 Welcome. Councilor McFarlane, this is the first time we are convening as the new Board of Finance. Welcome everyone. We'll call this new board to order at 5.35 p.m. And first item on the agenda is the agenda. We have three board members, as you can see, participating remotely in a motion on the agenda to get us started. So moved. Thank you, Councilor McKee. Do we have a second? Second. Yeah, great. Seconded by, say Councilor Jang. Any discussion of the agenda? Seeing none, we're going to vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. We have an agenda that brings us to the public forum and is there anyone in the room? I think the public forum does not appear so. So we will go to Sharon Busher is with us online and has her hand raised. So go ahead, Sharon. Sharon, you are unmuted on our end of the peers. We are not hearing you, Sharon. If you are trying to talk, maybe you can try something for your end. We're trying to promote you as a panelist now. And you now are a panelist. You need to unmute yourself. Looks like you're unmuted and you're not hearing yourself. So let's see. I'm not sure what to say, Sharon. If you wanted to try to, I'm going to move on with a meeting, I'm going to move on with a meeting. If you want to try calling in on the number, sometimes that works. We can, we'll pause again in a minute and try you again. But let's move on. Let's do the consent agenda and then we'll try to share it again. Is there, can we have a motion on the consent agenda? Sure, I'll make a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated. Great, thank you. President Paul is our second, seconded by, I didn't actually, was that Councillor Jang? Thank you, Councillor Lee. Thank you. Any discussion of the consent agenda? Go to vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. All right. So we have an adopted consent agenda and we'll try again is Sharon with us. Sharon, go ahead and try speaking again. Seems like we're having some kind of technical difficulty tonight. It's strange since we certainly had you, it's worked during the past. I think we need to move on. Sharon would be, I'd say this, if you're trying to connect on an urgent matter tonight and really need to be heard on an action where we're taking action on, you know how to reach Jordan. She's in the room. Why don't you reach out to Jordan by phone directly and we'll figure out how to get your comments. And if it's not so time-sensitive, we'll figure out a way to do this another way. I don't believe there's anyone else seeking to be recognized. So we will close the public forum and we'll move to section four of the agenda. We have four items for approval and recommendation to the city council and then we have three items for finance approval only. And then we have a budget discussion at the end. So that's the roadmap of the evening. We'll start with the airport strategic evolution through reorganization 4.01. Welcome Nick. Why don't you give us a overview of the action you're seeking recommendation for. Excellent. Well, very exciting to be here tonight to present this and through the support of you, Mayor and your team as well as the HR department over the last several many months we've been going through a analysis and reorganization structure of the Burlington International Airport soon to be the Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport. And with that reorganization structure there are many elements, many positive elements to this reorganization. I'm also joined here with the leadership team of the airport Dave, Larry and Marie. The four of us right now are the leaders of the Burlington airport and have strategized and looked through this reorganization to add additional elements and growth opportunities for the employees at the airport. This in the premise of this reorganization is to add four managers to a tiered system rather of five killers of the airport which is the two deputy directors as well as the finance department, the engineering department and a new position or a new department called the innovation and marketing department. This entire reorganization is under these five peers inclusive of the four new managers as well as an additional maintenance specialist. So another union position and reclassification of additional positions to union positions. Appendix C outlines every position at the airport in the requested action tonight. You'll see there are a few new positions, a couple of removal of positions, three removal of positions, the director of maintenance, grant transportation and a QTA manager as well as some reclassification title changes and the majority of these positions being reporting change only. From a financial perspective, this fiscal year requires no budget amendment. There are significant savings through current vacant positions and for next fiscal year as you see in the memo, there are and will be included in the fiscal year 2024 budget as well as future budgets presented to you with the support of the airline industry, the concessionaires and significant increases in our total revenues this year and into the future as we approach historic revenue numbers in many, many categories. The action requested tonight of course is to add these new positions, add these manager positions and as I initially stated to give an opportunity for many employees at the airport to advance and grow into these positions. These would now allow an additional position for an entry level or a maintenance specialist position to grow into these manager positions, manager of operations, manager of properties, manager of airfield and a new position called manager of customer experience. And again, the financial structure and elements of this is very limited through next year and no budget amendment required for this fiscal year. I think I've explained much of it in the memo itself but that's the bottom line. Good, thank you for kicking us off next. All the work behind bringing this proposal forward. The floor is open to you the board for questions. I would like to proceed. Councilor Jay. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I am happy to make the motion but before I would want it to just take the time to say thank you to Director Longo, not only for the memo but also for inviting me at the airport last time to visit and to also hear about the plan, this reorganization, the hotel, beta technology and the innovation work that you have been doing over the past couple of months, let's say. I am really impressed by your work and wanted to take the time to say it here. Thank you for the leadership. And also it seems based on my understanding that this is long overdue. This has been, this was supposed to happen at least, let's say a couple of months ago because as we all know, the airport is growing and serving this region perfectly. And it is about time that we support this reorganization. And for that, I would like to make the motion as indicated on board up. Yeah. Great, thank you very much, Councilor Jain. Do we have a second for the motion? I'm happy to second that and agree and also concur with Councilor Chang's comments. Thank you, President Bob. Further discussion? Councilor Barlow. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I just had to start a moment, the first comment from Councilor Barlow. I did, and Director Alango and I have spoken about the reorganization, but I did have a question about, it seems like it's a pretty significant restructuring of the airport staff. And I'm just wondering, given sort of the hiring environment in the world generally and the challenges that many organizations and institutions are having, hiring staff, it seems like during the transition could be a little chaotic as things are realigned. And I'm just wondering if there is a plan to sort of address that during this transition and how long will you anticipate that this transition might take? Yeah, really good question. And I think because these are manager level positions, because we have many talented folks at the airport today, we do have unions work on this reorganization as well. There are qualified, although of course, we would have to go through the hiring process, qualified internal candidates for these positions. And I believe these are highly competitive salary rates for these new positions, both from the director level positions that are currently vacant, the deputy director and the director of innovation and marketing, as well as the four new manager positions. Highly competitive, we did look at many other airports, both in New England and in many other locations. From a strategic and phasing approach, there are key positions that I do wanna get hired as soon as possible so that we can complete our leadership team as well as strategize with our employees. So the timeframe is gonna take some time, it'll take several months, if not through the rest of this summer. And best case scenario, we can hire the majority of those positions and fill this majority of positions. Inclusive of the new maintenance or the additional maintenance position, we also looked at the hourly rate for that position at different airports. And we're at or above the rates for that position itself. And that doesn't include a hiring bonus, which many other airports are completing right now. We've hired multiple maintenance positions and operating specialists throughout this year. And we're really successful with six or more candidates for each one of those positions. So I'm very confident that we're gonna be able to hire these positions at the rates being proposed. And during the transition period will the old structure be in place and tell them, I mean, how will you manage through that? So over the last six or so months, we've temporarily assigned and transitioned employees. For example, Marie is now managing our ambassador team on top of her duties. Larry is now managing half of our maintenance department. As well as his duties, and then Dave is managing his operations team as well as half the other half of the maintenance department, which all aligned with this new structure. So the employees are already being prepared for this transition as we continue to hire both director and manager positions. Thank you. Any further discussion, any further questions? Okay, I think we'll go, just we're ready for a vote. All those in favor of a vote, and please say aye. Are there any opposed? Motion carries, you know, so thank you all very much. Thank you, Nick. Yeah, thanks for the hard work on this. The 4.02 is also an airport item. This is a request to prove the modification of the previous leaf through form of ground lease agreement with ETD hotel LLC developer, proposed hotel at the Burnton International Airport. It's been some time since we've talked about the hotel project at the board, I believe. I think everyone knows Jeffrey Glasberg from our passport with Jeffrey on numerous projects. Turn it over, you guys, to bring us up to speed. General on the project and what this modification is about. I'll give a very brief history and then I'm gonna hand it over to Jeff. Jeremy Fark is also joining us tonight as well, who has helped since the beginning, which started back in 2017 with an RFP process, 2018 and 19 some awards as well as city council authorization for an option agreement and mayoral authority to sign the ground lease associated with this hotel. DEW Corporation is our partner on the hotel development. They've also partnered with throughout the years, a hotel management firm to run the day-to-day operations. So it is extremely excited to bring this to you today to get to the next step, which is redesigning, re-looking at this site, re-looking at the terms which Jeff will explain and see the permits throughout the rest of this year get into place and then the development and construction started towards the end of this year, most likely into the spring of next year. Go for it, Jeff. Sure. Good evening, counselors. The resolution in front of you this evening seeks to move this project forward. I became involved with it originally in 2018, as Nick mentioned, in an effort to negotiate an agreement with a qualified developer to bring a hotel to the airport, the parameters that the city set for that were that the hotel be developed with other people's money, not the municipality's money, and that the term of ground lease be less than 50 years. So coming up with a business transaction that works for private capital, where the ground lease has a finite term such as that, creates a constricted range of opportunities for how to put that transaction together. We negotiated what was a very good agreement for the city initially, the revisions to this proposed agreement leave the city with a very good agreement. What's happened in the interim was a regulatory process that took some time, input from the FAA on location of the hotel itself, the pandemic, which put a stop to all kinds of development, especially hotel-related development. And we now find ourselves in a rising interest rate environment and a market that is actually quite strong for hotels. And so in the interim, a number of new hotels have come into the marketplace, taking available brand flags that had been contemplated for the airport. So all by way of saying it's 2023, the opportunity is to move ahead with development of the hotel. There are some revisions to the financial structure that are required to make that happen. The prior negotiated agreement put the bulk of the city's revenue stream in it as a percentage of gross revenues of the hotel. Under the proposed agreement, which is in front of you this evening, the stream of revenue to the city would be modified. It would be comprised of a fixed ground lease amount and then a variable revenue stream, which would depend on occupancy and use of the garage. In our analysis of what we see as those opportunities, we think the financial interests of the city come out as well as the prior transaction. And I think with that, that's really the part of it is trying to put the developers of this property in a place where they've got a financial transaction with the right brand to be able to proceed. Their goal is to get back into the regulatory process with South Burlington immediately with hope of being able to break ground certainly for next spring. Great, thank you for that. Jeremy, anything you wanna add before we open up the discussion? No, I think that's a good summary. Everything else really gets into detail. So it's a question of how much detail you wanna get into in terms of how this plays out. But really what we're doing is there's an option agreement and there are various conditions that the developer has to satisfy before they can exercise their option to ground lease the property. And then once they meet all of those conditions and they exercise their option, then the party signed the ground lease. So this would be the approved form of ground lease and we're modifying it so that, like Jeff said, it's financeable. They found their new development partner who's very experienced has found that the structure that was in place before is more difficult to finance than the structure that we're now proposing. I think one element to that is we have not signed a ground lease. The mayor has not signed any ground lease on part of this deal because of all of the elements and the time that has gone through. So this is in amendment to the authorization for the mayor to execute this option and changes in the ground lease, which is completely red-lined for you to see first edition versus this edition. Okay, great. So thank you for seeing that up. How would the board like to proceed? Question? I think mayor, there is a question from Councilor Bergman. I'm happy to make a motion first or whatever you'd like. Sure, why don't you go ahead and make the motion? Okay, I'll make a motion to take the action as recommended on Board Docks. Great, we have a second by Councilor Chang and we will go to Council Bergman. Thank you. Actually, I am just really interested in the location and particularly with the FAA's adjustment or whatever they did, that was referred to but not specified. So, and I looked at the site, the appendix or the exhibit for the site plan and that was, I didn't see it, it becomes a lengthy document and I didn't quite get there. So as somebody who came onto the council a year ago, I was not part of those decisions. I have a major concern about expansion into the Chamberlain School neighborhood and so I am particularly interested in the location. I have no issues with the changes that occurred and that are being proposed per se but may have major issues with the location. Thank you. Okay, great. What do you want to speak to that? Yeah, so the original RFP specified two locations, one on the southern side of the parking garage and then one on the northern side of the parking garage. The south side is the entrance, the driveway entrance into the terminal building. Originally under the original contract, the original option and ground lease, the hotel development team was proposing and had designed a southern site plan or the entrance to the parking garage. Again, this is on the east side of airport drive, which is not the neighborhood side and is appropriately zoned today, adjacent almost touching 10 feet from our parking garage facility. The FAA then was involved with the height requirements and there were interferences with navigational aids as well as the radar that did not allow the height to be built on that southern site. So through this process, this actually happened pre-pandemic through the process, the FAA denied that height requirement and the hotel team pivoted and moved to the northern site. We have an existing surface parking lot there today. This is adjacent, our parking garage again and adjacent are exit lanes to the parking garage on the existing surface lot. And that's where the new site is being located and being proposed. The FAA is gonna take another peak at this because it's slightly being modified. They did receive a 70, they did receive an FAA permit on that already. But again, the site is being modified because of the new development team, possibly new brand name and the requirements that come with the brand. But existing zones, appropriately zoned, east side of Air Force Drive and not being proposed anywhere else possibly existing surface lot. Excellent. Thank you. Any information that can be provided besides the oral, I totally appreciate this information, Nick. And if there can be that along with any site plan drawing if you've got something so that people can understand how tall it will be, just what its footprint would be. That would be very helpful and I think helpful to the city if we decide to go forward with it. So thanks all, that's all I've got for this. I appreciate that being in the council's packet for this. Thank you. So we should be able to do that, right? Yeah, that's a good one. Do we have, are there new renderings for that location or is it still just basically just up side plan? I think that's a great scenario. Yeah, just like plan. So we'll make for that council approval next week, we'll get the site plan on the packet and I hope you can understand where it's, it's, I think, I'm hopeful, Councillor Bergman, you will not find this impacts on your concern. It's right there immediate appeal of this project has always been its relationship, close relationship to the parking garage as an asset that we have there that is at times it's getting better over the years, but it has been underutilized at times. Yeah, this would be another useful help that I kept full use out of that existing city asset, the garage. Further, any further questions? There none, I think we're ready for a vote. Yes. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Leave the motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Great, thank you. It's you, Jeffrey and Jeremy. Okay, 4.03, Penny for Parks and Bike Path Project close out budget amendments. Welcome Cindy and Sophie. Want to do a quick overview of this? Sure. So anticipating the fiscal year end and reallocating funding for Penny for Parks to projects we're going to complete and then start in fiscal year 24 we're just moving funds back into the pot for the most part or reconciling budgets where there was a discrepancy just based on counting of all these projects. Very good. Floor's open to the board for questions or voting. Yes, sir. Jay. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and thank you Sophie. I would like to make the motion as indicated on the product. Great, thank you. Seconded by Councilor McGee. Any discussion? Councilor Fogg, President Fogg. Thank you. The only thing I just wanted to note is that when Penny for Parks was first created the idea was for us to spend the money not necessarily on multi-year projects not on to really spend the money on projects year in and year out. And I know there's always reasons for why things don't happen the way that they do. I just felt it was important to note that that was really the idea. And we've had this conversation before over the years when money has been held over from one year to another to be able to accumulate money so that larger projects can be done. And I think obviously on a case by case basis that certainly that's understandable. But I think the people who really brought forward the Penny for Parks program intended for the money to be spent every year. And so that would be the, I think it maybe has morphed into other things and just would once again just remind ourselves that that was the idea behind Penny for Parks. So it's a lot of money to be put into restricted which of course that's where it should go but we just hope that as we move forward that we try as best we can to use the money for what it was intended for so that it can be enjoyed more quickly. That's all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Sure. Sure, go ahead. Thanks for that comment, Councilor Powell. I think for the most part a lot of projects are completed so we are moving money back because we over budgeted thankfully that's rare these days. And when we're budgeting out for fiscal year 24 we're budgeting most of the Penny for Parks allocation and leaving some buffer just because the prices for things have sobtrated so much but also just taking into consideration capacity not over promising what projects will undertake and with the anticipation that if we can get through all these then we'll come back and ask for VA to move more money into specific projects that we can complete but we don't wanna have projects that are holding money and we can't get to them for multiple years for the reasons you're outlining so that money is freed up for projects that are active and may come over budget than what we anticipate so we don't have to push them off. Yeah, I mean, I would just add that I that has happened in the past that, you know I think people, this is probably a good problem to have is that we all get a little bit overzealous about what we can accomplish in a year and then find out that maybe we can't do all of it and certainly it is not a bad problem to have that money needs to be returned. You know, it's a moving, you know it's always a conversation and you know, I appreciate the work that you're doing. I do remember that it was a very it was a pretty hard fought battle to get this penny for parks program and just wanna make sure that we're doing all we can to spend it every year as best we can. That's all. Thank you. Thank you though. Thank you. That's a wrap. Yes, and thank you for this. I just had a question about the system wide line at the bottom. I didn't quite understand what was being intended there and I was going to elaborate on it a little bit. The community requests. Yeah. So do the accounting system that we have we always allocate $45,000 I said $40,000 every year for community requests but often that gets approved in the fall by the parks commission. And then we've already in motion for several other projects so we can't fit it into our schedule basically until the new fiscal year. So rather than pull from that line we're allocating the money in its individual project in the next fiscal year rather than keep pulling from that and then having to replenish it all the time but we hold that money so that every year if we can accomplish something within the six months basically we do move forward with it. So this year for example, we had a request from Bat V to install a tactile sign at Waterfront Park and we'll be able to do that before June so we're pulling from that fiscal line and then other projects we can't get to so we'll add it as a project to fiscal 24. Understood. Yeah. Thank you. We have it first and the second. We do. So I think we're ready for a vote for some questions. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Great, thank you. Thank you. 4.04, distribution and collection system improvements sold. Thank you. Welcome, Chapin and Martin. You want to see this up? Yes, sure. So this is a project that started at the end of 2021. It's funded largely mostly in part for the 2018 Clean Water Resiliency Bond and it includes a lot of distribution, relining and rehabilitation as well as collection systems. Rehabilitation, so that's a project that's now over $7 million. So pretty substantial, a lot of work throughout the city. Dubois and King has been on this project from before we got bidders on board. So they really know the project well and they've been with us as kind of a force multiplier but also a necessary component in the field to track quantities and quality of the work. So this is basically just an extension of their contract for this year. And that's what we're going for here, it's a request. Okay, thank you. And welcome, Megan as well. Do you want to add anything to that, Megan? Yes, I mean, I think everybody will see it as a larger number that we've spent in previous years and I think it's driven by two things. I don't know if Martin said that it was managing some kiddos. This is our heaviest, most juicy part of the work. So we need more hours for people to be all the places they need to be. And then also with the passage of time, as we're seeing with lots of contracts, there is a little bit of a cost escalator for due to inflation. But we view this as extremely necessary, we need to make sure that this work is being done right so that we're not gonna have problems later on. So it is a little bit of money, but it is an investment in this infrastructure to make sure it's being installed properly so that it will last for many, many, many years into the future. All right, thank you. Floor's open for questions, discussion, Martin. Thank you for the presentation and happy to make the motion as indicated on the board. Thank you, Councilor January. We have a second. Seconded by Councilor Barlow. Further discussion and questions? We will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Where are you at post? Motion carries, you know, it's like, thank you all. And that includes the section four of the agenda and we now have three items that are for board of finance approval only. And the first is an authorization to accept grant funds for the Letty Gully stormwater evaluation. So welcome back, Sophie and Cindy. And I see we got Megan here too since it's a stormwater item accepting grants, 26,000 of grants anything else? Let's take a quick look at this. It was received a proposal, a sub-proposal from our comprehensive plan that identified the Letty Gully as having stormwater challenges. This opportunity came up. It's 100% funded, no match required. Worked with Megan's team on just narrowing down the scope and we submitted and we're successful. So we're looking forward to implementing this. So we can identify projects. But the next hopefully round that's funding to complete state of stormwater evaluation. Excellent, great. How the board likes to proceed. So quick question. Go ahead. Yeah, I mean, I don't understand why Addison County Regional Planning Commission is providing this grant to the municipality. This is one of the mysteries of the state because they have a lot of funding coming in. They've asked for help from the regional planning commissions to issue these grants. And it doesn't necessarily come from our planning commission. It comes from wherever whichever one received the specific grant. That's why it comes from Addison County. No other reason. It's a management decision on the state's part. Okay, so if I understand correctly, the state can give let's say utility money to for example, central Vermont and any municipality have to apply to central Vermont in order to receive it. That's right. Yeah. And in other grants they have a nonprofit organization Watersheds United Vermont is also managing a different part of money more for the implementation side of it. And that's a state-wide organization but they're based in Montpelier. That's just the way it is right now. They're leveraging existing organizations to be service providers and administrators of the amount of funding because the state can't possibly manage it. But it is confusing. We don't have to have cows. We're not gonna have cows grazing on Letty as a trade-off. We might have goats for the poison ivy. There you go. Exactly. Thank you. And I'm happy to make the motion as indicated before that. Great. Thank you, Councilor Jennings. Do we have a second? Second by Councilor McKee. Discussion. We'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. All right. Already opposed. The motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. 5.02 request. Approval to execute a contract for seasonal lawn maintenance services of water resource facilities. Welcome. Who would like to get this one out quickly? I think Matt Dow is our wastewater superintendent. Welcome back. Bear with me as this is my first time in a long time. So we're looking for approval to execute a contract for seasonal lawn maintenance sort of the three wastewater plants and three water reservoirs that we put out to bid a couple of months ago with one qualifying bid. Good. Thank you. Floor is open. Are we ready for a motion? Yeah. I was just asking. Sorry. Sure. Go ahead, Councilor Jay. Yeah, since the city has the equipment and don't you think it would be better to hire seasonal employees to do this work? Like in terms of cost? So we have reached out to parks in the past and it's been challenging for them to meet those demands. There was a three to four year period where we did work with parks on that, which they were not the ones that were doing the work. They were hiring it out as part of the paperwork diversion program. And honestly, our needs were not being met. There were times where at three weeks we go by without us getting mowed and which was not fair to us or our reputation when we had visitors come to our wastewater plants and make it harder for maintenance and whatnot. So over the years it has gone back into a best practice for us to look for our own lawn care so that we can have our needs met as we need. We're certainly willing to keep having the conversation. We got pricing for five years but are only asking for approval for three years so that we can continue to have that conversation. I think parks is aware we have this ongoing need. Parks does service a lot of, it services the landscaping that we have is that's immediately adjacent to other things that they maintain because it's quick if they're mowing this field to just chop over. These are kind of whole new sites that they would have to mobilize for and when we've presented that opportunity to them they're not currently at the capacity they would need to meet that service but it's an ongoing conversation because I don't disagree. Thank you. That's a wrap. Just from my education, I'm sort of new to scrutinizing numbers like this but it seems like a lot of money and I'm just wondering how it compares to previous years, is it in the ballpark? Yeah, we were very happy that the Paragon had to contract the last cycle on I can't remember the number of, we talked about the number, I think it was like maybe like a 3% escalation last year which seemed realistic and especially considering the last contract they actually had no escalators year to year and then it's I think a 3% each year after that. And then but to put it in the perspective 15 years ago, we were actually paying somebody close to the $20,000 a year back then. They were providing an amazing service and it looked like a golf course but the reality is that we have a lot of tanks and a lot of things you have to work around so it's not necessarily just like, oh, jump on a mower and go. There's, they usually come with like a team of three or four people and I think it takes at least an eight hour day to do just the wastewater class slow on the three water tanks. Okay, thanks, that's helpful. Catherine McGee, go ahead. I'm happy to make the motion as recommended on board box. Great, thank you. Is there a second? Second. Second by Councillor Jang. Discussion? You will go to vote. All those in favor of motion, please say aye. Aye. All right, post. Motion carries unanimously. All right, our last delivered item is 5.03. Thank you both. So water resources item request for approval to execute contract for installation of security camera node at the reservoir. This is going to be Megan. Okay, Megan, do this up. So we have existing cameras. They needed to be upgraded and then as the results, both of our own sort of investigation and seeing evidence of people getting into the reservoir or drinking water reservoir, that's where seven million gallons are stored. That is the water for the city. And we absolutely do not want anybody to be able to fiddle with it or introduce any substances into that water. And we're seeing evidence of graffiti, not necessarily other nefarious acts, but it is of concern to us. And it was as well a concern to the state when they did our sanitary survey. It was marches that efficiency. And so we are on a schedule to update the cameras there. So that includes updating the existing three cameras and then expanding the number of cameras so that really and truly we can see every nook and cranny and be able to respond if we see somebody jump in the fence to intervene. We collaborated with Scott Barker and the larger IT upgrade. We needed to, sorry, the larger camera system upgraded. We needed to wait until that was in place before we could add additional cameras because the previous system wouldn't allow for expanding the number of cameras. So we're very appreciative of that effort from the innovation department. President Ball. Thank you. I'm happy to make the motion as recommended on board docs. Great. Do we have a second? Second. Thank you, Councilor Chang. Further discussion? Yeah, I was just wondering where is the information going once the cameras, who's holding the, is it the police or your employees who's monitoring it? Yeah, both. So we have 24 seven operators at the water plant. And so they have a screen where they're looking at cameras and then our understanding is it's also being fed to police as well. They have so many cameras, they can't possibly, I think be watching them off all at once. So we would be having our operators monitoring those cameras and then alerting the police. And we've been in communication with the police about what our critical facilities are. Cause obviously with capacity issues, they can't respond to all trespassing calls, but we got a positive response with them understanding that this is a critical facility and that we do need response if we have somebody trespassing. Thank you. Okay. There's no further discussion. We'll add the motion rights. We will go to the vote. All those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. Very opposed. Motion carries unanimously. Thank you everyone. Great. Thank you, Megan. Thank you, Jayvon. So with that, great. So we finished our deliberative agenda. What we wanted to do now is have a discussion about an early discussion on the FY 24 budget. We had some, a little bit of discussion in January before, you know, we made making the decision that we would not be seeking a tax increase this year. The thinking behind that, if you'll recall, was really several factors that went into it. One, we just had this major community debate decision just a few months before that in November regarding the school bonding vote, which is clearly as we're already, as we know, is going to start to have impact on tax rates in the coming year. And we also remain in this volatile municipal budgeting environment where we, for years now, have really been in a more uncertain place than this city ever were, I would say for my first, let's see, all the budgeting up until the pandemic was very different than what we've experienced since for a variety of reasons. And board members will, council member, we thought we needed a tax increase in for the FY23 year and went to voters and was narrowly rejected. And then the way that budget kind of sugared off in the end, it's going to be of a tight budget year, but it appears that we, and Catherine will give a, I think part of this presentation is to give us a little bit of sense where we are in FY23. We're feeling, for board members who've been on for a while, been comfortable with us, kind of used to us finishing the end of the year with multimillion dollar surpluses. I don't think that's what's going to happen this year, but I do think we will, we're in pretty good shape, especially given the fact that we plan for some volatility with the replacement reserves, we're going to make it through FY23 without an increase in pretty good shape. Looking ahead to FY24, we have known it would be challenging with the continued uncertainty on various revenue lines, with the increased costs that the city is facing as we see throughout the economy with inflation. You know, with the fact that we have, we are not planning any substantial new, the fact that we have not gotten voters or we don't have levy increases planned, we knew this would be a challenging budget and I think you're going to see that it is. And we want to start the discussion with you about how we are going to get from over the next couple of months. And by the end of June, get to a balanced budget. You'll see, Catherine will walk you through it. There is, as we often experience at this time of year, we are projecting some budget gap and we have some ideas about how we plan to fill it. And so that's in the roadmap here. Catherine's going to give you an update on where we are with the current budget year and look to the year ahead and kind of lay out the challenges that together we're going to have to work through over the next two and a half months, a little more than two months. Take away Catherine. Great. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. As we usually do, I wanted to provide a little bit, excuse me, of context for this budget. These are things that we have talked about before but do bear repeating. I'll just handle them quickly. Some of the big changes are to our public safety resources as we have added CSOs and CSLs. Many counselors will recall that we in previous years use the savings from not having full officer account to pay for that. Now that we are well into our rebuilding plan that changes things a bit. We also have higher than our usual employee costs as we were negotiating those new contracts in the aftermath of the pandemic and in the midst of the record high inflation that we know about. The highest of those increases occurred in FY23 but we do in FY24 and 25 still have what I would refer to as outsized bullet increases. Some but not all of our revenues have recovered from COVID. We see that a bit unevenly and you'll see that more detail in the coming slides. We are level funding our department operating budgets which is difficult for department heads in light of inflation but we've decided to try and hold the line there because at this time we aren't making changes with staffing. We are adding staff very much but as you'll see here in public safety there are some staff additions and of course that comes at a cost as well. So I like to make sure that we are kind of grounded in this year's budget before we talked about FY24. So we'll do that quickly. These are our major sources of revenue that I'm focusing on. Here everything's in millions of dollars. You can see the percentage and what we budgeted and where we currently expect things to land. It appears that we could have as much as a $2.3 million pull. That sounds really like a lot. It is only 2.5% of our $94 million total in terms of some of the reasons why we are experiencing that. DPW which I see Chapin is here. Might wish you got escaped before you had to answer these questions. But parking services we are currently projecting to be off by some 700,000 from what was budgeted and street maintenance and engineering make up the other piece of that. For parks it is 75,000 of waterfront and that's largely events and also some of the slips and there's also recreation facilities are down about 30,000. CT is down almost 400,000 or that's what we're predicting and that is a combination of two items. One is recording fees and that we projected at 450,000 and that is every time a property is sold there's a small portion that CT gets and we budgeted that based on our actuals for FY21 and 22. When interest rates were really low, we had a lot of those that has really slowed down now that we have high interest rates which of course we did not let last year. We also had a large amount in the CT budget under purchasing savings but we don't have a methodology to document that. That is something that can happen but it will not happen in FY23. And then for permitting and inspections that is about 400,000 off in building trade permits and that one is a bit volatile because some of the big projects like the VFW and the new phase of Cambrian rise can be 100,000 or more per permit. So depending on the timing of that we could be better off than that 700,000 but bill is being a bit conservative and we're off 300,000 in zoning permit applications which is also unusually slow. So when we get to the expense side you're gonna see a good chunk of this as offset. So we're in the ballpark but before we're doing that do just wanna remind folks one of the ways we built this FY23 budget is we were not unduly, once again we were like super aggressive but we intentionally together projected revenues assuming recovery essentially to pre-pandemic levels and knowing that there was some risk in that as we're seeing play out here in some ways we do have a $2 million revenue replacement reserve which could be drawn upon and I think we are gonna have some draw upon to address this. So overall like I don't find it particularly alarming that we are having some shortfalls on some of these budget lines given that that's sort of the way we approached it and that we plan for it. I am, we are concerned about the parking lot and this is something we will be talking more about in as we get further into the budget process and that is the slowest revenue area to recover. I think that that is real that we have had for a variety of reasons last parking demand than we did before the pandemic and we did see that starting to bounce back for a while and we are concerned that there might be some plateauing of that. So we're not gonna get into the weeds of that tonight but just sort of a preview for you. There we, it's an area we're working hard on and we need to do some, it might be one of the more challenging areas of the budget, the looking forward budget. We may need to consider some policy changes together that generate some additional revenues to get that back up to, we're not in position for that to have those kind of shortfalls year after year and we may need to take some action there. So, so that's the point of the revenue side and then top of it is, I'm gonna sit on the expense side. The good news from a budgetary perspective, sometimes, you wanna see this money invested in doing good things, creating public value, but in terms of coming to a balanced budget, we, it is looking like there's gonna be substantial savings there if you wanna speak to that any further. Yes, I'm not showing it broken out across departments because I'm still firming up some of those numbers with department heads, but a lot of that is actually coming from salaries and it's just with hiring being slow in this competitive job market. There are some savings to be realized there. So just to reiterate what the mayor said, the last slide showed up to $2.3 million less in revenue, but we are predicting that it could be not that much, but close to that much in savings and expenses. And we do have the $2 million revenue replacement fund that is set aside and we won't touch that until the end of the fiscal year, as we know when things have shaken out, sugared off, I'm just gonna use that Vermont phrase. Any questions about 23 situation before we move on? So I'm gonna head to 25. Go ahead, Mark. Just so I understand, again, I apologize. Sometimes this is not for our members. So if we're $2.3 million short, 1.9 million, we would have to, if this played out like this, it'd say 400,000 from the revenue replacement fund. Yep, and then roll over the 1.6 to next year. Got it. We had already planned for $1 million for, we're going into the FY24 budgeting process with a million dollars set aside for a replacement reserve for next, for the coming year as well. So, and you will see one time funds are probably gonna be important for us getting through the upcoming year. So let's go to that. All right, let's go to that. So moving on to FY24. This provides some context from FY22, our FY23 budget. You can see the actual projected and then what we expect in terms of an increase for FY24. And then the overall increase from FY23 to FY24. And you can see we're holding operating expenses level, but there is quite an increase on the salary and benefit lines. And again, that's COLA and the introduction of the new public safety staff. So where are we gonna get that money? Well, this is an update to the FY23 revenue slide and this is our best first guess on what that might look like. And it takes into account the actual budget performance that we are seeing currently and does, as you can see, there's a contraction in DPW and P&I given that we are expecting them not to hit their budgets, but by quite a lot and that will be ongoing discussions with those department heads. But as of now, this is what we feel we can expect. And so we are predicting going from 94 million to 94.5. And that leaves us with a gap of about 1.9 million. Again, big numbers, they sound scary. It is 2% of the budget. So it's not totally unreasonable at this point of the budget process. And the strategies we're using to close this gap, we will continue over these next several weeks to have several many discussions with department heads on the revenue and expense projections and we will refine those before our marvelous nights of May. We will continue to strategically use one-time funds. Some of them are set aside. We will come to you and ask for more use of that just as a heads up. And then we are also exploring the use of the Parks and Rec has an interesting opportunity to use some revenue authority that's in their charter. Those of you who have been around know that our tax rate is not one tax rate. It is made up of many, I should know the exact number but let's call it 15, different rates. And we talked earlier today about penny for parks which is really focused on capital but there is also a separate line for parks. And as we were making sure that we fully understood and were utilizing all of our revenue sources, one thing that came up was an interesting item in our charter which says that we should annually appropriate a reasonable amount of money not less than two cents for parks but there is not a maximum there. So that is something we will come back to you to discuss but is something where we are looking if we can better align revenues and expenses in that Parks and Rec area. What can you expect? The many marvelous nights of May are coming and Jordan has the schedule. It just didn't make it into this PowerPoint. So I will send that out right after this. By early June, you get the full budget and then by charter, we presented to you by June 15th and by June 30th, we will pass the budget. And with that, we are open for more questions and any discussion. Also, this was not posted in advance. It's been very much a work in progress but I will post it after this meeting. So it's up for all of you and constituents and anyone who would like to review it. I'll just maybe say a little bit more about the reference to kind of one time strategies. First of all, I do think we should, I think it's likely we already had that $1 million of our budget set aside for a revenue replacement reserve for to deal with volatility. And I certainly think we're gonna have that in there depending on how much carryover we have from this year's revenue replacement. Maybe we'll even recommend a little more there. We'll see. I do see us having some discussions in the sort of preview of the public safety discussions. The public safety discussions, we are working on a full update for you on where we stand with all of the investments that we have made in alternative resources within the police department and some other areas of the city. And I think we are in position even more so than we haven't been in past years to kind of project where the police department budget is headed, excuse me, with these additional, it's really a very different department now than it was before basically year 21. And when we get to the police department budget, I think we'll have good tools for unpacking that together and projecting where this is headed. I do think ultimately we are going to, basically the vision of the police department, when it's fully staffed up with all these position changes there is some, not enormous, but some modest increase to the amount that we have spent historically with the police department. I think we're going to grapple with that as part of this year's budgeting process. And I think one of the solutions for passing balance budget may be both to sort of strategically invest one-time funds into projects and one-time funds into public safety and start to telegraph for ourselves and for the public that if we want to sustain investment at this level in future years, it's probably going to require some increase in the public safety tax. So again, not prepared to get into kind of the details of that today, but to give you a preface of kind of the major discussions coming in this year's budgeting. I think that will be a big one. That's really where we're at. We will probably, sorry, go ahead. We'll come to you in one second, Councillor Bergman. I think we'll have, it's possible we might have, we'll have some sort of kickoff to the May process and we'll be in, at that point, able to kind of give a more detailed overview of where we're at. Councillor Bergman. Thank you. And thanks for this relatively early beginning of the discussion. I'm interested in progressive alternatives to the property tax. And I recall many decades ago when revenue sharing was cut and we were faced with a fiscal crisis and there was a task force that came up with a number of alternative revenue funding ideas. And so I look at our, our annual report, the fiscal annual report, and I see that certain things like the franchise fees are flat, but we've gotten decent increases in the gross receipts tax and the local sales option tax is improving. So, but also that the, like impact fees are really low. So I'm wondering about when we're going to be getting back the impact fee study, which we will then have to turn into changes to the impact fee ordinance. And that's a source of revenue. And that's a source of revenues, but I'd also like to see, I know that the council, I think unanimously passed a resolution on, related to reappraisal, but also on looking at alternatives to the property tax. And that has gotten, I think, mired in the CDNR committee with maybe the lack of funding to do a study that is asked for. So consistent with our past practice of trying to study things, I would love to see in this budget, some monies to study alternatives to the property tax that are based on the, the ability to pay. And I would just note in that wonderful annual report that I still have Catherine, and which I now am looking at, that the, on page 164, the personal income in the city rose by like, two and a half hundred million dollars, it looks like, from a billion point two to a billion point five, maybe that is just 300 million dollars or so. So there, there is some money that we have gotten, and that's consistent with, you know, sort of the gentrification that we've seen on the housing, the housing market and the pressures that low and moderate income people are facing there. So I would really like this budget to, to have something built in so that we can study it. I think that probably it is a bit too, too late to do something for, for this June's budget or this July's budget, but it would be really good for us to begin the study process. Thanks for listening. Thank you, Catherine. Any other comments at this point? President. I'll just be brief and say, you know, thank you so much for, particularly to Catherine for, for this overview. It's hard to really comment. At this point on, you know, on a lot because it's really so, you know, it's so global where I don't even know if we're at 36,000 feet, maybe we're even higher than that. So I'll look forward to continuing this. We have, we have another board of finance meeting probably on, I don't know if we have another one on the 24th. If we, you know, I, and I, you know, and honestly, I don't remember everything that was in the PowerPoint. If you listed any other dates in April one, we will be discussing this before the May dates. So I, I, I, that could have flown by me, but I'm, I'm hopeful that we will have some more, you know, conversations as this unfolds on, you know, before we get to the eighth of May. So was that, was that, did I miss that? Was, was that your plan anyway? You didn't, I did not specifically call that out, but I am envisioning this to be an iterative conversation. So yes, you can expect something probably at just about every board of finance meeting between now and June 30. Well, that was, that was sort of what I was getting at, but I didn't want to like over, over ask. Okay. That's great. Thank you. And thanks for the presentation. I assume you'll be posting that on board docs. Yes, I will. Sorry. I think you might have missed that part, but we got it ready late and it will be posted as soon as it's over. Great. Thank you. Just to a council Bergman's point, I, I, I'm, I don't think it's going to be done in time for, I mean, you know, I think it's, it's a study. It's not going to impact the FY 24 budget, but there is an important study already in the field on. I don't know exactly what you're expecting that to finalize, but it's, I know that for, I think before the end of the year, but I will find out. So that's, that would, and I believe the impact study fee is due around the end of the calendar year. So yes, I think both that we, we should be well positioned with studies that are already. Contracted for underway. For FY 25. But we will give some thought to whether there's anything else that we want to. Consider studying. In the year ahead. For the comments from. Okay. With that. If there's nothing. There's nothing. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. With that. If there's nothing. There are no further comments from counselors. We'll. We'll conclude this. This item. And that will. Include our business for tonight. So if there is no objection, I will declare the board finance. A journey at 6.55 PM. Okay. Have a good evening.