 All right. So I'm going to call this meeting to order. The first thing is to review and approve the agenda. I do not have any changes to make to you. Yes. Yeah, I forgot. I should have mentioned this earlier. We need to add payroll and bills approval to the consent agenda. It's just. I'm not off. Okay. We can talk about that when we get to the consent agenda. Okay. I'm not off. I don't have any other changes. Okay. All right. So with that, we'll consider the agenda approved. And. So onto general business and appearances. An opportunity for any member of the public to. A comment on something that is otherwise not on our agenda. And if you have something to say that's relevant to something that's not on our agenda, that's not relevant to something that's not on our agenda. That's sort of more adjacent to that item. And as is also true for those other public comments. If you would say your name, where you live, and I try to keep your comments to about two minutes. That would be excellent. All right. Do we have any takers? I want to just call your attention. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm just somewhat urgent. There's a lot of complicated matters and misinformation flying in all directions. You were asked at the last meeting and you tabled it to appoint a city official. Because the discussion has gone on that the cities need to be more engaged. Without having. We need somebody of intelligence and integrity. And without her permission, we don't have the authority to do that. We don't have the authority to do that. Because you need, she manages a radio system. Not directly, but she has to stay in touch with all her trucks. So that's something worth considering, but it's, we, we entered this contract, this, this authority. Which is a contract chartered by the legislature. And it says an appointment for a vacancy will be made in 45 days. And it says that if you had until October 11th to appoint a replacement for Dan, he was doing due diligence there. That, that was essential. Now we're near a month. Tomorrow is a month past that. So, you know, we, we, we're not outlaws. We, we have to, you know, adhere to our contracts and take seriously the important work that needs to get done there to get budgets ready. So we have to, we have to, we have to, we have to find out what radio system parts might fail and buy spares, et cetera. I call your tents changing subject to. The article in seven days and VPR about the rental problems. I've attended some of the housing task force and homelessness task force and it. Very various. We have a problem in this city that's not unlike Burlington's city. We need to have the enforcement or inspection mechanisms in place to actually support those. Housing task force initiatives, inventorying the BNB's finding the code violations, figuring out where public investment should go. We need to take that much more seriously. And ramp up the enforcement and inspection. When I've called multiple issues of sewage, I've been working on it for a long time. I've been working on it for a long time. I've been working on it for a long time. I've been working on it for a long time. It all just gets treated, you know, as if it's, it's, it's normal routine business. That's not okay. You know, it's, it's not okay at all. So, I think I've reused up my two minutes without hitting two other topics. But maybe you could actually consider putting some of the things that I bring to your attention because they are well research, putting them on the agenda and talking about them rather than putting them on the agenda. So, it's a good idea to look at it so you could get it. It's of annoyance. So, you could sweep it under the rug for another few months. Thank you. Anyone else who is here in public. Wish to make a comment. Oh, in person. I guess that's what I meant. In public. I'm not seeing anyone, anyone online. I'm not seeing any hands online. reaction, if you want to, but I'm not seeing anyone digitally either. So we are going to move on then on to the consent agenda. And with the consent agenda, just a question about the addition, John, is there any anything we should know about the addition of payroll and it was a payroll on bills? Payrolls and bills. It's on every time and it just wasn't on this time. All right. Any other, yes, Jack? I'll second it. Okay. And is it including the payroll and bills? Okay. And that's okay with you, Donna? Yes. Okay. Any further discussion about the consent agenda? I just, I don't want to pull it off the agenda. I just want to make a comment that the raise the blade initiative is something that's been, that folks from the conservation commission have been working on and just delighted to see that our staff was very supportive of that, which is initiative about mowing higher. So you actually, like three inches up, literally like raising the blade of mowing, which ends up, you end up with better water retention and soil health. And so anyway, just glad that that's there. And yeah, no need to, no need to pull it. So any other comments? Okay. All those in any further discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay. So the consent agenda passes and now we're on to the presentation from the agency of natural resources. And I, I see some folks here from ANR. So welcome. Yes. Yes. And I'll let you introduce yourself. And if you need a minute, I'm going to let you talk to camera about that. And it sounds like maybe we could just like take a minute. Okay, sure. But Peter's talking now. All right. Thank you, everybody, for having us, Madam Mayor, counselors. I my name is Peter walk. I am the commissioner of the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation, Montpelier resident. I'm joined by Nick Gianetti, another Montpelier resident who is the head of our pre treatment program in the wastewater program within the DC. Can I pause a second? We're getting some signal that it's hard to hear in the back. So I just want to give pause. Yeah, in the in the room. Yes. Yeah, try it again. Is this any better? Yes. Great. Thank you so much. I usually do not have trouble projecting so I will I will do better. So thank you for having us. We are here at the request of the council to discuss the issues related to per and polyfluoro alcohol substances, otherwise known as PFAS, a class or excuse me, a grouping of chemicals about 4000 strong that are in various products and uses around all around us there in our it's they've been used in our clothing and our furniture and our carpets and our ski wax and our firefighting foam for decades. We as a as a global society or Frank are coming to knowledge of these chemicals way too late. For Vermont's experience, it started with in 2016 when across our border, our southwestern border in the town of Houssik Falls or the village of Houssik Falls, PFAS or PFOA, PFOA, one of the chemicals was discovered in the water system in Houssik Falls. That led to there was a fabric coating factory in Houssik Falls led to local discussions in around Bennington to discuss what was happening there because there was a very similar factory there. And so we are actually on Monday going down to celebrate the final extension of water line systems in Bennington to cover the more than 380 impacted residences from PFAS in the in the groundwater that flowed into drinking water wells in Bennington. That is the frankly sort of the tip of the iceberg in terms of where PFAS exist in our society. And we are doing our best to respond to where those come from. What you are seeing here relative to Kassela's leachate and from the news VT facility is the result of our waste stream. It is the things that we all collectively throw away coming back to us. It's not going away. We have done a number of things to protect Vermont residents over time. There are drinking water standards in place. We are working on surface water standards. There are cleanup standards in place that we use. We are working with partners around the country to identify ways to better test for and understand where PFAS come from and where they live and how we treat them. And I think maybe most importantly for the residents of Vermont and not fully are included is that we have to have moved forward with litigation in two cases against manufacturers of these chemicals to hold them accountable for the problems that they have caused. It is our perspective that they should have known or did know that these chemicals were harmful before they entered our stream of commerce. And so we as community members in this state and elsewhere around the country need the resources to be able to address them. These are not naturally occurring chemicals. Any level of PFAS is not a natural source. And so what Nick is going to go through now is the nature of the pre-treatment permit that we just, the draft permit that we just issued or that we put out for public comment for the NewsVT facility that seeks to over the course of time install full treatment on that leachate. There's a process for that and it's one that's going to take some time. The treatment techniques are fairly well known, but managing the process, understanding what to do with the residuals, the end of the process, because putting it directly back in the landfill is not a great idea because it's just going to come out again in the form of leachate. We have to work through all those things. And so that's what we're here to talk to you today and answer your questions. I'm happy to turn it over to Nick. Can you folks see it on the Zoom screen? Okay, I can share my screen. Sorry about that. Okay, can everyone see that online on your computers? Cool. Thanks for having me and thanks for working with me through that little tech hiccup there. My name is Nick Gianetti. I'm the pre treatment section supervisor for the Vermont DEC. The pre treatment sections in the wastewater management program in the watershed management division. And the wastewater program is broken up into two sections. There's the direct discharge section, which regulates discharges of wastewater directly to surface waters. And there's the pre treatment section, which focuses on discharges coming into those municipal wastewater plants that are direct that are directly discharging to surface waters. And the pre treatment program is really in a unique position to focus on the reduction of pollutants that are coming into those wastewater plants. And the goals of the program are really to protect those wastewater plants from adverse impact from certain pollutants, protect surface waters from past from pollutants that may pass through the wastewater plant, enter the surface water and protect the biosolids that are produced by by municipal wastewater treatment facilities, specifically the quality of those biosolids. So this is a presentation we've been giving at the public meetings that we've been holding for this permit. It runs through the major the major kind of buckets that are in the permit that the major conditions that that apply to the regulation of the leachate discharge at the modular wastewater treatment facility. So I'm just going to kind of go touch upon those major conditions. And then we'll open it up to questions. Before you get very far, you're not seeing that on a Zoom screen. Okay, there's something different about how it's happening. Sorry about that. This isn't my computer. Yeah, as I am. I should have done a trial run. Yeah, we're all struggling through this post pandemic life together. Yep. You know, we just held two public meetings for this permit, and it was the same type of hybrid in person situation. And yeah, there's definitely a steep learning curve with with managing that for sure. Okay, I feel like I've done all the things I know how to do. That is showing on the screen is just last time this messed up really bad. He just looked through the slides. I think that's what she was trying to do. Maybe we just blow these up. Yeah, you guys can see the power. Yes. Yeah, I think we'll just we'll do it like this. Can everyone is that large enough for everyone on the computer? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, sorry about that. So yeah, this is so you know, we're here today to talk about the renewal for the New England Waste Services or news pretreatment permit. And that permit regulates the discharge of landfill leachate from three landfills. That's the New England Waste Services of Vermont landfill and Coventry Vermont, the North Country Environmental Services landfill in Bethlehem, New Hampshire, and the central Vermont landfill in East Montpelier, Vermont. This permit regulates the discharge of leachate from those landfills to Vermont municipal wastewater treatment facilities. It's currently on public notice through November 24. And it will be effective for five years once approved and issued by the secretary. There is an opportunity to amend the permit when it is after it is effective. And this this particular discharge has been permitted since 1994 with the agency. Permitted the discharge to the city of Montpelier since 1994. So yeah, so this permit is is really it permits, like I said, the discharge of leachate to the Montpelier wastewater treatment facility. In the permit, we've specified limits on the volume and the amount of BOD or biochemical oxygen demand that can be present in the leachate and discharge to the Montpelier wastewater treatment facility. The volume and BOD limits are based on the allocation issued from the city to the permittee. And the way the pretreatment permit program works is for the state to issue a pretreatment or the state's pretreatment permits are based on the approval, the municipal approval of that discharge to their wastewater treatment facility. We can't permit a discharge to a municipal wastewater plant if the city hasn't approved it. And we we won't, you know, make a city accept a wastewater discharge from an industrial user or or from from a source. So so it's you know, the city's decision or any municipality's decision to accept the discharge, they would issue that approval or sometimes called an allocation letter where they issue they allocate a particular amount of flow that that entity can discharge to the wastewater plant, as well as BOD in some cases. And we adopt that as part of our permit. And we would issue a permit for any discharge to a municipality that has the potential to adversely impact the wastewater plants. And being that this is leachate, there's a lot of stuff in leachate. If it's not managed appropriately, it can adversely impact the wastewater plant or the receiving waters or the biosolids quality. That's why we have a permit for this. And you know, the major changes in this renewal are the removal of the Newport wastewater treatment plant, the Berry wastewater treatment plant, the Burlington North wastewater treatment plant and the Essex Junction wastewater treatment plant from the permit. So currently, Montpelier is the only municipality on the permit that's accepting leachate under this permit. And those other discharge points were removed for various reasons. You know, some of you may be aware of the moratorium in Newport, the act 250 moratorium, which you know, doesn't allow leachate to be received at the Newport wastewater treatment plant any longer. Some of these other municipalities did not renew their agreement with with the permittee. Or some some of these municipalities don't have the infrastructure at their wastewater plant to receive leachate anymore. So therefore, as part of this renewal, they were removed from the discharge permit. Another change in this permit is the change to the flow limit. The previous flow limit was 23,000 gallons per day. But there was a provision in the permit that allowed the landfill to exceed that flow limit. So long as the BOD met the BOD standard, the landfill's leachate was consistently met the BOD standard. Therefore, essentially, there was no flow limit and they could discharge as much volume of leachate as they wanted to the wastewater treatment plant. So long as it maintained that 1200 pounds per day BOD, we put a cap on the volume of leachate that they can bring to the wastewater plant. That cap is 60,000 gallons per day. And that's based on again, the approval from the city to the to the landfill. We adopted that approval in this permit. We're requiring pretty extensive leachate monitoring of the leachate in this permit. Sorry if that's blurry. We're requiring monitoring of conventional pollutants such as BOD total suspended solids. We're requiring monitoring of metals. There's the suite of priority pollutant metals which have been included in the permit in the past. We've also added some new metals, total aluminum, total iron, total molybdenum. We're now requiring monitoring for nutrients, total phosphorus and total nitrogen given the concerns with total phosphorus and the nutrient impairment in the Lake Champlain Basin. We're requiring monitoring for priority pollutants which are a suite of toxic pollutants that include toxic organics, semi-volatile organic compounds, pesticides, PCBs. And we're also requiring monthly monitoring for per and polyflora alkyl substances or PFOS which as you folks know are an emerging contaminant. Another new requirement of this draft permit is enhanced monitoring at the municipal wastewater treatment facility so at the city of Montpelier wastewater plant. The purpose of this monitoring is to assess the impact of the leachate on the wastewater treatment plant's operations, determine how well the wastewater plant is removing pollutants from the leachate and monitoring the impact of leachate on the wastewater plant's effluent quality and its discharge to surface waters. So we're requiring you know a variety of different types of testing or PFOS testing quarterly which would be in the influent. So coming into the plant the effluent coming out of the plant and the solids produced by the plant requiring quarterly monitoring of influent effluent and solids for metals. Two times per year monitoring of the other priority pollutants that I mentioned or the organic compounds PCBs, pesticides and we're also requiring twice per year monitoring of whole effluent toxicity testing or wet testing and wet testing is a test that determines the toxicity of the effluent of the wastewater plant. It exposes the effluent at various concentrations to fish and daffodil or water flea and it determines the toxicity of the effluent. So we're increasing the monitoring for wet testing as well. Another new monitoring requirement in this permit is in stream at the Winooski River. This monitoring is required three times per year above the outfall of the wastewater plant and below the outfall of the wastewater plant. This monitoring is required for PFOS. This is in addition to the state monitoring in stream receiving water monitoring that we're currently doing and this would be routine monitoring so this would be expected for the life of the permit or for this permit term and the purpose of this monitoring is to determine concentrations of PFOS in surface waters that are attributable to the discharge. Determine if those concentrations pose risk to accumulating in fish at levels that pose risk to human health and as part of this permit we're requiring specific sampling methodology specific sample points and specific collection procedures to ensure accurate and representative data is collected and to be consistent with the state's statewide surface water monitoring strategy. The final condition of review is the requirement for the permittee to implement a pilot system to treat leachate. The goals of that condition are for the permittee to explore a treatment system for PFOS to remove PFOS in its leachate. They would explore a pilot system with the goal to establish a full-scale treatment system over time. The goals of the study of the pilot study particularly are to establish design criteria for a full-scale treatment system. Through our review of that pilot study we would be reviewing it to ensure that it's properly designed operated and maintained to provide consistent and reliable treatment of that leachate. Another goal of the study is to provide the agency the necessary information for us to develop a treatment standard or a technology-based affluent limit for us to limit PFOS in leachate across the state. So those are the goals of the pilot study. The timeline within four months from the effective date of the permit we anticipate receiving a plan outlining the details of the pilot study. That plan would outline the technology that the permittee is looking at piloting. The monitoring plan that that the permittee will implement to collect various operational performance economic environmental data to determine how the pilot the effectiveness of the pilot study. It will also outline the location of the pilot study and that plan we're planning to treat that plan as a amendment to the permit. So when we receive that plan we're going to put it on public notice and that will be subject to public review and comment and feedback and we would consider that upon amending the permit to incorporate the plan. After the plan is approved within one year the permittee would implement the pilot study and begin the data collection phase. Two years from that they would report out on the pilot study findings with the final report. We're asking for quarterly progress reports throughout the duration of the study so we can keep our finger on the pulse and review data as it's collected. And as I mentioned before following the report our intention is to determine an implementation schedule for the installation of a full-scale treatment system and to develop the applicable treatment standards for that treatment system. So with that I'll conclude my presentation and overview of the permit and I'm happy to take questions. This is Peter again. I just want to just kind of anchor on the point that Nick made about in-stream monitoring. We've done some already a couple years ago and we've got some more going on and obviously if this permit goes into effect it will have ongoing monitoring to understand what the in-stream impacts are from all sources of PFAS to the wastewater treatment facility and so that's a piece that I think we we thought was very important and we pushed for not to be the burden of the city of Montpelier because it it needs to reside with with the pre-treatment permittee but wanted to make sure that everybody sort of heard that piece loud and clear. Thank you. So I just want to clarify the process from here. Sorry I didn't articulate this earlier but if council has questions for Nick or for Peter now would be a good time but I do want to also after we have clarifying questions that I hear from the public folks want to make comments and then we'll go back to council discussion. So but first any questions from council? Yeah. Yeah thanks so much guys. So like yeah I think collectively we all have some responsibility for you know leachate and PFAS and put it in the water and everything. I guess what I'm wondering is we're the only municipality doing this now so by having this the one discharge point are we disproportionately putting both our community at risk and maybe this region at risk by being the only ones who accept this and discharging into the water like right here in Montpelier? So so yeah that is correct that you're the only permits you're the only municipality receiving leachate from this particular permittee. There are other municipalities in the state that do receive leachate from other sources. Yeah as part of this permit issuance you know we do an analysis to look at the quality of the leachate and how that impacts your wastewater plant and how it impacts the effluent quality and the surface water that's receiving that discharge and you know for the conventional pollutants priority pollutants metals nutrients that I that I reviewed in the permit you know the the agency you know there's there's not a reasonable potential for that discharge to adversely impact the surface waters that's why we're allowed to issue this permit because we're not you know we did not find an adverse impact to surface waters or a you know any violation of the water quality standards as part of your municipality receiving the leachate. Does the department have a position one way or the other if we accept it or not like do you want us to keep accepting it or just gonna be straight open I'm not gonna make Nick answer I'm not gonna make Nick I mean for the most part we do not the I think the challenge that I see is that like many of these instances we are simply going the problem isn't going to go away. News VT already sends some of its landfill leachate to the treatment center in in Platsburg and so if if if my pillar were to refuse to accept it then it would just go there and it would end up in our shared water body again and so I think you know I fully understand the concerns and we we share those obviously that's why we're looking forward around the state. It's not it's it's one of those squeeze one part of the balloon and the air just goes somewhere else kind of situations where it's not going to solve it for for the rest of society and so I do understand but no I mean I this is a municipal decision as to whether to accept the leachate. Go ahead Donna. I had a question about your pilot study one would that be us and and nowhere else is this already not being dealt with in a way that we can look at and examine and pattern after. I'll start neck and then you can go so so the the treatment system the treatment pilot is required to be done by the permitee which in this case is News VT not the city of my pillar. The the treatment systems for PFAS exist right we we've used them in different capacities you know and we had Cassella do an engineering evaluation of a few different treatment technologies we had a third party look at them the treatment systems exist it's how to manage the entire process right what happens to so when you treat or PFAS the PFAS doesn't go away just get super concentrated. What do you then do with that concentrated PFAS putting it back in the landfill doesn't seem like a great idea because then it's just going to come back in the the landfill leachate again if we solidify it so that it it can't leach out as easily then we create capacity issues in the landfill because we're solidifying a bunch of takes a lot of solid to to fill up that there's a lot of things to try to figure out along the way that goes from scaling a fairly basic treatment process to treating you know thousands of gallons a day of landfill leaching. So understanding it you said there's we know how to treat it but we don't we still have a residue even though we've now reduced the volume we still have this residue it's like nuclear power so it's you know it's so the one of the treatment systems that we we we we would use we could use as a reverse osmosis system you know very similar to how we make and maple syrup these days where we super concentrate the syrup on one side and the water goes up the other the sort of same thing could be a feature we use and what you do with that super concentrated liquid is important right and we need to man manage it one of the challenges that we have as an agency and we have as a society is that we haven't really come up with good ways to destroy this chemical yet and so what we do how we pursue that destruction in the long run is really important or you know manage it because it's it's in it's in firefighting foam it's designed to resist high temperatures and so you know typically we would do things like you know thermal destruction of these sorts of chemicals and we're not sure if what to what extent or when that occurs because the research isn't isn't there enough at this point to understand what those effects are because nowhere else have they come to any resolution on this either what you're telling there we are we are well ahead of most places on on all of these issues and and the only other thing about the pilot it just seems a long time and three months a year to three years i mean that's a lot of stuff being flown out is is that recommended by the experts i mean how do you get such a long timeline there's no way to get it more condensed or is that money so yeah the the pilot study it's right now is proposed for a duration of two years and that study would occur over two years and the reason why we wanted to do it over two years is because um you know we wanted the the treatments we wanted to stress test this treatment system right like the treatment system is going to be subject to different hydraulic different flows different conditions such as temperature you know seasonal conditions things like that we wanted to make sure that there was enough time to for the treatment system to operate under those different seasonal conditions and demonstrate that it can perform effectively okay but you can see my worry okay all right thank you uh j did i see your hand oh okay over over here yeah go ahead Lauren yeah thank you really appreciate you being here and all the work you're doing and you know as as you can imagine we're hearing from lots and lots of concerned residents hearing from people from all over the state in fact hearing lots of concerns especially in Newport and other parts of the state you know and i think we can all agree that the current system is a total mess and a fundamental failure just putting these leachate out into the river and i appreciate that you all are really you know talking to lots of colleagues all over the country like Vermont really is at the cutting edge and i appreciate that you all are pushing and trying to get this pre-treatment technology i was just going to call earlier today with people wrestling with this in states around the nation so just acknowledging that you know it's it's a suite of bad options it's a terrible situation um and you know really glad to hear that there's litigation underway to go after the chemical companies who are the ones who manufactured this profited off of it and now we're all dealing with all of these issues just a couple questions about the the permit just curious why why in this scenario you know there was the engineering study and why is cicella being given the like essentially deference to come up with a plan instead of you all just looking at okay we've got this data here's like coming up with more details of the plan and having more say over what it is you know i'm glad to hear that it's going to be out for public comment but just curious what the rationale is behind that piece i'll start and then nick and go from my perspective it's it has to be a plan that they implement ultimately and so certainly we have considerable interest in what that plan looks like which is why we need to approve it but ultimately it has to be a process by which they know how to manage it and can do it we will work in and in and them to develop that plan so that it's effective and as nick said we can stress test it but i do understand that that reads as a concern to me that reads as ownership of the challenge um and we are the over you know oversight for that effort if you want to anything um thanks that's good to hear that you'll be working closely in developing it so it's not just i mean obviously knowing that you all have a certain mission in charge to protect public health the environment and casilla has a different mission um just knowing that that oversight and working together um just curious about the other chemicals i mean so obviously we're very concerned about PFAS but there's you know hundreds of chemicals who knows in in leachate how you know is there how much i saw that there was like one list in the presentation of of some of those that are being tested like i mean do you have a sense that the pretreatment would probably be getting at a lot of those or are there other chemicals we should really be concerned about beyond PFAS um i don't know nick if you have specifics but generally speaking when we're treating for PFAS pretty much need to get rid of everything else first because PFAS is president in such tiny amounts that if you treated if you didn't sort of pretreat in the pretreatment process for some of your more present chemicals that are larger in quantity you wouldn't you would clog up your filters way too quickly with everything else and so the and those so there's going to be a lot of work that will have lots of benefits because the the filtration the filtration chain should deal with many constituents that are in the leachate that's encouraging a couple more yeah go for it yeah so the just curious the thinking behind just doing quarterly testing in Montpelier so knowing that we're going to be the one off-taker in Vermont at this point um you know like one test of season seems really small for a data set is is there a rationale behind that or or i would i guess urge more testing um yeah we're happy to consider more testing so if you do want more testing i encourage you to make a public comment on that but you know the rationale is really that you know Montpelier so we're requiring monthly testing in the leachate we're requiring quarterly testing at the city of Montpelier Montpelier receives various sources that are not just the leachate of PFAS that are not just the leachate so you know we we didn't think it was necessary to we thought quarterly monitoring would be sufficient to characterize the the amount of PFAS in the implement affluent and solids at the wastewater treatment facility you know it's more testing than any other wastewater plant around the state is doing currently and that is something that we're considering for other municipalities but um yeah quarterly monitoring is is what we've recommended as part of the permit and that's consistent with um if you look at the massachusetts nifty's permits and and how they're what they're requiring of their municipalities it's it's consistent with that monitoring schedule gotcha um and and if i saw it right we're just testing for the five PFAS not all of the PFAS that we can detect using the no we're testing for um you know the number always changes i believe it's 36 compounds but that would include the five regulated compounds as well as other precursors and and PFAS compounds as well and currently there are no approved methods for PFAS so currently we're prescribing that it's called EPA's modified method 537 to use for PFAS and that can detect i believe it's 36 compounds but once a month once an approved method is adopted by the EPA we're requiring that that method be utilized and EPA is looking at that method they have a draft method currently released and they're taking comment on that draft method and i believe that that analyzes 40 compounds recognizing that there's thousands of these that's kind of where we're at right now with with um our ability in wastewater monitoring just one or two yeah go for it yeah um would so i saw that part of our permit is taking out of state leachate and i know that you know part of what we've talked about is well we're all part of the vermont waste system i imagine there's in our state commerce clause issues but is there a way for us i mean it's us importing out of state leachate just doesn't sit well just why is that part of our permit yeah so that's yeah that's been part of the permit for i believe it was 2000 i think it was 2004 that was included on the permit i can double check that but that's been part of the permit for some years now and there is an interstate commerce clause that is at play there i do you want to speak more on that sure i mean that's always a complicated issue right the the way we typically deal with issues of associated with so we don't accept waste into the state of vermont unless it meets the requirements that all of our municipalities through the solid waste management districts and other entities meet and nobody takes us up on that and so we would need to this is essentially putting the same sorts of requirements on vermont created leachate and so i i think it would be a challenge from my perspective to for interstate commerce clause issues but i'm not a lawyer so i'm i'm not going to tread too too far into that one and my last question was just one of the proposals that we're looking at for the next phase of our water resource recovery facility is drying biosolids and there was some hope that there might be a market for them i've just been assuming that as of right now with the leachate that it's pretty p-fast contaminated biosolids so there wouldn't be much of a market for that and we shouldn't be spreading that around so i'm just curious if there's any thoughts on how we should be thinking about the biosolids as long as we are continuing to take p-fast contaminated leachate and potential markets yeah you know leachate is a large source of p-foss and a lot of that p-sauce in the wastewater plant goes to the biosolids it likes the solids and those solids you know they can be managed a few different ways Montpelier brings their solids to the landfill but the other management strategies include land application or if there's sufficient treatment of the biosolids they can be used as compost and given out to the public and p-foss is a huge concern in land application of biosolids particularly and the distribution of biosolids used as compost and for for the public it's it's definitely a huge concern and you know with with the land application there are there's limitations on the groundwater so if if biosolids were going to be applied to that site there would you know the the permittee that was applying those would need to do testing of the soil and the groundwater to to monitor the levels of p-foss in that that are being contributed to those two medias via the biosolids so so that that would be you know the limiting the limiting factor for land application I don't know what if there are any limits in p-foss for biosolids that are distributed as as compost and I'm not sure off the top of my head just because that's a different program so we have started just in this past legislative session the agency of agriculture regulates those biosolids that that become what we call exceptional quality that have been treated in some way shape or form and then simply come back as excuse me then simply come back as as soil amendments and they have been given authority by the legislature to root to require testing of of those soil amendments and so they're in the process of working on that now but it is you you have identified you know identified part of the challenge right we have this system in place that uses commercial goods or you know consumer goods with p-foss in them that end up in our waste stream and part of that waste stream is the biosolids at the tail end of it um well and then it recycles through but yeah so that's but I would also say that for every wastewater treatment facility we've tested there's p-fas present in the in the in the effluent and so your your sources are not if if the city were to stop taking your sources of p-fas would not disappear entirely thank you um I've got a few questions oh go ahead Jay sure thanks Ann um feel free to correct me if I've missed something but I'm just trying to wrap my head a little bit around the timeline here um Nick I think you did a really good job of sort of laying out exactly what the feedback loop is in terms of testing technology development etc um to be able to to deal with the p-fas that are coming out of the leachate but kind of best case scenario is that two years there's at least a proposal to be able to deal with it like we've we've got to that point where at that point there you know we could look at new technologies that could could deal with it but this is all relative to um essentially just working with one vendor right so along the way if deadlines aren't met along that way it could get extended right so I'm just trying to wrap my head around like timeline what we're looking at here in terms of you know the position that we take as a city but knowing like expectations around um just you know how long if we were to get if we if we were to sign on and and engage you know and be positive around this this new permit and everything that you know that that goes on then you know what exactly are we looking at as a city in terms of what we discharged into our rivers yep so four months from the issuance of the permit we'd have the proposal the plan and that plan would be subject to state review and public comment following the approval of that plan um within one year of the effective date of the permit the the pilot study would begin and then there would be a two-year testing period um and so at year three of the permit um we're looking at a completed pilot study and final report for review following that it's the agency's intention to develop treatment standards and an implementation schedule for the full scale treatment of leachate I can't say right now how long that would take um but but those are the dates that that we have presented in the near term or the short term timeline so one follow-up question to that uh if the city Montpelier stops taking leachate does that mean that the pilot study doesn't happen so this pre-treatment only applies for permanent facilities in the state of Vermont so if you there are no state of Vermont facilities that are accepting leachate then the options for Gosella are out of state and therefore it would be subject to New York or to Hampshire whoever's requirements under their pre-treatment program we would not be able to put any conditions on that leachate okay um and you might have alluded to this earlier but just to be clear um are there any so right now there's this effluent leachate coming out of a landfill and we're the the general tactic right now is to put it into wastewater treatment um facilities are there other ways of dealing with PFAS besides just like and maybe maybe this is like the solids you are talking about um there there are other ways to deal with to I'll say temporarily deal with PFAS once you've separated it out from everything else to solidify the volume of leachate that they create on a daily basis would be impractical to the running of the the creation and operation of a landfill so and and still wouldn't resolve the issue because the PFAS would just still exist in a different form um so it's there it it still requires it requires treatment and the can you know condensing of that material to the point where it can be managed in a way that doesn't you know essentially shut the landfill down because we're filling it up with solidified leachate if that makes sense yep um okay and one further question something that I feel like I have heard from constituents is that they want to know where this is coming into their lives uh are their products they should not be buying uh etc and I'm guessing the answer is no to this but I just want to confirm uh there are there any um initiatives at the legislative level or at the department level or anywhere uh that would potentially require disclosure uh that this is applied to a product now that it's in the ski wax that it's in you know it's it's on this couch but it's not on that couch um you know that that kind of thing so the legislature actually went beyond that this year and for certain products not all products that contain PFS they required those they mandated that those products not be made for sale and for the state of Vermont okay so that was carpets intentionally added to I'm gonna look to learn for a little help here um excuse me that's a referral um the uh ski wax is uh firefighting foam um carpets what else it was uh food packaging carpets like indoor residential carpets rugs and like stain treatments and the firefighting foam and ski wax some of these are phased in over the next couple of years so I mean it's really hard to tell because there isn't labeling um but some things now are saying PFS free um because there's been consumer demand so you know you can certainly look for that um you know I think there's still like pots and pans and stuff that are Teflon coated but so stainless steel or you know things that are not the like non-stick surface kind of thing are those and are the I'm sorry to interrupt the like the non-stick pans are those included in the the phase out or those those that were not yet covered California just past I believe a ban on cookware I don't know when that goes into effect but that just got signed into law like a couple weeks ago so that could drive the market yeah but um so it's not on all products but then it's in apparel like your Gore-Tex waterproof things and um yeah it's used in a lot of different things so there's still more there's still more product categories that have not been covered yeah okay so that and and so you're getting to the point senator mayor of turning off the spigot so to speak of sources into our waste stream it's there's still a sort of big use of you know when we when the city decides to replace these chairs or this carpet or what have you that's gonna go into the landfill and that more than likely has PFAS so that that you know the life cycle of those products is pretty long and so they're going to continue for some time and we also have to think about what's already in the landfill so yeah you can understand why we're trying to tackle this problem from both ends of of the issue and i would add that there are there are limited things that the state of vermont can do or any state can do as a way to control the use of of chemicals as part of the update to the toxic substance control act which is a federal law there were certain sort of things that preempted state action but this but dpa under the previous administration wasn't really taking much in the way of action and so it allowed four states to to take some action so there's still some question about sort of that's going but i am pleased to say that in our discussions with the the current eba administrator uh the sixth new england states sent a letter to to the incoming administrator when he first started basically saying here's our wish list of all the things we need you to do relative to PFAS and i have to say that the he appointed then the the person who runs our our regional eba office in new england as the co-chair of his PFAS council that's just come out with their action plan and it it is going to take what was a sort of slow deliberate process and really ramp it up and we're excited to see that and you know finding out more information on the toxicity of different chemicals finding out more information chemicals being able to test for more than just the suite of thirty six we can test for now um there's a lot of good stuff happening and we're pleased to see a response from federal partner stepping up thank you any other questions from council okay so at this point uh if the public has thoughts questions concerns um i'd like to raise now is the time i'm going to start with people who are in person and then we'll go to folks who are with this digitally anyone in person wish to make a comment you say your name where you live and try to keep your comments about two minutes yeah i just have a question my name is bretta pal but the non-piliar um i'm just wondering about a financial impact to uh so if we give this permit if we don't give the permit they're gonna have to take leachate and send it to new york or somewhere else that is probably more expensive than are we trying to get ahead of a fine is it cheaper for us to permit this or get my question i'm wondering how that how the finance impacts sure that's all yeah thank you well i'm not going to answer the city's finance cuts the only financial benefit the state of ramon gets us the payment for the permit application itself and so that's not a significant a significant interest to us we're you know we're agnostic as to whether people will apply for permits but um i don't understand they're a payment for their acceptance of that of that leachate uh from from new zt to the city okay and they do pay the city of montpelier uh castello pays the city of montpelier to accept leachate uh all right anyone else um questions how much well it was not made into yeah if you have a public comment now be a good time how much is the economic impact to montpelier if we stop taking poison is that anything else you want to say oh yeah i have a lot more to say i would recommend that you do it now then well i was trying to follow on that we'll we'll answer that question so it seems like we're treating castello with kid gloves here you know for why aren't we requiring their plan before we even issue the permit you know they're making profits off of this stuff and obviously we make profits because they're paying big monies to montpelier to take it but we're we're setting montpelier up to be the PFAS poison capital of new england you know poison for profit it's it's immoral uh the one-year pilot project to to not even have uh an actionable treatment solution for two three four years out and if it doesn't get kicked further down the road is unconscionable um how do we compare have we done side-by-side analysis of how new york's going to regulate it if we do stop taking it they may be stricter than than vermont you know uh why why haven't we heard about the the impacts on the lake or what about treating it at an ocean side treatment plan where it's being much more dilute than being dumping it into lake sampling i mean it doesn't seem like we've done due diligence here uh quarterly sampling versus weekly or monthly it seems like certain pockets of this stuff are going to come out uh and we should put out warnings when when when not to swim in the river or not eat fish but we're we're feeding fish which are either being eaten by you know ducks and and herons and eagles you know we're passing this stuff around as if it were okay and and it's not okay um how do we compare the effluent tolerable concentrations to our drinking water standards you know i i'm not hearing any any comparison for frame of reference you know parts per trillion or parts per billion or whatever um might could sell will be importing leachate for profit from other places i mean i may have misunderstood part of that conversation but it sounds like they're at liberty to be bringing in other landfills leachate and passing it through their supply chain in effect dumping on Montpelier um what testing has already shown what what testing has been done it's already shown the concentrations that were dumping in the river and what those impacts are on on fish and in wildlife and even swimmers who accidentally inhale a mouthful of water um i i just think to to be suggesting that this is impractical is is really making a judgment on the profits of a private corporation a very large private corporation a very profitable private corporation so i don't think we should be popularizing the notion that it's impractical to just stop this you know stop it we're not at liberty to to poison our our wildlife or our our friends and neighbors thank you are there was that okay yeah go ahead bill just an answer to the initial question last year the city was paid four hundred and seventeen thousand dollars the last year the city was paid four hundred and seventeen thousand dollars by this by Koselev to accept leachate great uh yes thank you hi everybody my name is kasey whiteley i live in Montpelier and um i used to live in the northeast kingdom and work in Newport so i and years ago took my trash to the landfill and coventry before it became Koselev um i appreciate that we have gotten ourselves into a very difficult situation and i feel like we're almost into some ways imprisoned by where we're at today and um i think here we are discharging peafies and other toxic chemicals into our waterways and into you know an international lake where people are getting their drinking water out of it and i think one of the reasons and i'm and i know you guys are doing your best to try and to come up with solutions and options for this but one of the reasons why i think we're in this mess is because a and r we have no water quality standards for PFAS and nor do we have any kind of a state plan for how we dispose of our waste we have rules and standards and regulations for all kinds of public services telecommunications electricity renewable energy development but not for sort of a basic public need which is like what happens to our solid waste and how do we manage it instead i think we've given over a lot of responsibility to a private company whose job it is to make money on that waste and the more they bring in the more money they make they're just doing their job so it's not Koselev's fault that our rivers and lakes are being contaminated and poisoned it's really the state's responsibility for solid waste to do something about this and it's not just my failure situation and i feel like we're in a bind right here now but being forced with choices that are really not good choices um i'm sure you guys from a and r i'll know that your mission is to protect and restore our natural resources and protect our human health and so i think you need to develop water quality standards and a plan for managing and safely disposing of our waste i know um you know i i kind of have a feeling that since koselev was given permission to expand the landfill a couple years ago by i think 58 years or something like that of course are going to bring in more waste and fill that up and i think we're taking a lot of stuff from new hampshire and and we it is it is ending up coming down here to us there's no doubt about it so now we're being asked to approve a draft discharge permit for which you guys really haven't developed any regulations or performance standards and that permit ceds authority and responsibility to koselev for so many decisions in this draft permit and they're and i know you guys say you're going to monitor their decisions and their choices and what they pick for a site and technologies but you really have handed over a lot of this process to somebody who's not supposed to be taking responsibility for our environment so um i just think it's time for the state and that's you guys are representing the state to step up and take responsibility for what happens to our solid waste and the disposal of this leachate that's full of chemicals and a lot of the chemicals that you guys are going to test for there's lots more in the leachate that aren't even on the list so there's there's just so many complexities and difficult situations that we're faced with now and i just think that we need to back up and you guys got to step back and step up and take some responsibility for this thank you anyone else in person yep come on up guiney i think in the evening we've met before my name is jay walsham from newport vermont um just to start uh i wanted to go over there was a statement right at the beginning uh by uh gentleman from a nar the same was to the fact that it's a full treatment of pf as and that's just not true uh there is no full treatment for pf as so and then as he also mentioned you cannot destroy pfs or these series of chemicals this means that what you're going to be dumping into that river is going to remain for generations it'll be in the the um it'll be in the water it's going to be in the plant it's going to be in the fish um it's eventually going to get to the wells that are located to private wells along that this river in the next 20 years you're going to see the effects of what's been going on since i guess 1994 um in the past 10 years an hour has dumped over 72 million gallons of leachate through the mont wastewater treatment plant only partially treated into the dog river and into the new ski the leachate contains upwards of 200 commingled chemicals into a toxic super mix that no one has ever tested what this complexity of chemicals does to a human being no one has tested this at least in the three years of research that that i've been delving into and then that now they're asking mark pillier to take another 72 to 108 million gallons over the next five years now note once this pretreatment facility is built in coventry which is the plan and they that they'll dump it into the uh the the river up there you will not see another dawn they part of the plan of this and it's right in a and r's uh review in in discussions with a and r is how do we offset the cost house could sell off set the cost of building this facility trucking they're not going to truck that anywhere they're going to put a pipe right into the the black river and they're going to dump tens of millions of gallons a year into there and what we think that this couldn't get worse a and r is also authorizing permitting and the importation of tens of millions of gallons of toxic chemicals and pfoas into vermont for the sole purpose of disposal into our rivers and lakes for profit you you guys can't be the dumping ground for this now the good people here in mark pillier they see a responsibility to account for their waste they're trying to reduce their waste they're doing what they have to take a portion of the leachate that comes from the landfill here but both coventry and Bethlehem landfills taken more than 30 of their waste from out of state from new Hampshire from Maine from Massachusetts from New York from Connecticut which means that nearly three quarters of the leachate that you that you want you to accept here is derived from out of state waste this is pure profit when did vermont's rivers and lakes become the toxic dumping ground for the profit of privately owned landfills and and dump their waste the waste from new england new york into vermont leachate and the hundreds of chemicals that are contained along there which is here's a short list highlighted ones are just the ones that are extremely toxic to human beings say about a dozen or so that's just one of 200 they present a clear and present danger to the health of vermonters and the vermont environment there's already a health advisory for drinking water systems and a dozen vermont locations for PFAS and ANR even has in their roadmap that they they're going to outline monitoring for fish consumption advisories what what are we talking about here this isn't pristine vermont this is this is a dumping ground you know i'm sorry that you guys are being burdened with us we had to fight in in Newport we had to actually go to court because the our city council are cowards the mayor there is a coward they turned when i came to speak to your mayor here they had just voted to not take it anymore in the background while we were gone they were convinced no you should take it and the and the city manager is all for it because of the money okay you're going to see money for a while you're going to see a lot of pollution and then you're going to see zero you better start budgeting now for that zero day one of ANR's attorneys claims that the importation is protected by the commerce clause of the constitution okay this is not correct okay the issue of public health and safety are not protected by the commerce clause associated by the supreme court supreme court states jormin commerce clause recognizes health and safety regulations as primarily and historically a matter of local concern so there's two things i'm asking of you tonight well one of you and one of ANR the first is that please do not take any leachate that is brought into the state from out of state please do not and then i'm asking today in this public forum of secretary moore to halt the importation of leachate under her obligation to protect Vermont citizens and the environment from threats to human health and safety so i have to say tonight thank you thank you anyone else in person wish to make a comment okay i'm not seeing anyone else um all right but we have a few folks online here so um linda berger uh go ahead hi i'm linda berger i'm a resident of district one my question is what is the relationship of montpelier's waste treatment processing and this leachate um currently i understand that we need to initiate and complete phase two of the waste treatment plant so what's the relationship of that to the leachate that we're currently accepting i probably ask our experts um to comment on that the in theory late the phase two has to do with the sludge drying so the initial relationship would have to do uh i think with the question councilmember hurl raised about what we do with the dried product if there was still p-fast in it and obviously um if we were to not collect the revenue we'd have to look at how the financing of that work but uh we're actually having an update on that project in two meetings december eight so we'll be able to talk about that in more detail then and uh just to follow up on that i have other questions around that same topic um including you know is there a minimum volume that we need to make even phase one work and then you know if we were to stop taking leachate what are our options um for that so great question thank you um all right and we're gonna i'm gonna go sort of down the line that i see the hands in uh debora dweyer and then we'll go to sheina uh hi i'm debora dweyer i'm in district one and um i too was wondering why the permity kasella the potential polluter is being given so much power and responsibility you know why why would we give them at the responsibility to monitor the level of pollution and to come up with a treatment plan and also monitoring things two or three or four times a year does not seem sufficient um and i'm pretty shocked that we're taking leachate this is a new one on me i'm pretty shocked that we're taking leachate from other states and um yeah i think we have to examine everybody's profit motive here and realize that the protection of our environment trumps all of that um thank you i also just wanted um jump in here is anything that you um want to address so far i mean there have been a lot of public comments so far um the clarification should i i just want to give you the opportunity if you want the only thing that i would add is for this permit is open it is open till November 24th everything that you are saying here you should say to us through the public comment process so that we can continue to evaluate all that information as we review the permit and make any necessary changes final before issuing the final permit is there an easy of way to access that comment we can share all that information with you okay great thank you uh we're gonna go oh yeah sure go ahead yeah just um i'll get more detail on this but it's our understanding at least in perhaps is more that we don't know that we only accept leachate from coventry and more time we don't think we're getting out of the leachate but unless it's coming through coventry yeah you well you're allowed under the permit right you're authorized we were allowed to but we don't we have not been accepting yeah the last time a discharge from the new hampshire landfill was received at Montpelier was um it was a few years ago and it was um i can get the exact numbers for you but you don't receive leachate from the new hampshire landfill on a regular basis um there was two months in i believe it was 2018 that you had received a discharge of that leachate and you know you you're not seeing that on a we're not seeing that on a regular basis you do receive leachate from the cv landfill the closed landfill in new montpelier probably about twice a month so on a regular basis which is also included in in the permit thank you um shana and then um rene hi yeah my name is shana kathbur i um on district two in kent street montpelier and also for the next 48 hours the vermont state director with community action works formerly toxic action centers have also spoken last week last uh city council meeting and uh comments at the in our meeting um but yeah community action works you know we believe that environmental threats are big but it's the power of well organized community groups is bigger and that's why we work side by side with folks to fight pollution threats in their neighborhoods and um one of the big parts of my job is over the past five years i've been co-facilitating the national PFAS contamination coalition uh which is all of these folks across the country have been fighting you know facing and dealing with significant PFAS contamination in their communities and that has really led to me being really really concerned about these chemicals and just seeing the health impacts that these families are facing and i um that this concern has really led me to to be really concerned with both the permit and with this fact that just for month that montpelier is is taking this um as well and i really want to make sure that our community is protected and that we're protecting the drinking water sources folks all you know across the state and and and you know across the region in new york and in canada as well uh and we need to start a clock in committing of not taking PFAS contaminated leachate um and in order for us to take the leachate we need to know that it is PFAS free and i'm worried that if we continue to take PFAS contaminated leachate it'll put us in a bind for when we have when we do come up with these surface water effluent standards for PFAS because we won't want our wastewater treatment facility to be a point source for PFAS and this draft permit gives gazella too much authority over the development and you know implementation of this pilot project and we also want to recognize that it's not just on the on this permit and that we can't punt this problem off to another town you know if this was rewritten to include another town or you know we're in working with platzberg we need to connect with the platzberg city council and commit to not you know making sure that across the region we're not committing we're committing to not taking PFAS contaminated leachate the solutions are complicated as has been named we need to go really far upstream and that's why you know we've been organizing for decades in vermont to move away from burning and burying our trash and to move towards zero waste so i were you know working to pass these policies to move upstream and to ban PFAS leachate from you know ban PFAS from getting into our landfills and becoming leachate by stopping getting it into our products that then go into the landfills we need to be kind of tackling this project at on all sides and that includes on the back end you know here in Montpelier of refusing to you know take this PFAS contaminated leachate um and recognizing that this permit as written is is is not working on a timeline or on a on a scale that is is is is addressing the urgency that this moment requires um so thanks thank you uh Rene and then the bridge oh hi good night um i'm rene am also i was in from Montpelier a neighbor of Sheena so um i wanted to i am not sure why we're having this discussion tonight to allow Cosella to pollute even more waterways with PFAS from the landfill leachate Cosella and the state should be involved in looking for solutions and effectively be cleaning the leachate before you know to our municipalities our municipalities should be looking at that leachate and saying okay it looks good we'll process it um as was mentioned my agenda and from ANR we had this permits in 1994 how is possible that Cosella and the state haven't yet created a solution because we've known forever that the leachate is contaminant not just with PFAS but other chemicals um as Reg went all the waste management experts says the best way to prevent the distribution of PFAS chemicals is to contain them in the landfill where they can do no harm when the leachate is transported outside there is a clear and present risk of the chemicals being released into the environment therefore the leachate should be kept and used at landfills like current regulations in most states allow the recirculation of leachate and condensate at landfills of course there's only the waste inevitable which has that event on the heat to dispose of the leachate due to the amounts increasing over time furthermore the concentration of the PFAS increase as the leachate is recirculated therefore it is not really a solution to the problem um there was a study conducted by a talent the EPA on the challenges of PFAS remediation but they say that the natural attenuation and long-term monitoring is not an effective strategy of PFAS so the plan to monitor is not a solution or even a strategy for controlling this and active treatment strategy must be used to either clean up the contaminants or containers so that it cannot leach from contaminants oil into the groundwater or drinking water all the units of Palatine Vermont and 8-ring states should say no to polluting our waterways and environment it isn't a question of how we should be allowed or not it should not be any PFAS or other chemicals in the leachate there are studies of possible solutions and also using this leachate for creating some type of energy gas that is that will be beneficial for the cell uh and uh we should move towards a solution to stop destroying our environment um the only viable solution again is to contain the chemicals so I urge the council to say no and talk with the other municipalities to say no to this and to the plan to be to create for Kasella and the state symbol to create a state OPR facility that will clean the leachate before it comes to us or any municipality thank you thank you um anyone else I I see um on the bridge or Cassandra Hemingway took uh their hand down so um anyone else virtually wish to make a comment you can also you can use the raised hand reaction or you can just unmute yourself and or you can turn your camera on and wave uh any of those are options okay all right Jack thank you for being here I appreciate it um I'm not an expert or specialist in any of this stuff I just thought I'm really just learning so my questions are are from that perspective um and so I just have a few questions one is in the uh in the pilot program that you're uh requiring uh news vt to come up with um do you already have a standard for what's the level of remediation or what level of removal you're uh you're gonna be requiring uh them to produce and is there a way to know if that's the right standard or if some other jurisdiction is uh is holding waste creators to a separate to a potentially higher standard thanks thanks for that question um so so the part of the process of that Nick alluded to was the development of a transfer excuse me technology based effluent limit essentially what is the capability of the treatment technology to remove that we have seen on the drinking water side where we have much more experience that that there are treatment technologies that remove it to a non-detect standard um which is as close to zero as the science community gets um the that so we we are hopeful that those those that treatment will will work um but we need to we need to see what what it looks like in large-scale use um the the the technology based effluent limit allows us to sort of understand that technology and set limits accordingly um the limits that we have in place to protect for monitors currently are about drinking water and groundwater as well as our where we where we manage site cleanups uh where there have been PFAS releases into the environment those that is currently at 20 parts per trillion for the five chemicals that were listed that is the to to my mind the most stringent standard in the country and has been for uh the three years that those five chemicals have been on the list and we were the first uh to really look at the the first two PFOA and PFOS and any real meaningful way in terms of setting standards and so there are we have numbers about what we think the toxicity data is that we rely on the Vermont Department of Health for and they've done a really sort of frankly groundbreaking job uh getting out in front and trying to understand that work and for what limited knowledge we have and so that will all play into the for understanding but the development of a surface water standard which is one of the ways in which we can regulate discharges involves a lot of study of the implications to to the to the ecosystem and whatnot and that is work that is happening at the the federal level and as I said every state would need to do this individually if they if we were going to do it state by state so it makes sense to for that body of knowledge to be developed at the federal level um and so but those are all factors that can play into this process as are the state of our knowledge improves over the next few years thank you um obviously we know that these are compounds that are going to be in the landfills for decades to come if if not more so as as i'm thinking about the public policy concerns here um and people are saying well just stop it just don't take any more here and uh and so i'm just thinking about the the overall consequences of doing that is it possible to conclude whether the net effect on on the entire ecosystem would be better if we said well we're just not going to take anymore uh period um and leave it where it is where which presumably is in a landfill where it's going to be leaking out into the groundwater anyway i'm i'm guessing is there is there a way to compare a couple of different paths that we might be going on and which has a net more positive value for the environment i'm not sure it's possible the answer than that positive outcome on most things that are net benefit outcome on most of the things we do as a human society but it would i think it would depend on where you were and and the transport of that people ask we don't frankly don't know everything about the way it interacts with the environment and so we don't know where it's going to end up we've seen it in places we've all over the place we've seen it in in soils on you know the mountain tops of vermont and the green mountain national forests that have never had any form of development on them right this stuff is everywhere and so it's it's difficult to to to say that the source that this ron the long failure wastewater treatment facility has a source how that would net out as and rather than it going to platzberg and sort of the net sort of overall Champlain basin ecosystem like i can't answer that question thank you it's worth asking i i think sort of related like with the department of health have like an epidemiologist who says okay like you got PFAS you're sort of the known like you know negative health impacts of it and is there any pattern that relates to the vicinity of the discharge points or for some reason is that like an impractical way to look at it so we've done a number of so there's been a lot of this is actually the like nationally where more work has been done in terms of looking at sources of PFAS exposure to PFAS and what it's meant for health implications they are not what we consider sort of longitudinal studies that is said you know we're monitoring somebody over time who we've had had had a known exposure in the national data but that's improving to some extent again it's it's relatively new in the sort of scientific world obviously it's been in production since the 40s i believe various versions of these chemicals um and so we're we're all a little bit late to the understanding of what what these issues are um in terms of that that's part of the the civil suit that's happening in in Bennington is around exposures and what liability Sango Bain as the owner of that facility has in terms of the health impacts of those those people with drinking water wells above what a health based standard is and that's what our how we developed that 20 parts per trillion is looking at the health impact the help the known toxicity data and Dr Saravose at the health department as a state toxicologist it's her role to you know sort of run that reference dose which is sort of what we know an unhealthy amount to be in a run through various calculations and we have I would say that we have the most stringent sort of set of equations in the country in terms of the conditions that we look at to get to our standards which is why Vermont across the board has some of the lowest standards in the country for most contaminants. Go ahead but on that in Bennington where you found these high levels in the water people have been consuming it for a long time before it was oh you can't drink this anymore has there been any apparent data looking at that community of health manifest you know manifested there's a lot of there's a lot of work being managed so that's part of and I'll admit to the sort of challenge as a as we are we manage cleanups to the point of getting it cleaned up but not to the impact of people's health and you know sort of financial well-being so there was a lot of interest in us addressing property values and long-term medical monitoring through our settlement with Seiko Bain that's not authority we had the state we as the Department of Environmental Conservation have and so that is why that's a separate process that is playing out in the civil courts right now to understand what impacts people have had and frankly to monitor that data going forward so that if somebody if the suit settles let's say but somebody years from now ends up with a condition that is known to be associated with PFAS there may be some recourse for them in the future but there hasn't been any identification yet sometimes there are symptoms and then they find the source so it is typically not something that has an acute impact it's a more of a long-term exposure impact and that's why that monitoring over time really matters thank you other questions whereas I'd like to get to at least a little bit of discussion about what we want to do and for that I more and I saw you might want to raise your hand but I don't want to pick on you if you don't want to say anything yet I have I have some thoughts so last time we talked about well actually first of all I want to thank everybody who showed up to make comments about this I think that's been really valuable and helpful to to hear from everybody on this topic I also want to thank you all for being here and taking the time to meet with us and I appreciate your your willingness to to well actually to encourage people to make these comments as a part of the public comment period and I also want to thank you for extending the period of public comment which as I understand it goes till on November 22nd 24th 24th okay and you know as much as we as the city can be posting that you know links or whatever to our our social media or as part of the weekly report or whatever I think that would be useful for folks to have that from our community as accessible as possible but you know in thinking about where we go from here one of the things that we had talked about last time was I collectively coming up with a letter that we would submit for a public comment that had some guidelines or principles and Lauren I'll be curious for your thoughts on that and we I just want to frame this to say that we don't actually have to make a decision tonight because we do have another meeting before the that deadline and I certainly still want to like hear from folks one of the things that I just want to put out that there was there were a couple possibilities that we talked about last time and about a third possibility came up in the meanwhile that I think is at least worth talking about or considering so one possibility is that we just stop we're done and to be fair even stopping might actually take a little bit of time as we figure out like if there's other sources of what do we call it? Steptige? Other effluent other not effluent other inputs into our system that might be required also just considering the the financial impact of just stopping and how are we going to make up that gap it's not hopefully unovercome unovercomable but so that was one option another option was you know we could set a timeline you know we'll keep taking it for another couple of years or whatever the timeline is one year three years I don't know and put conditions on that for our purposes and but those are the two things I think we sort of talked about last time and the third possibility came up which was that we could stop taking leachate unless these conditions are met or and we would start taking it again after certain conditions were met and I think that is also worth talking about and I'm also coming back to your question Jack about you know what is the net it's impossible as you say it's impossible to know in one possibility is that if we stop because we're at the cutting edge in the sense of all of this work does that mean that research and development slows down I would like to believe that the answer would be no because the the EPA is also on this and hopefully as you know as you were saying is accelerating their work on PFAS I've spoken enough I'm I I'd like to hear from you all what do you think and in part this could be thoughts on what direction we may want to go as a council in putting together a letter to submit as comments or actions that we could take yeah um this is a really hard one for me uh because I'm an Indigenous woman and I'm a water protector I'm a parent and so trying to think of what's best to do in a situation that feels impossible right now is a hard one so I don't know exactly where I stand I don't want to push this off into another neighborhood because that always happens obviously I don't want it to keep coming here because it's affecting our children and it's going to affect people for generations to come um this feels very hard and I wouldn't want your job um and I appreciate the fact that you are both sitting here listening to a lot of public comment that you know might feel hard to hear so I appreciate you sitting here and listening um but as far as where I stand right now I just you know this is a very hard thing to discuss and talk about and I feel comfortable continuing these conversations because I don't want to make a decision on a whim or under pressure but we're under pressure aren't we fair thank you other thoughts go ahead and yeah I mean I I totally agree and I think we heard it reflected from the agency and from public comments I mean as one of the people said it does feel like we're in a box with no good options and um I mean I guess where I'm still coming down similar to what we talked about last time I mean I don't like the idea of us just putting this off onto another community if there is opportunity to end up with a better solution for our region and this is where us continuing to take it for some finite period of time if that's going to keep the pretreatment permit on track like it concerns me to hear that that could halt if we don't continue as a permittee um so you know to to jack's question of a big picture what you know what path could lead to a better long-term outcome um you know I mean I I hate to be importing this into our community but um for any period of time so I mean I I still you know similar to the kind of principles we had talked about last time I think you should have a plan to eliminate the intake of the PFAS contaminated leachate um I mean I liked Jay's idea and what you had mentioned um Ann about putting a date on it I mean I think that you know saying something like as of December 1st 2022 our water resource recovery facility will no longer accept leachate that contains any detectable PFAS I think at that point I mean a year it sounds like maybe they could have built it and so maybe we could accept the treated um water I think we could revisit if they've gotten behind but we feel like there's a good faith effort happening it could get revisited and you know maybe we'd be willing to extend it but that would just keep some pressure on I don't know if that's the right exact uh proposal but I think something showing that we're not just going to take it forever that this really pretreatment needs to happen it needs to stay on track needs to be timely it needs to be effective um I'd like to keep that pressure on and I think our role in a permit could push that um so I wanted I want and I'd love people's thoughts on that I mean I still think we as a city can put in comments on some of the you know making sure you know I I still do think that A&R's role in you know if we're going to sit stay at the table in driving the process more you know I'd rather have A&R in the driver's seat working with Kasella to shape it in a way that is going to be feasible for them instead of them just helping um you know felt like Kasella's in the driver's seat with them guiding can we flip that dynamic a little um so I think there should be more oversight of the agency um and I think you know increased monitoring and some of the other things we had talked about so I think those same principles I if we're going to stay at the table putting in that kind of suite and then I am interested in I mean it sounds like we're not really doing it much anyway but if we can not accept out of state leachate and you know maybe our lawyers would tell us we can't do that but um if if if we can I would like to do that as well yeah sure um I'll just add that I'll echo that appreciate peter and nick being here and acknowledging the challenge of this issue it is it is certainly uh complex and complicated there's no doubt about it um I also appreciate other counselors comments about you know um you know Jennifer and Jack what do we you know what's our what's our place here and what role can we have in this I think that the more I think about it um you know the more I realize it this is not a this is not a problem as much as we are desperate for a solution this is not a problem that we as a counselor are going to solve right um but we can play a role in how the state manages you know these this issue and so I I fully support Lauren's we talked about this and you alluded to it Lauren the idea that we put a time frame on um how much longer we're willing to accept the leachate that you know that contains PFAS um I think ultimately our responsibility is to our community and to the Dog River and the Nooskey River and everybody that's downstream from it and we that's where our responsibility lies so maybe there's a conversation to be had about what that date looks like if it's December 1 2022 you know if it's if it's a year from now then then then I'd support that if if we thought that maybe it was something we maybe needed to look longer term then I'm okay with that but I I do feel like we need to um take a take a stand in defense of of the water in our city um and know that um the impact that that what you know what's what we're putting into the into rivers now the impact that it has um on our community and the community is downstream from us so yeah that's my two cents thanks um I I too I like the idea of setting some limits I have a question about you can set liniments but then you have to have a standard so if we say in 12 months we want such and such we need a standard that's clear what our goals are and what we want from their behavior and we could do it as such to say we have intentions of even maybe a long-term relationship if indeed there's this constant improvement of how it's treated and we become that really solid palette project in concert with A&R and Kasella but that we we have to be clear and I don't have the science to lay that out in emotion but I think we we need to figure that out somehow what is our standard to go beyond that year I just wanted to thank you for mentioning the other possibilities with putting a timeline on how long we would accept it but also I've really appreciated the fact that you mentioned switching the roles and putting Kasella behind what our environmental folks are doing and not having them be in the driver's seat I feel like I feel I could sit more comfortably with that I have a really hard time with big companies like that being in charge of our waterways because I don't think they have historically cared so much about our water and care more about money so I appreciate that and I also wanted to thank the people that made comment in person and online it's not easy to have these conversations and I appreciate all the emails that I've been getting and I'm sorry that I haven't been able to get back to everybody but you're here and you're using your voice and I think that's fantastic another reason why I love Montpelier so I'm done I agree with everything Lauren said I do think we can come up with with language not tonight because sitting here with many people around the table writing something generally is a disaster but I think I'm hearing enough support for that idea that I think it's it makes sense to I think the volunteers were Lauren and Jay and that's fine thank you and I think that's a good way to go my my thinking is that it's it's hard to picture that one year is enough time if you think permit is issued they have four months to come up with a plan and then they start working on it there won't be much information available by a year from now and then in two years might be a better number I don't know what you all think about that but but then my thinking was we would come back and have language to to say yes next yes or no next time something to consider yeah yeah yep no that that all sounds good and I think it's two conversations right one is responding to the public comment period and the principles that Lauren drafted up there seem still seem very relevant you know and I think maybe we've added some stuff tonight that we could incorporate into the comments there the longer-term discussion you know I think we do have a bit of time to suss that out you know we don't have a contract with Kasella we could say any time like you know banks closed we're not taking any more right so we can set a timeline I mean I'll be honest with you it's like the thing that feels good to do would be that say we're not taking it anymore but I think as we hear more information like what feels good might not be the right thing as far as environmental stewardship but we're just dumping it back at the Lake Champlain and passing the buck to somebody else so I think it does deserve a bit more conversation around this to see what actually is the best decision for our community and actually for the state of Vermont because I think we've got that on our shoulders now as well here it's not just a community discussion it's a discussion of the entire state so we can't take that lightly but for now really hats off to Lauren for drafting all this and really appreciate the uh the guys coming in today to go over this definitely learn to this. Yes thanks thanks for being here and Lauren maybe perhaps in the discussion of the wording you can also talk to you know Nick and Peter and our own solid waste and staff and see what they think on timeline I mean is it 18 months is it two years and come back and tell us what you found out that would be very helpful can I interject quickly Madam Mayor um I would say from a process standpoint it's if you are going to ask our perspective on a separate agreement that you have with Cosella I think that we could contribute to that conversation in in some way I would need to think about that some more but in terms of developing principles of which you would want to comment on our permit I think we need to stay arm's length from that and I hope that's okay and we're not intending to be but I think Connor had it right when he said there are sort of two steps to this process we want to know what issues you see specifically with the permit before the 24th that you would like us to address that is the as I like to say the alligator closest to the canoe and and and you can continue the conversation about your timeframes and other things that we can engage with you yeah I agree having separating those conversations I think does make sense um and so at least for next time we yeah having a draft for for that we can all vote on to submit as a part of public comment I think would be useful I still have unanswered questions about our facility you know like I guess even more in depth and like oh we take you know we we made you know $400,000 on leachate last year if we stop taking it what does that do to our debt service you know there's there's some other things I think are um I just wanted to have answers to before we're before we either pull the plug or don't and we'll we'll have other opportunities to talk about that so I don't feel done with that second part of the conversation about what what our plan is or where what we're going to do but I think we will have some other opportunities coming up even to to talk more about it um and I look forward to that yes I just had two quick questions while we have our A&R experts with us just one on timeline what's the like earliest if everything went exactly right that the pilot pretreatment could be up and running in your like best guess earliest well so the permit requires it to be up and running a year after the issuance of the permit obviously the longer it takes us to respond to comment and finalize that permit the longer out that timeline gets so it's impossible for me to answer that question because we're we're not done with the public comment period yet so once we see issuance of the permit though we didn't speak a year after that and then is there one just one other um is just thinking of our own facility and even you referenced earlier that even if we stop taking the leachate there's other PFAS sources obviously the leachate is a you know a concentrated source do you know right now I know there's been a lot of money for like um PFAS contamination pieces and some of the federal infrastructure and stuff like are there potential opportunities of better filtration for our own water resource recovery facility that might be coming up that we might want to be looking into so we're just getting a sense of what's in the recently passed and signed into law I can't quite bipartisan infrastructure frame whatever it's whatever its current manifestation is has something like eight million dollars a year for the next five years I think for Vermont for emerging contaminant related drinking water and wastewater infrastructure I'm not exactly sure how that will roll out um typically that runs to our normal state revolving fund loan programs and we can I think but I think it's all it gets a hundred percent caught you I don't know if you've looked into this yet Nick I mean it's as of last Friday so my knowledge isn't quite there yet but I can share what we know at this point but there are going to be resources specifically from the federal government specifically for PFAS like contamination options today I 40 million dollars sounds like a lot of money over five years I think it's gonna wind up being a drop in the bucket towards the overall need which is again why the litigation exists just put in a pitch for your friendly local off-taker of all the leachate in the state right now there is one funding program that currently exists um it's the American Rescue Plan acts the ARPA program that there's a pre-treatment initiative as part of that program and the state is we're looking to fund pre-treatment projects which include municipal projects which would be like planning projects and those those would include like the identification and of sources of pollutants coming into their wastewater treatment facility we're also looking to fund pre-treatment projects at private businesses which a pre-treatment project for the reduction of PFAS would be eligible under that so that that's a funding program that we've just announced through through our you know through the recent American Rescue Plan acts initiative and we're still in the process of developing like the prioritization criteria and the ultimate the the final rules for that for that program but currently we have an RFI a request for information out and we're seeking input from municipalities and private businesses on what what are the what are your pre-treatment issues what are your pre-treatment needs and our goal is to tailor a funding program to to meet those needs so that that is an opportunity and I encourage you to submit a response on the RFI that's currently live and I'll I'm happy to share the the link for that that closes next Friday so that's an interesting opportunity right now there's two million dollars available through that fund with the hope to extend it to 10 million and it does require a partnership between the municipality and the private entity which which could be challenging um but but that's that's um you know a potential opportunity neither final comments here team oh so we're uh not taking any other public comment it's a process can you because of the folks that came and spoke tonight direct staff to take the transcript from the youtube and file it in that process before the 24th that's out of respect for all the folks that made the effort to articulate their concerns on this permit um i'm gonna let folks make that uh make those comments on their own um and i appreciate that uh you'll have heard it um but uh yes to that point uh commissioner walk did say he was going to tell us how people could post comments yeah we'll post it ourselves whether he may want to mention it publicly tonight yeah sure um so you can post public comments a few different ways we're accepting comments via email um read the email address off for folks um we're also accepting comments on our environmental notice bulletin which is the um the department's platform for public noticing permits and applications and accepting public comments um we're also taking comments by mail so um the email is anr.wsmdwastewateratvermont.gov and like i said there's also the enb website want to say that one again yep please yeah thank you do would it help if i gave are you gonna be posting this in your minutes just for the folks who don't listen that might be like trying to write it down quickly yep so the the email address is anr.wsmd w-a-s-t-e-w-a-t-e-r anr.wsmdwastewateratvermont.gov is is the email address that we that we're accepting public comments that the period is open until close of business on November 24th we're also accepting written comments um the addresses the agency of natural resources department of environmental conservation watershed management division one national life drive davis3 montpelier vermont 05 620 and like i said the environmental notice bulletin is is also there to accept where you can post comments and it's also on the wastewater programs website there's a link with the draft permit and a portal to submit comments thank you very much and i just want to point out steven that was not a point of order and it was a public comment so please be respectful of other peoples of our time if we're going to have public comment we'll have public comment and if you're going to raise a point of order it needs to be that not a request of council um to have a motion that's not appropriate um okay it is 830 now oh it's 840 we are going to take a break and uh so we will be back at 850 all right okay all right so it is 852 we are coming back from our break uh all right and we are moving into the the winter parking uh i guess it's really in sort of an update and uh so i really did you have anything you want to say before i turn it over to i know just briefly while the dpw folks are getting set up just reminder to people that last year we enacted a new winter parking system during the winter months the alternate side parking that will be in effect again this year and dpw's goal today is to review that policy for as a reminder and we'll be going through a couple of minor changes and take some questions but really this is as much informational as anything else so i'll turn it right over to them go ahead yeah thank you uh my name is zack budget for those of you who don't know me um cameron can you allow me to share the screen for any chance she's on it can you guys see my screen all right thank you um so as bill just mentioned we're here to talk about winter operations specifically alternate side parking program that we will be starting which is effective monday of next week november 15th um just to review from last year there were we had a list of pros and cons in our in our first year of the the trial um the mainly the cons where we had uh we had to have an employee exclusively deal with ticketing um this was a heavier lift for our police department uh with the changes because there were more streets that they were enforcing uh on a on a nightly basis uh we had twice the amount of tickets that were issued um last year in comparison in some other years there was a couple streets that had a high level of non-compliance uh and then we noticed that it wasn't a perfect fit for every street um some of the pros that we experienced last year was the that we had the autonomy to perform work as needed there were virtually no emergency access issues um we had very few cars towed at the end of the year um which was different than the the previous years when we had a winter ban that was in effect we had uh way less uh complaints um from years past we felt like we provided the better level of service to the citizens and residents of Montpelier we had uh the costs uh for DPW to perform when our ops were were better managed and we had very little manual posting to do so in preparation for this year we've we set out flyers with the water bills to remind people of the changes um we've posted um the word on front porch forum and facebook and other media sources uh we spent time working with the bridge to do an article uh to also help get the the word out uh via the newspaper um there was an issue specifically uh related around Elm Street between um by the doctor's office at Elm and Spring Street intersection uh so we just made a change there slightly to allow um no overnight parking 1 a.m to 7 a.m which will allow us to clear clear that section but um we'll then allow daytime parking um we have um just secure you guys just approved tonight on the consent agenda uh the parking lot plowing contract um and then the other thing that we just recently did is we sat down with crosstown towing and we've kind of developed a plan forward for how to deal with the towing um there was some concern because we only towed three total cars last year um about them continuing to provide that service for the city of Montpelier they were not necessarily interested in that little amount of towing but we worked it out and um we have a plan forward for this year um some other issues that uh have come up is mainly um we still are working to fill a couple vacant positions um we've made some good progress on that um and then really the other big issue um is which it's um we're trying to get the word out to the public and we included in the flyer is for people to not place their trash receptacles in the middle of the sidewalk um that makes it very hard for our sidewalk plow operators because they have to get out move the trash can and then move it back um after they get by um so we this year in the flyer we try to develop a just a simple placement preferred placement location so that people understood well where we would like them to place their the trash can that was out of the way for us to do our snow removal um so with that uh we're about to enter into the alternate side parking program on monday and i will open it up for any discussions that you all may have great any questions for zach comments okay i was um glad to see that uh there it sounds one of the questions i had coming into this was what was the plan uh for elm street in that problematic area it sounds like um that's been addressed that's great i was also really glad to see that there were fewer total toe wings that happened uh as a result of this plan that um that was pretty encouraging to me uh for this and any other thoughts or comments okay yeah go ahead donna i just want to thank you for the the data you presented that was very helpful that's why we don't have questions you answered them yeah yeah totally true uh public comment oh no jay go ahead um zach i'm curious if you all have a plan my sense is that uh if we if if you have a plan to sort of ease into the enforcement of this um my my fear is that you know we've had a fair amount of warm days including today i know the street signs are up and and that's great to to remind people but and i know you've done some outreach but honestly i i haven't seen too much of it online so i don't know how extensive it's been like front porch forum and social media um i'd hate to be in a place where we just start ticketing on monday and people are like it's 50 degrees out what's going on so i i know like we did last year where we put um you know sort of faux tickets on cars they were they look like tickets but they're just like hey this is a warning keep in mind that this is coming and i don't know that there's any snow in the forecast but i do feel like if we're too heavy-handed early on this still is just the second year of this program so i think that we need to really be sort of um cognizant of that and gentle how we enforce it in the next few weeks thanks so that's part of the reason for this meeting and we are going to be doing as much outreach as we can and snow is predicted from monday so that's a good plan in dbw's part to get awareness okay any public comment on this okay and anybody online wish to comment on this okay all right well thank you so much zack and yeah thanks for your presentation full of good information all right thank you have a good one okay all right so we are ready to move on to follow up to the police review uh committee's recommendations and uh so we have a set actually i just want to put a little frame around this if i can um so tonight we're going to be talking about a set of the recommendations not the whole set but particularly around the ones where there is some agreement between the department and the police review committee there with their recommendations so actually maybe i can list out those things so prioritizing the purchase and implementation of body worn cameras establishing a community engagement protocol after use of force incidents the demilitarization of equipment purchases training for engagement with youth crowd control and scenario-based training as they are available and supporting street outreach expansion through many means including homelessness task force funding resources um and uh i just want to be clear that there were other recommendations that came out of that um reports and uh just want to make sure everyone's clear that we're probably not really going to be talking about those other things uh this evening um we may talk about when we want to schedule uh talking about those things but um that is probably it for now so um hoping that we can just stay on topic because those other things have a lot of gravity and um there could be a lot of conversation about those other things and we want to give them their um you know their their due uh conversation but this is about um just this limited set and just to uh to set expectations in advance for public and for the council i think from our perspective for staff and maybe the committee is we're looking we're not looking for you to finally approve anything tonight but we are looking to see to get a signal from the council whether you also agree with these recommendations um and that doesn't mean that we're going to go out and buy these things we still have to do a budget so but it does tell us gee we should consider these as budget time and and bring them to your attention and figure out the impact as opposed to no we don't want this so we don't have to do any more work on it so you're not making final decisions but if there's something you really object to this is kind of your chance to let us know otherwise we'll just keep proceeding try and implement things um and obviously we'll have more in-depth conversation now that was a lot of preface but thank you and i'll turn it over to you all okay good evening madam mayor members of the city council uh clerk odum uh city manager frazier and assistant city manager uh neena meyer members of the public my name is brian pete i'm the chief of police for the montpellier police department and extraordinarily proud to be here and very thankful um what i wanted to do is to provide the council with information regard related to the um our position or how we were looking at with the police review committee um so rather than fighting with the system to look for the powerpoint presentation i'll just go from slide to slide uh with me is dan tau he is part of the police review committee uh dan's a huge advocate for mental health a huge advocate for peer uh he and i see a lot uh alike uh in regards to like crisis intervention training and response and also on this call is alex popoff who is the founder of visual labs who is our would who is my preferred vendor for body-worn camera system and alex is just he's got there's five slides here just to give a general overview and to give some information regarding body-worn cameras and how that system works i broke it somehow i'm a cop i'm touch it you share this and you look great i did break it huh let's see if this works all right well i can use the arrow button um all right so these are the topics that uh i'd like to touch on um just a group to just again a brief review of what the mayor had provided just in a visual form of what those recommendations were to identify the consensus recommendations that we've had with little or no substantial cost impact and then to identify some of those recommendations that would have a substantial cost impact to the budgeting process just so the council's aware of what these what these may or may not look like and then uh then to provide an overview of what the remaining items are that would be discussed so before i get into it i do want to say that our goal and we will be and i believe we are the best public safety is to provide the best public safety for our community our services for our community we also plan to be the best police agency in the state and nationally recognized leader in law enforcement and and that's what drives us is is providing an amount of the best amount of service to those we're sworn to protect and to help and that help and service comes in all kinds of forms and we're very which leads me into the next part is very grateful for the opportunity with the prc so we want to publicly thank the prc that's a lot of work and in the time of a lot of strife a lot of anger and emotion we had people who came out from our community and donated their time time away from home work from their families and we recognize that i'm not i'm not kissing up because it was not a pleasant experience because when you have to look at yourself you have to take an honest assessment of yourself and that's never easy um but we have people who came out and and who were in the intent of the prc was was critical but it was also looking at a way that how they can help the department be better and how we can provide the best possible service to to our community so again i really want to thank the prc so one of the one of the slides that came out uh that they had presented last time they talked about some of the things that we've that we agreed with and some things that we don't have necessary consensus what so i've highlighted these here and in red of what i'm going to touch on today in summarizations did i just break the buttons to camera i'm just i don't smash that hard because i'm not that strong anymore i'm too old uh now the cursor is working okay so um the first the first topic that i'd like to uh just briefly touch on is just the community engagement protocol after use of force incidences so we would just need guidance and again like tonight is not for that it's just something for the council to kind of keep in the back of your pockets of what kind of guidance um for the city regarding our role and the development of any community meetings or outreach processes or protocols if you know and god forbid that we have to have use of force incidences that revolve that involve serious bodily injuries going forward or ois's which our officer involves shootings uh so in addition to myself uh deput chief nortonson who is also here um we're working to assign our new community actually it should be community relations officer that's my bad um our new cro is a dedicated public information officer or pio um and then also to identify a dispatcher to also serve in that role and the reason for that is we want to provide maximum information with minimal delay to the public as to what's going on we don't want the narrative to get out of control we want to provide the facts of what's going on and then move forward from there so any processes that have to go that that have to be done are done correctly um just to also let folks know that the state use of force policy highlights that there are new procedures regarding ois's or which again our officer involved shootings for our um serious bodily harm investigations and those new procedures reduce the city and the police department's involvement in the investigative process so it will go to nine times out of ten the vermont state police and the vermont state police will control all of the information such as uh any video footage uh records everything goes to the vermont state police we would do an administrative investigation to look at our policies and procedures while the vsp will conduct a criminal investigation into the incident and then while they're controlling that incident they have control of the records they have control of all the materials so any release of video footages or anything is preferred to be approved by them before it goes out mouth still works so demilitarization or what's commonly referred to or known as the 1033 program the Montpelier police department has not been involved in the 1033 program for quite some time we can easily develop a notification and approval process through the city through uh through bill and camera's office and what the council if need be but we would primarily prefer that if we do continue to go through or dip back into the 1033 program that the council gives us direction as to which items that they would rather us concentrate on getting and which they won't and which ones they won't uh so as a note there is a lot of regulation and accountability built into the 1033 program if they have an annual inventory process program compliance reviews and the state coordinated reviews and it goes through one representative from the state so any requests go through one person that goes funneled up to to the federal government to see which items that we can get most agencies look for non-controlled items such as office equipment vehicles and body armor one example to give you is that uh it's a very cost effective way of what the PRC has pointed out um and again they they've looked at it from from every every other angle that when we're on a tight budget we can look for these types of things but the state also has a program that we can get office equipment from as well so why not just use that resource rather than pushing through the logistics of this program but just to give you another idea so like the incidents that happened on january 17 of the 20th the body worn or the the level four body armor that officers had while they were outside at the uh at the capital is expired helmets and the level four body armor to stop rifle places it's expired um so so that's like an example of something that we can get if it's available through the 1033 program that we can use that's going to be cost effective for us because my estimates are it's going to run roughly $35,000 to to uh get it get this equipment for all the officers within our department more information on the body worn can't or the 1033 program can be found at that below website so street outreach and training uh so it's it's when we're looking at at outreach and when we're dealing with folks who have uh signs of consumption police officers are trained to look for signs of impairment uh an example that would be DUI stops so officers do have this training they do have this recognition but we're not medical experts um so as we're looking for um training or any training that will help us to determine intoxication we can easily work with EMS Washington county uh the hospital and and just so so anything that we're not already trained in or we're not aware of we can easily develop a program to do that in house at no cost to the city or at no um effect to our training budget uh as of note to put folks at ease this is something that we've always done was to call for EMS to call for Bob Gallon's folks to come help us if we see somebody who is going through uh who is symptomatic of light threatening symptoms they're unable to to again like walk uh their signs of alcohol poisoning uh you know i i think that anyone who may have had the opportunity to go to college probably has a very good training background on some of the things uh to see with intoxication and that's unfortunate um so mpd we're not i am not aware of any specific training that talks about deescalation or things to to to use with somebody who may have consumed an intoxicant um i i think that all points of deescalation revolve around the same thing time and effective communication that's not like of a judgmental type of a uh of a process everything has to come from a spirit of how can i help not more or less that this is an annoyance to me and that's something that our department has to make sure that we're always on guard for training youth and adolescent behavior so the academy does provide some level of information to officers in level two and level three training that i recall and some of the certification courses that i've been through it's a touch and go training it's not anything that's necessarily in depth but i will say that the montpellier police department is working with statewide stakeholders to implement a crisis intervention training program our team program here in washington county and this includes lori emison with nami dan um psychiatric survivors uh who else just a whole host of people who are who are very good at this and and the whole thing is uh is geared towards a community response not decisions based in a law enforcement response so with the c it program that brings training and part of that training in that curriculum talks about the adolescent brain it talks about the development of the adolescent brain and the development of brains and and and and how they affect behavioral disorders and everything else to that effect so that's coming so there's not going to necessarily be a cost associated with this but we also would recommend sending a corporal filbrick who is our community relations officer to nasrow which is the national association of school resource officers they have already long developed a benchmark plan regarding how to deal with youth and and the adolescent brain and development and personalities that relate to it so we could send mike up there he can get the specific training for nasrow for the school resource officer and then they have a another class that's especially devoted to adolescence and development and mike can take those those classes roughly three grand he can come back develop a curriculum for us to use in-house and that would be something that we would constantly train ourselves on so that we're not looking at this these are costs that i'm anticipating we can pull out of our own budget so training and crowd control we already prescribed to the madison model for those who may not be aware the madison model is just is something that in a nutshell that places emphasis on police resources to incidents that that involve safety and life that's the primary secondary is property and then third level is any level of or any type of amount of civil disobedience so the primary focus is always going to be life and how to protect life how to preserve life anyone who may be injured in certain certain types of situations and how to make sure that we're not part of an escalation process as we're working to control the situation of civil disobedience that may have gotten out of hand of course this is obvious we are the state capital we have a critical infrastructure so this is something that's extraordinarily important for us to do depending and again the council is already aware of this we do have challenges depending on the size of any crowds that we may be dealing with because of the amount of officers that we would normally have on any given shift if it's a situation or something that we're not aware of that we're not prepared for that's an impromptu thing that we had no knowledge of it's going to take some time to bring those resources together and those resources require again our work with our partners federal state and the regional law enforcement agencies in washington county we have already identified that this is a lack of this is a lack of training that we do need we would recommend that this is something that we bring in somebody to give us hands on control because this is extraordinarily important stuff it can't be learned virtually on the when i just when i made these slides and looking at the resources to bring somebody in the worst i guess the bad estimate the highest estimate would be roughly 15k our current training budget is 148 but deputy chief norton had given me some ideas we've looked at some other options we think that we could find experts subject matter experts in other places that are that are that have subscribed to the madison model and bring them here for cost that would be less than that and something that we can already absorb in our current training budget so scenario based training we and i apologize for the font on this when i tried to keep the slides at a minimum we've already received when i first got here there are a lot of resources within our community of folks who are doing a lot of things and that we can take advantage of that we have a lot of organizations a lot of allies that can give us free training prevent child abuse vermont the fbi the rainbow umbrella of central vermont circle cvmc there are a lot of organizations that have come out of the woodwork to say whatever you guys need there's some training that we think that you should have we can provide it to you for free so we can get those types of specialized training at little to no cost we do advocate as the prc had recommended scenario based training to augment the rule 13 those are training requirements by the state that officers have to have certain levels or certain topics to be trained in annually to maintain certification and and scenario based training is the best of course actors and role plays there's limited opportunities their cost associated with it there's liability concerns if there's a hands-on scenario and somebody hurts a wrist their their liability issues there so we're looking for virtual reality training and to let the the council know we did apply for and one a grant that we have a virtual vr training machine that should be here by the end of the year and we're also working on grant funding to try to procure more of these machines so that we can have not just one officer going through these things but several officers and when we're looking at things like c it based training you've got two officers one it's one vr machine two officers appear two officers an outreach worker going into a situation virtual reality and training on that this also is a cost savings multiplier for us as well as a environmental stewardship because we can actually do things like shoot virtual reality without wasting the money or without like the lead contamination so we do have to qualify um and and you know live fire within state requirements but again this is another force multiplier and keeping what the council's spirit of environmental stewardship so what i do want to say that and again i don't mean to bring up a controversial topic but training should not be our only focus as we look at these types of things mpd needs tools if we're going to rightfully um look at the preservation the sanctity of human life and in my opinion the police or the prc's research has shown that the Montpelier police department is worthy of the trust that's been and been stowed upon officers regarding the current tools of use of force that they have to include firearms so we we need to look at the possibility of having other use of force options and i look at this again of course using the minimum amount of force necessary and what pushes me on that is that canton v ohio that lawsuit talks about the liability that officers that municipalities can if they can force summarizing it if we can foreseeably see that this is something our staff needs to be trained in we can be liable if we don't train our folks in or we don't provide our folks the tools they need to find themselves out of certain certain situations and then to also let folks know that there was another case that just came out within the supreme well within i'm sorry the 11th circuit court of appeals um which which their jurisdiction their area is florida alabama and georgia and they recently found that an officer who had used deadly force against somebody who was suicidal was not granted qualified immunity for those protections and that's in alabama georgia and florida and and and then the the stress was so just a quick summarization of that you had an end it was a call for assistance there was a woman who was suicidal her husband came downstairs told the responding sheriff what was going on the woman uh the sheriff went up to engage she had pulled out a knife she continually kept coming at the officer the officer kept trying to back up and then ultimately the officer did shoot that woman and the emphasis was on what other did you retreat did you transition to other to other use of force options you had a taser why did you not use the taser why did you not use your oc spur your baton so those are things these are the type of conversations that we may have to look at in the future and again i'm not asking for the council to even talk about that tonight um so i would advocate um consideration for an increase in our training budget specifically looking at how much it would cost us to um to send folks to training uh those types of increase uh note then and up there with those slides it talks about what our current training budgets are and it gives example of how much some of these trainings are to send our folks uh to these trainings so that they're more professional and more proficient and they can bring that level of experience back to the department to give to other officers in a more cost effective way so again that is my tirade on training and uh scenario base so in mental health proficient or professional funding i am going to say that on this one i i i did not do too much due diligence on this one i reached out to the washington county mental health services we've looked at what that cost estimate would be that's 125 k 82 for a full time 41 for a part time while washington county mental health services now we we had discussion and we thought that we might get more bang for the buck regarding for a professional um uh mental health worker somebody who is trained and educated and uh and and counseling but what we should have done was bring in more people uh to the table before so so i want for this slide i would primarily my my my goal takeaway point i'm going to turn over to dan would just be to allow us more time to talk to other people in the space in this area to come up with an idea solution or recommendation of what this type of funding would go for if the council decided to give it and uh so i'll just give it to dan thank you chief teet um would it be okay to turn the lights on no thank you first of all um i want to thank the leaders in this room for for uh taking the proactive step of forming the montpelier police review committee which uh will uh which i am very confident is going to help move the city closer and closer to a progressive person-centered approach to uh public safety secondly this is my first uh city council meeting in a long time and kudos to you in the zoom world for all the time the effort you folks put in uh next ballot should should look about a an increase in your compensation and finally chief pete's been an absolute delight to work with during during the time on the police review committee he's really been a breath of fresh air so we are very fortunate to have chief pete as the leader of our public safety here in the city um i am dan toll i'm a montelier resident and the president of a mental health and law enforcement management advisory firm and of course a member of the montpelier police review committee uh i've come here to help clarify the intent of this particular recommendation which is all about mental health funding for crisis response um before i get into uh my issues i would like to address my background and credentials in mental health this mask doesn't want to seem to stay up what it's okay all right please don't yell at me first of all i'm a mental health advocate and with my team promote uh our our goal is to promote transformative social change in mental health and in the disability arena i am a psychiatric survivor um i have a major mood condition that i've dealt with for many decades as chief pete mentioned i work for the national alliance of mental illness also for the mental health agency pathways for mont as a support line operator and and i volunteer as well um on a number of different committees at the statewide level the a hf the a hs mont mental health integration council which is co-chaired by uh dr levine in addition i sit on several several committees at the department of mental health including the adult state program standing committee the substance abuse mental health services agency which is the federal arm of a hs for substance abuse mental health and um i'm on the block grant planning council and uh basically uh for all of those volunteer and work commitments i try to be the voice of people who have mental health conditions and uh i don't like the word disabled i'd rather say otherly abled um and with that i'd like to address this particular slide um the intent the intent of this particular recommendation was to add a third leg to the crisis response stool which comprised of law enforcement social work and peer support um the the goal was to was to add one full-time peer support worker and add a half of a social worker to the existing social work we have right now who splits her time between half her time with barry and half her time with us so we end up with one social worker one peer support worker all working together with chief uh pete's wonderful team of law enforcement professionals here in the city um this particular set of recommendations as chief pete indicate it's it's a work in progress and and uh we're we're having a dialogue around the fact that um really we need uh we're our recommendation is that we take or i should say my recommendation i need to own this that we take a step back as chief said and um for washington county mental health the police department and the peer support leadership um leadership in in the state in particular locally it's another way for those of you who are familiar um and look at the optimal way to to allocate this 1.5 uh fte personnel between social work and peer peer support crisis worker uh peer support crisis workers um and i would add just as a as an aside as we discussed in the committee um when it comes to the funding issue there is funding available um from both uh federally from samsa as well as from dmh for peer support crisis workers um and uh and other uh progressive uh law enforcement social working initiatives and uh i would uh i would say that that is an opportunity that we can we can try to take advantage of in terms of funding to uh off to avoid drawing more down from the the city's budget thank you continue on it again uh just again for that record i am a huge also a huge proponent of peer peer advocacy is is a lot of people will refer to as a secret sauce and a response model and i think what this does is highlights that there is a there's a desperate need to figure out what these response models might look like and how to reach uh and how to find the resources to fund them all and we're not realistically expecting that the council should look and try to take it upon itself to do that we're committed to finding other ways and resources to make this happen to the best of our ability and not burden the city with doing it there's funding and opportunity out there we're going to find that so with the street outreach capacity um anyone uh we believe that uh we can any training that we would need regarding street outreach would we can find that in-house we can reach out with again our community partners and get that training in-house so so folks would know what they're um what they're seeing when they're looking at uh certain issues and incidences and calls for service um for the record that the of the prc did recommend i believe an additional funding of 1.5 persons regarding street outreach uh good sam previously had one full-time e i believe funding and since then uh that the council did agree i think to fund another half so i think that equates to one full time or one one fte so uh this is what they're looking at two people working 24 hours each 40 hours for outreach and additional resources so at this point uh to to looking at what the prc's recommendations are you've already done one you would only need to do a point five at this point and that we the numbers come up to about forty seven five and again this is something that we're we're budget neutral and this is not a mpd decision this is uh on the council just information for you all's uh knowledge and making decisions so human trafficking regarding the the training for human trafficking um again we're going to talk about those other ordinances for a later date this is just uh talking about the relevance about upcoming budget discussions so we've long utilized a trauma-informed approach regarding our interactions with our community members as well as our investigations and we're going to continue to prioritize that and looking to protect victims and prevent re-victimization and that go to a to look at the cause and those who are actually doing human trafficking and devote our resources there um human trafficking is taking place in vermont it is significant it is here in montpelier um i will tell you that while historical data shows that we've had a minimal number of investigations and i had to do some thinking about that and knowing now the the level of the prevalence that's going on out there i honestly think that the reason we're not having more human trafficking investigations is because our department doesn't know what to look for in certain cases so um we've reached out to uh to some folks and we're looking at trying to find like so to give you an example um some of the information that we got was that approximately 61 percent of trafficking cases in connecticut have at one point in time trafficked here in vermont uh so so there is a prevalence there so we've reached out and we've looked and found uh somebody who can't come in and give us this training with our current training budget the only thing we have to do is pay for is their lodging and them coming here and that's only going to roughly be twenty or two thousand dollars and they're also going to come in here and talk to us about the dark web and how some of this stuff is done online not it's gone out of the days of craigslist there are more covert ways of how these things are happening and there are there are a multitude of ways of human trafficking some people if you say human trafficking they're thinking of what happened in ruttland there are several people who are handcuffed in a locked room and they're going to move all the way to something human trafficking can be something as is uh is i would say a daily occurrence of somebody who may unfortunately be using their own kid or family members and trafficking them out for these types of gains so this is something again we would anticipate having a one one-time cost within our current training budget and then bringing these trainings here to Montpelier and then continue to train ourselves and work ourselves to be better at finding and seeing these types of things data transparency so uh we strongly agree with this when data data data um but there are some limitations to this and this comes in form of time and it also in in absence of time it's going to come in from and with technology and with money um so administrative staffing so because of the potential costs that are involved um there may be like an rfp process and and and looking at four systems and programs that might help us better to put information out there so like say for example if we could find a system that would say here's the data as we put it in when we're working on the street in our calls for service and that the public can go online they can file reports online they can look at crime mapping to see what we we're called for in what area get their information there and even do their own data mining from the system so if they want to pull stats and see what the arrest records were how many traffic stops that we've had they can do that there are systems out there that can in case management systems records management systems and computer a dispatcher cad systems there are products out there that can do that so if there's a way that we could potentially fold this into the televates study that that talks about communications and there is a potential here but that's a very complicated dialogue with so many moving partners parts and partners that are involved so i'm asking for a little bit more time to conduct due diligence before i can bring these types of particular options i just don't want to come to you and say oh you want data give me three people that's not fair that's not realistic that's stupid so so we want to find out what our due diligence efforts are what this might look like and how it would impact any request that we have for project funding so like at a first glance just to give you an idea initial cost could be somewhere like a one-time purchase for these systems of like 40 or 400 000 but the good news is you can we can pull these payments out at very low interest rates to just say in four years we're just going to pay it off in the years after we only have like five grand to pay to maintain this system so body-worn cameras i'm going to turn it over here to alex here pretty soon but just of course we also recommend body-worn cameras we agree with that assessment we would recommend i would recommend a company called visual labs visual labs is a as a smartphone based system there's no proprietary costs involved so you don't have to go like if you go to axon or watch guard or other agencies you might have to have to buy the camera the camera is only good for x-mart time then you got to buy it again you got to get docking stations for uploads you got to do all kinds of different things with visual labs i can get these phones for 99 cents and then i can get the app installed on here and i can do everything that a body-worn camera does but i also have the flexibility of where technology is moving like say for example they're getting out there technology is moving away from having in-car computers to just a docking station for your phone you slide your phone and then you type and you work off that so there are so and there's so many other apps that we have or so many other programs that we're working with they're trying to upgrade to that would also work with um with smart smartphones so pros are with uh with visual labs is that the costs are extraordinarily lower than competitors requires minimal hardware and purchasing of recur recurring proprietary purchases there's already a statewide body-worn camera policy that exists so it's not something that we would have to develop and then and then go through the entire due diligence process it's already there and we we would have to follow that based on certification and based on like the state law so um again uh these types of phones will allow us for backup so if we're in an area where our radios don't work we can pop on a push to talk app and work from there um and again it's more adaptable to emergency technology the cons are that it would require a perpetuity additional funding in the budget which would be around 35 000 each year half of it would go towards the service cost of having the the data plan for the phones and the other half would be for the subscription service so alex are you still there sir he's there but he's muted oh sorry about that my name is Alexander and I work for visual labs and if if somebody would help me I know that city council chambers have the slides up I have them on my other monitor here but then I can sort of follow along and she can move those forward so yeah they're perfect and I will go so general body-worn camera goals I'm sorry it's on the other screen I'm not trying to disrespect anyone but I can actually put it and I think Chief you already mentioned some of these things one of the keys and it really it it clearly helps everyone not only the law enforcement personnel the citizens transparency and accountability but the body cameras tell the truth got the video and audio of what happened in a situation it improves that trust and cooperation between law enforcement and the citizens it's the evidence minimizing false complaints allegations and I think one of the keys here that the people don't necessarily focus on this production of liability um it it is almost equivalent to an insurance policy where yes as Chief would say it might cost you know roughly $35,000 a year that could easily in one instant save a million dollars of liability and I'll give you one example federal heights Colorado it's in the Metro Denver area they had a different vendor for body cameras they switched to ours and because of some of the location analytics they were able to prove that their officer did not violate their pursuit policy because they're in Metro Denver in urban area they have a no pursuit policy over 50 miles an hour unless it's like threatening and an officer got into a stolen vehicle pursued speeds very quickly at 50 and the officer pulled off and ceased the pursuit and then tragically that stolen vehicle about a mile ahead it struck and killed a pedestrian and the pedestrian's family's lawyer came in to sue the city claiming that the officer had caused the death of that individual and the chief said absolutely not we can prove it with our analytics showed the speeds that were taken by that officer and on speeds of 50 they could see him turning back into the station through all the geographic mapping that we have this just inherently the system memories on smartphones so we're getting GPS out of that I'm happy to learn more details in a doubt or that but again more than just recording a conversation but a lot deeper than that and then obviously the officer safety training you know that goes part of that so if you slip one more slide out now perfect equipment consolidation as chiefly mentioned we're using a smartphone and we we like to say BWC does not mean body-worn camera but instead means body-worn computer because we're taking a very powerful electronic device and we're placing everything you see on the left side of the screen body camera and docking station and a digital camera and an audio recorder personnel locator all that can be combined into a single device a smartphone and what you see here these geofences that I was sort of mentioning all the location analytics to go with that and the live streaming capability which would potentially save not only just an officer's but citizen lives where if someone with the right permission can turn on a body-worn camera remotely and get a live video and audio feed in theory chief Pete sitting here in the council chambers or sitting there in the council chambers if he heard one of his officers was involved in it in a shooting he could turn on that camera and watch it remotely from where he was assuming that he would have those permissions so using a smart device and software I should probably step back just momentarily and say visual ads we're a software company not a hardware company all our body camera company competitors are hardware companies they all make proprietary hardware we have developed an application an app that goes on the smartphone in conjunction with the backend evidence management website and so we're purely software based and therefore you know make things much more customizable for agencies we've been doing this for coming up on eight years now in january we've got hundreds of agencies all around the country so this is this is a very well proven system anyway next slide camera positioning options this is often a question we get well we've got our citizens there you know videoing us holding the smartphone in their hand that's not going to work for us as police officers and of course not the camera is mounted just like any other system any other body camera system either in the chest potentially even as well as the belt because with a wide end of lens on many smartphones and then the officer controls when that camera can start and stop just like any other system and then policies would dictate when they should turn it on when they should turn it off you know when that is allowed or just allow things like that next next slide the redaction which is built into our system we have that integrated into the system where if you have to release videos to the public both the audio can be redacted or distorted and faces can be blurred out as you see here there was unfortunately a very tragic incident took place just outside of Atlanta where one of our customers may issue a piece of the body-worn camera footage and blocked out some of the innocent people in that footage and they use that footage to track down a very violent suspect but anyway that's all included and built into our system next one is the real-time officer safety feature and that's where we get this positional awareness again with a GPS that's coming from smartphones which is both from the satellites and cellular triangulation that the chief or someone on you know at the command staff in dispatch could see exactly where all the officers are at any point in time and so they would know how to send help or where to send help exactly if there were any kind of critical situations the remote activation capability I already mentioned one of our customers is the state of Georgia their department of natural resources and during the protests in Atlanta a summer ago they they pulled most of their game ones off the parks and the lakes sent them to downtown Atlanta on their ATVs and they were patrolling kept things very well under control in downtown Atlanta during the protests but they were live streaming from several dozen of our smart phone body camera systems to a major master control center with the governor and the FBI and other law enforcement agencies so it can help control situations by knowing what's going on is that real-time situational awareness remote activation and again with this live stream availability so knowing where people are and what's happening on the ground leveraging the connectivity of the smart phone simultaneous playback this is just something you know we'd like to see it's just interesting to show the evolution of technology it's not necessarily just one picture from one camera because you often have multiple officers on the scene and unless you show four different viewpoints from four different officers those videos can actually be all played simultaneously and if you look at the next slide there it actually shows those videos so we've got four officers ABC and me at the scene and you can actually see this is a still from each of the four officers body cameras because no matter what system you have you know one individual camera might not capture the totality of you know the situation that was you know being presented in itself and that's really I've got the you know next slide it's great for questions and answers anyone there I will say that the chief being his officers tested the system it was about a year ago now went through very extensive testing with our system you know we had to sample phones out there and then they put it through its faces and you know we're very happy that he ultimately compared our solutions to others and concluded that he was recommending the ultimate purchase of the visual ads to the smart from the body camera solution so that's all I have but again happy to answer any questions that anyone has. All right Alex thank you very much sir I'm sorry are there any questions related to the body one camera system? No I would just like to say I really appreciate getting these slides ahead because I've been very dubious about body cameras and and slides really showed me how much these improved my issues with them so thank you. The technology has improved you know far far beyond a typical kind of GoPro type camera and we're leveraging that technology we're based in Silicon Valley you know kind of the heart of the software technology and got a lot of very smart software engineers that you know they live for innovation and technology and we just keep advancing the system more and more you know as the technology improves and allows for furthering software and to to provide a better system for law enforcement agencies. Thanks Alex I really appreciate your time. Thanks Alex and then I apologize I just I know time it's late so we only have two slides here the closing the slides are this just and again I apologize for the size of it but this just talks about this just breaks it down visually what the financial impact that we're anticipating would be related in relation to the PRC recommendations and again I do want to emphasize that this one right here the 15 k one-time training costs probably eliminate that everything else I think we can find ways to squeeze that within within the budget but I'm also going to look for grand opportunities to try to fund a lot of these things. And sir do we know if there are any other police departments in Vermont that are using the visual labs system? No sir for the most part it I believe and and Nord you may be able to help me out on this one but it looks like watch guard and axon. Yeah I have a case that I'm working on or that I started out working on with the Capitol Police and they had they have the axon system. Yes they just purchased it. Yes sir. Chief do you mind like just maybe talking about the public records aspect of this a bit like remember Chief Faco saying like the storage component of it would be the most costly and not just like storing it sort of the staff time associated with like responding to massive requests so like how long would you have to hold on to the data you know what sort of stuff could you expect in that regard. So looking at the so so so technology has changed since then and so looking at that and I apologize this was something that was on my list to talk to you about that currently would the 35 would include it would more than cover so the statewide policy regarding how long we have to hold certain types of footage for that would be rolled into that entire 35. I think we'd be very very good with that rather than having to buy servers or do anything else like that cloud-based technology all of the sort with the with the automatic or with the built-in redaction features would save on administrative time though it would be logical to expect we're going to see additional public records request. I do have some numbers if the council was interested I could send that out at a later time but what I would say is I don't want to necessarily put the cart before the horse and say the sky is going to fall we're going to need three people to deal with it if we do are fortunate enough to get body worn cameras I think that a wait-and-see approach at this point in time would be more prudent than rather than saying if we're going to get body worn cameras we need to get additional staff to help us with public records request I think we would need to look at the data behind that and see where that's that's beneficial but but and again in the past the redaction part of it would take an extraordinary amount of time this technology it's it's lengthy but it's not nowhere near as time-consuming no vhs tapes anymore for this stuff I still got some at home sir thank you sir and madam mayor and then the last slide I have is just these were are the other ops are the other topics for discussion related to the PRC report that can be talked about at a time of the council's decision of cheers great all right well thank you any other questions about not just the body worn cameras but about any of this from council and then we'll go to public comment yeah go ahead learn thanks just one clarifying question are there steps that you see chief like I understand just on the transparency point of you know if we want to significantly ramp up public access to data that there is the possibility of a different database and you know an expensive path are there assuming that could take a while are there like interim things you're thinking about to improve or is I mean hopefully it's not like an either or and we just wait and you know it looked like a potentially long trajectory for a big data upgrade so just curious if you're thinking about that so some of the interim options would be purchasing some software systems or some platforms that can do some of these things individually so it would be like a purchase of five grand here six here or three here to do that and then there would also be an administrative lift that would accompany those types of purchases so it so yeah yes ma'am there I am looking at those options but I'm trying to work some more due diligence related to it but the interim process would be purchasing other types of systems and then additional staffing Donna go ahead yeah yeah I was gonna see if there's any council questions but I'm happy to go to write to public comment now if that's she's a committee member yeah yeah um let's let's do that well let's go to that now so um we'll go to Alyssa and then I I know you've got a comment there so yeah go ahead Alyssa there there we go thank you for un-meeting me hi Alyssa Sharon chair of the police review committee before maybe former chair I don't know if we're currently active or not but we still feel somewhat active um thank you so much chief P and MPD for your openness to so many of the police review committee ideas and so appreciate how you were utilizing community partners for some of the training ideas and the train the trainer models you're putting forward to as well as the virtual training options I think that's a really efficient way of doing it in a cost-effective way of doing it and thank you Dan for being in the room today and for clarifying the mental health recognition I think that was really a helpful perspective to bring I I mostly had a process question for you Mayor Watson and the committee which is just the council which is how we should engage in this um specifically I you know I think the police review committee might be interested in weighing in on some of the questions posed by chief P like for example questions about the community engagement protocol for after-use of course incidents he put forward a question to the council like how should we engage with you on this I think we might have some suggestions based on our um you know extensive conversation that's true also on you know the demilitarization 1033 program of the process literally the process of how this might be accessed in the engagement between MPD and the council so I'm wondering is this the right time to do it now or will you be taking this up again in the future and um I'm just and also I just want to flag that in the future um it would be great if um committee members were were invited or flagged that that something was on the agenda we found out about 45 minutes I found out about 45 minutes before the meeting tonight so scramble to invite people but as you can imagine we're not really prepared to thoroughly engage at this point we would love to in the future yeah that's a great question um thank you for that um so a couple thoughts one uh is I think getting into the details of the answers to those questions is probably not what we're going to be doing tonight I think we're mostly just taking the temperature of the council to see if like generally speaking is this are the should we be moving forward with those conversations um in detail and I'm sort of guessing that you know for some of the items that have budget implications like we're going to take those up sort of individually for things about the use of force um uh protocols like that will be someone perhaps perhaps the the chief perhaps um someone else will be coming back to us with some with a protocol that we would then potentially approve um and so those conversations um I think we're probably not the right fit for a council is my guess at least not right now anyway um but then that does leave the question of like when and how does that continue and I'm curious for your for thought suggestions or input or what you all are willing to do like in part you know your mission to create produce this report it's sort of done right but um but there may maybe some useful follow-up um as we get into those details so I feel like I've only partially answered your question um about this I think what I'm taking away from one thing you said is that there will be other opportunities to engage yeah I know whether or not we are an active committee committee members really care about these topics and we've done a lot of work together you know with GP and MPD and might have some helpful for stigma students along the way and so um you know we support as the chief said like the recommended what he put forward we generally support there might just be as we get more into the leads um suggestions around process if you were going to get controlled equipment you know that from the 1033 program that kind of thing and we could do that in writing or we could do that actively or we could do that you know outside of I think there's a lot of options but one takeaway is we're not doing it right now that's fair and I that's exciting okay and I also okay I I guess I would also be be interested in the opinions of the committee like if you if you want like if you think people want to continue to meet to collectively have that conversation you know I certainly don't want to um disenfranchise that group from continuing if you want if you want to keep um you know collectively weighing in but um in part I want to leave that to you and to to the group um otherwise you know uh individual participation makes sense to me um there was another part of your question though which was about um uh how people are notified and I think that is that is worth noting absolutely and I was just going to follow up on that Alyssa um we'll commit that committee members are notified anytime any of this is on the agenda and well in advance um we had actually I don't know why that didn't happen this time it should have so we'll make sure that that's taken care of and I think in terms of your question in general I don't want to answer for the chief but you know maybe we should just have a conversation the three of us or two of us about does it make sense to have one more meeting with a debrief or something like that um now that we're having these conversations but I don't want to commit anybody's time without us sort of thinking it through so that sounds great why don't I pull the committee members you know as we get into the details to see if folks want to meet and if not then maybe we figure out individuals to connect with uncertainties choose like Dan you're going to want to be engaged based on the mental health issue moving forward as an individual or as a committee member either way you know that's clear so if we can't meet as a body I'm sure we can we can figure out who might be point on which which issue so I'll pull folks and then move back with chief p and cc um you can remember thanks so much great thank you um yes Richard did you have something you also we wanted to add are we done with this are we done with this agenda item not uh quite a little the council's still got a just one last comment at the end okay yeah okay I get the 10 o'clock hours only going to take about three minutes of the 10 o'clock hour my name's Richard cheer district two loomis street and it's it's real difficult I'd like to talk about the what you're calling militarization um but I'd like to frame it differently and unfortunately we're not going to talk about the civilian police review board which I consider to be wild overreach and I just read the 1033 one as a solution looking for a problem simply because we haven't had we haven't used that program since chief Hoyt and we used it for one rifle you know and it's been city policy amongst Brian amongst Tony not to use that program for years except for perhaps for clerical items and I don't even think for that we've really reached into it but we do use that program when you talk about procurement it's different than use when we call in the state police they are sometimes using equipment that's procured from that program and my fear is that when we talk about 1033 it's a wedge to interject on the state police and on how they see their professionalism and I come back to the shooting that happened the police shooting over at the high school we had a piece of equipment that was coming into that scene that would have allowed the negotiator to get closer and closer and would have possibly resolve that without the tragedy that was a piece of military equipment and my fear is that in addressing 1033 that way we're in a sense saying that Montpelier police can do it all themselves and or that we're going to call in an emergency and say okay what kind of equipment are you bringing where did you get that equipment it's a much more nuanced situation than it's presented in that particular recommendation so that caught my eye as well as the others and I'll be back when we do discuss other elements of this report that I felt fairly strongly I would like to address the police review commission and say it was great report I mean it was very thorough and I felt like it was really well thought I might disagree but boy you guys really provided your thought documented quite well and I congratulate you for doing that and I thank you for doing that it took three minutes thank you okay anybody else either in person or online I understand these are preliminary but the ones that are budgetary are coming up sooner than later as a technology literate person I have concerns about the smartphone just the smartphone application versus a purpose built camera the I've watched the other officers other departments use the purpose built cameras the controls for activating them and deactivating them are very blind I mean could be done without looking I'm concerned that the attention of an officer going to his phone to figure out how to turn it on and start recording it's not something that officers typically going to be willing to give up in a in a hostel or a potentially dangerous situation so I just raise a red flag cheapest is not necessarily best in in this situation so I will speak more about it later but I think I'd like to see a comparison broken out separately of the hardware the licensing and then the storage because we do also have options we've got hardened data centers both at velco and at VTEL that could potentially be certified for forensic grade data storage within the state rather than the exorbitant rates that some of these vendors are charging for cloud storage I have a lot more to say about it but not tonight thank you okay anybody else either in person or digitally okay and Dan you wanted to add something yes I just wanted to finish by acknowledging individually the members of the committee council councilperson McCulloch councilperson hurl Jen Dugan avid germain but in particular two of the workhorses Mike Sherman who I think is on the line now who are all the work he did early on in the process and then to Justin Dreschler who was the heaviest lifter I think he's I would call him an Olympic Olympic lifter for all the work he did at the end to pull the report together and lastly and not leastly the absolute wonderful leadership of of Alyssa Sherman it was a delight to work with with her and the whole team and I'm glad we're able to put pull together the report and recommendations that we did thank you so thoughts questions from council I guess the the question that we really need to answer is are we ready to take some next steps in each of these particular items are there any red flags are there what are your thoughts on moving forward well a general statement I mean I really support us moving forward with the staff recommendations as presented in our agenda makes sense that we definitely can explore more details of age but I would recommend that we follow those recommendations kind of there's nothing more to say just a thumbs up I'm sure like Donna said we'll be fleshing it out but I think generally we're going in the right direction here yeah yeah anything else folks want to say yeah go ahead Jay well I just think it might be worthwhile um to do a bit of an inventory of the recommendations and understand where the decisions need to be made I feel like some of them can just be can happen through the budgeting process and you know and as as we work through that but then there's others that might require more feedback from the committee like Alyssa mentioned etc so agreed that we're certainly moving in the right direction but having kind of a knowing where we could just sort of give a Connor's thumbs up and be good and other things where we need to to dig a little bit deeper and if there's a specific decision that the council might need to make about something that's beyond just approving a certain budget line item I think would would be really helpful in terms of moving forward yeah that makes sense to me and I I agree I think gosh with the incredible diligence of the police review committee as well as you know the the work that you and the department have done chief to to you know see how these things can align I think where we are moving in the right direction and it's this is very encouraging I think there's some great steps forward that we can take here and continue to be a leader in the state on all of these these issues so yeah looking forward to getting into details and making it happen so yes I just want to thank the department already on the community engagement piece I I think we've seen some huge steps forward it's great to see coffee with a cop up then regularly you know I think Corporal Phil Brick's doing a great job in some of his new duties you know just having like his presence at the homelessness task force last meeting it says a lot I think it says that MPD is there to listen to the front people on the ground and like you know I don't think that goes unnoticed I apologize but I do want to want to take if I could just take a quick second we got a an email from the the deputy assistant director for the U.S. Marshals earlier this week specifically noting what Diane has been doing and his his work with the one person who had to she helped him get his hearing aid and that was posted on Facebook he sent an email saying that that's community that's 21st century policing and that our department should continue to move forward doing that so I'm extraordinarily proud of her and of the unit so thank you all very much for that yeah that was a great story people haven't seen that so all right Lauren I'm just glad to hear obviously have already voted on all of these and I'm glad to see that we're moving forward and appreciate Chief you and the the staff team kind of fleshing out a lot of the ideas and how it's going to work and that's great to see like totally agree I think like moving forward with all of it and there should be more community conversation of you know body cameras and all of that so whether some of that might be you know sessions I know you've been doing a lot of community engagement sessions on different topics and stuff so maybe some could be done that way and some at council meetings so just like thinking through how to you know educate and engage and get feedback from folks as we move forward but glad to see we are moving forward with all these and then I guess just process wise so there's the kind of sets that is agreed upon and then some of the other recommendations just like hoping that there's a plan to just take those up and have those discussions as well but I think this process of starting with the ones that everyone agrees on and making sure that the budget reflects those pieces makes a lot of sense but just making sure we're not leaving behind the other pieces all together all right so I'm wondering if we need a motion on moving forward I'm not sure that we do you don't think so okay I think I think we're pretty clear that we're all kind of in alignment which is great awesome all right well thank you so much again all right well I think we're ready to move on to our otherwise last agenda item it's who be fair it's after 10 do you want to take it up do you want to take what's that we could how do you how would you feel about that it actually might be good if Lauren and I are the remaining members after Dan has left it might be good to talk about appointing a third member of this interest and maybe we could even maybe huddle a little bit before the next meeting then okay that's fine um anybody's interested is anybody interested in great yeah so is that what it's called the lobby income yep I believe we could call it legislative advocacy that's a better that does seem better less sleazy than lobbies going once going I'm a maybe okay okay he's a power player at the state so so you all may get invited to the meetings there we go there we go so we'll take that up next time then okay great all right on to our council reports Donna well I I do want to go back a little bit to the police review I appreciate some memo I guess it's actually pretty long we got from staff that was a lot of time and to me that's what it laid out what I I could perceive what we needed to do next so I really appreciate that it was very helpful and I appreciate that you all listen and had Doug Hoyt here and Paco when I was gone to talk about public safety authority great you haven't demolished us when I was good and it's great to be back to Vermont there's a lot of strange behavior about mask elsewhere in the world it's a it's very strange to be in a place that won't wear mask it's a really very appreciative that we have a a politeness of trying to protect ourselves and one another as well as ourselves so anyway thank you all for being here just encourage folks I got my booster shot a couple days ago I'm still feeling like death as a result of it but but if you go up to the mall there it's so easy it's quicker than getting like a cheeseburger and they're really efficient they're like each one of them doing like 40 jabs a day so really like if you want to get it it's it's so quick and easy just pop up to the mall there just a PSA on that well I got mine two days ago and I feel fine so don't like don't let Connor scare you off it's I'm feeling I feel my arm I'm totally fine that's it for me all right Jennifer I'm solid okay all right I'll stick with the vaccine the theme and say thumbs up and congratulations to the school district for for getting hundreds of kids vaccinated this week it's I heard tonight that it wasn't a fun experience for everybody but what I heard was that it was kind of a party atmosphere in the schools and I think it's great I think kids are really recognizing the things they're doing like getting their their weekly COVID tests and getting their vaccinations are doing their part to work for the health and safety of the community yes I would echo gratitude one of my children was one of the less happy about his vaccinated um but the only thing I wanted to to just note tonight so I feel like ever since COVID struck I've been like the federal government's going to come through with money and just noting the passage of the infrastructure bill and hopefully the Build Back Better Reconciliation Package in a couple weeks but knowing now in hand the infrastructure and just talk to Bill about this but it might be good once they've had a little time to digest to get our someone from our federal delegation staff in to talk with us about the opportunities and how this is going to impact cities because you know I know for example just in my professional world like there's money going to state revolving fund for city water projects and stuff so just us all understanding especially as we go into budget season and bonding discussions and stuff of if that is going to change anyway we might think about prioritization or timeline for anything because there's going to be some new opportunities which is exciting so that's it for me thanks great so I have two things one is first thank you all for doing the budget survey all all seven of us have completed it so that's great so I can get you information about that and second thing is November 18th Thursday next it's not tomorrow it's a week from tomorrow as the Challenger Memorial rededication ceremony and it's happening at four o'clock at the high school and yeah I mean I think it'll be a good opportunity to remember and just celebrate the lives of the astronauts who died but anyway I just want to make sure that was on folks' radar that's it for me probably worth mentioning that last night we had the board of sole authority meeting to discuss the reapportionment proposal from the reapportionment committee advising the legislature and of course the proposal is to divide our current two member house district into two districts and by a thin majority the board voted to advise against that that's out there and if anybody's listening wanted to know but I just personally like to thank so many of you all were there and it was it was it was great I mean it was it was just great to have so much participation from council especially you know considering all our elected officials and we're talking about how we choose our elected officials so it's uh it was very appropriate thank you keeping on the vaccine theme I got mine on Friday and felt fine the whole time and to Donna's point I've been traveling a lot to a nearby state where I won't call out but there's a drastic difference in mask wearing just between here and there extraordinarily noticeable so just you don't have to go abroad to see differences speaking of vaccines we will need to have a policy we already have a policy that I've adopted administratively for staff but for OSHA and it may be delayed now because of some court case but we will have to adopt a policy with regard to employee safety and that you know it could be everything from mandatory vaccines to mask wearing all these other things so we're putting something together it should be on your agenda probably one of the next couple meetings just so that you're thinking about that and we are in fact trying to understand the the bill and all that's in it we I think vlct will be also providing us with a lot of resources on that I'm a little concerned about I mean it's great that it's happening so yay timing may be weird as we you know we're really getting gearing up to do our budget and make these kind of decisions and you know we have to make decisions on bond votes by January and you know will rules even be written and things by by then so but be that as it may also I'm guessing there will be more years to take advantage of it so we're on it and I you know I think our plan right now is just to go forward with our budget and if there's stuff that we have in our budget that can be eligible for this great and we'll just have backfill projects to fill the budget up because we've got as you've seen we have a long long list and probably not money to do them all this year so okay that's all I have okay great um I think that is it so without any reminder that tomorrow is the Veterans Day holiday so City Hall will be closed all right so thank you uh and so without objection we will like this meeting adjourned 10 23 thanks everybody