 The first item on the agenda is to approve the agenda. I know one change is that we're not going to be doing the minutes as part of the content agenda because the clerk hasn't found us that they're not ready yet. There are already other changes people like to make to the agenda. In that, we'll consider the agenda approved. The next item on the agenda is agenda business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on any item that is not on tonight's agenda. So we're going to ask for your comments to approximately two minutes. And we'll go ahead and take those comments now. You can go first, Steve. I don't know if you all saw the piece in the Times Argus. I want to raise the temperatures are dropping again tonight and tomorrow night to deadly levels. And the motions of like opening the memorial room till 430 and then just saying you're on your own. And I went to the city manager and as last Friday and said, we should at least open up the info booth unlocked that info booth. And instead it stayed locked. He didn't find the key didn't return the call and somebody sleeping bag was locked up in there. So we are we are recklessly we're we are it may puncture. It may puncture sovereign immunity. If you reckless indifference to life and death situations, you know, we can't leave people outside at 10 and 20 below. And yet we are turning a blind eye to it as if it's all handled by our unaccountable nonprofit partners. So the fact that I said open open direct center open, you know, keep someplace open the teen center could be open. You know, you need to provide some measure of safety to these folks that are unhoused. And, and I got not I got crickets, even though he agreed to find out how it could get open and then call me back. Snow removal, you put this very onerous parking restrictions in place. And yet the city's not living up to its half of the bargain. You know, you're not plowing the snow while the cars aren't there. And that's why we agreed to move the cars and go way out of the way to park somewhere else to keep those streets open tonight. And yet you're not doing the work, or your people are doing the work. And to me that's just that's ripping off the citizens, you know. So those are those are the two minutes. Thank you. On line I see Peter Kelman and then Vicki Wayne. Hi, Peter Kelman, my period district three. At last week's budget hearing, a number of people myself included commented on the lack of transparency and clear and timely communication regarding a good bit of the budget. At the very end of the meeting, Bill Frazier expressed perplexity about people being at an open meeting complaining about this. So, I'd like to very briefly explain to Bill what I meant, and what I think some other people met, and a good example is getting on to this meeting. I went up and clicked on the zoom link, and oh, I needed to get the passcode to get on. Why do we have that additional block for people, if you're going to send out a link why can't the link go straight through most new meetings do that. And the agenda packet. I went to look at the agenda packet for the meeting early this afternoon, and I noticed there was virtually nothing for the budget item on it. So I sent a note to Bill and I suggested that first of all, he should include that terrific PowerPoint presentation that he gave last time that should be on there. In fact, it should have been on there the first time so people would have a chance to read it ahead of the meeting. And it really answers about 90% of the questions that were asked. And, and he here Cameron put it on a little later in the afternoon which was great because it gave me a chance to look at it again and come up with a bunch of questions which I'll ask later. But it doesn't include any agenda packet it doesn't include the link to the budget book. The book link, if you go to it doesn't really have a real budget. It's got a kind of an overview and it's got a bunch of other stuff that isn't really all that useful some very pretty grass etc etc. And it really isn't until you look at the bottom of one of them and see a place where it says spreadsheet breakdown that you get to the actual budget. But that budget is impenetrable, although some of us know how to read those kind of things and can find stuff but it's really hard to get at my point being that what we really need in a budget process. What we need is to have the budget to be put into plain language language that anybody, the sixth grade education can understand and bills presentation was a pretty good example of it it did have a few acronyms that I had to guess at, which we shouldn't be in there, but we need to have more plain language now. The other thing we need to do timely. Is the second hearing. If I am not mistaken on the 24th, the budget item will go up on the, the ballot. So, obviously, tonight, you guys are going to vote for the budget. So pretty much anything that any of us say, or question, or have an opinion about tonight isn't going to count for very much. I'm not sure that there even was any much change from people who got a chance to talk last week. But certainly tonight can't be really considered to be a budget hearing. Oh yeah, you're going to hear us, but it's too late. I really rethink the process so that you engage people in budget making, just like you engage the city council and the city council and the city manager work work together, people need to be engaged early and often. Thank you. Thank you, Peter. No, Vicki way. I, I should have written this down. I have a couple of responses to Peter. It did take me a few meetings to figure out how to do the, you know, meeting link and then the password thingy, whatever what I do is when I go on to the city's website and go to Orca media and call up the agenda. I just put a little piece of paper next to me and I write down the password and then when I'm ready to go to the meeting. I call it up, click on it, put in the password and I'm done in about less than two minutes, less than a minute. What I wanted to say was that I would hope that we could start having people speak and make points without the accusatory stuff going on. I think the points would be better taken. If there was less acrimony and less and fewer accusations that may or may not have anything to do with reality. So I would hope that we could have a more civil conversations. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else I don't see any more hands online. Is there is that just me. Oh, okay, Maria Maria. Why don't you go ahead. You're muted. You're muted. I can't. This is Maria. Maria, you need to unmute yourself. I thought I had, I clicked on it. I'm finding it somewhat difficult to locate some information and get informed and I don't know if this will be dealt with later but we have a pretty large bond vote coming up regarding rec center. And despite looking through the city's website, multiple departments and searching the local publications, I can find very little information on exactly what's being proposed for the 8 million that we're ultimately going to be putting into this. And I would certainly expect clear communication about what the business plan is basically before you come to the taxpayers for that kind of money. Where can we find this information. Well in advance of town meeting day. And why isn't it clear now. I have a point Maria and the, the bond vote right now is to purchase the property. And that's a relatively new opportunity that the city had and we've looked for years for a place for a rec center and felt this was strategic to move forward with this we do need to put a more detailed plan because obviously a land that size can have multiple uses, including, you know, rec facilities rec building possible housing and other things. So, if this passes we will then go through a whole sort of a publicly engaged planning process for the build out or use of the long term use of that property. There's a, to some extent it was a strategic parcel and Jay may want to respond to so I appreciate your question we've tried to explain what we know today, but we don't have much more than what we've said. No, I don't want to add much more than other than that what's on the bond is a $2 million vote not 8 million. So I just want that she was clear on on what we're talking about here. I grasped that, but I think that what's out there is a proposal to buy this property and then put 6 million into it. And I guess I'm curious as to what the contingency plan is if we decide not to go forward with 6 million to improve that property. We're taking it off the tax rolls if the city buys it so it's a liability in two ways. Then there's a development costs which we may decide is more than the city wants to carry. And what will we do with the property in that case. It's a big outlay as a just in case. Well, you're correct. And the we don't know that it's 6 million. I mean, that was what the estimate meeting the rec center is, but I mean, that's a fair you know, yes, there will be a significant capital investment for a new property after that. There's again, I don't want to speculate too much, because we don't know but you know the property could be resold potential that portions of it could be sold even after we own it. So, but all the questions are asking you know what we're sort of working on next steps ourselves. So, what are we buying precisely that even that isn't clear. How many acres is included. What buildings are included. I've only been up there once so it's approximately 138 acres and it's all the buildings that are there. Okay, hold up on the rest of this discussion until we get to that item on the agenda. Okay, so there will be more clarity coming I'm sorry. I don't know if there's any more clarity but they're going to be listed discussion about it. Okay. So hold other questions until then thank you. Okay. I'm not seeing any other. Kim Cheney. You have your thumbs up sign camera you're going to speak. Oh, Cameron's working on. I wanted to talk when you're the Central Mount Public Safety Authority item comes up. Thank you. I'm sorry I apologize. Okay, moving to the next item on the agenda, the consent agenda. Is there a motion. Second. Moved in second the consent agenda as presented. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed. Okay, thank you. We're moving on to item five on the agenda. The order report. This is this was taken up last week and the council decided that we wanted to have more time to review the. The order report before. Voting to accept it. Is that Heather graves there? No, that's Heather graves. Yes. Okay. Okay. Okay. Kelly. I'm a finance director. Oh, yeah. Sorry about that. I'm going to leave it to the auditor's to kind of clean up where we left off last week and go through a presentation to just kind of give all the specifics. And then we can take questions after that if you'd like. Okay. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you for coming. Yeah. Well, I'm glad I could be here and glad we could, you know, take some more time and, you know, continue this conversation from last week. Do I have the ability to share my screen. Now. Go right ahead and share it. All right. How do you do that? So walk me through. I don't see view. I'm not seeing an option here, Kelly, to share this over here. Got it. Thank you. Can everybody see that? Here we are. Thank you. Yes. So I'm going to go back to, uh, to last week and, you know, Kelly had kind of given you a summary through a memo, you know, of the, uh, you know, the fiscal state of the city of Montpelier and talk had some audit talking points. Miranda had, you know, kind of gone through and confirmed, you know, exactly, you know what Kelly had shared with you all. And, you know, when it came into like taking the selected pages of the audit and going through and having some conversation, I know that there was some comment, you know, about not having either access or time to review, you know, the audit financial statements. So what I've done, you know, is taken, you know, certain pages out of that, uh, to generate this presentation tonight and have some conversations, you know, with the city council to, you know, to pick up where we left off last week. So right now you're looking at the balance sheet. Kelly here. Sorry. Um, would you mind just sharing this as a presentation? There's a, there's an arrow in the, um, top of the screen that you click on to. Okay. Hold on Kelly. So bear with me. Oh, no. There you go. You get out of there. So if you go up to the top banner. Yeah. It looks like there's, um, it's almost like playing Pictionary here. I feel like maybe it's the wrong game, but I'm going to try. Um, so if you, you can see where there was an arrow in the top banner, the icon right next to it, um, in between the finger pointing at, you know, deflection. On the left. Keep going. Keep going. On your left. You're almost there right there. Yeah. And then start from the beginning. Okay. There we go. Thank you. See that now. I don't want to confuse this. I don't know what the next slides are going to take out for screen, but do you guys all see everybody's picture on the right too? Yes. Okay. So, so, uh, Kelly, is there any way to get rid of that? Are you all good with that? That is good. And so if you just, um, hit the year enter key, that'll bring you on to the next slide. Okay. So. Right here is a balance sheet for the city as a June 30, 2021, this audit period. And, uh, what it's got is all your governmental funds for the city as of six 30, 21. The one that, uh, you know, obviously as the operational fund for the city of Montpelier is its general fund. And at June 30, 2021, the city had him in the first column, $6 million worth of assets, you know, against liabilities and, uh, obligations, you know, deferrals of assets. And, uh, um, obligations, you know, deferrals of about three million eight 50, which leaves you at the end of the year with equity of about 2.2 million dollars at the city of Montpelier. The big number to be discussed, you know, as the unassigned fund balance, and I'm about the third number up from the bottom, you know, of that column of about $1,600,000 a million, $599, everybody see where I'm at? That's a reduction last year of about, I believe it was about a $200,000 reduction, you know, from last year, the unassigned fund balance went down about $200,000. And the city, as I recall, has a fund balance policy where it's typical that you keep it at Kelly 15% or about 60 days of your operating budget. Does that correct? That is correct. Yeah. So, so to really kind of put that one into perspective, folks, I'm just going to, you know, go down one page and I'm going to come back to these other columns, you know, that you have here, you know, because there's some more details later on, you know, and that, but I'm going to go down one more page, you know, and basically look at the comparative information from 2020. We typically put three years of comparative information to kind of show where your assets and liabilities were where the year before to put it into context. Sadly, as I pretty much qualify every governmental presentation, you know, going forward for the last two years, 2020 and 2021 were a pandemic year. And it's really kind of hard to, you know, to have a conversation of comparison, you know, when you're in the middle of a pandemic and the city was really kind of, you know, going through survival mode, like a lot of other typical, you know, governments, you know, shutting down government furloughing people and, you know, and stopping or halting, you know, certain capital projects and all those are all things that the city of Montpelier did, you know, but there's really nothing that I could say out there for 21 and 20, you know, and 19, you know, given the fact that the most two recent years, including the audit period are in the heart of the pandemic, there's nothing out there that really, you know, really helps out at me as far as the general fund, you know, goes and all of its other activity funds, you know, that would say, hey, there's something that's a real big talking point for a general operations fund here right now, especially during the middle of the pandemic. I don't see it folks, you know, so I'm just going to like flip to the next slide here right now. And again, there's the liability comparison. I'll use the, you know, the same comparison, you know, with the city's assets, you know, as far as, you know, for a three year comparison, there's nothing clearly that jumps out to me, you know, in a three year comparison, your accounts payable were almost identical, you know, your accruals were almost identical, you know, and clearly, you know, the one thing that we'll talk about here in a second, you know, is your intercompany and pooled cash in the due to due of other funds, you know, on the right, you know, that's definitely going to be a conversation piece that we're going to talk about at the end of the presentation. Here's one, certainly, you know, that, you know, just kind of like redirects the city's commitments and, you know, carry forwards and some of the obligations and, you know, council actions to reserve and restrict, you know, various monies of the city, you know, and in the full audit report, you'd actually have the complete breakdown of what those are, you know, with the council resolutions and the carry forwards, you know, of what that number is. And that is money that the city has set aside for specified projects that is not in addition to the next slide of your unassigned fund balance of $1.6 million. And you can see right now that the city's unassigned fund balance, you know, in 2021, the $1.5 million, the totality of your fund balance, you know, would actually went down, but the general fund unassigned fund balance actually was maintaining, you know, a little less than 60 days, you know, but clearly, you know, and again, it's really hard to give you guys information, you know, and really hard to, you know, to kind of, and still in the midst of a pandemic, especially with all the, you know, the adjustments that the city kind of made to, you know, projects and, you know, and priorities and, you know, certain things that happened at the city, you know, with some of the projects, the TIFF project kind of, you know, coming to a halt, you know, so again, you know, $1.6 million was the general fund balance and in comparison to where it should be, what we like to see and what the city has for a typical fund balance of 15 to 16%, which would be the equivalent of 60 days and the national standards that's put out by many of the, you know, the sounding boards, the authoritative oversight agencies like the governmental accounting standards board says that you want 30, 60 to 90 days of your operating budget in reserve. The city has a policy where it's 15% or 60 days of its operating budget and when you take that into consideration with the funding of the various articles and capital to put that in Montpelier terms, it's about $15 million. So your fund balance would be around $2.12.2 million for representing, you know, and adhering to your fund balance policy, which would try to be close to 60 days of that operating budget. You're at a $1.6 million and that's even shy of what your fund balance policy dictates for the city of Montpelier. So that's definitely a talking point that we're going to talk about in the back of the document and really come into some of the other things, you know, that play a part in that fund balance and how the city will use that fund balance to mitigate various things such as cash flow, such as fronting the TIF project, you know, for the investment, you know, as that TIF was gearing up and the planning and all that. And I think that that was about $1.1 million. There's a variety of things, you know, that the, you know, that the city, you know, will use that fund balance for, you know, and clearly it's shy of what you guys, you know, have set for a benchmark, for lack of a better way to say it, that 60-day, you know, that 60-day mark. There's some other funds that are considered major funds for the city. You know, the capital project, certainly being one of them in the city has a multitude of, you know, various capital projects going on now. The community development fund and the other governmental funds, folks, is predominantly your cemetery funds, your recreation fund that you have. I think you have a senior center fund, you know, that you have out there, and you've got about $2.3 million sitting in those various funds and of which the three predominant ones that make up that $2.3 million are the cemetery funds for the city. You know, it's, you know, it's senior center, you know, and it's recreation fund. There's a breakdown, you know, clearly of what you have for, you know, for your revenue breakdown. You know, clearly a lot of the revenue that's coming into the city is funded predominantly with taxation, you know, and you can see the other breakdown and for those, the reference that we, the product that you all had last year, the full audit report, you know, these color shades that you see, there's actually a detailed breakdown on schedule A and B of your audit report, you know, that actually gives you line by line what those other revenues are. But obviously property taxation, you know, makes up, you know, the lion's share, you know, of what the city has for, you know, for revenue streams coming in. Expenditure is the same way. You can see and get a flavor, you know, of what's going on, you know, that you have here, you know, where your money's going as far as expenses go, you know, public safety is a, is a big expense, you know, for the city. You can see what that representation is based on, you know, a dollar in totality for the city. So there's a breakdown of where your money goes, you know, to, you know, to fund those various departments. And here's something that we always like to put in folks. You can kind of benchmark and gauge, you know, where you are in 20 and, you know, in 21, you know, for, for what's, you know, what's coming from money and what's gone out the door for expenses, just to give you an idea for comparison, you know, and if somebody says, hey, hey, Ron, you know, is there any take on that? It's really tough to really take two pandemic years and really kind of make sense of it all in the world of government in this day and age. Cause that intergovernmental, you know, came in larger than what was budgeted for. Cause the city when it prepared its budget back in 20 for 21, you know, had no idea that it was going to hit a pandemic and no idea the various grants and funds that were going to come into the city, you know, that it typically wasn't used to, you know, so you can see kind of an increase in there folks, you know, of, you know, of what, you know, really what that, you know, there was some money and money that came in that was not property tax related to the city. And a lot of that was various grants and things and other funding that the city got to combat this pandemic and other certain things that were, you know, certainly, certainly some of them, what the city was used to getting, but a lot of that is pandemic funds as well. This is going to be a big talking point here in the, you know, in the past. And this is something that I was looking forward to, you know, having that conversation with you all last week and, you know, and really, you know, kind of bringing you back to another presentation we had done in front of the city council and, you know, and really, you know, what we think is some of the, you know, the, hey, pay attention here area, you know, at the city. And these are all the proprietary funds. These are all in theory funds that are generated with non-property tax payer dollars, you know, but clearly, you know, it's supposed to be paid by service fee revenues, you know, to fund the operations of these various areas. And the one that really, you know, strikes out at me, you know, certainly. And as I said, you know, in the past presentation for the city is the sewer fund at the city. You can clearly see the, you know, in the second column there, the $52 million, I'm about maybe two thirds of the way down the paper, on the paper on the total capital assets of $52 million. You've made a significant investment in infrastructure. In 21, you made a significant investment in infrastructure and upgrades with your treatment plan. And that was one of the conversations that we had in the past council presentation is for lack of a better way to stay at some of these deferred projects and, you know, obligations of the city, you know, that the city was going to have to have a plan for and come up with. And even though the city was in a positive situation, as we're going to see in a minute, you know, a lot of that's really skewed by, you know, grants that came into the city to actually fund this wastewater treatment plant. And it really kind of skews the financial position for the city. And this is something that I know is still a big area of monitoring, you know, with Kelly Heather and, you know, your finance department and Bill, you know, as far as, you know, wastewater and operations and kind of what that plan looks like. But it's also been your biggest significant commitment, you know, that you've made to infrastructure, you know, certainly in 21 and with some other planned, you know, phases that you've got, you know, in the future post-21, you know, that you have right now. And I just want to talk about some of the details of that, that what we've been talking about with, you know, with your management. And then the parking one and the district heat fund, you know, one of the comments that we had, you know, with Kelly, you know, regarding those funds is when those funds were birthed, you know, at the, you know, at the city and, you know, that there was this intent, you know, what these things were going to look like years ago, you know, the last two years of forever change, not just Montpelier, but government, you know, really kind of, you know, taking a look in the mirror now at some of its, you know, past plans and saying, you know what, if the legislators aren't going to park in the parking lot, people aren't going to visit the hotels and people aren't just coming to downtown. I'm trying to put it in Montpelier language here. You know, maybe we need to revisit that utility fund and maybe we need to redefine, you know, what that is because the city, you know, I believe made in the next slide that you'll see a $200,000, you know, transfer to break that fund back to zero, you know, and basically make it whole. And I think that that's certainly going to be something that's going to be carried on as a practice going forward, you know, as long as, you know, quite frankly, this pandemic has changed the way that we communicate and changed the way we do business and really quite frankly is keeping people out of cars and keeping them home and safe. And that really is going to affect your parking lot, folks, you know, and that fund. And I think, and as I've said to Kelly and Heather and is the, you know, is a simple fact that might be time to go back and look at that fund, you know, its birth rights and really that plan. And I know that that certainly is being looked at by management. And the same goes with the district heat fund. The city made a tremendous $9.5 million, folks, tremendous, you know, infrastructure project down there, you know, with the sidewalks and all that and keeping, you know, and keeping, you know, that infrastructure maintained, heated and, you know, and up to date, you know, and operationally, you know, as you look at the, look at the, you know, the parking fund for the district heat and this slide is really going to tell a story here. You know, as you go down to the, you know, to the bottom, you know, of what this thing is, you know, for the, for the district heat fund, you know, operationally, that heat fund is in the whole, and I'm again, second column, you know, from the left, $381,000, you know, folks, you know, third number up from the bottom. So there's some conversation that have been had, you know, with, you know, Kelly or staff and, you know, in the city management, you know, regarding, you know, what I think it might be time that the city go back and I know that that's certainly eyes on right now with Kelly and her staff, go back to looking at these parking funds and this district heat fund and really kind of looking, you know, at its birth rights and how that's funded forever going forward. And then again, your sewer fund, you know, the, you know, it just, you know, somebody says, what do you look at here? I look at about, you know, 11, 12, $11 million plus of bonds that you put into your, you know, your wastewater treatment plan last year, predominantly funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, you know, that, that were necessary renovations and upgrades. And I think that that was only phase one. You've got phase two, possibly phase three, you know, you've got deferred maintenance that you're looking at here and it's not cheap to put pipe in the ground folks this day and age. And I think that that's something that, you know, that again, management continues to look at monitor and, you know, and quite frankly, forced to readjust their plan, you know, and how it's going to, you know, to take care of maintained wastewater in the city of Montpelier. So utility funds are certainly one of the big conversation pieces that we had with you, you know, and your management this year. And I think that that's something between wastewater parking and district heat that the city really, you know, still has to take hard looks at that, going to make some hard decisions and, you know, and quite frankly go back to again, some of these birth rights on, you know, how these things got created and what their intent was, you know, and make adjustments where necessary or continue to make adjustments where necessary. This is a three year graph, you know, as far as what you own in those proprietary funds, you'll clearly see the non-current assets, which is your fixed assets or infrastructure. You'll see the level of increase in the investment that the city has made, you know, during 2021 net of depreciation to, you know, where the city, you know, you clearly see that trend is that the city is putting a lot of money in infrastructure, you know, and this graph is nothing more than support for that statement. Liabilities, you know, a lot of that, you know, your current and non-current would be the long-term portion beyond one year of your debt service payments and, you know, and clearly the city has, you know, has made the decision, which I completely concur with, to go fund these infrastructure upgrades, you know, by borrowing. You use, government should use long-term money to fund long-term investments and clearly 11 plus million dollars for wastewater was invested, you know, in 2021. And really, you know, again, here's what came in the door and here's what went out the door and here's really some more talking points, you know, for the city and the one big one for the sewer fund, wastewater, you know, which I alluded to up front as we were, you know, kind of talking about those proprietary funds and as we get closer to the back to our talking points, when you look at that second column and you look at that line item, about three quarters of the way down the page to capital grants under the sewer fund, you're going to see about 3.7 million dollars of grants that came in from I believe Kelly predominantly that was all rural development, correct? The lion's tear, yes. Yeah, so that 3.7 million dollars, if that number is not in there and you go down into the change of net position, basically what you took in and what went out the door, you know, for the city's wastewater fund, that really excludes infrastructure, you know, the city actually looks like it was in a positive condition of about 3,250,000 dollars. If you take that capital grant of 3.7 million dollars, it brings to light the talking point of Kelly and the challenges that the city has right now with trying to understand, you know, the operations of this thing, keep the balance of maintaining the operations of the sewer fund, but also keep the balance of, you know, of continued and deferred maintenance and really addressing that plan. It really takes the city out of a favorable financial position and you've got a lot of people that would go up and say, but Ron, depreciation or a paper number for 1,059,000 dollars and I'm still in that sewer fund and I'm about halfway up with depreciation. You know, that's a paper number. That's money that physically didn't walk out the door, but when you first put that pipe in the ground, that depreciation is a real, real important number because it really turns the hourglass over. Not over for, not only for kind of looking at a capital plan and, you know, how you're going to fund those future renovations, but also how you're going to maintain that. And what we're seeing a lot of governments do in the area of water and wastewater is they're actually setting aside reserve funds, maintenance reserve funds, capital replacement reserve funds. And these are all things that I know are being looked at by your management. You know, we kind of look forward to being a sounding board, you know, for, you know, for that as you go forward. The next column, the parking fund, you can look down and look at what his next net position was, was zero. And to get to zero at June 30, 2021, the city transferred in $203,000. I'm about five or six members up from the bottom in that column. So you're at really kind of a break-even point, you know, with your parking fund. And I don't think it was ever the intention, you know, that the city could have realized when these things got birth that, you know, people quite frankly were, you know, because of something outside and beyond its control of pandemic, you know, was really kind of going to control the volume and, you know, and really dictate, you know, the future, you know, of that parking lot, whether it's city, not the city, you know, needs to look at other alternative methods, you know, to doing because people aren't coming to Montpelier, you know, and people aren't coming to beaches, you know, people aren't coming to places that they used to come. So it's really kind of forcing government, you know, to look at, you know, these, you know, these, these various enterprise funds, you know, that were, you know, that were built and developed, you know, with certain details, you know, that quite frankly the pandemic or other external influences have forever kind of changed that DNA. And again, I know that this was big topics of conversations with your management. And the district heat fund, you know, although certainly it looks like, you know, that you've got $4.3 million, largely, you know, in, in, in tack of net position, all of that folks is tied up into the infrastructure, you know, of that fund. So you can't physically put your hands on any money. And I think that that's another fund that the, you know, as I know that the city continues to monitor, it really is going to have to monitor that forever going forward, you know, because I think things have changed, you know, and, you know, I'm confident things have changed. And I'm confident management knows that I'm confident that there was a lot of conversation, you know, regarding, you know, your enterprise funds this year, particularly with the three wastewater parking and district heat. And here's really a three year comparison, you know, of the operational, you know, funds for the, in totality for the city, you know, during the year, there's been a decline, been a decline of fees, you know, parking lot. I think is a big representation of that. And again, the operating expenses, you know, you're going to see, you know, a lot of the operational expenses have gone up, you know, from, from 2019 to 21. I'm really not at, you know, you know, concerned, you know, really about the operational expenses, you know, because I think the city did everything that it had to do to, to really kind of, you know, for less. And it's a horrible analogy, but to stop the bleeding, you know, and some of these, some of these proprietary funds and really, you know, it forced the city to make some hard decisions and, and a lot of those hardwood decisions were really caused, you know, in the face of a pandemic. And getting into the discussion points here, the business activity funds, which I really tried to emphasize going through the plan, going through the pandemic, the city management continues to, to monitor, you know, the, you know, the financial position and the operations of those, of those business activity funds, those things that are, you know, that are supposed to be paid for with non-property taxation with user fees and, you know, any type of other service fees. And, and, and I know, you know, that that's a, that that is, this is going to be, I think, probably the single biggest challenge that the city is going to have over the next two and three years, you know, is really kind of looking at the business activity funds, you know, and really the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the objectives of them and revisiting any other adjustments that need to be, to be made to them. And I really think that the one thing that this pandemic has done is especially with the last one that was passed in November with the, the build back America, I believe is what it was coined as, you know, is the money that's gone into the infrastructure, you know, typically, you know, government, you know, through CARES and through APA saw some, saw some relief money for, you know, revenue deck, you know, decline, you know, through various hazard pay and, you know, other foreseen things that were caused by the pandemic. But now a lot of these projects, you know, that were deferred because the government didn't really, the projects may have gone away in their entirety or the complexity or the objectives of these, you know, of these, you know, these capital projects or investments would have changed during the pandemic, you know, as they're revisiting these things, they're finding out now that the cost has some, some things, you know, have almost double gone up by 20%, 30%, 40%, you know, so it's literally forcing government to really kind of look at the projects that it has, reprioritize, but the, the federal government also realized that. And the last stimulus package back in November, compounded with the one in Congress right now, which is like, you know, build back America again. You know, I believe that they're trying to pass in January of February. It is deal solely so that government can have an infusion of capital to literally allow you as a political subdivision to mitigate some of these additional cost and, you know, and inflation and some of the other things, you know, that, that go hand in hand with public works, that go hand in hand with water, wastewater, you know, your, your, your, your heat fund, you know, your parking lot. It allows you now to, to have access to some necessary money to kind of mitigate the pandemic, the inflation and, you know, allow you to kind of get back to, to, to business as usual. And let me just say that there's, you know, that there's not enough money to go around and infrastructure and, you know, and, and, and, and there's a recent knock, you know, at the federal government with this latest stimulus packages being, you know, trying to be passed in Congress right now is that the states are holding on to a lot of this money. And that doesn't help out the municipalities. You know, so I encourage you to work with your state departments on who typically will fund, you know, this because the states have a lot of money and the states haven't distributed a lot of money for infrastructure and for education, you know, and I know the states are now getting a lot of pressure from Congress to, you know, to go back and say, well, we've passed out a lot of money. What are you doing with it? And I would expect for the city of Montpelier and, you know, and a lot of the other political subdivisions, you know, in the state of Vermont, with this current infrastructure bill where you haven't seen, you know, any of that money that was passed in November yet. And with the one proposed, I really think it's going to help you address some of your infrastructure, you know, projects and, you know, and really kind of allow you, you know, to, you know, to mitigate the cost of inflation as you deal with these projects. Debt and future debt issuances. The city took on a lot of debt this year. It was about $11 million. That doesn't concern me, you know, as far as what that goes, you know, because of because I think it was deferred debt. I think it was deferred maintenance. I think it was all absolutely necessary, you know, but the city continues to monitor future debt borrowings and, you know, really kind of trying to understand some of the, you know, the, you know, the challenges that it faces as it continues to, you know, to make infrastructure repairs and upgrades and renovations, you know, to, you know, necessary renovations, you know, and remember, the city had invested, I believe, into one of the various TIF projects that came to a halt, $1.1 million. And I know the city is working with the bond bank right now on reimbursing itself for that $1.1 million. You know, the city's trying to understand, you know, what the, you know, the relationship of what that reimbursement is going to look like. And as far as, you know, the DNA of what that bond is going to look like, they continue to look like, look at that. We're having conversations with, you know, with management, you know, about that. But if that debt does not come through for the city, that's going to be $1.1 million of cash that the city invested in this TIF and good faith, thinking that this thing was, you know, was going to move through. And if that money doesn't come through, the city's unassigned fund balance and cash flow is going to take a hit by $1.1 million. And mom, peel your can't afford that. It just can't afford it. And then lastly, with the November stimulus package, you know, about to be introduced to, you know, to the various states and accessible by the municipalities. The 2021 November infrastructure, you know, package about building America back. And then the one that's in Congress right now being talked about, you know, clearly with all this money coming your way, you know, there's going to be some wholesale changes to federal procurement that the federal government, the various agencies are still working on. We continue to work with your management on upgrading its procurement policies to really kind of accommodate, you know, the, you know, the future federal stimulus funds that you're going to get. That's about all I got, folks. And I'd certainly, you know, Kelly and Bill, open it up to any questions that you all may have. Okay. Thank you. Other council members may have some questions. I'll just start off with one or two questions I have. You know, when I review an audit report, as I understand it, one of the things that I'm always interested in is whether the audit discloses that the city's books present an accurate depiction of the city's financial positions, assets and liabilities, expenditures, and whether the operations are in compliance with the generally accepted accounting principles. And as I understand your report, we have received a clean report on those items. Is that correct? Correct, Bill. To kind of piggyback on Kelly's memo last week and Miranda's confirmation, you know, we've got our highest opinion and that's called an unmodified, you know, report bill which basically says that the city's financial statements present fairly. Great. Thank you. Any other members of the council have any questions? Donna. We should all cheer Kelly and your crew. Yay. It was a Herculean effort, folks. And I know that Bill and Kelly really wanted to put this in front of you, you know, last week and, you know, I'm glad that we did because I want you all to feel comfortable. This was a Herculean effort, folks, you know, by your staff, you know, working with us really to kind of get to where we're at here today and hats off to them. Yes. And I do appreciate so many of your comments, Ron, not only for this audit, but for future budgeting. A lot of it resonated. So thank you for taking the time. And one thing I would just add on to that. And the one thing that I always qualify, you know, these, you know, these future investments that these, you know, the stimulus, I've been doing this for 30 years. The last time we saw it, it really was nothing, you know, what it looks like now is back in 2008 with these error funds. And one of the things that I caution government to use is use this money and make it meaningful to Montpelier, because this money is going to go away, stay true to who you are, stay true to your plan, make your adjustments, you know, and, you know, and I think that there's one thing about Montpelier as an outsider looking in Montpelier was way out with this pandemic in front of it, you know, trying to really kind of mitigate, you know, some of the pain that you were going to feel, you know, and I commend you for doing that, stay true to who you are, look at these plans, look at these funds. And as a stimulus money comes in, make sure that it really complements who you are and what you intend to do. Thank you. Any more comments on the side of the table? Any comments or questions on the side of the table? Thank you, Lane. I see you have your hand up. Yes, I was just wondering, is this the first year that this particular firm has been auditing us? No, it's not. Oh, okay. I believe we're in the third year of our contract. Oh, okay. I must have missed that. I was just curious. Nothing. You know, just curious. Okay. Thank you with that. The chair would entertain a motion to accept the audit. Any discussion. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed. The order is accepted. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Ron and Miranda for being here. Miranda, Miranda's the brains. Kelly, I'll find you so we can continue our conversations. You all be safe. Folks. Thank you. Okay. We are up to item. Six on the agenda. Discussion of the central month public safety authority. Donna, do you want to kick this off? Yes, I did have a present. I thought there was a lot of comments made during public comment as well as this topic that it would be good to give people a little bit of orientation and I'll try not to take too long, but hit the highlights. And I thought it might be good to have something to look at. And as always Cameron is helping me with technology. Well, I haven't helped yet. So let's make sure explain some names. So center from our public safety authority could be called CV PSA, which you'll see on the slides. But I tend to say public safety authority. Another entity that's up on the slides that I call capital far this capital far mutual aid system. Sometimes it's known by its initials, but I have chosen not to use them. I'm trying to use real names. And hopefully I can keep you understanding who I'm talking about. Now I am wearing two masks. So anybody can't hear me either here or online. Put your hand up. That would be good. So the public safety authority actually started out with four municipals involved. Berry city, Berry town, Berlin and Montpelier. There were others like Northfield that attended off and on, but for five years we meant. And we worked on this charter. This charter includes not only the functionality of the board and the organization, but also governance of its members, cost allocation systems. And it went to before the legislatures and, you know, working with the legislatures, you have a lot of work there. And it was in 2014 that we finally got it approved and we were chartered and we had our first meeting with a handoff from central Vermont chamber of commerce was holding the committee meetings to the actual board of public safety authority. August and 14. Now March 2015 was the first time the organization attained money. It was $75,000. So we could hire an executive director. We were very, very lucky to get Paco. He was retired from Vermont safety department as deputy commissioner. They are very experienced and we hired him as a part time executive director. And he within six months created a, what we call a business plan. And we were looking at after meeting with the public safety authorities, public safety departments in the four towns that we had started with, as well as Barry and Montpeyre. We realized that dispatch might be the beginning place for us to look at regionalizing. Because we could have looked at the police department, the fire department. Dispatching was a central issue of communication. So his business plan was a model about whether it could be a centralized brand new dispatch building, or would it include both sites in Barry and Montpeyre, what we call one system, both using the same system and overlapping. And hence we'd keep both dispatch centers open in both cities. And that actually was presented to the councils, but it was not accepted as an operating plan. So in November in 2016, again, working with the city's public safety staff, under their advisement, we added an executive committee to our business plan where the police chief and the fire chiefs were part of the oversight of the operations. In 2017, the very beginning, we refined the one system with two locations as advised by the public safety staff. Again, it was not accepted as an operating plan by Barry and Montpeyre city councils. And they both encouraged us to find a third member. And we really wanted members, but I must say at some point we weren't playing as much time in seeking new members as you were trying to make good partners with the members we had. In 2018, Capital Far Mutual Aid System joined public safety authority under an MOU. They weren't a pure municipal, they were a group organizing 30 different towns. In December 2018, with the advisement of Capital Far and their participation, we looked at one centralized dispatch center, either renting or leasing with a simulcast system that was very important to Capital Far. And we laid out a cost allocation plan. This was not accepted by the Barry and Montpeyre city councils. And at that point, our executive director resigned. He felt there wasn't support for his work and he needed to leave. So in 2019, 2020, 2021, and beginning in 2022, we are without any staff. And as all of you know from our city committees, when you don't have a staff member there, there are things that fall through the crack. It is hard. But we have kept our spending under $5,000. We have our website, we have board liability insurance. We have given money to dispatch training. Very successful, all of Montpeyre's dispatchers have been certified, federally certified. And we've had enough money to keep and maintain as people come in. That's really good. Now, in August of 2021, we have brought forth a report to the cities about telecommunication need assessment report. Now, this was where we had gotten money two years before for $50,000. We took that and added it to our fund balance. And we spent $55,000 for phase one of an assessment and planning. And this dealt with telecommunication, all the radios, all the towers, huge study. And we were very pleased. And we heard very positive comments from Barry city staff, Montpeyre city staff and capital far. They made their own recommendations that came out of it. Everybody was in sync. And I must admit, I felt the central public safety authority board really thought we were having a turning point in our relationship that we were really going to have some clear action from not only us, but from our partners. And that hasn't worked out so good. Barry city has decided they'd like to report. They're going to use the report to move forward to get their councils to work on in building communication issues. But they don't feel a need right now to work with public safety authority or capital far on what capital far once is a simulcast system with radios. And as that says, it's a $3.9 million equipment acquisition. Now, we're not talking about upgrades, a simple thing of upgrading your computer. We're talking about having equipment from the 1990s, not only the radios, but these towers that are out there on all sorts of weather that haven't been modified. And you cannot get any federal grant money to apply to a public safety communication system that doesn't meet at least a P 25 standard. And that's what this report that puts out a design of a P 25 standard for radios, consoles, et cetera. Now, that report not only lays out the design, but also lays out the possibility of moving forward and actually getting perhaps even a new coalition. I mean, I must say I felt public safety authority board was very open saying, okay, if we aren't the entity that will work for our Central Vermont community public safety providers, then fine, let us find, let us help you create one. But you definitely need partnerships. That 3.9 million is not going to be carried by towns of people of 2000 people. I mean, the radio doesn't cost less because there's less people in the town. So we really have to have a regionalized system. And when we applied to lay his grant last year, we've heard again and again, it has to be a regionalized system. It has to have really strong, defined equipment. So we need another step in that equipment. We need to really lay it out. And hence our last $30,000 public safety authority is looking at spending that to get an RFP. So that then it'll be, it'll have to be fine tune when you actually get the funding, but it can help you get grants. If people can see the exact equipment. We said that like he's office said, they really would be much more willing to fund it. If they can see more exactly the equipment and know that the regional system has a strong body and a strong bonding. And unfortunately, public safety authority does not have a strong bonding, does not have a resume and finances because we've only maintained our executive director. We've had one capital grant of $75,000, which we spent on consoles and helping bury a Montpelier with their initial fiber connection. And then we spent our operating funds for training. So the next slide is like, okay, we think visualization works because it combines local resources, local control. And then you can go after state and federal grants. And we feel it can be a more efficient system because it gets rid of town boundaries. The call goes to the nearest truck. It's nearest the house. And one reason we started with Berry City, Berrytown, Berlin and Montpelier, that was the ideal geographic and population base. We had some low level departments. We had Berlin with great tower capacity. There were a lot of things in each of those communities that made a strong system. And we definitely feel that's what you've got to end up with eventually is something like a four system physical being. And that we think it's really, I mean, it is risky for the cities and the towns not to invest and replace this equipment. You're going to have one crisis and it's going to wipe you out because those radios are frail. Those towers are frail. They're totally not only obsolete, but they're crashing. There's a memo that Brian Pete put out recently talked about a couple crashes that happened. We're living on borrowed time and I'm concerned about that. I'm more concerned about that than the existence of public safety authority. I'm really concerned to have worked since 2006 to see some really consolidation of entities so we can work together and get not only the equipment but also help our employees so that they have good training. They have ability to move in employment. So we have good retention. I just think it's a win-win. But the concern today is what is the role of Central Vermont Public Safety Authority? Are we viable for a public safety authority services as now visioned by our members? And so we do have a valid item. The board wanted to move forward to have more consultant work. Whether or not we still exist but still have more consultant work this last year. And so the public knows the way a member withdraw from the public safety authority is a vote of their members. It's the same as how you join. It is a vote from the residents. And so that if indeed you were to vote out, it takes a year to leave. So if this $30,000 was passed and Montpellier decided to put it on their ballot, does we withdraw and that also passed? Then we would still have a year to work with that consultant and help advance this equipment, this RFP. So that could be in a good place for our members should we depart. And I must say, I think it might be really good to put it before the voters because I feel that the councils have not been clear of their own commitment to this regionalized entity. It had members that created the charter, but then select boards change, councils change, staff change. And that hasn't been as solid as when we initially started on the charter. And I'm hoping that if indeed we decide to put that on there, that the voters will get involved and maybe give the council some real clear direction. Questions? I'd like to take questions from the council first and then Jack, you can open it up. Connor, do you mind just like Recap and Barry's current status here? You said they heard the Tel Aviv report. They were like, ah, great, there's stuff we can take from that, but not necessarily through CVPSI. Right. We were asking that Barry Montpellier and Capital Far come to the table with us and work to implement this design system. And Barry felt that they were not committed to this simocast regional system, that they wanted to work on their councils and their radios. Okay, thanks. And, you know, there'll be other board members who will talk who maybe can do it. There was an actual letter that came out. Yes. Both, all the city that Montpellier signed on, Barry signed on. Yeah. They have a copy in his computer. So if I understand it, what you're saying is that Barry City likes everything about this Tel Aviv plan except the part where it would be part of a regional system. They want to go their own, have their own separate dispatch system. Right now what I would say, well, not separate dispatch system, but right now I would say they don't, they indicate they don't want to spend any more time on the more, this $3.9 million acquisition. They want to focus on their council, which is great. That's part of that system that needs to be done. And they're in building issues where they lose communication with their first responders when they go inside buildings. So that's what they want to focus their time on versus joining a committee to work on the larger simulcast system. And this $30,000 ballot proposal is not a request to the municipalities. It's a proposal being put on the ballot by the authority, right? Right. And the authority has taxation authority, but only to its members. Capital FAR is a member by MOU. They're not a municipal. So they're a district FAR union, which is quite different. So we can't tax them. And that was one of the things we were hoping that in phase two, with the consultant work, we would do more outreach with towns and get select boards involved. But right now the FAR stations are mostly independent and volunteers. And is it reasonable to expect other towns to volunteer to join up? In March? No. No, no. But in the foreseeable future? I think only through Capital FAR. I do think that Montpelier has built a great relationship with Capital FAR because a sub branch of that organization called Capital West has several contracts, like 18-20 contracts of dispatching. With Montpelier. So Montpelier and Capital FAR have a very strong relationship. And hence again, public safety authority is totally willing to work with them and our consultant to bring one on board to help them facilitate that happening. Okay, thanks. Anyone else on the council with any questions at this point? You'll have more chances, don't worry. Thank you very much. And Kim, Jamie, you've had your hand up from the very beginning of this presentation. So why don't you go ahead? And you're still muted. Okay. I've been on a board for six years. And it's been a struggle. But what I want to say to this board is the only way that I can see improvements in the communication system is to have an effective regional plan. And there may be difficulties with well, let me stop there. It needs to be an effective regional plan. I think no grant provider will give us money for the towns or the cities unless there's an effective governing plan. CBPSA has the means to do that. But as Donna pointed out, we're a long way from reaching agreement. Chief Pete's plan talks about forming a municipal corporation. But I got to tell you, this is a really complicated business. You would have to work out proportional board representation. You'd have to work out cost allocation between all your members. All of this is in place in CBPSA. I personally opened it and have advocated for changes in the CBPSA board to include fire and police chiefs. The cities have rejected that. But this is the very plan that your police chief is making in some way. But what he leaves out is whoever runs this has to be a public corporation subject to the open meeting law and with transparency. I can't tell you how disturbed I am to have to find out what's going on by Mr. Whitaker filing public document requests. If we're going to work together, we need to get it out on the table. What really needs to happen, and it can happen under the auspices of CBPSA or whatever group you want to have, is essentially a regional plan for getting some grant money to build a communication system throughout the county that would include the hospital. Because, frankly, most fire and EMS services are EMS these days. And I think virtually every Washington County family will have some need for emergency services in the next few years. And unless we plan now, that's not going to happen. But I think the suggestion of this council is any idea to terminate CBPSA is premature. We need to get the RFP built. We need to get a so-called shovel ready plan to give to the grant makers at the state level, which is where the money has to come from. I think that's going to happen sometime between we need to put this together in the next couple of three months. Because I think grants will become sometime this coming summer and we need to be ready. But we need to have an organization that can handle it. And we have to clearly say who owns it, who maintains it, and who pays for it. And those are tasks that are in front of us. And I urge this council, let's give it a try here. If it doesn't work out, there'll be primary elections in September or whatever they are. And this matter of withdrawal could come up then. But it should not come up unless there's an alternative in place. And I have not heard any viable alternative that will get anybody at the state level to even consider a major grant to get at the kind of things that we need because we just haven't sorted out all the government's issues. And so, Kim, as part of your thinking that all the shortcomings of the Central Vermont Public Safety Authority, it's essentially the only possible vehicle to get us where we need to get in the foreseeable future? Yes, and there's something to say that the board can't be remade and restructured. That's completely possible. And I can see proportional representation for towns to belong to this central organization. And when we did the planning for regional dispatch, it shows what everybody knew would happen. If you band together, your expenses can be better managed and you'll get better service. Will it save money? Well, we figured out it would for that particular project because what we were doing with dispatching was so inefficient that they were paying huge amounts in overtime. And you could organize it in a way so that you didn't need those expenses. That was a substantial example. But it's an example about how cooperation working together can actually be more efficient. And in any case, I don't see any money coming for our needs from the state unless and until we figure out how to do this. And we ought to start right now and plan how we're going to do it. Thanks, Kim. Justin Dreschler. Hey, everyone. Thanks, Kim. Thanks, Donna. I am large part agree with both Kim and Donna. I think they're those parts saying the same things. Jack, can you hear me? Yeah, could you please just say who you are? Sure. Justin Dreschler, CVPSA member. So take what I say with the grain of salt. So having looked through this, the history of the committee and studied it and looked at the charter, the authority has this extraordinary amount of power like in theory, but in practice it has none has been my experience so far. Is that it could do a lot, but it's actually doing nothing. And Jim Ward said it best at the last hearing, which is that it's much closer to an exploratory committee than it is to an authority with any sort of bite. That's essentially what's been happening. So the authority is trying to get it back to the city council. We're trying to get it back to the city council. We're trying to get all these different options presenting them to various city councils and then being rejected. And so Donna explained that whole process where all this work is happening, but there's no buy in from anybody. Anywhere. There's no buy in from Montpelier. Like if we're being honest, there's no buy in all as far as I can see from Montpelier itself. And I, I don't know why. I think it's true as Mr. Whitaker has pointed out that Montpelier has a conflict of interest. I don't, I'm not saying that Montpelier is engaged in some sort of conspiracy to undermine the CVPSA by any means, but the dispatch contract creates a very clear and obvious conflict of interest. And you don't need to be actively thinking about that conflict of interest or conspiring to, or engaging in any sort of like ill behavior, but that conflict is there. And I have to question whether that informs this complete lack of buy-in from the town, but it's not just Montpelier. Nobody cares. Nobody cares about this project. And if Montpelier isn't going to care, nothing's ever going to get done. But it's like, we have this wonderful opportunity. The governor is ready to throw millions of dollars into his budget that we could tap, but everyone needs to believe. And until we believe, until Barry believes, until the outlying towns believe, nothing is ever going to happen. So that is my, that's my take on this. Thanks. And do you have a thought about what should happen with this ballot proposal? I think you should, I don't think that we should consider withdrawing from CVPSA right now. I think you should give us one more year, see if we could put together an RFP because I do think like, unfortunately, I think what happens to happen here is I think you have to put the cart before the horse. I think you have to get the RFP in place and then go out to all the towns and say, hey, look, we did all the work for you. Do you, do you want to be involved in this process now? Because we think we can get a few million bucks. And then if everybody agrees, then you can go to the governor or then you can go to lay here or whomever and say, look, we get along. We're not all talking shit about each other in the papers all the time. We can, we're here working on something together because that's important. You know, it's important. I think everybody is capable of working together and has the exact same goals. Everyone has the same goals. We just are having a hard time getting there. Okay. Thanks. Good evening. I guess the best place for me to start is to say to everybody is that when capital less was first form, I guess I was instrumental in getting it to where it is today. A lot of people have worked very hard to make capital less work very hard. I'm not so sure I'd go as far as Justin and saying that there's a conflict, but I understand where he's coming from. But I would also echo his, his concerns about where the city of Montpere sits in this whole process. In the history of the cap of the public safety authority, there have been any number of people that have appeared before us and talked to us that were members of public safety organizations that did not want to see public safety authority succeed. In fact, for many months, we even had a lawyer from the city of Montpere. We were able to get an opportunity for internal order of police at our, our meetings. And actually Carolyn was very helpful in trying to get us to a position of providing training for the dispatchers in both very in Montpere who are not getting the training they needed. So we were advocating for that type of training. And I think it did some good in terms of service to the city of Montpere, but also to those people that are in Washington County, greater Washington County. But as far as the future is concerned, I would suggest to you that you have to ask both of the very representatives on the Montpere representatives where are they getting the money to do the things that they say that they're going to do with the operating systems that are in place. Both console systems in both Montpere and Berry need to be replaced. They are beyond by any stretch of the imagination, beyond any life expectancy. Why they're still alive is completely beyond me. Other than the good work of the people that are in those organizations to make those systems work. So in the interest of time, I would ask and urge you not to put it on the ballot, but to ask the questions about what's going to happen and what is the plan for taking care of the consoles and the potential plan joining together of Berry and Montpere to act as a failover system should one of the other fail. Those are things that you should be thinking about. And I would encourage you to think of that and collect that information. And I thank you for listening to me. Thank you. Connor. First off, thanks very much for everybody who's served on this looking at the timeline. Can obviously see it's been a frustrating exercise sometimes, but you know, Tim being on for six years and everything and going to lack of direction, I think from some of the municipalities. Just need to say really appreciate this and sticking with it. The question I had for the group is, do you think this entity is viable without a staffer? It's such a heavy lift. And like a staffer is often like the glue that holds all this together. Like going forward, do you think you need a director as opposed to just consultants kind of piecing it together? Just be interested in your take there. Well, as Bill put on the agenda format, Central Montpublic Safety Authority over its eight years thus far has received 3085,000. And of that 320,000 was spent on an executive director in office. And it's about 80 to $90,000 a year just to have an part-time executive director in office. So I really applaud that the Public Safety Authority Board said, okay, we didn't fire Poco, but when he left, it was like, all right, we've worked four years, four and a half years to try to get some business operating plan accepted. It hasn't. I feel like we can continue without a staff, but I don't want to ask for $100,000. I feel like if my pay or in capital FAR can make it work, go for it. And I have to say they have a stronger bonding, a profile than us. They have a much better relationship with state and federal people. So I would do everything I can to support it. I don't care which entity does it. I just want to see it happen. And, you know, and if the council needs the voters to support them at it, put it on the ballot. If just as top helps, great. But I really don't want to get tied up in administrative money for Public Safety Authority right now. And I know it puts us out of compliance with our charter. But to me, that misses the point is that we have a wonderful study, a little more additional work. To me, it's very important to have the results of the federal and federal tax. I think we can kind of elevate as well, as just an example, is willing to do an extension to base two for $30,000 to work in that RFP. To me, that's a huge jump. Let's, you know, let's do that this next year and then see where we are by then, Montaigneur and capital FAR may have made all those contacts and access that money, but even if we work this year, And once you get a grant, it's a year and a half to get equipment, if we're lucky. So I would rather than to do it the fast track right now of Capital Farm, Montague are working together and going after that money was here now before it disappears. It really, really, we need that equipment folks. It's desperate. Thank you. Steven and then Kim. I've been working for quite a few years on this project. I first spoke at the joint meeting in 2018. I was at that point critiquing the plan for lack of a failover. So I'm delighted to hear Doug Hoyt finally getting the religion that you can't do public safety without a failover site. I'm personally, and I hear others, I'm not ready to squander the 385,000 and the dozens of person years invested in this Tom Galanca and others have invested enormous amount of years Kim Cheney, Doug Hoyt, et cetera, Donna even, but for Donna for this topic of withdrawing to even be presented to the council without having first been voted or approved or discussed on the CVPSA board is really a betrayal of the responsibilities of chair. So I think it's way out of order out of process because the CVPSA board has not discussed this or approved this or suggested this and the person who's supposed to be leading this organization is actually undermining it. So that that's a problem CVPSA has bonding authority to potentially purchase a radio system. They may not need to invoke that in such a flush grant environment, but they also have a governance structure, which is transparent and accountable. And this is part of the accountable is is hearing and being exposed for mismanagement. So capital fire, on the other hand, has a very opaque and non transparent and not accountable system. You've heard me complain repeatedly that the errors that happen in their funded dispatch operation hosted at our police station, including death and delays that could result in death are swept under the rug. The committee has never met to address those issues and make sure they don't happen again. So prying records out of how much revenue is taken in from the town's capital fire is in effect a straw man for Montpelier's dispatch monopoly. And that that cannot be there. There are a good bunch of guys, there are a bunch of fire chiefs. They're not managers. They manage a fire department. They don't manage regional public safety authority and governance. I attended their meeting last night. You heard that there were crashes. The Berry City Radio Dispatch Center went down because someone didn't maintain the UPS, the battery backup system, and tested repeatedly. And some of those units, when the batteries go low, do not pass current through to the console. So they just had to clarify UPS is an unenviable power supply. And that's a necessary piece on any rack. But what's worse is that no one even documented the process. If that ever happens, move this plug over to that outlet and your radio system will be back up. So this went on for some time until the police came over and figured out what was going on and they got the radio system back up. But that's not a failure of a radio system. That's a failure of management of UPS and maintenance. And that's what you can expect. That type of maintenance and management is what you can expect from capital fire. Last night we learned that a tower in Woodbury had been down for days, possibly, and it still wasn't up and it wasn't going to be up today either. So it's very clear that CVPSA is the entity that needs to grow the capacity to manage and finance. It's also critical that this planning for a radio system be integrated with the fiber planning that's being done by CV fiber and with the cellular planning that actually is how the calls originate when somebody needs help. The governors today and a few days ago presented a plan for 51 million to be invested in cellular infrastructure. The future of public safety communications is broadband cellular infrastructure in addition to those radios. You can't do these things separately, but yet the capital fire folks say we can't plan. We don't want to plan. We don't want to engineer. We don't want to have a design engineer independently. And we don't want to integrate planning with cellular and community fiber. That's just short-sighted. It's reckless. It's wasteful of public resources. And the emergency here is fictitious. You just heard that the consoles are way past their life. My pay or consoles are about six years old. In fact, one of them was paid for with CVPSA money. And they've got a useful life of 10 to 15 years. They've been discontinued from support, but they can, a Motorola rep told another public safety authority you can get five more years out of them if you have to just buy a few spare parts. I've told you this before, Stephen, I have a question, not related, not related to the technology, but there's something you said a minute or so ago. You said that you think the public safety authority needs to grow the capacity to develop and manage the next stage. And I wonder if you think it's reasonable to expect that that's going to happen. I think it is. I think Paco, if with a change in leadership, I think Paco would come back on half time at $60,000 a year and pull this together. I think he understands from years of my working with him, the importance of integrating the planning with LTE. In fact, that wasn't with LTE being cellular. Long-term evolution is the cellular technology that we all use, but that's what's going to add public safety, the capacity, drone video, mapping in the field, automatic vehicle location, fire ground, the chief incident, site commander can see what the camera on the fireman is going. It goes into locating a person who's down in a building. LTE does a whole lot of cellular technology, does a lot of public safety that hand-held brick radios will never do. So the integration of these, regardless of whether these firemen realize the opportunity and the necessity of planning for it now, has to be done. And that's where CVPSA can do that better. Berry City, I'm going to respond to a couple of the questions I heard. Berry City, especially the fire company leadership, resents the fact that CVPSA can put an item on the ballot and get some money when they feel they need that money to address personal safety hazards. They've got dead zones. They encouraged, they encountered a dead zone when they were fighting a shed fire just a year ago. And it really scared that they could lose some men. So I respect that urgency, but resentment over a politic of how the money is channeled by a regional authority is not grounds to just throw overboard a necessary regional investment. True, they have some priorities and they should put money into their priorities for in-building communications and infill of radio coverage within Berry. But Berry will grow to understand that they will gain as much as it will cost them from a regional system because the support they'll rely on in large incidents and the cost sharing from regional radio infrastructure will benefit Berry more than it will cost them. So they're focused on local priorities and I admit that, but that too shall pass. I heard from the Berry City manager that that letter that you heard about had not been signed. There was not a signed copy, that it was circulated as a draft and he was surprised that it had been handed out to the cities. Yes, other towns want to join. I've talked to a number of towns that are interested in joining because they absolutely need to have, I've talked to select men in numerous towns and they absolutely need to have control over the escalating costs of dispatch that Cap West is arbitrarily imposing upon them. Right now, and this is a problem with the structure of capital fire being relied upon as the third member rather than those towns joining directly, is that capital fire doesn't answer to the voters the way the select boards do. Capital fire gets its funding from the fire department budgets of its fire chiefs. So the fire chiefs submit a budget to their town, get it approved and then give most of that money to capital fire, which then gives it to Montpelier police department. So that aggregation fund works beautifully to the advantage of Montpelier dispatch, but it totally corrupts the process of the towns feeling like they have a say and some ownership in the process. Well, in terms of practicality, it sounds as though what you're saying is essentially that if this grant money comes through the municipalities that are not members of the authority, we'll see the benefit of joining and we'll get into it. Absolutely. They'll see that they already see the benefit of having seats, voting seats on the board. Any town who joins, in fact, I've suggested that the charter, if possible, the charter be changed to allow a select board to vote in the way they did for fiber optic districts because it would still require a vote of the general populace to do a bond vote because that's where the money liability kicks in, but just to join and have a voting seat on the board and create a governance structure would get this thing off the dime. I just feel we strayed from the topic and Steve is presenting himself as an expert, but there are disagreements on equipment and all of this. I would like us to get back on the topic, is that possible? Yeah. I'm addressing all the topics that I heard and I heard questions from. Well, let's let's I am an expert compared to the self admitted non expert. Let's focus more on the big picture and a little less on the technology issues, which although important or not, okay, what's going to get us in this environment with so much money, hundreds of millions being thrown at broadband, 51 million being thrown at cellular and only 11 million being thrown at public safety in the governor's proposed budget. That's clear that if the CBPSA can do an integrated plan and rely on that broadband money for fiber backhaul towers or delivering broadband, those and generators to support resiliency and in diverse routes of the fiber so that a windstorm doesn't take it out even buried fiber to a tower would be smart. Those costs can be born from the broadband side of the ledger and therefore get a whole lot more bang for the buck from the smaller public safety side of the ledger. Okay, thanks. Are you going to move to the next speaker, Kim and then Vicki. Thank you. I want to address Connor's comment about management. That's the root of this problem, Connor. Unless there is a staff, if you can imagine running 23 towns, all of which have radios that cost $7, $800 a piece and they need maintenance, they need care and they need to have this batch of frequencies so that people can communicate with each other and what we have now is the worst of all systems. We have pre-mandatas in various areas all wanting to do their own thing with no central management and hopefully, I mean, I don't know whether you can use grant money for that type of organization. We didn't put it in the budget this year. Some of us tried but we thought it would be better to see if we can't talk about getting everybody to go or we need to go. It's kind of like calling a regional council to talk about these things and kicking it around. That's going to take some push from the political managers of city managers, slack board members informed by the technical people but it has to be unified. There has to be one management structure. If you can imagine running a police department with six chiefs, pretty soon your head is going to spin and you say, no, maybe we better have one person in charge. We got to get there somehow. We got to be serious about doing it. Thank you. Thanks, Kim. Vicki, you're still not unmuted. My internet connection seems to be a little rocky tonight. Apparently, all the money I paid a Comcast isn't good enough. But anyway, I had a question because I missed some of this because of the internet thing so maybe it's already been said. I had a question for Chief Hoyt. The consoles for the dispatch, are they the original ones that we put in when we built the building or did we bring them over from the city hall? Or are they newer than that? Do you know the answer to that or do you want to respond? It's been a while since we built that building. You're unmuted. Still unmuted. Here we go. There. The system would not let me unmute, but now it will. Thank you. No, the current radio consoles that are sitting in the police department are not the ones that came from the police station in 1980, whenever it was, whenever we built the police station, those have since been replaced. If I'm not mistaken, there's one person here, Kerry McCool, I can tell you how old the radio consoles are. I don't see where Chief Pete is on board, but somebody can get you that information for sure. Thanks. Steve Whitaker said they're 2016. Does that sound about right to you? I can't verify that one way or the other. Okay. Chief Pete is here if we need to speak. Let's bring it back into the council, Donna. No, just that Fred Cummings came here and testified before the council about the problems of replacement parts several years before he left, which is what, over a year ago? Okay. I don't see any hands up. I'd like to get this back to council and move to a decision. So I'll give you my thoughts first, and I don't know if you were trying to get recognized, Bill. Just to add a couple things, whatever you all decide to do is fine. Just to address a comment that was made, the letter that went out from the two cities, the city managers, and the chiefs was not signed per se, but it was certainly all jointly drafted and agreed upon, and when it was sent out, everyone was copied. And to that point, talk a little bit about, I'm certainly not a technical expert, but to simplify the televate study, it basically broke it into three areas. One was the consoles. One was what we call the Barrie Montpelier project, which has to do with the internal radios and the interaction between Montpelier and Barrie, and the third was the simulcast system. And the letter that was sent basically said that the cities will take care of getting their own consoles, and Barrie has about half of the funds already appropriated. They're seeking grants for the other half. We have a third already in hand, and we're planning to probably lease purchase over a two or three years, so those would be in our capital budget. So I think those were, and obviously if we can get grants, great. The larger Barrie Montpelier portion of the project does need funding, but it's certainly not, I mean, that is a regional effort between two cities. It could be done through CV, PSA, or not. In a way that can get handled grant-wise. The third piece was the simulcast system involving the greater region for, you know, capital fire area, for lack of a better term. Barrie expressed very, you know, basically no interest in being part of that. And so that letter communicated that to the board and said that Montpelier was interested in working on that, and we would do so with capital fire and CV, PSA, if necessary, or we would be happy to work on it on our own. So we have attempted, first of all, committed to seeking the project working. And second of all, following the technical guidance, I think our teams did embrace, you know, felt that that report was great. We hear the concerns about cellular and are seeking to make sure that anything that is built is compatible with cellular in the future so that we don't have to duplicate efforts. And we are currently looking for ways to fund these projects for ourselves and for others. But I think the question I have is if the regional authority consists of two communities. It's not a regional body, it's two communities. And if one of them is not interested in expanding to the further region, I think, you know, I mean, I'm not here to speak for Barry. They should be speaking for themselves. And, you know, you could ask them that question. So that's caused the question to us. With regard to the single entity running this, I agree that there's clearly an issue with how capital fire is structured and how you get all the towns in. And I believe that probably the city will have the same challenges that CVPSA has. I'm not sure either one is more better positioned to organize all of that. And, but wherever it ends up, you're going to end up with a single dispatch with somebody running it. And it isn't going to be six chiefs and eight chiefs. The way it is now, we have a single dispatch and an entity contracts with us. So there's only one chief running that dispatch and the rest are customers. Maybe that's a long-term model, maybe it isn't. You know, with regard to the conflict that people have mentioned, the conflict that we feel is an obligation to the customers to make sure we're providing service. And to, you know, Donna, your summary was really great. And I think for people who heard that and kept hearing that those councils didn't go along with the plans and, you know, that I'm sure that is frustrating. I think it's important that the city said at the time this started the city, the then city council and mayor and said, we're interested in this process. We're not interested in changing anything unless it matches or improves the service that we receive now. I'm not meaning to look at you just the way I see this. And as various plans were put forward, the conclusion of the councils at those times or we don't see where this is an improvement over what we're doing. So it wasn't that they didn't appreciate the good work or anything else. It wasn't clear to them how the city delivering services as to its residents and its customers would benefit. So I think we're at a crossroads where we need to move forward with the regional equipment. In fact, a couple of years ago, our city staff at the time, it was Chief Fakas at the time, Chief Gowans and I wrote to CVPSA and said, we think that investing in equipment is the best place you can go. And you have and that's great. So I think the question to be wrestled with is how does a regional authority that consists of only two members and one who doesn't really want to be regional, how does that work? And I don't know the answer to that and does it necessarily have to be decided tonight? Lastly, I'll simply say that people can debate the structure, the benefits of the structure and certainly the looseness, I guess, of capital fire. But we have had a regional dispatch system housing 18, 20 towns for a long time. So the city is very bought into regional dispatch and I think the concept that they were taking two regional dispatches and putting them together to be one big one kind of overlooks the fact that Montpelier has 18 or 20 customers and Barrie has three. Again, that's not a shot at Barrie. It's just saying we're not bringing two equal regional systems together to make one big one. We are taking one significant one and one that really basically just serves themselves in a couple neighboring towns and that's fine. That's been their choice. And so that's been a hurdle to overcome and I agree with Mr. Whitaker that Barrie has a lot of pressing needs and they basically as much as said, we're looking out for Barrie right now. And so that's how I see it and how we at staff see it. We are very much interested in pursuing this project and we see the benefit of serving the region with modern technology, not because it's good for our monopoly. The fact is whoever runs dispatch will have a dispatch monopoly. So if we think a dispatch monopoly is bad, then everyone should have their own little one. So one hand we're saying one big regional entity is good, but then our big regional entity isn't good. So I think we need to be a little consistent in our rhetoric. That said, whatever you all do is obviously your call. And Bill, with regard to the talk, what we've heard tonight about how in 2022, we have a unique opportunity in the next few months to apply for grant funding to implement the televate study. Are you saying that on period standing alone would be just as suitable an entity to be that grant recipient as Central Vermont Public Safety Authority? I don't know if I can say that with 100 percent certainty. Haven't looked into the question. What I do know is that and I agree with what people have said that what systems that are funded are of a regional nature. And if we were to seek funding for a regional project, it would it would include the regional. So I'm not sure whether we would be at any advantage or disadvantage. Perhaps we would be. I don't know. But you know, the capital fire is a member by MOU with CVPSA. They're a member by contract with us. I mean, they're a customer by contract. So I don't know if there's any stronger legal tie to those towns with CVPSA than there is with us. The only issue is CVPSA's funding half comes from the city of Barry, who may or may not want to be a portion of any matching funds. So I think that's it. OK, thanks. Donna, I have the question I have for you. I talked to Kim this afternoon and we've heard him say tonight that it's premature that we don't need to do this right now. And whatever happens this summer, either CVPSA or some other entity gets the grant or not. And that might be a better chance, better time to make this decision. What do you think about that? Oh, I just love the discussion. I mean, it's brought it to the forefront. I mean, really, people are so afraid of discussing things. But yeah, that's fine. I have no no issue. I kind of like that direction. I do appreciate Donna bringing this up, because I think largely we've been not not punting it, but we haven't given it the level of detail that it's needed. As I'm about to say, we should punt it. But now I don't know, like, you know, turn it on the ballot, whether it be now or in August, I think those force like a community discussion, right? It's, you know, we have to sort of justify the worth of this and sort of think the praises of regionalization. And I do wonder, would we have more information that we need to make an intelligent decision in the summer than we would now? Not necessarily. Think about it. People can think about it and talk about it. And we can find out if the grant comes through for Montella and Capital Fire and I mean, it sounds like if it's something we want to do, like safety authority would have to come to Montella and bury for a hundred or a hundred thousand dollars if you wanted us to be a full functioning entity with staff capability to do grants, etc. That's all. So right now, as Bill puts out, we have not got the paying membership of a region. We have two paying customers and that's hard. Well, and we'd have some work to do, right? Because we not only have to convince ourselves, it sounds like we'd have to convince Barry City Council to some extent, though, and that might take some time. So I, you know, I'd be on the page, throw it on the ballot this summer, unless, you know, we're convinced otherwise in the meantime. But I think we do owe it to the people who have served on this board, put the tough work in, you know, to give it a shot the next few months. But I really appreciate bringing it up now. But at this is 2006, it came out of my presidency in the Central Vermont Chamber of Commerce. So nobody's been at it longer. And I just want regionalization again. It doesn't matter which entity. So I thank you for all the time you've given it tonight and hoping it'll be more in the front burner. And we'll continue this discussion. Thank you. Anyone over here have anything? Yes, Lauren. I mean, just briefly, I mean, thank you for bringing this up. I do think this has been a really important and informative discussion. Um, I mean, I, I also agree with Connor's approach. It sounds like with the grant opportunities right now, the RFP, we'd be better informed. And it seems like it gives us the possibility of if CVPSA would be a better entity to get some of the grants, um, even if it had to be like Montpelier staff working, doing some of that work to, um, but having more options to be able to take advantage of funding opportunities. Like if we'd already kind of voted that we were going to mix it in the next year, it seems like that would be hard to put grant proposals forward. So I think that gives us more options. But I think revisiting it just kind of see what happens. And I like giving voters a chance to weigh in sometime in the near future, um, even just for the community discussion, it will spark and, you know, what are our goals and what changes might need to be made to it sounds like the structure and the way it interacts with the councils and stuff is a lot of, uh, storied, uh, challenges. So, um, how can we set it up for success if we're going to keep it? Thanks. Anybody else on council feel a need to say anything else on this point? I feel I'm in that position where everything that there is to say has been said, not necessarily been said by everybody, but Kim, do you, uh, need to add anything at this point? Very quickly. Look, we're talking about how to get money for the, uh, simulcast system. We're not talking about how to get money for the councils. The, you won't have any customers if we don't have a system. And Bill, we're not talking about dispatching. There's no way CVPSA should ever issue a bond issue without membership of the towns being part of it. And everybody would pay their share, uh, depending on the benefit they get from it. That's the work that needs to be done because I don't see any grant money coming in here, uh, to build the simulcast system unless we do that. So they're very different problems. Thanks, Kim. I think that'll be the end of this discussion. It's thanks. Thank you, everybody. This has been a very good discussion. And it, every, I was kind of daunted by the idea of trying to explain all this to the voters of Montpelier in the next month and a half to get a sensible decision. So I think, uh, I think this is a good, a good choice. Um, we're just over our, uh, normal 8 30 PM break. It's 8 33. So at this point we can break for 10 minutes and then we'll be back. Yeah. Okay. You know, we're at 8 44, uh, call the meeting again to order. And we are up to item seven and eight on the agenda and I will call to order the, I'll start the public hearing for the budget and the public hearing for the bonds and we will take those up together starting with the presentation from the city manager. Okay. Hello, everybody. Um, my name is Bill Fraser. I'm the city manager. This is the city council's proposed budget. Second public hearing for the budget and the bonds. For those of you that watched last week, um, it will look remarkably similar. There's some minor changes. Maybe I should do a contest, right? Like what's differences between the pictures, um, but it's a very similar presentation, um, but it is another opportunity for, uh, the public to learn about the budget to ask questions and obviously to try to convince the city council to make any changes as they desire. So tonight, just to be clear, um, it was mentioned earlier tonight, uh, the city, this is the deadline for the city council to make decisions about what goes on the ballot later tonight. We will be finalizing the warning. And, uh, so any, any last budget changes need to be made tonight. As we went into the budget, city council, um, hope to implement our strategic plan, uh, rebuild from COVID cuts. I think it's a good reminder that it's a good opportunity to remind people that the FY 21 budget, uh, excuse me, the FY 22 budget last year's budget, the one we're currently in, it's actually reduced from the prior year because of COVID. You heard the auditor talk about us take about taking certain steps. So some of our budget increases here are actually building back from a, you know, toward more toward the year before, uh, trying to get back to normal. Um, so that, uh, that has really been a big thing to try to get our services and our infrastructure back on track. Obviously delivering responsible services, one of the ways we held the line was, um, you know, freezing positions and those kinds of things. So to try to get those back, address the challenges with revenues. And, uh, frankly, they're coming back, um, in most cases, strong, not in all cases and to stay with inflation, uh, that is our goal annually this year. It was 7.0 as of December. The January numbers are not out yet. So revenues. Um, the good news is that we got full pilot funding of, um, 1.24. That was a significantly more than we had budgeted, uh, which was a great help. We had thought that the state would, um, that there would be reduction in that since a lot of that comes from rooms, meals and alcohol and sales tax around the state. We thought, uh, but the state made good on that money, even though those other revenues didn't come in. So that was much appreciated by us and other communities that receive funding. Uh, our rooms, meals and alcohol taxes are improving. Uh, we've got 253 budgeted this year, which is, uh, I think about 80,000 more than last year. It's still about 30,000 less than what we had received the year before. Last year, the state increased our highway. He aid money substantially by $300,000 and at least at minimum holding it there this year, hopefully even increasing it. Building permits are down. Uh, so we are, um, at 75,000, which is good, uh, because it was more than we had received, but our, uh, in prior years, we'd been up it around a 75,000. Still, our net increase from these items was just under 500,000, 488,000, 489,000 dollars. So that would, that really helped us, uh, both in coming out of the prior year, uh, but, uh, coming into this budget year. So looking at the city council's goals, uh, and how, um, what is in this budget that would address those. Again, there is a lot of budget detail that someone mentioned earlier that it's, um, I don't know, not unreadable, but, uh, it certainly is very dense. There's a lot of lines and a lot of numbers that's been the case for a long time. Which is one of the reasons why we try to highlight the main features of the budget. Uh, so we have, in our goal of improving community prosperity, we put $50,000 in for economic development that is up from zero last year, but down from 100,000 that had been in prior years. One of the goals was to explore the feasibility of, uh, uh, municipally run child care programs. And we are including that in all of our, our studies and considerations of a newer expanded rec center. Our goal for additional outdoor recreation. Again, the proposal for, uh, to purchase the Elks Club would address a lot of that, as well as, uh, we actually purchased some land recently for Hubbard Park. Uh, we have $45,000 in for the homelessness task force, uh, which matches what was in last year. We have $131,000 for the community fund, which matches last year. We have $32,600, uh, for Montpelier Live, which matches last year, and, uh, we have $10,000 for our arts fund. That is an increase from zero from last year, but a decrease from the 20,000 that had been prior to that. Next goal was, uh, to have, uh, provide responsible and engaged government. So, uh, one of the main things was that we are back to budgeting for fully staffed city departments. Our last budget actually had, uh, at least six positions that we did not fill, um, just to hold the budget down. Uh, we've heard many complaints about the website and we do have funds in there for an upgrade. We put in $10,000 for the capital area neighborhoods, are known as CAN, that is a reduction from 20,000 from the current budget. Uh, I think I mentioned this last week, however, we're, because we're only starting in this current year in December, we're six and a half of a year has gone by. So the 30,000 between the two budgets will get us through for 18 months till, till we do this next year. Um, we've been wanting to deal with our ADA transition plan to make all of our buildings, uh, accessible and in some of our programming. And so we were able to put, uh, pretty much the full estimate for the ADA projects into our capital plan this year, very exciting. We've also looked at, uh, some website, uh, excuse me, some, uh, software, thanks you. Uh, and data, uh, to, to try to help better improve communications with the public to be, have more information about our projects, uh, and also to get more information. So it includes surveying and getting some data from our residents, um, to have a more inclusive process as we make big decisions going forward. We have $30,000 for, uh, committees, uh, stipend to try to broaden the representation on our committees and $15,000 for advocacy, uh, um, at the legislative level. And I think the most, the key thing is that with the fully staffed city departments, our, our services can fully be fully restored. And we're slowly seeing that now. Well, we've had a lot of vacancies, not, not just the ones we held open, but others. And we're getting back to, um, you know, seeing some people coming and getting hired. And we're, we're, we're almost fully staffed now. And it is making a big difference for the girl of creating more housing. We restored the $110,000 or we budgeted $110,000. That is the annual recommended amount for the housing trust fund the year before that had been cut to 60, but part of this budget through the ARPA funding is restoring that last year's 60 back in. So, uh, actually a new $170,000 going to the housing trust fund. Our goal of, uh, practicing good environmental stewardship, we've included $100,000 to implement the net zero plan, uh, could be in the form of a position, could be in the form of consulting or some combination of the two. But, uh, city council said implementing net zero is a high priority. We want to fund it, uh, toward that end, uh, the, the net zero plan that we got recommended some projects for the city in the highest priority project was converting the DPW furnace to a department of public works, excuse me, furnace to a pellets furnace. Uh, and so we have $250,000 in one of the bonds to accomplish that we have some third some seed money set aside for dam removal. We believe there's going to be a lot of grant money for that, but this may help match, um, an application or, you know, provide some money for us to do some background work. We've continued funding, uh, $40,000 for the GMT MyRide. This is a continuation from last year, and we have got in one of the bonds, $600,000 for, uh, to help complete the River Confluence Park, uh, that area just over across the river from Shaw's where the Confluence of the North Branch and the Manuski meet right now is just an open field and there is a plan for that to become a very, uh, usable and, uh, inviting new place. The, um, our goal for building and maintaining sustainable infrastructure, I think that was one of the top, uh, efforts that the council and the staff made this year was to put a little, you know, there was a lot of money out there, and we wanted to put a lot of money into our community's infrastructure. We all know that it needs it, and, um, because of cuts the last couple years we were, uh, falling behind. So this is an attempt to play catch-up and perhaps get ahead. I'm going to go into that in more detail, but as you can see we have, uh, about $2.15 million in our annual funding in our budget and another $2.5 million in between capital, between ARBA funding and our cap, our own capital reserves. So go into that more later. Goal of improving public health and safety, uh, the main, uh, focus here was the, the recommended, recommendations of the police review committee, which is listed to the PRC. So, uh, the only position that's expanded, as I mentioned, we'd fully staffed all our positions. We kept everybody level position with the exception of expanding, uh, the capacity for a .5 social worker in public works, although that really excuse me, not public works in the police department. That really is, wouldn't be a city employee, it would be a contract with Washington County Mental Health, but, uh, that was one of the recommendations from the police review committee. Uh, we would, we're including body worn cameras, uh, as we just talked about the dispatch consoles. We actually don't have funds in this year's budget for them, but we had, we carried forward over last year's money, so that this would be our first installment to, to make them once we're ready to go. And the Crisis Intervention Training program is underway and in fact has been sort of selected to demonstrate, uh, to others. In addition, the council has set aside 425,000 to deal with housing homelessness services, public bathrooms, uh, the, to be just, uh, to be determined exactly what that looks like, but the idea was that we have a, a significant issue. We need to put resources to, um, to helping address it. So moving on to the capital improvement plan, I said we go into more detail about that. This is just our annual funding mechanism. Uh, so our capital plan is made up of our debt service payments, our annual capital, and our equipment. Back in the normal years, we had a target number, you can see the 2.375 million in FY20. Uh, that was, it was pretty much our target number. We would, and then we always funded 515,000 for equipment. We subtracted whatever our scheduled debt was and that left us, whoops, I'm gonna go back. I just can't see it. Um, and that, that left us with how much money we had in the annual. Obviously, last year, FY21, we had in 22, we had to reduce those numbers greatly, uh, in order to, uh, stay within our budget. And so this year, the good news is we're increasing our budget by about 215,000. The bad news is we're still about 250,000 below our target. So next year's capital budget would presumably include that increase in it as well to get us back to our planned, um, funding level. So what's the money? We have $590,000 for streets and roads. We hear a lot about those and they are a high priority. As I mentioned, we have $230,000 for buildings and grounds, specifically for our, uh, ADA improvements, our accessibility improvements. $68,000 for parks and trees. $63,000 for sidewalks. Comet was made last week, I think, which was well taken, that $63,000 is not a lot for sidewalks and that's fair. Uh, there are also a lot of sidewalk work in addition to this that's included with some of the street uh, work and road work and the bond projects. Uh, so these are just simple, just sidewalks in and of themselves. Uh, $27,500 for bridges, $20,000 for transportation related things, and $75,000 to help manage these projects for whatever technical assistance we might need. In our equipment, again, part of the $230,000 we would have to raise next year's to get this from $360 up to the $515,000, but we do have $108,980 for fire EMS, and this is essentially payments, so the equipment plan also includes, um, financing payments, so this would be payments on the fire truck and the ambulance that we have purchased in the last couple years. $95,000 for DPW, this would be for a couple of cruisers, we have not purchased them the last, normally we cycle at least one per year, and we've withheld them the last two years, so this would be playing catch up for that. Um, information technology, again this is to improve our IT infrastructure, and then $26,000 for parks, uh, for our vehicle. Now we get to the ARPA money, uh, so again, uh, we've learned even more this week than last week about ARPA, but we, for now our plan remains the same, um, to be determined whether we want to change it later. So, um, part one was to restore our, the council made a commitment that the first section of money would go to restoring those projects and, and purchases which had been delayed as a result of budget cuts. So there's a long list of them, but essentially, uh, they lump into $620,000 for delayed roads, bridges, and retaining walls, $420,000 for deferred equipment purchases, and the $60,000 to restore the housing trust fund. So that was the first batch of ARPA money that we got, uh, actually did receive in September. The next batch, which we're expecting to receive in September of 2022, is currently planned for now for the community outreach that we talked about, the, the new, um, software, the, the community survey, and other transparency type things. The $425,000 for the homelessness issues, including the bathroom. $50,000 for an EV charging station. That would be, and just to be clear about that, that would be at the DPW garage, that would be for city electric vehicles. We could talk in the future or about also, or at some point putting another one in for use by the public, but this would be as we talk about converting the fleet to, um, electric vehicles, we need the capacity to charge them so that we can have, you know, middle of the night, whether it's a snowstorm or if we have a police cruiser that needed it to charge up, we can't have them waiting two hours while one vehicle charges, so we need, we need to have the high capacity charging ability. And then $450,000 for water and sewer improvements as needed. We heard loud and clear from our auditors about our investments, and this is not something we didn't already know, uh, in, in our water and sewer system, so here's a chance to get caught up on some of that work. In addition, um, we had, as, as I mentioned at the beginning of the, of the, um, presentation, we had better revenue receipts than we had budgeted for, which was great. And, um, so some of the capital money that we had budgeted for in the past but not spent, we were holding as a cash reserve. We had about $435,000, so we were proposing to use this to add to that $590,000 that's already in the budget for paving, bringing us up to $770,000, which is the recommended amount of annual investment in, um, paving to get our roads up to the level of pavement condition index, PCI, that we hope to, uh, that we'd like to maintain, so that is allowing us to meet a long-standing goal, and obviously that would be our goal would be to continue funding that at that level next year. We have $221,000 in equipment, as you can see, is because we got to the equipment fund the last couple years, this is catching up on all of that. And then $34,000 for dam removal, and that was mentioned earlier. So that's those last three items are the sort of the more detail of where we're investing our infrastructure money, but certainly we have not put this kind of money into infrastructure in the community for a long time, if ever. So our total capital, uh, is about $2.35 million in projects, a little over a million in equipment, and about $560,000 for community, uh, related efforts, so just over $4 million, and that's not including the bonds. So again, sizable in investment certainly made, um, easier with $2.2 million of that coming from the federal government. So we have four proposed bonds, uh, the the one is, uh, East State Street, which is a blend of general fund and, uh, Water Sewer Bond for $7.2 million. One is to purchase land for the Future Rec Center, the former Elks Club. We've revised this total to $2 million, discussed this last week with the council, and we have a group of infrastructure projects for $1.815 million, and the major phase two upgrade to the water resource recovery facility. The artist formerly known as the wastewater or sewer plant. Um, so our total of about $7.8 million, a little over $7.8 million in general funds, and $19.9 million in water sewer funds. Um, so to anticipate a question that we might get asked is that the budget, the total budget that we just talked about already includes the payments for the first year payments for these bonds. So, uh, there would any, if they were all approved, it wouldn't increase the budget for this next year, um, because they've already been accounted for. Obviously, the capital plan the following year would then have to incorporate second-year payments of the debts. Um, so just to, to anticipate that question. So, let's talk about them in a little bit more specifics. $7.2 million for East State Street. This has been quite a ways in, in planning. Very important project for us right in the center of the community. Again, $4 million from the general fund, $3.2 million from water sewer funds. So, this would be a complete reconstruction of East State Street, um, for Main Street all the way up to College Street. We'd be putting new water and sewer lines underneath and rebuilding the road base and surface and improve sidewalks all through there. Uh, we will also be putting in a new combined sewer outflow issue, CSO they're known as, um, and that'll be corrected by putting in a new outfall. Ultimately that will go outfall be near the Rialto Bridge. So, there will be some disruption on State Street as well as that is done. That's not really the main part of the program. Parking lot out back here behind the fire station will be approved. We've had this periodic odor problem at East State and Main. This will correct that. And this project is assisted with another $1.4 million in ARPA grants. So, that is, that has really been our top priority improvement project for quite some time. We're happy to finally be presenting that. Uh, $2 million, $2 million for rec center land. Had some good questions earlier today about, uh, plans. I can, uh, I don't know if I can offer any more clarity on the plans. What I can say is, uh, in the fall we were approached, uh, by, uh, private group that was interested in partnering with the city or actually interested in acquiring some or all of that property, uh, to, for recreation purposes and knowing, and so the city had been in con, conversations with them about ways that we can partner and we remain in conversations with them. So, it's possible that some of, some of this work could be done privately, some will be done publicly. As we talked through, we realized that it probably made the most sense for the city to own the property, because we had the most flexibility of what we could do that the group is being formed really for recreation purposes. Um, so this would purchase the land and buildings, the 130 acres could be done as a, in conjunction with private investment. Uh, it could, will very likely require a future capital investment for a new rec center. We're not going to, we're not going to build something for nothing. So that was correctly identified. We don't have a plan for that yet. What that would look like, some of that depends, what, I think our goal in working with the private group, if, if they're successful, is to make sure we're not duplicating efforts. So if they build certain private facilities that the city can sort of lease with operating costs to use, and the city can create public facilities. Uh, so we want to, we need to see how that plays out. It's a very large parcel size. It certainly provides for more, more, you know, building facilities, but also parking to support those facilities, trails, fields, potential housing, and more. We heard a lot about that last week. I think as we finalize agreements, we'll be able to talk about that even more. But we see there's a lot of opportunity to meet a lot of cities, of the city's needs there, and possibly even, you know, I'll just leave it at that for now. Why did we go there? We've looked, we have a recreation center on Berry Street that's really not functional. It's not accessible. It's got asbestos. It has terrible ventilation systems. It really doesn't meet our needs. It all has no parking. And I think it's one positive is it's central easy to get to location. So we looked at renovating that, and it was going to be in the six to seven million dollar range. And even then, it was going to be pretty constrained by its size, what could go in there. So it still had the same footprint, still had no parking, still had a lot of the negatives, and didn't allow for expansion. So we had the pandemic really put that on hold anyway, a couple of years ago. We also looked at expanding our rec center at our Elm Street recreation area, which is where the swimming pool is, tennis courts and those sorts of things, the baseball field. And again, it had a lot of space constraints because of all the other popular facilities that are there now. So not to take away from them. Parking is also limited there for those that use the pool, go to the ball games. They know that can get pretty tight out there. So to put another attraction there, particularly in summertime, was very challenging. So the opportunity to look at a major tract of land, which is already in recreation use that is situated so that it could be a regional asset seemed attractive to the city and to the city council and fully acknowledged that we need to have a more enhanced public process to design what happens as we go forward. The miscellaneous infrastructure bond, these are several projects lumped together in a bond, single bond for management. It's just easier to do that way. All coming from the general fund. So we mentioned $600,000 for the River Confluence Park. This is certainly not the entire budget for the whole project. We understand that's going to be in the $1.2 million range, if not more, and about $600,000 has already been raised from private and grant sources. So this would be about half the cost of the project and it would match these other funds. This park, people may forget that in 2002 when we submitted our grants and received federal money for the transit center, part of that project included creation of Confluence Park at this location. So this is not a new idea. This is one that has been part of city planning for a long time. And once the transit center was completed to finally the attention turned to finishing the rest of that project. And now we have it designed and we've got a group working on it. $550,000 for the Main Street and Berry Street intersection. Again, this has also been a long time concern for people. Most people that use it realize how dysfunctional it is. It's been identified in concerns about development projects at Sabin's Passure and out on Berry Street. It's considered a level F failure intersection. So the city engaged in a full Main Street corridor plan really all the way from Memorial Drive or River Street you see me all the way to the roundabout how we could improve that entire corridor. And so this is really for the phase one of that that includes signalized intersection at Main and Berry, some physical changes and coordination of those lights with the lights at Route 2 and at State and Main so that traffic flow will be smoother. Additionally, oh geez. Where do I press? There we go, I did it. Look at that. We've been talking about upgrading our street lights, converting them to LED lighting for quite a while, recognizing that there is an energy saving and a consistency of lighting. I think I said at one point that it would improve our lighting and I was DPW made sure that I understood that the light candles would be similar, but that we would have more consistent lighting. Right now we have some failures in banks and this will improve that. We will be an energy cost savings. It's a relatively long payback about 11 or 12 years, but it's still using a lot less energy and we're looking forward to doing that. I already mentioned this earlier, but we will be replacing the oil-fueled heating system at the DPW garage with a wood pellet system. This is again the top priority project identified in our net zero system. We're excited about that, particularly given the fact that the wastewater plant right next to this garage is already fully now net zero for heating with the methane. So that's great. And then we have a slope failure on Marvin Street, which is putting section of our own street at risk. So we'll be stabilizing that with a slope stabilization technique. So those together are this particular bond proposal. And lastly, the big one, we have 16.4 million for the wastewater plant upgrade. This is phase two of the plant overhaul project. Obviously it's a huge investment, but this will then bring our plant fully up to modern standards. And again, this was, it was 40 to 50 year old technology we'd been using. And it will be work in conjunction with the project that we recently passed and completed. So the phase one modernized the plant and to accept, so in reduced to, trying to say too much at once. Phase one modernized the plant to accept commercial food waste. It also really reduced our energy costs and increased our methane production to enable us to heat the plant. In fact, to the point where we have excess methane. One of the residual issues as a result of this, however, by taking organics is we do have an odor problem that was unanticipated. And we're still, we're looking at ways to address that. And we have excess methane. So this would use that methane to dry out the biosolids or sludge as it's called. We send that to the landfill down, we pay by weight. So the the dried sludge is considerably less weight than the wet sludge. So it's going to save us money. And also because it's a much smaller in size volume, it will be a lot less trips to coventry, meaning us truck trips. There's environmental benefit that way too, with the reduced road traffic. So that is really this would then we would have a fully state-of-the-art wastewater plan at that point. And utilizing the resources that it's creating as best we can and certainly addressing the very foul odor that is coming from it. In addition to the city's budget and the bonds, there are three independent ballot items. I'm obviously not in a position to speak on behalf of any of these groups. Teller Harbor Library has a budget for a ballot item of 395,696. That's an increase of 45,000 from last year. The Central Vermont Public Safety Authority we just talked about has it's actually a ballot item for 30,000. Our share is 14,100. And that is up. There was no request last year. And the Central Vermont Home Health and Hospice has the same 23,500 as they had the year before. So those are other money items. You'll see on the ballot. As well as the school rate. And so this brings us to what I think is ultimately the good news and the best story of this year. Obviously, we have put a huge amount of investment in the city budget and trying to play catch up, trying to get our services back, trying to deal with our lost revenues. And so our, the municipal portion of the tax rate is up 6.8%, which is one of the highest that's been proposed. However, the residential, residential education tax is projected to drop 4.7 cents. I think there's due to federal funding and some of the state funding. So that means that the overall residential tax rate that people will actually see in their tax bill is only going to change by 1.1% this year. That is actually the lowest change since 2016 when it was also 1.1%. And then before that, 2011 when there was actually an overall reduction, I think there was some change in the state education funding formula out here. So as you can see, the total rate was $3.44 in FY 22, excuse me, $3.4.4 cents, and it's going to $3.7.7 cents. So only 3.3 cents change, 1.1%. And I took a look at the overall tax bills over the last five years and discovered that our average change with all in has been about 2.7% per year for the last five years. So while property taxes are certainly a concern for everybody, I think when you take a large look and you can see both the city and the school board have been doing their best to provide what they provide with the taxpayers in mind and keep up with costs. So again, I think that's the best place to end with the lowest tax rate in a long time. Lowest tax rate increase. Start the lowest tax rate to one of them being misquoted there. So reminder that this is the final public hearing that make decisions tonight and then voting is on Tuesday, March 1st, but early voting will start as soon as possible once we finalize the ballot, which I believe will be done on Monday night probably, and go off to the printers and then the early voting will start. So that is a lightning summary of everything that's in the budget. Obviously, if there's any questions the council members or members of the public or anybody have, we will do our best to answer them. We do have the department head team available either here or online to answer any specific questions about those operations. So with that, I'm going to move back up to my seat and conclude the presentation. Thank you for listening. Okay, thank you, Bill. This is an opportunity now for members of the public to ask questions or make comments about the proposed budget. There's a fair number of people in attendance, so I am going to ask people to hold their comments to two minutes and I'll ask Councillor Bate to keep time. I recognize that people may have more extensive comments but I'd like to go through it at this two-minute minute rate to make sure that everybody gets a chance to be heard and if we need to give people more than one turn, we can do that. So I have a two-minute sign. I'll put up a one-minute and then stop the red. I mean, I can't read it, but you can see the red, right? Right, yeah. That would be a blurred out screen but we can't see it. You can see the colors though. You can see the colors, yeah? The yellow is one-minute red as time's up. Okay, and I already see one hand from the people online, so we'll start with Tina Munsee. Good evening and I just want to express my disappointment with the council, the city manager and the mayor about this budget because even though Bill has explained the tax increase, it is almost a 10% increase from last year's budget and I think that asking that plus these several very hefty bond issues is not showing a great deal of respect for the people of Montpelier. I love Montpelier and the city is changing. You really do have to have some money to buy a house in Montpelier or to rent an apartment and if you're retired like I am and on a set income, you may be having trouble paying the taxes you have now. So we live in a state that has high taxes. We live in a city that I think has high taxes and despite that, we have potholes and we have pipes in the ground, as the auditor said, that need to be kept up and are decaying away. So at the last public hearing, Didi said, well, everybody in Montpelier just votes yes for whatever you put on the ballot. And I have to say the only reason your taxes are at the level that they're at is because the schools are in the minus category. So I wish to say that I would vote no for this budget and no for the expensive bonds that you will include on the ballot and I will encourage everybody I know to vote no also. So thank you for listening to my comments. Thank you. Vicki Lane. I just have one thing to say. I don't spend money easily but I do think that purchasing the land that the Elks property was occupied on is probably a very good thing for us to do right now because we will at least have control over it. And if we don't take this opportunity, we'll lose it forever. And we don't have a whole lot of land that Montpelier can control the development on and maybe get some community some community benefit whether it be an affordable housing or recreation or a combination of recreation and affordable housing. I do think that that particular bond issue is I see it is a good thing to vote for. That's all I have to say. Thanks Vicki. While I'm not seeing any hands online, I'll go to Peter Kilman. Yeah. Jack, I would like to ask a few clarifying questions mostly of Bill Frazier. So it's not a typical two-minute thing. I can ask my questions but I'd like to ask them and just go back and forth with them a little bit. So let's just try it, okay? Bill, let me start at the very end about the tax rate. Can you say, I read an article which was very hard in the Times Argus talking about the common level of appraisals and the possibility that that actually could hurt us in combination with Roxbury. Could you just explain that a little bit because it seems to go contradict what you said about anticipating that the school rate would be low? I can generally explain the common rate of appraisal. I have not really spent a lot of time looking at this year's school budget or their tax rate calculation. So I'm not in a position to answer it. We did get those numbers from the school after their budget hearing last night. So those are the ballot items that they'll be putting forward. So that is the projection they are giving for their tax rate for mobility residents. So we're just using their numbers. Okay, so I would just suggest that, I mean, if you didn't read that article, it was a January 6th article about the common level of appraisal. It sounded kind of scary to me. Now, maybe it's wrong or maybe they've gotten better numbers since then, but just let's not count on those numbers unless it's... Just quickly on that, I mean, I really... Try never to comment on the school's budget. Let them explain their own budget. I would say that they have the common... We have the common level of appraisal number for this year. So that would have been available to them in their calculations. Okay, Bill, what is pilot funding? What does that stand for? It's payment and lieu of taxes from the state. So the state pays us payment and lieu of taxes because they don't pay property taxes. Okay, good. Economic development, $50,000. What specifically is economic development? I know we used to have Montpelier business, whatever it was called. What is economic development for 50 months? The Montpelier Development Corporation had been funded at about $100,000 a year. They recently folded, they went out of business. So we had no money in the budget last year. I think in general, we think that economic development is an important priority of the city. The $50,000 for this year is going to be used kind of for two major purposes. One is to update our economic development strategic plan that was done in 2015 or 16 that led to the creation of Montpelier Development Corporation. But some of those goals are now... Some of the goals and priorities in that plan are sort of out of date. For example, they called for a hotel in parking garage in the center of downtown and that's not happening. And other... So I think the idea would be to have a community process to see where our community priorities are for economic development and commercial activity. And then next year, figure out how to fund that going forward if it needs to be. The remaining funds are used... So when we do have economic development opportunities, we often need some specific expertise, development type expertise that we don't really have in City Hall. So this would be to contract out with people. To assist us in that area. Until there's a more permanent group or person that's handling this. But there would be a public process to work on this as well, right? Absolutely. I thought I heard you say that. Yes. Okay. In terms of... You mentioned in passing the purchase of the Hubbard Parkland, what funds were used from that? Was that this year's fiscal year 22 funds? Yes. I'm looking at Kelly to help me answer that question. Okay. Yes, please. I'm looking for my instructor. So it's the U.S. Forestry Grant funds that would be coming through in 22. Great. So we have a U.S. Forestry Grant money and some private donations. Okay. And on some of these budget items, and I mentioned this point last time about black boxes, like the Homelessness Task Force for $45,000 or the Community Fund... Oh, the Community Fund, I think it would be great in the future to actually append the Community Fund specifics in the budget so that people reading the budget could actually see it. I happen to have been at the meeting where the Community Fund reported, but it wasn't included in the budget that I could see. Appreciate that concern. As you know... I can't do the hand. I don't know how to put the hand up there. And so we don't have that. We just know what it's for, but we don't know what their recommendations are usually till right at the very end of the budget process. Well, it would be nice... It still could be appended. All right, anyway. Those are the... People pick at those Community Fund amounts, and it'd be nice to have them be more public. You could come in the annual report so that everyone can see them. Yeah, but that's after this vote. That's two minutes of your time speaking, not of Bill's time answering. All right. Well, I'll be quiet for now for a while. Maybe I can come back later. Thank you. Thanks, Donna. That's great. Linda Berger, I think you're next. Thank you. I just would like to remind people that the mob failure is under corrective action from the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation because of our waste water treatment plant, so that this bond is critical to being sure that we no longer have a public nuisance and a health and safety issue in Montpelier for our public. Thank you. Thank you. Vicki, you're up next, but I want to give other people who have not spoken yet a chance. So I think Nat Frothingham is up next. Okay. Thank you. So you can go ahead and speak, Nat. Thank you. Just since you introduced this tonight, Bill, how did it, how did the, on the purchase of the Elks property, how did that happen to go up by $500,000? I mentioned this last week as well. When we first brought this to the council's attention and we were preparing the budget, we were just using an estimate, I guess, of what we thought the value and available resources were. And since we had done the preliminary work, we've had conversation with the landowner. We have a better sense of what the price might be and what our available resources are. Okay. Obviously, we're negotiating, so I don't want to get too specific, but I feel like- So that number could change? No, the number that the city, I mean, it's going on the ballot tonight, that would be the city's bond. So we'd have to find other funds if we needed more. Okay. Thank you. I heard you allude to this question a bit, but it is front and center, I think, in trying to imagine this bond. What will the new rec center include? Who will own it? Who will run it? What will it cost to run? And are we going to lose tax money as the city owns the property? So there's a lot there. So presumably, if there's a new- So take these in kind of a strange order. The first question was who's going to run it? So the same people that run the current rec center would run this rec center because presumably that one would not be functioning anymore. That's not to say we might not need more staff. It's also possible. Many of our staff, like with the senior center, they have programs that bring in revenue that help pay. There is no specific plan for that. So those are all questions we're asking ourselves. So what would it be? How big would it be? What's included are all questions to be asked. As I mentioned, there's a group that is looking at creating some private recreation facilities, tennis courts in particular, but potentially some other things. So we are trying to work with them. If they're going to invest private dollars, we don't want to have them build a private tennis court. They put a public one right next to it. We'd rather have an arrangement where they put the capital to build their tennis court. And if we need to offer a tennis program, we would rent the court space from them. And obviously the revenues from the lessons or whatever would pay for that. So all of that is in a planning stage. And I think those questions were properly raised earlier to date. And that is the next challenge is to figure out how do we master plan that entire property? What can we get the best return for what we need there? Vicki mentioned that there's a lot of potential uses. And we'd like to thank you, Bill. I hope I'm not interrupting you. The access road to the site has been a known problem. Who will fix it? Has an engineer taken a look at it? Do we have an estimate on the costs? Who will pay for that? No, we don't have an estimate on costs. Obviously it would become city property. So our city crews would fix it. Or we'd have to contract to have it fixed. Expenses to run and manage the center, insurance, all of that stuff. Any estimates on that? Well, no, because we don't know what the center is. Other than we do incur all those costs now on our current center. So some of that would transfer to a new center. Obviously a new or bigger center might cost more. Likely would cost more. How are you answering the walkability question not close to downtown? Must have a car. How do you answer that question? Well, how do I answer it? It's an interesting way to ask that question. There's no question. I think when I gave the presentation, I said the one plus that the current center has is its location and its availability to people. That said, it still gets a lot of vehicle use. This site is along a bike path and along a transportation path. So it's not a short walk, but it is a bike ride in some seasons. And I'm not trying to make light of that. We obviously also have our Elm Street facility. Which is a distance out of town. And people are able to walk and ride and use cars. It's not, if we could build all of this in the center of town, that would be our preference. But thank you. Who are the, you mentioned the private group. Are you free to say who are the private and public players and stakeholders that we're working with? I am. They're a group called the hub. And actually there's a representative here. So at some point he may wish to speak on their behalf. They have presented publicly to the city council in the past. I don't want to, I defer to them to let give out their details just because I don't know them as well as they do. I may have asked this question before. Let me try to put it a different way. Does the else club pay taxes? And are we going to lose tax revenues by selling the property to the city? Well, I think we should also be clear. It actually is no longer owned by the Elks Club. We call it the Elks Club. It's privately owned by LLC. And they do pay taxes. And so we would presumably, depending on, well, yes. So the city owning it, it would not pay taxes. Depending on its development and what its uses were, if there were private uses on it, those private uses could pay taxes. But that is a calculation that we need to make. One more question. And Bill, thank you very much. What's your view on the city having that it's basic responsibilities on this bond issue to provide adequate and timely information about a bond proposal in advance of the public hearings? Do you think the city's done a great job on public information in advance of this public hearing? I think the city has provided the information that we have. I think there's a lot of unanswered questions that we don't have. And I think I'm trying to be as candid about that as we can be. We've been talking about this since fall. As I said, the hub didn't make a presentation, public presentation to the council. And there was, I think, publicity about that. We've been sort of labeling that it was coming. I know in my bridge article now that you helped me launch many years ago, I specifically focused on the bond so that the whole city could know that those were the things we were talking about. I wish we could answer every question. And we can't because that's not where the project is at a state of development. It's an opportunity. Real estate doesn't always come with timing. There's a market. There could be other buyers. Bill, thank you for your help. I appreciate it. Thanks, Nat. Maria, Vanie, are you here? My hand was still up, but I forgot to put it back. Okay, I've got you down, Vicki. So I won't forget about you. Maria, if you could hold off because you're not, you're still muted. There. No, I'm sorry. I deferred to Vicki. I forgot she had a question. Okay. Okay, go ahead, Vicki. Okay. My question is, I have two now, but one of my questions is what happens with the school budget if one town votes no and one town votes yes? I don't know. I'd suggest you direct that to the school. Okay. Because I mean, sometimes I think it means the whole thing doesn't go down. I'm not sure that they believe it's a total vote cast of the district. Oh, okay. All right. I was just curious. The other thing is I read something that said that to do, to upgrade the current rec center that we have to meet the basic requirements of what we can use it for would be the $6 million. Is that, did I misread that? That's correct. Yes. That was the cost of renovating the building and improving it. I think if we were, I think it's a lower number to just, you know, to put an elevator in and fix the HVAC and not change the insides. But at that point, that's a lot of money. But you can't get any additional parking. Right. And yeah, so the plan that was developed was between six and seven million. Okay. The other thing is that I think with the bond vote for the property to, without having decided or without owning the property, would it, it wouldn't make sense for us to spend all the time developing all kinds of estimates for all the various things we might want to do with the property and then lose the property. I mean, that would be wasted money, right? Does that understand, does that make sense? That was our logic. It's sort of like the parking garage. We disagree about that reasonably, but that was what our logic was. Yeah, it's kind of like the parking garage. We lost that and paid money. So anyway, that was what I had to say. Thanks, Vicki. Now, Maria. Back to this rec center issue. What are the plans for the existing rec center? Will that be sold? How much will be generated from the sale in profit? What will, what can we expect in tax revenues from that building not being city owned? Or do you plan to retain it? Again, a process that we need to engage in. I will say that we did look at least put out the building for sale a few years ago. And the liability, as is the liabilities on that building are so much that it really doesn't have much resale value because of the asbestos and the ADA compliance and all the other. So if anything, it doesn't, I don't think we should reasonably expect any revenues from sale, possibly if somebody bought it for a dollar and, you know, we did it. I would say the most likely candidates for that use would be for that location would either be to partner with somebody to create some housing, in which case, you know, it's close to downtown housing that would be taxable and also need a need and or use it to deliver some sort of homelessness services. So those are just my thoughts. Those, the council hasn't talked about any of that. So I don't know where we would go publicly, but obviously we would have to make some decisions about that. Okay. And what is the potential for selling off lots for housing from the property we're looking at buying to add to the city's housing stock, ease the housing crunch and add some taxpayers to the rules to ease the burden on the rest of us. There is potential for that. And would it be possible to work in a commitment to that to offset the cost of purchasing the property and developing some kind of municipal facility up there so that its impact on taxpayers be blunted? Because I agree with Tina. Property taxes, municipal taxes especially, are highly regressive when you compare them to income taxes. And if we want to maintain a middle class in Montpelier, we really need to look at this problem, especially as housing costs increase. It's the Vermont gentrification that you see in small towns where people move in from outside and want large amenities that are expensive and that burden their native Vermont neighbors. And you lose the longevity of community membership, you lose stability, you lose economic diversity and you end up with very wealthy people who move on when it becomes hard to pay the taxes and people who need subsidies from those people. And I'm not interested in that kind of bimodal economic distribution. I don't think it's a healthy community. So how can we avoid that? Well, that's a huge question. And I think that that is certainly probably the biggest substantive issue that our city council wrestles with in their strategic plan, really focused on the need to have a diverse community and housing opportunities. I don't think the purchase of the rec center is going to solve all of those social issues. I do believe that housing is a high priority and there is a desire to include housing in the project. But I don't know how much 100% commitment we can make because we haven't looked at all the options, but knowing the folks I'm sitting up here with who are my bosses, they're pretty strongly committed to housing. So I suspect we would include that in there. But how can I ask my neighbors to support this without a commitment to offsetting some of the costs? Because I know some of my neighbors are not very wealthy people and I don't want them to be priced out of the market. I think we're getting into an area where probably the city council should be answering because I can't answer for them. I don't know what they're prepared to do or not do in terms of commitment. I think I would say from a management perspective until we know what's... So I would think... This is my opinion now. I'm not speaking for the council or anybody else. So it's going to be clear that this is... I think housing would be highly desirable and would be a high priority. However, I don't know what's involved. I don't know whether that's a good place to build them. I think there are things that we need to evaluate before I could say 100% we can put housing there. That said, I would be surprised if we went forward without doing that. For all the reasons you mentioned, we need housing. We need to get some revenue back from the project and all those things. I'm just going to pose a over promise. I think Councillor Bate has a response she might like to make to you also. Well, I just wanted to bring up every time we've talked about this land, it's been very clear we're interested in housing that we can't promise, but we're interested in housing. Personally, I'm interested in dense housing. And really diversified. So I think it's there. It's in our awareness. It's in our discussions. That's all I can reassure you with. Until we own the land, we have no control over it. That's the issue. Somebody can come in and do all sorts of things with it. But we don't want done. At a meeting last week, someone who was in favour of housing said, well, we can't tell a developer what to build on this property. And in fact, the exact opposite is true. If the city owns the property and is in a position of looking at potential developers, we actually can tell them this is what we want to see developed in this property. And that's what we'll be looking for for a developer. But your point is taken. What we want to happen is not guaranteed as of this date. Oh, I just I think that there is a certain if you look at us as the bank, you're coming to to fund the project. This isn't a very clearly defined business plan. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Carolyn. I have various comments going, speaking directly to the land. I think one of the things that puts me off the most is to refer to it as a recreation center. We have plenty of recreation. So I think maybe changing the terminology to be more inclusive would make it more attractive. The next thing is that 20% of our population is over 65. And nowhere do we talk about anything to benefit them. And they have a van over the senior center that we drive on nice days because on rainy days, the rain comes in. So we can't use it. So that portion of the population tends to be ignored pretty totally. Finally, that's bathrooms. We need toilets downtown. This has been an ongoing discussion and no movement in that direction at all. So I want to urge you to somehow focus on that. And finally, nobody ever talks about just plain demolishing the existing rec center. They always talk about renovating it. And it seems to me that if you started over, that that might be a different conversation. And that's all I have to offer. Okay. Thank you. I'm going to look to the room. Now we have, see one hand up. Sir, would you like to stand up and start by identifying yourself? My name is Ethan Atkin. I'm the chair of the board of the hub, which is the entity that has been referred to as the organization that is planning to put up a social and recreation center up on the property that was formerly owned by the Elks. The hub is a nonprofit organization. So although it's being referred to as a private organization, it's only in the context of it's not a public organization, but we are a nonprofit organization. Our intention is to create a community social and recreation center that would service people of all ages, particularly welcome would be those over the age of 65 and those under the age of 65. Our intention is to create a social center. We feel that GMT transport could easily transport the people that may want to go there that can't ride on a bicycle or it's too cold to walk. And we feel that this is probably a once in a lifetime, probably once in a hundred year opportunity for the city of Montpelier to create a center of this sort. And having the recreation department of the city of Montpelier involved in this would make a whole variety of year round recreational and social facilities available. Our concept is that you should be able to come there and find either some social activity or some recreational activity that you would like to participate in. You can come with your family, you can come with your grandkids, you can come with your grandparents, you can come with your teenagers, and they would find something that they could do there. The intention is to have a restaurant so people can also eat before or after to also have a retail outlet that would sell clothing and materials that people who were involved in these recreational activities would be interested in. We are so delighted that when we approached the city just to inform them that we were planning to do this that they also saw this opportunity and are putting this bond on and the city council was very supportive of the idea. So I would think that anyone in the city who is either over the age of 65 or under the age of 65 who could vote would want to support this type of project because it will bring economic development to this community. Big companies, small companies would be very interested. You're past the two-minute mark now. Both big and small companies would be very interested in bringing their employees into a community that has this type of facility. So I think this is something that we should all support. Thank you. Seeking in the room, Steve Whitaker, I think you mentioned earlier you have some comments. I can't fit them in especially. I want to point out that it's almost 10 o'clock and this is supposed to be a public hearing. And so to take a half hour to not start a public hearing until nine o'clock at night and then get the first half hour to a repeat of last year's city manager, last week's city manager, it's disingenuous to pretend that we're going to impact this budget in the next few minutes before you vote it. You've got no capacity or room to change it in accordance with this testimony. So it's really kind of a farce. It's a fate of complete that you're going to vote this budget the way it is. And so you're just going through the motions to listen to folks. You're bundling the bonds is unfair to the voters. They can't say yes to one and no to another. So the pre-information that Peter brings or Nat brings up a great point. When you're voting bonds, the information that's out to the public is supposed to be a lot more thorough than what has been done here as is evidenced by all these questions and back and forth. So if you're setting up the city for another round of litigation over what shooter shouldn't have been funded, you've done a good job. I have a lot of details having gone through the budget that I want to say that and I'll just skim through them because the police, I believe embedded in the 420,000 deferred equipment is tens of thousands of dollars for police equipment that's not integrated into any technology plan at all. So the needs that were expressed two years ago, which were slipped into the budget without scrutiny, ended up, the scrutiny ended up catching up to them and then they don't fit or mesh with the technology plan that has been completed by Tel Aviv or another bidder. So the Tel Aviv needs assessment, the next phase was supposed to be a system design and that's where you would determine which radios accommodate and fit in with the regional plan. So I would, I'm saying that that's an area too. The consoles I've mentioned are not properly vetted. The walkways to connect the parking lots, that needs to be done. We have a problem of disappearing public records, public records, the axon proposal that was made. You were told last week that axon made a proposal to the council. That never happened. I searched all the minutes of city council for the last 13 years and there's no presentation by axon. So that was misrepresented. Axon did provide a proposal and somebody disappeared it. Just like somebody disappeared, the relationship, the agreement with city center over in the bathrooms. I want to point out that this is a public hearing on the proposed budget and bonds. And so the 425,000 for a housing hub which makes no sense. If you're going to continue to talk about instead of put shelter over people's heads, dignified shelter over people's heads with privacy and sanitation, we're going to have a hub so for all that talk, we need to get our thinking straight. We need to target better, not any more studies over this hub. That's a different hub than ours. With regards to the bond, that's two minutes. I want to see if there's anyone else who wants to be heard. I'll probably hear from you again, but I do want to make sure that everyone who wants to be heard is heard. Thank you. You've already taken two terms of two minutes from one of your, yes, your top bro. Okay. So I can go for? No. What I'm going to do is go to the next person and I think that's Peter Kellman. Am I unmuted? We're on now, yes. Okay. Bill, I just, just to lump together a number of the IT website communications. You've got some money here, some money there. I would just like to, I don't think you've got enough money there. This is a big problem. The website, I've written to you about this, the website is built on a platform that simply is like 30 years out of date. You need a new platform. You can't fix this one. Not only that, you need to have a web manager. You've got to have somebody looking over this. Every day, things go up on the web that are incorrect, that are mistakes that are made by people because the system isn't foolproof enough. You've got to have something where if you enter some data, like that it goes throughout the system, it can't be just partial. And you've got IT systems where the assessor and the tax department and the planning and zoning are all working off different maps. This is a big, big, big problem. I just hope that you'll look at them all together and that you'll really come back with, find the money to really do the job right. Don't try to fix this website. That's the least of the problem. Thank you. Thank you, Peter. Is there anyone else online who's looking to be recognized at this point? I'm not seeing anyone, but sometimes people are waving their hands and I wouldn't see them. Okay, back to Steve Whitaker. I'm sorry? Yes, we will. So I would cut the 45,000 on the Homelessness Task Force because they're self-dealing. The people vote money to themselves and they don't comply with transparency laws. For the 45,000 plus the 45 we gave them before, all we get is 12 hours of Don's time. Something's wrong there. The accountability is missing. Cut it until it's fixed. The website is good that he just mentioned that. We need to inboard both IT support and legal support. It's not okay for me to appeal to you as city council and tell you that your city manager is violating public records law and you do nothing about it. A lawyer on staff would do that. You don't have a process to not allow him to require the city manager to adhere to the law and that's just not okay. I shouldn't have to be your... So city IT staff should include website maintenance, as Peter just made. There's other uses for a city attorney than just keeping the city manager. So I have a lot of suggested cuts but in consideration of the hour and because I know the futility of y'all are just going to go and vote. Those are suggested cuts. We don't need an assistant city manager. We don't need a dysfunctional city manager. We should eliminate one of these positions. We should replace the city manager with the expiration of the current contract in March. Start a search immediately. Cap the salary at $100,000. There are candidates who will be more than willing to work on reforming and restoring this city to integrity for $100,000. That concludes my budget comments. I see no way realistically to convince this council to amend the budget. So I'm going to do two things. I'm going to recommend that the budget be turned down by the voters and I'm going to announce my candidacy for mayor, which has been filed. And I'm going to encourage the voters to turn it down this bloated irresponsible budget that you refuse to amend and make rational and to focus when the budget's turned down and we get a new city manager will focus on basic maintenance, lower taxes, accountable government, care for the low income and the homeless. We're not going to gentrify this community under my watch. We need toilets, not one toilet. And we need the seniors need a van. Thank you. Vicky Lane, not yet. Yeah, okay. Unmute. Okay. Am I, can you hear me? Yes. Okay. I now I lost track. I think that there is a great deal of integrity in this city in the council, the manager and other people that are that work for the city. I think that some of the personal accusations, the direct and indirect accusations are a little over the top. I don't always agree with everything that the manager does, the mayor does, or the council does. And you all know that I have stood in front of you and let you have it every once in a while. But I do not believe that there's a single person on the council or in the manager's office or any of the other employees in there, even though I may feel that some of them may be paid a little more than necessary, that doesn't have the best interests of the city of Montpelier and all of the citizens, the ones that are like me, not so well off, and the ones that are well off. I just, I've been hearing a lot of this vitriol and yeah, I see it, Donna. And it is a little hard to take. And some of the points that are made may be good points, but they get lost in the vitriol. And I guess that's all I need to say. Thank you, Vicki. I am looking, I am not seeing any more members of the public wishing to be heard. So let's bring this back to the council. I guess I should first close the public hearing and then proceed to council discussion of the proposed budget and bond issues. Surely someone has something to say. If there's no discussion, the chair would entertain a motion. Jay. Jay, go ahead. I just wanted to kind of get things started a little bit if others had thoughts, but I do agree with the, I'm not sure how this plays out in the specific language, but I do agree with the concept that we approach the acquisition of the Alts Club and that property as a property acquisition, as opposed to a rec center development, because I do think that, as I've said, a number of times at other meetings, that ultimately this really is an opportunity that I feel the city should take advantage of to acquire the property and that there needs to be a robust public conversation around how we best utilize that land and not go into it with any presumptions. And I think that a lot of the conversation we heard tonight was rumble. What exactly is going to happen to it? And we haven't really talked about it yet. Timing is dictated that we need to take advantage of this opportunity, but we need to commit to our community that we will use, if the voters approve it, that we will engage in that process and that could very well be given the amount of space, include rec facilities, it could include public-private partnerships with, we know there are already interested parties, nonprofit and for-profit, both and potentially could include housing. So I think that that, from a messaging and conceptual standpoint, as we look to have conversations with voters about what this means is that it's not, hey, this is, that's more open-ended, because obviously, and we heard this, is we still have a building on Berry Street that we own that has required work and has potential for other things as well. So I just don't want the potential of the former Elks Club land to be lost in this notion that this is about a rec center. I think it's really about an opportunity for the city to acquire its really significant piece of land within our city limit. So thanks. Yeah, Donna. Well, I don't totally agree of just joining it. I think, indeed, within the narrative, I'm looking for it as one of those areas of connecting with the rec creation and that it's also, I mean, commuters can use it to job. I mean, it isn't just for, it's a shared use path and I think housing. I mean, so I guess I would like to have other things listed. I wouldn't want to just say land acquisition, because what does that tell voters? To me, I am looking for placing some recreational buildings there. I am looking to place housing there. How it looks in the end, I don't know and that may not be all that happens there, but those are the two big ones in my mind and I would feel neglectful if I didn't mention them. So maybe we can work on them wording. Yeah, I was just looking at, I mean, your next item after this is actually approving, first looking at the warning and then approving the wording of the warning, but maybe we could say something. I'm just looking at the way it's drafted right now. Shall the voters authorize city council to borrow some not to exceed $2 million for to purchase the property, formerly known as the Elks Club, we put the actual address in. Proceeds from bond funding with youth finance, land purchase for potential use for recreation, housing and other uses, something like that. That sounds great. Yeah, I mean, I hear you Don. I'm not saying that it's like just, you know, totally open ended and you're right. I think those two ideas are, you know, how we would approach a management plan for the property. So yeah, I'm with you that we like, say this is what we intend to do, but you know, what we're hearing from folks is like, is, well, what exactly are we intending? It's like, well, we don't have, you know, we can't commit to that right now, but let's commit to a process where we, you know, focus on those things. So yeah, I appreciate it. Thank you. Okay. Adam could take a word and see what time it is. Okay. Anyone, Lauren? Are you looking to say something? Sure. I think that's a great idea. Oh, that's weird. Thank you. I totally support that. I like Bill's proposed language, getting housing in there in particular as like a clear direction that it has the potential for that that we want to explore and the obvious recreation opportunities of the site. I mean, I think more broadly just briefly, you know, really appreciate the engagement. Obviously the budget is months and months and months of work and a lot of people have participated a lot of times throughout the process. So really grateful. I mean, I think that this budget for the city is really just going to get us back on track to delivering services that our residents need and expect. And the part that I'm really excited about with it is the ability to make investments in things like housing and some of these long time systemic issues that if we underfund now are just going to set us up for ongoing costs exacerbate a lot of the problems that we heard about tonight of people concerned about different kinds of people not being able to live in our community. And I think if we don't actually try to address root issues and make investments in things like all kinds of housing, which is what this budget is trying to do, then we're just we're going to get nowhere and actually make the problem worse. So I think this is a responsible budget that just actually is being responsive to a lot of the concerns that we've heard and that have just gotten really kind of on steroids during the during the pandemic with so many issues just becoming worse. And we've had to cut services and things due to budget cuts. So being able to restore and actually make some of those investments. So I will be supporting the budget. Thanks. No, we don't because I just consulted with the manager the actual vote. Well, go ahead. I thought you meant about the warning. So typically what's happened is the you do vote to to approve the budget and bonds. And then we just make sure the correct number is in whatever whatever your number ends up being. And then we make sure the correct number is in when we approve the warning. And then if we have any language change on any of the ballot items or want to put new items or take off items, then that's the time to do that. So we should have a motion on the budget. I'll make a motion to adopt the budget as presented tonight. A second. Any further discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? And then a motion on the bonds. Is that separate? So you would move to put the bonds on the ballot either in whatever form you want. Either as they're laid out now. Then you'll do the wording next. But just the amount of the bond and what how they're grouped. So I'll make a motion to put the bonds on the ballot. Yes. Do any. Whatever install or amount you want and however you want. Including with those your motion include the two million for the real estate purchase instead of those on bill slide. I don't have them here on a sheet of paper. So there's currently there's four proposed. There's one for seven. Let me just read them and then you can vote on them. So 7.2 million, four million from general fund, 3.2 from water and sewer funds for East State Street. Okay. Do you want to vote on them separately? Move separately and vote separately on each. Change it or do whatever you want. Let's do that. So the first motion is for the bond is is there a motion and a second for that? Okay. I have East State Street is the first one. East State Street. Yes. Could you repeat the motion please? We're we're developing the motion now. The motion is to place the bond for East State Street. 7.2 million on the ballot. On the ballot. Okay. Let's keep it simple. Is there a second for that? Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. I make a motion to put the ballot item for the purchase of land. Well you know so we're going to do the wording on the next ballot. That I don't just the purchase of land for the $2 million. For the $2 million. Okay. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? If somebody else wants to do it. Okay. Okay. Okay I make a motion to put the infrastructure projects 1.815. I say it like that. On the ballot. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All those opposed? Okay 16.4 for the water resource recover. And for the wastewater recovery facility 16.4 million. Second. Discussion? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay. We have passed those four. I think I already closed the public hearing. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Next we are up to item number nine. Second public hearing for the annual meeting. And the draft warning is in the materials. I will open the public hearing. Do we need a presentation? Mr. Whitaker. I just think you're making a mockery out of good governance. That this you know to rubber stamp this stuff the way you have to not listen to any of the testimony of the people that showed up and not make a single change. And then to you know just ram this through onto the budget. You're demonstrating the problem which I've tried to illustrate is that you totally rely on the city manager. You don't hold him accountable. Then you rubber stamp the work. And it's just atrocious that this city's governance has devolved to that level. You know we have to reclaim this city from the mismanagers. And we have to make it livable for both the well to do and the people who are already here and the poor. And you're heading in the wrong direction. You're heading to you're selling us out and I resent it. Thank you. Is there any comment from any other member of the public? Seeing none I will close the public hearing. And now it's time for a motion and discussion about the language of the of the warning. So I would so one of the little sidebar we were having Kelly when we're doing the next agenda item can is it possible once we change this to come back with a final version so we can sign it tonight. Oh beautiful. There we go. It's much faster than that. Exactly. So I think obviously you should make sure that all the articles say what you'd like them to say. But the specific suggestion that we talked about for article 14 was and we'd have to probably find the address right. So shall the voters authorize the city council to borrow a sum of money not to exceed $2,000 for the property formally owned by the Elks club at and you met $2,000,000. What'd I say? $2,000,000. You're a negotiator. I am a good negotiator. Okay. Yes. $2,000,000 for not to exceed $2,000,000 for property formally owned by the Elks club at what is it? 203 Country Club Road. Beautiful. Proceeds from bond funding will be used to finance purchase of land for potential use for recreation housing and other uses. And then the rest would be the same. I would add that the number off the top of my head may be wrong, but it's 143 acres. I had 138. 138. I was off by five. Approximately 140 acres. There's actually two lots. I think one is five acres or they are under 38, but I'm not sure. Oh, where the building is relative to the what's was is currently the golf course. So those together total 143. I do think I do think that that is worth acknowledging the size of the land as as opposed to just the street address to represent the potential of what's there. So I think that that we feel comfortable saying. Yeah. I don't want to misrefer to you, but Approximately 130. Well, it's definitely, I mean, I know it's at least 138. Okay. I would use the least number, not the highest number. Approximately 130. Yes. Let's say more or less. Yes. Yeah. Are there any proposed changes to the language of any of the other articles before we have a motion and vote on it? I didn't see any. So just I want to make sure we got that right. For article 14, then we would say, Shall the voters authorize the city council to borrow a sum of money not to exceed two million dollars for 138 for approximately 138 acres formally owned by the Elks club at 203 country club road. Not for the purchase of? For the purchase. Yes. Thank you. What is not to exceed two million? It's two million, yes. So you're saying that property will not be purchased for more than two million? No, the bond will not be even more than two million. Could we center or put the housing first? Sure. Please. And thank you. Yeah. So say for housing, recreation and other uses. I'm seeing nods around the table. So yeah. Okay. Jay, did you have a comment on another item on the ballot? Well, I just I know that there were some changes about a little bit of language happening this afternoon and I'm just trying to pull up the most current version. I'm not able to do that online right now. So I just says the page is unavailable from the agenda. So I just wanted to maybe I'm in the wrong place, but so we there were some changes to article 13 that we talked about this afternoon, right? By email. Yes. So I just was I have to. Oh, it was it says Confluence River Park and it's supposed to be River Confluence Park. Is that what you were talking about? Was there an unborn meeting this afternoon via email? No. One person noted a wording change and sent it to us and said, would you mind drafting a change for tonight? It's Confluence River Park. That's correct. Okay. And this one has river in it. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the corrected version. Okay. Lauren. One question for article 15. So this is the water resource recovery facility upgrades. I wonder about adding the phrase set improvements are planned to improve the facility solids processing system address odor issues. Yes. Comma and implement a combined heat and power generation system. No. And so we definitely not implement combined heat and power. That's an old language. So I think it would say improve facility solids processing system and eliminate the odor problem. I think I would definitely that's definitely correct. Great. So where it says yeah. So everything from implement to system take out and just say and correct an odor. How could you add the word that hazardous odor? This is not just smell bad. This is bad for your health hazardous. The people on State Street have said that to me. As Linda Berger tonight made the statement. Hazard is really important. It's not this stinky. Yeah. Actually he's got a good point. Eliminate would be even better to address. No. Okay. Kelly do you want to step up to the table so that you can you can you can read to people what you have and everyone can hear you. Yeah. That sounds awesome. Okay. So I just want to circle back to the other adjustments and the articles that we've gone over just to make sure I've got it all. So but starting with article 15 where we just work where what I've got here is show the voters authorized the city council to borrow a sum of money not to exceed 60 million four hundred thousand for various sewer treatment systems to upgrade the water resource recovery facility at Dog River Road. Set improvements are planned to improve the facilities solids processing systems and implement incorrect odor hazardous odors. I would I would say don't put implement just say and correct problems related to hazardous odors potentially hazardous odor or or to eliminate the I don't know we could just refer to the state's corrective order. So what to refer to the order bill. Lauren you have an idea one what about and correct and ongoing odor violation at the site or state odor violation somehow I mean part of what I want to convey is that like we're going to have to pay something to upgrade this no matter what because we're in violation right now so somehow make yeah that's what I was trying to get at was yeah that was some word salad there odor violation at and location at the site correct and ongoing odor violation at the site it's incorrect ongoing odor violation at the site soft but it's better than not I mean eliminate I mean we could put it and eliminate the ongoing order to eliminate the violation okay yeah correct and eliminate the other violation at the site okay so you want to do you want to read out loud through that the first couple of sentences of article 15 so everyone knows what it's going to say yeah okay so starting from the top here yeah shield of odors authorized the city council to borrow a some of money not to exceed 64 million for various sewer treatment systems to upgrade the water resource recovery facility at dog river road set improvements are planned to improve the facility's solid processing system correct and eliminate sorry the odor violation at the site if approved so then it just goes on one thing I just noticed on the third line where it says to improve the facility's solid processing system it should be shouldn't be facilities ies it should be singular facility apostrophe s okay everybody happy with the way 15 is phrased and and we're solid on article 14 I'm going to read that back to you too just to make sure okay thank you so a shield of odors authorized the city council to borrow a some of money not to exceed two million dollars for approximately 138 acres and then this is where at recreation property formerly the elks club at 203 country club road is that it's a little bit uh there's a lot going on there in that statement but we modified that we modified it we weren't going to go directly to the language of recreation property because it was a recreation property I'm confused and then it goes on to say you're taking recreation property out of that okay so I think it would be saying to borrow some of money not to exceed two million dollars for 138 acres of land formally owned by the elks club at 206 country club road for the yep got it I had that's where I was okay that's much okay you should be for the purchase of and then the hundred approximately 130 acres eight acres of land okay so shall the voters authorize the city council to borrow a sum of money not to exceed two million dollars for the purchase of 130 acres approximately 130 acres approximately 130 38 acres of land formally the elks club at 203 country club road okay and then and then it goes on to say a proceeds from bond funding will be used to finance the purchase the purchase of land for potential housing recreation and other uses okay this is the entire notice the entire ballot is there anything else that anyone wants to propose to change in the language before we adopt it you have a comment there yeah um we have a comment from member the public uh vicki lane um I'm I'm just concerned about the the stated acreage um in that it could get messy if you get more than the 138 I I'm just concerned about using the lower number when in reality it could be the higher number um I just think that maybe if we if we said approximately 143 to five acres maybe vicki I think I can answer that for you it worries me well so this I don't think it the city charter is very clear it actually authorizes the city council to purchase property the voters don't have to vote to purchase property what the voters over here are approving the financing that the bond okay so if it's more or less the council could vote could only you know could purchase more they could buy double it if they could get it for two million okay so maybe we should just leave the acreage out I think the idea behind and again I don't want to speak for the council members but I believe the idea was to make sure people understood this was a large parcel okay it was the approximately 138 acres because understood it wasn't just a little house lot or something okay I just I just got nervous because I I do think that we you know I don't want us to approve it and then have somebody come come back and challenge it because you know well I good point but I think if if the purchase goes through there will be an action taken by the council because I do believe this is a one in a lifetime chance that we should not blow so okay thanks thanks Ricky so is somebody prepared to move to adopt the warning as as we've amended here to adopt the warning as amended I second that well awarded motion is there any further discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye all those opposed and we've adopted the public warning for the annual meeting and Kelly I think you're running off to print it right now thank you thank you okay moving along to item nine on the agenda the strategic plan update I think we're turning it over to the assistant city manager for that yes hi I'm Cameron Neeter Meyer I'm the assistant city manager and I'm very excited to talk to you all about the strategic plan and where we are at so give me just a second I will pull up my presentation all right it's worked for me so or everyone else tonight so I certainly hope it works for me let's see give yourself permission to share your screen yeah that's why I brought this other computer up here to sit next to the disc computer so council thank you for allowing me to be here and for sticking through this this is a very exciting update for me I love being able to talk about the work that staff has been doing to implement the strategic plan goals that y'all have identified for us I think we have a very successful first quarter reporting session just to reiterate what is on your strategic plan and what your overall goals are there's improving community prosperity providing responsible and engaged government creating more housing practicing good environmental stewardship building and maintaining sustainable infrastructure and improving our public health and safety for our community overall our status is doing really well we have at least 72 percent of our projects on track right now some of the ones I was looking through the data the ones that have some disruption or major disruption are typically minor delays that have to do with the timeline of the projects because we changed the way we are doing our strategic plan in that it is along with the budget a lot of the some of the longer term projects that have delays right now are because they're contingent on budget passing so that they can get started so that's what you'll see in some of those or we're asking for some more clarity around what your needs are so I'm what I'm planning to do is walk us through high-level updates of each of your pertinent strategies and activities that support the goals I won't go into too much detail you were provided and the community was provided the full report which has all of the updates for each of these in totality so if you're interested in looking at that full report it is attached to this agenda so I'll start with goal one which is to improve community prosperity and one of the larger strategies there is economic development and outdoor economic development we've done a lot around Confluence Park that's been discussed and it is on the bond now and so I'd like to just sort of say where we are right now they have established and when I say we this case it is the parks department I do want to shout them out they've been a lot of work with this have established a contract with the Vermont River Conservancy to do project management right now they've done two rounds of boring on the sole at the site to check for ground stability and for contamination just so you know the impacts of both of those results may affect the final cost of this project and so the community knows Vermont River Conservancy will be hosting Confluence Park stakeholder meetings looking for import input on the final design of the project and we are still actively fundraising and applying for further grants for this project I know that it's important to y'all to have an expansion of city provided child care options and right now our daycare after school care is going really well and our program is being is still very successful even in the face of covid but we have been working with our plans for a new rec center to establish an infant's child care facility which is a higher standard of facility currently the elk's property has a school that is licensed to offer infant care and so if that is a facility that we're able to purchase it becomes more immediately available to us so that is a delay because we're just sort of waiting to see what happens when it comes to infant care when we're looking at economic development bill sort of talked on it earlier we have $50,000 included in the budget to update our existing economic development strategic plan as well as retaining professional support when needed one of the other projects under this that is delayed is our tax stabilization program review and the tiff district review and tiff is a tax increment financing program which is you know something that the council will need to have substantive discussions on so that we know which direction you would want to go in and I will take a moment to say please interrupt me at any point this is a pretty I'm going to get try to get very speedy through this pretty long presentation but if you have any questions just throw them at me please thank you one of the things that we'll need to do is determine levels of social service provision but one of the things that we've done to support work in that direction is expands the contracted peer support outreach work currently being provided by Good Samaritan Haven staff that is one of the activities that y'all highlighted was to expand or formalize the peer support outreach worker and we have extended that contract with them to help provide more peer support work specifically around those who are experiencing homelessness an exciting update that we have is our feast program growth our senior center is four months into a new design of our feast program which runs our meals on wheels and we have brought our own kitchen manager chef in house so we have really working to get them up to speed so that we have a whole new kitchen a whole new way to provide food and then we'll be able to expand those programs once we've hit a very sustainable baseline so moving into goal two providing responsible and engaged government on one of the main strategies and we've talked a lot about that tonight is communicating more effectively one of the updates is improving the functionality of the city's website one of the things that we do have in the budget is a way to sort of bid wow sorry bid out the website hosting and so we have an ability to sort of look from the ground up what we want our website to look like so that's very exciting one of the other activities that you identified was conducting more intergenerational community events i am happy to announce we have four currently scheduled events that are aiming at a whole different i will just say it again intergenerational involvement so look for advertisements for some upcoming events i will highlight one of them is our march for meals events all through the week of march 18th to 25th our senior center and community services are planning quite a few events to raise awareness for those who need food or help with food security in our community so one of the other things that we talked about about communicating more effectively is improving a recruitment for city committees and one of the things that we discussed was the implementation of committee stipends so as you know cjack our social and economic justice advisory committee has come to you and the thirty thousand dollars was included in the budget that passed tonight so we'll see how that goes but thank you for that our committee will has stated that they'll continue to design a pilot project implementation plan to recommend to y'all before the new fiscal year one of the other things we've done to increase coordination and our communication with the community is draft an mou for work with the sustainable montpellier coalition to run our capital area neighborhood groups that is still pending approval through our legal review but it's i anticipate that being done very soon so it's very exciting we're also you know very committed as this as staff can and the staff has the capacity to continue updating our website when we get feedback about it so you know i do encourage people to let us know if they have an issue if it's something we can fix we will we will add it to the list of things to get to so thank you for being patient with us and let us know if we can help you find anything sometimes it is just a familiarity issue so we can help the ADA transition plan was fully included in the 23 council budget so thank you for that another thing that we talked about was that was also part of the social and economic justice advisory committee work was language access improvement that's another one that is in yellow because we don't have any substantive updates one of the things that we did identify sort of in this conversation was the need for somebody who speaks Pashto or to help bring our afghani refugee families who are in our community now making sure that they are best served so that is something we are aware of and will be working on when we're looking at focusing on diversity equity and inclusion we talked a lot about the creative discourse equity report recommendations one of those was the stipends another one was to really look at how we're communicating the history of Montpelier so I want to thank a few folks Jess Robinson Paul Carnahan Michael Sherman the division for historic preservation the Vermont Historical Society and the C. Jack committee for helping us edit our history section on the Montpelier website is now a much larger history section really acknowledges indigenous ancestry of the Montpelier highlights that and talks about the city's history in a more holistic way and I just really appreciate the work that they put into that also moving on to increasing city staff and council capacity one of the things that you all have put on your list of strategic outcomes that you want was getting the planning department to come and do some skill growth exercises with y'all this hasn't been scheduled yet and we would like to turn that around and ask y'all what clarity for some clarity on what you would like the goals to be for a planning exercise would you like more information about the city plan would you like to talk about the zoning and the responsibilities of the city there this isn't a conversation we have to have tonight but if you could if I could ask that you think about what you would like to get out of that exercise and let us know so we can make sure that you get that also when we're talking about increasing capacity one of the things that we're really excited about is seeking accreditation for the senior center through the national council on aging they've been working very hard on that and are up to date on getting that rolled out the timeline has explained in more detail on the floor report so I know there's a lot I just really love bragging about what staff has done so thank you for bearing with me you just heard tonight that we have implement we have put in $110,000 fiscal year 23 budget for the housing trust fund which was one of your goals to support creating more housing another one of the goals for creating more housing was working with housing developers to accomplish successful housing projects our planning department has been engaging with a number of developers recently and they highlighted a few of the projects that they've been working on I want to call out the Good Samaritan Havens application to the housing trust fund was supported for the Berlin homeless shelter that's being built currently on Barry Montpelier road and there's a couple other projects that are upcoming you know about the central Vermont Habitat for Humanity project and some others so there are some exciting work being done when it comes to housing one of the other things that we've talked about a bit tonight is coordinating when we're talking about housing is coordinating about emergency housing or a service hub or some sort of support for those experiencing homelessness I know our homelessness task force is eager to bring a memo back to y'all about what they want to use the 15,000 you appropriated for them to conduct a study to get an actionable plan for housing needs or sheltering needs for folks in our community so goal four is practicing good environmental stewardship big strategy there is expanding our park land Hubbard Park was expanded this year by 78 acres through a grant and fundraising project and we've talked a lot tonight about the Elks Club property opportunity so goal five was to build and maintain sustainable infrastructure we've really been addressing newer improved infrastructure needs we I just sort of touched about the public restroom work I know the homelessness task forces asked that consultant like in their proposed consultancy project they've asked them to include a public restroom component you have set up a public restroom committee that hasn't met yet but it is it has been stated and city council and the city has let the state know that we would like more collaboration on bringing public restrooms online and moment failure one of the things that we've talked a lot about tonight and is considered yellow and on a minor delay is just the recreation the rec center development so we're obviously looking to see what plays out with the bond option and that plan to purchase otherwise we have some backup plans that we've identified to you and we would need to readdress that if when we know about the land purchase so I am excited to start talking about the opportunities we've done I'm going to soapbox here for a second but when we went through the rec center development or re or renovation option earlier I think it was already two years ago we did a lot of public hearings and got a lot of feedback from the community about what they would want to see in a rec center and so we do have a baseline understanding of what our community is looking for that we are able to turn around and bring back to the community for feedback so we are very excited about where we are when it comes to rec center and that land obviously would have more opportunities one of the other things that is in a slight delay is our creating a sustainable district heat management plan we did hold a user wide update meeting for district heat customers in October we will be bringing in an external partner to audit the new fiscal year then this heating season's capacity charge changes just to make sure that not only are we doing best practices when it comes to our capacity changes but that our customers feel comfortable and confident in our capacity charge changes so that is something we'll be doing and we will also because our DPW team has worked very hard with our users to increase their effectiveness and their the efficiency of their heating systems we will be doing another audit of the capacity for each user at the end of this heating season to make sure we got it right so if you have any questions Donna Barlow Casey has been put in place as the project manager for district heat all right last goal improving public health and safety so again we've talked a little bit about this and I think it's telling how much addressing homelessness in our community comes up in your strategic plan I do think that that's very important to call out and there are many ways that we are addressing that the homelessness task force presented to council both long and short term goals and is continuing to work towards getting a consultant to come in and give us an actionable plan to move forward I also wanted to highlight that one of the things you wanted to do is to expand our peer support outreach workers and our social worker programs within our police department funding for half a social worker has been included in the fiscal year 23 police budget again I mentioned before that we've expanded our contract with Good Samaritan Haven to support longer term investment in peer support outreach and also the police department really wanted to highlight that our social worker as she works with us now has been great and has responded to all requests for outreach from the MPD so we want to thank Susan also one of the things that was very important is the implementation of the police review committee recommendations so this work is ongoing I do encourage you to read the full report for details on this I cut this down quite a lot Brian was very thorough in his answers and I should say chief Pete I apologize the recommendations that the city and the council have already moved forward are a lot one of the things that is really important is bringing body worn cameras in place and we aim to have those in use by fiscal year 23 focusing our community resource officer on community engagement protocol after a major use of force we're looking at street outreach training training for crowd control we've already committed to demilitarization and scenario based training the recommendations that still need council discussions include the ordinance changes around sex work and public intoxication and then what requires future funding because it's not we're not able to do what is recommended right now is or alternatively the training just doesn't exist yet is training around youth and adolescent behavior hosting web hosting for increased data transparency and street outreach capacity and mental health capacity and that's a regional issue another thing that is important for you through the impede or through our police department is focusing on the technology side of the police that's a really big deal our body worn cameras are really the focus of that one and you know chief Pete has details in the full report but that is again going to be rolling out in fiscal year 23 as it is planned now so another really important strategy that we have for improving public health and safety is being disaster ready so our local hazard mitigation plan was accepted by FEMA and we continue to monitor that plan we're also meeting internally and with external partners such as the Red Cross to discuss emergency sheltering in our community as we recognize that the nearest Red Cross approved shelter right now is in Barrie so that is something we are working on addressing also our national flood insurance program community rating system we're aiming for improvements and our updates are due in February and we're we're on track for that and are currently preparing the required documentation so a couple other things we talked a lot today about CBPSA so I won't go into that in any sort of detail but we are talking about funding for consoles another sort of activity that chief Pete has really been working on is working on policies and procedures in the police department I will leave you to read that very long list of policies that he is reviewing but there have been quite a few policies that they've been working on to really work around transparency and being more equitable within the department so finally we're talking about our community justice center support and making sure that we're operating a full spectrum of their restorative justice programs all of our CJC programs are in full operation right now those include restorative justice programs are outreach services to people affected by crime and other offenses reentry services to those leaving the prison system we really we uh the CJC really helps people find housing and jobs and our conflict assistance program really does continue to serve our community so thank you to the CJC and the CJC correct director Carol Plant wrote quite a bit in the full report I recommend reading that for more information and so this that was a lot of talking I'm very sorry but what that also is important to note is that we sat down and looked at all of these updates of staff the other day and mapped out sort of when would be appropriate to come and talk to council and so we have a tentative presentation schedule for council updates on some of these topics outlined here this is obviously tentative and may change I just want you to know what is upcoming and when you can expect to hear information about these plans and that goes for the community too if there's something that you're interested in hearing further details on this is potentially when we'll be talking about it to council also I want to again sort of announce to the public that this the software that we use to track our strategic plan progress has a public dashboard my goal is to update it every time I bring a presentation to council so you can read all of these updates in a sort of interactive way so that is a there is a direct link on the city's home page to this dashboard and it will be updated within the next week with the information that was shared with council tonight so thank you that was my very exciting updates where we're at with our strategic plan my contact information is on this slide and is available in the agenda packet if anyone has any questions on this topic thank you thank you thanks Cameron that was it almost seems like you've actually been working I think we should give her an earlier slot sometime because you're always late at night and you're always rushing through and it deserves much more attention and you deserve much more credit so thank you thank you I thought this was just great one and so yeah big thumbs up I think this is a great thing to be able to inform all the residents what what their government's been working on one thing that occurred to me particularly and I don't know if this is even within the capacity of this system but in light of the conversation we had tonight and the action we took on the on the real estate acquisition bond it's clear that we're looking not just at recreation but also at housing is it possible to somehow make that come under both the both headings within the program I would need to look into that okay thanks yeah yeah no that was great Cameron sometimes it's good just to be reminded some of this stuff you know fresh in your mind but do you think is it possible in a week when the dashboards updated maybe a thrown on social media though just a yes yeah I feel like we can't get that out enough you know it's yeah I'm gonna see if there are any other council members okay see very briefly that it's it's telling that we're not going to talk about bathrooms till May and does that mean everybody's agreeing that no one needs a bathroom till May because that that's an example of how these bathrooms are owned by the people here and they need to be open and you've done nothing in years to make these bathrooms accessible around the clock and to just put it off till May is just an example of the mismanagement of this city secondly the environmental stewardship we keep bragging about it but nobody's cleaned up all the mess that's been out on the riverbank year after year after year and it's been really compounded in the last year with Gerton Park and so this is all just feel good pretty talk but it's it's hollow it's really hollow you really need to look at your own integrity and whether or not you're gonna live up to it your words thank you we can move to thanks camera next on the agenda item 11 review petitions for annual meeting there are none okay so that gets us to item 12 of camera we maybe we should have not have let you go back down the mask mandate extension are you part of that or I so basically you adopted your mask mandate shortly after the authorization was granted by the legislature it requires after the first 45 days which is just coming to a close sometime after this meeting for it to be extended and it has to be extended can it can't be extended for any more than 30 day period so ironically this will be on your next agenda on February 9 because 30 days falls between the 9th and 23rd so you'll be doing the next extension at the next meeting but our recommendation is if you wish to keep this in place simply extend it is in its current form okay I'll move that we extend the mask mandate ordinance as as written for for an additional 30 days motion in a second is there any other discussion I just say I think you know I've noticed people I think the behavior in town has been better the longer we've had it in place here you know even go to the shows probably maybe one person without a mask the other day but most people were doing it right and I think most people in the community would probably prefer a statewide mandate but I think it's working well as is so I would definitely support it definitely supporting it and just registering my ongoing displeasure that the governor is forcing us to have this conversation at 1102 instead of at a minimum letting the law just go into effect for a long period of time what a waste of every municipality's time but I'm glad we're passing it okay all those in favor signify by saying hi opposed okay that brings us up to other business not aware of any other business all right well I was going to do this in a managed report but I could do it under other business this is more of a report as much as anything else the lobbying committee sent out requests to all the my period based lobbying firms advocacy firms seeking to see if they would be interested in representing the city for this legislative season we received four proposals one of them was on budget and seemed to really understand you know it was really focused on advocacy we had two that significantly exceeded the budget but also included more I think so it's a kind of nice idea but it was the full package of public communications and PR and I don't think we're just did in sort of hiring a spin doctor and then one expressed interest but didn't really respond to all the questions so you don't really need to vote on this but I can do this but I would recommend that we hire Leonine associates who are right behind here they were the one that was on budget and really focused on advocacy and they they seem to address the concerns that we had they're obviously handy to us and two of the key principles are Montpelier residents so if there's no objection I'll go ahead and contact them sounds good I don't think we need a motion we've already decided to spend the money in yeah I have a separate issue when you're done oh yeah that was all I had okay I wanted to discuss remote meetings we were put off last meeting right I would prefer us to be remote in February then assess where we are in the data and everything else before we come back live what does anyone else think I would agree with that as you can see I am struggling tonight to breathe with two masks on because I have asthma and if I was at home on zoom or my office on zoom I wouldn't have to run out and use my inhaler and be in the rest anybody have a problem with doing that okay well members of the council first okay uh mr wicker do you have anything more to say other than you disagree with it uh well I just think that there are people who are not equipped uh who don't uh can't make out who's talking on a screen uh the audio quality the video quality uh is is insufficient we have invested in air cleaners uh I think that the maintaining of presence for those who find it difficult or to participate via lame technology is uh is important especially especially when we have the capacity to accommodate it I know it's more convenient for y'all to sit at home in your pajamas but it's not good for the public I just want to say it's really a health issue I don't like my pajamas that much uh it really is a health issue I just don't think us being smart for us to defy our very thing we're trying to do with our mask mandate and so I would do I need to make a motion why should I make a motion I make a motion that the council meets remotely for the meetings in February and that we reassess it at the end of February okay any further discussion all those in favor pretty signify by saying I opposed okay we'll have to weigh the j now I can touch you now okay anything else on the other business I don't think so but council reports and start with Donna this time well I want to start off thanking Cameron again she came out with that memo she sent out and I haven't even done it justice yet because I was feeling the need of not understanding all the what was going on with efforts towards helping people who are without a home as well as trying to understand their calls I got three calls just this week and two last week about the scrutin park structure and trying to balance out other people's need in the structure and it's so many gray areas but I do appreciate the memo I will read it and come back with questions the other thing I had my first meeting as representative on the community justice center advisory group and an initial meeting was very much into life philosophy it was really really enjoyable you can't have it back it's a totally different kind of meeting it was very refreshing thank you now I just want to thank all our staff who's been working so hard in the cold the last week here especially public works you know it's really going above and beyond so thanks very much quickly a little bit of a broken record but I guess it's been a while but I just I think it's important to publicly acknowledge all the work of the folks in our school system lately it's with this relentless pandemic and an ever-moving target of directives from the from the federal government and particularly from the state lately it has been it has been beyond challenging and and I just am so grateful that they have risen to meet the needs of our community um not just our kids but the you know yes our kids but also everybody who who you know parents and folks who work here and and the challenges have just been relentless but they've they've met that challenge day in and day out and so I just wanted to uh acknowledge um the administration the school district the teachers the staff and everything that that they're doing to support community um I kind of I'm just going to piggyback on what Jay said um I really am impressed with the school district and the teachers um all the supports my kids um are held really well at school and it makes me feel good knowing that um their questions are being answered the staff um are being supported as best they can and I just my love goes out to all of them and I just really want to thank them for everything they've been doing through this very long what three years two years since some change it's been incredible so thank you uh thanks would echo all of that like deep appreciation for school district and I think Cameron's strategic plan update underscored all the really hard and important work the city staff are doing too so thank you to everyone I can't believe we're approaching two years in this pandemic um the only thing just wanted to note I have gotten a few questions about the the parking policy and people asked some kind of basic questions like on the premise of you're making us do all this work and it doesn't seem like it's any better for the city I'm just thinking maybe like just some public information out of like because I think you know I was like well the comparison of like the number of cars towed and stuff and they were like oh okay if it's actually doing something then it feels it's worth my effort to move my car every day so I just was thinking like some kind of little reminder of why this is like helpful to the city to actually do it because I've gotten a few questions thanks thanks um I will say I echo everything about people have observed about how great our city workers and school workers are I don't have kids in the schools anymore but more but I have a granddaughter in the school who loves going to school loves her teachers and uh we're obviously doing something right um I also want to mention and give praise to the Montpelier police department I don't know if uh were you gonna do this I don't know if people are going to have I don't think this is something that people necessarily saw but the Montpelier police department has been selected to be a pilot site for the development of a national online model for tolerance diversity and anti-bias training and so I think that's a real credit to the work of chief Pete and and the rest of the police department so good job guys um mayors report well mayors still not here but I've talked to her the other day and she's uh doing great and uh we're in good shape or she's in good shape and that's it I guess see clerk's report I just remind folks that the uh candidate filing deadline uh for which you do not need a signature petition is Monday the 24th at 5 p.m the office will be open until then um I mentioned you can ask for an early ballot anytime but they I'm hoping they will be available around February 3rd so as soon as we get him we'll start mailing him out and uh city managers report I believe I will pass okay that uh covers all the business before the council without an objection we'll adjourn at 11 13 p.m thanks everybody