 very first. So I will call to order this meeting of the Wynuski City Council. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance led by Deputy Mayor Hal Colston. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. You're welcome. Agenda review. Any concerns about the order of the agenda this evening? Hey, Kristen, I'm sorry we will need the executive session at the end. Excellent. Public comments. I know we had someone signed up, but I don't see them on the line. That is correct. The one person who did sign up is not currently here. Okay. And while we're at it, do any other attendees want to make public comment about anything that is not included on this agenda? And you can use chat or raise hand in Zoom to indicate. So I will move us on then to our consent agenda. So we have our meeting minutes from January 25th and accounts payable warrant of 129 payroll warrant of 110 to 123. We also have the gentrification report, which we included in the consent agenda instead of the regular agenda because not really changes since last time we're still not meeting the indicators of gentrification. But there's good information in there if you want to check it out. And finally pool project completion form for the bond bank, just a statutory form. Any questions or concerns about the consent agenda? All right. Would someone like to make a motion to approve all four items? So moved. Motion by Mike, second by Amy, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. So council reports. Can I start with Jim? Yes, yes, you can. So since our last meeting, the housing commission met the day after our council meeting last week. They're beginning to get a couple of actually had a very full agenda. So we did our report back on council work and see report on kind of connections between the housing commissions work and other bodies and priorities going on the city. Chief Audi joined and gave a great overview of the rent or the public housing registry, a public building registry and how that program has evolved and what it is capturing right now and what we're seeing from that collection, which I think was really helpful in the commissioners had a number of questions on what we're seeing out of that registry. So I think that was a great to make that connection between the city effort and the policy work that the commission is doing. And I'm scrolling through my notes for a second. And then there was some time spent on talking about the impact fee and how to prioritize certain types of uses related to housing for that. And I think a memo is coming back from Heather to summarize that recommendation to council into the planning commission. So get some good input from the group. But the, this kind of takeaway is looking at a mix of affordability and family size as part of things to incentivize their family sized units. And then finally, the commission received a information on housing incentive options. We have family sized housing incentive options. So these are free bedroom units are greater. That can be, and how we could incentivize those. So some options were initially laid out additional data and information on what they mean from a new skill be collected and presented at the next commission meeting. So the housing commission is making progress on looking into that. Thank you. Mike reports. I have nothing to report tonight. Thank you. I have nothing to report as well. Thank you. Amy. Yes, I've got a couple of things. First, I want to let you know that the safe healthy connected people commission has lost a few members so we are going to be in the process of recruiting for some new folks. And we would love to find some representatives for that commission that represent how diverse when you see is. We are specifically trying to recruit more folks that identify as new Americans by Poc or you and or you could be any of those. We are still finalizing the language for the for that recruitment and we'll be sending something out on front porch forum. And Paul is going to also be posting something to the website so probably in the next couple of days that will be finalized. If you know anyone who's interested, you can send them to the website for more information or to you can refer to the front porch forum post when it goes out. And then the other thing I wanted to just remind folks of is that the city manager evaluations are due back to me this Wednesday. So if you could make sure you get those to me by the end of the day on Wednesday that would be great. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you, Amy. Last Thursday, the planning commission met. So they are back on a two meeting a month schedule. Spend most of the time reviewing a memo that Eric put together that lays out some of the changes that the group has been discussing discussing to our zoning over the last several months. We have included some statutory language around accessory dwelling units, expanding conditional use in some of our zoning districts to like childcare facilities or educational facilities and some other small changes like that. So they have scheduled a public hearing for those changes at their February 25 meeting later this month to get more input before advancing anything on to council. I also spoke with them about the next steps we discussed as a council on how to support our commissions. You know so they were they liked the idea of some equity training, like the idea of council updates at every meeting so just sharing verbally some any key outcomes that come out of our council meetings. As well as anything relevant to their work that's happening at other commissions. So very specifically, they would like to be more connected to the work of the housing commission and have a better understanding of what's happening there, which is Jim and I were already discussing about how we could do a better job keeping connected and I think when we get into, you know, work planning for the coming year for commissions that will be an opportunity for staff and commission chairs and to come together and make sure we are doing a better job building connection there. That is it for my council reports. So I will pass it to Jesse for our city update. Thank you. Nice to see you all just a couple of updates on our end, starting of course with our COVID update. So as of this morning with no new cases at our lady that outbreak is considered resolved or over per BDH so really excellent job by their staff and Chief Audie for pulling that together and eliminating that outbreak. Last week we had six new cases of COVID and when you ski that's down from 10 the week before and continues that downward trend we've been seeing since the high watermark in the middle of December. And those six new cases were at three unique addresses. So, again, huge thanks to our residents who are really the ones making the difference and quarantining and isolating and wearing masks and whatnot. I know you all have heard this before but just in case folks are watching daily testing continues at the OCC and will continue for the foreseeable future. So if you're interested in a COVID test. You can stop by Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays from 2pm to 8pm so in the evening, and then nine to three all other days including Saturday and Sunday so Tuesday Thursday Saturday and Sunday, nine to three. You can sign up on the BDH website for those testing opportunities you can also just walk into those testing opportunities and those we do have translation and interpretation available at those testing sites. The state has started vaccinations for those neighbors 75 and older tomorrow will be the first max facts clinic held here in when you ski. So you can folks have registered online for that for the mass facts clinics they will be every Tuesday in when you ski for probably the foreseeable future. Those are held at the armory, you have to register to be vaccinated at those clinics. If you're not sure you can go to health for month dot gov slash my vaccine. Thank you Paul for putting that in the chat for folks. You can also call 8557227878. If you're having any trouble signing up for vaccines in your 75 or older, feel free to reach out to the senior center or call City Hall and we can get a message to the senior center, and we can help you navigate that process it is quite a process to get registered. We're working with VDH on opportunities for our limited English proficiency population in our BIPOC population to be vaccinated. So those will be rolled out this week. And the most important thing you can do is really again not spend time with folks outside of your household, wear a mask when in the presence of other socially distance and wash your hands and again huge thanks to the community for taking all those steps and lowering our numbers. We do a quick update in preparation for town meeting will have one more official council meeting before town meeting day. So for for council and those of you watching all of the information about town meeting day is available at when you ski vt.gov backslash town meeting. We anticipate receiving ballots and starting early voting on February 10. As we've previously discussed we will be sending out those postcards are now at the printers and will be in mailboxes. Hopefully early next week. The mayor and I will be doing our town meeting television budget presentation this Wednesday at 530. We will publish that out on our website and through social media and things. And then February 17. We are doing our traditional city school budget presentation. It will not be a community dinner in person as much as we would love to see you all but a virtual joint budget meeting. And then of course that's February 17 at 6 o'clock and of course the night before town meeting day March 1 we will also be doing our virtual budget presentation. So lots of information out there please join us for one of those events or watch the recordings online. Quick update there is a winter parking ban on tonight. We are expected to get between 5 and 10 inches of snow here in Winooski so please park not on the street. I anticipate that that will likely continue through tomorrow night. But definitely tonight it is currently a parking ban on. And with some fun community services stuff. The skating rink at Rotary Park is up and running please come out and enjoy the cold weather. We do encourage folks to wear a mask and physically distance to the greatest extent possible while they are there. And of course Rotary Park is open from dawn until dusk. We will be having a virtual trivia night this Saturday night at 6 30. You can find information about that on our website and you can join with a team and essentially do the equivalent of what I call pug trivia. So it should be really fun and good way for folks to come together. So today has kicked off a Winooski reads program a book group for adults. The first book will be the Underground Railroad Railroad by Colston Whitehead really amazing book if you hadn't had the opportunity to read it. The first session will take place on February 23 at 6 30 and if you are interested in joining up with that book club. So I will send an email to the library director Nate Eddie and he can get you signed up for that. And his email is and Eddie so netty and eddy at Winooski vt.gov. Currently the Winooski library is also doing a cook the book virtual cooking series. So that will be the first session of that will be February 17 from 6 to 7 30 and will feature chef Brian Stefan from Winooski's own southern smoked food so if you're interested in that. Check it out at the website or on social media. Thank you very much. Jesse. So we'll move on to our regular items then first up item a. This is on for discussion lot nine act to 50 permit amendment application process, which I think Heather is likely introducing maybe I can introduce it and I think it would be great if you can bring over Adam and Dave Marshall and Bob diploma as I'm introducing it that would be great. So as you know lot nine has been under consideration for redevelopment for quite some time Adam Dubroff is the property owner and developer. And he's really his project to present tonight and then also in your packet is a memo that staff put together in reaction to the October act to 50 draft permit that Adam has submitted so I will turn it over to Adam. Adam or Dave Marshall if you want to unmute and there you go. Okay, Dave Marshall here. Can you hear me. Yeah, welcome. I'm going to introduce the city councilors mayor and staff and it was guard to the application that's pending before the council tonight. In this particular case, lot nine does have a long history. to the earliest days of the downtown development project in which it was a parcel of land that was conveyed to pizza galley properties as compensation for the work that they did in supporting the downtown development project. And as such, it is a very small lot that's located within the downtown. And it's one that pizza galley recognized at the time as well as the city that there were gonna have to be some extra coordination between the two parties in order to enable this particular parcel to be successfully developed. So there was a development agreement that was entered into between the parties that provided some guidance in regards to how projects on this particular parcel would be managed by both parties going forward. This particular application over this request before the city council tonight is associated with a request to enable an active 50 application to be submitted for the project. This particular project itself is one that has been seen by the city council previously, actually in two different forms. It was the original form back in 2016 and then a revised form in 2017 back in May of 2017 in which the footprint of the building was significantly reduced the proposal to expand the boundary lines beyond as the original lot lines as they exist today was reduced and basically very, very simplified. So at the time back in 2017 May, the city council reviewed an amended site plan presented by the architect and Adam Dubrov to again present the project. At that time, there were a number of discussion points with other parties relative to parking and things of that nature. And in order to enable that particular discussion to go forward without an encumbering umbrella of issues over the top of it, the active 50 application was withdrawn. But prior to that, the city council had first approved the original proposal back in 2016 and then the amended one in 2017. So here we are today, basically seeking a new permission from the city council to submit an active 50 application to the district commission. And with that in the background, didn't know if there is any particular things that we could do to help bring you up to speed. Is there the opportunity to do screen sharing? Yep, we can, Paul, if you can make Dave a co-host, he can. Do you wanna share your screen, Dave, or do you wanna add him to? Well, I think I've got two machines going on right now. And the one that is the one with all the presentation materials I'm not signed in yet. So I need to first do that and get you up to speed. In the meantime, perhaps Jesse, if you can fill in the blanks on the information that has been supported to the city council with regard to both the application materials as well as the staff overview. I think that would be very helpful while I work to get up to speed here. Well, this is really your, so I will tell you, Dave, none of the current city council was serving when the previous council reviewed this project. So I wouldn't suggest you start from the beginning. If I were the council, I would also ask the question and certainly staff has been asking this question. How is the Act 250 application that you previously referred to as being withdrawn from Act 250 was withdrawn as a result of a lawsuit? And how is this project as currently presented different from that and will get us to a different, more productive place in the future? And then in the memo for council, I think you all know this from the materials we presented, but staff have been working with Adam and Dave for about, I don't know, time in the past crazy since August on a list of items that we were hoping to have answers to as we brought this forward to the council for consideration. So Eric and Heather have outlined those issues in that staff memo and perhaps the developer could walk through those items tonight. They do involve, as you've probably seen in that memo, a number of places where the city will need to make potentially or the developer is asking the city to make additional, and turn to additional legal agreements. And so you all will ultimately need to do that as this project moves forward. You ready, Dave? Very good. So I've got two machines on board. The one I just signed in with is one which I would like to do the screen sharing with you if possible. You should be all set, Dave. Give it a try now. See if you can. Okay. Give it a screen option. I think just looking for the magical icon that'll allow me to do some screen sharing. Oh, I think CEAVT over in the attendees list is probably Dave's other screen. Can you move that over? Is that right, Dave? Thank you. See something happening. There we go. You don't get to look at my empty chair in the office. So, okay. So you should have coming up on your screen, the overall plan of the downtown area. Let me know if that is indeed coming up once I hit the right button. Yeah, I can see it now. Thank you. Okay. So this is an overview of the downtown development project itself. North is straight up on this particular plan and we're all familiar with Circulator. We have Winooski Falls Way that runs parallel to the river and Abnaki Way. We have a lot 7D, which is a currently active design project. But in this particular case, wanted to draw your attention down to the bridge and this particular open space area as it exists today. It's primarily lawn with an embankment that goes from what we call the street level down to the mill level, Champlain Mill. And in this particular case, this particular site plan shows the proposed building, shows some connectivity associated with that. And I'm going to go to the next page to show you what the city council actually looked at in 2017. Mine, the fact that none of you were there, but nonetheless, this was the plan that was presented at the time. And it basically, if you follow my cursor, this is actually the lot line. And in this particular case, this has frontage on the bottom of the circulator, whether you want to call it Main Street or whether you want to call it Winooski Falls Way, this particular street address is actually for Winooski Falls Way. And lot two, which surrounds this particular lot nine parcel is open space controlled by the city and the association as it relates to amenities for pedestrian uses and other amenities as they become popular or recommended to be implemented. So in this particular case, this was a significant reduction in the character of what had been originally proposed and approved by the city council. This ultimately this amendment was also approved in the May 2017 meeting. And what this application actually does is looks very similar to that. That's what this particular planning coming up before you is, but it also is very simplified in the fact that you can see again, these are the limits of lot nine. This particular one similar to the other plan still has the patio out front. But what is different on this particular footprint from the one that was originally presented back in May of 2017 is the fact that now the main entry for the hotel is situated at the bottom of the circulator. We felt that this was a better presentation and street communication with regard to how pedestrians and the public as they drive by will be observing this particular structure. So rather than coming in from the side, we're now working and extending the brick walkways, the existing brick walkways into the front of the hotel. There's another egress point that's been consistent with the original previous approvals. And then in this particular case at the lower level, keep in mind if you're in your mind's eye, we do have some pictures that we can burn up, but this particular street level is higher than this particular entry point into the Champlain Mill. So what happens is that there's an embankment from the street level we'll call it down to the middle level. And along that particular place, we have a grade change and then ultimately a lower level that is opened up that basically provides views in the subway direction. Again, north is straight up on this plan and south, of course, is to the south, no, to the bottom. So in this particular case, what we're seeing before you now is the elevations of the proposed building. This is what we call the north elevation. This is gonna be looking back up the circulator and you have your main entrance into the hotel itself. It's gonna again, from the street level, you've got a total of six levels and I'm just gonna kind of pan through these particular elevations only because the next one provides call outs on the materials. So this particular view, this is the east view, this is as you're looking at it from the Champlain Mill or on Wyniskie Fallsway, looking in the west lead direction. This is what you're going to see as far as the window, the glazing and then this grade change that takes you from the street level down to the mill level, so-called. And what I'm going to zoom in is on the right-hand side of this particular drawing because the architect has called out the materials. One of the things that's required is part of the development agreement as well as any project within the downtown area is that they fully comply with the design guidelines that were set forth in the original Act 250 approval. And one of the major things that we're looking for are durable materials on the outside of the building. So right now the standard is typically something that's going to last 100 years as far as an example of what durability is intended to bring forward. And in this particular case, we have different types of materials that are called for whether it be the brick or limestone trim as well as stone picture frames. I'm not going to claim to be the expert of being a civil engineer, but again, I'm going to pan down a little bit further here. And there are some call-outs with regard to the change in materials at the bottom. Here we're looking at either cut limestone or auto-claved architectural concrete masonry units to again create diversity, but again, also durability with regard to the aesthetic of this particular building. So now I'm going to zoom out to the full page and I'm also just going to point out that these particular sign features are kind of a placeholder due to marketing and branding. These things often change depending on the franchise that you're working with. So right now we're not looking for an approval on signs. That will be a separate application comes back before the city council. So again, with regard to at least character, these are placeholders more than anything else. But going to the next page here, this is actually, come on, here we go. So this is the West elevation. This is looking out along Main Street on the portion of the roadway that heads out to the bridge. And all of this is at grade. And as you move from the circulator down to the lower level, we actually have a retaining mall. We haven't shown the grade as a grade change on this particular one that does show on the site plan. So what we're trying to do is create a street presence along that entire section of the roadway. And with that, I'll go to the next sheet which finally shows the extra level. This is again, down on the middle level. This is what you would be seeing as you come from Burlington, in regards to the glazing and the different banding widths or the banding of the building to basically, again, break up the mass. And with that, this is, we've got some, we've got, what do we wanna call it? We have not only emergency egress but also at this Southeast corner of the building, we also have some maintenance access, the ability to basically take out trash and things of that nature at this lower level. But let me get back to the site plans and we can start to orient ourselves a little bit with regard to the operations in this area. So I'm actually going to spring to the grading plan because it shows a little bit more of the elevation changes. It's not quite as pretty but nonetheless, what we wanna do is identify the fact that you can see these particular contour lines. These are one foot contour intervals. So they represent one foot of elevation change as you move from the street level down into the Champlain Mill level. Under today's conditions, there's a low point. That's what this circle of contour represents. It's a point of equal elevation that only has a low point. The public works department put this in probably 10 or 15 years ago to basically improve the drainage on this particular area. These flows go directly out to the river in the southerly direction and discharge to the riprap that's located between the river itself and the walkway. It's actually a boardwalk also that extends out towards the river and is situated on piles. Things that are of importance to us is that we've worked with public works in the past on providing designs for improvements in the hydraulics of what's happening at the bottom of the circulator. Unfortunately, one of the fateful decisions made back in 2006 was the hydraulic gradients that were designed for all of this downtown were eliminated to save some money. And ultimately, the ability for drops of water to move along the curbing and efficiently get into these bigger structures was lost. So under the most intense rainfall events, you have all the water showing up at the low end of the circulator. And as part of that, the city has created this swale that allows for water to get directed to this swale rather than going down in front of the Champlain Mill because there was a point in time when the mill needed to actually sandbag their doors in order to protect them. So the city has spent some time and effort to basically redirect the overflows that jumped the curve at this particular location and run down around. And what this particular design does is is respectful of that. It basically has the building at a higher elevation to protect it from these particular flows, but nonetheless provides a corridor for these drops of water that will jump the curve or online under the largest storm events, you're eventually gonna get some sort of failure even if we had the best of curbing lets. But nonetheless, these flows can still go where they go today. This particular connector walkway is designed and now have a catch basin structure so that under most normal flow events that the water will go into the structure and then get introduced into this extension of the drain system that picks up all of the roof runoff and basically runs it out in this particular direction. So questions that had come up in the past was, hey, what does this mean as far as the city's stormwater infrastructure and its ability to basically manage flows from this area? The original stormwater permit that our firm did for the city actually had all of this area programmed to go into these particular catch basins and this area is still drains towards that particular top of curb and ultimately over the curb and into the basin. So there's no change there, but I guess another way to describe it is that it's consistent with the originally authorized stormwater permit. And then what historically happened down in this area is that before the city redeveloped the downtown area, there used to be a large parking lot down in front of the mill. All of these flows were grandfathered in regards to being able to continue to go to the lake. Good news, the lake, well, I guess it gets to the lake eventually, but first to the river. And what this particular system did is actually converted the dirty asphalt parking lot surface into a clean walkway. And in turn, also allowed for at least cleaner water to be going directly into the river. This particular project actually takes the roof run off and has all of that go directly to the river. So unlike a parking lot that has heavy metals or oil and grease oil residue and things of that nature that basically get washed out every time there's medium sized rainfall event, we've eliminated all of that in recognition that lot nine was always designed to be very small. It also was designed to basically rely upon the infrastructure that the city had put in with regard to parking. So as in relationship to that, the way the hotel is proposed to operate is that there will be valet surface, service, excuse me. It will operate very much like a urban downtown hotel to any of the largest cities and trying to find parking can be challenging. Not to say that's the case here in Mooski, but nonetheless, there will be valet surface or you can basically park yourself. So the valet service will basically take the vehicle and go to the available parking. In this particular case, the development agreement calls for the developer to pay for whatever parking they utilize. So in this particular case, there will be primarily most of the demand will be at night. And so one nice thing about hotels is that when everybody's occupying their room, there's that's where you've raised demand as an again, that's an off peak demand on what otherwise is occurring in the existing parking garage. And in this particular case, there will be some demands during the day. That'll be something that the valet personnel will be responsible for managing. The applicant has worked on acquiring offsite locations if the parking garage is full to basically as a backup plan for basically managing vehicles from the hotel. And in this particular case, things that are primarily different from the original concepts for development of the area of this four hotel, even going back to the original development in 2006, was originally there was gonna be a drop-off area. Well, that particular drop-off area created a lot of the challenges in regards to the covenants that basically govern the operation of the downtime association or the property owners within the downtime association also. And in this particular case, what ultimately the applicant has chosen to do is basically consolidate everything within the footprint and to basically have a minimal amount of spillout within the covenants. Every one of the property owners is required to cooperate in regards to providing access. And that's primarily what's happening here. If we were to zoom out a little bit. No, that's not gonna do the trick. So I'm gonna go back to the first one and show and zoom in on the area immediately in front of the Champlain middle. So things that were actually integrated into the original downtown development plan was, you know, as far as emergency access, we have access along the streets for this particular lot. But also we designed this particular bridge to ensure that a fire department could actually drive under if they chose to provide to provide another means of access to the lower level of the building. So in this particular paved way was all designed for vehicular loading, large vehicle vehicular loading. So we made sure that in working with the fire chief at the time that their particular equipment could basically work its way underneath this bridge without issue. The original design height of the vehicles were 12 feet, five inches. And we had about a foot of extra elevation available underneath this bridge to facilitate their access to this bottom level if necessary. I understand the applicant has spoken with John Audie in regards to their thoughts as far as access. It's, you know, it becomes third hand. So I'll let John eventually speak to any questions that the city council may have in regards to that. But kind of boiling it down, John felt very comfortable. I understand with regard to their ability to basically respond to issues in this particular area. So I've been around a lot, you know, things that we will eventually come back to is the development agreement and keeping in mind that even within the development agreement it recognized that lot nine in its original form was very small and that there were some desirable benefits of having a hotel back at the time of the original development agreement when it was created. And it basically talks about the ability for the applicant to expand with the city's assistance, you know, the size of the lot and the ability to utilize areas beyond just lot nine itself. And that's the spirit of what this particular plan calls for is the ability to utilize a portion of the rights of way. This is actually the right of way that basically runs right along Manuski Falls Way into the bottom of the circulator. I'll go to a plan right now that shows that in a little bit more detail. So this particular plan, we've zoomed in again on what's happening and this represents the rights of way of all of Manuski Falls Way. I'm gonna zoom out, just make a little easier for everybody to see. So you can cross, head move. There we go, zoom out one more time. And okay, so in this particular case, you know, what we're trying to do is also create a street presence. One of the challenges with the layout of the roadways is that there's long distance from the curb line back to the property line. And right now this is both a bicycle way as well as a pedestrian way. You can see this particular ramp here. This is where bicyclists coming in off from Burlington are invited to get on to the walkway and move their vehicles through here only because of the challenges of moving through this particular area. So that was the original concept for this particular area. And we, this particular application respects that. It's the same one that that was reviewed by the city council back in 2017 and improved and move on to active 15 at that time. And in this particular case, things that are totally inconsistent with other projects is extending the pedestrian way then the right-of-way here. Here we're proposing a bicycle rack that would be located within the right-of-way as well as a ultimately a pedestal sign for the hotel itself. So there are some things that ultimately definitely need to be worked out before any type of construction. I know I'm jumping way ahead and not trying to do that. We do fully stipulate that there are a lot of things that need to be worked out as far as agreements, but nonetheless, the first thing we wanna do is at least get started with the active 15 process and with the recognition that the things that are provided in the staff overview are all open and that they do need to get worked out so to everybody's satisfaction. So we have been working with staff for a long time. It's taken a while to get to this particular point and we're excited to basically move forward with additional detail. The application package is in the packet for the city council, 249 pages long. I wanna apologize. That's what the district commission looks for us to do with regard to applications and that being the background, I'm going to thumb through a couple of these particular plans just to see if I can't toggle any other memories as far as specific points of interest for this particular application and it's interrelationship with the downtown and kind of go from there. Oh, I will take the opportunity while we're here to talk a little bit about utilities within the covenants and I believe the development agreement but I'll stand corrected on that. There are narratives that basically says that everybody within the downtown should be able to be able to connect into the utilities that service each lot as well as to use the common area for whatever utilities are necessary to carry the day. Again, lot nine, which I'm outlining here with my cursor is fairly small and the recognition within the original development agreement was that there were gonna have to be things that went on outside, maybe even to the point of extending the footprint. Now we went there, had a lot of pushback primarily because there were questions as to whether even the city could modify lot two, which is again, all of this open space area without the agreement from the rest of the association. So rather than push that, button the applicant just said, okay, well, let's just go back and make this as simple as possible in regards to this particular proposal. So here what has been highlighted here are the various utilities. When we designed the original downtown project, we attempted to basically provide utility stones that would make the connections as easy as possible into the municipal system. And in this particular case, the blue represents the waterline connection, the red represents the power, the orange represents the communications and this green one actually represents the gravity sewer. So all of that was working very well. Things that didn't work out very well is the fact that there is a lower level of this particular facility down at the Champlain, no level that needs to have sewer service. And in this particular case, there is our plans for small response space inside, it may end up just being for breakfast, but nonetheless, it still needs to have a grease strap to protect the municipal sewer collection system. And in order to basically move the wastewater from the low elevation up to the gravity system that's up in the street, we do need to have a pump station. So in this particular case, we've got flows or infrastructure that's related to the operations within the hotel itself. We have the grease strap, the pump station and then a force main, that's basically a pipe under pressure that brings the sewage up to, excuse me, the gravity system up in the street. So that's in the stormwater infrastructure in a nutshell and why there are certain components that are located within lot two, the open space aspect. And let me just go and hit the page and see what else we may have here. This happens to be some of the meeting minutes from that May 2017 meeting. And then this is actually a development agreement. I'm not gonna bore you with it right now, but if you have the opportunity to read this at some point, it talks about again, just some of the challenges of the original lot nine and the commitments of both parties to work toward a project that can fit in this particular area and maintain the character of the area and basically how to address needs of the project. And that last, this particular one talks about the obligations of the applicant to basically figure out the parking at the same time. It also says the city should also work with them and figure out the parking in to make sure that if there are gonna be spaces available in the parking garage that they are reserved for this particular project. We know that we have daytime parking challenges and in this particular case, the applicant isn't looking for anything special from the city there. They will basically use and pay for whatever is utilized. But at the same time, when it comes to the nighttime parking, we are very interested in having the city move forward with enabling the applicant to utilize those spaces without issue. We understand that there is an option by Mr. Turrent to gain control of parking spaces as they become available. And in this particular case, we're just looking for the city's assistance in kind of doing that legal notice out to Brian to ask him if he's interested in controlling the nighttime parking. And if not, then we will be in good shape with this particular project in its peak demands during the nighttime. So I've spoken a lot, you can see I'm starting to lose my voice. So maybe that was a good time to entertain questions and then maybe we can better fill in the blanks that way. Thank you. Thanks for presenting that, Dave. As Jesse mentioned earlier, this particular body of counselors has not really engaged in this project. Which is why we put this item on for discussion this evening. We're not gonna be in a position to make an approval until we have some more time to sit with this project. I have a couple of questions. I think first and foremost, what Jesse raised earlier about, the previous iteration of this design resulting in a lawsuit around parking. It's not clear to me how you're addressing that now, moving forward to avoid that problem again. We, at this point, we've been working with the city trying to get to a point where we can get Brian Tarrant online with regard to parking issues. We've asked Brian to provide a waiver and he has no interest in doing that without having to be legally obligated to do so. That is, we've tried to work behind the scenes in regards to dealing with parking and in this particular case, all I can say is that we've worked towards the issue. Is it any different than it is before? The answer is probably not. Because we think that there is the opportunity to utilize the parking spaces at night, but I believe that I understand and I'm not going to claim who has ever seen the documents, but that there is kind of a right first refusal for Mr. Tarrant with regard to parking in the garage. So that may be mischaracterization, I apologize if it is, but what we really want to do is have a coherent discussion with the city and Mr. Tarrant basically get us to a point of understanding on what is acceptable and what's not going to be acceptable in regards to the parking garage and the commitments the city has made and specifically the rights that Mr. Tarrant may have in this particular facility. Okay, thanks for that. I think that information alone leads me to believe that we will want to do an executive session to dig into those details as a group. My second question would be, after this was the lawsuit and the previous application being withdrawn or what have you, there was the land swap discussions. I heard a couple of other ideas about how you all would move forward, the Wundewski Hotel Group would move forward. And I'm curious how you came back to this original plan as being viable once again and wanting to move this forward. Well, things that were substantially different from the original application is that the overall height of the building is shorter. We've eliminated the land swap and really become- David, I think she's asking about lot seven and seven D and eight. I'll answer this, Dave. And thank you, Dave, for your- Oh, I'm sorry. There's Adam. Sorry to talk over you. And I appreciate everyone's time. We worked through a variety of options and the Act 250 application was withdrawn specifically to evaluate different options. It was to look at doing a land swap. We looked at lot eight first and looking at lot eight, we decided to move on to lot seven D because we couldn't fully park the hotel there. So the idea was to create a situation where we could fully park the hotel and not add to the parking issues. And then we looked at seven D as a hotel doing full parking there initially and we worked through plans there. And then there were several different iterations of plans that evolved to having a parking garage there and a hotel. And finally, after tons of work and proposing to the city a new development agreement that wasn't accepted, we moved off from that and looked back at lot eight to do partial parking there. And that couldn't work either. So then we came back to lot nine, which was always our first choice from the beginning. So we have a great plan that is entirely kept on lot nine. It follows the master plan. And the benefit of all those efforts is we did get the bond funding or help get the bond funding for the new garage. So what's different now is we have the new garage to be built and takes pressure off of the city to have with additional parking to solve parking problems. That's the big difference. Thanks Adam. I think for the rest of council, like I said, if we wanna dig into the parking situation or other issues like that, we should executive session that. But I think now would be a time if you wanna ask questions about the design, if you wanna get a little more familiar with this project so that we can have another conversation in the future that would be appropriate. Amy. Thank you. Thanks for the overview Dave and Adam. I'm curious if you can tell me in square footage how much of your plan utilizes the lot two parcel and a follow-up question for the city is do we have any other agreements in place right now where utilities from other buildings like the Champlain Mill are using lot two for utilities? The building's entirely on lot nine. So the usage of lot two would be for utilities and then on the north side of the building as Dave highlighted, we'd be using the right of way area. So correct me if I'm wrong, Dave, but I don't think there's any building at all or on lot two. No, there's no building at all. The only feature that we are looking to utilize on lot two would just be the extension in the southeast corner for the pedestrian access or basically access to the southeast corner of the building. And on the west side of the building, there's also another little walkway and then there's also a landscaping feature that holds up the west side of the building up at street level and then transitions down to the middle level and that's all located on the southwest corner. So in this particular case, the uses are very similar to what other people have used within whether the public right of way or on portions of lot two in regards to grade changes and the like. So again, very, very consistent with existing practice. Do you want me to answer the utility question? So Rauscher, I think you are on as well. Do you want to answer that one? Sure, so I believe the Champlain Mill also has underground sanitary utilities that run through lot two. So they have a pump station out front. So I'd have to confirm that, but I'm pretty certain they have utilities run through there. Actually, that's a very good pickup in regards to the fact that the Champlain Mill did install a new pump station during the construction of the downtown development project. And that's, if you look at the plan, you can see the sweeping arc of the ramp that comes down from when it falls way down to the Champlain Mill level. It's actually on the north side of that is the existing pump station. So good call in regards to another entity that's utilizing a portion of the lot two area for utility purposes. Mike, I see your hand is raised. Yes, so your pump station for this development would be on lot two, correct? That is correct. Okay, thank you. Well, also highlight one of the zoning, the questions that staff have outlined for us for zoning approval includes where you would be locating offsite parking spaces, as you mentioned. Adam, you wanna talk about that one a little bit? Can you hear me? Oh, yeah, no. Yeah, sorry about that. The idea that we've discussed with staff is using the upper levels of the Cascade garage for valet parking. So our guests who David pointed out would stay in the evenings, would occupy the parking spaces that are least used and we'd have valet parking at the highest level and running back and forth for guest cars. Okay, thank you. Do you have a, yeah, Jim, go ahead. Question I have is more around operations and trying to envision what valet parking and check-in parking will look like, given that it's somewhat disconnected from the hotel. Could you say, is there gonna be a valet stand on the right of way as well? Or how, like, where will people access valet and how will that interface if you need three to five spots with for dedicated check-in as well? Where is that activity taking place and how is that staffed? We'll have a mobile application and we'll have valets running out to the curb from the hotel or being stationed outside to go out to the curb when someone pulls up to find out if they would like valet parking and then when they're in their room and looking for their car, they'd be able to request their car through the mobile application or the phone while directly to the front desk. I think you're on mute if you're trying to talk to him. That is my question. Thank you. So if I can jump in here, if, as you know, this is not how we like to bring projects forward. You know, this is quite an unusual project in that it's gone through so many iterations and so many different models. I think we as staff feel like there are still a lot of unanswered questions, but it certainly is your prerogative to co-sign Act 250 application as required by the downtown permit. So I think it would be where, I think if you want to talk about the implications of the development agreement and the future commitments of the city, we should probably do that in executive session and we could do that now and come back. Or if you are mulling this over and would like to give staff more guidance on things to work with the developer on to bring you back in approval, we can also go that way tonight and have a more detailed discussion later on. Eric or Heather or Bob, anything else you want to add to help give guidance to the council? Nope. I think it would be valuable to have a discussion about the development agreement implications again, just to reacquaint this group with this project. So would somebody move to find that discussion of negotiation of real estate purchase or lease options in open session would be a disadvantage to the city pursuant to state statute section 3132. Motion by Amy, second by Mike. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. So I would like to call an executive session and invite city manager, Jesse Baker, our attorney Bob DiPalma, Heather Carrington. Eric. Eric Vorwald. Would somebody move to listen to executive session? I'll move. Second. Motion by Mike, second by Amy. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All right. Do we have a separate zoom line set up for this? Yes. So everyone who's going into executive session needs to leave this meeting, go into the other zoom meeting and then we'll return to this public session at the closing executive session. And where's the link for that, Jesse? Hello, welcome. I think we are waiting for one more member of council. All right. All right. So Adam and Dave, once again, thank you for the presentation this evening. We just spent quite a bit of time in executive session reacquainting with this project. As was mentioned earlier, these five members of council have not seen these designs before while this design has existed for some time, it's really the first time for most of us getting reacquainted. And want to invite you back to come back and present again. So first of all, we can spend a little more time with the designs that you have shared, but also would ask that you come back to us with more detailed responses to some of the items that staff raised in the memo that was attached to the agenda. So we would like to see in more detail what the design of spaces in the right-of-way looks like. So for example, with the patio, are there permanent structures? What is the landscaping? What is the lot coverage or pavers? That sort of thing so that we can have some time to think about how that aligns to the overall master plan for downtown. And also we have a parks plan for that public space that would be behind the hotel. Want to make sure that all lines up well. The other item in our staff memo that we're looking for more detail on is around the parking spaces. What does maintenance and compensation look like for those? I think those are our primary concerns that we want to see, but I do want to also call out, some of my fellow counselors had questions earlier about parking operations. What does that look like to do valet in practice? Having deliveries and pickups running through how you're gonna manage like trash and drop offs and things like that. So we would like to see more detailed responses to those issues in the memo at a future meeting. And I would ask if we could get more lead time with any documents that you have to share or any designs so that we can see those in advance and have more time to digest it. We also want to have some time to advertise to the public that designs for this project will be coming back so that we can make sure that folks are invited to weigh in and to see how this project is progressing. You have a copy of, I'm assuming that the memo staff provided in the agenda that you both have a copy of that as well with the items raised there. Okay, great. Are there any, do you have any questions? Is it clear what we're looking for when we reconsider this and move towards approval? So I guess Dave Marshall here, as far as the scheduling, would it be prudent to set some time frames in which we make sure that the applicant provides staff and the city council ample time by setting up a specific date in which the information needs to be submitted by it, which when turned would support a, perhaps a date before the city council that we could set now. That's often common practice with development review boards where when they continue a hearing, they continue it to a date certain and that allows anybody who's participating tonight to know exactly when to come back. So the challenge there is that we have not set our meeting schedule beyond March yet because of town meeting day. Typically we would be meeting that third Monday in March and the first and third Monday each month. We do have a meeting coming up February 16th, but I'm not sure that that would, would that provide enough time for you to put together a response and that could be shared with us with like a week's notice. Maybe, well, I guess that was going to be my question with regard to how much time staff and the city council would like to have for absorption and comment prior to the meeting itself. So if it's one week, then yes, we can provide additional information that we believe would be supportive of your request. And so that's the next question is a week enough, a week, seven days enough for time for that internal management of the information. I would ask staff what they think about that turnaround. So in looking at a calendar, if we're looking at the February 16th date and council wants information a week ahead of time, we would need that by the ninth. If you want, if council also wants staff's comments on the developer's details, we would need that like by Wednesday or Thursday of this week in order to give staff two or three days to look at it. We can do that. I don't, that seems like a very quick turnaround for the developer. Alternatively, they could send you something on the ninth that they also said to us and we could send you something on Friday, but again, that only gives you the weekend to review staff's comments. I would prefer a scenario where staff are able to make comment and then we as council still have roughly a week to digest. Okay, so the next little meeting after 15th, you have not set yet or have you? We have not, I think. Would that be March? Who would like to be March 15th? Likely, yeah. Okay. I would like to do whatever we can in a collaborative effort to make the February date because we've submitted a lot of information and I think it's really a matter of collaboration with staff. We've been, since November, submitted multiple documents and I don't know what else we could submit quite frankly in terms of easements and parking suggestions. So it's really a collaborative effort and we've exchanged emails multiple times, had discussions with Bob last week and I don't know what new information we need to present. It's really just trying to bring something to final form here. So what I am looking for is more detailed designs for the patio, the landscaping, the pieces that are going to be in the public right of way and maintenance and compensation plan for the use of public parking spaces as outlined in the staff memo. I don't think those items were addressed tonight in the same way that you addressed some of the other concerns. No, they're not. And again, we have, since November, tried to initiate a collaborative process with staff, submitted multiple documents and are totally willing to work things out but exchanging emails back and forth. They're actually, whatever it is that staff needs above and beyond what we've proposed, we're happy to consider. And so I think it's a collaborative process and if there's something more than what we've submitted, we need to know. How about this as a compromise? Adam, you know I disagree with that assessment of what we've received from you since November but I think the mayor clearly outlined a few minutes ago what the council is looking for. It's being recorded. You can go online and watch it in a few days if you want to reiterate, to re-inform yourself of that. So if you can provide us a written memo by Thursday of this week, February 4th, being responsive to the council's requests, then staff will do our best to turn that around in three days and send that to the council by February 9th, which will give them a week with it before our February 16th meeting. Happy to do that. Great, thank you. I don't think there are any final questions or comments. I appreciate everyone's time and you're getting up to the speed on this project and there are a lot of moving parts and I appreciate what you have to go through to put your arms around this. So thank you. Thank you, Adam. And thank you again, Dave, as well for your work tonight. Very good, thank you for your time. And it's incumbent upon us to put together that package for staff to make sure everybody's time is well spent. All right, we will see that update later this month. With that, I will move us on to item B in our agenda, which is Vermont Economic Progress Council, TIF district annual, I believe Angela is introducing. Yes, so this is an item that is brought to the council every year as part of TIF legislation. The council is required to review and accept, approve the report that we provide to the Vermont Economic Progress Council about what is happening in our TIF, both financially and qualitatively with regard to jobs and development. I've included the copy of this year's report that Heather Carrington very graciously helped provide the information regarding development in jobs for and looking to see if council has any questions. Thanks, Angela. I recognize this report is standard. There's some really interesting information in here in that we had net neutral business change but an increase in actual jobs in our city, which is great. And I believe I saw in there about a 15% loss in taxable receipts, which honestly, for given the situation we're in with the pandemic was a lower number than I thought I would see. So I think there's some good news in here. Are there any questions from council on the contents of this report? All right, not seeing any public here for comment either. I think that I would entertain a motion to approve this report for submission. So second. Motion by House, second by Mike. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you, Angela and Heather. Moving on to item C. This is a grant request for assistance to firefighters grants and chief Audi is with us. Welcome. Good evening. Thank you. I know you've had a long meeting so far. So I sent the memo. This is a federal program as described in the memo to you. We have not applied for one of these FEMA grants for many, many years. This is to replace 26 self-contained breathing apparatus, SCBA air packs. It's a 95, the feds would cover 95% of a, it's a $197,000 project. Along with that is an ask for use of part of our CIP funds that is earmarked for SCBA. And that's a combination of upgrading our existing air compressor. So it would work with the new equipment and do a couple other additional enhancements to the basic equipment that the federal program would pay for. So I don't know if there's questions on the memo or. Thank you, chief. So already budgeted the match money. That's good to know. Yeah, do you council have any questions about this? Amy. There we go, unmuted. It looks like from your proposal chief, we would leave about $5,000 in reserves after this other money is spent down. And I just, I guess I just wanted to hear from Angela or Jesse what our comfort level is in reducing the fund balance down to that level. It seems like the grant would cover everything we would possibly ever need to spend from it in terms of the self-contained breathing apparatus. But just wanted to hear your thoughts. Go for it. The reserves that we have available for the self-contained breathing apparatus were the annual budget. We had been replacing these with component pieces at a rate of like three or four a year. But at this point, the mechanisms that we have are two out of date, we need new mechanisms. So we've been setting aside those funds that we were using for three or four pieces every year for the last several years in an effort to be able to do this. And then moving forward, we would budget the same as we had before for annual replacement to keep the stock going. So basically this actually allows us to fast-track full replacement with non-city dollars but then maintain the annual contribution. So my comfort with spending down those reserves to fully replace and then continuing to fund so we continue that building up that reserve is I'm very comfortable with that. Thank you. Part of what's driving the full replacement is I can no longer buy one or two packs and put them into our existing group, the platforms, the manufacturers of chains of platforms so you can no longer take and buy two and put it in our existing group of air packs. They're just not compatible anymore. Any other questions? All right, would someone like to move to approve the Assistance to Firefighters grant application fund request? So I'll move. I can. Motion by Mike, second by Jim. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Thanks, chief. Yes, thank you. Have a good evening. You too. On to item D. This is another grant up for approval V-Trans Small Scale Bike Pedestrian Program with John Rouscher. Good evening, everyone. So this is a grant that was recently announced by V-Trans. It's for projects that are gonna go into construction this coming summer. So we're looking to apply for the already awarded Hickok Street work, which includes already has awarded sidewalk construction as part of that project. So, you know, if we did receive the grant, that would help pay for approximately 43% of the already awarded sidewalk work, which 173,000 has been awarded and is scheduled for construction next summer. So this would help bring down those funds required. Thank you. Any questions from council on this application? All right. Does someone want to move to approve the V-Trans Small Scale Bike Pedestrian Program grant? So moved. Second. Motion by Mike, second by Hal. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. That is the end of our regular items. I believe we may require an additional executive session. Jesse may have some guidance on what we are asking for. Sorry about that. So it's the executive session is warranted pursuant to one VSA 3132, negotiation of real estate purchase or lease options and premature public knowledge will put us at a disadvantage. So if we need a finding for that and then if you just me and Bob Dupama going in to this executive session. Thank you. To find that negotiation of real estate purchase or lease options would put us in a bad position pursuant to VSA 3132. Hello. Thank you. Motion by Amy, second by Mike. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Can I have a motion to move us into the executive session inviting city manager Jesse Baker and our attorney Bob Dupama? So moved. Second. Motion by Hal, second by Mike. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. So we will move into executive session to discuss this one topic. We will return to this meeting simply to adjourn. No other business will be conducted. Is that the same ID? Okay. Same line as before. Thank you. Thank you. All right.