organization runs. So within general government is the city clerks team, communications, finance, human resources, planning, zoning, community and economic development, parking and our TIF tax increment financing district. So you see the people here who all touch either that work entirely or part of their work is dedicated to these areas. So like the overall budget presentation, we want to kind of settle this conversation within the strategic vision. So these are our high level accomplishments from 18 FY18. It's important to note that ultimately I am responsible as your staff for implementing all of the strategic vision goals, but we haven't called those out here. We're leaving those for the other issue areas. One of the things we have done here is called out some of the more operational details that again aren't directly tied to a strategic vision area but do tell a story about the work we do. This operations team does every year to enable all of that work to happen. So for example, 3,600 invoices were processed in FY18 for a total of $13 million of expenditures. We had 1,500 people participate in two different election cycles. We got 214 employment applications, 68 zoning permits were processed. I see the businesses that were supported in the grant dollars that were brought in. So on the operation side, some of the big things we did in FY18, we secured funding through the nearest planning grant to support the master plan work. We hired a planning and zoning manager and a public works director, both really big positions to further your vision. We completed the economic development strategic plan as you know and worked with the housing commission. We supported the permitting of a low income tax credit project here in the city. We continue to work on dispatch and supported unconscious bias and respect in the workplace training for all of our employees. FY19, this is the year we're currently in about halfway through it. So as you know, the master plan is out for comment. We're working, lot, many of us are working on the full TIF build out and new parking infrastructure proposal. We're launching a new website in February, a new Pope parking app that will be aligned to the one Burlington uses and UVMs. There's more continuity in the area. Continue work with housing commission. And then again on the operational side, and you've heard me talk about this before, but transition to a new retirement plan for our employees who are not in the state, beemers, Vermont municipal employee retirement system that we think will be a significant improvement to the employee benefit as well as the cost savings to both the city and the employees as more of their dollars will actually be invested. We settled the police contract this year and completed the non-union compensation plan. Looking forward to next year, again, many of these you've heard about, the, I won't call it that individually. From an operation standpoint, the things we're looking at is streamlining the permitting process to better have efficiencies specifically between the planning and zoning office and economic development and public works. There are permits needed on all of those and want to make it very clear to people what they need as they consider projects. We're planning a full update of our personnel policies. We've done that incrementally. You've approved a few of those since the last full update, but we want to fully integrate those and relook at that plan and implement a performance management system and employee evaluation system. And of course, these all will be in discussion with you and approved with you after town meeting day. So in terms of the actual budget, what I'm going to do here is walk through each of the different funds and pause after each one and happy to dive into the actual line items about any of these funds. So in the general fund, that's the fund that's supported by tax dollars. What's included in this proposal is the addition of the full-time accounting clerk. So that's moving from a 12-hour a week position up to a 40-hour a week position. And that's, as you heard me say last time, really to support significant capital projects that we're taking on as a community and grant management for those projects. Included in this proposal is the full implementation of the non-earning compensation plan, i.e. getting everybody into the plan. We have a number of employees who are still below step one of the grade that they've been assigned to. So this plan gets everyone into the plan, but then holds the pay scale adjustments at 1%, which for those impacted, it's an average increase of about 3.23% to their salary. So it's still an increase that's higher than COLA, but not the full COLA adjustment. And then also included in this proposal are investments in technology that we've talked about over the last year. So that's moving to the exchange and the cloud server that will give us a lot more flexibility to do our work administratively, as well as funding for a computer replacement plan that we've never had before. We have some old computers and Adobe licenses for key staff that will enable us to create searchable PDFs right now, as you know, when you get your agenda packet, it's a picture of a piece of paper that you can't search. So this will enable us to have searchable PDFs that will link on the new website and allow the public to better engage with material that's being put out in the public. So we wanted to pause for a minute on the revenue side of the general fund. We can talk about revenues throughout this process, but really this is the big picture of the budget. So we wanted to provide an opportunity to have you all ask questions if you want. So on the revenue adjustment side, as you heard me say last time, the things that are included here are a new fingerprinting service through the police department and the local options, sales tax and room, smells and alcohol tax that is in the property and pilot summary line to fund capital. And just to go into, I want to spend some time going into each of those in a little more detail. So it's important to keep in mind that these are two different local options tax, one for sales and ones for rooms, meals and alcohol. It's 1% of the transaction and the city keeps 70% of that 1%. So 30% of that 1% stays with the state and 70% of it comes to the community if it's approved. Both of these, while it's authorized in our charter that we can implement, still require votes of the public. So on the sales tax side, we're projecting to raise about 144,000 in FY20. A caveat to that is that is based off of sales receipts from FY17 and FY18 that I was currently posted with the tax department. What that does not keep in mind or what that does not reflect because there's not data to reflect it yet is a recent case, the South Dakota versus Wayne Street. Thank you, South Dakota is beginning the state that says that local options, our sales tax is due on deliveries to a community. So it's a destination based tax. What that means for us is Amazon orders, Wayfair orders, people who are sending goods into our community from outside of our community or from outside of Vermont that either equal 200 or more transactions a year or over $100,000 of transactions a year. So not the real small kind of Etsy shops, but the larger sales shops, the local options tax will be applied to that. And because that hasn't yet been collected, we have no idea what that projection will be. So we have not made an assumption about it to be conservative. So it applies to alcoholic beverages that are sold not for consumption on site but sold to takeaway and tangible personal property. It does not apply to sale of motor vehicles, medical items, food, fuel, clothing or shoes. And it's, as I said, destination based. And you see here a selection of other communities surrounding us that currently impose this 1% sales tax. Burlington actually I think it's 2%. Burlington has done differently through their own charter. On the rooms, meals and alcohol side, same concept 1% on hotel rooms, meals and alcohol, 70% comes to the 70% of that 1% comes to the community, 30% stays with the state. We're projecting that's going to raise about 133,000 in FY20. That applies to any food or alcoholic beverages consumed outside of the home and at any future hotel rooms. Currently we have no hotel rooms in the city although we may in the future be collecting Airbnb revenue. Again, that's not reflected. And then you see the other communities it applies to. That is the, I'm going to switch now into expenditures unless we want to stay on the revenue side of the books for any questions. Just a nitpicky one and maybe it's for Angela, but on the investment income piece, it seems to be all over the place. 13,000 one year to the next. Why do we think it's going to be 10 this year? I'm just curious. So, I'm not sure where the 2,600 is coming from that's in the projected year and that was purely an estimate based on year-to-date transactions. Okay. We've collected quite a bit more than $2,600 so far this year. I think in general my takeaway in this has been even though spreadsheets, if you've got questions about revenue specific, there's been a few times where the expenditures or revenues you guys have noted that because of where we're at in the accounting year they're maybe not completely reflective. So, if you've got a couple of flags like that. So, I'll save my other questions because I think it's going to be the same answer. But that's a good overall point and something to pause on from it. So, using this spreadsheet, for a quick second, Eric, do you have your pointer on you by any chance? No. Okay. So, he usually does. So, just for orientation, not necessarily look at these line items but for the organization of the spreadsheet. So, what you have in the spreadsheets before you is what we budgeted in FY18 and what we actually spent in FY18. So, that reflects a complete year of operation. FY19 is what we, in the gray box is what we budgeted. FY19 year to date was in September when Angela first pulled these spreadsheets for us to work on. So, what's really talking about two and a half months into the fiscal year and two and a half months in without salt and without some other seasonal things. And then the projected year end is our best estimate of where we're going to end the year but again, without a whole lot of calendar information about experience. And then, of course, the FY20 proposed budget, any additions and the budget with additions. So, if you really want to look at what we've, oh, thanks bud. What we've actually spent today, this is the only line where you can actually see a full year of actual data, the FY18 actuals, the FY19s are all projected. And that holds true through all of the spreadsheets. So, shall I, any other revenue questions? One minor clarifying question. The projection for the rooms and meals tax, is that reliant upon the build out of the hotel or is that based on current? No, this is based solely on current receipts in the last two years from Munozki. So, 17 to 18 increased 5%. So, we've increased the projection from 18 to, or from 18 to 19 to 20 by 5%. It's no new businesses, no new hotels. It's fine to be very conservative. Thank you. And the pilot, the pilots were all held consistent this year for the last year. I believe so, yes. You'll see a slight increase compared to budget under the WHA pilot. And that is for the new pilot that came on for the late housing house. Okay. I'm just sure folks are aware we have publicly said to their board that we would like to reopen those pilot agreements at some point in the next year. So, that's something that this body could have enough peering in the future. Any other revenue specific questions? We can always go back. So, on to the expenditure side of the general fund. So, what the screenshot here is the summary, the traditional budget and the detailed budgets. Line items are on page 59 to 62 of your budget book. That's also on the website. You search budgets on the city website. You come up with that full book. So, again, those line items are on page 59. So, happy to answer any questions about expenditures. As I said, the big changes are the non-union wage compensation plan, the accounting clerk and the technology lines in this general fund budget. The rest is relatively level funded. There is the additions that we've called out of the $5,000 for lowering barriers to entry and the $6,700 for the school newsletter. So, that totals the 11,700 you see there in the additions column. Do we want to just remind people quick to look. Just since that supporting additional participation we talked about potentially childcare, potentially computer additions. I mean, it was in the initial presentation just in case people are looking at this budget at home. Sure. So, council and staff during the goal setting session for this year had a lengthy great conversation about how we include other voices in our policy discussions and at our tables and thinking about what are the, there are real systematic reasons why other voices may not be included and thinking about how we lower those both by our own education, which we'll hear about later in this agenda, but also some of the more systematic things. So, for example, right now we have no budget for computer access for people who may want to serve on the council. You guys are using your own technology. So, if we were to commit to buying technology for people who wanted to serve that might encourage others to serve. It may childcare obviously is an issue. Lots of people don't participate because they have other commitments at home. So, if we were to provide a stipend for childcare or provide childcare during commission meetings or things like that, it may encourage others to apply. So, that's what that $5,000 placeholder was. We're open to any other ideas you might have about how to spend that as well. Thank you. I'm gonna keep going about happy to come back to any of this. Did I interrupt you? I mean, I have a philosophical question about this concept. Like, what is our existing stipend for if not to subsidize participation? I don't know that the issue was raised as a council specific investment to be blunt. When I heard the conversation and it was pretty general and we kind of stayed up in the air, it was more geared towards commissions but I don't think we put that kind of detail to pin in paper. You are the only stipend group in the city, the other participants or not. I guess not unusual for people who serve on task forces or commissions to receive some sort of per diem some way to recognize that people's time is valuable. I think to me it was more along the lines of can we make childcare accessible? So I think that that can be a real barrier for people to participate. You know, the idea of Chromebooks, for example, type expenditures for minute taking where somebody's able to have access to that, do that, upload it at the meeting and be done with it versus there are times now where people all look around like who has the computer who brought the minutes sheet to fill out. So I think there's thought of some opportunities there too. So was that the beginning of your lobby for a massive raise for councillors? No, that was beginning of a lobby for no more stipend. And I think that is one that we haven't really fully built out. That is exactly why we called it out because we didn't bake it into the budget. That's what we thought might be a good starting place, but happy to do it, take it out, flesh out ideas, what would it look like if we had a baby's childcare provider a month, a night a month for commission meetings, we can put some more meat around that if that would be helpful for you all. And then structurally one of the things we talked about is do you do one night a month where all the commissions are meeting at the same time? That's been a philosophical discussion and if you do something like childcare that would support that idea. You're refreshing my memory. Can I ask a tangential question? I remember seeing previously there's a line item for computer replacement for the city, right? Does that include additional computer capacity at the library? So that does not necessarily include new computers at the library, what it could include is reprogramming, like reassigning computers that we were backfilling, that what the needs of staff and the needs of the public to do basic word processing and internet searches could be compatible, could be the same. I mean, I'm fully supportive of this concept and taking down barriers that people might have to participating in our city government. I wouldn't necessarily wanna see funds going towards computer replacement. When I do know, like the computers at the library do get in really high demand of a lot of computer or a lot of residents who really, we don't have that computer access at home and are utilizing it at the library. So I would like to see that capacity grow before we're using this money for technology specifically. Could we ask, when the community services presentation happens that they cover computer usage at the library and whatever measurement tools they have to be great? That's a question I've never asked or sent that information on. That's a good one. Please and thank you. Other questions on general fund expenditures before we move? So I'll keep going and Tender, we can also come back throughout all of these budget conversations to anything else as well. So the next fund that we're talking about is the TIF fund. So there's three slides here. This is the revenue side and an expenditure side and then a modeling side. So, and this is the actual line item budget that you see here. So we're projecting two points, almost $2.8 million of revenues coming in. That's a very small increase in increment is on the assessed value. And what you see projected up here also assumes details associated with a global settlement that we're currently negotiating. So you see a large miscellaneous income number in FY19 and then you see the discontinuation of the ground leases in FY20. On the expenditure side, little harder to see. Detail is in your budget as well. We're projecting 3.2 million of expenditures, primarily towards principal interest payment on our debt. Also level funding, our legal and professional line items are obviously our development agreement payment and our general fund reimbursement. We are, as you'll see in the models, the expenditures override the revenues for a number of years. So we are proposing to use $460,000 of fund balance to cover that expenditure. We're leaving the remaining $800,000 of fund balance sitting on that fund. It's important to know on the RTIF, which is slightly different from other TIFs, there are a number of revenues within the district dedicated to pay off the debt, including the property tax increment prior to the ground leases, other property agreements, and the surplus revenues from the parking garage since the parking garage was built with TIF debt. So we, our meaning are, so you see the very last line there, that 1.0, 1.06, et cetera, that is our debt service coverage ratio. That number has to be above one to meet our TD bank debt obligations. So we are maintaining that at 1.3, into this FY20 proposal. And then we've been doing a lot of work to make sure through these global settlement discussions that we are making decisions that allow us to successfully pay off the TIF budget. So what you see here in this modeling, this is just a snapshot, is this is the FY19 year, this is the year we're in, this is the year we're proposing for. FY20, FY24 will be the last year of the TIF. And with these assumptions, we will be closing out the TIF almost just barely, but we can do it. And I think it's really important here to call out the assumptions we're making. So those assumptions are settling of this global settlement that we're negotiating right now with all the property owners in the downtown. The sale of the ground lease, so the payment to us for those ground leases for the spinner place in the first floor. We are assuming in this model, just to be conservative, only a half a percent tax rate increase a year from FY19 through 2024. So you think of those property tax increases are applied to the TIF district, but that increment goes to pay off the debt, not to the general fund and other city expenditures. So if that percentage increases more, that we will pay off our debt faster, but to be conservative, we're modeling very small rate increases. Does that make sense? We are only planning for the hotel increment. We are not assuming the strand being redeveloped or any other parcel in our downtown being redeveloped. We are planning for a continuation of the general fund transfer. So that's the work to support the city's operation, which is allowed within the Covenant. This assumes full payout of the TD note, which is our primary debt, our debt we have to pay per our current obligations, as well as the note from the PCOR family. This model here assumes only repayment of the community development note, which is the note we're paying ourselves that Board of Trustees meeting you had at the beginning of the last meeting at 50% repayment. We are modeling that at 50% now because that's what we can maintain what we're doing now with that level of repayment to ourselves. And we can continue that through the life of the TIF district. Any additional increment we get, so say tax rate increases by more than half a percent, or say another building is redeveloped in the TIF district, that new increment can go to fully pay off ourselves. It's also funds that you could as a Board of Trustees forgive over time. Sorry, Seth. No, just in that 50% repayment of WCDC note is net of the community development items that are essentially that we're divining out of that repayment stream. So the 50% repayment is then obligated by the Board of Trustees to the community development. So it is one in the same line. So we're only repaying 50%, it's not net. Okay, so it's 50% and then in addition to just it being 50%, then we are also, then after that subtracting out whatever we did. So, okay, that's good. I don't think I totally caught that, that's perfect. Thank you. So if I understand the question I was asking, I was trying to see if we're really modeling at 50% of total payback after using funds for its community development or if we were putting 50% towards it or 50% of debt coverage and then afterwards taxing, not taxing that but using some of that for community development and the answer is the latter. Thank you. Any immediate good questions? Christian, you feel good about explaining that to the public, good. We'll talk about that again later. So community development, that's the next fund as they are late, so that 50% CDC note repayment equals $150,000 allocation from you as the board of trustees of that note repayment back to the city for operations and this is the city side of that budget, how we plan to use that money. So you see that the only revenue stream coming in is that 150,000 and budgeted this year are continued staffing levels. It's 98 cents left. 98 cents left. Our website is funded out of this budget. Heather and Paul are working on a Vermont business opportunity city materials as part of the rebranding economic development strategic plan and legacy campaign and included here is the grant match for the way finding municipal planning grant we just received. So as Angela was giggling at, we are balancing this budget down to pennies but what we are not proposing to do is use any fund balance this year for operations. We are currently caring about, projected for the end of this year about $200,000 in fund balance in this fund and we are leaving that sitting here to fund future potential projects or incentivize other developments. So parking. I'm sorry if I missed this somewhere but can you talk about the difference in the salary lines between FY19 and FY20? Are there different positions being funded here? Yes. Remember those great things. So I believe that most of the change is due to less of the planning and zoning. It's gonna be coming out of this fund because the master plan is going to be nearing the end in FY20. So that has shifted towards the general fund. Okay. The general fund is picking up a greater proportion of the planning and zoning administrator because that person's time is going to be spent less on master planning and more on zoning. Thank you. I have a question about, actually no, I think that's gonna come up at one of our later presentations. It's never been, I take it back. I do wanna build on that. You can ask questions twice if you'd like. One of the things that is I think difficult to understand in the budget in general is like these issues where salaries are being paid out of multiple buckets. Fund account. Yeah. We will, we have a whole spreadsheet on how positions are broken out across funds. We can send that to you. So it's fun to explain. And this pays for a quarter of this per year. You're gonna see that with the accounting clerk position as well. That is over several times. Rightfully so given the attention service paid in those other funds that are under price. It's also one of the signature reasons we wanted to present the budgets, all the fund budgets at once because pulling on one thread changes other threads. So you see questions. Parking, everyone excited to talk about parking? All right. So the next two slides present the parking budget and these are the role of budgets so the details are in your binders. It's important to call out there is one parking fund but we track it in two different buckets. So what you see here before you is what we call the on street parking fund. So that's everything parking related that's not the garage. And then you see the garage parking fund. The reason we separate it out separately like that is as I referred, mentioned earlier that any surplus coming from the garage parking annual operating budget is dedicated to pay TIF increment because the TIF debt paid for the building of the parking garage. The same is not true on the on street meters which is why we separated out. Significant difference this year is the proposal of a new parking facility at lot 70 for calling at the neck in a garage. So that to be very confusing is being budgeted out of the on street meters fund not the garage fund because we will not be using TIF debt to pay for that infrastructure. We can't then budget the revenues or the expenditures into the garage fund. That only will last until 2024 when the TIF expires. In 2025, those two funds will be more intermingled will still likely track the separation so we know where revenues are coming from and track meter usage and whatnot but they will be combined in 2024. So significant in this budget is that debt service for Abinac-Uey that if all, if the bond is approved we would pick up some of that in FY20. We're also budgeting for kiosk replacements as part of this capital budget. And we are looking to use 195,000 in fund balance to offset that new capital expenditure still with a remaining fund balance of 230,000 in that fund. I know we are not ready yet to share with you renderings of that garage or the modeling. That's something that we are working on a lot right now. We don't wanna put anything out there until we're pretty confident about it. We are meeting with them tomorrow and hope to get a better sense of that but anticipate bringing that to you with the capital improvement plan and public works infrastructure budgets in early January. So can you just speak to use of reserve for debt service? New Raj. Can I speak to use of reserve for debt service? So what we are proposing here is to use on street parking meter fund balance reserves fund balance reserves. To pay financial debt service of the construction of new parking infrastructure before it starts collecting revenues. So as we start building it and take out a bond anticipation now and then debt before new revenues come in, we are proposing to use that. As you'll see in modeling, we will likely continue to use reserves to pay that debt service over a period of time. Until it ramps up. But then eventually it'll be self-sufficient. And quite frankly until that debt expires in 2024 as well. I think that's to an important message for people because we get that question a lot. Where does my parking money go? And the one thing that the city talked a lot about is trying to re-invest it when possible in economic development and additional parking infrastructure impossible. And this is an example of that for people at home as well. When you think about fund balance and on street parking. So to me, and I know we've got capital funds that we're allocating resources into but I'm not clear that if we have a separate capital fund for the garage but like what types of improvements would we be using a reserve fund for in on street parking if not for the development of new capacity? To me there's this, I can see how in the garage fund you wanna make sure that you're not spending down the fund because we need to be using it for capital improvements. Maybe I have that wrong in terms of where those funds, how those funds get used. But on the on street parking, what are the types of investments we need to be thinking about long-term that spending such a large chunk of the reserve fund may or may not impact? Should I be driving on? Yeah, so the real capital expenditures for the on street fund is the kiosks and any kind of technology to manage parking. And this would include new guts for all of the machines that are currently out there. So essentially restarting their technological life. And additionally, we have two new machines as well. So the need to replace those is probably not gonna occur for a few years. So this budget accomplishes both upgrades to the kiosks. Expansion of the number of kiosks. And we still have a sizable reserve fund. But I think to your point, long-term capital planning of this, post that debt service structure is something that's interesting, right? In terms of, is that money just gonna sit and collect? Because in four years from now after you've tapped it for debt a couple times, they're still, and you've replaced kiosks and they're still a couple hundred thousand dollars could be getting additional significant amounts of fund balance left over each year. Which hopefully we could use to offset some of the CIP needs within the actual garage structures. One of the things that is under budgeted in the existing parking garage is the structural replacement. We don't put a lot of money into it for things that could fail. We had to spend a pretty significant amount of money in FYAT replacing the travel cable in the elevator that was completely unanticipated and depleted almost all of the structural reserves that we had built up today. So that's interesting, because it really, I mean, because once the TIF's done, there's no real reason not to look at parking as a collective comprehensive thing, so. And I think the advantage we have now is that we do have this fund balance to reinvest in the infrastructure that's gonna enable us to do the full build out of the TIF district. But then thinking about how we annually fund for that preventative maintenance garage is our expensive to maintain. And if you don't maintain them well, they get really, really expensive. And I think our public works team has done a pretty good job staying on top of our existing garage. But to Angela's point, looking at that modeling through beyond the life of the TIF district and ensuring that we're putting enough weight for that preventative maintenance on both structures will be important. I will be really interested to see the future financial modeling for additional garage and mainly just that concern of what future uses of fund balance are we signing up for by moving forward to pay debt service? What's the plan to wean off? And are those estimates conservative enough in case revenues end up coming in much lower than anticipated with that new garage? And I think also a thing we need to be very clear and point out too is what are the revenues that may fluctuate and what are the revenues that are contractually obligated. And come with part of building parking structures is putting place parking contracts that will live through the life of the debt, which feels uncomfortable to a certain extent because we're entering into decades long agreements. On the other hand, it's what gives us that certainty that those are always. Don't forget the tax departments and expect taxes on those as a result of those long-term agreements. You didn't get that watch, H.E.C. yet? Sure. Yeah. So this is the on-street side and then on the parking garage side, again, sorry for the small print here. So these are, this is the line item budget. Again, parking garage only in the current parking garage where the surplus is rededicated back into either capital or to pay the TIF increment. So this is a very level-funded budget, same staff allocated. We are including some structural repairs, but as Angela alluded that we have brought down that reserve balance in the past years. So we are currently not budgeting using any, while we're using surplus to reinvest in capital but not additional surplus in this budget. So that is it on the math side of things. We do want to call those few emerging issues that are maybe reflected in this budget, but are also just things we're kind of keeping our eyes on. Obviously the website launch coming up in February, which will be a, I think a big customer service improvement for us as a city. The legacy campaign planning and centennial planning getting ready for our 100th birthday in 2022. Housing commission recommendations coming forward with new zoning requirements, zoning updates as a result of the master plan. The planning commissions are already starting to think about once the master plan is released, what are the zoning updates that are needed. Our AFSCME contract, which is our personnel contract with our public works employees, does expire this June. So we've had initial conversations with them to set up negotiation sessions, keeping our eyes on any emerging training needs that come out of our equity training work that we're gonna be talking about next. Our common level of appraisal is currently at 91.5%. So just really quickly, common level of appraisal is what you're in the grand list or our total assessed value of all of our individual properties in the city. Each property has an assessed value when those properties sell at significantly above or below assessed value. A percentage is applied, it results in a percentage. So how much over or under your assessed value is your property selling for. And because we have statewide education funding, if that drops below 80%, so if your assessed value is below 80% of what the market is bearing for your sales, you are required to go into a reappraisal. Right now we're at 91.5%, which is definitely on the downward trend. We are keeping our eyes on this. We think it will go down again this year just looking at the sales data coming in. We do have some funds set aside for a citywide reappraisal, but it certainly is a very significant undertaking for a community. I would recommend if we start thinking about this that we also think about doing it in conjunction with a new technology that allows us to put our property records online as some other communities have done. So again, no recommendation to do that in FY20, but I think something we should really keep our eyes on. I would just flag too that the school district is obviously massively impacted in a very similar fashion by that, and just want to flag that for people that that should be a very collaborative conversation. Now the school has very blatantly said in public to us in meetings that they would like to see it sooner than later because of the benefits on the education side of things, but that's something still will stay in connection on. Continue to keep an eye, we're very thankful for the technology improvements we've been able to make this year, but first see more coming up in the future, specifically ArcGIS, which actually is built into this budget to more effectively use the data we have to monitor and model our needs. And then of course parking will continue to be an emerging issue, both the new parking infrastructure as well as improved signage through the way finding grant and other issues. We also are intending and built into this budget is putting out an RFP for access control system that would talk between the two parking infrastructures and really let us monitor who is using the garage for what periods of time on what days. We really have no way of doing that right now. And there's a long history about access control in Fluske, so we're trying to do it in conjunction with the property owners. So those are our emerging issues that is our overall general government presentation. As I said, we're happy to dive into any individual line items tonight or throughout our conversations. Those are the people who support all of the community services, public safety and public work staff to do their important work. Great job, very digestible. The great thing about this is this conversation doesn't leave the table tonight too, so certainly we can ask any questions if I have any concerns or any topics for discussion, but this is an ongoing conversation for really the next, almost a month and a half. So please also, just because we do move on to other program areas, program areas after this doesn't mean we can't talk about items in these budgets again, so stuff like that. I have a general question. For the technology that you're referring to, have you looked at any kind of cost benefit analysis to see what it really will yield in terms of cost savings going forward? That's a great question. So we haven't done a formal cost benefit analysis. I think what we believe anecdotally is the technology we have been using is very ineffective. So for example, with our old email system, we had, we were on a free system that tapped out at 50 email addresses, and what that meant is we were making staffing decisions when we were full. We've had 50 users with email addresses. So what that meant was we were making staffing decisions based on who had email and who didn't. So for, you know, you've heard John Rauscher talk about our asset management system. Thank you, where we, where it tracks work orders and tracks the work being done in the field and the equipment used and the resources used, while without an email address to access that system, our public works employees couldn't maintain it. So it was all funneling through one supervisor. This allows us to have more users on the system and not be making staffing decisions that way. Additionally, people here in City Hall couldn't share files with people at Public Works, for example. So they were emailing back and forth versions of documents that were getting lost. Now they can all go into a shared network and work off of the same, same document. So while we haven't done a time study to say what's the time savings we're gonna realize by not recreating different versions of things, anecdotally we believe there's a benefit. And then lastly, I think there is a real customer service benefit to be, to putting materials out in the public that are more searchable. Right now, as I'm sure you all have gotten used to going into meeting, council meeting agendas, you have to know to click on this document in this folder and then scroll through all of the previous agenda items to get to what you're looking at with the new website and the new PDF system. Each agenda item will link to its own documents. You can say, really I'm only interested in information about the pool that the council has talked about and can look at just those agenda items and go to just those documents and then search within that document for every time that something, this word slide is mentioned and look at how things are tracked. So while that's not a cost savings because that's not something we're currently doing, I think it is a better way to engage our residents with the conversations we're having and the information, we're having as staff and council and the information staff is trying to put out. So it's an improvement rather than a savings. Another question right now on the administration budget. Budget administration. Great job. Really great job. I appreciate all the work and thought that went into this too for a turn it over to, and a very good presentation. Appreciate the way that it's structured and how clear it is and felt very transparent and open coming into the meeting in terms of what was here. Didn't take a ton of verbal explanation other than some things that aren't easy and are complex things. So good job. A turn it over to the public. Any questions, concerns from the public? So seeing and hearing none. We'll continue to make that a fluid conversation, but thank you very much for the first department presentation. Okay, next up on tonight's agenda, we have the discussion of potential approval of equity training, potential dates and requests to use fund balance. So I'm going to kick this off, but Nicola, if you either of you want to jump in as well. So councilor Colston and Mace and Julie and myself have been working with Sue McCormick and Keisha Rahm on their proposal for the equity training we previously talked about through our strategic planning sessions. So what we wanted, so attached to your agenda, you see the letter of agreement between the trainers and us. Because this is really your initiative, I wanted to make sure you saw that. And the kind of questions on the table tonight are discussion of the dates. We have previously talked about holding this training opportunity on a Saturday to enable most people to come and just as a reminder, what we're thinking about here is training for the leadership team, shared training with the leadership team, the city council commission members. So anyone who serves on city board or commission and then the community leaders from the public as well, including some folks from the school system, some young people from the school system and some communities not otherwise represented. So the thought is to do that on a Saturday when hopefully more people could attend. So I wanted to run by you all the January 19th or February 16th dates. Those are dates that currently work for the trainers. And then also because this is not something we've budgeted in the FY 19 budget, we are asking to use $11,000, which is a contract amount from fund balance, which would leave a remaining fund balance of 586,000. I think this is a conversation that we've all been excited about. And I think really started snowballing from our strategic planning session this summer. So I don't know if Howard or Nicole, you guys want to add anything? I've worked with Sue and I believe Tal has also for many years in a variety of different settings, school district conversations that are similar in terms of unpacking what it means to be in a position of power and privilege when you're serving people and how you make sure you create space for voices to be heard and issues to be talked about in terms of people's perceptions of structures of power and their realities. And I think she's very skilled in this work. And so I'm excited that she's open and very excited, I think more than open, very excited to work with us in Winooski. She has done work with the school district in Winooski. So she's very familiar with the community. So I'm excited to move it forward. Yeah, I would add to that. I think Sue brings a real strength in engaging the community and getting people to share stories. And what I like about the proposal is how they'll wrap it around and help us maybe have ongoing conversations so that we can continue to grow and learn. So I think it's going to be a really great project for the city. Thank you all for engaging this and all your work to make this possible. The proposal and yeah, it's great. Any questions for Jesse or for how Nicole? I do actually. And what both of you just said is very helpful because the proposal itself was very unclear to me. Like I don't understand what it is we're getting by the description. I know there was like mention of a small planning team and then a six week dialogue experience. And I would be curious to hear more details of like what this actually, what that means and what it looks like. So I think it's intended to not be fully defined before you start to work with people in the community. But the notion that Hal and I talked with her about is having a one day training is really insufficient to move this work in a meaningful way. And so I think the idea is to identify through maybe through the workshop or some other means of a poor group of folks that want to continue the dialogue in a supported way over the course of six weeks or so. And then but have the membership of that group the membership of that group not be defined at the outset but or the outcomes necessarily. I mean, Sue is really focused on having people own this conversation. And it's not like this is the program that we're gonna run in your community for the next six weeks. So I think that's why there's not maybe a lot of detail, but we have had extensive, we have seen more detailed proposals and I think this is a letter of agreement. So it may not be as detailed. But the concept is to build off of the one day training with a group of folks who represent the different commissions and constituencies within the community in order to take it further. And then build from that and see what, is this something we should continue was this a successful model to use in this community? And I don't know if that helps Christina. I and I didn't look at this before the minimum just add in the website now. It looks like there are some videos and examples of what was done in other communities that might be helpful from an understanding standpoint to what might come about. I think that approach makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, if we're talking about work of getting trained to better recognize our own unconscious bias and how we bring our experiences and power and privilege into enacting systems that systems of oppression. I don't think we wanna start creating systems for how this work over six weeks looks without having coming together as a group first. I think that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And we'll be getting together next week to flesh it out even further. So it's an ongoing process. Other questions, comments, concerns? Council? Do people have conflict? So I think it would be great to have all five of you there for the full day. Do people have conflict on January 19th or February 16th? I do on January 19th. Okay. I do on both. Those are both the New Years Council weekends. So I'm fully committed for the whole weekend because I'll be training a group of 15 people from set up to sundown on Saturday and sundown those weekends. So one of the conversations we had with the Palo de Col and Sue and Keisha was, actually, I'm not sure you were, I was trying to do this before town meeting day with the current sitting council or do we wait and do it after town meeting day with the new sitting council? I think that's a decision for you all to make. And I think if those two dates aren't great, it would be great to have some dates that would work. I'm actually good on the 19th. Just, sorry, I'm gonna be back in DC until the 17th, 19th. Maybe we wanna send a doodle around and then at risk of failure. Number one, I actually am of the opinion that this group initiated it and it wouldn't be a bad thing for them to give that feedback to get the process rolling and started because I think you're gonna have to do a whole new re-engagement and re-explanation of this issue. So before you get people to commit a Saturday. Yeah, so that's a concern to me. I actually, usually I would rather punt if it's gonna be ongoing work to the next incoming council, but I don't know, for this it seems like that might really slow this down. What do you mean by two cents? What do other people think about that? I mean you are then committing the future city leadership, but I also see this as much of an opportunity to get staff, resources and training and exposure to. It's really engaging sort of a broader cycle of training. That's not just us impressing. I think our opinions quite frankly are kind of minor in this to be blunt. I mean, our reflections are gonna help shape what they're gonna do, but the people sitting here, I don't think are going to totally inform a process. We shouldn't be, that's the point and goal. We know what we think. I mean, this is work that I feel really strongly about and have some thoughts to share about. So I would love to be able to participate. That said, you know, I'll defer to them. But I think that helps them. Then we can shoot for dates and then within, if everybody's comfortable with that direction to try to move forward with it and with the existing body. You got it. Thanks. Well, that's just assuming, I don't know, but yes. The phone balance is getting kind of low there. Sorry. Other questions, comments, concerns? I just wanted to flag. So the fee in here is for the training. But there's also omis on the city for logistics. And then if we're hosting this on a Saturday, is there also salary that we need to think about paying for? So right now we've thought about this as being leadership team only. And those staff are all exempt. They don't get overtime. So we would have some flex time things where somebody may not work a Monday if they've worked a Saturday or something. But there wouldn't be a financial obligation to them. Okay. I just wanted to be aware if it's really twice or like a significant change in what we're looking at. Questions, concerns from Council? One more thing, just while we're talking about timing. It's okay. Not fully formed thought, but like for inviting commission participants here, how does this align to the whole like realigning to the strategy for them? What do you think for us to think about? Yeah, that kind of broad structural thing, I will say I think should go to the next council. Yeah. Just because that's gonna be a big conversation. I think there might be some steps we could support in that conversation moving forward from giving staff any comments about here some recommendations in terms of developing a plan for that. And I know we don't want it to go forever, but I think actually pulling the trigger on that, talking to them about what we're thinking and showing them the master plan at the same time. I mean, it makes sense, but I think ultimately the new composition of the council should end up accepting that would be my gut on that, but we can revisit it. Well, I feel like there's some connection to like, whatever might be surfaced in an ongoing, like we'll be training dialogue could read into, read the wrong word. I don't know, inform the way we think about the structures. That's true. It actually could end up playing a positive input into what that should look like on the back end too. But it would also, if people are gonna have slightly changed focuses, it might be good to hint to them, hey, as you're thinking about, oh, well, public works, I'm not gonna be involved in thinking about this. Well, actually we're gonna include all of these things in the umbrella of this commission that could include some things we weren't expecting. So that'd be a good thing to at least fly for the minute. So I guess from my perspective, I also think it is an incremental, much as like going to them and asking for the, asking all the commissions for feedback on the master plan was an incremental step to say, your policy work informs this policy vision for the city. I think bringing them all together, there's between the council leadership teams about 15 folks, there are 57 folks if we add on all of the commissioners. So there's significantly more volunteers at the commission level than there are sitting here in this room now. And since I've been here, there's never been an opportunity for them all to come together and do a body of work together. And so I think even if it's not, even if part of that isn't a realignment of the commission structure, it is a step to say, we are all working on a piece of this greater good. And then how do we better support all of us to do, to implement this vision? And it's really through the master plan at that point. So I think it is an incremental step I guess. I think too, I mean from my perspective, this training and ongoing work, gives us a clarity in the lens by which we're viewing that future commission work and the work we're doing as a city, but I wouldn't want to tag that into this work. I want, I would want there to be space just for this. I think it certainly will give us a better lens to look at future work with the commission, but wouldn't want to water down this important work by then putting a bunch of municipal work. Yeah, the ultimate goal of this is to come out of this with a lens of equity in terms of how we do our work, how we lead, how we interact. So I think it's important and we talked about it and I'm glad to see it's come to this. Well, we appreciate everybody's who's involved in getting it pushed along from an idea to something that's actually going to happen. Thank you. Other questions, comments, concerns from council? Can you say what's our name again? Is it Sumacormic? Sumacormic. I'm just like for people who are watching at home to look at, visit the website and see what kind of services. CreativeDiscourse.org. Yeah. And some of the projects listed on here like the downtown revitalization, Essex Junction, better for Maine, Visiting Nurses' Associations, Waybridge School, Heart and Soul and Essex, which I think was probably the one I was most familiar with. But there are some other ones listed on there too between organizational and some community or municipality-focused work towards serve for lot too. Yeah, we did. Other questions, concerns, comments? Questions, concerns, comments from the public? So seeing and hearing none, this is on as a potential voting item. So I would entertain a motion for approval of the equity training and the use of fund balances as described in the memo. So moved. Second. Motion by Nicole, second by Alan. Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing none, those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And those opposed, motion carries. That concludes tonight's regular agenda. I would entertain a motion for adjournment. So moved. Second. Motion by second by Christine. Any further discussion? Seeing and hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, motion carries. And just as a reminder to folks, we do have a council meeting next Monday as we continue our budget process. So we'll see you all on the 17th. And I do not think we're going to hit an hour and a half next week. I think next week is going to be a bit long. All right, we're on. What is it? So it's community services. We're officially adjourned, Jim.