 Just let me know if she's not coming tonight. So we don't want to pull this out of the way. And in doing that, we can get rid of this table if you prefer it. I'll just make a few microtons right here. Take on if you can probably even do a wave of this table or just leave it there. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter to me what we're having. Thank you. Thank you. Do it yourself. Did you think the pilot would be able to arm her now? No. No. No. No. It's Mike Cassel. I won't try to pull her back. I'm going to try and do this because I'll just sort of extract it to them. I think there are ways that they can see the matter. I think they're going to have an operation process. I'm going to try to do this. I'm going to try to do this. Yeah, I didn't talk to them about it. I talked to them about the order. I'm going to try to do some sort of this when I'm trying to get into their good graces. Yeah. Well, in fairness to them, you know how these guys don't pick up the very vocal people that we find out in times of city council. So I think in fairness to everyone, we should give them a little time. Well, anyway, so as long as there's no... No, no. We just do a lot of come by eye here and get through it. Hi. Hi. I'm sorry. I'm late. No, no, no. Okay. All right. So I apologize for being in a sleep. But I would like to call to order the South Wellington City Council meeting on Tuesday, February 20th, and we'll start with a salute to the flag. So we'll move on to item two, which is instructions on how to exit the building in case of an emergency. If we have an emergency this evening, it is instructed to go out these two side doors and gather in the parking lot. If these doors are blocked, please proceed through the lobby and out the main doors. And then again around to the parking lot, Tom and I will make sure that the building is cleared. So please everybody just leave the building in case of emergency. Great. Thank you. Item three is possibly entering executive session. I just asked a question. I don't see additions, deletions. That kind of, that was inadvertently left off along with an item you had wanted. Pardon. It's a catch 22. How can we amend the agenda with that one? I guess you can't. So I'm sorry, Megan. Good point, but no. Oops. Sounds cocky-esque. Well, that will be. I think that's normally considered to be part of the agenda and you're certainly free to do that. Right. So we'll have two way. Does anyone have any. Desire to delete or amend or change the agenda. I would like to have us have an open discussion on both the qualifications for a new police chief as well as the search process. Under other business. Okay. And I would. If I may add discussion about the survey. Proposed airport survey. Okay. I would also ask, depending on the time, I have. Two ideas about how we might. Provide some leadership on two topics for the city. And I just wanted to explore that before we actually go down that rabbit hole. There was something on the February. Maybe not. No, the minutes are fine. Okay. But I did have a question on. The grant request forms with regards to the dates. They're, they're post. Oh, is that under consent agenda? Why don't we wait till we get there? Because we can pull that out when we get there. Perfect to discuss that. So our next item, if that's all the additions, solutions, whatever changes. Possibly enter executive session to discuss legal and personnel matters to include appointments to the South Burlington boards, committees and commissions. So. This is where we might go to the executive session. Yes. Okay. So I moved that the council make a specific finding that premature general public knowledge of a discussion and update with the city manager on labor relations negotiations with employees and confidential attorney client communications made for the purpose of providing professional legal services to this council would clearly place the city at a substantial disadvantage. Second. Okay. Any discussion. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. And I now move to the board enter new executive session for the purpose of discussing labor relations agreements with employees, CBA update, confidential attorney client communications, the appointment employment or evaluation of a public officer employee. And we're inviting Tom Kevin and Andrew into the session with the council. Second. Any discussion. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Okay. We should be back by 710. That's. And then carry on from there. Okay. Thank you. We have two motions that time. I don't know. Thank you very much. So both my favorite. Are we going to vote on these? Well, bring. Yeah. Megan. I'll bring this. Oh, thank you. There's not much history. I do not even know what those words mean. It's magic. Executive session. Oh. We'll be hearing in two minutes. They said 710. For certain. So that. Probably. I don't think. I will get the best. I'm sure. You just walk up here. I'm not. We're meeting up there. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Something else would just get changed. Yeah, I think so. Just stand up and go like this. And we'll push this one. We'll see how it goes. Is that what you're going to do? So they just need to listen to some of those things. And next, save your money. Yeah. Please do that. Well, it's going to warm up tomorrow. That's what I'm going to say. Not in here. Well, that's how that works. We should all go upstairs. Yeah. Okay. Do you see it? Yeah. That's right. Okay. Okay. You ready? Probably. So I'd like to call back into session. The South Burlington City Council meeting of Tuesday, February 20th, 2018. And pick up on, I guess, do we go right into appointment? No, appointments are the 14th. Okay. So item four, which are comments and questions from the public, not related to the agenda. Is there anyone in the audience who wishes to say anything that is not on the agenda? All right. Seeing none. We'll move on to item five announcements and the city managers report. So Tim, do you want to start, please? Yes. I have all the things I did was I came to the SBBA meeting this morning. So I'll have to report. Thank you. Tom. So three things. One, I've heard from probably seven, maybe eight different residents about the potholes. And I got to say the fact that we increased the paving budget really sells well, so to speak, because next year there'll be another $25,000 to address it. And I know Justin is on the matter, but I would just say the potholes are causing quite a lot of damage to vehicles out there. I have a friend that got their rim bent. So I just wanted to relay that. Another resident raised concerns about the mattresses, activities and the property and lands around Rick Markott Central School. I don't know what that means for how we might be able to have increased concerning activity during school hours and the surrounding grounds around Rick Markott Central School. Have they shared that with this school? In the woods. I encourage them to actually contact the police. Yeah, so. And then the last thing Patrick Leduc was here, but he didn't want to stick around. And I just said that I would plug this. And if you all want to say as well, I'm hoping to go. I think I need to be in Montreal. But Saturday, March 10th, a great fundraiser, a fun event for South Burlington residents. All the money goes to a scholarship. It's just a time to celebrate our youth and their interest in arts. So this information is all over the place Saturday, March 10th. Semi-formal coat and tie is adequate. Kids are welcome. Kid-friendly. I think that's great. So I applaud his efforts to do that. Like Tim, I was at the SBBA meeting this morning. Helen and I have put together a couple of surveys. One for the business community and one as a follow-up to the airport NCP survey. And I know that's going to be discussed under other business. So otherwise. Okay. It's melting outside. Yeah. Yeah. And then it's going to freeze hard. I went to the SBBA meeting this morning. I'm very glad I went. There was, you know, I got to talk with some people I haven't seen for a while on different topics that I'll discuss in other business. But I also want to commend management for and the staff for the presentation. It always helps me to hear it a second or third or fourth time in a nice clear sort of concise and direct way to let the business community know what's happening. And there's a lot happening in the community for which they appeared pretty grateful or happy. So I thought that was a really good use of your time. And I look forward to when we sit down as a roundtable with them to discuss further what we can do to help the business climate in this community and what they might bring to the table as we look to encourage other businesses to relocate here or be part of city center and those kinds of issues that are important to us. City manager. Thanks, Ellen. Just a few things. Just building on the SBBA meeting today. Appreciate Justin and Kathy Ann and Alana participating this morning. And thank you, Tom, for setting up the room. Tom came in yesterday sick as a dog and set up the room. So I think it's great to see that organization active and adding content here. You're meeting with them in a roundtable setting. We're still working on a date for that, but it's looking like mid-March. Last week Justin led a tour of the city center park. And so the half a dozen of the staff or more went out and walked around the park last week. And there's an enormous amount that's been done. So when they begin back in the spring, when they're ready to build again, it's not going to take too long for that to be completed. Last week I met with Michelle Boomer of the agency of transportation around a matter involving aviation or jet fuel tax and FAA's consideration of local option tax as being inconsistent with their guidelines on how taxes are to be used. Megan came up with an interesting idea. I think that we should explore further about directing that money if it comes in into abatement programs. And we should talk about that more. Trevor is not with us tonight because he is at the White House. Trevor chairs a panel of first responders who recommend to the President Medal of Valor winners. And that award happened today. And so Trevor was down there as part of that award ceremony. So our own Trevor Rippel leading a nationwide panel that chooses Medal of Valor winners is quite a feather in his cap. And that's all I got. Okay. Thank you. Item six, we're five minutes early. Why don't we move to item seven? Are there any reports from committee assignments? Pat is in here. And I forgot to mention she just was not well enough to join by phone tonight. So she apologizes and wishes she could have joined us by phone but is unable to. And I think there might have been an airport meeting that she might have reported on, but she's not here. I don't have anything for channel 17. Tom, transportation always happy to talk. Do you have any questions about GMT? We had our meeting this morning. We're looking at different funding models for Medicaid and how to make it a little more equitable. And we're also just finished summarizing the survey on GM on the general manager's first year review. Questions or I'm just wondering if you have questions about GMT might be more useful at these times for you to channel them to me during the session. So I don't know if there's anything pressing. Well, the only thing pressing for me arose out of, and it's a longer term issue, arose out of our meeting with the hospital in terms of their future planning on Tilly Drive. And, you know, our concern that the amount of trips by GMT and South Burlington don't seem to kind of equate in my mind to the amount of funding that we provide. And that, I mean, that's a conversation that needs to happen, I think, with, I guess, both South Burlington and the hospital and GMT about what it will take to really make that easy bus transportation, especially if they're enlarging it. I mean, their plans are, again, it might take two years, but to get the permits and then another year to build the building, but they want to expand their ambulatory care on to Tilly Drive. And right now, as I understand it, for lots of people in South Burlington to get there, they have to take a bus downtown and transfer to take a bus to Tilly Drive. So your round trip, just for a doctor's appointment, maybe, I don't know what that would take. I mean, I don't ride the bus. Is that an hour? I mean, these are the types of situations where you could get really creative with solutions, right? So, I mean, I just saw in CBS News a report about a non-profit that drives people to their doctor's appointments, right? So people volunteer to drive people to doctor appointments because they find that when they get to their, for example, their chemo appointments, they get their treatment and they tend to recover at a better rate. So the question is, if you're trying to get people to doctor's appointments on Tilly Drive, is it about getting GMT to send a bus there like three times a day, or is it something about trying to organize people who have free time and they've got a car to take people that need, because people who can't drive themselves, that's the population we're talking about, right? So that kind of thought that just drives me nuts when we have to try to organize a big box to go around in a circle, you know, like four times a day. Well, but they are going there. Well, I just think there's ways that I would agree that creativity is, would be perfect. So maybe Tom can bring back to the GMT board that, you know, I think we're a community ripe for looking for some creativity to support. So maybe the hospital should be like co-sponsoring Uber and Lyft, right, to get people to their appointments there. They need to be part of the conversation as well. I don't think it's just South Burlington and GMT. I think the hospital needs to be part of that as well. Clearly. This is great. So we'll revisit the Tilly Drive discussions and see what other record we're on. I mean, because the hospitals had said to us, well, GMT says, well, maybe one of the, what do they call it? A substation or a sub hub? A sub hub should be at the hospital. Well, yeah, or a satellite. But there's no parking there. So who in the world wants to drive to the hospital, search around for parking or pay for very expensive parking to take a bus to Tilly Drive? I mean, that doesn't make sense to me. So maybe looking for other satellites, satellite in Burlington and South Burlington at the mall or those kinds of conversations. And I like your idea about, you know, finding other options, maybe RSVP or something like group like that. Maybe there's some. We already coordinate volunteer drivers in the rural area. So I love that you suggested this. Maybe we need to look at that in the urban area more for specifically Tilly Drive or other health services. Meals and pills on wheels. Right. We're just encouraging people to use Uber and Lyft. I mean, sometimes they might be as cheap as the bus. I don't know. But anyway, so that's. Sure. You may ask a question. Are you looking at finding ways to do more park and ride within Southland? There's so much traffic. Is there a way we can have some park and ride options on the edge of South Burlington and increase so that more people actually are using public transportation versus cars? See that gentleman right there? He is the guy to talk to. Charlie Bay. We'll be here a minute later. That would be a good question. But yes, I'm on a gas movie. And Charlie will go CCRPC. This is on there. Document of interest. Great. Thank you. Good idea. Great. Okay. Moving on. Oh, now we can start our public hearing. So I would, let's see, we need to have a motion to open the public, to go into public hearing. So moved to the second reading a possible adoption of amendments to the city's public nuisance ordinance. So I have a motion and a second. I'm all in favor. Aye. Aye. Andrew. Andrew bulldox city attorney. The proposed amendments that we went through, there are three, three of them at the first reading that we discussed. These will are intended to accomplish the following in the city's public nuisance ordinance. Number one, amend and clarify what constitutes a public nuisance related to noise plainly audible from dogs and cats and restricting those hours to between 8pm and 6am. Expand the hours when trash pickup and removal would constitute a public nuisance from 8pm through 6am to 8pm through 7am. And number three, exempt noise from permitted use in an applicable zoning district of the city's land development regulations provided it complies with the regulation specific performance standards for that district. The thought here was to take it out of the nuisance and police department as the issuing authority in those instances when performance standards under the LDRs aren't being met. And this would transfer again over to a enforcement authority of the city's zoning administrator instead. Okay. I just have a question. My understanding of our discussion was that there would be quite hours through 7am for everything. I don't think we picked on the trash. I thought it was also for cats and dogs as well as what was the other noisy thing. Hold on. So trash loudspeakers. Hold on. Here it is. The noise resulting from excavation, demolition, erection, construction, alteration, a repair of any premises or structure as well as the operation of any power equipment or machinery outdoors. I don't know if I misunderstood, but my understanding was that we were looking for a uniform hour in the morning before which this type of noise would not be permitted. I remember that discussion, but I don't recall whether it was eventually decided upon that you did want one blanket, but certainly happy to make that change if that's the will. I would be more, if it becomes, I see that we have the red can, the Myers here. I would be more sensitive to the dog and the cat outside as opposed to the trash. So just, so I voted for this thinking that it was a blanket. Okay. Just, that was my intent. Is the cat and dog is between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m.? That's how it was amended. Right. And you're suggesting that it should go to 7 a.m.? That was how I had understood our vote last time, but that's how I intended to vote. Okay. I don't know if we voted or if we just kind of gave you feedback. I think we didn't really vote. I think you had voted to warn the hearing. Right. But yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, sure. Other comments of Tom? So I just understood that we voted to move this forward for public hearing, but not necessarily on these exact times. That's part of my question. Since this discussion about trash collection, I've had a meeting with Justin Rabadou who opened my eyes and said that partly why trash haulers like to serve at 6 a.m. is they meet the traffic. So it's a lot more efficient on their routes. And so I completely understand that and that makes a lot of sense to me. I also recently had a meeting with Tom Marot who said this makes sense, but what would make more sense is if we rolled it into a larger conversation about consolidated service, which I understand that 80% of municipalities in this country have and also other parts of Vermont have. And that haulers, I don't know, is that the politically correct term, haulers, service providers? That's pretty good what we've been called so far today. So we're not sulting. Yeah, but take more than that. Yeah, we don't intend doing something. Yeah. Very good. So just Tom Marot suggested that it might be better to have a conversation about hours of operation in a larger conversation, a larger topic about how we could achieve a lot of our city's goals as well as provide greater efficiencies for haulers in serving the communities. I would like to hear from the haulers because you do have a perspective that would be good to hear from the hauler's mouth or the horse's mouth. Can I ask one question? Yes, you may. Would this allow us to preclude the use of the, it's a small world after all ice cream trucks on our city's streets because it says the use of loudspeakers rather than sound application of women upon the public streets for the purpose of commercial advertising. So as an ice cream trucks speaker that you can hear two blocks away playing a song, would that be in violation? That's a good question because we also have a separate permitting process for, for peddlers. For peddlers. Right. Right. But does it include an exemption for this? To their noise? It's just food for thought there because under this, it looks like this would preclude, it would prohibit that type of activity. Do you wish to prohibit it or do you find that harking back to your childhood and quite nice? There are times when it is annoying, especially depending upon the song they choose to play. Yes. Picky, picky. Regulating the song, we want to steer clear of it. I can't put that in here. All right. Any other clarifying questions? On the ice cream truck, which is germane, I would just say in our last discussion on this topic, we have a rogue ice cream truck vendor out there. So maybe through proper enforcement, there's one that doesn't get a peddler. They don't like clowns either. So it might be just that one that's extra annoying. The other one is a little more sensitive and doesn't bring it on. When I asked for the peddler permit, they could not produce it. They said it was on file back at their office, but should it have been carried on the truck? I believe so. Next time I will ask them. All right. Okay. All right. So I would invite you up to the table. Sure. Please. Are you together or separate? We're together. We're together. Not all the time. So if you both want to speak, you're welcome to please identify yourself for the record. I'm the Blue Can of Family. I'm the Blue Can of Family. We're the Red Can. All right. Well? Well, here you have the red can recycle. And so we got a call that you guys are thinking about changing the trash pickups from six to seven. I don't know why everybody picks on the trash guys, but we seem to get a majority of calls at 3.30 after one people's trash is and picked up. So, but so the, that one hour, you folks have to realize that one hour in a morning to us, I'm going to speak for us. My company is huge. two and a half hour advantage because of traffic. If we push that one hour back to seven, the transfer stations close at 3.30, we will not be able to dump our trucks at 3.30. We'll also be later in the neighborhoods. It will put us in the neighborhoods twice a day with children, not once a day. So in the afternoon, we try to finish our routes, which doesn't always happen. We try to finish by 2.2.30. We need to make the transfer station by 3.30 to dump your trucks so we're ready to go the next day. So at seven o'clock in the morning, if one hour again, keep in mind, one hour is two hours to us. So at seven o'clock in the morning, if we start at seven o'clock in the morning, we've got, my biggest concern is now the safety of my drivers. We will be in the heart of the traffic and then we're back in the heart of the traffic in the afternoon. So I know everything's a give and take and it's, you know, we've got a company. I've got a company to run. Yeah, at the end of the day, what will transpire? If it does move to seven, we're gonna have to put more men on the streets to meet that 3.30 that we have to dump. Now from at three o'clock or 2.30 to go from here to the transfer station, how it'll be at 3.30. If we leave right here at three o'clock, we might make it. If we don't make it, we can't dump till the next day, which puts us further behind. So bad weather, snowstorms is another problem. But we've got to think about the safety of our drivers that are in the traffic and we try to keep out of them. We try to root our men so they're out of traffic. So it's more than just that, you know, that one honking of a horn at six o'clock or seven o'clock in the morning. I think there's a little bit more to it of why we need to change it till seven o'clock. It will be huge on us. More trucks, more traffic, more costs for one hour. I, you know, we probably get, without exaggeration, we probably get three calls a year. And I'm there, I work there all the time. So does Mr. Cassellis. I'm at my office at 4.30 in the morning. So I know when we get the calls. If we get three a year that we woke someone up, we're lucky. So I don't know where, you know, I don't know if you guys had a petition or while all of a sudden the trash guy's a problem at six o'clock, it will be more of a problem if we got to move it ahead. Thank you. Do you have anything else to add? Mike Cassella with Cassellaway. So I think just to reiterate the same thing that Jeff said, I think we're pretty much on the same page with everything. I think the biggest thing is that safety factor for all the residents, you're now making it, most cities and large cities, they're picking up the trash at midnight, you know, to get the work done. And I get that hour doesn't seem like much and, you know, people do want to get their sleep. But at the same point in time, if that hour comes at the cost of putting kids and people at risk, I don't see where that risk is worth the inconveniences. And I don't know what you guys have for numbers. If there are that many people calling, saying that there's this real issue with noise out there. But I know we're not allowed in some municipalities early in the morning. And I still hear, you know, the music playing loud and other things like that that keep you up at night. So I think from a safety standpoint, that's really what I'd like to hammer on. I think it will take more time, more trucks on the road, more carbon emissions, because we're gonna be sitting there idling and other things like that, that, you know, you're just adding more cost to the system and adding more risk to everyone that's out in the environment. So to just clarify in terms of the safety, I think I'm hearing there's two issues. One is that your drivers will be driving these huge trucks and picking up and dumping this stuff in potentially heavier traffic for a longer period of time. The other issue are the school bus, the kids getting either walking to school or getting on the school bus at a... So we will be... I mean, that still happens now, but at least you get in two hours before, an hour and a half before that's really, is that, I don't mean to put words on it, we will be at the pick up date, the pick up time now and not the get off time now if we move this time ahead one hour. You're basically moving us into a lane where most of the people are either heading to work, heading to school, heading to wherever they're heading to start in their day. You've basically condensed our starting time to right in the busiest time. So obviously from an exposure standpoint, you know, we try to route our trucks more efficiently to keep them out of the really dangerous areas because we don't wanna put our drivers or anyone at risk. So we're already trying to do that systematically when we look at our routing and other things like that and moving out of those areas, but you're basically crunching that time that we have to get there. And like you said, a lot of our drivers aren't getting done till four or five o'clock at night as it is anyways, and then you add snow and ice and road conditions. I mean, it can add a lot of outside elements that can impact our business. And what are the hours of the transfer station again? I know it closes at 3.30. When does it open? Six o'clock. Six o'clock or six o'clock. So if you don't get there in the afternoon, you go there first thing in the morning before you start your next route. But that sounds like it puts you back half an hour anyway. I mean, it's sort of in the neck. If we have to do that now, we're all messed up for the day because once you start that an hour behind and we jump in the next morning, it just keeps snowballing. This winter was just unbelievable. Yeah, but it must happen on a regular basis with snow. With the snow it does. We try not to, that's why we try to get done so we can get dumped that day. If we do not get dumped that day, we have an issue the next day. I mean, I just don't have that much extra personnel. Doesn't Cassella run the transfer station? We do, but I Why don't you move the time out to four o'clock? Talk to the state. I mean, I think for us, the transfer station is, I mean, we leave trash in our trucks all the time and dump the next morning. And that is an issue, but I think the bigger issue is that time window that you're moving us into is exactly when people are heading to work and when all the traffic is. So if we've got certain areas where we know we need to be there at a certain time, it's just gonna boil over and cause other issues. Okay. So would you go ahead? So I love the safety piece. That's absolutely important. But my other question tied to this, I raise this partly I've residents, friends that live on Barrett Street. And so in the summer times, they hear a lot of trucks, multiple trucks throughout the week. And so I'm curious what your reaction and notion to rather than changing these hours, is there a form of consolidated service where you'd see a lot of operational efficiencies? You'd also see increased safety because we'd have fewer trucks serving the same geographic areas while still maintaining competition and bidding for route exclusion and certain geographies. Are there forms of consolidated service that you've seen elsewhere in the state like in Wetzford or elsewhere that you guys would see as valuable to better offer and manage your services and increase your profitability? Madam Chair, this discussion's not on the agenda tonight, right? We're just simply talking about the noise ordinance. I don't want to circumvent you, but I just want to make sure that we keep to agenda if we could. We'll have you back. Because this could be another great discussion to have at another time. That'd be a useful talk. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Okay. I'm sure we will. Yeah. Any other comments? Any other questions? All right, thank you. Thank you. Anyone else from the public who wishes? Yes, come on up, Mon. I have that some elementary school students are going to the bus at seven after, 10 after seven, and it's still dark in the winter. There's kids that are walking, there's school buses, and it's dark. And then at that time, that's seven in the morning. So if the bus, if the trucks are going at that time too, I think that does add to the danger in the morning. Well, there's some where they're down my street at seven. Something. That's when I walk my dog. Say a little of my holler. My little holler. Okay. Any other comments or questions? All right, Andrew, I'm going to come back. Whatever we have to come out of public session, I'm going to, to the public hearing today, just to, all right, if there's no other comment in public session, kind of a motion to go back into, I move that we close the public hearing and go back into open session. Sorry. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Okay, so the amendment says, as in front of you, I understand what they are. If you want to make any changes, I'd recommend coming back for another hearing at the March 19th, kind of a date. I would like to swap the dog and cat and the trash pickup and removal. I like the dog and cat to be quiet from eight to six, eight p.m. to six a.m. Okay, so that's what, that's the. I mean, eight p.m. to seven a.m. Sorry. Okay. And the noise related to trash pickup and removal between the hours of eight p.m. and six a.m. Effectively leaving that as it was. Yes. Right. Okay. And we're at this point. So I'm supportive of that. He's shaking his head. Tim is sad about that. We were hoping to get some uniformity here, right? So, because there were a lot of stop times that were different times. Mm-hmm. I mean, not. Well, if we have the, oh, I see. You want to make the cats and dogs have to be quiet until seven a.m.? That's when you can start mowing your lawn or snow blowing or. It's six a.m. Seven. Seven a.m. I'm supportive of council memories changes. I just want to make one follow up comment on the consolidated service piece. Since we are talking about noise and quality of life, I just think three or four trucks turning our neighborhoods is a lot more noise in these hours than one truck. So, I think ties into it. It's a broader conversation. Okay. Well, it sounds like we need to have another hearing to tease out the next round of amendments. So, I understand the 19th and March. I guess maybe just a sense of what I should put, include in the morning so we don't keep coming back to. Okay. So, some consensus about that would probably be helpful. So, I think it comes down to you. Tom said that you liked my changes. I'm supportive of that. Okay. Well, I mean, I sort of like the uniformity of noise as well. But understanding that, you know, the trash pickup and removal has some safety issues. It's like a utility. Yeah, which is a little bit different than having your dog yell or your cat or your dog bark in your cat yell. So, I guess people can't let them out until seven now. So, I would be supportive of those changes too. Okay. So, I recommend a, sorry, I don't have the language for you, but the council warned another public hearing for second reading. So, it'd be a third reading, but for a public hearing, it's 7.30 on March 19th, regular city council meeting. I'll move that. Okay, any discussion? Do we have a second? Both second. Okay. All in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Moving on to number, let's see. Eight, the consent agenda. We have signed disbursements, approval, I guess I would entertain a motion to approve signed disbursements, minutes for January 4th, 16th, 24th, and February 5th. They've been cleaned up. They've been cleaned up. Yeah. They're approved. Approved negotiation and execution of park signage contract with design signs, Inc. and approve the stormwater grant application for the construction of Pinnacle at Spear Pond MO5 retrofit. I'm willing to make the motion, but the grant request, our post date. The first one was due by January 31st. The second one was due by December, let me get my glasses, 21st, and I'm going to have to date for the third one as well. I'm just curious, are we approving something post facto? No, I think that Tom, these are, of course this is your form, allowing us to apply for the grant. And my expectation is that Tom, knowing the deadline for the state, has somehow arranged to make these meet their requirements. So this form is simply his permission from you to him to apply for the grant. Tom wouldn't have submitted this to you to ask your permission had he not been confident that he could still apply for it. Would this have been the date that he actually filled out the form? Filled it out. To us from later on approval? I don't know. Yes, I imagine it was. That's when he was working on it. Okay. But for whatever reason, and I don't know what it is, each one of these respective request forms. But again, this is your authorization to him. Well, of course I'm in favor of these grants. I just, I really hope that the process is being respected. That's why that's my hope. I think that's why we're, that's why we run it past you first. So I made my motion. Okay. Do I have a second? It was a motion. I didn't hear. To approve the consent agenda. Second. Okay. Any other discussion? All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Thank you. All right. I see that Ron Smith is here. We're a little bit early, which is unusual for this group. But we need the time. But we need the time. Because I'm not sure 20 minutes will be enough. That was a long report. So would you please come forward and we will receive the presentation and discussion of the FY 17 audit. Welcome, Mr. Smith. Good evening. So do you want to present the highlights? Sure. So I'll confirm. I believe what your management's been telling you all year about the state of the city of South Burlington for June 32. It's been a long day. I apologize for June 32, 2017. Talk about some of the highlights of the 140 pages of information sitting on your website right now and talk about some of the management talking points and certainly answer any and all questions that you may have of me and Ms. Washington and certainly the direction of the city with its fiscal affairs. So to start out, the city improved its financial condition in 2017 over 2016. So I'm sitting here pleased to say that. To say that, you have about an operating general fund budget of about $23 million. We'd like to see you at 30, 60 to 90 days of that. You're at about 15 days. You know, right now you're about... 15. 15. 15. Which is equivalent of about $900,000. The good news is, is last year you were at about eight days. So you've improved your financial condition over that. We still want to see you get to that 30 days. I think that that's an important benchmark for the city. And, you know, and clearly one of our management points is that tax stabilization or fund balance, Paul, you know, preserve. And clearly I think that there needs to be that continued movement to get there, you know, to that number. So 30 days is at $1.8 million approximately. Correct. Yeah, about $1.7 million, $1.8 million. So we want to see that, that puts you on the average and certainly right within the industry standards. And we do about 200 municipal audits and certainly, you know, one of the things that you're gauged on financially. And this is a busy city. You know, you've gone out for some debt with your two projects and some of your other, you know, projects that you've had with your recreation capital reserve and public safety. You're busy and you're going to get gauged on your financial performance. So that's the reason why we'd like to see you move in that direction certainly for, you know, for that financial stability to go forward and be able to see projects without having to put that burden onto the taxpayers. Does that affect your bond rating? Well, it does for sure. Yeah, it does. And the impact, the last private bond that you went out, as I recall, is when you went out and borrowed to fund your pension obligation over about $8 million, I believe, at that time, and what it was. It wouldn't necessarily impact that because that was a taxable issuance. So the fact of the matter is that's treated differently than a non-taxable bond with the good faith and credit of the city, you know, at stake. So, but any tax issuance that you go out on the private market for, oh, it will affect it. Absolutely. I've seen it, you know, based upon whether it be 30, 60, 90 days and the thing about the city of south religion, you operate, I would argue, probably almost every, you know, type of business that a city could run, you know, from the utility departments of water, wastewater, stormwater. And that really, you know, I think really emphasizes the financial stability of you because of all the other operations that you're running. You don't do trash. What's that? You don't do trash. So I think that that's important, you know, to bring that up because I think we have some very healthy utility departments. And that's why I'm concerned, you know, but not as concerned if you didn't have healthy other utility departments. I think that that would put more of an emphasis on your general fund for the financial stability of that, but you have healthy utility departments. You have other mechanisms if you run into problems here at this city to be able to revert to, to borrow money for, you know, in essence to take care of an emergency or a phone call whether it be your city fund, a special reserve that's not attached to a statutory or some ordinance, you know, that you have with the restriction of those monies. And that actually happened about six or seven years ago when we ran into the issues here at the city with using some of those funds and really not being able to identify what they were for, but they were certainly not for what their intention was. And this past year, for instance, instead of going to the bank, you were able to borrow from, I believe, your wastewater fund, like $250,000, you know, to fund a needed expense. That's the dynamic, you know, financial, you know, opportunity that you've created here at the city is to be able to use those monies to mitigate hardships, to mitigate cash flow issues, and to really mitigate some of the struggles of your, your general fund at the city being able to have the access to that, you know, to those pools and pockets of money. So, but please, for goodness' sake, stay away from the restricted funds that's at least something that I'll raise my hands and tell you wouldn't like dying breath, let's not go back to those days, you know, when we didn't know, we had it, but we didn't know we were using it. And I'm confident that your staff now, you know, knows and certainly has, you know, that information readily available to bring to this council at any time, you know, whether or not that practice is going on or not, and it's not. So, without your intent to do certain things out there. So, again, financial improvement, you know, over the the year before you, you have about three, over three million dollars set aside in some of these reserve funds, highway impact fees, you know, for example, over almost one and a quarter million dollars, you've got about three quarters of a million dollars of recreation impact fees, you have some other small fees out there. And I think that when I'm starting to talk about these things and these various capital reserve account funds that you have, and other special dedicated funds out there, that really kind of eases the sense of urgency to get there overnight, you know, because you're not going to get there, you know, overnight. We're trying to go from eight days to 15 days to 20 days to 31 days. It's just not, you know, practical. And some of these reserve funds, they allow you and buy you some time, you know, but I still think that the city needs to certainly have that plan to get to that 30 days, and I think that that's an important goal, you know, for the city. And then I think with the stability of some of the other funds that you have, it certainly puts you now in an above average state, you know, because I think that some of the, you know, some of the problems that we see out there in the world of government is some of these struggling utility departments, you know, the ability to have all this infrastructure, but not maintain it, not take care of it. And that's not a problem here in this city, you know, you've got adequate reserves, you've got infrastructure, you've invested into your infrastructure. And I think that puts you in a solid financial state. I really do. So, and you won three very large utility departments here, and I would argue between the three of them together, you know, you're looking at anywhere close to eight to nine million dollars a year when you collectively add those. That's a lot. That's a busy, busy place. So, yeah, that's certainly something that I would say is a talking point. It's been a talking point for the past three or four years, but the good news is that you are headed in that right direction. You really are. And that's something that's an outside look at it that we like to see. So, yep. Other talking points, you know, before I get into some of the management comments. Your other post-employment benefits, you still have some unfunded obligations. You have this benefit that exists at the city, you know, for retirees and active employees where they're allowed to convert some of their benefit time for like health insurance and other types of benefits. Your actuaries crunch those numbers. The value on those just to let you know is about $700,000 for your retired benefits and about $3.3 million for your active benefits. Those are actuarial crunched numbers that basically say that based on the book value of some of these people and what they have sitting, you know, for benefit time, they can actually convert that to benefits and that's the value of the benefits that the actuaries have put on that. And I think that that's important to know, you know, so that, you know, as people retire or as people move on, you know, that you are aware if they meet a criteria within some collective bargain agreement that there's a cost going to be associated with that just, it's almost a severance package, you know, and I think that that's important to know, you know, when it comes time to, you know, anybody that exercises that clause in that, you know, in that collective bargain agreement. And in addition to that, the city's unfunded pension obligation is about $6.7 million this year. It's about where it was last year. So, yeah, and I think that that's good news, you know, given the state of the economy and given the fact that investments, some of your investments, you know, certainly perform well, I think early on when you're refining a step at the market and the economy certainly, you know, has had peaks and valleys of which, you know, you have fallen into. But long term, you know, that money's there and we're confident at the end of the day that was the right thing to do for the city of South of Wellington is to go take care of that obligation because you were paying a very inflated rate of interest by not funding it. You know, whereas you put all that money into there, you know, right now, we're confident that the growth and the performance of that portfolio someday will take care of that unfunded pension obligation. And what was the figure on the unfunded pension? About 6.7 million dollars. Are you saying we're unfunding our pension 6.7 million dollars now, or we covered that with a bond 8 years ago? So, you covered it with a bond, you know, but that was about 8, so remember you covered it with a bond, but you still got to pay that bond back. So, that's what's left on the bond, about 6.7 million dollars. But the good news is by going down and borrowing that money and infusing all of that into your pension plan, you lowered the rate of interest, you know, on that. We weren't funding it. It was the right thing to do. We were part of that whole process and decision, you know, making an advisory to the city. And again, I stand by what I said to you about 7, 7 years ago when, you know, when that happened 6 or 7, that was the right thing to do. And I say... We didn't overcorrect. What's that? We didn't overcorrect. We had hundreds of thousands of dollars even prior to now of just interest by not infusing that money in there, you know, you would have. And that obligation probably would be larger than what it is right now. And really what that done, I refer to it as... When you put that money and infused it into that plan, it wasn't there before, you know, so, and if my recollection serves me, there were two issues going on. The money wasn't there, so why was it unfunded? But at the same time, you also weren't funding what was necessary to fund your obligations in your share of what that was. And you got double whammy. So that infusion of cash certainly mitigated that from happening and I think certainly reduced the interest for lack of a better way to say it on the premium that you were paying for that unfunded obligation, clearly. So the obligation now is, looks different. You know, not to the plan, it's to the bank. You know, that you went and borrowed, you know, the money at. So the money at to infuse in here. Those are, I would say, the biggest talking points financially, you know, of the city. We started this process sometime and you have a very fast growing and busy getting to be busy tiff, you know, I think that that's certainly something. We wish you were busier. We do too, you know, we do too. So we're in the deep into that one right now. But, you know, that that's active and that's dynamic. This city's a busy place. You know, it really is. And I think that, you know, when you add the element of that, it makes you busy or some some other talking points. The we, like I say, we started this process sometime May, you know, of last year. July, I think that we've had constant contact with your management monthly. You know, we have a very hands on relationship with you all and in sometime this past, I think early fall, you probably would have got a letter from us on a payroll matter, you know, that we certainly advised and gave advice to to management that I know that you were privy to and that was a concern. You know, that was that was a concern it was and and as proud of our management comments, we issued a separate letter under that just because we felt the necessity to do that. Tom, I would like copies of those letters. Yeah, I would love the copies of letters too and I don't see that in this packet. That's intentional. So intentional because I was already issued under a separate letter. So our management letter and that came up this morning, our management letters are our tool and we deliver that into you in many different ways and it's the form of correspondence, you know, so one of the things that we did is whenever we believe, you know, that through the result of our audit in this process that there's something, you know, that certainly, you know, rises to the level of documentation that we'll put in writing 10 out of 10 times and that was that was actually put in writing. To be clear in your mind that that matter we're discussing didn't rise to be a deficiency in internal control. It rose to a deficiency where we actually separate we actually separated that from these other matters because of the deficiency that it represented and put that into a separate letter to management. I would love to get copies of those letters and are those public documents or we never got anything in writing. But that's fine. I would just I'd love to look a little bit at those details. So again, management letter, letters, you know, there are probably, you know, I think only two, you know, instances that payroll being one that rose to the level of we said, hey, here's some concern and let me just say regarding the payroll matter, your management responded to that one fast and really mitigated the financial exposure to that one really fast. That's not it. I'm sorry. That's not a deficiency in internal control rising to the level of being included in this. Just so we're clear, it was and it was issued in a separate letter from this one. We could issue five management letters to you all and that one based upon when it came up. So it's like the Department of Redundancy Department. We felt no need once we issued it the first time to you, Tom, to put it in writing again, you know. So it's the best way I can say it. And so presumably next year, if you do our audit, that issue will be taken care of and it will not rise to a deficiency. We are confident that you all spent a lot of time and attention in that matter and as you read that letter that we cited, you know, that very matter, we went into some detail on that. So and we actually helped and worked and I'm confident that you guys have, you know, responded is the best way you can say it. A question came up to me at a board meeting today, Ron, can you look with certainty, you know, say it won't happen again? No, I can't. Mistakes happen. External influences impact a lot of things, you know, and I'm not saying, you know, that it won't happen again, but you certainly took steps to mitigate that and reduce the risk of happening again in the future for sure. Tom? I'm talking too much tonight, but I actually saw you this morning at 7.30 a.m. at GMT, so it has been a long day. And if you could speak a little bit to the concern about relational complacency and auditor cycling and independence and what you do at your organization to address those industry standards and concerns about every five years cycling out auditors. So I have the pleasure of working with really two professionals. That question came up this morning. I really feel that I got cut off too with it, you know, but as far as the question that came up, as Tom just suggested, you know, the concern in our profession is complacency, you know, is using the same firm, you know, a right thing to do and best practice. And there's actually a GFOA opinion on this, the Government Finance Officers Association, where they've come out and said because of the specialty, you know, of the nature of this industry and the lack of auditors that understand this industry, you know, that the recommendation is, you know, is that no, you know, provided that the auditing firm has, you know, safeguards in place, you know, such as auditor rotation, which we do every two years at our company, and we actually rotate out the audit managers every two years, and we rotate in the testing people, you know, every year. You may see my face, but I'm nothing more than the face of the people that actually signs this engagement and signs off of it based upon the work, and I would argue, and you can check with your management, there's new conversations that happen every year. So to avoid that complacency and to get in line with the GFOA and this auditor rotation, that's our way, you know, of getting, you know, into, you know, the getting into, getting out of, you know, the complacency matter. And I equate our relationship to doctors, you know, when you have a specialty medical practice and you have a relationship with that doctor and you believe that doctors understand you and treat you, we would equate the same thing to our relationship with you all. This is a specialized industry. There's not a lot of people, you know, specialized in this practice. When you get our auditors that come here, there are 30 people in our company that we rotate on jobs that know 100% of this profession. They're not tax accountants. They are auditors and they understand government and we do over 500 governments. So that's one of the responses in the to the question, you know, that you had asked me today and I say the same thing as our reputation is everything. You know, we will not put a client above our reputation and certainly we are firm believers in being very, very proactive, you know, to the point where we do the audit or rotation to avoid complacency and the inference of it. Does that address your concerns or are we going to continue to? I want to hear your response. I question the doctor analogy because I mean you want to hire out physicals to independent third parties that keep at arms distance. So the relationship complacency is just a concern but I think that's a broader conversation for another night. And when I use the word doctors you're not going to go see a general or you're not going to see an orthopedic surgeon when you have an oncology problem. You're not going to go see a tax accountant when you need an audit matter redirected, when you have problems that specifically address your whatever condition it is. You're going to go see a specialist and we refer to as a specialist. We live the world of government. We don't know what's going on out there. I got nominated to a national committee one of two people in this country that serves on the yellow book advisory committee so understanding that I consider myself a specialist because I'm only one of two people in this country that can raise their hand and say that my name will forever be etched in a book at the government accounting office and I'm proud of that. So it's nerdy but I'm proud of that. I'm a little boy in St. John'sburg. Little boy I do. It's a national award here this spring. So that's nerdy for me but that's the ultimate commendation that you can get in my profession and I think that that comes with being a specialty and being acknowledged by your peers and my state acknowledged me to represent the small business accounting firms of this country. So I get to go to April, have my exit conference and then may I get my award and acknowledgement and I'm proud of that and I'm proud of the people that helped me at my company get there as well. So you've been auditing South Burlington for seven years? I'd say probably seven. Yes. 2011 I'm sure. This will be the eighth year. Somewhere. And then what's the I mean is that typical So what's typical is usually three years with options and then you guys go back out to bid someone out to bid three years ago and we have two year and two one year annual options to renew in our contract that haven't been exercised yet and that will certainly be at the discretion of the city. I guess my question actually was more in terms of the company or the the communities that you audit do they how many times do they renew your contract like I've been doing this for eight years so and I think I'm proud of this as well when I left the other company 21 years ago to start this company I took over 150 governments with me. Today I retain 131 at our company with those governments so I'm proud of that record as well. That was 21 years ago and I built the practice to continue to build it. So again I think that my old employer may not be happy with me but certainly I'm proud of the reputation that followed me to this company and I'm proud of the 32 people that I work here with and I'm proud to rotate them into jobs so absolutely. So without getting into the weeds about that second management letter about the deficiency of the irregularity that was found do you have any insight as to why you might not have detected that the previous audit? So a couple of things. We're talking actually about the guts of inputting payroll information. Our audit does nothing more than confirm and validate best practice to how these numbers get on the financial statements. Not to the intricacies of setting up client deductions not to the intricacies of going in and verifying that 500 employees deductions were on a health insurance bill and those people should have been doing it. Our audit is to do more than sample based upon the numbers that exist in 135 pages on that and test transactions. Is this something that you might want to be doing in other audits in the future? Is looking with a greater microscope? So again the answer would be that would be what we call a limited scope or a scope that would rise above and beyond the process of our audit. And as far as that goes I think that there's some things that we learned through this process for sure which I think makes us unique and cutting edge but no we're not going to go look to see how you opened up your bank account or when you you know taught to your switched insurance carrier or whatever it is that the right people followed over or that somebody that retired that's not an any audit program you know that exists out there and I think it would be just frivolous of us to throw the resources you know at those types of things I'm more so concerned of your bank accounts getting reconciled I'm more so concerned of you using purchase orders I'm more so concerned of okay is there something that happened through this process that we should have you know that we should have caught I think we beat that one to death I think that the fact that your management caught it you know something worked you know but at the level that it rose to and the the drilling down for lack of a better way to get to the actual issue way beyond the scope of the audit but we did take some things and actually add it to our audit program for sure absolutely yes good so getting down to the matters that you were discussing that auditors are focused with and I'm glad for this discussion but you have here under purchase orders some purchase orders are being issued after the invoice or product is received by the city and I'm glad for that amount of detail I think that's important for us to know I have full confidence in the leadership of the city but I do think that just like you know the claim that auditors and auditing firms can become complacent I think that there can be complacency on both sides absolutely so I just wanted to note that and I also wanted to note it's over it's near 7% our expenses for our total for the year and that's quite a lot I'm sorry I didn't get that one 6.46% so for cities governmental activities 1.22% but if you include public safety, public works, capital outlay, etc. at 6.46% our expenses above revenues I'm sorry yes I mean that's what you're talking about we're spending more than we're bringing in so I would say that's a fair statement with government in general which gives you the ability to tax so I won't get into that conversation I just had that one two weeks ago it was a source subject I don't want to start a source but I would agree a lot of times what we're seeing is revenue problems not expenditure problems and unfortunately when you see revenue problems that burden falls on the backs of the taxpayers one last question are you done when the right time to yeah yours is a short one okay I guess just as I think that what I would hope is that we take this forward and really really ask of people work for the public here that we drew have an accounting of new initiatives I would really for instance the mental health collaborative I just learned this morning that we were contributing funds to that and I think I just would like to see that fine print just like we got for the the dispatch you know we saw the contract we saw all kinds of fine detail in that I would like to see that fine detail and I understand that it's in the budget that money's there and that you're not going over but I still I just want to know what we're in for what communities you know are contributing how much this kind of detail I think is that's our bailiwick that's what we do we have a draft MOU that has that I'll get that too and are you saying Megan just so I can understand it to my role you know our role at our company I mean is that something you'd like to see like it like is that supplementary information in your financial statements too I think for new initiatives new initiatives undertaken and what was the cost and I just know for my channel 17 work someone you know and you're still working perhaps or not but on the you know when there are new initiatives and you have to invest in a new initiative I think that maybe a separate you know you know subheadings, new initiatives and the budget line and how that all works into how much cash we have at the end of the year and at what cost and what investment and certainly if that's something that the city feels is valuable you know for a piece of supplementary information it's not required but if you feel that that's necessary and valuable that's a schedule that we can add to your financial statements for sure and I'm not decreeing this I mean we'd have to talk about it but that would be something that I would like to see a lot of times what people like to see is property tax collection rates you know how do you compare how do you compare in the first three months how do you compare in the next three months over the course of a year that's a piece of supplementary information some people find more valuable than others so there you go I mean we can put the document in there but what you see here now is promulgated by standards you know and you know certainly if the city saw some value in supplementary information we could add supplementary information okay Tim I think I had a quick question and then what is an I-9? So an I-9 is a form filled out by the department of so the Homeland Security it's the Immigration's naturalization it's the old name of the form but when you are employed by your employer before you are issued compensation you're required to verify that you are a U.S. citizen you know or and produce documentation there's required proof that you have to do that Do I stand for immigration? I believe it actually does an I-9 is an actual form if you google I-9 it will bring you into Homeland Security's website and bring you into that form you know there's like an I'll equate it to another form you know I-9 I think went to immigration W I think comes from the Department of Labor is where I'm going with the I W's are the U.S. Treasury W-2 W-4 W-9 request for tax payers identification I understand that there's a significance of the letter in the department at the U.S. federal government that promulgates you know what that form is to be used for and really who generates that and who's the gatekeeper of it and I think would be Homeland Security now which is under the Department of Defense so really quick you said you do a lot of different non-governmental agencies and you mentioned property tax rate collections do you see any municipalities offering more flexible monthly collections a lot of discount programs now given the people the ability to you know to to pay early to increase cash flow what's my take on it all depends on where we're at and all depends on what your financial condition is and I don't recommend that you know now at the City of South Burlington given your general fund financial condition I think it's a good idea I think it's a good concept but I think that that's something I would get to if I were you so for sure you don't see we need that now I think it's something that I think is an absolute great thing to offer for your citizens and do I think that if you is now the time no for the City of South Burlington is it something that I think that you know you should put on as a goal just like it is to get to 30 days absolutely that will help you get the 30 days easier you know but certainly I think it's a goal and I think it's an incentive you know that can mitigate some other things so so yeah yep any other questions just one comment that we all knew that it was going to be a tight year in the general fund and we monitored it really close I think we had 35 thousand dollars to the good and what did you come out with I think we were off like within probably two thousand dollars fifteen hundred dollars that's why I say I'm here I'm here to confirm what you've been what you've been told and as you can remember you know back in 2011 or 12 the information that was given to you certainly I would question some of the reliability back then and some of the past councils you know but for the past six or seven years you have definitely worked hard internally to get to these talking points here right now you know so that you ought to be proud of it really you know I think that the city's come a long way to get to best practice and these conversations six years ago 70 years ago they weren't you know some of the they weren't comfortable you know sitting up here and telling you about your shortcomings and to be able to sit here and tell you about some of the things you're doing right you know even absent of that payroll problem you caught you know you fixed at very little cost of the city that's a good story hopefully we can reduce and mitigate it from happening again in the future so if there's no other comments or questions thank you very much thank you it's been a great pleasure thank you it was a good report to read what was it was a good long report it was a big long report no kidding it was a lot of work okay moving on to item 10 receive and discuss a petition related to the reopening of the South and Dog Park located at J.C. Park favorite topic please come up to the table and state your name for the record and then here we are so my name is Michael Itzman and Ed Plord so we are basically speaking on behalf of the People's Science Petition okay so we collected 273 signatures to reopen J.C. Dog Park I walked I personally walked the neighborhood and I got almost everybody like every signature on Patchin Road Shepard Lane Arbor Road, Juniper Drive so a lot of people are interested in reopening the Dog Park and I talked to people and I didn't hear any noise complain I mean everybody was happy and again no noise complain I tried to find so because it was always referenced to the noise ordinance I tried to like read it and I tried to find what caused the closure and actually I don't really I don't find it so it's mentioning like a dog or a cat but it's not like mentioning dog parks or anything like that so I'm just appreciate if you could give us more insight like on what triggered the decision to close the Dog Park because of this noise complaint okay any comments that you would like to add and then we can respond no I mean well except for the you collected some signatures but there's also some other folks here that also walked around so it's you did a great job but others that walked around so and then we met houses and I guess my experience never been tried to talk my daughter into not having a dog for a while because I wasn't excited about the care of a dog but she loves the dog in that but since she had the dog and I live right on the 131 Patchin Road which is right that gray house right on the corner it's the street that you go in up Shepherd Lane there so on that anyway it's just the benefit of having that dog park there first I thought I didn't want it there and then I'd say you guys did it and the limited options you had I think it really was turning out to be a real nice effort I've been stopping I've stopped my lawnmower and started talking to people more than I ever did there's a lot more traffic there I mean everybody who lives in that area they know they're at a park and you go to buy a house and you see it you like spark across the street everybody's kind of aware that you're at a park and it's not necessarily going to be the quietest area in town same thing as if you go to get a house that borders interstate or something you know kind of what it is and we knew that getting into it we obviously have some kids there and we enjoy it for that aspect but the community aspect and the nice folks I met and doing this and I never met before I'm stopping and talking to people even not necessarily the dog owners either it's just really opened up the community and I just never thought a dog park would bring a tighter community in these days I think that's what we need people talking to each other I need more privacy I need to not talk to my neighbors I need it quieter I think we need more bumping in of course we don't all get along and there are things but there's so many more advantages and I just have to push myself to come here and talk about it because it's important and the raising kids and having them in that kind of community and showing them that I mean we go trick-or-treating in that area that's really rich in the kind of neighborhood stuff that I've never seen in a long time and having a dog park that people have to go in their car to or do whatever it just doesn't seem like an option I would ever want I appreciate you coming and sharing your thoughts about that I wasn't here at the meeting where the decision was made but I certainly was here when as a council we discussed quite a few times the need for dog parks and I make it plural because I think this the entire council feels that we need more than a single dog park in a community of this size and I know I for one have brought up the issue often when we talk with or speak with developers around city center and other developments you know what are you allowing you know your renters to have dogs and then so what's what's the deal with the dogs what are you doing to make that a place that won't intrude on other people's enjoyment I guess but also recognizes that dogs need exercise and they need to eliminate and that typically is done outside so what are the issues so I think we all believe that it's really important in terms of the process we also found ourselves faced with the airport saying rather kind of suddenly we're closing that dog park so you need to end it find some other place for the dogs and while I personally didn't believe that that probably was the best place for a dog park I mean we've had that happen twice once on patch and road and then at the airport so it's clear that we were looking for that we needed to look for some permanent spaces that the city controlled and some of the spaces we control are the parks and that's frankly why we looked at JC Park it was kind of a quick decision I think there was some timing in terms of winter was coming or the fall and we wanted to get move the the fencing from near the airport to a place and create it I think what we didn't do as a council and you know I take responsibility for that along with everyone else we didn't really have the conversation with any neighborhoods or even dog owners in particular about what are some of the requirements about dog parks people would mention other parks like oh go to the one at Shelburne it's really beautiful or some other community but we didn't sit down as a council and say there's some things that ought to be included in dog parks if we're going to cite them on our own property so in a sense we backed into this we also found at the same time some land that was available at Feral Park and we kind of I think went forward rapidly without real public input frankly about where to cite these if you had maybe taken longer and done a little more time talking and dealing with the neighbors now I think you would have made the same decision I don't think you would have found I think everyone you would have talked to would have said great like you know so I'm not saying that you should have sure kind of did but I'm saying that I don't know if it would have resulted in a different outcome I'm not sure either I'm talking to the people who signed the petition and dealing with that it was pretty JC was always intended to be temporary as I told you that that was a temporary site for the recommendation of our director of parks and recreation so it was never intended to be a permanent site it was intended to serve an area in the city that had enjoyed a dog park off Kirby Road extension and that that was closed so quickly but I think that what we've learned is that you know the lack of process has really cost us a long run it gave you something that we had to then take away and I'm happy to explain that not all neighbors were satisfied with that location and there were confrontations that were occurring between people that I was afraid was going to end up in an arrest and that was because of the improper process and we do take it was a well I mean we're all aware of the one problem or the one complaint because I don't think you have two complaints that you're not getting a park so it yeah one complaint I'm saying you had other people unhappy with the sighting who didn't live there that were complaining about the noise no but they were unhappy with the site and the proximity to the park and to the picnic area and I don't think you're going to find anybody would say that was the perfect you're not going to get consensus on on that location at all but but the bullying tactics of that I'm sure you all have are you know there's personal things I deal with non-park related when the kids come crying in the house because they've been sworn out and whatever the case and the neighbors like dog reacts in ways because of certain tools that are being used by a neighbor and it's sad to see the dog in that you know manner one bark is about 10 blow horns worth of punishment for that I don't want to go but but I'm saying you're not going to if you're making that decision on on the one person no I'm making it because it should not be close to residential areas and I don't see why that if the people in the residents all want it there there sir how many more petitions do you need signed do you need anybody well I mean how many more signatures would make it clear because I have we have a good pulse of the neighborhood of that area the ones that are affected by that and enjoy that and we're not getting that the concerns you see Tom I just want to say Helen I completely agree with you we need more dog parks and I think that could dilute this concentration of barking if we focus some attention to find more dog parks and I the second part that you said and I also want to follow up on what counselor Emory said I heard Tom Hubbard and Maggie Luger say that they did do some outreach to neighbors so there was some effort by staff to make sure that I even understand a lot of close neighbors have been consulted on this and they were they were supportive of it so that's okay all right so make we could have done more I'm saying is in the defense of the city I heard them say that they did do some outreach and effort and I I definitely still stand by where I was that night which is I'm for I'm supporting a moving it if this wasn't perfect location let's focus on finding better locations the dog park I just I still don't think we should close a perfectly good dog park while we're looking for that space I just see it still as $17,000 of taxpayer money that is just sitting there idle and so I still support opening it with the caveat that I think we need to comprehensively look at our dog park solutions and find another location and then relocate this as soon as we come to agreement as to where that space would be again basically there's also noise I mean noise like when like the teams are like practicing or when the kids are playing people walk their dogs I mean they're like still dogs in the neighborhood that are barking it's not like only the dog park that was causing noise well basically I also was wondering why it was closed instead of like taking some actions to maybe like put some barriers up I mean there are like it could be mitigating it things that could be done it could be but I don't think there's unless you guys know of any are there any official citations of breaking ordinance that the dog park had that the city has like any fines or any the police never acted but there were there were signs asking dog owners to control the barking of the dogs signs were removed so there were I wasn't there well we don't we don't that's why I didn't but I guess I will say that going forward our full agreement by the council was that we really do need to come up with guidelines and some processes not to just say oh here's some empty space that the city owns let's throw up some fencing and call it a dog park and not think about its impact on the people that live near it or the size of it I mean I find this dog park you didn't consider about how it was going to affect anybody else well we that may very well be true we're hoping however with the committee that we've created created and the work that they're doing to develop some guidelines that we then have something to work with that we can share with the public we can have a public hearing about those guidelines and get feedback about them and then we can go forward and really look at the spaces the land that the city currently owns and what would make a reasonable spot for some additional dog parks or at the I mean the most extreme is do we need to use some open space money to buy property to create dog parks in different parts of the city to meet the residents needs so we're hoping to go forward in a much more kind of reasonable logical way and I know that doesn't address your concerns but that is the decision that council made to make it more of a understood and clear and transparent process and not just a reaction to we've got some fencing and we need a dog park and where can we put it in the committee didn't meet last week they did for the second time so that they are following a process to come up with the criteria that they feel best represent all interests and where should be located and what its dimensions should be and how it should be mounted and what best makes that park successful for everybody yes and then committee there's four of us here on that committee that's not why we're here right now all time yes I mean so are you two done are there other people who would like to maybe you can come in on that committee oh we are already we are on the committee both of us uh huh and so we're not here to have you tell us we know what we know what we're doing on that committee that's not why we're here right now we're here excuse me and I'm a property owner in south Burlington and a dog owner although I never went to that particular dog park I walked by I have a little dog I don't need to put her in that tiny little space that you temporarily claimed was put there but we went through all the documentation and when that was presented you never said it was a temporary site so I'm gonna question that as you know you have wrong information or you're giving us wrong information and the second thing was we noted in your minutes in the past the airport gave you four years to find a new place there's a five year lease for ten dollars I mean really and that's what you came up with I you know I just find it pretty um like I feel like you're lying to me I'm sorry you feel that way and you're wasting our time we're here to see if you will re-vote until we get a real space for the dogs open it you used our taxpayers money you used our time I will make that I would like to have it re-voted to open it until the new committee finds the space that we need I don't want to hear more from public but I will absolutely say that I don't think we gave enough time for enforcement to be tried I think we could have had the police go through and work on the sound noises so at the end of this after we hear from more people I will make a motion that we reopen the dog park until we find a new space and open another dog park in South Burlington but I'm not optimistic that you're gonna get a passing vote are there other different comments do you want to come up I'm just gonna say I'm a South Burlington resident but I'm not in that area and what I'm hearing from the outside is there a compromise for the short term are there tighter hours that can work so that there is some of the community aspect happening but perhaps it's within a tighter window that wouldn't cause as much for the people that live nearby maybe a compromise in the short term so the problem is isn't that there's one person complained one person complained did anybody follow up on that did he call the police do we actually know his claim is true I live right next door to him I never heard what he heard so one person had an upsetting claim that he heard numerous dogs barking is that true does anybody know I visited the park on a Saturday and there was a lot of barking I was there it was very noisy he was in his house with the windows you were actually in the park I was in the park on the backside of it in my car with the windows open it was loud there it was continuous barking by about 13 dogs all at the same time that's what I heard when I was there have you been visiting the park for another time I visited other times when there was random barking when nobody was there because it was dark but the times when I was there when there were dogs there there was a lot of barking because that's what dogs do they bark we could have an official you could get one of those sound recorders for a week and actually record it and have some real data instead of some of this oh I heard barking I mean you put that somewhere we can identify that I like it on the airport too yeah I know you might have heard it but there's not necessarily people there's more people coming than ever and it's not like they're not coming because they enjoy that I'm sorry and you might be angry at me for saying this but I think it has to be said for me to have participated in a decision that put any resident in an emergency situation is not acceptable for me this is not an essential service that we are providing it is a dog park that we need and that we need to put in a proper location so if Mr. Plourd you want to have a dog park in your backyard and your neighbors bless it let's open your backyard we have a situation I'm being but that is the case for the citizen who was legitimately complaining I wouldn't say it was legitimate I would take that I believe it's legitimate unfortunately our actions inflamed a neighbors dispute and I feel very badly about that and we cannot correct that by just throwing more oil on the flames I'm sorry about that and I'm sorry I mean there is a garage and that neighbor has high fence and trees around his property so there is a lot of noise barriers so I'm not sure how that can travel so I mean everybody I don't think we should reason him into complying so basically what we learned in our meetings at the dog park task force meeting that distance to residents is essential and if there are noise barriers and there are noise barriers there is a dog park and other properties are more exposed and they haven't complained so I just feel that noise is really hard to measure and everybody needs to like taken seriously and it's not like yes of course he has issues and it needs to be taken seriously but we have an issue too and we should have a chance to like make our point I talked to the president of the homeowners association of quarry ridge and apparently there is a park there that people use to walk their dogs or let their dogs out of leash and he shared with me in addition to his disappointment that the park was closed his agreement that dogs and noise are an issue including in that park in quarry ridge and so I do not think that this is something that is unusual I think it is something that is quite common that is why it is in two of our ordinances we have the care of cats and dogs ordinance and we have the noise the nuisance ordinance which you brought with you tonight and noise is a subjective quality there is no measurement that will say once you get here that's noise it's for each individual so I'm just going to reiterate that for our actions to have brought a disturbance of the nature that I brought to this neighborhood we are responsible we made a mistake and I don't think that going back and making it a second time is going to make it better and how much did that cost as tax payers $5,000 total $5,000 we are going to be able to use the fencing because we have it we are going to be able to use the fencing we are going to be able to use $11,000 $17,000 but we are going to be able we are going to be able to use the fencing and not buy any more fencing to replace that it's not going to be enough fencing I can tell you the committee is not going to build the park as small as that a dog park good I think that's a good so do I you are on the path to improvement that's what we want I would like to come back to the president of Kravitz said that noise is an issue and he's supporting the petition that's right but he's not the president of J.C. Park and we tend to for the area of land that is under his jurisdiction I said would you be open to turning that into a dog park and he said well I don't know and that's the position we are in that's the position we are in I don't understand that I'm sorry I think his point was that having a dog park creates noise that can be a nuisance to people who live near it that you can't get away from that when you have a dog park that's close to housing or limit of noise or somebody else it becomes a problem so I think our hope is that the task force will come up with guidelines one of which will most likely be potentially will be that a dog park can't be situated any closer than x amount of distance from a home to avoid this in the future because we really don't want to do this again sorry dogs can still run off leash at that part yeah we have a leash not in that J.C. Park so the dogs are still there running off leash with the kids playing on the playground can I ask you a question another woman who has her hand up who would like to speak hi colleague chambers why did the airport throw out the noted dog park what was their reason did they give you one the FAA I believe since they bought the properties and demolished the homes the land becomes owned frankly by the FAA and it can only be used not by Burlington well they're caretakers I guess but the FAA's requirement for land that they buy with their money even though it's through Burlington has to be used for airport related activities and a dog park is not related to airport activities which sounds reasonable to me but at one time with those airport meetings regarding planes and everything else the place is going to become unlivable once they come in but it's going to far out do dog parks or roosters if you have a chicken which are not allowed because they're too noisy but it just it seems to me at some of those meetings the airport talked about uses for that land there was talk of farmers markets and other activities and stuff so those are out too I imagine there's so much land there there is not the land the airport has offered to share but you guys were not interested in using that land right I mean the the airport has offered other land it was considered to be too close to residential for who for who the residents or the people who are there if you were to engage them and talk to them about it and nobody has a problem then why would there be a problem with someone being near the park I guess I'm trying to understand that because I don't have a problem with that park there even if I didn't have a dog you know so why would I why would you not put even though I don't have a problem Kevin you have we've talked about land exchanges and so forth just in visioning or whatever dreaming with the airport so it's not totally out of the ballpark that there could be some kind of land swap for a dog park if they swap the land and give it to us and they take the road or something then it's not an FAA use requirement and it potentially could be turned into a dog park I think as Monica pointed out though again if it's close to some houses we're back into the situation where someone who lives near that new park complains about the noise there's a lot of land that still has houses but those houses are going to have to go well some so if they were to complain about having a dog park near there really there don't have any you know like to stand on because they haven't moved out and even though they're in the noise zone well and we have I don't know it depends if you complain to the FAA they don't always listen to you well we read in some of the minutes that they had offered to celebrate Burlington and some Burlington didn't want to listen to the offerings that the airport would consider giving us some more use of land if I can weigh in on that that's not accurate we had a discussion with the airport about the land they the proposal they came up with was completely untenable nobody would take that deal and that's the best they would offer this was the second time was this public or was this behind closed doors this was a discussion that I had it's all documented we could read it pardon me it's documented or it's something that you kind of discussed with them I discussed this at the site afternoon with the public works director it's here to say it's not here to say this is the second time that this community has been kicked out of a dog park the first time by UVM and the second time by the airport we made a decision at the staff level supported on a general basis by the council that we needed to put a dog park on our own property so we can't get kicked out anymore and that's why the decision I hope you had four years but the airport deal was a non-starter partly for what Helen says which is the FAA won't allow it and any kind of swap on their terms was just untenable plus we had two attorneys in the room it will take us a year of legal work to abandon a road and so it was going to be abandoning a road to swap please don't keep interrupting I would like I know he's saying well other people can if you're talking over well you can interrupt me but I can't interrupt you that just makes no sense that's not what this is all about you have to be polite they will be polite are you finished? yes I don't know if I need to say but this isn't worn for action tonight so I'm just going to make a motion that we add to the next agenda it's a reasonable item to reopen the JC dog park until a new dog park is open within South Burlington I've made a motion but I don't know if people want to talk more or if I'm going to get a second but since it wasn't worn for action I think we have heard quite a bit so is there a second to that motion? was it under the same rules or are they restricting the hours or there was some discussion which sounded like a compromise or something like that some I mean it sounded like opening it with the same rules or would there be some compromise that would appease that isn't clear from the motion what I would open is that between now and then those compromise parameters possibly could be solicited so the task team could come up with maybe a proposal well I'm not sure the task team task not to be redundant with coming up with a compromise for JC park at this point we're looking for some guidelines that we can use into the future with potentially that piece of property I guess or any other so what will happen with the JC dog park right now it's just sitting there empty so what will happen well if we cite another one we'll pull up the fence and use as much as we can in the next park what is the timeline on that well you know it depends I think what the task force recommends if they recommend that every dog park in South Burlington needs to be seven acres then that limits where we might cite it and that might take some time you know and until I know what the guidelines are the city council knows what the guidelines are it's hard to know what is the potential of the timing I'm anxious to have some additional parks because I think the public would like them and I think they add to I don't know our quality of life I'm a dog owner I have a lot of my own property so I don't take my dogs to dog parks but I can appreciate that people want a place to let their dogs run and get exercise and not always be on a leash and potentially bark at other dogs I guess so I don't have a time frame for you until the work is done if I could add and I I'm an advocate like Helen and I think all of us on the board are for dog parks and so I encourage you your focus and your energy to really let it happen and make it happen and let the task force know that you have that they have advocates because it's not going to be easy I know I mean I know I'm in the dog I'm just sitting here right in front of you and just trying to discuss what will be done in the meantime and I mean right now we're just trying to find a way to get in South Burlington I mean Farrell Park is very tiny yes of course it is one but I mean for my dog I don't need to bring him there I mean it's just smaller than Jay-Z dog park but we are here to talk about Jay-Z dog park and it looks like the city council is not open to anything I mean you're just saying I'm sorry we have to consider that noise complaint I don't need anything for you I mean it probably doesn't even matter how many signatures we will bring I mean if we would come with 600 or 1000 I mean I just fear right now that the outcome wouldn't be if you came with 709 which is 5% of the electorate it could force us to put it on a ballot so what happens then then the community could vote on opening Jay-Z park what would the time frame be on that it would be months in the meantime was Jay-Z dog park well it sounds like dogs are running there off leash which they were before there was a dog park but then it wouldn't make a difference right I mean if the dog park is open it would be like a secure place for dogs and like children and I mean everybody has like love the dog park is closed there are no dogs in the dog park no I can't do that exactly so if you can't except other than being on a leash by the owner right? it's off leash allowed at Jay-Z Tom says there's no leash required at Jay-Z so basically we can use Jay-Z as a park to like exercise our dogs without using the dog park right okay and I think that's the interim plan until we find first get a vision of what it is is best practice and what we can do and then site some additional dog parks so what would be the difference to like you try to like um you try to keep the dog park closed to like make one person happy but we can still use the dog park to the noise level would be the same right so I don't understand I didn't understand your question so what you were saying we can use the dog park we can let our dogs run off no you can not use the park not the dog park we can use the park to let our dogs run off leash so it doesn't make a difference to like closing the dog I mean I don't see a difference you haven't heard any complaints that's the difference about any barking that's disrupting people you are encouraging people to bring the dogs and using everything else except the dog park is that the solution? that's the current rule system I don't see anybody to do anything these are the rules that exist today I just want to make the situation is that the park itself is locked and closed okay so we can basically still okay so the rule states right here that the police should have been called for you to enact this were the police called and was that documented for us to enact what for the complaint I believe the police was called I don't have the report but I mean if you're going to go by the rules we got to go by the rules I mean was it documented were the police called if you have to do to follow the ordinance so are you breaking the law this last time I came in front of you you accused me of breaking the law do you remember that no I don't so I'll run the camera go back and watch it so you have to follow rules it says right here the police need to be called and it gets documented one person calls you and you make your decision I mean it just doesn't seem fair to us you've heard tonight a counselor and it's more than one counselor who went to listen for himself there are members of the city employees who went to listen for themselves I do not think it was just one phone call that led us to make the decision I don't know if I'm going to convince you of that otherwise I'm not accusing anyone of breaking any laws in fact I didn't want anyone to get arrested that was my biggest concern that we not act quickly enough to avoid an arrest so did you go to other dog parks to evaluate the noise level I mean was it like noisier compared to other dog parks like with that size or did you I mean I think basically we don't have the standards and we're looking to have some standards developed so those kinds of questions can be addressed before we cite another park versus just saying oh this looks pretty open doesn't seem to be very many homes around and we know to us there's a housing development that's going to go in and put the put a dog park in I mean I agree but I mean it doesn't help us right now so I mean this is basically our issue sorry I am I'm regretful that the park was put in the dog park because actually frankly if I had known that your dogs could run off leash on J.C. Park I would have said yeah why are we even putting this skinny little fence up to keep them somewhere okay I mean it just seems kind of my question is if dogs are allowed off leash on J.C. Park is that correct yeah that's what I understood remove the dog park and if you've got the whole thing for the dogs it doesn't keep the children at the park safe or dogs running in the road well you could lock the children in the dog park let's move the swing set to the dog park boys well the dog has to be under the control of the voice of the owner very clearly there are some dogs that simply have to can only let out in the park remove those for one there are a number of dogs that do simply cannot let off leash yes now I understand my dog is one of those dogs then some dogs you don't want off leash because they aren't friends to children or other dogs so well I appreciate your comments and your passion and I hope you will translate that into coming up with some you know guidelines that can we can use that really address the needs of dog owners and dogs and the residents and we can move forward with some additional parks so thank you it's usually at nine o'clock we usually take a quick break for a few seconds and we'll do that but before we do that it's him's birthday are you 25 yes you can rent a car I don't have a nice friend but I want to finish 25 p.m. so are you hi share hi share oh he's there hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi share hi hi hi Hey, I had napkins, I didn't even need a little harvest. That's all I could find in the house. All right, so I would like to call back into order. The South Burlington City Council of meeting on Tuesday, February 20th, and we will pick up with item 11, receive and discuss the report related to current land use restrictions on the Wheeler Homestead and Park property. And David Rue is here. David Rue from Stitzel Page and Fletcher. I've done a fair amount of research over the years on title and permitting history on Wheeler Nature Park and a number of the parcels that surround it. I think as Wheeler Park now is approximately about 98 acres of land, not counting the 22 acres that recently came in as part of the GM Gulf land swap and not counting the 25 acres to the east, sort of that are north, let's see, north-westerly of the Oak Creek Village subdivision that the city owns over there as well. How many acres? Well, Wheeler Nature Park, what I'm talking about today is simply the approximately 98 acres or so at Dorset Swift and northerly of Park Road. Okay. Not including the 22 acres. Not including the 22. I will get to that in a minute. Okay. But just for the introduction, we'll talk about traditionally what we've talked about as we are known as Wheeler Nature Park in the city. The first and foremost is the city's at least practice since the 1990s when it acquired what was then known as the Cawkins Parcel to use Wheeler Nature Park as recreation land. The original bond vote in 1992 to acquire Wheeler Nature Park, well, it was just a bond for about $1.5 million, I believe, to acquire what was then known as the Cawkins Parcel and it was then 104 acres of land and the bond funds would also be used for recreation improvements for the Dorset Streaker now Veterans Memorial Park north of that. Since that time, the city has at least established a practice of going to the voters if it would like to use the Cawkins Parcel or Wheeler Nature Park for uses other than recreation. Specifically, I'm thinking about the 2008 vote for the police station where the city proposed to build a police station at Swift and Dorset on about six acres of land. It went to the voters because it felt that the bond authorization to buy the land limited the city's use of Wheeler Nature Park or the Cawkins Parcel to recreational uses. So the city has established this sort of practice that if it would like to use the Cawkins Parcel for anything other than recreation it would at least seek voter approval to do so. Whether that's advisory or mandatory we could talk about it a later time. Aside from that sort of existing practice or historical practice of the city there's 14.4 acres of the Cawkins Parcel just to the east of the homestead, south of Swift Street that has been set aside as offsite mitigation for prime ag soil impacts through Act 250. How many acres? 14.4. And there's a map designating this area. The history behind this is it is tied into the city's acquisition of 25 acres to the northwest of Oak Creek Village back in the mid-1990s. And as part of that deal in order for the developer to build the houses on Fox Run Lane which was about the third phase of Oak Creek Village the deal was that the city would bank prime ag soils as mitigation for the impacts for the development of the seven acres of housing of Fox Run Lane. The mitigation formula currently and back then was that for each acre of prime ag soil, statewide soils that you are going to impact under Act 250 as part of development you need to bank double that and that was at that time it was double. So for the seven acres of development going on near Fox Run Lane the city was forced to bank 14 acres of land and it used Wheeler Nature Park to do that. What do you mean by bank? I mean it was already public recreation land. So how does that... Well through Act 250 through criterion 9B of Act 250 which is protective of primary agricultural soils you are allowed to just like with say wetlands impacts you are allowed to mitigate those impacts by doing essentially offsite mitigation and that's what happened here. It allows through Act 250 you place a permit condition on those 14.4 acres that limits its use. In perpetuity or until you go back to the district commission and ask them to amend what are seen tip normally as critical permit conditions which are difficult or challenging to amend. For these 14.4 acres the use restrictions are no buildings or structures the city may be able to build rec paths or picnic areas with approval of the district commission no fill, excavation or grading no use of motorized vehicles and no activities that are going to impact drainage. Can be agriculture. Can be agriculture. Any other uses outside of those restrictions are allowed as well. Open space is fine. These were imposed as part of a 1994 Act 250 permit amendment. So just you were... I'm trying to take this down. So you said no building or structures no fill, excavation, grading or vehicles what can you use it for? Pads? Well with the approval of the district commission you could use these 14.4 acres for picnic areas, paths and generally anything that would not negatively impact the ability of the land to be used for agriculture. Before we would propose any use of that land presumably you have to go to the district commission to get their approval. And you said and I didn't catch many of the words so I can't really jog your memory very well but it was hard to back out of this except for there was a little exception there. Yes, there is an exception for there's something called the Stoke Club Highlands or Rule 34 test that allows you to amend critical permit conditions in Act 250 permits. I could probably rattle off half of the standards but not all of them as I sit here but it's a balancing test where you look at the foreseeability of the need to amend the condition the need to accommodate flexibility in the permit process and a few other factors. It's a legal test. Importantly it's rather rigorous because when you propose these conditions or accept permits with these conditions the intention is that they're not going to change unless there's been significant change in circumstances. A change in law a change in Act 250 law that would impact the land but normally it's very difficult to remove these kind of restrictions. But some have in some places in Vermont? Yes, it's possible. It's very difficult. But it has happened, right? Yes, it has happened. I don't have any answer to that question. I don't have the knowledge of all Act 250 permits where someone has applied and been successful under Rule 34 in amending those permit conditions. In this instance if we were to amend that condition I anticipate the agency of agriculture would have a say in that. Also they may want to see other equally valuable land to be set aside maybe at a different ratio maybe four to one, I don't know. I'm speculating, yes. I'm speculating. So that's for those 14.4 acres. There are also, there is also another seven acre piece. I'm sorry, can I just clarify for me? And so that 14.4 acres are part of the Caulkken property? Correct, correct. Because we've added other pieces. Yes, and now I'm only talking about yes, I'm only talking about the original Caulkken's parcel right now. As part of the Jamgolf land exchange the city also just recently accepted a permit condition that set aside seven acres just to the east of the 14.4 acres as on-site primal soil mitigation as part of the impact that the development would have the Jamgolf development would have at the southeast, well sorry northeast early corner of the intersection of Dorset and Park Road. This seven acres is just to the east of the 14.4 acres and in between when the restrictions were established on the 14.4 acres and when we applied for this most recent Act 250 permit in 2014 there's a substantial change in how Criteria 9B under Act 250 is administered. It is now the restrictions that get put on mitigation land are much stricter. The agency of agriculture and the district commission impose the restriction that the land can only be used for farming as defined under Act 250. Farming has a seven part definition and I can read it to you if you'd like it's under 10VSA 6001 sub-section 22 but it's cultivation or other use of land for growing food or growing food, maple sap, crops raising feeding or management of livestock poultry, fish or bees operation of greenhouses production of maple syrup onsite storage preparation and sale of agricultural products principally produced on the farm the onsite storage preparation production and sale of fuel or power from agricultural products or waste principally produced on the farm for example, methane gas power the raising feeding or management of four or more equines owned or boarded by the farmer including training showing or providing instruction and lessons and riding training in the management of equines. So for those seven acres of land you really can only use those for farming. Does include living in layfowl. Pursuance of the permit condition in this Act 250 land use permit the city is required to brush hog this land every two years if it's to layfowl fellow so as to maintain its agricultural potential. Other similar restrictions there are similar permit conditions on other city land namely about I believe 15 of the 25 acres to the northeast of Oak Creek Village as well. Is that subjected to the Rule 34 test? It could be. It could apply to amend that condition. So an agricultural use or farming use could potentially be a cider distillery. Well, if you have an orchard on that land and... You could plant an orchard. More than 50.1% of the apples are grown on that land that are using for this used for the cider distillery. Okay, so it wouldn't work. You may be able to get an Act 250 permit. There is a history of this with a couple other apple orchards in the state down in Shorham and other areas. Is that the same for the maple syrup? You'd have to tap get the sap from the trees on that property? No, that's a different sub part of the definition of farming. The maple syrup is classified as farming. So if you planted hundreds of maple trees and strung lines and used vacuum equipment and evaporators and built a sugar house, that would qualify as farming. So clearly there can be some structures built on this? Agricultural structures. But you're mixing the two different permit conditions as well. The one on the 14.4 acres prohibits building on just on the seven, but they need to be agricultural in nature. There's also, well, before I move off the Cochens parcel, based on the calculations that were done for the Jamgolf land swap permit, there appear to be approximately 47 acres of primary agricultural soils remaining on the Cochens parcel itself. It's 47, 48, 46, something in that range. Do you mention that because those carry some state restrictions? No, there were no restrictions, but they could be used for similar uses as the city has done in the past. Correct. Which if we put a conservation easement you couldn't. We are getting into an area where I'd rather talk to the council in executive session because it involves legal options and strategy as to what the legal uses of the land could be, the other parts of the land could be. As to the 22 acre piece that the city recently acquired, there are no deeded restrictions on that land. And there are no conditions of permits that explicitly prohibit the use of that land. However, when the golf course development was built, the developers of the golf course relied on the open nature of those 22 acres to sort of offset the intensity of housing development at the golf course. Such that any further development of those 22 acres is likely going to require some form of mitigation under criteria 9B or other things. Especially if they're impacting primary agricultural soil. So I know the city has in the past considered some stormwater treatment practices for those 22 acres. That would take the land from being open putting it to a stormwater mitigation or stormwater treatment use. There is a possibility that the city would have to mitigate the impact of the construction of those stormwater treatment practices and be subject to banking other land or offsetting other areas of land for those uses. So the 22 acres, while not explicitly subject to any deed or permit condition, were sort of used to offset or used as open space as part of the jam golf development. Is the offset 2 to 1 or 1 to 1? It depends on under criteria 9B the mitigation factor depends on the quality of soils. Each type of soil has an agricultural value ranging from I think 1 to 11. There may be others. Primag soils are 7 and up to 1. For soils that are 1 and 2, the mitigation factor is 3. I think for soils that are and I could be just a little off between the different factors, but there are different mitigation factors from 2 to 2.5 to 3. Most of the soils on the Wheeler parcel are not of the highest quality and so the mitigation factor that would be used or is 2. Most of the soils in that area are of the 6 or 7 not highest quality value. Are there more acreage to talk about or can I ask a question? That was all I had prepared. Go ahead and ask a question. My question is and I know that we're speaking in generalities because otherwise it needs to take place in executive session. So in general is a kind of a blanket policy for a piece of land that we wish to keep into perpetuity desirable. Desirable for what? I'm speaking generally for keeping into perpetuity for not dealing with all the legal intricacies of law reform and changing political landscape in the city manager's office or the city council all these kinds of little things that I think that depends on whether you are a conservationist or your developer or you have certain feelings. That's not a legal question. A conservationist would obviously want to protect as much open land as possible and would want to see it protected in perpetuity on the other spectrum. You'd want someone who would want all land available for development. What would the blanket policy be for the conservationist or for the development? I don't think there's a good answer to that question. I think that there are exceptions to every rule it's up. It's not a legal question. I think it depends on who's sitting here. If you want my personal beliefs, I really don't feel those are appropriate as non-resident. I'm trying to speak generally in open session. Sorry. Out of the caulk and property then a total 14.4 plus the seven acres, right? Are those contiguous? They are contiguous. There is a map of them that has been submitted in Act 2.5 and they're right next to each other. They're northerly boundaries of both of those areas are well, the northerly boundaries of those areas are the former northerly boundary of the caulk and parcel. They are not all in the same boundary because Swift Street jogs up to the north and back down. There's a little jog in it as you drive to the east. Generally, the new seven acres is directly south of Swift Street after that jog. About 21.5 acres are already in some kind of mitigation situation. active 50 permit conditions may or may or may not be changed in some future date so it's not it's sort of in perpetuity until the law changes or right I would say it's difficult to change it's difficult it would be be pretty difficult to change those at least as we're sitting here right now it's it's possible but okay you go before the district commission correct it would be totally be subject to the district commission and what their feelings are on on the on the alternative I mean that's part of it too I mean if you want to you have to demonstrate a good reason to remove these restrictions and then the 47 that are prime ag acres that's not in perpetuity but it still carries some no those are unrestricted those are those are unrestricted those are unrestricted those are those are also an asset to the city for possible future mitigation one reason what it right right okay okay and then the 22 acres that we just they could also be great for a city far so okay and then you subtract that from 98 and that's what we're talking about could be good for playing fields you know there's there's a lot of good things I guess my question is when we were talking with the task force and it came up that there was a memo by Jim Barlow about this is there a memo that exists I don't know that Jim has ever looked at Wheeler Nature Park I know that Jim spent a lot of time and I helped him looking at the 25 acres to the northeast of Oak Creek Village and evaluating the permit conditions subbed that are that that land is subject to but I don't know that Jim ever I had never seen a memo that Jim wrote with respect to the Wheeler Nature Park itself the car remember that I remember that Jim did do a memo on that on the other parcel the northeast of Oak Creek yeah the land to immediately east of the Hawkins parcel very immediate south me immediately southeast of the caucus parcel the 25 it is broken down as 10 and 15 and I recall that one of those two parcels was subject to active 50 permit restrictions that require the land to be maintained for agricultural use and I think it was the 15 acre parcel but I don't have that directly but yeah it's been a while but I clarify you said the Oak Creek remediation the 14.4 acres and the 24 acres were related to Oak Creek's seven remediation but that's 38 acres and doesn't seem to add up no 24 acres northeast of no the the 14.4 acres were mitigated were restricted to mitigate 7.2 acres of residential construction along what is now Fox Run but if you look at the active 50 permit for Oak Creek but the 24.8 acres or whatever it is that was acquired by the city is according to the permit is to be used as parkland and the supposed to be brush-hogged every two years I don't have the permit in front of me so I can't say for sure I think I don't know if it's the whole 25 or 15 of those my recollection was that it was 15 but there you're talking about two different parts of Oak Creek village and two different phases the 14.4 or 4 but I think it's phase 3 and the 7.2 to build Fox Run which came later I think that the 25 acres and at least 15 of those came as part of phases one or two of Oak Creek from what I recall but I did not do the research or go back and look at my research on Oak Creek to really get into the meaning of those permit restrictions and what can or cannot be done on those parcels. Thank you. Andrew did you have a comment? I just said one follow-up. Are there any land other land characteristics on the property because it's subject to Act 250 that might create hurdles for any sort of development on the problem? Sure there are I my understanding is there's a lot of wet area particularly in the northeasterly corner of the Cawkins parcel that may or not make the land developable it's if it's pretty wet or if it's classified as class 2 well and it's going to be very hard to develop. If it's classified as class 3 they may be developable subject to other wetlands mitigation. I don't know what the classification is or what the delineate if those wellings have ever been delineated to determine their extent or their classification. Okay any other questions? I would suggest that maybe we have in a future meeting not tonight an executive session to get our answers. There are some other encumbrances that would make putting at least portions of the property in a conservation easement very difficult from the legal perspective that I'd like to advise the council on in executive session. I can tell you all about it at later time. Right so we can plan that in later March. We can't do it at our next meeting. Is that its town meeting right? It'll probably be March 19th. March 19th? Okay. This is very helpful. Thank you. Oh thank you. Thank you. Well and then let's get a map then too. Yes. I can provide you. I'm trying to picture these parcels. I can pull the map out of my packet right now and provide it to you. Unfortunately I don't have the electronic version. You can pass it around. Well I'm for the executive session. We really would like one. Certainly. Because this is a challenge for me. Okay. No it is it's very difficult to think about conceptually without having a map in front of you. I agree. Okay. All right thank you very much. Thank you. Have a good night. You too. Thank you. Okay. Item 12. Briefing and discussion regarding CCRPCRPC's ECOS plan. For Shaw our representative and Charlie Baker is going to. And I apologize that we're an hour late but. We have no. Sometimes you know people bark and you gotta listen. That's good. Good evening. I'm Chris Shaw and this is Charlie Baker the executive director of CCRPC our County Regional Planning Commission. You already have it loaded. Thank you Andrew. So I came in tonight because we were having a public hearing tomorrow for the ECOS plan. The ECOS plan as you know is our regional version of the city's comprehensive plan. So we do this at the next level up for all 19 communities in Chittinette County. And it's going to have some tweaks that I'm going to go through for you here. I've been somewhat close to this because I'm on the Long Range Planning Committee and we've been tackling part of the three elements that you'll be seeing tonight. It isn't the whole plan. The whole plan is just like your own city's comprehensive plan in a very large booklet with maps and all detail that I'll refer you to. We had written comments that were submitted on the plan by January 5th. And so we're doing a public hearing tomorrow night six o'clock CCRPC in Winooski. And then we'll see how we go from here. We're going to go to a website. If you want to look at the plan and read it in its fulsome 278 pages or I think we got it down to about 115. We have to save paper. And here's our schedule. We're going to do public hearing tomorrow night. We're going to work on the comments that came with it. We've already worked on the comments that came with us from January 5th when we were submitted written comments. The public hearing tomorrow we're looking for public feedback, public oral comments. We'd be happy to take any notes you want me to put into the record tomorrow if you guys find anything of note. And then we'll have a second public hearing on May 16th. And then hopefully we'll adopt the final version of the plan on June 20th. The CCRPC has got an action plan for what we're going to do as you guys would with the planning commission for the ECOS plan. We've got all our lists of strategies and actions and project lists included in it. And this will be our focus of the next five years. This plan is going to be a five year plan. This will be working on and this trickles down to what you guys deal with every day. The Unified Planning Work Program, examples of which you're working on this year for South Burlington. The number one priority would be your bike and ped access that we're working on because we're not so much about cars these days. I was on the active transportation committee and we're trying to find the intersection bottlenecks that we get around Chittenden County and improve them. Because we want to make it easier for people to get around on foot and on bike and other ways to do it, even segue if they had that. So number two was as we did the planning visioning over here at Exit 14 for all the crossings that we had for bike and peds over there. Because it's been pretty horrible for the college students and anybody who's ever tried to navigate over there by Dorses Street going on over to the Sheraton. Number three, these are UPWP programs that we're working on here in South Burlington through CCRPC support and this plan. The land value, the return of investment, the efficiency of infrastructure. So I've noticed that you had that on the back of your agenda for today. Yes. Well, it's being addressed. So it's the number three priority this year. So you're going to do a study and really quantify that? That one actually is proposed for fiscal year 19. So patience. That has not been decided if and how to pursue that. That one gets a little more complicated. It's a five-year plan and the money probably only goes about. We did the UPWP one year at a time. Yeah, one year. Okay. And then number four, the Williston and Dorset Street lanes for bikes. Number five would be city center parking and management. And number six would be the National Resources Land Development Regulation Standards. And I think you're getting a tweak tonight on that. Were you not? So those are what we are all, how it all trickles down to South Burlington with the UPWP. We're going to support multimodal development in our areas, plan for growth and protect our rural planning area through municipal plan and bylaw assistance. Act 250, the next 50 years, Brownfields, which are of course the polluted, not superfund sites, but places that have oil and stuff in the ground that are not quite to the level of superfund cleanups. But we need to. Not Primag soils. Not, well, they could have been at one time, but we didn't recognize them. And it's pollution. It's not like black gold, Texas tea. No, it's more industrial uses, but it's not the. Where is that field? Field sites. Yeah. Gas gas. Drill baby drill gas stations would be the standard way of looking at revenue. Right. We're going to invest our transportation system to maintain our existing system primarily, but also to address safety and congestion, improve intelligent transportation services, expand our bike and pet facilities and transit services. You've seen downtown Burlington has done so well and transportation demand management, which I'm going to defer here to Charlie. Keep trying to figure out how that works. Yeah. It's really reducing the demand for people to drive. So it is a lot of the bike, pet transit type of services. We've been great on supporting housing development. We've been doing well on that assist municipalities with enhanced energy planning implement the lake Champlain total maximum daily load program to help clean up the lake. Our stormwater systems have been doing a wonderful job on that. I think we're heading shoulders above the rest of the communities that are dispersing stuff back into the lake. So South Burlington should be proud. And when you put some money into the upgrade of the Bartlett Bay plant will be in better, even better shape. In fact, I think we'd leave the pack. Emergency management. This is the regional dispatch that CCRPC has been helping with the lead provided here by South Burlington's management. Thank you very much, Kevin. And I think these are all the buzzwords for AHMP, which is the all hazards mitigation plan that you guys approved and saw most recently. I was on that committee primarily concerned about culvert replacement and flooding and river corridors and things of that sort, which with our changing climate are going to become even more of an issue over the next 20, 30 years. We've seen it from Hurricane Irene, Tropical Storm Irene and the washouts that happened from there. We're getting ahead of that, which is good to know. And we have tons of culverts in the state that need attention. And you can see any big washouts in Jericho where they have dirt roads, what happens to their infrastructure. LAPC are local emergency plans. We've got a great operation centers for that. I think ours is the key for Chittenden County. Are we not, Kevin? What's that? The local emergency plan? Our emergency management center? Our center is available. Available? Yes. I didn't know if we served for the entire county. No, we did not. We served for South Burlington. For South Burlington. Well, thank you. And the LEOPS, which is local energy operations plan, how we're going to react to emergency actions, weather events and stuff of that sort. We're going to support efforts to improve population health and do that by making our walking trails. We've done a great job of that, our bike trails. Monitoring advancement of the autonomous vehicles. We don't know what's going to happen in the next 10 years, but we know something is going to happen. We just want to be more flexible and nimble with that. We're going to coordinate with the municipalities on the ECOS annual report and scorecard so you can see how we're doing on a quarterly basis and be able to get feedback on what's going on region-wide. And of course workforce development through actions that continue to monitor and the demographic shifts. So here's the plan. It's a five-year plan we last updated in 2013. And we've rolled in three updates, which have been the energy, the economy and the transportation. And I'll go through those in a second. But the main overview is that we're going to do minor edits to the Future Land Use Plan. The Future Land Use Plan is often a fuzzy map as we do it here with our own planning commission. So people don't get too excited about seeing boundaries that are clear and cut because when people look at maps they want to immediately find where they are in the map and then find where the boundaries are. The Future Land Use Plan is very fuzzy looking out at 100,000-foot level and not getting that sense of detail but saying, we want industrial over here and we want residential over there and we want open space and green space over here. So we're going to be doing minor edits to that. Forest integrity has come up because of the disparate nature of town forests or pockets of forests that aren't really serving a function very much like wetlands if they're disconnected. Health intro strategy to number five, I think that relates more to the opioid. Yeah, I think we're just updating how we're talking about health in Vermont right now. And I should mention the forest integrity is a new requirement of town and regional plans that the legislature adopted a couple of years ago so we're adding language to comply with those requirements. So can you just expand on that a little bit in terms of... I mean I sort of understand the term, the integrity of these forests. Chris was sort of saying we have stands in different places that aren't connected to somewhere so they lose their integrity, is that what I would... This is more about maintaining the integrity of the swaths of forests that we have. So if you think about Vermont, I mean a lot of it is going down the spine of the state. Yes, yeah. Is where most of our forest land is and a lot of it is already in state forests or if you go down further south in federal forests. But does that include particularly precious stands of really old trees that are surrounding... I mean they're not connected to anything anymore but they just haven't been developed or cut down. This is much more about large forest acreage and it's really much more about habitat than it is about the individual trees. I think we can address that with our local planning commission with their maps that they did a few years ago where they identified the secondary and primary habitats which were really very helpful for identifying if we had any old growth that were left here in Clay Plain forests along the Muddy River. But I think that as you can see like Frederick Olm said, it's green necklace around Boston. If you keep your forest lands intact that benefits a crew to the next generation rather than pushing in a development here on a dead end and pushing in another one. Right. Okay, so you're really looking at the bigger picture in this. So the things that I worked on here is the MTP and the CEBS. The MTP is the Metropolitan Transportation Plan. It's required by the federal government and it's the one thing that we have money for and it's fiscally constrained. The other items within this ECOS plan are generally visionary as our own comprehensive plan does and goal oriented. But the MTP has a budget if you will. But it looks out for a good period of time and it gets updated every five years as this plan will moving forward. The CEBS is the Economic Development, Community Economic Development. And that, I'm sorry? Strategy. Strategy. And again, that's something that needs to be updated along with the ECOS plan. We've now sort of rolled them all into the one package here where we put them all together. They used to stand as separate or they've come in as new. The MTP used to be a separate deal that we would update every three years, I think it was. Every five. Every five. But different cycles. Yeah, so we finally get the cycles aligned. So they'll all be on the one comprehensive plan now every five years moving forward. And the energy plan was something new. That's a new requirement again. So the third piece, we have the MTP, the Economic Development and the energy. And that's what I'm going to go through here as we move along. So Enhanced Energy is the first new subject. And this graphic, which is a little hard to see, but what is showing on the left is the number of homes that are needing weatherization in Chittenden County and the numbers that are out of the total homes. So you can see about two-thirds of the homes need better weatherization. We have long ways to go in that. Efficiency, Vermont should be able to help us on that and any incentives that we can craft. We sort of track that understanding that it is a big cost of living in the Northeast in a snow belt. And then the development that we've been doing a good job here on is making sure the areas planned for growth get the growth and the rural areas don't. And that's, we've done 86%, I think, is what it's saying since 2012 have been put in areas planned for growth. It might seem like it's a lot of development if you're over there in Williston where I work. And it's true, but that's sort of smart growth. It's near the infrastructure. It's near the sidewalks. It's near the stores and people can walk to the services that they need. There are a number of homes going up rather fast, but that's concentrated development where we have the places for it. And it reduces traffic, reduces energy needs. And overall, I think we can have a good quality of life. This is the other piece that we spent a lot of time on. 90% of our energy needs to be from renewable sources by 2050. This was set by the state. This is a huge number that we're probably going to have a very hard time meeting. But if you don't set the goal hard, the bar high, then you're never going to get there. And the bar is there on the left where we have a high target, low target, and our current capacity. We could spend hours going into it. Basically, I think the bottom line is South Burlington is on the hook for somewhere around 22 megawatts of solar energy, which is doable. It would take up potentially about 107 acres. If we put it on solar farms, we are not counting putting it on rooftops, which would probably reduce parking lots. Or parking lots, which would reduce that 107 acres. As you can see on the right graphic, what you're getting is the amount of land assumed for good solar installation in orange and the total land area of Chittin County. So it always looks to me like when I looked at that graph that somebody skewed it a little bit. Because when we actually... Well, there's very much good land. It looks like, ah, we should have no problem putting solar farms out there everywhere and getting the whole thing. And of course, that's not true because if you look at the detail maps, local constraints and state constraints really cut down that number quite a lot. So when I say South Burlington, you know, if you looked at our local constraints for the habitats you just described, the forests, the clay plain forests, and all the things that we've identified, it's tight. And we probably should be looking for more rooftop installations and parking lot installations. Because not everybody's going to want a solar farm in their backyard right then. But they could put it on the roof too. We talked in the plan about those sites, about rooftop or parking lots and brownfields being preferred sites before you get to open fields. So here is your energy peak as far as transportation. The total passenger car is about 100,000 here in Chittany County. Only 600 are electric or plug-in at the moment. That's all? It's like every other car is a Prius, really. And there are eight Tesla slots over there at Healthy Living. This is only counting the plug-in type cars. So hybrids, if you're a pure hybrid and you don't need a plug-in, you're not in that number. And the important thing to note is kind of in the black italics where to get to 90% renewable, we need 89% of passenger cars to be basically electric. So that is a big shift. But we have 32 years, correct? Exactly. So it's very possible. We don't figure out what to do with the used batteries. I think that's the other flip side, isn't it? I think there's a lot of technology embedded in that. But you can see all the automakers are starting to talk about moving towards all-electric. Sometime over the next five years, ten years. Cities and countries are going to go all-electric too, right? Didn't Sweden or Denmark or somebody say they want to be all-electric by? Or even London said they wanted to have all-electric vehicles in 30 years? I had an all-electric house, the second house I ever bought. It was one of those Gold Star electric houses. That was way ahead of the game. On the right there is our heating graphic with the $27.41 for the BTUs with oil heating versus the heat pumps. 1758, I have a heat pump in my house. I'm quite pleased with it. That does run on electricity. But it's more supplemental to my gas heating system at the moment. Why didn't you use natural gas in there as well? Well, that was one of the comments. So let's talk about that. One of the comments that we got by January 5th. Look at this. Twenty people read this report and commented on it. Riveting out of the 20 communities or 19 communities. But they offered two comments at least on it. Some of them were technical in nature and were addressed. The municipal siting constraints were about the solar energy and about the language. So the weakness of the suitability language and the municipal siting constraints are both around that solar. So we put solar and what about natural habitat and what's an appropriate place to put it. Spent a lot of time on that and the language gets real lawyerly. So we sort of finessed that and left it so it wasn't going to offend either way. Because there are state and local constraints that are pretty straightforward. And then there you are. Natural gas versus the 90% renewable. That was the question. I don't have an answer. I think that we're not going to be putting Vermont gas out of business by 2050. Although if you read that in its pure sense that seems to be the goal of 90% renewable by 2050 is that the state of Vermont has said we would not have a Vermont gas there. So if I can just address that for a moment since I met with Don Mandela a week or so ago about this. And you said don't do that to me. And I think we want to be clear. You know the state legislature asked us to develop a plan to meet the state comprehensive energy plan goals which is and what's in legislation which is 90% renewable by 2050 for our region. Natural gas is a heavy part of our energy portfolio. What the plan says is to be 90% renewable by 2050. We really can't use too much natural gas. We're not advocating for that position. We're just reporting back to the state what it would take. And so you'll see a lot of language in there about the market. This goal is unrealistic. That ties in with like, yeah, if the state really wants to achieve that, we need to have a different conversation about natural gas. However, if we do see natural gas as part of our future, then we're not going to be at 90% in Chittany County. So you can't have it both ways. And so that speaks to the second line from the bottom is that the goals are unrealistic for 90% renewable if natural gas remains as cheap as it is, you know, in the cost of solar and the cost of wind and the cost of hydroelectric continually are higher than natural gas. It's unrealistic to expect that you can meet that goal. And then, of course, the best part would be if we had a consistent and enforceable energy code. And this is where you guys can help come in and the state can help come in and all those. He doesn't care about that. He's standing up. So what's wrong? Moving on to the CEDS. This is the Economic Development Strategy. This slide just basically shows the increase in median household income over the last seven years. On the right, the number of bachelor's degrees in Chittany County versus the rest of the state. How much extra money you would make in a STEM related field if you studied science, technology, engineering, and math. So hopefully you youngsters are getting on those engineering programs and doing your math homework tonight because they pay more. Look at that difference over a lifetime. That'd be quite significant. That's annual. Annual. Yeah. And then here's an interesting graphic that also relates to what's happened over the last few years. If you look in the far upper right there, you have 2002 versus 2015. And you'll see that the number of employees living outside Chittany County has increased. Therefore, the traffic coming in every day to Chittany County, if you haven't noticed, has increased. And anecdotally, I've talked to people in my travels around the city. And they are moving to Fairfield or Georgia because it's cheaper up there. And the cost of gas and their driving to here is not as much of a consideration for them as the fact that they can afford a home up there. And they can afford land. And it's more of a livable lifestyle for them to raise their families there. Families. Key word. Yes. I would say autonomous driving vehicles are going to exasperate that. People can hop in a car and get work done. They're going to do larger commutes and it's going to spread more and more houses out to the countryside. For your long-term planning, you said that was something. We'll talk about the transportation next. Well, we'd like to reduce that trend, but there's the trend. And it's going the wrong way, at least I would say. But you guys, we all have this power. And then in the lower right, you're seeing the cohort change for ages. Of course, the greatest number of people changing from the last 10 years has been in the over 60 set. So that we're getting more of the. You're getting there. You're getting there. And we actually got a boost in the 20 to 29 year olds. It must be our new legalized marijuana. So this is covering a 10-year period going back to a period of time where UVM and Champlain College in particular both had significant increases in student population. So we kind of have a big influencer there because we have such a big percent of our population as students. So when they graduate for the next two years, they become ski patrol members and work at the level ski hills. That 13% number is really discouraging. 13% of Vermonters aged 20 to 24 are unemployed and looking for work compared to 3.3 for the general population. That's the problem where V-Tank can't get new kids to join them. There's this whole segment of young people that are like either not properly trained for jobs that exist or have not been funneled into a way to make them interested in those jobs. So there's something we're not doing right because that's a huge number. Well, and I have to give Vermont Technical College a lot of credit for their Williston campus in putting something in a population center rather than down in Randolph where the kids can get those skills. And the centers for technology in Essex and the Burlington Technical Center and those regional vocational technical high schools that do a great job about getting kids who are not necessarily going to study books through eight years of high school and college but are ready to go to work and fix things and do computer graphics. They have great programs for dental hygienists and optometry over at CTE in Essex. Those are wonderful feeders because the optometrists in the area are dying for people to help them with glasses. And more people probably need glasses now than they did a hundred years ago. Well, we're all aging. The other members just point out there that 40% right now we talk so much about the skills and having to do some sort of post high school training program over college and 40% of our high school graduates go on to no further training or anything. And so I think there's a big issue that I think the State Workforce Development Board has been raising about how do we back some of that up like other countries do into the high schools so that they are prepared for jobs needing an additional layer of investment, right? I mean, all those programs cost money. They're taking out student loans, all those things. I heard a great anecdotal story at work about a young man who went through the welding program at Burlington Tech, right? And got a job in Burlington at a firm that wasn't as appreciative of him as they could have been. So he moved to another firm in Williston. And that firm loves this kid so much that they have promoted him. They've given him a raise. He loves working there. He loves doing the welding. The work is interesting. And that's the kind of story that I like to hear where the service gives the kid the skill that they need and then there's an employer willing to receive that person, train them and bring them up into the workforce so that they can be doing that for as long as they want, you know? So 15 people read the economic development dropping down from obviously the first item there. And they talked about industrial lands, perhaps having more of them. Better broadband, of course, which has always been a state priority. Smart growth is an economic development strategy that if you put the density here in Chittinac County it pays benefits to everybody because people will stay here. They'll spend their money here and they'll provide jobs here where the density of population is. And rail freight, which apparently with the idea and passenger freight that we've heard about going up to Montreal as a potential for both problems when you're dealing with Shelburne on this one probably where those comments were probably related to Shelburne's issues with the salt shed and you go further down the line where they have the sightings in Rutland and all that where they talk about, oh, we didn't know that all these hazardous chemicals were just sitting there for weeks at a time on a sideline. So that's probably what those comments are about. And, of course, permitting being burdensome, which is still the bane of businesses wanting to expand here in Vermont, is they go through the Act 250 process and it just sort of sours them on the whole issue and makes it difficult for them. I ran into that experience 15 years ago with a company from Canada that said, oh, we want to expand in Milton then about six months later that it's so much easier in Canada to expand what we're doing up here. Nope. My one pet thing I will say about that is that it's really the permitting system. We have three layers, state agencies, the district commissions Act 250 and municipal permitting. Other places it's an integrated system. Here we have three often separate systems permitting. And so that's my one great hope for the Act 250 commission that they actually make some progress on integrating the permitting system. Well, that's been a 30-year project. I mean, we were talking about that my first year in the legislature, which was a long, long time ago. Yeah, not a new issue. I've heard all 251 cats, right? The MTP is the Metropolitan Transportation Plan. And, of course, this one as we pointed out is a financial plan for identifying how it's going to be paid for so it can't be as visionary as perhaps some of the others. It's got to be less fuzzy. And it covers all these priorities and strategies there. I don't need to read them to you. So I'll ask my question. Go ahead. One of my questions now. I really see that the bike path network is a county project. And right now we have this patchwork of towns and cities working on it individually. And it comes at a cost, right? Where we need expertise. We also are all competing for the same grants. It would make sense, I think, to have a more regional approach to connecting the bike paths and making a regional network. We have a bus system that is regional. We have, you know, our utilities that are regional. And I see bike paths as another regional, you know, conceptual design, but also in terms of the personnel, you know, the people power behind it. It makes sense for there to be a centralized. I'd like to see that with the airport too. There we disagree. Last year we did our regional bike path plan. So we do try to look at the whole network. And, you know, there are places where there are gaps. You know, sometimes those are at town boundaries. You know, and those are the places that we try to, you know, work with those towns on next. I mean, and you guys have an example here with Williston. And I'm going to forget. It's a muddy brook. You know, right? Marshall Avenue to Kimball Avenue. Yeah, that connection is one of those. You know, and so, but the governance structure we have in Vermont, it really does rely on towns to play a critical role in making those connections. And there are those tough ones where you're crossing a river or a creek. It's usually where we end up with real connectivity issues. Or a highway. Or, yep, yep, whatever physical boundary or barrier there is. There's something like an interstate, you mean? Yes. That's another good example. But that's Megan's point, though. Yeah. Is that now it's so bifurcated city by city and you have your own bike plan. And, you know, maybe you bump into someone else's trail. So you can get a little bit farther. I'm just saying that the regional bike plan, I'm just saying that the implementation still does rely on, yeah, it is V-transfunding, but a municipality asking to complete those connections. So I hear your desire. I'm not sure how far along we can move it further than we have been, which is, you know, I think we've been working very well with the town to try to help support making it, getting those connections made. But there are challenges. Well, that's good to hear. So you are facilitating that. Where a person over here has expertise, they could help. I think it's about 80% for the how to get across the interstate. I understand. I understand. But I don't want the 20% to fall on just one municipality because I think it will serve a lot of, right, parties. Look on the next slide. Oh, you cut out the funding. No, the funding is at the next one. Okay. Yeah. So it's the next one in ours. We didn't get as many pages. We're just trying to make it to try to answer a little bit is the number of projects that our municipalities are working on in terms of the bike ped network is a tremendous amount of projects. You guys see what you're doing. Every one of our, particularly this, I'll call it the urbanized area, if you will, have a similar number of projects. So that network is happening. It is more piecemeal maybe than people would like. But it really, I was really amazed when we looked at this project list at the bike ped list. And honestly, VTrans was, they were like, whoa. And it was like, that is what our residents are demanding in our municipalities. And you hear it from the folks down further down Dorset Street. They want safe paths, but you talk about two different bicyclists if you take a bicycle for an instance. The casual bicyclists who would not want to be on the roadways that represent probably 85% of the biking population, they love our bike paths. And the 15% that will want to be commuting to work on the roadways and will want the separate lanes, as with complete streets that we've implemented over there on Wolfson Road. So they're both equally important and they're both equally going to take advantage of whatever connections you can make. And so they're screaming for those connections from Dorset Street so they can come up the Cider Mill so they can come up safely to Dorset Park in Veterans Memorial Park and go to the high school without getting clobbered if you're a 14-year-old kid or a 16-year-old kid. And similarly, you know, the other folks want to be able to get on their bicycle if they're commuting on a safe way to get over to Williston if that's where they work and not have to, you know, do this as they cross that bridge on Hinesburg Road and cross the bridge over there, over the muddy brook between Williston and South Burlington by the police station, hoping that they're not going to get clocked by a truck, you know, because it's a very narrow bridge and the connection doesn't exist for a safe bike lane over those bridges. So absolutely those connections are vital and Williston might stop at their side of the bridge and South Burlington stops at their side of the bridge but nobody's really addressing the bridge. So let's take another example instead of the bus on the public busing system. We have, for instance, our stormwater office that is now contracting outside of South Burlington. We have some, we have an office with a lot of expertise that is able to serve other communities as opposed to having the same level of expertise in each community, right? It makes sense to have some kind of consolidation, right? We're talking about that in a lot of... So you want a regional bike? I haven't heard a lot of towns bring that up but I think that's something for us to think about. V-Trans is doing a nice job on their state highways, the Hinesburg Road. They're planning to widen that border that is now probably gravel and chuck hold for six inches but they're trying to make that shoulder three feet, I believe. And you can see last year, Route 2 going through from South Burlington to Williston with bike lanes. So I think there's really a lot of positive movement, I think, in those efforts. The one on the other side will note that V-Trans took some of the transportation alternative program money for these two years and said we want to devote it all to clean water. So there's definitely some of the money that was available for some of these projects has been reduced. I think it was last fiscal, maybe this fiscal year or next fiscal year, confused at which fiscal year it was started but there are definitely two years where there's reduced funding for bike-ped projects because of clean water projects. So we'll have to... Let's do that in the short term in the hopes that long-term water quality revenue gets developed. That's still a debate in the legislature. Two other things to note on this is just 70% of transportation funding for the foreseeable future goes to maintaining the system. And I think that's a pretty realistic number and then autonomous vehicles, I think you started to note Tom, when we were doing some of the initial modeling, there is a real possibility if we're not managing that change well that we're going to see significant increases in traffic. One scenario we did had an 80% increase in traffic. It's counterintuitive, but with autonomous vehicles it's going to drop you off and then you normally would leave your car in the driveway. Now that car is going to turn around. Solver parking problems, but it's going to increase the usage of our roadways so extensively. So there are other opportunities, yeah. It could free up parking in downtowns and city center or an example. But we've got to figure out how to make sure we're managing those zero occupancy vehicles or zombies, thank you. I want to plant a seed too. I really think the state needs to look at license plate assessed tools. So that's a lot less infrastructure. You don't need to pay for people, but we could start assessing to car registrations based on license plate usage. It could assign usage or fees based on usage of our roads which most economists would support. Based on mileage. So whenever you go through major intersections it captures your license plate and you get charged two cents and so whoever is using our roadways get assessed the fees. When the cars are autonomous, they're all going to be communicating to each other and to the system, to the traffic lights. That data is clearly going to have to be there. So we're going to have more shunpikes? Yeah, shunpikes. So again, 20 people read the MTP draft and there were a ton of comments. They were getting tired. Well yes. Far more comments certainly than we had on the other ones. More transit obviously including rail. Talk about autonomous vehicles as we just did. This was based on Don Cummings asking me to put this comment and you guys did your resolution, thank you in August. Along with the state of Vermont to adopt the climate action goals that correspond with the UN Paris Agreement. So that's the direct result of South Burlington's input. And I think Charlie can tell you if we've I think the board is going to take that issue up. I don't think it will be necessarily part of our plan but as joining it as an organization so that will be a separate conversation for our board. Not all comments make it into print apparently. So no new roads. Reconsider the Champlain Parkway and interstate expansion. These would probably be comments that were against the Champlain Parkway and interstate expansions. Yep. More roundabouts. Yes. Which are something that we haven't used enough of in Vermont. More and better bike facilities which were I think getting better at and more I'm not sure of this last one here. Ambitious safety targets. This is really trying to get down to. I'm not familiar with vision zero but apparently. This is really trying to get down to like zero particularly bike pedestrian. Accidents. Accidents. And fatalities in particular. Because we've had a few. Yeah. And that's pretty much it. So. We're having the hearing tomorrow night. Hopefully people will show up in person other than the. Twenty people who read the first part the fifteen people read the second part and the twenty people who read the third part. Could it be refreshments? Will it be? If you get there early. Chris I read it but I didn't comment. So you've got twenty one. And we did send it out to every household in the county that's out front porch forum which is about sixty thousand. So it did go out to everywhere we could get it out. The one thing I do want to mention on the transportation thing is in a key geography. In Chattanoot County as you know. And one of the issues that came out of the transportation analysis I'm sorry I skipped over this. We were looking at it before is looking at the interstate. And you know what and I know this is nothing new to the city council and. You know one piece of it was we are going to it looks like if things continue that we will have to do some widening between fourteen fifteen. That segment you know I think a lot of people would already feel it is over capacity. There's some other things that are going on there but at some point in the next thirty years we need to go from you know what's four lanes to six lanes in that segment. Route eighty nine. Yes I eighty nine. The interstate. Yep. Yeah. On eighty nine. Cool Chester fourteen to fifteen. Yeah from from the South Burlington interchange. Into Winooski. To Winooski. Yeah yeah it does get hairy. Yeah it's the bridge right the bridge already has three lanes but the three lanes. And it has so many accidents now. So that and the other thing was it did look like it helped the overall network and the interstate to have an additional interchange improvement somewhere in South Burlington. We've never really looked at improving exit fourteen and what that could be improved and how it might be able to incorporate bike pad. We're looking I mean we have that thing going right now to look at a bike pad crossing but we've never looked at how to improve that interchange. And the other possibilities would be twelve B or an interchange similar to what the airport was looking for I think they called a fourteen N. Right. But one of those three things might you know it might really be a good idea in the long term. So we're talking about next year just but that's a really long process. All right we all know how long those really big projects take and so we're talking about starting that that initial discussion up next year to start that and that's going to take a little while we've looked a little bit at twelve B when we're looking at the Tilly Drive area. This would be a little bit you know kind of broader interstate you know from sixteen to twelve look. And of course you know for better or worse it's all about South Burlington at the end of that. And so. Right there. It doesn't work as well. In terms of the regional system and we can review some of the background. Well one eighty nine you ought to at least be able to do a U turn so you can get on and off. Did look at that it doesn't work as well. Sorry to me to start a big conversation. But this is this is important talk. But this is a it is a real big important topic. I think to the whole county to the same but also to South Burlington and so we'll come back at another time and start talking about that. I think it'll be you know maybe summertime September maybe. So off of transportation a little bit. I'm concerned about the thirty to fifty nine age range dropping in our county because that's when you have children. That's when you are at your peak of earnings. And. I'm hoping that the C.C.R.P.C. is really seeing that as a nut to crack. How can we bring those families back here. And I know you've been looking at affordable housing but I think there is also family housing to to consider and I mean this is a song that I sing pretty often here with the loss of family housing we've had in our city that it's just it's very difficult to find that level at that price I mean family housing with a little piece of land. I really think that people even today that that's what they're looking for when they start to settle down and they're in their peak earning years. And this is not a characteristic unique to Chittany County. This is Vermont. Right. I mean I mean actually Chittany County looks very different because of that spike in the 20 somethings due to the college population. So. So it is a big issue. You know some of it's about affordability. So it's about being you know it's being a sizable enough economy. Right. I mean I think one of the big challenges we have is the trailing spouse issue. You know like if you're starting your first or second job and you're trying to advance up the career ladder. You want to have other jobs to go to. And coming to a small market we're at an inherent disadvantage. No offense to anybody. It's just the reality when you look across the country the larger metros are growing and small metros in rural areas are not. And it's you know it's part of the nature of the beast. I think it is the fight against that. And I think that's what you see you know the state agency of commerce working on how do we you know market Vermont you know there may be technology may solve our some of the issues you know being able to work here remotely and work for a company in a bigger city. So there are opportunities that we need to explore. Housing is definitely part of it. And there's a lot there's a lot that can be done to help improve that situation and something our board kind of looked at two years ago was how do we encourage more families to come here and tech jobs and things like that. So all of what you see in here is all related to trying to make that you know the bike pad network. People want to have quality of life to move someplace. So it's all interconnected and all trying to achieve those same objectives. Right. Right. And and I understand the stem. OK. But please don't knock the nonstem and just look at the dollar figure. I really I just science without conscience is nothing. I just want to say that. Steam sounds just as good. It hasn't quite taken off. So I think. Just to make it comment back to transportation. And this is going to sound really pro kill. But you know we're a pass through community. And so as we you know make the interstate better and all these ways to get through our community to go somebody somewhere else we're left with keeping those roads maintained and dealing with sort of the traffic issues without it seems to me sort of a financial recognition by the state. You know they'll invest their money into another on and off ramp for the interstate potentially or widen it. And then all those cars go through our community to get where they need to go. And it isn't always here. It's somewhere else. And then it's Burlington right. Pardon me. It's kind of here we're Burlington. Right. I say all this I'm a resident in South Burlington. You all know that. If you don't know that watching at home. So I feel that pain and share that but you know I think Burlington is and South Burlington are creating you are creating your destinations you know that's what you're trying to do in cities. We certainly are trying to. Yeah. Yeah. And the one thing you know and talking to V Trans I think we have conversation very similar to that with V Trans like don't don't talk about widening the interstate if you don't have anywhere to go at the end of the ramp. Right. Right. You know and so this is not about the interstate. It's about the system including route to or Heinsburg Road or you know wherever you get off has got to work and get you someplace where you want to go. So on the I don't know if this is encouraging or not but South Burlington is a destination you know and we were looking at the network. It wasn't all people trying to go to Burlington. It was other places in South Burlington that people are trying to get to as well. Maybe it's a little bit of Wilson or Shelburne you know mixed in there but you know I think it was positive and I think they were hearing that you know and the money that earmark money for the exit 14 signal systems you know that is to me a big investment that VTrans was understanding like you need to do things to address traffic on the arterials in South Burlington. You know just working focus on the interstate that isn't going to do it. So anyway just well good. I'm glad. I mean that's just sort of a pet peeve but it's just kind of you know we've had our whole city separated by interstates for the greater good. Yeah, it is a big barrier. I think Tom's toll tax system might be a portion because it'll come along to replace our gas tax. We'll have toll tags and everybody be tracked so that we can get a cut of the 90% of traffic that flows through South Burlington towards the city. You know that wouldn't be bad. Now we could pave a few more streets and fill those potholes. And if I can offer thank you for your patience 30 seconds on a pet peeve of mine related to Destination City is where you're talking about the U Mall and its you know potential for reinvigorating itself if not with an H&M or target. Target. And a library. For now. And a library. That city place has been so named for Burlington's redo of their town square mall. And I think it's South Burlington's responsibility. I'm glad to have Monica here to maybe take the reins from the planning department. We would be well advised to get ahead of a developer in coming up with a name or way to brand that center by where the U Mall is. City center place. Yes. Special place when you think of your bill at the door and you guys can come up with the names or anybody can come up with better names than I can. But you have task corners. You have maple tree place. People can refer to both relatively easily and know where they are. U Mall is pretty. Church Street has the same with Burlington. U Mall I don't think is going to pass the test of time. So I think it's time that the council and the planning commission get together and figure out a way to come up with you know south corners market corners market south market square anything that is our own as opposed to something imposed by somebody else the shops at Dorset you know place. You know wouldn't quite work for me. All right. So thank you. What is Rodeo drive? Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you Chris for all your work on the RPC. I'm glad you like it. Great job. So thank you. All right. So moving right along we're on item 13. The new circular wireless request for a license agreement for small cities. I can't get it. I can't get it. I can't get it. I can't get it. I can't get it. I can't get it. I can't get it. I can't get an AT&T signal here for some reason. Wireless installations on city land. Just kidding. You're not kidding. No, it's true that there is a middleman. They'll lose it all together. For you from AT&T? No I'm not. My name is Will Dodge. I'm an attorney at Downs Rockwood Martin. We've represented AT&T since they came to the state in 2008. So I'm here to try to I was just going to say so they we got approached by new singular several months ago about kind of this new small cell technology which you will explain in some detail and so will dodge and I have had some discussion now over a license agreement but ultimately it's council decision what to do with city property. So coming here to explain kind of their their proposal current license agreement just a couple of broad terms for the public is it ten currently at what's being negotiated it's a ten-year term with automatic renewal for four consecutive five-year periods unless either party provides written notice of termination $250 an annual rent for each location indemnification and insurance requirements against all claims related to cells compliance with FCC and other regulations and broad terms that is what's currently being proposed and is it two or three sites that so three sites right now okay and I'll show you where those where those are located but just to give you some sense and realizing that you guys have been getting a lot of information and thinking about the the CCRPC presentation this is just one little tiny speck of the aspect of you know better broadband coverage and dealing with changes in technology so cell sites that we're all traditionally used to are usually antenna arrays on cell towers or on buildings like the the some of the some of the buildings in south Burlington all have antenna the rays on sides of them sometimes they're in stealth chimneys and those are traditionally what's built most of the cell system throughout Vermont. But what's happening now is a migration to that doesn't eliminate or obviate the need for those macro cell sites as we call them those ones that are forming the network now but the basically take the signals that come from those bigger sites and boost them and also just deal with traffic from so many more people using smartphones for so many other things on a regular basis as well as what's starting what you're starting to see which is sometimes called the Internet of Things or IOT where machines are also trying to basically access the Internet at different times on different networks. So small cells and then you have other types of systems distributed antenna systems are often used inside big buildings like hospitals and Wi-Fi hot zones we all know from going to Starbucks which are much kind of smaller a smaller form of densification. A small cell are basically little sites that usually are on some combination of either transmission structures distribution lot distribution poles like basically your your your electrical wires outside or also street lamps and they usually cover a radius of about 1500 feet but when you string them together in the right place they basically help to deal with the effect of lots of people at different times all using their devices they only communicate with macro cell towers yes in other words what they're what they're really doing is they're taking the signal from the macro tower and they're they're boosting it and they're distributing the traffic that they're that's trying to go back to that macro site in such a way that it doesn't basically results in you dropping a call right so let's say you're in your car and it looks like you're in a traffic jam and for some reason your cell site your cell signal may die or your call may get dropped whereas the car in front of you somebody else still has theirs going well it's all because of the tower itself trying to just deal prioritize different traffic so densification is to is to trying to deal with that in the small cells are an internal positioning requirement to point some entity towards the macro cell tower not as much they're basically they're basically unidirectional so they're more like an old omni antenna that just goes out so could they communicate with more than one macro cell yes absolutely but usually they they end up yeah it's gonna depend it's gonna depend where the placement is but I think usually they're tied to one particular site so to give you an idea I actually don't have there's very few small cells in Chittenden County right now there's no AT&T small cell so we're coming to South Burlington first but this is a Verizon small cell that's over on Susie Wilson Road and you can see a couple of characteristics basically you have that canister antenna as it's called that's sitting on top of the pole and then about three quarters down the pole you have kind of a almost what looks like a speaker or maybe an air conditioner that's that's basically the brain of the antenna that's what's doing all of that's what's doing all of the work so the installation itself is basic doesn't involve any type of ground disturbance you're using both existing electrical wires and existing fiber wires to get it hooked up and you're relying on the that existing pole more than anything and most of these as you're gonna see are going into some kind of existing right-of-way so either a state road or a municipal road so they do require more than power they require some fiber yep they do because they're because they it's part of part of the reason that's done is for redundancy and reliability in other words to make sure that they're always working even if there's some type of outage so not all of them do it just gonna depend on the the individual network so small cells you know I've talked a little bit about this about densifying the network or sort of bringing the network closer to its users the main reason for this is you know in this chart is kind of sort of a dramatic illustration of the fact that data usage just on AT&T's network has increased 150,000 percent since 2007 since the iPhone was invented so densification and some of those other systems like distributed antenna systems and Wi-Fi is all basically trying to deal with this and we are expecting that this is only going to increase over time so that's why these types of small cells are becoming much more important within Vermont the the sort of the legal process for dealing with small cell deployment if you're going on to an existing utility distribution poll what happens is the the company like AT&T in this case will get an agreement with the poll owner so with Green Mountain Power you'll go through the section 248 a process and if there is any type of excavation for any purpose like if you have to maybe replace a pole with a new pole or put more fiber in then you'll go to your town for the section 1111 permit the right-of-way permit on a municipal street lamp or traffic light it's basically the same thing except of course we need an agreement with the town to to do the attaching then we'll go through the 248 a process and again if there's any type of excavation think for most of the sites that we're looking at right now there wouldn't be but we would we would come for a separate right-of-way permit so it's a pretty straightforward process so what are the areas that we're talking about in terms of South Burlington's owned or that the yeah the city-owned infrastructure we're looking at the fire station light pole so to go to your question Tim that a Mac a small cell site here will actually improve things in the fire department and in the town hall so that would be a good thing for the high school to the high school I think is I think as well the other one that the second one of the sort of municipal pole locations is basically at the vitamin shop so kind of across the street from or you know right going into the you mall and then the third one on the bike it was the light post but that's the vitamin shop has a pole has a pole right in front of it basically so it's so it's in the city right-of-way but it's just in that's just you know where it is in front of that particular shop and then the third one is down you know if you know where the transmission lines are right now that cross Dorset Street this is just a little bit further south of it so not too far from from where we are right now 400 Dorset Street I'm forgetting what the name of that that business oh it's actually a city I think it's the city building that's right yeah yeah so right in front of there so on all of these we're not proposing to change these poles in other words we're not going to replace them and build taller ones basically just like the example I showed you the canister goes on the top and the equipment cabinet kind of goes in about three quarters of the way down on the pole so what kind of area do these these three poles seem kind of close together so what area of the city will this service really it's fit it's 1500 feet but the way that it works with in conjunction with the macro sites is that it's going to improve things all the way up and down Dorset Street in particular at least these three locations yeah and those business now we have a couple of others that are on GMP distribution poles and we've actually sent in some 248 applications these are already sites that we're working on with GMP but there's one on Kennedy Drive another on Airport Drive another one down on Shelburne Road and one over on Grandview Drive where it's all going to be I think the one on Grandview Drive is actually a privately owned pole within a condominium and it's in that sort of pretty dense area oh your macro cells are on top of your store yeah there's a macro cell on top of the store there's actually so there's there's one on top of the AT&T that's where most of what's covering Dorset Street now is that plus the right exactly you've got a little bit from Joy Drive there's also the the we call it the Midas building but it's actually the Credit Union building that's around the corner as a site over there I feel like there's two or three others that I'm forgetting no I don't have any pictures of those macro sites AT&T periodically does antenna adjustments on that site so if they replace them out or add different antennas and that'll all continue to go because that's that's just the way the technology works is there's antenna upgrades to deal with more data but this will have the effect of dealing really with the problem of traffic and dropped calls and just not very good penetration into some of the buildings and you know dealing with especially times of kind of peak traffic so high school graduation right all those periods of time where there's a lot of people all trying to use their phones at the same time my prediction and this is a this is just a pure predictions nothing I've spoken about with AT&T is that when Market Street develops that's going to be another area where probably out of the gate AT&T will approach the city to say let's just we're anticipating that's going to be dense so let's just put up small cells right from the beginning in this height of an advantage so on top of a five-story building it'd be more effective or not really I mean with this the these light poles are pretty much the perfect height because they're they're trying to have again bring the network closer to where people are to just get in especially that in building coverage that's already working with what's out there from the macro sites but for some of those polls that you showed they're already like either black or brown would you be willing to to paint the can so that it's the same color as that pole I think that's something that we might talk about with the the the we'd want to look at it in each individual case I think it might be possible that we can paint some things but not others so in other words we we may be able to paint the canister but I'm not sure if we can paint the operating box HVAC yeah exactly exactly the DRB question well I mean it's like you if you get it if you get a you have a nice light pole that's a cobra head right you don't want to spoil it with a silver can on top of a bow I totally get it if you can avoid doing that it's great where are the holes in South Burlington because I guess I'm surprised where you want to put these well again I think I think the I think in terms of in building there's probably there's a lot that the that Dorset Street will have so the you malls not great right this building not great but in terms of other areas of I would say it's actually really over on Shelburne Road like trying to go to you know into Shelburne there's there right right and then which sorry which one Queen City Park oh really some of the parks yeah once you start going down Dorset and Spear you just lose as you hit get towards because once because there's a the the silo on Heinsberg Road has got T-mobile sprint 18 T Verizon there's like they're all packed on that thing right but that's the last entity I know of as you go south on Heinsberg Road there's something else I don't know where it is no there's really nothing so the best thing that honestly I'll certainly take back these comments but why near Airport Drive I honestly I don't see any well again Airport Drive's really just dealing with dense with I think densification you know it is probably a lot of it is Alice French fries yeah and comfort comfort words during the summer periods right when there's that many people all going like after a getting ice cream like monsters game whatever the RF network people for New England are saying like what's going on with that spot huh because you've got cancers on top of the hotel the Quinta La Quinta has kind of that's T-mobile it's T-mobile yeah but you have you said the credit union which isn't pretty definitely helps but again this is why densification comes into play is to deal with just traffic so are we supposed to do something yeah so right how did we get T-mobile did that go through the council I don't think it's different we had we had a thing before us like a month and a half ago right we're there on Dorsey Street there was a whip tower that's still it's being appealed right and that was that was different that was a again that's not on city property this is different because right yeah the license but there were some other de minimis you know changes right yeah yeah 247 a and that was yeah under appeal was it there one on Wilson Road to further down yeah like at con the contact paging yeah that was a that was a T-mobile beam microwave beam going somewhere but I don't know where in the interest of time and maybe a motion to get seconded tonight I move that the council authorized the city manager to negotiate and enter into a license agreement or agreements with new singular wireless at the proposed two locations in and owned by the city I just amend that for the three three locations three locations in and owned by the city so that's on Dorset those are the three locations the fire station in front of Vermont shop vitamin shop and then near the school I'll second it but I have to just other sure so I'm sorry is there a way to modify that to talk about the the painting of the can on the top so that it is it's so late I can't think yeah like one of the pictures they gave us that aesthetically complimentary to the poll that it resides on so the motion just authorizes the city manager to negotiate so we can instruct him that that's our wishes it's a really good stop ladder it just hang on and I'll do my fire truck poorly she'll do you meant you're mad okay understood I did second it yes so it's been moved and seconded is there any further discussion I ask a question you certainly may do you anticipate doing any more these in South Burlington and why are we just talking about the three well the agreement I think the way the agreement strapped it is that we would just add them we would just add that you won't see permission and then if we want if we want to add another one and it's okay with the city then we would just use the same same okay what is my authority under this motion just for the three yes yep as the motions in front of you right now if we want to have a larger discussion about a policy of how we're going to handle these license agreements as they come in I think that's a different different action another question for more discussion so 250 per 11 per unit per year correct okay so I have no idea what the going rate is for micro or small cells do we have any indication is whether we're being paid fairly for this we've reached out to try and try and determine that better if you have any this is what I'll say about this issue because obviously you know you should you should look at it and that's a that's a fair thing to do the way that the modeling that's that's been used for this around the country is that those rates are pretty competitive so for instance the city of Indianapolis just to take one example you know obviously much greater metropolitan area so there's going to have more sites but even there they're charging $50 a pop and what I'd say about that too or a thing to keep in mind is part of what AT&T and all the other carriers are trying to do is to keep these costs reasonably low so they're not just passing them on to the consumer right whereas what I think where the model was kind of headed for the first decade of cellular was they would keep paying higher and higher rents and so your price would keep going up so even though we're not a regulated utility some of the same price dynamics takes place and that's why that's why that's what's being offered for those installations we do post a $5,000 bond and we'll also pay for like all the what's called the make ready work so if we look at a poll and figure out wow that poll is listing or there's something wrong with it before we can do it you know we obviously take care of all of that work and we provide the insurance and also you know indemnify the city for any type of problem that happens with this and the agreement makes very clear that like city's not going to be on the hook if a truck plows into one of them and there's some kind of interruption of people's service like that's that's that's on us right one more question I'm sorry it's one more so does the contract provide in any way does it restrict the different types of protocols that could exist in this box in the poll to being only for GLTE or 5G or Zigbee or any of those other types of protocols there's there's no restriction on the type of her call that could be utilized by that communication device and you can you can understand why that would be the case is that we couldn't get into a situation where for the whole entire country we'd have to negotiate with each municipality I just I just want to know because I don't know yeah okay I'm done and maybe painting you'll cover yeah yeah okay so is there any more discussion you ready for the vote all in favor signify by saying aye thank you very much thank you enough okay item 14 there should be quick we did meet in executive session and we discussed the appointments to the South Burlington boards committees and Commission so I would entertain a motion to a point in squirrel to the housing trust fund committee Brian Sullivan to the DRB for three-year term Daniel Seth to the city charter and Jonathan Pence to the parts and wreck committee moved second any further discussion all in favor signify by saying aye okay thank you item 15 January financials excellent I think I still got some voice left here you received the December narratives from department managers I didn't receive any follow-up questions on that but I'd be happy to follow up if you have any from the narratives that were sent out last month and in terms of the January financials you received those where 58 percent of the way through the year right now general fund expenditures are at 56% revenues are at 53 so we're in good shape there on the expenditure side most of our operating transfers have been made vehicle purchases have been made some of the bigger things that they hit the expense lines though the winter hasn't been extremely kind to us we're well into our budget for salt for diesel fuel for overtime and we've still got a little bit of winter laugh we'll see how that goes all bond payments have been made except for the pension which usually comes about in May on the revenue side we get some good news the building and sign permits are right where they need to be and the fire inspection revenue is about 50% of the way there surprised and already higher than what we were all of last year which was encouraging to see so all in all we're in pretty good shape in the general fund enterprise funds sewer is at 41% in expenses 50% revenues and stormwater 73% revenues 109% in the expenditures mainly from carryover I think Justin explained that pretty well in this narrative carryover of the projects from one fiscal year to the next so happy to respond to any questions are there any questions I was just curious why we haven't paid the Winnowsky Valley Park District they seem to be the only one in that I think it I think it hasn't been reflected yet I believe that that was approved in the warrant though as maybe two two warrants ago okay so it's just the way they bill okay so in the warrant there was the $205,000 for the new factor jet yes what what is the vector jet vector machine is that the the big truck that suck this that's not sucker right now you had to buy a whole new truck or just well it was in the fleet replacement schedule was okay what happened to the old truck to get to get sold I think they got credit on some of it okay some of the turn in for that what did you call it it's not sucker yeah sorry I'd like to strike that well it's got this big tube that just goes into the I know it just eliminates it so you're just jealous that you don't have one and the new truck body that was 75,000 what that's from another public works a different truck also a planned fleet replacement on that one for Justin yeah Megan no questions whoa I want to see the numbers on the police obviously I've already set that before good enough thank you okay number 16 this should be a quickie this is a acknowledging receipt from the Planning Commission of the draft amendment to the land development regulations an accompanying report and we requested to consider warning a public hearing on draft amendments to the LDRs I don't have anyone here on the 19th Paul's not here tonight all the council really knew needs to do is acknowledge that you've received these amendments proposed amendments and warn the hearing all right so I would so we've all acknowledged that we've received them yes there's two points that just wanted to tell you about because if you're going to be warning public meeting it's something that public may want to discuss at that point something came up in our public hearing and the Planning Commission had a split vote on yes three three yeah so do you already know about all that yeah okay I personally do yeah it was written in they they described they on the buffer on the buffer was on the buffer change it from five feet to eight feet no eight feet he didn't want it to make it five yes yeah it's complex but it yeah the the the the document you have says eight feet and there was a split vote on whether we agree to change it to the five feet and one of the reasons we didn't is because it was not a warrant topic so you can choose to the Planning Commission split the vote so the Planning Commission put it forth with the eight but it there's the whole the t3 area the market street development is planning a second and they had to work hard to put in their front porches so they were saying that the additional feet would mean something to them for their new building but also because it's not about spot zoning for all of t3 to propose their recommendations include allowing for carriage houses or smaller multi-family now and so there's the thought that maybe additional footage would help in the other t3 properties as well so it was not something that we warned to discuss and we have the initially the the additional footage in our current document right no that keeps it eight then it's wider in this and the question is half the vote said should it go to the five feet so so your draft document from whatever discussions you had prior to that had agreed at eight and then this developer came in and said wait a minute I can't do my new development unless you change it to five and so the vote there were only six people okay I don't know there were six of us one person was not there and I don't know but the but the conversation just to be clear was not just about the one development we looked at the whole t3 and thought there's reason that going to a five foot could make sense but but it was a split vote so the point is you have the opportunity to have a public hearing and I don't know if that comment would come up or that would be good to hear all right so so we've officially accepted this or received it and so I would entertain a motion to warn a public hearing on the draft amendments to the LDR development regulations for 7 13 we've seen wheels in 7 30 what was the one you set before yeah that was the newest since that's the news what time 7 30 we make this 8 o'clock we gonna spend more than half an hour on new since I don't think so whether it's 7 o'clock or 6 o'clock in the morning that's the only issue right okay so we make this 8 o'clock just found to be somebody that comes in the wants to talk about it yes okay so moved okay second any further discussion thanks all in favor signify by saying I second to the last item other business so we have I'm going to run to the men's room all right take it we'll wait for you we'll wait for you you're fast it's a door listen and packed meeting this is a statement that there are no pending appeals tax appeals under the 2017 grand list we have certified this every year Todd gave me this that there are no such a deal good to period of the semester yet I would be on the table not make it in 15 seconds I just want it for the record the gold goes to seconds Schmeckens yeah we convene I guess the South Romansen City Council meeting Tuesday February 20th we are at the item other business and I believe we have two possibly three other pieces to discuss one is the process for advertising and interviewing and selecting the chief of police and qualifications and qualifications so sure I'm not going to quote Ben Franklin but a republic is a precious thing and we we are a public body we are a democracy and the police is one of the pillars of our democracy and I truly think it's in our interest to make this process as public as possible police chief really does determine policy for a force and and determines climate in a city and having learned about police chiefs the selection process and hiring process elsewhere I really want us to have a discussion about how Kevin had foreseen it what our role in it is could be is there room to still influence the conception of that process I think it's it's something that the public would like to take part in meet the candidates but before meeting the candidates actually putting you know you know just like we do in our visioning meetings what kind of qualities they would like to see in our police chief because the police chief of course is a leader for the force but like I said really sets a tone in the town and I really want us to have that discussion I also received and I've not met him I know his parents I received application materials from someone who was the assistant commissioner to Bill Bratton if you haven't heard about Bill Bratton NYPD commissioner who really turned things around there and he was a native remonter grew up in Underhill went to Harvard followed a career path and then really heard the call for service and it was after 9-11 and he decided that he wanted to join the police force and he went through the New York State system and join NYPD and I think he served from 2016 to 2015 something like that and last position was assistant commissioner and he moved up quite quickly because of his qualities and his vision but also his leadership qualities and because the ad which we hadn't seen until I started looking for it which was only that I know of in seven days was listed to have what is it a title three Vermont licensed police chief sorry level three thank you that he felt that he was excluded from the process and he therefore contacted me and just asked is it worthwhile to submit an application I'd really like to move back to Vermont here are my qualifications which are quite impressive and I I do I want to have an explanation as to why we would close off our process to people you know only in Vermont we are the second largest city in the state we are dealing with big city problems whether it be racism and diversity and tolerance whether it be opioid addiction and drug trafficking and that is cross-state lines whether it be human trafficking and the sex trade I mean there are huge issues that go beyond our borders we are not a backwater we are dealing with big city issues here and I'm not saying that we get back water candidates I'm just saying why do we limit ourselves to only police officers in the state of Vermont and I did do some inquiry and I know police chief in Burlington is from out of state will stand is from out of state Rutland is from out of state maybe Fairfield Fairfax I can't recall is from out of state and I I just I know it's possible we've given ourselves a year and I I don't understand why and I really think that we might be you know reducing the pool and and really you know turning away candidates that are public would be interested in at least to hear from and have you know have in the running so somebody's prepared to remark on this nor is there anything warrant for this discussion maybe the meeting in the future we could talk about the process we've gone through in the past and what we're looking at this time for selection I would like that very much but I will say this this is an incredibly awkward you've just on television advocated for a friend of your family no no is that a hire no I said this is we cannot have this conversation I can see that concern now how can I consider haven't you this person people know who the applicants are Kevin I don't know the happy to talk about this now we we've we talked about what we were going to do to advertise and to hire I brought this to you for this discussion the reason we're choosing to hire within somebody who has a level 3 certification is there already quick pre-qualified to be a police officer and a chief in Vermont if you don't have a level 3 certification it can take you months to get that certification before you're eligible to be a chief in the state there are many qualified police officers in this state who can serve with distinction as a chief of police here I did not feel it because of the pool here at or needed to go outside of Vermont to look for a candidate when we have many candidates right here who know Vermont who know the laws their level 3 certified already and I did not want to spend three to six months in a certification process for a chief from out of state who may arrive here and then decide Charlie said it before trailing spouse problem spouse can't find a job and they decide to move elsewhere I don't want to take that risk and we don't need to take that risk because there are qualified candidates right here who are interested in this job first of all I want to correct something I do not know this man okay I do not know this man I'm just saying I received an application I know his parents but I do not know him from Adam I'm not recommending him I'm just saying from my untrained public eye he's worthy of the public's consideration I am not in a position to hire him but I am advocating for the public I am okay that's the distinct I am sure Kevin that you have received applicants that people have talked to you about and so I don't think that what I am doing is jeopardizing or compromising in any way opening this process to candidates from outside of the state and again I reiterate that this is a big city problem in 18,000 population and when I read about the processes going on in other cities they are public processes and they're they're not limited I just I want your explanation as to why I guess we would limit ourselves because it's it's as it's been described to me the only thing that you cannot do if you do not have a level 3 licensure is you cannot arrest for felonies no the police chief does not arrest for felonies no that's totally untrue I don't know who's telling me that you can't serve as the chief of police in this state without having a level 3 certification across the board it's not just about arresting for felonies it's about having this licensure level that means that you know the laws of the state that you've been through a a course around the laws that you've received field training for this 15 hours look I don't want to I just chief of police let me be very very very clear about this let me be very clear chief of police works for me I will determine the process that we go through to hire chief of police the city manager is different the city manager works for you having whatever process you specify for city manager is fine but I will specify what the process is for the chief of police because I understand what that department needs and what I'm looking for what would the public process not bring to you I mean I why close that off I really don't understand because do you want me to do that for a public works director or a fire chief or an ambulance chief I think fire and police are key well then then we've completely abrogated my role under the charter to make hiring decisions for my staff no I'm not gonna open that door Megan and I'm done and that's it I'm not gonna open that door it's my job to hire people if you're dissatisfied with who I hire then get rid of me but that's my job and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna delegate that out to a a committee of people it's not gonna happen okay so you don't want to go Seattle's route that's fine I don't want to go Seattle's okay that's fine but could there be a process where the community tells you its goals and priorities that they like to have you consider I know the city's goals and priorities for policing they are they are apparent and obvious to us I don't need to form a committee to advise me on that with respect I understand my job and my job is to oversee a police department so I am I know what that police department needs I'm disappointed by your demand for control and I'm not taking away the hiring it's not a demand for control it's a control by right under the Charter it's not a demand it's not it's not a power play it's not a demand for control the Charter specifies very clearly what my job is and I'm not gonna abrogate that to somebody other than myself I didn't ask you to abrogate it I asked you to explain why that's my and and I can then respond that I'm disappointed because I think that the the process is something that could be you know conceptualized and could take you know various forms and to be to be quite honest and I I think it's important for this to be discussed in public session this is a public body having it was it only advertised in seven days seven days other paper on our website because I didn't find on the website but it just doesn't speak of transparency it speaks of we know who we want we're gonna just you know kind of go through the motions and you know when you started when you spoke to us you were talking about 12 months and that would give us lots of time to to you know look at different candidates and that and and 12 months is a long time and I don't think that the process that you've put into motion requires 12 months and so I feel that there's a disconnect between how you spoke to us about your approach to this and the actual process that has been put in you know into effect and I think that I'm not the only person who thinks that okay well I understand and I respect your position I understand respect your I'm not changing my mind but I understand and respect your view there's no side to pick but I would I would say is to your original concern and I would love to hear what that's what we've done in the past and I hear that out of chiefs have been chosen in the past but I'm curious how in Williston did the city manager take the full ownership of that hiring process because Kevin works with the chief like a lot I mean we see the chief once a quarter maybe maybe more frequently who knows so I'm a big fan of precedent so I'd love to know how selection processes for chiefs of work elsewhere but I would also say I have similar concerns about saying a specific name it almost seems like we tainted I didn't say any name okay I didn't say any name when chief football was under consideration that process I remember there was a call for input from the public I don't know what the criteria were for how they would what pool of applicants they would solicit right but once that pool was established I know I wrote a letter to somebody because they because they asked it said what qualifications do you want in a chief of police for the city of South Burlington and I was very specific on three points but they had to be and we were fortunate that Trevor fulfilled all three of those and probably everybody else's as well but but that's the only thing I remember about his selection process I don't know any other details I think other people's recollect but I just like to press it I think we've had more public outreach in the past and I don't understand why it's under such tight wraps I'm gonna call Charles after and ask him about this yeah but you recall being asked curious how you would how you would want that envision it to be translated by Kevin so let's say you know 50 people in the community write letters and they say these are the qualifications and they're all a little bit different so there isn't I mean there probably would be some overlap I mean maybe it would be helpful to know what criteria or or values that you are looking for because we may all shake our heads and say spot on that sounds like all the things that this community needs versus not you know really knowing I mean I happen to trust your judgment and I think you have worked with Trevor really closely and have a pretty good sense of where this city needs to go and where we've been and how to get there but it would be helpful to have more understanding of so what are you looking for are you looking for Trevor to or and you know there probably are things that Trevor doesn't do well that you want in the next one I mean that's why you know people retire because they sometimes they just feel like you know these are the issues you know someone else needs to carry this water I don't know I'm not I mean I don't know what his shortcomings are I know what a lot of his positive things are happy to talk to you but I also think you know willing to share not in public not in public okay see I don't understand that Kevin and I don't understand why we can't put down every name and their qualifications for all of the applicants out there because that's not what I'm gonna do okay why because because this is my job I know what's needed in that department if you want to talk specifically about what's needed in that department it becomes a personnel matter that we'll have to do an executive session which I'm happy to do but I'm not going to change the process I'm going through to hire one of my staff it's just not going to happen so I appreciate it I just explained it no you said you weren't going to share it right but there should be qualities I would share with you in the executive session happily I propose we do an executive session next meeting well that's the next meeting is kind of the 19th that's a month away executive session now I mean can we do that with an unwarded item yes you can but I I I I guess I'm I'm really flummoxed and so maybe it's required because to be quite honest it kind of is I don't understand I really don't I mean in my line of work you have to be transparent and I'm not a public entity I mean I guess UBM is a public entity right okay but everything has to be transparent and the equal you know opportunity and affirmative action everything has to be transparent and going beyond your board never hires the faculty right oh I'm not saying I would hire I'm saying I just want to kind of understand the process and understand what the role of the public could be in that process because I think the role of the public is important and as Tim says and I've heard it elsewhere people have been asked before and it is an expectation and it's not going to happen this time I don't know how much more clear I can be than that I'm sorry you're clear but it's I will happily talk with you about an executive session not in a in public session happily talk to you about this and explain this but this is my decision it is my authority under the charter I'm not going to change my mind on this I'm not so I just wanted to be discussed in public that's all Kevin because it has to be discussed in public I think that people are asking people are here here is my public statement on this I'm gonna hire the best qualified person for this job this is a highly sought-after job in this state it's a premier position in large part because you provide the resources and the taxpayers provide the resources for an agency to allow it to do the very best it's a elite organization and they're highly qualified candidates that we're aware of in this state who want this job and so I'm not concerned about a extremely highly qualified candidates stepping forward and applying for this position I'm glad I'm sure that is the case I'm just saying it's unusual the process is unusual and I had to ask these questions because I've had people ask me these questions okay you for the UVM example I think of Bill Falls and I think Bill Falls was an internal hire and everybody was like he's a perfect candidate he became the dean of the largest college on campus I think maybe that's somewhat is the case here Kevin knows the field he knows a perfect candidate I don't know Bill Falls was selected by the faculty let's make it clear okay we do not have we did not have the president or the provost hire Bill Falls and select both it was the faculty who pushed Bill Falls so it was a public process and that's what is unusual about this is that it's top-down and nothing goes out to the public and that makes no sense to me or to many people well that's this is the first I've heard of many people haven't contacted me it's the first I've heard of it but let me be very clear I'm not changing my mind on this you said that so I'm just I'm publicly stating my want to have an executive session now I'm perfectly happy to do that would you like to do that can we make it you reorganize on the seventh would you like to have it then it's better than the 19 okay that's that's fine that's acceptable okay yeah 6 6 30 here 6 or 6 30 I think it has to be 6 30 yes that's as soon as you can count yeah who is available and that's running so March 7th at 6 30 there'll be is it we can do that after the reorganization and then provided two people are reelected yeah three people maybe someone could just select us I'm sorry to be catty but I I'm really quite stunned okay so next will be survey the airport survey sure and I'll back off on my two but Megan has been working with Paul pulling together the survey questions around what they want for noise abatement we're working with the data we already collected well adding to that the follow-up yeah that weren't that were left off or we hadn't thought about it or phrasing them and I think I was impressed with how sort of neutral it was but really addressing the questions that I think would be really important for our tax membership to have when they get to the point I think in April to sit down and as a advisory committee my understanding is that's when they're really going to be duking it out on what's in and what's out and what they're going to recommend to because the next meeting in March is as I understood it they're going to get the information on what is a burn kind of thing but ideally I think they would have time to look through the information and digest it and put it into you know their preparation for the April meeting that was the thinking behind getting it to them before you know yeah I just don't know feeding can but and you know I guess the discussion is are you you know willing to have the administration send it send out the survey or do you want to look at it and work on it or I mean it's the questions are you know all the ones we want answered it really lets people make decisions and and give feedback and as I recall in our last discussion it was going to be let's just have the people who live there I wondered with Kevin whether we should include maybe as a separate the data but query the the school personnel and I don't know if David wants to do that they have a different perspective perhaps because they don't live there but they work there so you know what's your pleasure Tom I just have one comment and looking at the best results I spoke with Coralie briefly about this I see you Kevin I would to have confidence in these results and be able to share these it's important that we can we can ensure that they are residents of the chamber I completely agree absolutely we need to know their addresses and their names but we can still anonymize the presentation of the results but we can have Coralie a trusted broker of this so it's just really important to be able to stand by and say this is residents of Chamberlain about like one person answering fifty times so we should do a paper survey that's what we did with these terrorists I think we can do it electronically yes as long as we record well happy it's cheaper and faster but how do we do it and and assure that it's only it's really that person and not those people in that neighborhood so that's where you have to record the name and the address but you could then do some quality checks so you could confirm with that person that they did complete the survey you can tokenize it all I'm saying is we want to have confidence in this data to really stand behind it we want to think about how do we ensure that these are qualified responses from home owners with these terrorists we did paper based and then we knew it was residents and it was it was very that's a small number of people and a lot of people will not put the stamp on and go to the post office and you know I think that sending it out as paper is fine but letting it come back as paper or letting it come back electronically I think giving the people a choice so oh well if you could if you sent them a postcard and gave them a serial number to type into exactly you would know that you got that that person's back wherever the code is I don't know how you they could just type the first thing could be what's the code that was on the postcard they type in XYZ 10 right and then you know that that address got it and they're responding for you 99% sure that's it would still be an honest it's called tokenizing yeah I mean that you would get it back and there would be a there would be a you know a serial number and the first question and you would be able to relate that back to what address it was you you would want to remove that from when you tabulate your final results you know you're gonna be tabulating anyway right to find out what what the you know the averages are per question or you know the me all that stuff so the question is I mean do you do do would people mind you know just letting us verify that they are the ones that indeed did answer the they were invited to do the survey and we are verifying that they're at they were invited in the first place we just happen you know we don't have to know their names unless I mean because there's gonna be anonymous stuff like you know what's your income level how many people live in your house is there's no demographics at all is it be a household survey that's a good question so if it's a household survey it's already kind of anonymous you know are you gonna ask them a kind of maybe you could say how many how many adults live in the house and it's only to homeowners right yeah one per household ask how many people live there owners or rent or the occupant well only the homeowners can talk about the ncps right renters don't have a say all dependents don't have a say right so so postcard a postcard and then maybe you could say how many adults are in your home right and have them affirm that they're homeowner right and then if you see two of the same serial and you can connect that to well there are two people in that home to adult I think one of the questions did ask are their children in the home that wasn't the first survey are we still dealing with the original survey or no well no these were additional additional questions that were really focused on the different programs and and then the aviation agreement and the navigation yeah navigation okay so you I mean you your postcard the code on the postcard could be the street address and the first three letters of the street or something like that Kevin's time is limited what I would say this is an important issue to the city and if this means that we want to their pollsters there are companies that could do this for us I'm guessing it'd be less than five to ten thousand dollars I know we're not made of money but this is important enough that rather than task it to Kevin if this seems bewildering if you don't have the capacity for it I would support engaging with a professional polling association that could with these parameters perform this task and give us I don't think it's necessary because the questions are simple they're straightforward it's just based on you know that the NC based on Paul's presentation basically is where the questions came from you know if you could have two NCP programs which would they be if the navigation agreement I had a threshold would you be more likely to sign on to it's not clear my mind what your end goal what you really want to do with this data is but if that if you just like all thought that the they should take back and the council is going to need to take a position on what you want in the NCP right and so if you're better informed with what the neighborhood wants that was the whole idea this was pretty concrete I mean you could go through it I mean it was great it I thought gave you the answers from the homeowners of all the options that were available which ones you like you could pick multiple ones you could it wasn't simple yes or no it was well I mean it was simple but it was specific enough so then you could tabulate it and say you know there's 85% who think this way and there's 65% it would go these two different ways there are paper-based forms that can be fed through a machine so you structure the questions and any scales you can recapture so if we did do 900 paper-based forms per household I know that it's possible for us to put it in a format that could be then tabulated it's rather quickly and send a no address necessary or no postage necessary envelope with it yeah we could do that but I think some people would be more likely to respond online so that's where I like the airport to pay for this too yeah I'm serious thanks ago is going to pay for the wall well so it sounds like we want to do this but the question is do we want to who do we want to test this with yeah I mean well how many households are there 900 900 so I mean so one scenario as you said out 900 postcards someone's got to go in and initialize you know these codes on 900 postcards that's no fun the other thing is if it's only homeowners we can't necessarily send it to that address or to the address there because somehow we got to figure out who the owner resident just do it does it have to be the homeowner can just be the person that lives in these areas easier but I think they actually turn they describe them as residents I don't know as they necessarily I mean some of the questions obviously for insult to be part of the noise insulation program you have to own the house right the renter however you could have since you live there you could have a sense of what if you're going to continue to rent what you would want as a resident to make the home more livable which is a postcard 20 24 print one up is it we just did it for the budget books right right right yeah yeah I got one that was the whole city though right there were eight questions I believe I think that's too big for a postcard no I was saying the postcard would give the URL oh yes yes and maybe or not it may be a code maybe you would say and when you and the first question of the code was just give us the first three give us your your number street address in the first few letters of your street name or something like that and then you would have to wonder you know I mean so if you don't want to go address every single card with a code separate number you're gonna have some printing system that has to put all the addresses on all these cards anyway right are they gonna be hand address or they're gonna be machine address we sent them to a mailing house oh oh okay which we could do again but well if they cost one or two bucks a piece in the whole scheme of things that's I mean I think it's important to have that kind of the airport's not gonna listen to us you know full day that's the idea tease out these details from the populace so we can say well we're your chance each of us are not residents but this is the response of you know whatever it is sixty percent of the residents so we're advocating on their behalf and these are the things that we want in the program or they want in the program or not clear then that's when you I guess negotiate as a tax member more information why don't I reach out to a direct mail house that we use and find out or get their recommendations or a survey company and find out what the best most effective way is to deal with this specific issue because they do it they know what they do and Megan's worked on the questions and Paul is you know finalize the questions and he might be able to just smooth the navigation yes question to those grease this skid well you might want it abusing it again okay I think that's we have to spend the money it takes to really get the data we need I want to fence with now this you want to go door-to-door insta surveys well it might have some value yeah he does surveys I believe we had a motion to adjourn I don't know have we covered every item so do you have enough information or sense of where to go and then and so our next meeting which is the sixth which is no the fifth the only thing we do is the discussion of the budget presentation two ballot items did you want to now tonight no no on that night well usually there's like a forum a candidate's forum but well what we emailed is what I thought we could do is just a five minute I mean that's what the school board candidates did last year right when there was nobody running you're in a pose it just kind of for five minutes kind of said what they were about yeah it's just telling the public you know a little bit about I don't think I got your response to that oh okay I know it's late really quick I saw a bunch of signs in Burlington opposing the regional dispatch I don't know if you saw those but so there's a really opposition against it vote no where did you see them all over the place Burlington so I don't know if we I strongly support regional dispatch and if that means give a hundred bucks to vote yes for regional dispatch I'm all for it I just don't want to organize it so tell me where to send the check so but as city councilors we advocated on behalf of the Tiff and we we pretty signs we put in our dollars and yeah yeah I don't know if you have thoughts on that but I was surprised to see the signs look good idea motion second pardon paper hi hi yeah I'm sorry I won't bring any materials tomorrow come in but I would still like to keep my appointment with you 10 what's left of it and 30 she's like it's not going to be late like oh it's good I'll see it okay