 So I'm Mary Riley and welcome and thank you for coming on the first night of winter. So thank you. We have a couple of announcements and then we'll go to the public comment. So there's a sign-in sheet and it would be really helpful if everybody could sign in. Okay, Gail will be circulated on it. Gail Rafferty is also on the steering committee. Matt Grady. Matt Grady, hello. I'm trying to find everybody. We have Michelle Moraz who's there and Joel is right over there. So thank you for coming. Our next meeting is December 5th. So that's the first Thursday in December. We thought we'd go all out and have a nice holiday meal. So if you have any suggestions on food, we try to have gluten-free. We try to have vegetarian. Prime Rib. Prime Rib. Let's see what we can do. Do you like that? This is good. Okay, this is from Marcos and Wilson Road and they do a nice job. Any suggestions you have, even not just the food, but any speaker. Feel free to send any of us an email. Our emails are noted on the agenda at the bottom. So we'll write it down tonight and give it to one of us. Yeah, okay. So I guess that's all. Those are the only announcements. I'd like to start with the public comment. Does anyone have any comment? Hi. Can you introduce yourself? Sure. I'm Kathy and Pippi Kaplan and I recently just moved to Burlington. And I moved here, I think for a lot of the reasons that many of you live here. It's a sanctuary city. It's a very humane place to live compared to the rest of the state. So I wanted to sleep with you a little bit tonight about an issue I think that is important to me and perhaps would be important to you also, which is public safety. I am part of a small group of concerned citizens in Burlington and we are trying to get an ordinance passed through our city council that deals with the loopholes in a fair and impartial policing policy. That policy was adopted in 2017. It is a city policy, which is the floor. It's got a lot of loopholes that really do not benefit our community. And the loopholes, for example, I think we're all concerned as I said about public safety. We have police, if our new Americans and our immigrants do not feel safe to call something they see in their own neighborhood because they're worried about their own status. They themselves, that is a public safety issue for all of us. The second part of course is the profiling issue. We feel that we should be equal under the law and therefore wash it someone of color be pulled over, such as profiling. The third thing of course is that it diverts so much of our tax dollars and our resources. Right now those loopholes allow our local police force to collaborate with ICE and as well as the border police. And I'm just here to begin this conversation as outreach. I live in this ward and you are the constituency of Burlington and just so you understand that we are reaching out to all stakeholders, of course the police and the commissioners and we are having meetings, individual meetings with our city councilors. I have handouts for everyone if you'd like to learn more about exactly what those loopholes are and really we just want to strengthen them and close the loopholes that would divert not only resources from our town and give us a greater sense of public safety but also be the inclusionary town that our mayor speaks about and that we have the one that liked them see me after the meeting. Next up we have Sandy Houston from Champs Lake College. We've got the projects. I think Jo's going to talk a little bit about some of our quality of life. For our capital projects at UVM, the projects that we have going over on this side of campus right now, the main one is projects which we call the on-campus multi-purpose center in New York. Before you may know it now as the Terence Center. It's the new multi-purpose but also for our basketball facility project. Some improvements to the hockey arena and then improvements for our on-campus students and their athletic on-campus. That's underway now so we just started that project and that's fully underway at this point in time. We have one other project coming up on this side of campus. It's in a small addition to the music building that we have brought to the MPA previously. That's scheduled to start in the spring. So those are the major capital projects we have going on over on this side of campus. Enrollment-wise, we are at about the same enrollment that we're at last year, about 10,500 undergraduate students. And we've talked about the work that we've been doing on our housing master plan. So we have a housing master plan that we did in 2015 with a consultant, Phyllis and Hire from Washington DC. He's come back and he's done a bunch of work for us on updating that housing master plan and looking at the desires of both our upper class undergraduate students but also our graduate medical students and their needs for housing. And we recently got the results from him, the major findings of his research and the recommendations and we're vetting that internally on campus and plan to bring that to the community soon. So do you want to talk to us a little bit about quality of life? I just wanted to give you an update. I'm sorry to interrupt. I think if you want, if you speak a little closer in, we have to keep it right up at your mouth. I just wanted to talk a little bit about quality of life efforts. As we've talked about here before, we try to do as much as we can to educate students before they get to campus while they're here on campus. And then also do some things to build community in neighborhoods. Eicham Street in particular, we are working to connect people through community gardening and those kinds of efforts. Gail, Champanoia and her staff at Student Community Relations are also working with people in the, I was getting the name wrong, is it the old east north end or something like that? The old east end, sorry. Which is down near Barrett, I think street, down near Shpanska Park. And so we're doing some research on that neighborhood and what's going on there and helping people really connect with one another and at Shpanska Park neighborhoods. So in addition to that, we are paying for Burlington police patrols to happen in neighborhoods where students tend to live and officers are out there educating people and being visible, preventing, you know, there being issues and also writing tickets when necessary. And the encouraging thing is we've seen a real downturn in the number of incidents in those neighborhoods and so we think that that's a good thing that we're out there doing that. Also, just to mention, you may have heard already, we have a new president, Suresh Karamella, came to us from Purdue and he's been at, he's been with us since July 1st, so for a little while he's getting out there he's meeting with people that with some of our counselors including Councillor Paul and just trying to connect with people and we'll be back to talk with all of you I think in March. So look forward to those connections. And that's all I have. Hi, everybody. I just want to say it's so great to see so many of you out so thank you for, thanks for coming out. Great. I'm from Champlain College as I said and I just have a couple of updates for you. We are in the middle of a presidential search as some of you may have heard in June our former president, Don Lachman, made the decision to leave Champlain and at that time Dr. Lori Quinn who has been serving as our provost for the last six years moved into the role of interim president and then we also brought on Catherine Morgan, Dr. Catherine Morgan as our acting provost. Catherine has had a couple of pastings at Champlain. She was a consultant for our academic affairs team. I don't know how many more that is. I'm sorry. So she was a consultant of ours for a few years and she also was a former Champlain College trustee. So very familiar with the college. We are looking forward to an exciting year ahead. We do have a presidential search committee that's being led by Neil Lunderville and we have a community representative on that search committee. It's Tiffany Blumling who many of you may know. We have had a number of opportunities for the community to provide input and we created a presidential prospectus that's posted on our website. If any of you would like more information on that. We will be, it's an open search so we will be bringing candidates to campus most likely in the first few months of 2020 and then the goal would be to announce a new leader in the spring time frame and have them in place to start the new academic year in 2020-2021. So that's just an update there. On the enrollment side, we are fairly consistent with where we've been for the past many years. We're just under 2,100 traditional undergraduate students, about 110 are studying abroad this semester in Dublin, Montreal and other partner locations. And then we have approximately 3,200 enrolled in our Champlain College online programs. And then I just wanted to give a brief update on some pedestrian safety efforts because I know when I first came on board that was the first question I got at the board six meeting. Some of you may have noticed that on South Willard Street we have built a bump out where the crosswalk is south of the Maple Street intersection and we have kind of painted triangles on either side of that bump out. So because we don't have cars on either side of the crosswalk it's really increased visibility for both pedestrians and drivers on South Willard. And then we also will have the, I see the DPW back there they're going to be installing the rabbit rectangular flashing beacons in that same location. So there will be construction to put the the faces in in the next couple of weeks and then we hope to have those in place. They're already there? What did that happen? I mean yesterday. Thanks for coming. I've waited for those and we're really happy to have them in place. How about Maple Street and crossing on Maple Street? On Maple Street what has happened is the lighting has been improved so it's now LED lighting and that was put in in the spring. So between the lighting changes and the crosswalk changes we feel like we've made some good progress in that area. I know pedestrian safety is a big one and we always try and help our students understand that looking at their phones is not the thing to do when they're crossing the street but I think these steps definitely help in some of those locations. Alert the presidential search committee because he knows how to get things done. Yeah, he does. Thank you. We also St. Paul Street is now reopened and we're really excited about that. Cheers. On that front are retailers that are in one night for St. Paul Street some more and Perky Planet are also very excited about that. It does mean that our shuttle buses, the stops for those buses have already moved to their permanent location in front of that building and then to the side of that building. And then that combined with the Maple Street construction being wrapped up seems that we won't be taking so many alternate routes around campus to get from one part of campus to the other. So we're happy about that as well. And I just want to thank those who made that happen. As always, I post updates on events and things happening around campus on the front porch forum. So please join us for events that we do host on campus and that we make available to the public. And if you have any questions, I'm a liaison for neighbors so I'm happy to talk with folks at any time. Yes. Considering that I'm very at their element, I live on campus. I know that Champlain College has a parking policy and I want to know what do we do about Champlain students that park on our streets. You do not have resident parking. And sorry, what street? Kingsland Terrace. So we have some pretty strict regulations around where students park and we do enforce that. So I'll take down your location and make sure that I know we do control the area. We have students that are permitted. We encourage them to park in our Lakeside lot and use the shuttle system. And then we have some pretty specific areas for our students and our faculty and staff to be parking. So, did you just shoot the park park? Kingsland Terrace. I made a phone call and left a message and I also just photograph every license put on the street. Send it. I've never heard from anybody. Let's talk afterwards. And I can connect. Thanks. Kingsland Terrace, question about your shuttle buses. Besides the big blue one, how many other ones do you have? So we contract with GMT for the buses. Which means we have typically two buses at any time going around campus. And they do trade out those buses sometimes. But we are getting some new buses from GMT. What's the capacity of the two that you have, the two that you use? They're fairly large buses. And what we've had is the school buses, the yellow school buses. Do you know how many passengers those can haul? I don't know. I'm not sure. Do you keep track of how many riders there are per trip from wherever they're going? We do. The drivers are counting on and off that bus. And can we see that information? Because I've never seen more than five people on those buses at any time. I'd be happy to share that with you. There are times where the ridership is really low. But we have to aim for the highest ridership at any given time. And so there are times, depending on the class schedules, where those buses are full. An alternative idea would be to have a 15 passenger van 75% of the passengers during the daytime. And then you can have little archer buses traveling in the morning and afternoon. Yeah, and we have during the summer we alternate with smaller buses. But we have had a lot of students, especially because we're trying to get them to park down at the lakeside location. We want to make sure that students have the ability to get to campus on a timely basis. Safe person on the park. I just have a comment. Christina McCaffrey, I live here on Les Road and I work up at the Medical Center and I walk to work. So I cross both of your campuses, depending on which way I'm going. And at this time of the year, I'm both coming and going in the dark. I'm using alternative methods, which is great, like bikes or skateboards or scooters and motorized scooters seem to be a fair deal right now. And they move fast and a lot of them have no lighting on them at all. And they also aren't wearing helmets. And I'm a neurosurgeon. I don't have the downside of what happens when they take a tumble. So I guess just maybe encourage them to take themselves to work. Yeah, I think that's it for that. We do have some educational programs on campus. I know I have my free white bike share helmet that I can ride around. But that's good things for my students. Thank you. So I'm here with this safe fall open at the New Dorn that I just drove down the whole road of Safe Falls Street and borrowed the beauty and realism. I didn't even need to go that way. I went the wrong way. Okay, so next, let's see. Sorry we have I know Jennifer Green is here. Jennifer and Darren Springer of the Burlington Electric Department Net Zero Energy Roadmap. Yeah, we're back to 15. We've got a few copies. I'll tell you a little bit about our roadmap that essentially shows our trajectory or our transition to nexile energy, including business as usual, if we stay on our current path versus what our 2030 versus 2040 scenarios might look like. And then I'll hand it back to Darren who will tell you a little bit about some of these new programs and incentives. Any questions on the agenda before we get started? Great to be here with everybody. We are the Burlington Electric Department, your public power municipal utility. We have about 118 folks working either at 585 Pine Street or at the McNeil Worship Plant or some of our other generation facilities around the community. We have not raised rates since 2009. Very proud of that even as we're becoming more efficient and even as we move to becoming the first city in the nation to be sourcing 100% of our electricity from renewable generation in 2014. McNeil, the wood chip plant in the intervail is the largest power producer in the state of Vermont now that Vermont Yankee closed back in 2013. So it's an important plant that we operate on behalf of Burlington Electric and also two other utilities that are joint owners with us. For those who are unaware, we have about a little under 4,000 commercial customers and over 17,000 residential customers. 60% of our residential customers are renters, which is somewhat unique in the state of Vermont. We have a high rental population for our service territory. We serve the entire city of Burlington as well as the airport. And these are just some facts and figures for us. We do have our peak demand comes in the summertime. So some of you may sign up for the Defeat the Peak program for Burlington Electric. We'd love for you to do that to help us lower our demand in the summertime. And I should mention our website, BurlingtonElectric.com. All of the information we're going to share tonight about the Nesero Energy Roadmap that's available on the website as well as a number of our incentive programs that we're going to cover as well. We really have two pillars, two foundations that we're building on when we think about Nesero Energy and we think about our role in addressing the climate emergency. Oh, mic closer. Sorry. One of which is we've been working on energy efficiency for a number of years in the community. And Burlington Electric provides the energy efficiency services for the city of Burlington. Folks have heard of Efficiency Vermont. They provide similar services for the rest of the state. But Burlington Electric had been working on efficiency even before they started Efficiency Vermont. And so we are continuing to provide those services. As you can see here, we've got some really good results with energy efficiency. As a community, we're using about 6% less electricity today than we were in 1989. 1990 is when we did our $11.3 million bond for energy efficiency. So we've seen results there. The rest of the state is up about 8.5% over that same time period. And the nation is up almost 30% in electric use over that same time period. So if the rest of the nation was on a trajectory more like Burlington, you'd be talking about a couple hundred coal plants worth of energy that wouldn't be needed nationally. We also are saving money through efficiency. We're saving roughly $12 million annually on customer bills because of all the investments that we've made and that you, our customers have made on energy efficiency. So we have a really strong track record there. This photo here which is a little hard to see is from our Energy Efficiency Calendar Contest, which we've renamed the Net Zero Energy Calendar Contest this year. We have all the fourth graders and all the different public schools who compete to have a piece of artwork selected for the calendar contest. We just selected the winners for the current calendar contest and we're going to be announcing those in December. And you can pick up the calendar at BED if you're ever interested and stop by. Oh, thanks. I mentioned earlier, but this is about our other pillar, our other foundation of being 100% renewable. That shows our renewability and our generation portfolios, those two different paragraphs. Roughly speaking, we get a little more than a third of our electricity in a given year is from the McNeil plant, the wood chip plant. We get roughly a third of our electricity from hydropower and that includes both large and small hydro, some of which is in Vermont, some of which actually comes from the Mooski One plant, which is right on the river just across from Burlington that we operate and own, as well as other Vermont-based hydro plants and other plants around the region. And then a little bit less than a third of our energy is coming from wind. We have three different wind projects that we contract with, two of which are in Vermont, the Sheffield and Georgia Mountain projects, and one of which isn't mean, the Hancock Wind Project. And we are getting a small, and you can see it in orange here on the right, a small but growing percentage of our electricity is coming from solar in the city of Burlington. So actually, in 2017, we were getting 0.3% of our electricity from solar and this is 2018, it's up to 1.4%. So pretty significant year over year growth in solar. And I'm going to hand it to Jen to talk about the Net Zero Energy Roadmap. Thanks, Darren. So Darren mentioned how Burlington in 2014 was the first city in the country to source 100% of its electricity from renewables. Really big achievement. I think the mayor, general manager of VED sort of regrouped and said, all right, we have sown the seeds, we have this amazing platform. What's the next sort of audacious thing that we do that puts Burlington out from the center? Let's consider a transition to Net Zero Energy. So let's essentially sort of invite people back to the grid and begin to slowly transition away from fossil fuels. So let's consider electrifying transportation and buildings, et cetera. I want to tell you a little bit about how we plan to do that. First, I'll mention though that in order to create our roadmap to Net Zero Energy, we knew we couldn't do it strictly alone and in-house that we were going to need some expertise. So we put out a request for proposal and at the end of sort of a long, deliberative exercise, we picked a team called Synapse Energy Economics to do our work. It was an over-year process between hiring Synapse and working with them until the final roadmap, which was released just this past September. So Synapse had a couple of tasks to do. The first thing was to analyze our business as usual. Again, we sort of stay on this trajectory in terms of our reduction or transition away from fossil fuels, what that would look like. And then we asked them to analyze sort of different pathways on how we could essentially move away from fossil fuels. So that's what I'm going to show you a little bit of now. The very first order of business was collecting up a clear picture of how all our energy is currently used in Burlington. Now, you can see from the sort of grid line, that's transportation that's outside the city. Next to that is the thicker is the black piece of pie. That's transportation sort of our customers, people moving in and around Burlington. Combine those two pieces of the pie and you can see the transportation is actually the majority of our energy use in Burlington. As BED and as a municipal utility, we knew that we didn't have firm control over that grid line. So we're taking that away for the moment. And when you do, you see that the two gray, which represent commercial and residential buildings, are actually the majority of the pie. So at the end of the day, the three main components that we're talking about are transportation in Burlington and then commercial and residential buildings. So this is what we're going to do together, again, as a team in our transition. So we talked about Synapse Energy Economics conducting sort of business as usual. You can see that top black line. If we sort of carry on as we are, we're not going to succeed in transitioning away from fossil fuels, i.e. achieving net zero energy by 2030. If you look at that, the darker green line, the precipitistic line at the bottom, you can see this is our 2030 trajectory. It's going to be hard and it's going to have to be fast and we're going to have to start picking up speed pretty soon. But it is possible and it is doable. We were just curious. In the offhand chance, we can't get to 2030 net zero by 2030. What would the 2040 trajectory look like? So we studied that as well. As you can see, that's a little less precipitous, but still quite ambitious. But for the purpose of this exercise, we really are focused on that 2030 goal. So not only is this roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels and invite people to use renewable sources of electricity, there's a huge carbon component in this effort. As you can see, there's a lot of CO2 reduction in both the 2030 scenario and in the 2030 scenario. In essence, if we are successful in reaching net zero by 2030, we will have reduced our greenhouse gases by over 50%. This is more ambitious than really any climate action goal that I'm aware of in the United States. So we mentioned briefly about these pathways that we've asked and asked to analyze for us. So indeed, if we're going to reach our goal, there are four key components. Four key, again, sort of pieces of the pie that we're going to have to address. 60% of our effort is going to have to go into the electrification of buildings. So over, you know, the vast majority of residential space and almost the majority of commercial space will need to be electrified eventually. And that's going to entail through weatherization as well to help ensure that we can sort of drop that need for full-on electricity. The second thing we're going to have to do, which is 20% of our sort of total pie is the electrification of vehicles. And Darren will tell you a little bit about what we have going on vis-a-vis rebates and incentives to help folks taste electric if you haven't had a chance yet. I'll just tell you on a personal note, I had somebody lend me his Tesla for two days. Given the fact that we drive an old, clunky Volvo, it was quite an experience and I'm sold. It was a teaser though. My electric vehicle will probably be a leaf or a bolt when the time comes. Sort of fun to taste the extreme though. The third thing that we'll be looking at is district energy and essentially taking the waste heat and using the waste heat from McNeil. You know, this has been a topic of conversation for quite some time. So this is going to be an important piece of us transitioning away from that fossil fuel element. And then lastly, is this the alternative transportation component. We need people to be car sharing, biking, walking, using public transit. In essence, we need to reduce our vehicle miles traveled at the household level by 15% by 2030. So there's a role and a piece for all of us to play. Fortunately, we have support underway that Darren will share with you. You know, a number of different solutions in the Metro Energy Roadmap and I just want to say one thing off the top before talking about the incentives which is we think about a lot the reducing emissions, reducing air emissions, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and pollution, the environmental benefits of what we're trying to do. I think it's also important for us to talk about the economic benefits of what we're looking at doing with some of these different opportunities and one of which is really the opportunity to buy local with your energy dollars. So if you spend a dollar at the gas station buying gas in the state of Vermont about 80 cents of that dollar leaves the economy of Vermont, goes outside to the states or nations that are extracting those fossil fuels, getting petroleum. If you spend a dollar charging up with renewable electricity at Burlington Electric more than half that dollar stays in the Vermont economy, more than three quarters of that dollar stays in the regional economy. So I think it's important we talk about this not just as an environmental initiative, it's also an opportunity to keep more of our dollars local by moving to the electric grid, moving to renewable electricity, moving away from fossil fuel. We have a number of these different incentives and some on the next chart and I'll talk about. We have incentives across every mode of electric transportation. If folks are interested in an e-bike, an electric assist bike which Jen actually uses to commute to work on a number of days and a lot of folks are using to commute around the city, we have instant rebates at all of the different local bike shops in town for folks who are looking at a plug-in hybrid or an electric vehicle. We offer $1,200 off the purchase of a new vehicle and $800 off the purchase of a used vehicle. We also, for our electric vehicle drivers who are purchasing a new vehicle have an incentive for $400 to install a home charging station and we also have, this is very exciting, we have an off-peak residential electric rate for EV drivers. So if you sign up for our rate and you set your vehicle charged between 10 at night and noon the next day so you're avoiding some of the peak hours you can charge for the equivalent of 60 cents a gallon of gas which is an incredible deal. Even if you're not on that rate it's still a heck of a lot cheaper to drive electric than it is to drive with gasoline. At our public stations around town you can charge up for the equivalent of $1.46 a gallon. So there's a lot of opportunities if you're thinking about driving electric. We're also working with Green Mountain Transit to bring the first two electric transit buses to the fleet. They're coming soon, they're coming this year, before the end of the year so we're excited about that. And we also talked about weatherization and heat pumps and efficient water heating. We have incentives for all of that as well if you're looking at getting a cold climate heat pump we have an incentive program for that to help you save on your cold climate heat pump. If you're looking at an efficient water heater we have incentives for heat pump hot water heaters. If you're looking to do weatherization we and in some cases depending on who your fuel company is maybe Vermont Gas have incentives to help reduce the cost of weatherization in your home. So really anything you're looking to do from an energy perspective we may have an incentive, there's a few more on this page here. We're going to bring 20 new charging stations to the community over the course of the next year including a number at multifamily buildings around the community so that we make sure that folks who live in a multifamily building may have an EV, have an opportunity to charge their vehicle. We have the first two of those charging stations have gone in at the corner of St. Paul and Maine one is a public charger and one is a new charging station for the car share Nissan Leaf which is called Sparky. So folks want to take Sparky out for a drive you're a car share member, you can do that. We also are working on a number of different things on the electrification side we have lawn mower program we have an electric forklift program we're working on new incentives all the time and we really want you to think about how we can help as you're looking at these different types of purchase decisions. And lastly I just want to say that we understand that incentives are important we also understand that policy is important so we've been working with the city council, with the mayor on a number of different things related to energy efficiency for rental housing we understand that it's not only going to be incentives it's also going to be policy and regulation that will make a difference and I do just want to acknowledge city councilor Karen Paul for helping to lead a resolution at the city council on the climate emergency and supporting the net zero goal across the city it's not just a BED initiative it's an initiative of all the departments and the mayor and we really appreciate that the city council has been supportive of this work I think I can pause there and see if folks have questions that Jen or I could answer. I don't own an electric vehicle yet but this is very inspiring I assume the city has current maps of where all the charging stations are how would I know if I bought it? Great question so if you're looking to find out where you can charge you can go to burlingtonelectric.com slash ev and we have on there not only a list of our incentives but also a map of the different charging stations around the community I bought an electric car a year ago, August and I think I missed your open window because at that point there were no incentives for used cars and then I installed a level 2 charger in my house but it wasn't one of the two that you support so I got no benefit from charging so what can you do for me as a used electric car owner who charges a level 2 at home? What kind of charging station do you have? A juice box. Okay so this is one of the challenges with our incentive programs is we have to be able to prove to the state that anything we offer essentially helped cause somebody to do something and so we can't always take credit for things that happen kind of without our own intervention that said there is one thing that we're working on I don't know if it'll be helpful to you or not because you have a charging station but we recognize that some folks either don't have the right charging station or may not have a charging station at all maybe plugging into the wall By the right charging station do you mean your type of charging station? Yeah and the reason we have a charging station requirement is we have a Wi-Fi connection with the charging station so we can get the data that shows that you're charging at the right times a day so not all of the different stations have that connectivity with us that's been the challenge we're more than willing to work with anybody who has that we are working on getting some smart charging cords from a company called Smart ENIT out in California they're trying to get them UL tested and listed for sale we promise that when they have them we're going to bring a bunch of them in and lend them to our customers for free for folks who haven't been able to get on the EVR and want to so if you wanted to give us a call we could see if you would be eligible to get one of those cords and maybe be able to get on the rate that way even though the charging station is not at the right station Now can I retroactively apply for the $800 rebate for a used electric vehicle? I wish I could do that but we're not allowed to by state regulation because when we offer the program we have to be able to show that we made in addition to the state's actions on energy and so we never are able to go retroactive unfortunately and the thing about that is as more and more electric vehicles enter the market the market for used vehicles is going to increase so I think that has to be incentivized because you shouldn't be penalized for owning a used electric vehicle I couldn't agree more and that's why we launched, you know, it was the first time that we've ever done it an $800 rebate on the used EVs, the used plugins which is now active as of September so I know we missed you but for folks who are looking at a used vehicle they're eligible for that rebate and if we can help you with the charging cord maybe we can get you on the EV rate and at least save you some money that way Thank you Yes sir So this is for Jennifer and probably for Karen I know this is a really admirable goal There seems though to be a disconnect between this and what I believe is the city's position that residential only parking on the hill should be eliminated because when that's eliminated you're going to push more cars up onto the hill to park so that seems to be on the one hand you're going to encourage cars to come up to the hill on the other hand you're encouraging zero net emissions so I just pose one wonder whether you've talked to DPW about that Not about that specific issue but we are in constant communication around sort of parking this idea of sort of eliminating the minimum parking requirements because we know the left hand has to talk to the right I'll look into that issue specifically I'm actually not aware of that change up on the hill Well it's not happened yet but it's been proposed and bandied about for a couple of years Yeah well I appreciate you bringing that up and Karen do you want to say anything about that Other than just I don't want to say There are no plans to eliminate resident only parking There are no plans that has been discussed we've had many discussions about that it was about I don't know three years ago and the decision was made that there would be no eliminating resident only parking there have been changes to new to streets that now want resident only parking but there have been no changes to streets that currently have resident only parking I'll email you my last correspondence with Chapin Okay Yeah please So I drive a hybrid an older one but I'm curious about the public transit because I've lived in bigger cities like Mexico City and I did not drive my vehicle in Mexico City I parked it and left it because I knew that the buses came so frequently that I would never have more than a 10 or 15 minute wait and my impression is that GMT actually has recently cut back on the frequency of buses and that's the wrong direction to go if we want to encourage people to leave their vehicles I walk I'm another UVM-er so I walked campus and I count the number of single occupant vehicles that pass me just on Shelburne Road as I walk to work and it's got to be 90% of them have the driver and that's it and we've got to do better about getting functional public transit Yeah only I couldn't agree with you more I mean this is a challenge for absolutely and so I think you know BED is committed to working on that 15% of the pie and I think we're going to have to do it together you know it is putting pressure on Green Mountain to the extent that we can it's recognizing that we have a robust car share network here unlike other small cities that have not been able to pull that off we do have a bike walk master plan that I think we should help ensure lose to fruition in a strategic way and I agree with you it's a challenge really happy that we are contributing to the electric buses that are joining the fray so that is helpful but I hear your frustration and many of us feel it too Yeah I'd just like to dovetail on what she just said because to me being a newbie here I moved to your thinking I don't own a car I just walk and bike and use public transportation and I'm actually so dismayed by the lack of use by the general public first of all the buses are rarely filled but it's also the fact that this is Vermont there's supposed to be this ethos there's supposed to be this consciousness and I'm not quite sure I agree about the scheduling although it's actually gotten better now that most buses come every 20 minutes as opposed to 30 they're still not on time but it's a shorter waiting period but I am just I actually cannot quite believe that Vermonters feel that it is a right for that to drive I don't understand why there isn't more about people utilizing the public transportation system and you're right it's got to be it's got to be tenable for both parties but I see I was actually very shocked and this is why I don't consider this place a city because if you had to depend upon it you can't get to work or where you need to go well thank you for sharing that I appreciate that what do we just hold up for McNeil plant using that spare heat we've talked about it for years and years and years but it was in the original permit for the plant back in 1984 so we've been talking about it for a very long time the challenge and we're working on it actively and I hope to have more to share on that in the near future the challenge is essentially the cost of getting the infrastructure in place from McNeil up to the potential customers and stakeholders who've been working with us whether it's UVM Medical Center or some UVM buildings or other buildings that could be involved so we're looking at different options the cost of that as reasonable as possible maximize the amount of extra heat essentially that we could get from the McNeil plant and move that to get it moving I mean we really just need to get a first step of infrastructure in place from McNeil up the hill up to some customers and we'd be able to expand that over time it's an exciting concept, it potentially is the single biggest emissions reduction project we could undertake in Burlington so it's been a high priority for us for all of our researchers follow on on McNeil I would encourage you to look at the power plant in Singapore for best practices are you aware of what they're doing I'm not in Singapore they burn trash the average lifespan of a 10 bar wrapper is less than one day in Singapore they get heat out of it they get electricity out of it the stack is emitting gases that are cleaner there's a reasonable atmosphere at the bottom so it's a really a very integrated plant I would encourage you just to look at best practices from their plants thank you, I appreciate it two questions will the locomotive of the new passenger be electric or will it be diesel the second question is you mentioned earlier on that you cover the airport any of your figures here including CO2 emissions and the use of fossil fuels include the airport we do include the airport in terms of the use of energy in the facilities the emissions from essentially all aviation fuels not just at Burlington airport but statewide all the different aviation fuels in the most recent Vermont data that I've seen are about 1% of the total statewide emissions but we didn't include air travel that's zero energy goal there's some things I'm aware of that are interesting and exciting in the area of reducing emissions in air travel so it's definitely an area that I know is getting attention not just in Vermont but nationally and globally and I've visited with beta technologies at the airport working on electric aviation technology that's quite exciting but for the net zero energy goal we were looking to tackle the two biggest sectors of emissions in Burlington and in Vermont which is the heating and the ground transportation analysis looks at I don't have any information on the rail I don't know if Jeff you heard anything but good to check up on yeah yes this plane calls for a lot more electricity where does that come from it has a renewable energy that's right so if we were to reach the goal here in terms of reducing significantly the amount of fossil fuel we're using for heating transportation we would be looking at potentially using up to 65% of our renewable electricity so what we're doing right now is we're working on a state plan that we do every few years called integrated resource plan IRP we're going to file that in 2020 and we're looking at not just where would we be getting all the additional renewable energy but also what types of upgrades would we need on our system and how do we make those in a cost effective way if we move in this direction and in a way that still benefits our customers over the next several years we would have room on our system to accommodate additional energy use from electric vehicles and coal climate heat pumps but over a 10 year window if we were to achieve this goal we would have upgrades that we would submit so we're studying that and we'll have a plan related to that in 2020 a lot of utilities I think are required to deliver this service so we would be required to do that so in Vermont we do have lease costs planning principles but they include environmental costs so we've never had a yes, yes our public utility commission has always accounted for those costs so we're not required to go out and buy the cheapest energy if it's fossil fuel whereas you might get a slightly more expensive unit of energy potentially if it was renewable and not be able to figure in those costs that's not the way the Vermont model works so what we found is that you're able to move in the direction that we're moving and still be responsible financially as well Karen, we have time for two more questions maybe this gentleman and that Michelle perfect thank you two comments one was about burning trash I agree with that another place to look at is Denmark in Switzerland and another advantage to burning trash is you don't drive the trash inside of you so you can actually there are small units that is very locally for example right in Zurich it happens in the middle of the city and Switzerland is known for not being in a dirty place so I think the technology is established I really would encourage you to look into it but I found this discouraging is that part that you said is not driven the cars that are coming in I also think there should be a significant planning among zoning and other things because ultimately you do want to you will have a problem with the cars I think and I think the opportunities to change this now one example for me is the high school I don't understand why we have more parking there do we really want to encourage students to drive there and so I don't know what role you are in there but I think all these incentives on the alternative of transportation I appreciate the point in terms of transportation vehicle miles traveled into Burlington from folks who are coming from outside whether it's commuters, visitors, tourists we didn't account for it directly although we modeled it we didn't account for it directly because in many cases we can't offer those customers an incentive it's another utility that will give you that it's an important segment of our work and we want to affect that aspect of transportation as well for example if we're putting charging stations in the right places and somebody is driving in they can potentially have an electric vehicle and drive to work and charge here in Burlington we know transit, community planning all of those are regional in nature and we are working on all of that so I definitely appreciate the point we agree with you that the regional transportation system is important and the analysis tried to focus on the vehicle miles traveled up Burlington residents but it's a good point really quick the 1.4% of the energy supply by source is the solar I'm just wondering is that the residential panels or is there a solar farm in Burlington I don't know about yeah it's full so it's all the different residential systems that you see we also have several different systems that are a little larger we have a system on our roof at Pine Street DPW has one as well and there's actually a 2.5 megawatt solar facility in the new north end in Burlington and a 500 kilowatt solar facility at the airport on the roof of the garage so we have some larger for us not large by national standards solar and we actually on 2018 or maybe this year 2019 we were ranked by Environment America as being the number one community for solar per capita in New England and number four in the country and I think we have the potential to jump to number two sometime in the near future with all the growth in solar so per capita basis Burlington is doing really well with solar thank you all very much I was inspired by my soul-soul riding electric vehicle several years ago so of course that person was Jennifer I'm going to turn over moderation to you we're going to well one thing too there's a clipboard circulating and you haven't signed in oh yeah great just just move it to one of the tables you don't mind we'll keep it circulating alright we're going to move on to Burlington tenants union and Kristi Delphia is coming up as along with maybe some of her colleagues and they've got some material to pass out as well they're passing out have a have a have a have a have a youth dome other than the fact that I've got a deep voice to begin with I know how to use a microphone my name is Kristi Delphia and we are from the Burlington union which is a newly formed union in Burlington for renters we are fighting for rights for tenants against landlords democratized housing which means we do not want renters of low income to be segregated from the richer neighborhoods everybody should be included everywhere we also are fighting for better housing as far as repairs by landlords we are finding that a lot of tenants right now are fighting with their landlords over things not being repaired buildings not being kept up to code also evictions because of tenants complaining to code enforcement are being unfairly evicted from properties for complaining about not having their apartments repaired we just recently had a summit for renters this past Sunday at the library because Mayor Weinberger did not mention renters at all in his housing summit the biggest thing that we found is the code enforcement complaints by tenants because landlords just aren't keeping other properties and it's a hard fight for us a low income people are being forced out of Burlington the prices for section 8 will only be 1565 for a two bedroom for low income people we are finding that landlords are now raising those prices high enough so that people cannot afford to live in Burlington or the Burlington area they are being forced to the out of the land areas and most people don't have cars they rely on public transit and 60% of Burlington is renters our voices are not being heard as of right now and that's a very large problem Is this Chris? Hi my name is Chris and I recently joined the Burlington tenants union Christie was saying it's a newly formed union but I'm just giving a little bit of background on my own personal experiences so on one hand my wife Megan and I lived with my wife Megan daughter Dylan and Dr. Towers actually so this is our award and we're in an in kind situation where we're able to in exchange for housing there where we provide services for the overnight on callers and managers I think this is kind of illustrative of how high housing costs have affected our affecting families in Burlington we could not afford to live in Burlington what's enough for the situation that we have it's basically we're working two jobs working all around the clock I work full time job and social services working with people who are experiencing agencies and service providers that are serving people who are experiencing homelessness in the community and coordinating services for them and hopefully housing part of my experience that also brings me to the tenant union is I've been doing this work in Burlington for about four years probably and it struck me that we're always having to kind of prioritize resources very scarce resources that we have for those who are deemed to be the most needy of people who are experiencing homelessness in the community and we do as much as we can to house people connect them with whatever affordable housing is available or such in any vouchers there's just not enough to go around and so I think that one of the things that the tenant union is also very concerned with the precariousness of housing that leads people also puts people at risk of homelessness or even leads them into homelessness and we do have an enduring kind of chronic homelessness problem in Burlington that really has not been even with all the whatever kind of inclusionary zoning housing we can do or any kind of developments that we've seen come online but we still don't see the R&R numbers really significantly go down so I think that for me homelessness precariousness of housing is really one of the prime motivators that's bringing me to the tenant union and my perspective is that I'm inspired by a group of tenants who are really kind of organizing to say that yeah we're really wanting the risk of renters and tenants in Burlington to really be represented and to be heard so what we're aiming to do in the coming years is to change housing for renters some of the things that we need to have passed by local government is rent caps not rent control rent control is a bandied rent caps need to be placed because the amount of space in these apartments to what they're being charged for is just totally inadequate and it's not helping anybody out other than and better tenants' rights because tenants actually have very few rights landlords have all the rights and we are finding that a lot of tenants do not know they have rights against their landlords they do not know where to go to find out their rights other issues are lawyers for those who are facing evictions whether they be just cause or no cause and especially right now we're finding a lot of our tenants are dealing with no cause evictions and unfortunately there are no lawyers for us to use we're basically left to do it ourselves and if we have to go to say which means we have to figure out this stuff on our home there's not really any information out there for us to properly use to be able to fight these things in court because you can never unless you have proof that it's a retaliation eviction a no cause eviction basically means you're going to be kicked out of your home and become homeless Airbnb's they have had a lot of issues with those as well they take out over 270 units a year for rental because it allows the homeowner to rent out their space to people that don't live here year round and that's a big problem for renters in Burlington affordable housing they are proposing to build two more hotels in the middle of Burlington we don't need the hotels we've had enough with hotels being built hotels being built means more traffic into the city from cars from people that are coming from out of state to rent those rooms and it's taking away the availability of building housing that we desperately desperately need in the city right now and the inclusion and rezoning issues that we've been facing is the most recent one back at the beginning of the summer they added landlords being able to charge their tenants for parking on top of the already high rents that's a problem they can't, we can just barely afford housing now and then to add that in on top of it is making a very portable situation the next inclusionary zoning meeting they are going to have or the proposals that have been brought up is that they want to segregate housing it's already segregated enough that's what we need to stop we don't want to be separated from those who have money to be living in our areas of the city because the 40% of property owners and landlords have the majority votes of what happens in Burlington when Burlington is 60% renters so we need to change that as well to make it fair for everybody to live here so those are the things that we're open to change and we need to get code enforcement to actually do their jobs we have in my case I am right now waiting for a verdict from the housing board review because we were dealing with code enforcement for the last six months and they have not forced this landlord that we are running from to fix his property they cover things up and code enforcement says okay you see we can't see any more of this pass system this is a very large issue they're charging $1,600 up for two bedroom apartments and things are just falling apart and not getting fixed so these are the things that we hope to change in the future and any help that we can get from regular homeowners as opposed to landlords that would be helpful too thank you we have time for questions we're going to have the municipal charter for CEDOM and it really talks about development development, development, development would you, does it make sense from your point of view to get behind a movement to change the mandate for CEDOM to include truly affordable housing yes it's in organizing with us right now we're just starting out so we're still trying to figure out how we're going to organize around going to the state house and fighting more we have to build up more people to join us and then we're going to be going after all of that kind of stuff we hope to go to the state house as well with some of these issues maybe this is a question for Karen as well it's around the Airbnb question especially with the growth of city plays and then the other new units what's the city's position in trying to deal with this difficult issue of Airbnb and keeping the market open for renters well I mean it's a complicated issue and I don't want to take time away from you being able to answer other questions it's a challenge with Airbnb because there are some people who rent out a room and don't do it all the time but rent out a room and that income allows them to stay in their home and we don't want to push people out of their homes there are some people like you had just said that are really not living in the home but are renting it and that is a way of basically using it as a source of revenue that could otherwise have full-time full-time tenants who live here and that's what we're trying to find a way of being able to curtail with the ordinance committee and that is what we are trying to do so that is certainly you make a very good point as I say we don't want it and a lot of the people that are renting a room and this is not all of the people that are doing this many of the people that are doing that are older and without that they would not be able to stay in their home but anyway just about time but thank you so much you have a chance to pass out we'll move on now to DPW and they've also set up a lot of visuals for folks on the tables in the back so you can check that out on the way out we have Megan and who else is my esteemed colleagues are just going to be available for answering questions Megan and her esteemed colleagues on the side we have Jenna Olson we have three programs our water resources programs and policy manager and then Jess Lavalet is responsible for sending you your water sewer store water bill every single month thank you Jess, you're brave coming out hi folks so we're handing out handing out copies of the presentation I'm going to have you guys fall along with me you're the first stop on our NPA tour we did a public meeting open house on October 29 a lot of people came it was great, we had food we had a door prize and I don't know if any of you were able to attend but it was a really great turnout and the reason we're doing this is we are taking a really hard look at our rates and the affordability it's kind of good to follow up after the Burlington Tenants Union because we know that there are some affordability issues in Burlington and we want to make sure that as we progress with figuring out how much money we need to sustainably steward our water resources infrastructure that we're aware of that and that we're making changes as necessary to make sure that people aren't having to choose between clean water and medicine or food or something like that so I want to spend a little bit of time just reminding folks of the services that Burlington Water Resources provides I'm the division director, Megan Moyer I've been with DPW and Water Resources since 2009 when I started the storm water program coordinator three years ago and now in charge of all three waters which is quite the challenge and very exciting every day so we're going to talk a little bit about what it is we do and then talk about why we're doing this rate study look at the existing rates and then also talk to and hopefully get your input on some of the suites of options that we're going to be looking at as part of the affordability study I'm now on page three the core values we believe that access to clean water is a human right it's something that the UN talks about we're very lucky in the United States that we have clean water but it's something that we shouldn't take for granted and so when we think about how we provide access to clean water we have to make sure and 24, 7 6 3 hours you keep 5 days a year that is our main focus, our main mission but we have to make sure that we're collecting enough money and so part of this study is to actually look at all of the things we do and are we collecting enough money to sustainably do our infrastructure you know we've been starting to rip up streets and rebuild water mains and what not how much of that do we need to continue to do to stay on a trajectory where we are taking care of our existing infrastructure as well as planning for the construction of and investment in new things that we may need to do in order to protect the lake but we're worried that when we start talking about how much it may cost to do what we need to do that we're going to bump up against these affordability issues so they're a little bit at loggerheads so moving on overview of water resources not that many people always think about how the city's finances work but water resources it is a utility like BED when you pay money to in your water sewer storm water bill that goes into a separate pot of money we do not get supported by the property taxes that money does not co-mingle so that storm water dollar that you spend goes directly to storm water services the wastewater dollar you spend gets sequestered and goes to wastewater services and the water goes to the drinking water we serve about 10,000 connections and all of the residents of Burlington as well as a small portion of Colchester as far as providing drinking water and we currently have about 43 full-time staff in total our budget is almost $17.5 million at this point for FY20 Page 5 Water Enterprise Fund Overview I'm not going to go through all of our assets I've listed them there so you can know all of the things that we have to take care of how many miles of pipe but the main function that the water enterprise or the water utility provides is drinking water when you turn on that tap for most good days you expect to see clean good water that you can drink used for bathing, used for cooking we also do provide fire protection so all of the hydrants, all of the sprinkler systems we maintain enough pressure and we pump enough pressure from the lake that if a huge fire broke out the firefighters know that there's enough flow to be able to put enough water on any sort of structure moving on to wastewater the main function of wastewater we call it wastewater but in the industry we're now thinking more about water recovery that's what wastewater treatment is it's taking the clean water that you put through your body or the clean water that's gone down the drain and it's stripping out all the pollutants that you or somebody has contaminated it with from the sewage or from the combined sewer storm water and getting as much of those pollutants out so that we can return it back to the hydrologic cycle the lake which is also where we take our drinking water out so it really is for the wastewater recovery facilities our wastewater treatment plants they are old they do sometimes have problems in this most recent storm event we did successfully process 34 million gallons of combined sewer we did have some combined sewer overflows which a large portion of Vermont also did but the plant itself did really well and it was interesting because that storm event 3.52 inches in 14 hours almost as much water as we did in Hurricane Irene which was over a multi-day period so through the dedication of our staff we were working around the clock making sure things were working we were able to get through that on the storm water side storm water is sort of the baby of the water family water has been around since 1867 wastewater since about 1950s which is baffling to me that we were dumping sewage into the lake until 1950s but so be it storm water came around in Burlington in 2009 when we realized storm water is cleaner than wastewater but over the time the fact that there is so much rain and anybody can look at the roadways and see what is in it and see that it is truly not clean so over time all of those pollutants in storm water cause problems so the chief function of the storm water program is to get as many of those pollutants out as possible and then on the combined sewer side and I have been here talking occasionally about the combined sewer system I am not going to get into it but I could take questions later our chief focus is how do we get as much water out of the combined sewer system so that it doesn't cause those combined sewer overflows that we do still suffer from so that is sort of our two tackle depending on where you are in the city we are either going to be trying to filter the storm water and or get rid of it but if you are in the combined sewer system we are trying to just either hold on to the water or get it to go back into the ground so that it doesn't enter the pipe everybody with me so far so the good news is we have been doing better if you look at this capital reinvestment effort graph you can see that for a long time FY 13, 14, 15 we really weren't doing a great job of investing in our existing infrastructure things were breaking we didn't have the money to do it with the success of voters the council, the mayor have been starting to make the levels of investment that we need to in order to keep our infrastructure working this is not reflective of the things that I think we will ultimately have to do the new stuff, the new storm water infrastructure the new wastewater treatment processes this is about keeping things working as they are and not backsliding so we have been doing a much better job of that we have been leveraging low interest loans when we can the state revolving fund program gives us 2% we often get loan subsidy we just recently Jenna was responsible for getting a million dollar grant to do combined sewer storm water reduction largely in this area because this is the area right here that feeds the pine barge canal CSO that goes off so frequently so I think Jenna had put out a posting we are going to be doing lots of little soil testing all throughout this whole area I don't know if there is something posted online Facebook your Torm post actually Eleni Tertula is one of our project managers helped us to secure that grant that's for basically identification of long term storm water projects so that we can better integrate with paving and traffic comm and things like that we are trying to figure out where the soils may exist that we could actually get the water to go back in the ground because that is the absolute best thing that you can do when you are trying to deal with storm water in the combined sewer system we have these separate buckets water, wastewater, storm water we are one water I think we are unique for at least some places in the United States in which the drinking water people report to the same person that the wastewater people do that the storm water do so when we do planning when we are making decisions we are thinking about how the impact would be to all of the waters there is also some cost savings there we don't send you a separate wastewater bill and a separate storm water bill a lot of our administrative services are also one water way so I think that is going to fit to how we are structured moving on to rate pressures there is some big line lines when we look at the budget for these funds personnel related costs are always up there our number of people in health care we are unfortunately still paying the debt service from the 1990 wastewater upgrade to the tune of about a million dollars a year that is on our books for many more years there is various electricity I am sharing this with you because there is cost that are there and they are not fixed they go up every year just like your bills your gas bills, your electric bills your gasoline there is always these things that are going up so when I start looking at the rate pressures I start projecting what these rate increases may be even just as things are now and then we start to talk about enhancements that is where we kind of landed with the council we move on to page 11 impetus for rate and affordability study the council has been great in hearing what our needs assessments are and supporting them and supporting these small incremental rate increases usually between somewhere two to four four and a half percent but they know and we know that we can't keep doing that without really looking at our rates and making sure that they are affordable and so when we last came to them I believe requesting both for the bond, the wastewater bond as well as for some staffing upgrades we came to an agreement that we needed to do this rate study and so we needed to look at alternative revenue sources we need to make sure there is not other things out there that we could be charging for PED's been able to not have a rate increase for a fairly long time largely because they have a very diverse portfolio of revenue where our primary revenue is just charging you guys we wanted to look at alternative rate structures to figure out how to maybe progressively price these tiers to preserve that essential access to clean water we're not talking about making water cheaper for everybody all the way up if you're going to be a water hog we're not just going to let you waste that water but that initial part of water that you need to bathe, drink, so on and so forth should that be priced in a different way and then when and where those rate structures don't help certain people certain low income people who are well below the federal poverty limit are there other ways that we could offer assistance for discounts and so on and so forth as part of that process naturally we need to do a lot of stakeholder engagement that's why we're here, that's why we're going to continue to come back as we move through our analyses so moving on to the rate study goals this page it's based on three main things we want to make sure that we are looking at all the things that we provide and that we're fully recovering those costs people shouldn't, particularly folks or customers who are getting something special such as if they are discharging higher strength waste than a typical residential customer or they're getting say private fire protection should residential users shouldn't necessarily be paying for a big building to be getting this in theory special service we need to make sure that the costs are equitably being recovered and then we need to make sure that there are these wraparound policies whether it's the rate structure or affordability discounts to make sure that everybody really does have access to clean water and to making sure that making sure that nobody is having to choose like I said between food and being able to have water for their family without looking at this page do you know how much you pay for your water? what's your water bill on? 160 to 75 okay, anybody else know what they pay? under 30 under 30, great so the typical bill the typical amount of water used by a single family home is about 400 cubic feet 100 cubic feet so that's a 10 by 10 room with a foot deep of water is about 748 gallons so you can kind of do the math of how much 400 cubic feet is and the typical customer page just under $50 right now which we had one person come up at the public meeting and say charge me more, I was like you got no the point is we do get a lot of value we believe you get a lot of value for the service you know one gallon a gallon of water out of your tap is just over a half of a cent I think I did some other math you know a 10 minute shower cost you about 37 cents when you look at what you pay for your cable bill for your cell phone bill for your BED bill and you're getting three services right for the price of one thing you get three it really is quite a value and across the nation I think utilities are struggling with the fact that folks don't remember how important this essential service is and what does it really cost so I'm almost done so that you guys can answer lots of ask lots of questions so some of the priority options that we're considering as far as these these fees and rates we talked about recovering the cost and stabilizing revenues to page 14 we're looking at a number of different fees most of these I would actually say almost all of them do not apply to residential users except for the standalone fix charge by meter size that first one is about the fact that the vast majority of our costs are fixed if I had a day where nobody used the water nobody flushed their toilet most of the pipes the infrastructure my people all still have to be here so a large proportion of our budget is is a fixed cost and so a lot of utilities are starting to add a small fixed charge I believe I don't know if BED has an admin charge but like you'll often see it as an admin charge and we're looking at doing that kind of to stabilize our revenue stream so that when we have when we have one of these these years where people don't actually use a lot of water like that that's really hard for our budget because our costs are all the same but then we are not taking in as much most of the other fees such as a connection charge that would be if somebody built a new building or a new home we do extensive review we have engineers planners everybody taking a look at this to make sure it's being done appropriately and we're not recovering those charges right now the fire protection charge I mentioned we're looking at whether or not we should be charging somebody who has a standalone sprinkler system some modest amount because they are getting the benefit of all of the extra pumping capacity that we have and various other ones I think the ones that you'll be most interested in are the affordability enhancements so right now we charge everybody the same all of the time doesn't matter how much you use 44 cents per 100 cubic feet for water we are looking at coming up with an inclining block rate where that initial tier maybe it's 400 maybe it's 350 we haven't decided but that initial everybody needs that amount of water would be cheaper for single family residentials and then if you use more than that you certainly would be charged sort of at a premium rate because you're probably using a little bit more water than you should we're trying to dial in into how we'll deal with multi-family residentials because they often have one meter and so it wouldn't really work to charge them with this single family rate but we're hoping to come up with something that might be kind of blended in between the two and then commercial folks and I don't know if there's anybody here who owns a business commercial folks likely would pay at a slightly higher rate because that is not essential life access water that is water that you're using as part of your business and it'll be interesting to have the discussions with businesses about how they feel about that yep the only way to ensure access to clean water for residential users for that life fit is we are going to have to balance the cost so it is going to be a discussion that we're going to have to have and then flipping on to the very last one I just wanted to give you the sort of full suite of affordability programs that we're looking at there's many more things there's education, there's plumbing assistance I think the Burlington Tenants folks we'd like to meet with them because we think there may be utility even if we can't provide a direct discount to renters can we figure out some way to make sure that their buildings that they live in are not using more water right if you have a leaky toilet that can cost you hundreds of dollars and then that's not being rolled into their rent rate somehow now figuring that out is going to be very difficult and it's possible that that might be a phase two we're going to try to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good right if we can come up with some affordability programs to help people who are lower income who perhaps qualify for some other federal program three squares or maybe they've qualified for some sort of heating assistance we're looking at all of those different programs we don't want our folks to have to look at your income we want somebody to be able to say hey I qualify for this other program and thereby qualify for any program any discount that we might provide but suffice to say there's a whole suite of things that we are looking at now and we may start putting them into buckets as to what we're able to do now and what we want to do for the future and then we're going to be bringing that to the city council we have five more minutes so if you are able to move this is the last yeah so and I don't need to go through the schedule just to know that this is the first bit to make sure you guys are aware of the project to take your ideas there's things that you think we're missing based on this material we want to hear from you as we move forward because we are trying to bring something to the city council in February at which point we would come back to the NPA and share with you the results of the study so I will take questions yes you very accurately monitor the water coming into a residence correct? correct do you monitor the grey water and black water going out? we do not so it is common practice for water utilities to charge except for irrigation meters to charge the amount of wastewater based on how much water you use largely because it's very difficult to meter to flow meter wastewater it's chunky for lack of a better description and so it is it is common practice to do it that way so I don't know if you have a follow up question but that is the nature of the beast I have another follow up question is there any plan to make the digesters down on the waterfront anaerobic instead of aerobic? so we don't currently have digesters we have clarifiers and we have a biologic system we had been I will say had been very excited particularly because of BED and about the energy savings looking at digesters I would say it right now I'm in a little bit of a standstill because of the PFAS issue PFAS issue because digesters do not break down PFAS and so even if we made a reusable biosolid which could be spread on the landscape until the state figures out how they are going to deal with the PFAS issue we're kind of stuck on that which is a huge budgetary issue for me because of the amount I'm spending managing biosolids right now I would love to do a digester environmental sustainability concept but right now the policy is not lining up with us being able to do that actually we're probably encouraged to put it in the landfill which breaks my heart two comments are you testing for PFAS? the other question is I understand the state doesn't charge when a spring water extraction operation bottling operation takes place because if you should argue to the state that the state should capture money for that and then distribute it back to the municipalities they don't know about the spring water capture it might get complicated into which groundwater shed you're in because if nobody's withdrawing spring water from our groundwater shed do we really have the rights to that money but it would be definitely something to look at as far as maybe putting it into a grant fund for water infrastructure to answer your other question PFAS we have had PFAS testing on our wastewater effluent influent and I think are the sludge and there are small amounts it doesn't come from the wastewater treatment plant we're a receiving station it comes from industries and things that are coming into the wastewater treatment plant and there is not currently a good way to strip it out before it goes out to the lake we did just recently have PFAS testing on our drinking water and I'm happy to say that that was non-detect it's a new issue the detection limits have dropped so the stuff that really has always been around we now know where it is but nobody quite knows what to do with it so it is quite the quandary that we are in as we figure out a way of dealing with it in an environmentally sustainable way does that answer your question? California has faced of course all the water restrictions and put in place all kinds of conservation mechanisms for residential housing what are the options for Burlington and where is the greatest waste in residential usages of water? that is a great question I will say that because we don't really suffer from the water shortage thing, conservation has never really been a big, a huge priority for us that should and can change because if we can conserve and drop flows on the water side it will help us regain some of our capacity on the wastewater side so I'm starting to look at it from that perspective I think one of the best places that would sort of like I never like to kill two birds with one stone whatever that metaphor is that would take care of multiple things at the same time like using storm water to flush toilets if you're capturing storm water so that it doesn't go into the combined sewer system and you're holding on to it and then you're using the fact that we flush our waste with drinking water makes me crazy so that's the one that usually frequently comes to mind if you're on the cusp of innovation people get nervous about it so I'm not up to speed on exactly how you do it and what not, I think we looked at it with the why and I can't remember if they ended up they're not flushing, yeah so we bring it up all the time and people get excited about it and then it seems like it's a code issue or probably a bureaucratic retake but that would be the best place that would do the most good or using main barrels for watering your garden so unless you have a separate irrigation meter if you withdraw water from a hose we are still charging that for wastewater even though it's going into the ground there's no circulation and done an irrigation meter you should be collecting your rainwater and then using that to water your lawn because that's what it's there for one more question and we're going to stick around afterwards so if people have more water questions we will talk water all night long I wanted to talk about the conservation aspect also because you said when people take a 10 minute shower it's only whatever 47 cents or whatever you said someone would take a 10 minute shower number one and then you also said if people do less money we still have the same carrying costs of administration which is that's got to change because I've lived in a tropical place water shortage over 50% of the people did not have access to water and you're right it's a right and all we need to have is some real catastrophe in Lake Champlain and there goes the potability I do agree my family lives in Cape Town, South Africa and they came within 30 days completely running out of water so I'm surprised that when you say conservation isn't mentioned it should be because if you think oil wars have been bad wait till you see water wars that's why I think it's on our radar now I'm saying that for however many years it hasn't been on Burlington's focal point because we weren't necessarily facing some of the issues we are with Lake Champlain I think people could have forecast them but I think they're more in our face and so as part of this you'll see there are some things on there about conservation we have leak detection kits in the back little tablets you can put in your back of your toilet tank because a lot of times toilets are the silent leakers if you put the tablet in and you see coloration in your bowl that means the part of your toilet is slowly leaking but I'm talking about climate change and I'm talking about we have one source since we don't get it from our groundwater at this point I agree she is a very good water source but it doesn't mean that Lake Champlain will always be such a good water source so thank you for your time and like I said we'll stick around after the next session and if anybody has more questions we're happy to take them we should give you more time it's a super big topic thank you we are going to wrap up with last but not at all least given the news of the week we're going to have a school district update with Claire Wool our school board president and Jeff Wick school board committee member so come on up you guys have about 20 minutes hopefully leave some time for questions because I know people are going to have them Megan is a tough act to follow great job you make water and wastewater interesting and the promotional materials you brought tonight just puts us to shame what did we bring we're trying to compete with BED so that was really cool hi we wanted to talk about an update with the BHS and ATC re-envisioning and answer questions most importantly and then also talk about the news yesterday that Superintendent O'Bang will complete this school year but will is resigning and not Claire could you hold the mic right up your mouth should I come back better first with our BHS BTC re-envisioning so the first message loud and clear is we are not over budget we have not spent any money with regards to construction costs and in speaking with the city council department of finance and conducting our own we call it our monthly BCOC construction meetings that we have to the public this is an estimate so our estimate we are in the design stage the schematic design stage and right now we are reconciling scope and development but in any project and it's near to me so I'm learning as I go but I am with very confident people the schematic design is we approached it once the bond was passed on the conceptual drawings we knew that going into January and meeting with all the stakeholders being faculty staff community we presented it as a wish list how do you want to re-envision BHS and BTC and so we spent many months and weeks with students teachers faculty staff to come up with the designs with within reach with Black River Design and worked diligently for the city's safety and accessibility on the property the square footage of the property remained roughly we're looking at 280,000 square feet that includes both buildings on the campus but we took a view of you know our wish list and what we would like to do within that the confines of that budget the bonded of late when we presented the schematic design for estimating in August it came back with unforeseen unfavorable seismic conditions that we had spent time and money to evaluate the soil asbestos scope and scale greater than anticipated and we understand that the real world costs a year later some of the estimates were double than what originally was presented when Black River Design did their estimating and where we come up with 70 million so the goal here is we have 70 million dollars to make this campus and improve this campus better and that is what we are tasked to do we're not looking to ask for more money so it involves being creative and at the same time understanding and educating the public what our current competition is with regards to construction and construction costs where footage costs so the next step is yesterday we saw a next iteration of the campus and we will present to the BHS BTC faculty on Tuesday this coming Tuesday the 12th we will also present it at the school board meeting Tuesday night and we will have as always our monthly meeting on November 21st for the public to come to BHS it's the third Thursday of the month at 6.30 to educate them as well so anyone interested in becoming more involved or educated in it we also have all our updates on our website BSB BT and we will answer any questions after but the news the initial news was depressing of course but depressing in a way of the reality of construction costs but the estimation for example when you're estimating a project this size for example I just wanted to share is the HVAC system for the campus it was estimated at $20 million just for the HVAC system and it's drilling down those details and those contingencies within those estimates is what does the campus need does it need the most high in HVAC system the middle of the road or the most the efficient for the best price so based on your own home renovation costs that's where we're looking to maximize our bond dollars so I am like I said our goal is our OPR requirements our accessibility safety and efficiency and so we will accomplish those within that $70 million and the design what we sold what you invested in in approving the bond was not only will it be curbside appeal it will look attractive but the most importantly when I went into the soils the wrapping around the original idea to wrap around the building from the gymnasium south like the north beach side coming around to the auditorium we are no longer going to wrap around the south side of the building that would look out onto Bacardi Field the athletic fields the soil there would not would hold the weight of four-story building and that was our original thought we had actually done preliminary soil testings all around the east, north and west side of the building and not the south so just unfortunate and we felt as a district spending dollars in the ground five stories or four stories down to have any would be money ill spent that we should look towards the ledge side of the building which is the east side and look at adding the needed square footage on the east side so the east side is the north avenue side of the building so I'm confident that we're on the right path and yes troubling as it sounded that's a reality and not to be Debbie Downer you know when you look at this campus and the potential it does make me a little sad to think that we are designing and improving this campus based on the number that we were able to seek for a bond and be estimating so you know for example South Burlington or other school districts having spent a year sort of researching in Massachusetts is you know potential drawings towns go after bonds and so we have put ourselves in this position where we are going to get the most out of 70 million dollars but that might mean utilizing more of the same space and renovating it rather than new construction and that's okay because it'll be a lot better than what it currently is so the upside is massive for improvement and 70 million dollars I look forward to seeing what that buys us and do you want to answer questions about the renovation first and then we'll go into whatever topics we want to hit and then take questions maybe at the end because you might get mired oh yeah right good idea alright so Jeff do you want to speak or I can speak without the superintendent can I go right ahead on Monday the superintendent's desire to resign after this school year and so he's sent that a press release to the public and it's been all over the news and we wish him well and we are appreciative of his leadership over the past five years and we immediately Jeff and I met today with our director of HR and I also had the good fortune of meeting with education today Dan French who will assist us in this really important role to fill and I'm looking forward to the work ahead and the recruitment to retain someone who would be lucky enough to work here in Burlington so that's our outlook is that we're immediately looking for a recruiting for a superintendent so the search has begun starting today the work perhaps less flashy things that I'd like to say is the negotiations have commenced with the teachers union for the contract that begins in July we've got a fair amount of time on that but you may all know that things last year the legislature passed a law that is in the process of taking a portion of the bargaining out of the local hands and into the state level and what I mean by that is healthcare is now being bargained at the state level and statewide so that's one thing that's kind of an interesting twist in this particular teachers contract negotiation cycle that will be out of our hands right now we don't know what it will look like so it might take us a little longer than it did last year come to an agreement with the teachers because we're waiting to see what the statewide healthcare is going to look like for actually all employees in public schools in Vermont so that's one piece that's out there what else is going on there's a seasonality to this whole business and we are just getting into full swing with the annual budgeting process in fact I believe our regular meeting which is next Tuesday we're going to have some more meet if you will to start digging into regarding what will our budget look like next year I believe posted on the school district's website is a list of public input opportunities I couldn't recite them right now but you can always email me and I'll send you that list or a link among others next Wednesday next Tuesday and the Tuesday after that the board meets so you're always welcome to come typically it's at BHS public comment but I'm very hopeful that we will do our very very best to keep your taxes from increasing in any painful way I think we did a pretty good job last year balancing we did add a few things I did my calculations when the tax bill came out in July it was in the 4% range on the education piece of the tax bill so I was pretty pleased with that because we ended up getting a lot of value out of that we added a number of kindergarten paraeducators to the kindergarten classrooms which were sorely needed these kindergartners as you know are very very young just entering school and the ratio of students to teachers is pretty darn high in the 20s to 1 and a few years ago under budget pressures the district had to cut or chose to cut all the kindergarten paraeducators so you got your school teacher in there with a large group of varying needs anyway I'm so pleased we were able to we're phasing that in over a couple of years there are a few other examples but I think we balanced some additions to cost well and I hope we would be very sensitive to that again this year can we pause for questions just to see we've only got five minutes it's very crucial what you were about to say as you might know we have a number of new principals that are in elementary schools I'm hearing very very good things seems like it's been very calming very positive things which is very important that sets a climb as you know from the top down so anyway I guess I'll back to Claire and then we'll take your questions very mundane questions walking by Edmunds Middle School regularly I notice cars have been parked on the grass yesterday there were six cars in the afternoon parked on the grass what's the reason for that yes we have addressed that right now we are working with Marty Spalding our property services we have some reduced parking in the back because of the construction and there just doesn't seem to be an ample space so we are figuring out with the other elementary school principal doing an inventory of it's just I don't want to say lack of organization but we have to get a stronger hold on permitting in the staff lot and so we've had some student teachers and additional parkers people parking in the parking lot so we've outgrown it so we have to address it so it's been brought up a lot because not only yourself but other neighbors have asked why they're parking out there would it be possible to stake out the drip circle of the trees there so that the cars aren't compacting the soil and doing permanent damage to the trees I won't bring that up to that great idea are they just traffic enforcement ticketing those cars no we've asked them not to because part of it was we didn't have it was on a neat basis so it's not the people that are parking there not teachers that are working there all day it's staff coming in and we've had some a couple of issues that we have needed people to come down on a moment's notice and that has been the only place where they have been able to park but it's getting more comfortable so we've asked them to address it well you're lucky that they granted that exception just related to cars my recollection from last year is that there is a plan to cease the practice of pickup at the side of the middle school which backs up the cars on south union but where there is like a whole line of no parking signs but like today there are literally probably 20 cars that went more than a block and a half back so is this something under construction still that's going to change that that's going to be done no there will always be that problem on south union street there was a study done by Peggy Bronco the bike organization in the city to actually add a bike lane and that did not go over well because of the narrowness between King Street and Maple Street and really the issue is that you know we could look into a curb cut and it's something that needs to get addressed last year or two years ago they talked about putting a road through the Edmunds campus and that was met with much resistance because that's the only field I know we have the large field above but it's really used for the elementary school and so the middle school green space is just that area and so it's an issue so again bringing it to our attention we hope to touch base with Marty and make McDonough the principal but when I was driving today when the road comes down there's a little faded crosswalk there no lights, no nothing cars are parked there and a kid came out between two cars and I stopped thank god but no visibility until that kid was practically in the middle of the street remind me it has to be a drive thank you it makes sense to close that block for two hours or they talk about not having resident parking on the left hand side on the left side we tried to tackle that five years ago and it was an effort because it's part of that all time thanks for being so transparent regarding the high school and the budget I mean you're right a $70 million opportunity to upgrade the high school is an exciting opportunity even if it's not what we envision it's going to be fantastic and also along that line what about the timetable thank you Mary so we are looking at originally we had thought the summer of 2020 but we will now be a year out because within the six months that we've sort of lost this August to now and permitting as it is it would be a 2021 project starting in 2021 just to piggyback on an issue with South Union I reliant there to write with my kids on the bike to IA because it connects with the fact that I play and it's quite a disaster because the leader end up riding on the road which is very dangerous because it's so crowded we ride on the sidewalk which we have a conflict with the students when you said that they will say like this this is pretty discouraging the cars are not supposed to stop there anyway just as a people I know this is not the duration it's more the city but I think the source of the problem is the school and the behavior of the parents that feel that's the only way they can drop the kids off it is a cultural we are on suburbia so we don't have numbers like placards in our car to pick up our kids like most suburban towns Vennance is our most city school so we have incredible challenge of even getting substitutes on that campus so think of it we have over a thousand students on that campus and you know times I would say 70 teachers and we cannot get substitutes because they say there's no parking I'm not working for your school and so everybody is challenged and even during construction I went through the city and showed them the parking, the ample parking and so it is an issue that we definitively have to do and it takes bodies to actually educate I mean we talked about we had parent volunteers that would man the horseshoe at the elementary side we've never had parent volunteers manage the middle school side but you know at the time of the day three o'clock if we can get volunteer parents but it's a pretty ugly position to put someone in like you can't stop the arrow where do you meet your kids? I think it's a design issue it's not going to happen Education in design so like you know people had talked about putting a horseshoe in front of Edmunds middle school similar to VHS you create the horseshoe and then you create the log but even now there's sometimes there are no cars parked at that 15 minute it's a convenient thing people do not want to ride around there so going to the parking lot in the back is because there's absolute no traffic in there so I don't buy it buy it on the drop off that it's an issue of not having enough capacity I think it's an issue of attitude I agree well I will bring this they have a very very active PTO I was the PTO chair there for many years and they have an active group of parents and I think it always needs to be at best and I appreciate everyone's feedback because it's an important joke Hi there so hopefully solution I mean we heard from Champlain College we hear from the universities maybe it's time for the Burlington school district to think about a shuttle for some of the permanent employees I mean you have space down in facilities I don't know what you have up on the hill it seems pretty packed up there but maybe even going with I know that there's been some partnership with Champlain over the field at Edmunds maybe you can partner with that parking lot down off from Pine Street with them the price of a bus and granted your subs probably won't but a lot of the long time people that live in this area would certainly and if we're talking in Burlington you know let's start let's piggyback off from them and get a shuttle I know that you can't use the special ed buses because of special ed money but certainly we can afford something to fix a problem up there so that's a thought number two is I feel your pain on the construction we have so many projects going on in the city there's no help statewide so everybody pretty much has an open check for construction I feel your pain we're doing some bathrooms up at Mount Abe we thought we're going to go 1-8 so I get it and I feel it I think in the room that we all have confidence that with the board that we have that we're going to get a pretty good product for $70 million so so and I don't want to be the elephant in the room but everybody wants to know if the superintendent is going to get paid that extra money when he resigns or is when he leaves is that it for him I know that the free press talked a little bit about it talking about it so right I think we aren't at liberty to speak to that yet however eventually I think whatever well so he obviously notified the community and the public of his intention to wrap up the year and then explore new opportunities he's under contract to do yet another year so the board has to ratify that and that's part of what we'll be doing we believe next week Tuesday and so eventually I got to think that there'll be more information on point so I'm just asking perhaps some patients but right I mean you'll eventually the taxpayers will know what the bargain is but the situation is but I think it's premature right now I didn't read anywhere if he's staying in the area do you know that we do not that would lead to him I think we're going to wrap up thank you so much applause