 Welcome to the ongoing town meeting television election coverage on town meeting TV. My name is Ali Jang and this program is one of the series of forum that we host in advance of town meeting day, Tuesday, March 5th, 2024. Today we have distinguished guests from Winooski and I will allow them to maybe introduce themselves and let's start with Kristin and go that side. Thank you. To be here, I'm Kristin Lott, I am the mayor of Winooski. Thank you. It's good. Yeah, again thank you for hosting us and I'm Thomas Runner, deputy mayor of Winooski. Elaine Wong, the city manager for Winooski. Okay, thank you all for being here today. On tonight's program, we are diving into the proposed budget and ballot questions that the city of Winooski resident will be seeing on the ballot town meeting day. So before we get started, just a reminder that if you are tuning in, you can please call us right here and ask to our guests some questions. And the number to call is 802-862-3966, 802-862-3966. So before let's now get started with a very simple question, how many people live in Winooski and what is the demographic composition of that great city? So we have 8,000 residents as of the 2020 census and Elaine, you just said it. 22% non-white and 19% born outside of the U.S. Okay, 19% foreign born and 20% white. 22% non-white. Yeah. Perfect. So now let's hand the presentation, let's get started and Kristin, let's hand it to you to pull up your slides and let us know what will people see on the ballot this year. Excellent. Yeah. So let me run through the FY25 budget and ballot items. As a reminder in Winooski, all legal residents can vote on town meeting day on these local items. So in this presentation, we have just a review of our strategic vision. We'll walk through the budget and the proposed changes, talk about what else is on the ballot for town meeting day. And then I have some items forward looking about emerging issues and some future needs that folks should have in mind. To not keep anyone in suspense, you can see here though in bold, this budget requires an 8.07% tax rate increase. So we like to ground everything we do in the community set strategic vision. This was developed through a community process in 2015. During that, we spent several years doing a lot of in-depth planning, you know, creating a master plan, a transportation plan, parks plan, et cetera. And for the last several years, we've been focused on implementing that with affordability and equity in mind. So equity is something that's extremely important to the city, as you can imagine. Like our city manager said, we're an extremely diverse city. So it's really something that's important to us. And lastly, we developed a tool to help us guide our policy decisions with an equity lens. We always enacted a plan to increase community listening and engagement to inform these decisions. So we do different engagement efforts to make sure that everyone's being heard. So we visit with student groups at Winooski School District. We have visited with other types of groups, like senior groups. We have a senior center in Winooski. So we all make sure that we go there and senior housing as well. So we make sure to stop by those places. We also try to do informal gathering. So we'll meet people at cocktail venues in Winooski, which there are a few, or we'll go to coffee shops so that we can get people in the morning before they head out to work. And then we also had an equity audit. And we received recommendations from that audit, which are really important for us to make sure that we keep those focused. So developing affordable housing. We hear about affordable housing all across the state, but especially in Winooski, where we're a small city, we want to educate and train landlords to make sure that they know how to treat our residents and make sure that the renters are also trained so that they know what their rights are. And we develop strategies to increase civic participation among our BIPOC residents. So we have a big BIPOC population. It's really important that they're engaged in participating in democracy as well. And it seems that you are one of the first municipalities to allow non-residents to vote. Yes, that is correct. And also, you also have, let's say, Director of Racial Equity Inclusion Belonging in the past. We did have one in the past funded through a grant. When the grant ended, we weren't able to retain that in the budget last year. Wonderful. Thank you for all you do about equity. Keep going. Sure. And sharing that because this, we use that tool in that lens in the decision on what to include in this budget that you'll see. Just a couple of highlights on recent achievements towards the vision. You know, we've advanced a number of capital plans. We have Main Street revitalization coming up. We're working on a hotel parking garage and workforce housing downtown. We've got that bridge project coming up. We've expanded community services offerings, particularly supporting youth. And we've progressed on housing priorities trying to update zoning to support priority housing. We are working on short-term rental regulations right now. We have just hired a new police chief and have had our most successful year in removing guns and drugs from the street and a lot more. So I got off track. Sorry. This is this is the outline of what is proposed in this budget. So the average home in Winooski right now is assessed at two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars. With this budget, they would be paying three thousand forty two eighty five for the municipal side of the bill. This is not the education side of the school, but just just the city side. OK. Yeah. And so the impact of that is about. Oh, it's three hundred one total per household, because I also have here. We're proposing five percent increases to the water and wastewater rates as well. The cost of water from Champlain Water District increased. We're also trying to increase our capital funding to maintain our water lines. That's great. So the mayor mentioned what that will look like for your individual bills. So if your house is two hundred and twenty five thousand dollars, what you're going to be looking at for your taxes in twenty twenty five is three thousand forty two dollars and ninety cents. And this includes a lot of stuff, right? So our police and dispatch support so they keep our community safe. It's the highest share of our general fund. And that's because we staff the police department twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year. So there's always somebody there if somebody were to need the police force. General administration. That makes all of the other functions more effective in our city. Public works that manages our streets, our sidewalks, our water, all of that type of infrastructure that you see and you also do not see. We have capital expenses. So that's our debt service on our main street revitalization project, which is a big project that we're doing in Winooski city vehicle replacement. So a police vehicle. There's a small tractor that's included in that. And community services, which support the vitality of our community. We're providing green spaces, safe spaces, learning spaces and programs. These include the library, the senior center, parks, the pool and affordable child care. There's fire and code enforcement. And again, that protects our safety, protects our buildings extraordinarily important. And then there are regional programs as well that we pay for. Well, the taxes pay for. Some of those are listed here. So Green Mountain Transit, TownMeeting TV, Winooski Parks and Valley District, all of those things have a price that's associated with them. And then finally, the O'Brien Community Center as well, which houses community services that are operated by the city. So your taxes pay for a lot of things that you see every day and that you also don't see every day. I love this slide that you just shared. It's so beautiful. And, you know, looking at it, what are the initiatives around combating climate change? That's a great question because you don't see it directly. However, our whole, like, development strategy is to be dense, be multi-modal and reduce people's reliance on vehicle transit. I think that's the biggest thing that we can do to address climate issues. It's embedded basically in that. And, you know, I heard some fleas that may be changing also, maybe opportunities to make them electric instead of gas. That's right. Yeah. We have some electric vehicles. We're looking at expanding that as it becomes possible. Excellent. I have a point if you want. So the there's the two big sectors in Vermont for greenhouse gas emissions are transportation, as you know. And Kristine was the mayor was talking about that, as well as buildings, heating and cooling buildings, especially heating. So in we have looked at efficiency of our wantons to see whether we could supplement their programs. And actually, we've finally concluded that it is not that productive for us to supplement their program. So it's really through the statewide utility for energy efficiency that that that that when you see these buildings are being addressed in terms of that source of greenhouse gas emissions. Thank you. Quickly wanted to show this organizational chart as context for the budget. The majority of our costs are staff because it takes a lot of staff to deliver all of those services. So we have this listed here, all the departments, all the folks that sit under there. And the other key thing about this chart is that residents and voters are at the top. You know, they vote on us based on whether or not we serve them. We listen to them to get direction for the decisions we make. City Council with the help of some volunteer commissions who provide us advice. We are then setting policy and directing the manager who then directs staff to execute on all of those operations. So this is a breakdown of what has changed in this budget. Eight point oh seven percent increase, five point four four percent of that is actually just existing services. So increasing costs for salaries, health care, inflation, new items, a full time fire captain position for evening coverage. Most of our department is like per diem on call part time. And we're finding it harder and harder to rely on that for emergency response and to recruit for those positions. We're also increasing the pay from 13 to 15 for those per diem part time folks. We are adding a second part time circulation assistant to the library to ensure there's enough staffing to keep those hours. We had a nine percent increase in our Green Mountain Transit assessment. So this maintains bus service. We are increasing our payments to town meeting TV and Manuski Valley Parks District. We are investing in a brand making operation for public works to reduce our use of road salt. That one actually will save us money at some point. And then there are increases to the capital budget. So that's our regular like paving sidewalks, planned replacements of existing equipment. But we've increased it a little bit. We'll get into more detail on that. And I wanted to know you see at the top. This is a two hundred thousand dollar increase. It was three hundred and thirty and then offset with some savings and new revenue that staff worked hard to find as we were concerned about the overall tax impact. And another thing to know earlier, you asked what we're doing about climate change. You wouldn't think it, but the snow and ice brand making equipment by changing from salt to brine it will actually reduce in less salt washing into the river and washing into the lake, which is, you know, those types of products washing into those bodies of water creates really bad algae blooms and all of that. So we're making steps with little things that we do within the budget to really help with climate change. Resilience. Climate resilience. So here's a little more detail on the brine system. And Thomas was just sharing some of the benefits. Yeah, so speaking of speaking of. So we're investing in this brine system and the cost will actually we'll see savings from that in five years. So although there is an upfront cost because of the new way that we're going to be controlling ice on our roads, we're going to be saving money in the long run. I've actually said most of all this stuff already, but that was another good, good addition is that although Winnowski residents are going to see a pretty hefty cost of the beginning, we're really going to be saving money. So getting more into the capital plan. This is our we have a five year street paving plan that I like to show every year because folks really care about this. And so what you'll see here is what's targeted for fiscal year 25 in this budget is at the top of North Street, those streets up there. But also over here on the right side, you'll see this note with bond vote. We also want to do some paving in this area that was included in a prior budget, but the team discovered that the curbing was so bad that they couldn't actually do the paving and sidewalks without replacing it. And that's significantly more money than just paving. So this is why there's a bond vote involved. Similarly, we have a sidewalk plan as well. And so this is showing you that we also want to repair those sidewalks if the bond vote is approved. And then we're planning to an install. There's a section on West Canal that's missing right now, which is a problem. And what are you hearing from the residents so far? Is it are they concerned? Yeah, this is actually the number one thing we've heard like across demographics even in the city is street and sidewalk safety, the condition of sidewalks and streets, accessibility issues. And so that's why we had as a council directed that we wanted to see an increase in capital funding in this budget. It's interesting to hear. Obviously, our community cares a lot about equity. You heard the mayor and deputy mayor most speak to that. And, you know, you think about what what how does how do municipalities promote equity? There's a lot of different ways and there's a lot of work to do. But sidewalks is actually a very cross cutting issue across a number of different user groups. So getting into that bond vote details. We had a bond vote in 2019 to redo Hickok Street and Winooski. And that budget or that project came in well under budget. So over half a million dollars of unused proceeds have been sitting gaining interest. However, we are not allowed to actually make money off of bond money. So we're getting we're now going to get penalized for that. So we need to spend this money. The only thing we can spend it on is street projects authorized by voters. So we're asking voters to approve reallocating this money so we can do that work on the east side of town to the curbs, the sidewalks and the paving. So basically, Article Six is not to allow residents to ask residents to give you the power to borrow more money. Not more money. Yes. But to use the existing money. This is this is amazing. Exactly. Thank you for making sure that point was clear because otherwise it might look a little scary. Yes. But it's just strategic. Yeah. And then we have another bond vote, Article Seven. I'm sure you've driven across the Winooski Bridge. Winooski Burlington Bridge. The Winooski Burlington Bridge. A lot of folks have and it needs to be repaired. And it's going to be extraordinarily expensive for it to be repaired. Luckily, the state was able to get a grant from the federal government to cover about 90 percent of those project costs. However, like I said, it still is incredibly expensive. So Burlington Winooski will each be paying a portion of that. So Winooski is going to have to come up with about $4.6 million to pay for our portion of this bridge, the Burlington Winooski Bridge. It's a 50-50 split, but we will be putting that to a bond to the voters. It's like I said, it's a very expensive project without these federal funds that probably wouldn't be moving forward at this moment in time. So if folks do want to be able to use that federal money for the bridge to be to be reconstructed, we would need that bond vote to be passed. So as also resident of Burlington, I utilize Winooski. That bridge sold a lot of time. What is the plan in making it a little bit of a multi-model use instead of only card and also to respond to climate change? Yeah. So the bridges in the plan that we're currently looking at, the bridge is going to be widened a little bit. And there will be lanes that are specific for bikes and for pedestrians to use on either side. They're still going through designs. We're not 100 percent sure what that's entirely going to look like. But it's a huge factor of what the team that is designing and working on the bridge, they heard from residents of both cities that that's really important to them. So they did a lot of those two spaces for it. Right. And there is analysis that's being that's still in process right now. But the latest that I heard is that they looked at the level of service based on current use at a peak hour in the summer, which means like that's the I guess you might say worst case scenario. It was really the best case scenario where there's a lot of bike bicycle traffic. It the new or the design for the update can accommodate three times that amount. So it's not just what it can comfortably accommodate what it's doing now, but that much more. So that's a way that we're addressing that concern. I know we don't have a lot of time, but also for those who are viewing this, you still can call with questions at 802-862-3966. 862-3966. Please go ahead. So that what you'll see on the screen in just a moment is what will be on the ballot. Everything that we've discussed today, the city and the school budgets. The mayor is up for election this year for a three year term. Two council seats are also up for election with two year terms. The school board seats. There's one that is for a two year term, one for a three year term. There's also a Champlain Water District Commissioner with a three year term and then our two bond votes. And as a reminder, the mayor already mentioned this, but it's really important to us. All residents of Winooski can vote and you can register at the polls when you show up if you are not registered already. So we hope to see you on March 5th. Wonderful. And now do we know if these seats are contested or all of them not contested? So there are three candidates for the two council seats. The other seats are not currently not contested. Including the mayor. Including the mayor. So we'll see the same mayor. Well, you never know. That seems likely. There's always write-ins, you know, you never know. Excellent. So that is, you know, the town meeting ballot portion. But I do want to share this is an opportunity to share emerging issues and be a little more forward-looking. 8.07% tax rate increases high. We haven't done a rate that high in quite a while. Inflation is a big part of that, but also we've been working to catch up on unfunded needs in staff, in capital. So that is something that we need to keep in mind. We also want folks to know that we are currently working with Champlain Housing Trust to transfer ownership of the O'Brien Community Center. They are better positioned to operate that facility in line with its current mission. So all existing residents would, tenants would be retained. There would be an expansion. We're talking about expanding our library space. The Community Health Centers of Burlington Space. Retaining the community access and, you know, they might even find other tenants that serve community needs. We will have public, a public session at the community center once we get further in the process. We mentioned Main Street revitalization. We are reconstructing the entirety of Main Street from above the Rotary Bridge all the way to the Colchester Town Line. Narrowing the streets to make them safer, improving all crosswalks, widening sidewalks, adding a bike lane, trees. It's pretty big. It will be kind of like our downtown revitalization at a slightly smaller scale. It should begin in April. We'll have a public meeting in March. We, as mentioned earlier, continue to struggle with recruitment of emergency staff. So that is something that is in our mind about potential upcoming needs. Voters supported regional dispatch a couple of years ago. I think Burlington also was a community a part of that. The path forward on that is unclear, but we continue to budget for that so that we're positioned to either join when it's ready or address those problems on our own side. And then I have to mention the impact of our city-wide reappraisal and education funding changes. So at the beginning of this process, because of the updated student waiting in the education funding, we anticipated Winooski School District finally receiving appropriate resources for the population we serve. And that this would probably mean they wouldn't need to raise taxes on the school side of the bill. But as we've seen in the news, education spending is just going up this year so we really don't know what that's gonna look like. And it's also unclear how our reappraisal is gonna impact that. So on the city side of things, you're gonna vote on 11 million whatever dollars for the city to collect. That's the amount of money we collect no matter what your assessment is. So if your value goes up, your share actually could go down like the tax rate number could go down. But on average, you'll probably be paying $3,000 based on this budget. The education side is just less clear. And so I think it's important for voters to know, because of the funding formula, it's complicated. It's important for voters to know that none of us know exactly what the impact is of this budget and those changes is gonna be. And so that is just something that we have to go into town meeting day knowing. And while all is quite likely all values in the city are going to rise. But if everybody is rising, on average, this would be an 8% increase on the city side. If your value goes up a little more than the average home or less than the average home, it could be six or 10. There's a little bit of fluctuation there. So basically, excuse me, it's by also April 1st. That's when people will have an understanding. Is it June? It's June first. I made a typo. We have to finish by April 1. That's where that day come from. But people won't know until after they voted in March. Okay. And also you're saying that basically it won't have much effect in 2025 budget, right? Is that right, Elaine? It doesn't affect the city side, but the reappraisal will affect the school's taxes because that is set statewide. It's too complicated for any problem to understand. Yes, and the formula about education funding also is really changing as well. And I think many people are concerned, a lot of things on the air, but you guys are thinking in the future already. Which is why people say, Winiski, my town, you have the best town. Everybody know, and you live in a town. We agree, we agree. We do believe that, yeah. I also want to include this slide with tax rate, historic tax rates. You know, I mentioned earlier 8% is high. You can see here that is high for what we have historically had each year. But I also mentioned that we're trying to catch up on unfunded capital. And basically the takeaway here is that our average annual increase has been less than inflation. So we haven't even been keeping up with increasing expenses. And that's why in the last couple of years we've been saying we actually need to catch up on capital. And I think that's part of why we get concerns from residents about streets and sidewalks because we haven't been able to maintain them. And then, I don't want to dwell along here, but just another, a couple of examples of these are things we haven't been able to fund that we know are on the radar. There's a lot of deferred maintenance in our water lines. That's why we raise the water rate so we can start catching up there. A couple of safety equipment things we need to address, an even longer list. And I kind of just want to set the stage that we need to have a community conversation going forward about what is affordable? What should we be prioritizing? Knowing that the outlook is we have a lot of things coming up that we need to address. So what are the decisions we need to make now to position us for that? Amazing. And then finally, I just have here our specific voting detail. If you're not familiar with the Wynuski Senior Center, that's where we host our election every year. 123 Barlow Street. We've got the hours are the same everywhere, right? Seven to seven? Yeah. And then some contact information for our clerk's office if you're not registered to vote. You can go in person, you can call, you can register online if you're a US citizen. For all resident voting, you need to go through our clerk's office. Oh, you have to go, okay. In person. Wonderful. And will the ballot also be at least translated and have it on the spot? Yes, the ballot will be translated and there'll be interpreters at the polls. Oh, yeah. That's good. That's very good. As a start. It is, it is. I mean, I think you guys are very innovative. You're looking into the future. And also at the same time, you're trying to make things affordable for your residents, right? And also you've been trying to be very inclusive by, you know, first down with the resident non-voting. You've passed it first, I believe. You wanna- Come on, Peeler and Winooski did it at the same time. At the same time, right? And I think, you know, the future is in very good hands with people who are very capable and also people who deeply care about the newcomers, you know, 22% who are foreign-born, right? About 19. 19% who are foreign-born. And, you know, also you wanna also, you are thinking also about not only from the side of the municipality, but also from the school. How do you work together in making sure that the taxpayers are not burdened, right? I think this is just very amazing. We still have two more minutes. Are there any closing statements that you wanna say and also where people can find all of this information you shared here today? I would just say, like, I wanna reiterate that we are elected by voters, residents, we answer to them. We have a community dinner coming on February 19th at the community center. So there's an opportunity to learn more Ask Questions. We'll be at the library actually tomorrow on Saturday from 12 to two. And just anyone can reach out at any time to share their concerns, ask questions, give their ideas. We're so open to input and wanna make sure that we're including everyone's thoughts as we make these decisions. And then the website for the budget information is WinooskiVT.gov slash FY25 as in fiscal year 25. Wonderful. So thank you all for joining us and for listening here with us today. And thank you for tuning in town meeting television, ongoing coverage of local candidates, budget. We just heard from the people of Winooski, the leaders of Winooski about their ballot items and also what would be people voting and who they would be also voting on town meeting day. You can find forum and all the information about the election season at cctv.org slash 2024 or on the town meeting channel, YouTube channel. And thank you again so much for joining us. Thank you, Christine. Thank you, Elaine. Thank you, Thomas. Thank you. For everything that you do for the Winooski people. Winooski, my town. Everybody have a lovely town meeting day. Thank you.