 All right. So I'm going to call this meeting to order. So first thing is to review and approve the agenda. I have one change to make if it is okay with everybody, which is this item number 11, the land conservation in Berlin on watershed. If we could move that up to after the complete streets appointment. So after we do the appointments, if that is any objections to that. So just a reordering there. Any other comments on the agenda? Okay. So with that, we'll consider the agenda approved on to general business and appearances. So this is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on a topic that is otherwise not on our agenda. And if you would say your name and where you're from and try to keep your comments to two minutes, that would be excellent. And all of those other things apply. You name where you're from and two minutes applies to if you do have a comment related to an agenda item, which you can make when we get to that item as the evening goes on. And I see we have listed the perky pet as potentially wanting to comment, but they are not here unless they're online. But Cameron, I'll let you check that. Okay. Well, knowing that he got in touch ahead of time, we can see if he Richard makes his way back here. But otherwise, any other comments? All the questions committee still has not met. We have an urgent need. As I've mentioned, I don't have a copy of an op ed I recently wrote might see it this week. I'd be happy to email it. People depocating on the path. I came into the city manager's office. They did nothing about it. Mary said that they would need biohazard suits to take care of crap on a multi use that city hall bathrooms and transit center are most obvious in the media. The transit center lease is not being enforced. They got millions in federal money. There's no reason at all to not insist they open those bathrooms from 11 to two while we negotiate extended hours staffed by city. Gerton Park has been permitted. It doesn't go and move has been permitted doesn't go into effect until the 29th. It was power washed. I noticed today, but they didn't power wash the surrounding asphalt where all the human waste is. So this place still smells like a urinal. And there's stains and food and grease and grime on the concrete. It's just I don't know who did it or why they did a half effort on it. Gerton Park was permitted went for a five foot asphalt path from Main Street sidewalk to the shelter on a gravel pad. And the art installation went in yesterday and it precludes the five foot asphalt path. So this is an example of how we do business here. Um, we were represented told in homelessness task force City Hall Elevate City Hall bathrooms would require thousands of dollars in retrofit for gates across elevators, etc. I inquired in a public records request. Where's the backup for that? I got a memo that said or an email that said there is no backup. It was a meeting with the assessor and talked to the assessor. No such estimates were ever made. So basically an impediment to the easiest, most traditionally available and cheapest solution to downtown bathrooms has been blockaded through staff. Let's just I won't even characterize it. Um, public records request to cut public safety authority. Uh, I made a request on the 14th for records that are essential to back up the document that you all will be reviewing at the next meeting. Uh, Dan was the essential and trusted entity on that board. But I'm being stonewalled through lack of staff or whatever public records law applies no matter what this council appoints the members to that two of the members to that you have a vacancy you need to fill. But it's not okay to tolerate one of your council members obstructing public records access when it regards to, uh, an authority that we're an integral part of. Similarly, I asked Jack to pull the, uh, consent agenda, which is marked for discussion item of the contract with cap West dispatch off of the consent agenda because it is marked for discussion and it is integrally tied in with the work of CV PSA. Thank you. Thank you. All right, anyone else and anyone online? Okay. All right, so we're gonna move on then to the consent agenda. Um, bunch of items on there this week. Um, any, uh, motion, uh, Jack, go ahead. I would I would ask that we take the item a off the consent agenda. I see I noticed that it's marked as for executive session. And I'm curious if there's something that we should know. I mean, it's just it's just a renewal of the prior terms. It's not an executive session is it needed your discussion. Okay, so we put it on the the exit on the consent. Oh, my request from that then. I'm happy with it. Donna, the same item. I have some All right, Jack, the consent agenda for the discussion. Second. Thank you for the discussion. Okay. I'm just checking. Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay. All right, so we have a number of appointments to make this evening. So one to the appeal or energy advisory committee to the community fund board and one to the complete streets. And I know that we have at least one candidate here from one of those three committees or candidates for one of those three committees. And so Cameron just checking. Do you see Merade or Jeffrey online? Okay. All right. So at this point, Tim, if you are up for introducing yourself to the council and tell us about your interest in joining the energy committee. Sure. Thank you. My name is Tim David. I've lived in Montpelier for approximately seven years. Been interested in, you know, doing my part to fight climate change for a while now. When, you know, when I first became a homeowner, we had the ability to install solar panels, weatherize our house, all that good stuff. But you know, it's, I think I feel like it's time for me to take another step beyond that. And so this opportunity and I'm excited to possibly help out the questions for Tim. Great. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you. And just checking in with you again, Cameron, do you see Merade or Jeffrey? Okay, Jack, pursuant to one VSA section 313 a three. I move that we go into executive discussion session to discuss the appointment or of the public officer with regard to items five, six and seven on the agenda. Second. Okay, there's motion and a second and further discussion. Okay, all in favor, please say aye. And opposed. All right, so we are going to head into executive session. So we I'm going to leave this open because I can't because we're all here. We don't have to take digitally anyone into executive sessions. So yes, Cameron. Oh, is it? Yeah, sure. Wow. That is amazing. Is that better? It's not better. Okay, so I just didn't join the audio. So I'm going to join the audio. Okay. Okay, thank you. Yeah, no problem. Yeah. Yes. No problem. All right, we'll be right back. We're like, it's like I see myself, but then I'm also in the background and there's a good delay. All right. Oh, Jack, go ahead. Okay, for the discussion. Okay, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed. All right. And is there a motion? All right, I'd like to move we appoint 10 favorite to the energy advisory committee, right? Harris to the community fund board, and Jeffrey Batista to the complete straight committee. Okay, there's motion and a second. Any further discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed. Great. Thank you. We are so delighted that you have put all put your names forward for this. And thank you in advance for your time and energy towards these committees. All right. So we are we had moved up an item the land conservation in Berlin, around Berlin pond. And for that, Christine Zaki is here. And it's gonna give us an update. Yeah, you can. Does that work for you, Cameron? So Christine Zaki, President Montpelier, thank you so much for squeezing me onto the agenda. And also you are very kind to move me up. Thank you. So I'm here today because we have an exciting opportunity before us to augment the land that the city of Montpelier owns around the fringe of Berlin pond in order to protect the water quality, the water that we drink every day. So there is approximately 40 acres that has been subdivided into four parcels that is on the market right now. A conservation buyer has bought one of those parcels, the other three remain vulnerable. And these parcels contain wetlands, brooks that are conduit for drinking water, and they the parcel directly a box land that the city of Montpelier already owns. So my hope tonight, on behalf of a community group that is working to conserve these parcels is to ask city council to express your willingness to have the city own those parcels should we be able to conserve them. And I did send out a some information in advance. I apologize for the confusion about agenda items in that email. I do have a parcel map here in hard copy if you're interested. And I also have hard copies of that letter of support as well as anybody would like those. And I made extra assuming. No, that's okay. And I know that you squeeze me on last minute. So I don't want to take up a lot of your time. I'm more than happy to answer any questions that you have. So we are trying to move quickly because the parcels are on three out of four of the parcels are on the open market right now. So, you know, they could be bought, you know, somebody can make an offer tomorrow. And any funding source that might be interested in making a grant to support the purchase of one of these parcels is going to want to know what the takeout is like who's going to own the land eventually, right? And so given the hope that the city of Montpelier would own this land, having an expression of support from the city tonight would allow us to move forward and know that, you know, ultimately the city is willing to own the land and we can we can articulate that to funders so that they can feel confident about funding decisions as well. And so that's the letter of intent that letter of support that's included. Is it actually commit the city to buy it or that is willing to look into buying it? Yes. And so I tried to word this cautiously because we don't have control of the land right now. So I cannot come to you right now and say, you know, there's 40 acres, this is the price tag, this right. So I can't say that right now because they're still in the market. But in order to move forward, we need to have some indication of willingness to seriously consider owning the land. So the and you know, please feel free to give feedback on this but I tried to um word this letter of support cautiously. So it uh the language in here says welcomes the opportunity for ownership. It doesn't commit the city to owning these parcels. Jay and then Connor. Um I guess yeah I mean I love the idea and and support it. I'm trying to uh parse the difference between buying it and owning it. So you know you're talking about the city owning it and you know Donna asked about the city buying it. So the question is you know if are you are you actively looking for people to purchase or or to whether it's individuals or grants or whatever it might be to fund the purchase of the land and then the city taking ownership and managing or are you asking about the city purchasing the land? That's what I'm not clear about. Yeah exactly. So the um the assumption has the assumption that we have been making and maybe we're wrong is that it's going to be easiest to purchase the land and move it into city ownership if um uh you know if perhaps another non-profit entity or a conservation buyer were to buy it quickly and take it off the market and then work to get it into city ownership right and so the the goal the hope here is that the city will be willing to assume ownership of this land. What I'm guessing though is that in order to get these parcels off the market it might be necessary to have for instance like a conservation non-profit or a conservation buyer to buy those parcels soon and then convey them to the city. Does that make sense? Oh absolutely. But I mean I guess the other alternative is the city could say oh no no no we would love to for instance bond to purchase these parcels and buy them directly ourselves even so that it's a long-term process and so short term I think it's a long-term process. Yes right and so you know in order to secure these parcels as even an option for us I think what we're looking at is getting you know getting either an option getting a conservation buyer or getting you know a non-profit to purchase them in the short term and convey them to the city. Well certainly it's somebody who you know an option is our is a short term but then if somebody is willing to commit to purchasing them then then we can talk about conveying them into you know see how the city how they would fall into management of the city so I think that that makes sense. I understand that there's you know a bunch of different scenarios but I think that I'm concerned if if it's we're it's a different conversation if we're asking to you know the city to you know to fund the purchase changes things. Right I mean if you wanted to volunteer that that would be amazing. Please feel free to speak up. Oh sure. As the assumption was that that was probably not going to be the case. I'd go ahead. Oh yeah just allowing the same lines. Who wants to get to be the first parcel there? Yeah so um it's a local a local couple um they actually live near Berlin pond in the summer they live in Pennsylvania in the winter um and this whole parcel is part of the historic Crandall farm and the couple who bought the single parcel are descendants of those that that family as are the people selling the remaining parcel. This descendant felt really strongly especially given that the parcel that she bought is the southernmost parcel closest to the city very wet felt really strongly about conserving it and trying her best to make sure it gets into city ownership so that's why it's 40 acres total subdivided into four parcels one of the four has been bought the other three are still in the market. Thank you. I do see that we have a hand up from someone online on that Shamba. Go ahead and unmute yourself and yeah. Good evening my name is Nat Shamba and I'm uh calling on behalf of the Berlin pond watershed association which is the uh non-profit group that's been started up recently to help preserve and protect Berlin pond and the natural communities around it and uh one of our members is the individual that Christine was just talking about uh who has bought a piece of the property if if you have the time I can share my screen and show you uh a little bit about where the property is so you get a little bit of context but I don't know if you have time for that. Um we if uh what do you think council would you would you appreciate seeing that? Where we we are gonna have that um digital or you're gonna make photocopies for us. Um I have props on us. Yeah if you haven't got these there so I think we might be good. Well it would show the the context of where this property is compared to the pond and sure because aerial photos of the property. Go ahead. Go ahead. Okay can you see that? Yes. Okay so a ton of time so right I'll be very quick so the picture on the right there is Berlin pond uh north is to the top which is where the Fish and Wildlife Access is south is to the bottom which is the inlet uh where the culvert is and um if you look again at the pond this is the piece of land we're talking about the this is the inlet coming into the pond at the south end this piece of property slopes down into the wetland that Montpelier owns and it abuts the inlet so it's basically if you if you know the area it's the place where there's a little parking spot uh if you want to walk around the pond it's by the culvert there so that's the piece of land that's for sale it's 40 acres you've got a picture of this lot four is the one that's been bought by one of our members who wanted to make sure it didn't get built on uh but they don't want to own it in the long run uh there are three lots each are building lots so if this if these get sold that would be three new houses right on the uh abutting almost the the wetland uh that Montpelier owns so again the culvert's right here Berlin pond is here this is the the open marsh that Montpelier owns the gray area is all wetland cedar swamp in this property uh this is the land that Montpelier owns currently around the pond and that's the piece that's on the market right now so it would add that amount to your uh your property if you were to choose to acquire it one way or another and we at the Berlin pond watershed association think that that is the best and wisest end goal for this project is to have Montpelier own it in whatever way that can be done and we will do anything we can to help you make that happen if you choose to work towards that okay thank you that would actually be very helpful um great so um as far as motions go Bill um yeah go ahead so it's based on what Christine was saying and if you're interested i think you could make a motion that said you authorized manager to sign the letter of support and that um the council would be willing to consider ownership of the property in the future if that were necessary and that puts it on the record i can make that motion exactly what you said okay is there a word for John Odom? Is there a second? a second okay uh great so is motion a second any further commutation all right so there's a motion in a second um all in favor please say aye and post okay great thank you so much yeah for sure thanks for bringing this to our attention thank you okay all right we are on moving on to uh the encampment policy and so for this i believe i am turning things over to Cameron so i don't have anything extra to bring you today out accepting what the park had um the parks commission had stated about the uh policy that you had um the last draft was from uh Dan Richardson and the parks commission met last night they asked for the following um amendments to the draft they asked that the word substantially be removed on page three under environmental protection factors basically the idea there was that if there was substantial damage that wasn't uh kosher the idea is to make sure that there's no damage um making sure that we add the park's commission on the list of city staff and conservation commission for um asking them if if they could weigh in on any decisions and then um again removing the word substantial before impairment of a natural resource so all of those edits are on the same page on page three and that's the feedback that i have on the policy that we've discussed a few times so they were otherwise okay with this draft i wouldn't say they endorsed it okay but those are the keys for the amendments that they asked for okay great thank you all right um i gave an opportunity for public comment at this point uh go ahead steven that was at the parks commission meeting last night and they a motion to support the policy failed um it was a tie vote and it failed for lack of a tie breaker um so they did not support the policy uh they did have some discussion about whether and i contributed to this about whether adopting this policy which guides and encourages uh city to seek out and report uh whether that not that's going to drive people further and increase the waste and litter uh and whether or not uh creating incentives like facilities that would cause campers to consolidate or aggregate around facilities might be a more prudent approach but that's work that the task force has not done and uh so i think this policy on its own uh does nothing but further drive it guides city action but it creates this kind of whack-a-mole where the folks that are affected are unaware of it meaning so they it's trial and error get moved get moved get moved which is disruptive and uh unkind to the uh affected vulnerable population so uh the city still has a reckoned with what it did to kasey and his stuff so uh i won't waste my breath on this topic yep go ahead hello my name is seth collins and i live in berlin vermont and uh recently i i was visiting berlington and the berlington of course has a larger uh city hall park so it might not be applicable here but berlington has constructed a like a public restroom facility with a water fountain hand washing station and uh someone comes in and resupplies toilet paper you know in the evening so i don't know if this is possible here but potentially something similar like that could be done in concert with the some sort of a you know public camping site of course in berlington the the sort of 10-day area is a bit out of town so it isn't necessarily next to the the isn't necessarily next to the public bathroom but the public bathroom ends up serving a lot of other people for instance if people are underage and can't go into the bars to use those facilities they can end up using this one so something similar i'm just proposing to something similar be adopted for a feeling thank you thank you seth and uh yeah just to note we are hopefully moving towards some public restrooms so yeah for sure um all right and anyone uh online wish to speak to this or in person okay i'm not seeing anyone um comments from council jack couple months ago when this was before us i made the suggestion to cameron that we include a statement in this policy to provide uh naloxone and training for the city employees who whose work potentially brings them into contact with people at risk of opioid overdose and i wonder if uh if you think that should be part of this policy or if it's it's being addressed otherwise within internally we just went through a training with our cjc um staff on naloxone and how to do that through vt cares we are working towards getting that training to our park staff and our other community services staff like our um senior center and our recs department as well so that is in the works i don't necessarily want to tie any staff who might be uncomfortable with that since it's not typically part of their work duty so i don't know if i recommend being in any policy but so far all of our community services staff have uh indicated that they would like to receive that training so when vt cares does that training with an organization they do give us life-saving naloxone kits i'd like to see that provided to other employees like public public works employees because they're out there all over the city and uh you know so there's no telling i know the police and fire have it but we don't want to make people wait for a call to the police or fire department because it could be too late that's a good point thank you and i'll ask vt cares if they can upscale that training for us thanks uh connor yep i i mean i agree with with what ben said this does nothing to address the root cause of homelessness that said i i think it does provide um guidance to city staff which was the original intent when camera drafted this in the first place um i think the the debate has been observed on this it's uh been on the front page of the paper we've seen like two or three tents at hover park and it's uh you know caused a rigorous and unnecessary debate in many ways but on the other hand it's like raising awareness on homelessness and brought many people to the table to start discussing solutions so in that case um i think it is good um public or the uh park submission went from um you know saying that champion shouldn't be done in any park i think to offering these suggestions which isn't a full endorsement of uh but i think it's a reasonable compromise to adopt what they've suggested by taking substantially out of there um and accept them with policy so i thought we were kind of on the same page last week and uh make a motion to accept the policy as drafted with the changes with the changes from the parks commission second oh so there's motion in a second um okay any uh yeah any for anything further go ahead yeah i just got this week got a call from uh i assisted a woman who uh a homeless woman who uh was been camping up at the back side of the cemetery in areas that were not paths were not roads were not plots but i understand that they've been trying to eject her in recent days and uh i don't have the full details somebody may who's nodding their head but uh the fact that we may be somebody may be trying to outrun the adoption of this policy uh at at the expense of a homeless person who's been camping up on the right next to the rock wall adjoining Alan Goldman's property but as i understood the cemetery commission had basically just set the groundwork that as long as you're not on the paths the roads or the plots that that public land was campable so i think that the lack of shelter is an urgent need that this council has not been willing to address and i don't know what it's going to take to uh force that issue but it's the by providing shelter you alleviate this need for uh opening up the public lands which is what and i share the park's concern watching the city's inability to address confluence park or dirt and park and the mess that's been made and has been persisted for month after month after month with no cleanup tells me we shouldn't allow we should do everything in our power to prevent opening up our parks our pristine parks to camping and instead we're going the other way we're saying here's a rotation to come camp wherever you can get away with it and we'll clean up after you when i know damn well we're not going to clean up after you um and i see oh did you have a comment okay i see we have a um a hand up from Emma Zavez so uh Emma go ahead and unmute yourself and uh yeah welcome hi thank you um and i joined late to this meeting so i apologize if it's already been discussed um i was under the impression based on the the agenda items in the memo that the parks had been um added to the high sensitivity areas list which would um discourage people from camping in the parks um and maybe i'm under a false impression because i'm a little confused now based on what the previous person said um but i guess overall i just wanted to express my concern about criminalizing or discouraging people from um uh being able to camp and reside on public lands if they don't have any other place to go um i think it's really important that our community be welcoming and try to do the best that um we can to support individuals who are struggling um and i don't think that um kicking them out of these spaces uh is going to um further that aim essentially um so i would absolutely be in support of people being able to um camp in the parks and in other public lands um i don't think it will have a horrible impact on dog walkers or other people who use the parks i use the parks i would welcome um that additional use of the parks there's plenty of land um so anyways thank you for for listening and i hope that that hasn't already been said or maybe already discussed i apologize for my tardiness no worries um thank you emma and just to clarify this uh version of the document does not have a high sensitivity area section in it but rather it uses criteria uh to determine whether or not um someone ought to um uh should not be camping in a particular uh location and so uh that's uh so the the current draft uh you know addresses issues of um uh where there's public safety issues or if there's environmental concerns etc um but uh yeah so hopefully that's helpful the new draft is on the city website on our agenda for the for this evening um so hopefully that helps clarify it a little bit anybody i don't want to jump in on that to clarify okay all right so there has been a motion and a second any further discussion um i don't see any other hands online um that is also still welcome one person okay all right um so motion a second all in favor please say aye and opposed okay so the motion passes um and uh thank you cameron for all your work on this thank you i appreciate it yeah um all right so we are up to the strategic planning i might want to suggest that you do the local house i was actually wondering i was meant to ask anyway um so if it's okay with you cameron um then council i we're gonna flip flop these two agenda items and do the local hazard mitigation plan adoption uh right now um which i think will make sense for us strategic planning is a little more of a creative space so that makes sense i assume is this also you can oh it is also me it's just a me show so you okay all right all right i may just actually go over to john's seats like it okay so tonight we have in front of you um the option to adopt and our recommendation is to adopt our 2021 update to our local hazard mitigation plan what i'm going to talk to you about tonight is what is a local hazard mitigation plan why it's important what steps we did as the city over the past year because it has been a full year process to get this done um what outreach we did and what the product was hopefully i know maybe you didn't read the whole 172 pages of it but it is a pretty robust document so i am very pleased with where we ended up and so i'm looking forward to talking about it so that is annoying um well i'm just gonna go with it and i hope that the folks at home will be able to see it right okay good great so a local hazard mitigation plan is a plan that forms the foundation of a community's long-term strategy to reduce disaster losses so after a flood what are we doing before a flood to make sure that the damage is lesser so it really tries to break the cycle of damage reconstructed and reconstruction and repeated damage so what we're trying to do is mitigate the impacts of a disaster so what we really tried to do in a hazard mitigation plan is identify risks and vulnerabilities in our area and what affects Montpelier the the greatest and once we identify those risks we try to come up with long-term and short-term strategies to protect our people and property in our communities so i just mentioned the disaster cycle and we tried to break that so i wanted to explain what that is so um mitigation is sort of the beginning of a disaster cycle a proper disaster cycle so you try to mitigate for things that you can anticipate so you anticipate a disaster and you try to build your sort of capacity as a community to resist the disaster if you know something is coming if we know there's really bad storms we might prep for those that's the preparation stage then an event occurs so say we get some really bad flooding then there's emergency response to that and then it comes back to the recovery stage the recovery stage includes includes restoring things back to where they were or reconstructing them hopefully in a way that mitigates against future disasters so we're constantly in the cycle especially up here i think you see snow disasters often how do we improve our infrastructure to make it so that that is better the next time so if you're going to reconstruct how do you reconstruct and that's part of the local hazard mitigation plan as well so again why have one is that all systems have vulnerabilities no matter what and it is always important to try to plan and mitigate for those risks we know we have them we know we have storms we know we have ice we know we have flooding risks so why not take the time to try to plan to mitigate for those occurrences so again i i'm just trying to sort of drive the message home of what is mitigation so again it is a long term or short term action taken to reduce or eliminate risks to life or property from a hazard event mitigation does not automatically assume that you fixed it and that nothing will occur or that nothing bad will happen or that something won't get damaged but you're hoping to make it a little bit less impactful to save property and life life being the most important so common mitigation strategies include changing policies our zoning is a really important example of that education vt alerts is a huge deal we learned a lot recently in our large-scale water main break that not everyone in town has vt alerts which is our number one way to communicate to folks so this is me pitching vermont alerts please sign up capital infrastructure projects are also very important as well as making improvements to those existing infrastructures so you could probably pick up on the benefits here that i'm saying but honestly what it really does is it focuses resources on greatest risks and vulnerabilities as identified by our community it builds partnerships a lot of this has been about talking to other organizations figuring out what the greatest risks are and how other organizations can help us mitigate those risks hopefully this has helped educate a lot of folks who might not have been aware it also builds us up a really great communication tool to talk about what we're going to do to be disaster ready it also saves us money and it opens us up to a lot of federal funding opportunities which we would not have if we do not have a local hazard mitigation plan right now because ours is overdue um we would be we would need a whole lot of waivers to get money if a disaster happened um so i'll talk a little bit about that so an approved local hazard mitigation plan is required for local governments to receive federal funds from hazard mitigation grant programs through FEMA and the federal government it's also needed to qualify for other post disaster funding through the emergency relief and assistance fund so we know that disaster recovery can be extremely costly and that emergency relief and assistance fund really is important in any community's recovery and so with the adoption of a local hazard mitigation plan we could get the highest federal funding level that is available through that so there's a couple different levels to funding and what you could receive VEM has said this is a very robust plan and has approved this plan so what you're getting is a as a plan that VEM has already vetted so we anticipate being qualified to receive federal funding at the highest level after adoption of this plan so we have an additional benefit of the local hazard mitigation plan here that we've put a lot of work into and that is our CS CRS rating and what that means is the national flood insurance programs community rating system so basically what it comes down to is that the mitigation strategies that we've identified in this plan basically will lower flood insurance premium rates for our whole community so we anticipate to get one point of improvement on our plan for what it is now which will save about five percent for our community in flood insurance premium rates so we're very excited about that potential and I know that this was a new angle that VEM and other organizations were working with so this is a pretty big deal for for this plan so I wanted to sort of go over the process of how we got here so funding for this update for the 2021 update came from a Vermont emergency management sub-grant that came through CVRPC the central Vermont Regional Planning Commission and that provided funding for callous and our hazard mitigation plan updates so this is through FEMA so FEMA helped us out with this sub-grantee etc so then we are in agreement with CVPC VRPC I'll get it one day and we gave them a cash match of $2,500 which is extremely low for this type of work so we're very excited about that so here's our whole process it was very robust y'all remember possibly establishing the local hazard mitigation committee that happened well over a year ago at this point we then did initial public engagement I'll show you the picture of that in a second but what it was was a survey and a dot matrix asking our community to sort of give us what they think is the highest priority emergency in our community we then did a hazard identification analysis as the team and as the committee we then set goals for the mitigation plan we then looked at strategies and actions and we drafted an action plan that you see in front of you and then we submitted that to Vermont emergency management and so VEM looked at it they gave us feedback very little feedback we then published that a few different places and asked for public comment then we got the draft back from VEM and received any public comment and then we gave it back to VEM with those changes they've approved it and now it is in front of you so what is even in this document that you're looking at so what we did is we looked at risks inherent in the following areas so we looked at what are the risks in our environment what are the risks in our development patterns like our population changes housing what transportation we have what utilities and facilities we have as the city what public safety infrastructure do we have what municipal plans do we have that I mentioned zoning before the national flood insurance program the CRS point system that I just talked about and we looked at how we've interacted with emergency relief and assistance funding in the past so then we really drilled down into our natural hazard profile and really updated what our hazard history has been so we reviewed everything that we did in our old plans tried to see where we are at with those we updated some our maps we updated our description of what hazards we have where it could impact and really came up with strategies and plans to address those so yes were there really significant changes in the maps or hazard profiles not really no I think our like I said before I think we could all just yell out what we see is the highest risk I think the things that were biggest added I'll get into a little bit later but some of the bigger things were pandemic that was never high on anybody's list of a thing that could happen I've been on multiple local hazard mitigation planning committees and that was never even addressed right so we added that and then we also I think added more cybersecurity issues so those were the two bigger changes I think we made thanks so again we really took a look and a drill down at those natural hazards and then we looked at our related policies and other plans that could like could influence the local hazard mitigation plan like our coup plans and our storm water management plan I think we're just calling that oh nope I need it right master's not in there anymore all right so I wanted to outline this because I think this is very important because our public outreach is what makes a hazard mitigation plan so I sort of wanted to highlight what we did we met nine times most of them were well over an hour so our committee met many times to discuss these these meetings were held via zoom and hybrid zoom in person we've also talked about this at our council meetings and our public survey was initiated and open in February of 2021 we put that on blast we put up flyers Facebook front porch forum through CVRPC's website and their mailing lists we did get 24 responses to the survey which I actually was very happy about because they were all very well thought out and invested survey responses so we did put that into effect in the plan so earlier I talked about our dot matrix this is what I'm talking about we put out a poster in front of our voting booths in March of the last election and so people were able to give feedback to what they think was the most important hazard for Montpelier to plan for so we asked for public comment for the plan for almost a month that plan was posted on our website in person here at City Hall and was sent out through all of our mailing lists in-person public feedback was also gathered like I said on Town Meeting Day and then we also put posts on our Facebook and front porch forum through our website CVRPC's website and then through weekly reports through the manager's office so here's what you really care about I think so here are identified hazards I think the bigger ones you'll notice are snow obviously snow and cold fluvial erosion is where a lot of our strategies play into it because that really does impact flooding so inundation flooding and fluvial erosion are a really big deal for us and our strategies so I'm going to this is for the public this is a chart that is in the actual plan online I'm going to not walk through every single one of the strategies because we'd be here for a long time so I'm going to highlight one that I think is most important and is a prioritization under high so a high level priority project for instance for fluvial erosion we will be increasing community communication around vt alert and other emergency preparedness actions so we're going to come up with a flood notification plan and some other policies around how to get the the awareness out of an emergency another highlighted project for fluvial erosion inundation flooding is focused around extending affluent piping up towards the cemetery bend in the river which assists in melting ice jams so basically in the winter um Jennifer I don't think you've been through this yet in the winter sometimes we put out a fluid water into the river to melt the ice so that hopefully the water will keep flowing through and so we'd like to extend that so that the benefits of that can go further up the river another highlighted project includes actions around our stormwater projects to making sure that we're implementing what is outlined in the stormwater plan so that um those infrastructure is strong and as resilient as possible another highlighted project around water supply contamination mitigation actions is uh continuing to engage with the department of environmental conservation and castella to monitor the PFAS regulatory the tissues process um so also what the plan does that's in front of you is it does review our status and outlines what we did between 2015 and now it also outlines our community's vulnerability for each of those hazards and then it reviews all of those hazards and outlines new or expanded initiatives to address them if we didn't can if we didn't finish it from the 2015 plan so um basically what happens if you approve it so if it's approved it's adopted we will start implementation for some of the things that we're already working on we'll also just continue to implement those throughout the process we'll also be evaluating what is happening and then in five years we'll formally revise that plan so this sort of just explains that a little further and then this sort of highlights the fact that if something happens if there's a large disaster how do we go about revising this plan so this isn't a static plan it has no need to be a static plan because disasters are not static so we would need to edit and update the plan if we've learned something new or if we've experienced something else and we would need to go through this approval process again so i just want to take a minute before we open up for conversation to thank everyone who engaged with our public outreach it really was a invigorating process i want to thank the members of the hazard mitigation committee they really were dedicated to this process throughout the entire thing it's been a long year and i really want to do a special shout out to grace vinson she's sick and wasn't able to be here tonight with us she was our project manager through the central vermont regional planning commission and she was super central to this plan so i just want to thank grace so does anyone have any questions that was a lot thank you uh questions from council uh lord and then don't go ahead first of all thank you i mean you can just tell the incredible amount of work that went into this um and really appreciate just seeing some things i know we talk about a lot of you know you didn't in the long list like climate change wasn't there but it's in the plan over and over and over again acknowledging um and of course was glad to see the PFAS as an issue highlighted that we need to come up with a plan and figure out how to address um i guess one question i had was like given that we're still in an emergency are there things that our lessons learned like i mean some stuff that i didn't see in here although it's so long i very well could have missed it but like you know like supply chains and like food supplies or stockpiling PPE or like are there things that like we want to thought about that um are just given but we've now seen how vulnerable some of our you know like i saw like foods kind of mentioned but it's more like that we should get food if there's a you know an event and we want to make sure that we can get food to people but like food food lines and food insecurity right so this so this plan doesn't necessarily call it out with that specific amount of detail the idea is that acknowledging that that needs to be done right so it sort of relies on you to create internal policies and SOPs that make that easier right so this is just a plan that basically says we will ensure that there's food but it's not going to tell us how to do that because you never know like you just said supply chains could go crazy right there's another thing that's very important in plans like this is to not call out someone specific that's not your organization because you do not know how a disaster will impact that organization if we say we rely on capstone for our food production and capstone is the thing that's impacted then then we don't have a food reduction so that's for us as staff to sort of determine what is like this the best practice and who to talk to so yes and no sarana does that answer your i feel bad does that answer your question i think yeah i i mean in part i just like kind of curious how how much this changed given that we've been living through it like in a state of emergency or like you mentioned that pandemic wasn't even on the list right we talked a lot about that i think mike is standing up because he wants to give more context mike has been on our our planning commission our planning for this as well so mike miller planning director so there is i believe in here of a policy to do an after action report on the pandemic so it doesn't specifically talk about it here but there is a proposal that says we should be doing an after action report and that's where as many and as much information as we can compile um i mean who knows whether it's going to be five years or 50 years before the next pandemic but we want to compile as much as we've learned um and put it somewhere so people have it available so i think that's where most of your questions would get answered isn't that mike we're dealing well because this may not be an ending it may be an ever evolving is there any plan to look at the most severe first year hit second year hit or of the pandemic to do some analysis now instead of waiting five years out i think we need to work with the state on on sort of that data since that's not data we're collect you know if you're looking at like more of a data thing i think that would be a lot of work in connection with the um and asking them to help with that process so also yes and no i think that ties into the after action report that mike was just talking about one of the things is food security and looking at what happened this past year and a half it's two years now and what we could do better like the secure food that basic supplies toilet paper involvement you know these basic things that people have a tendency to afford when they can or be out of it and like so one and your index was wonderful plans index i could find so much and i could follow that along when you were talking to um i didn't see anything in there about i see economic impact jobs getting people to work um and maybe that comes under the pandemic but i think that's also something we really need to look at do you mean in like if the roads get flooded out or do you mean just specific to pandemic no anything that might keep people from their jobs and and that's like you have your cyber prices you have your funds you you're missing your job missing your a link if you're remote so the other things we have experienced in the pandemic but we've also experienced when we have big snowstorm that is true i will say that the focus of these plans is primarily on preserving life and property and not necessarily this like larger economic impact i don't that's not discounting it or saying it's not important it's just not necessarily what this type of plan focuses on again i think that that is sort of us and y'all is counseled to work with on creating policies to support our community and i guess i'd bring it up as something within climate change we've also got to say economic climate change it's both the environment and the economics of our world so i just put it out there for thought for teaching yeah and i think some of it also comes down to the the mitigation plan so we're looking a lot on trying to to do the hazard mitigation so a lot of this plan is targeted on on on minimizing and mitigating those things ahead of time and some of those things we can't we can't mitigate the damage to the floods to the businesses you know we can from from a certain standpoint by minimizing say how risk how i risk you know we we require elevating buildings so that way they don't flood as often you know that that type of mitigation but a number of things we what we really can't mitigate ahead of time you just have to respond afterwards there's that response phase you had that mitigation and preparation and then you have that response and recovery some of the response and recovery we try to do some mitigation on that but some of that is you know what we do in our in our coup plans and our other plans that are going to more address what we do in an emergency response situation i'm really i did see that um see winters online had a hand up took it down just wanted to check in um let a comment online that is welcome yeah go ahead go ahead there yep hello hello hi um i did have a question about um you know the city's security we're talking about you know hazards and concerns people have when is the last time the city had a comprehensive security risk assessment done and you know did the city pay any attention to the report um in regards to technology we're currently undergoing a transition plan to a new technology provider um so they're doing all of our computer stuff right now so that i'd say stuff because i'm not super familiar with computers so um they are looking at a lot of our security measures in our um like our computer infrastructure and are helping us uh migrate to the cloud currently so that is a timely question because it's currently happening okay thank you specifically we also did this review about five years ago and we did implement the recommendations that and are now doing it again okay that's it's good because it feels like that uh the risks uh keep evolving from an IT perspective yes capital area neighborhoods have any role in this and just i could like you know if there is a disaster nothing beats a knock on the door people don't like text messaging and stuff yes we're we're funding them right so well yes all right they're definitely part of our communication plan okay great great uh go ahead let's keep going here again uh i attended one of the meetings of this committee and i raised at that context the engagement uh i think 24 survey responses in a bunch of city employees well i applaud the effort that went into it to me this is more of a plan to plan this is to check the boxes to get the federal funding this is not a preparedness plan and i've also reviewed the continuity of operations the coop plans that uh like just referred to and those are really uh you know some phone numbers in a few locations they're not there is no planning going on that's got us prepared for a hurricane or a flood and for instance in this document that your there's discussion of whether marsfield or right spill dams failed and the inundation that would be affected and it just said there was no data available there's no strategy to go out and get that data i mean there could be there should be but it's not there so i i basically suggest that if you're serious about doing planning i went to school for planning both in california and it would break college and this this is not a a uh this is not a plan that's going to save us a lot of greed we're still going to be almost totally reliant on you know the red cross or whatever in a disaster but even the vulnerabilities of our radio system this is something that cvpsa and capital fire are wrestling with current vulnerabilities and future vulnerabilities that the cvpsa study did not look at the failure modes of those towers getting blown down that we haven't even bought yet uh so i think we're sorely lacking in the whole area of planning and preparedness of who's going to do what and how are meals and where are people going to be put up and i was here in the 92 flood and it got real ugly and basically most of the local committed workforce that would be your best asset would not have a clue what to do because we've never rehearsed these scenarios and crafted a plan so i would encourage you to take this as a starting point not an endpoint any other comments okay so um is there a motion to adopt so a second right any further discussion okay um just checking online again just make sure um so sorry is there Mike did you have a comment the motion to adopt the resolution i believe there's a form that needs to be adopted yes yes oh so um so the recommended motion in the cover sheet was adopt the proposed updated local hazard meditation plan there is a resolution but if they adopt the plan it's part of the part in parcel of the plan okay it's just the last page of the plan that says council has a yes so you're fine okay um all right thank you um like 30 um all right is there any further discussion in motion and second on all in favor please say aye and pose okay so uh that passes and so um thank you back Cameron and Mike for your work on this and please pass along our gratitude also to the other members of the committee yeah um all right so we are moving on to our strategic planning it's a continued from last time now to be fair of the way i want to arrange this time is actually start with public comment and so here from the public on there's a a draft of our strategic plan goals and strategies and initiatives for the council that is attached to our agenda um and so i want to give folks an opportunity to come at first that's okay with you and then we will uh dive into the remainder of this and i'm now because we probably will not have an opportunity for public comment leader um so recess for our break right now right now that would be totally fine thank you yeah you're yeah yeah um so we're gonna that that sounds great especially since this is a kind of a substantial topic um so it is 741 right now and i think we can oh 742 uh let's go you know it's 10 minutes 752 sound all right okay so we'll we'll take a break and be back at 752 i'm sure uh so we are going to start with public comment so our the draft is available online and um so this is the opportunity for for public to comment on it and then we're going to go into continuing our commentations from last time so i know we have at least one person likes comments so go ahead thank you very much my name is kasey white lady i live on st paul street on a long time for my mom to your resident homeowner and i just want to bring something up um that i have contacted all of all of the counselors about which is first i want to appreciate the seriousness and the complexity of all these issues that you all are dealing with and how interrelated a lot of them seem and one i want to talk about that i respectfully going to ask you to make a priority on the strategic plan is there is about the leachate that um is coming to our our treatment plan and being discharged into um into the dog river then to which we're going to ski and when we talk about hazard mitigation i feel like this is hazard mitigation but it's also a really important part of our environmental stewardship or whatever we however we want to label it on the strategic plan i think it's well established that the toxic chemicals that the leachate contain and you've already mentioned PFAS tonight several times are a very serious danger to human life aquatic life um as well as the health of our precious waterways and this is not a problem or an issue that rests on my pillar shoulders alone i think um in the short term it is a management issue for us but in the long term i believe it really is a state's responsibility to ensure that leachate doesn't uh continue to contaminate our water sheds and the public cell you're probably aware that the agency of natural resources has granted a moratorium for a suspension of of leachate going to the newport wastewater treatment plant up in lake mefram agog which is where the kasella landfill is and where three rivers come into the south bay and then for agog it's an international issue because leachate uh PFAS have been found in the water that is actually a drinking water supply for 170,000 of our Quebec neighbors um so i think the and so oh so anyway what i the the main point one of the main points i wanted to make with you all was that the agency of natural resources has declared a moratorium for newport to not take any leachate until january 1st 2025 so that sort of begs the question for me that if leachate is not safe for people in waterways in the mefram agog watershed how could that same leachate be safe for us here in our watershed so i'm gonna make this short i know you've got a lot to do i'm just respectfully asking and encouraging you all to make this a priority in the strategic plan to develop a plan to manage and ultimately stop discharging PFAS and PFOAs into the Winooski watershed thank you very much thank you okay any other comments yep i got this a minute ago so i'm not as prepared as i would like to be um i have not had opportunity to uh download uh i know just been speaking to your city clerk about your website i'm not the only one who's well aware of the deficiency of the website um i'm concerned where the examples came from especially when it gets to the public safety regional improvements and hazard emergency hazard um and i want to also second the comments you just heard that this we're accepting this toxic stuff for for profit we're we're profiting off of taking toxic garbage from other landfills and we might not should be doing that and i don't know to what degree our you know financial break even of our you know treatment plant improvements is dependent on it but we shouldn't be held over a barrel on that on that regard uh i know people who have had serious uh organ damage and surgery and whatnot from PFAS contamination expert engineers on the topic if you want to hear from them from him um so i'm concerned that the urgency of the unhoused looks to me like something you'll think about and talk about till next year or the year after here this there is not action uh there's no sense of urgency in this policy around study implementation needs for more or both social social services style offering or uh determine the level of social services you got people sleeping under bridges we're getting COVID we've just had a COVID case in the community here a woman you frequently see in front of cool jewels has been taken off to quarantine with a positive COVID test and had been sharing pipes and cigarettes with other folks uh over at confluence park so this is real serious stuff we're allowing this you know uh anyway i think you get the point to the degree yes this is supposed to be a strategic plan but to the degree some stuff jumps right to the top and it starts becoming action i don't think i don't think this uh can be more uh strongly emphasized okay thank you and anyone online we don't see any hands but just want to provide that time see if someone does change your mind okay all right um so with that uh pretend to move into this process i think i'm turning it back over to camera let's go quickly just give you the 50 000 mile view here um just put on your drafts of the vision mission and value statement don't need to address those tonight if you don't want but um a lot of the stuff we're trying to get as concise as possible in the right category and there were some things that were said that then show up in the goals and strategies so try to put everything where it belongs to the point of the comment that we just made and others potential initiatives that are in the left those came from the list of things that you all put up on the board a couple weeks ago and then a list of things the staff put in those are not a final list so you certainly can add or subtract your divide and i think um so from there i'm going to turn over to Cameron about you know that's what our process tonight and probably the next meeting is is to to really get that where we want to be so my goals for tonight and feel free to disagree but i would love to get um sort of the formal vote on the strategies and then we could start discussing the initiatives like Bill said they are sort of a collaborative effort and so once you've prioritized the strategies we could talk about the related initiatives so my goal in creating this for y'all is if something does not reach the level of priority on your strategies as the initiatives that are counsel supported or counsel put forward in the strategies that are not voted for so um we're just going to pick one on the front page right so if y'all do not vote just prioritize the strategy of promoting outdoor economy sorry Alec um if you don't vote for that those two things were not counsel um driven those were both like staff recommendations that built up to yours so those would still stay within the staff work plans but say both of those things were crazy off the wall no offense crazy off the wall something that one of you championed then it wouldn't have gotten priority status and we would just continue to use staff initiatives in that strategy does that make sense am i explaining that correctly for y'all so yes jay sorry i just had a couple questions one is bill i just wanted to clarify like so our action items because i definitely have feedback on the vision mission that this is nothing we're initially going to deal with tonight okay and those are really the just the overarching documents that could you know basically say here here's our big vision for the future of the city here's kind of the mission of the organization and here's the values to which we would everything we do we would do those values but then this is the actual plan of these are our top goals for the series the actions so is this something that we're going to invest some time in to refine yeah okay my goal would be to now that you have time to it uh next meeting yeah okay the next meeting when we give you a draft to sort of work towards that totally fine a little bit of that work at the last meeting but it was these long long lists oh yeah oh there was lots of pieces of paper okay so that's that's fine i just wanted to understand how we can provide feedback on that yeah oh i see that don't worry i and i know it wasn't like okay let's make it perfect right now but i just want to understand that process the other thing i wanted to the second thing i wanted to mention was just looking through this real quick i know jennifer has been having some issues with her email and i don't see her name on any of these so i i would like to and i don't know exactly how in this process we we fairly make it work that she can sort of speak up and add her name to some of these things and cameron maybe you've already thought of this but i would like to make sure that she has the opportunity to do that yes so this y'all just straw poll that wasn't formal jennifer i hope that you've seen these i sent them a few times so i'm hoping they came through and you just weren't able to like x on your computer okay so on my phone on your phone that's what i meant yes sorry um about that but so this was just a straw poll and so what i would like to do now is because you've sort of laid out what you are interested in prioritizing it sort of walk through each of the goals and then vote for the the strategy is that you would like to see so we can either go through them roll call wise or just call out the ones that um got a straw poll priority and mayor i sort of turn that over to what you want to do sure actually before we do that i just want to um back to jay's question a little bit do you want to create time for us to provide feedback on this document tonight or would you okay i'd prefer that for next week next week thank you um great okay that that makes sense to me i think what i i'll uh sorry this feels a little scattered but i think there's a lot of ideas floating around so what i'd like to come out of tonight with is enough information to build out our um departmental work plans to build into your strategic plan to give you a draft for your next meeting so that you are responding to an actual draft and not just a spreadsheet so um right after this meeting it starts a lot of uh meetings with my department heads to sort of go over what you guys talk about tonight and sort of build this out as a real plan and not just the highlighted sort of headlines if you will for each Donna the goals are listed here and i would prefer we put them in some sort of priority orders i would like to know why that one's one i've seen it all the time but oh just so i know they were we haven't consciously done that and i know the list may not mean that but i guess i would prefer that we actually try to do that if not tonight maybe some other time if the council also would like to see this the goals themselves listed in an order that makes sense if this is our foundation this is where we build on and we build on and we build on um okay so you're also asking to prioritize the six goals yes okay consider that my only hesitation about doing that i think that could be good my only hesitation is that if some things end up uh like under the strategies does that make some strategies more important than other strategies yeah i would also sort of argue that all your goals are the top priority they are the things that you've identified as your goals are the top priority for the council right those six things so they're sort of on an equal playing field and i can definitely just okay all right it's our people and i'm happy to do that if others want to i don't want i mean at least maybe even at substitute today to me that doesn't change the strategies the strategies are what we've chosen right i would just like us to think better about our goals is building blocks that's all yeah okay that's that's fair um and actually if you think about it we were we were on the path at first we need to try to get to three priority goals and others and we got from nine to six and then he sort of stops but when we were going to keep the six it was just which were the top yeah or like which one of these are the more foundational ones and others i i think if i'm going to make this proposal that if folks have thoughts on ordering the goals that perhaps that is something that we can provide feedback to cameron between now and the next meeting is that all right and then if there is some kind of consensus around that then cameron you'll know and can report out on on that and if we need discussion then we can that's all right that's great that's great okay great um but moving back to the strategy oh connor go ahead yeah no sorry there was one strategy that kind of stuck out to me jack was the only one who voted for it the clarifying the city's roles in social services in policy i sort of thought that was a discussion that just needed to be had because it informs so much of the other discussion like child care homelessness you know um this is why i didn't vote for it yeah well and actually i i'm kind of wondering about the comment that you made cameron about you know some of these things they're gonna happen anyway they're a part of they're gonna be a part of the work plan are those things at the strategy level or are those things at the initiative level initiative okay um all right so i guess learn i mean just on that point and i know like i had put this in my email but just for people who aren't copied on that email you know i was to me i was trying to vote for things that i felt like might not otherwise get done if they weren't identified as council priorities you know something like you know the core infrastructure i think we had all flagged like there's you know so much work to do to to maintain and like of course we need to be focused on on infrastructure but i didn't vote for it because i i know that that will be a priority of city staff and that we made that clear um so you know only having 10 votes i wanted to make sure that some other things that might otherwise not get done i don't know that it's always totally clear and i don't know if there's like a way to indicate easily in the spreadsheet which things you view as the like you will not do if council doesn't prioritize it and which things are just part of the work plan right because that is not always totally clear to me in some of these like i might i might view them of of course we should be doing this but if if nobody on staff is viewing it as part of their job donna looks very question because i don't understand that thinking of because then we would remove a whole lot of things here that the staff's going to do anyway of you know but it's a matter of what priority is dpw streets or what priority is it to the police to do this so i didn't assume anything was going to get done when i did my voting and that's fine if we need to that's what i want to know i grabbed my votes back and i'll put them someplace else yeah right like that matters so i need to know what the rationale is with everybody if we can come to that agreement it'll be helpful so i guess for the strategies we gave example initiatives y'all threw out a bunch of initiatives the staff threw out a bunch of initiatives right so the strategies are the things that we can all sort of agree on at this point we haven't prioritized them but we've agreed on them right you see these as priority strategies we agree here are some example potential potential initiatives to help support that strategy so what i'd like to get to tonight is to vote on the proposed strategies for instance that first one actively support economic development that's a priority for you then we can build out those initiatives with staff if that's something that we feel like is not something that's appropriate i'm not going to include that in the things for you to look at and we'll highlight why so for instance like the mayor has an idea of initiatives for zero to three child care right i think that's a really good point because that we've talked about it a little bit so i'm going to use that as an example that's under improve community prosperity in explore expanded child care if nobody votes for that that's not necessarily going to go away because staff is still interested in providing that service right but it would not be included on your strategic plan because that was not something that we saw as feasible before and so it's not something that you guys have voted as a priority strategy and therefore why would why would we elevate it up to a place where we're talking about it publicly and putting money towards it if it's not supported by all council right so what we're getting to today is the strategies and then we can come back to y'all and tell you hear the initiatives that y'all came up with for that strategy so actively support economic development here are all the initiatives that we've identified that can fit under that strategy that you and staff have come up with if for any reason there's something that we staff feels like we can't do or whatever we're going to bring that to you and say here's what's not included in that right was that made more sense yeah i can i pause here yeah sorry um i i just want to verify that folks are on board with the so to the the column to the left of the council the the yellow column the council poll for priority strategies to the left of that is proposed strategies so what i hear you saying Cameron is that tonight i'd like to vote on those you want to vote on those strategies yes um that's what y'all straw poll for it but is is the idea that because they're here just because we don't vote for them doesn't mean they go away right correct um so if no one votes for a promote outdoor economy that is still alex yeah for his department and so y'all got keep getting when i give you guys strategic plan updates you get two reports you're getting the report of all the things that y'all have identified as priorities and then all of the work plan items right so i'm sorry yep go for it so i i also just want to verify with the council is there anything on here that you think really shouldn't under proposed strategies that really shouldn't be on there is that a is that a fair question that is because i'm hearing um connor say that he didn't vote for a clarified cities role in social services because he wants that to be an agenda item just to talk about but he's not but you're not opposed to it like you don't want to take it off no i think it's like necessary because it informs the rest of the okay okay so i just want to do a quick check with the council is there anything on the proposed strategies that you like i i actually don't think that's a good idea or we should take that off oh we're good i mean i to me i think there's obviously it was like a tricky thing to try to figure out how to lump a whole bunch of ideas um you know so for example some of these like you know so there's no votes for provide community support to residents in needs the way it was characterized there like to me i would have put the workforce development for unhoused people could maybe go under the homelessness um line that people that i think will be a priority that's identified like so there's some initiatives that i might have like recharacterized in different ways and like the peer support outreach worker that is something that i think again could go in a different category so i mean it might be a case of some of these are things that are just going to be staff priorities some of these i would have like i i think a line is really important or i view it as like that's also something that the police review committee recommended for example the expanding the peer outreach worker so to me that was covered under the provide policing which fits Montpelier's needs and implementing that report because that's a recommendation there so it gets kind of squishy like and i totally understand this was like an exercise and like a challenging thing so i guess just like how would we think about some of those things that i think like i would have identified some of those initiatives as priorities even if i didn't vote for it and nobody did i think that was what the new dex was to try to go through the whole list of initiatives if there's any more we didn't have and then go down with top activities because no one can figure out if there's someone i'm going to drop off is that we could do that i think it would be very hard to go through all 170 of them okay it's not exactly what i've prepared because i would have i think i i just am not prepared for that and i don't know if we can talk about it this is all a flexible process so um i'm sorry here all of bill are you talking about going through the initiatives instead of the strategies to see what the top choices were of those again doesn't mean it's out but it might be interesting to see which particular projects have the most interest without doing the strategies themselves i i think we need to establish that i mean that's my number one goal is that we if we walk out of here at least understanding the strategies then after that we can talk about those the initiatives that go with the prioritized strategies because i if we don't have a consensus of what the important strategies are then the conversations about the initiatives that support those are unhelpful but lauren i do hear you saying that some of them can move and i agree and i would love to hear those ideas first too you know if you're like this thing is important to me and i would have voted for it if and i think it goes to this other place i this is a work in progress so here to hear that turn up and i also just want to verify i didn't hear anybody objecting to and to any of the strategies like none should be taken off the list in or at least this the strategy level yes jack thank you okay i just wanted to clarify that yeah i i agree with that for instance i'm looking at the strategy of communicate effectively which i did not vote for of course effectively i i don't think it necessarily requires council level discussion to say we need to make the website better i think that that is an element of management rather than policy that's that's how i thought about a lot a lot of like i agree but it's important us to know that a majority of you thought that was one of your highest priorities yes so i think that it's not so much what's coming off it's where do they fall so you know yes we should communicate effectively but if if people think we really need to you know if that's something we want to spend a lot more you know priority time on this year on this effort and then it's good to know that that's where that falls and you know other people have other priorities not saying that you know we all go but everyone could vote for everything if we didn't know it's like where the exercise is what people prioritize to see and the same thing i think eventually with the strategy the initiative is just a lot of projects and here we talked about what we're not gonna be able to do them all we're gonna have to decide the budget time or whatever so there's something that people really aren't supportive of that aren't let's stop talk you don't let's you don't get them off the list okay so so at this point are we looking at which do you want to have the conversation about strategies first like what are our top yes i would like to go by goal by goal and vote on which sort of you've already sort of pulled what you thought was your top um and i would like to sort of get your formal vote on each of the strategies so um again if y'all are okay with capping it at 10 the reason i gave you 10 votes is is because of um that's how you facilitate make sure that we're not getting like a thousand ties on things um you know you can expand that i think that doing the math i think you can expand it probably 11 or 12 without messing anything up for ties but that's up to you um that's sort of a facilitator um number there so i'm certainly not going to tell you to not vote for something more than once so so we can go through the improved community prosperity goal we have one two three four five six proposed strategies uh they're actively supporting economic development promoting outdoor economy maintaining a vibrant downtown um this one is a per question but clarifying the city's role in social services provide community supports residents in need including um some different workforce and um uh intern programs and exploring expanded child care so i'll just sort of go through them one by one and maybe we could just raise our hands mayor does that sound appropriate okay so actively supporting economic development are we are we voting to say like this is something we want of one of our 10 yes please okay is this one of our 10 okay oh wait do we want to like anybody want to make a case for one or two if we go goal by goal like assuming we want to talk about these a little bit right um that's really fair given that the council wouldn't vote 75 thousand dollars to the development core i can't imagine we want to put a staff in on this add a staff and without a staff i don't see how we can do that and so that's why it's not one of my top 10 i don't see it reasonable within the financial parameters okay and so that's interesting because that that's one of the things that i'm like we got to figure out our economic development thing like i would love to have that conversation like are we still where are we at with economic development and do we need to hire somebody or do we need to um pay somebody else to do economic development but anyway that's that's just where i'm at other thoughts on on this particular one hi i don't know if y'all can hear me we can that scared me hi i would actually like to see if the community itself could be a committee for it so that we would work together from within the community both citizens and business owners and it could be a really great way to meet some of our needs if we can have economic development to solve some of the issues that we've been talking about tonight that the solutions come and in doing so create business in the area as well so thank you that's an interesting comment but i think that's something that we could take up out of future time and actually for now we're actually not like i appreciate appreciate your thought there and i think it's worth further discussion but we're actually not going to be taking public comment during this section of it was just in response to the idea of hiring someone yes right exactly we'll have there will be future opportunity for the public to comment on that section so we're going to we're going to continue with our meeting for now but thank you so any other thoughts on economic yeah go ahead Conor is it fair to say the assumption would be that we have an agenda item to talk about how we structure economic development for the future and these would fall under that i said there wasn't written in stone there'd be a staffer there'd be another one right right so i would say how we would interpret this is that if to say it went the way you've already done this drop this was a top strategy something that was important to counsel that in another month or two when we're doing the budget we would propose funding in the budget again depending on the overall picture but we probably would include it because it would and with a recommendation for what to do with that funding would hire someone contract or or just put in money and figure it out later but at least saying you've said it's important you know to the comment you know perhaps even if we have a person we might have an economic element steering committee that book you know something like that you know so but we can talk about the house the details as you know as we go forward it would be you've said this is important so it's important us to respond and give you a plan for moving forward if it wasn't important then we might still do we probably would still look at the tax stabilization tip probably but we might not talk about funding in those cases um jay and then i have a thought go ahead do you want to well i was thinking about process stuff um we have 10 votes there's a straw poll not an official vote but um and so you know knowing that like okay maybe explore expanded child care is that's on the list and you know all of these are you know somewhere in the in the work plan would i redistribute my votes does that make sense like maybe some of us would like to to reconsider yeah where votes again none of these things are are going to go away and and just want to check in with you jennifer i don't know if you've already thought about like these were my 10 votes would go you already know yes okay great okay okay that's why i rose by hand i was like wait no i did not put my name down for that okay so i also wanted to check on that because i saw you you saw you do that um jonah are you are you saying what i think i don't feel that the expanded explore expanded child care should be a strategy i think it should be an initiative everything else is very abstract and that's very specific it is i agree i agree that's that's fine with me i i also kind of wonder um um you know also knowing that like the second one here promote outdoor economy that's going to happen anyway right like we're right but it's y'all prioritizing where you want staff time and money to go okay so if you say that's a big deal to us we want to make that happen then it's up to to me to work with alex what's going to make that happen for you right right this is you directing us on what you want time and money to go to okay that's really what it comes out to honestly just try to think like should i redistribute my votes i mean again nothing's gonna go away this is a planning document that we can address you can reprioritize and you can say i don't like this plan anymore at any time at any time um so um do we want to yes jack go ahead i thought your just your mention of the explore the promote the outdoor economy is a good example because i think many of us if not all of us were really quite energized by alex presentation i don't think it's to the point where we can say well we've got something that's fleshed out that we can do or decide to do and so that might be a reason why that might not be one of our high priorities for this year but alex gonna keep working on it he's gonna keep agitating for us to do this and when he comes back to us we could come back and say yeah this is now something you've got fleshed out we're gonna do this okay all right sorry i don't know do you want to do you want to take that straw pull again for the first one of course yes good can do since uh or no what did you do well i was just trying to think process wise like do you want to take five and cash marks or i can give you a little card then we'll put down there ten and no we i think we can just raise hands i can write people's names down we're good to go good to go bill thank you for thinking i'm glad i the only reason i was thinking about were you doing this because jennifer was like you know maybe not that one so i had for the first one actively support economic development i had and connor j and jack and did you know i okay he didn't understand the assignments okay all right so never mind i had and connor j and jack yes all right the promote outdoor economy so i'm sorry couldn't that be part of actively support economic development that's a type of economic development from my perspective i think that that is empowering staff to say hey we the council is willing to invest in whatever it looks like right um staff etc post um mdc right um that we'll leave you we'll leave it to you to decide or consult with us but to decide what's the best approach of what we think is the best for my period now i would say that promoting the outdoor economy should be a very significant part of supporting economic development in the city so i'd hate to say oh well the council supported this but not this because ultimately it's empowering staff to figure out what's the best so wait forward so could we combine those yes and and i think actually that's kind of a good outcome of these these conversations yeah um because it's basically said okay it's maybe maybe you know one of the top strategies has been doing different stuff on our list the other thing i do want to assure people that you know we're we're a small organization we're at these meetings we're watching these meetings you know it's not like these conversations don't happen so vote on something it's you know it's like well they didn't vote for it so we're you know we hear you say this is important we're moving into these things it doesn't matter so they just but it is really helpful to say these are the five or ten things that are really you know when we're sitting here next year we want to have had really moved the ball forward or completed you know some things of these here where we're going to hold ourselves really accomplished yeah can i ask jay a question were you saying that this and this should become an initiative is like child care it's really very specific it should move under the column of initiatives under active supportive economic development that's what i think is the umbrella yeah i think that that's yeah for looking at the columns i think that that makes sense of that you know it's it's a little bit broader than some of the other things that are under the example initiatives but i think it it fits it falls under that umbrella so yeah and we can get started yeah we yes yes so we'll come back thank you i saw a bunch of knots so i'm just going to move that that's great um so we thumbs like you actively support economic development with the caveat of combining the promote act outdoor wow we're sorry guys outdoor economy as initiatives under that strategy yes does that change anybody's boat maintain and again when i say these things out loud it's not saying that we don't want to do these things right maintain a vibrant downtown okay uh this has been sort of put out there by connor is something to take off of this but clarify city's role in social services policy and involvement thank you provide community support to residents in need um may i as uh as a part of that um we're talking about maybe explore expanded childcare as being an item underneath that one and then i don't know lauren were you also referencing um moving one thing yeah you were also suggesting moving something what were you the workforce development to the homeless oh i thought that was under this one i guess it is just i i mean it looked like it wasn't going to be highlighted and so i was thinking it does look like you know addressing issues related to homelessness like we could maybe put that under that because it looks like it's going to be a priority and it might be one of the strategies we want to be exploring um and then similarly the peer support outreach worker to me also is part of that program um yeah that doesn't help your expansion no that's fine i mean i'm seeing that as under provide community support to residents in need and so so you're you're saying maybe address homelessness in the community as also being a part of that no no she's saying to move those two initiatives into the last page under address homelessness in the community oh i see adding those initiatives there okay got you so right oh okay fair enough i'm gonna also vote for to provide community support to residents indeed do i have jennifer and an formal vote on that one the child cares about yes all right so that is that goal your number one goal for that is actively support economic development without door economy moves underneath it um that's the only one that received majority vote next goal provide responsible and engaged government so the first strategy that we're discussing is communicate effectively which we've sort of talked about um accessible communication some of our resource officers um increasing coordination with can and doing some more forum and outreach hands for communicate effectively it's in there it is that's the first one sorry improve the city's website he's paid community events and recruitment fairs so then the next is provide excellent services which has some accreditation initiative supporting wow we're supporting it um and talking about our community services department retaining staff and some other things so provide excellent services isn't just our job yes that's how i felt about it too okay okay follow equitable and inclusive practices which talks about the equity action plan recommendations and language access improvements so equitable and inclusive practices make a yeah you put that under excellent service and you have four votes excellent equitable and that's what excellent services are all about i mean one one thought just seeing where the dice is being rolled um i mean to me seeking language access improvements is part of effectively communicating with our community um i mean to me a lot of the equity report recommendations were tied to better communicating and engaging um and i mean some of i don't know if communicate is covering this but it was like how are we um it might have been elsewhere like providing space for people to gather and things like that there's that might be lumping too much into communicating but um how are communicating and engaging would people feel comfortable moving those initiatives up into communicate effectively would that change anybody's vote on that one that would submit i think it makes sense to move the second one particularly second one language access language access okay that's also not to say that i i mean i think we should be implementing the recommendations the question is how much council time is that right the mostly their second their most recommendation outside of language access is to continue to do the equity assessment yeah because it's not done so and that's on that's on my work plan so it's not again going away so then achieve full accessibility to city spaces so this talks about ADA compliance and our ADA transition plan which we're currently working on getting quotes for Jennifer thank you uh the next one is we titled it create global connection uh which was the establish a sister city program and then the last one in this is the fiscal resiliency which uh talks about some of the budget process priorities that finance has okay all right so the one with council i'm so sorry my brain has melted out of my ears the majority is the communicate effectively which we have moved language access into thank you before you move off this topic one this comes under the overall heading of provide responsible and engaged government and i'm not sure that language really captures what we're going for because i think that what we were going for was a couple of things one having the government be both responsible and responsive but two creating conditions for the citizenry to be engaged and and i think that's there may be a better way to phrase it but i think engaged government isn't really doesn't really capture the way that we were talking about it last time does anyone have any do you have a language uh recommendation or phrasing recommendation not on the top of my head but that's just okay yeah okay thank you next goal is the create more housing goal so the first strategy there would be increase available housing units we talked about a few things in the proposed initiatives like prioritizing infills through the edu's working with um partners for vhcb grants um and our housing task force plans and i get hands for increasing available housing units are you skipped did you skip did i skip one yes i did for you sorry folks um apparently i also cannot read so the first one in actuality is consider housing task force recommendations which includes updating some studies don'ting changes maintaining funding for the housing trust fund and some other recommendations can i get a hand for housing task force recommendations thank you but again i guess i feel that's under increased housing units that's one of the means so i would put it with the other side below it and i'd add that consider the recommendations is pretty passive okay fair enough i agree word implements can be used i agree with donna that feels like that could easily combine into one and so the other the increase available housing units also in straw polls got a majority and so we can work as staff to combine those and try to figure out what the best phrasing is if that sounds amenable to folks that's fine with me anybody objecting to combining those okay yeah jack go ahead um when we get into the next bullet the short discuss short term rental policy i think that that's also part of increasing available housing units because what we are seeing in short term rentals is that it's actually reducing the availability of rental housing and if we if we hope to increase the availability of housing then at a minimum we need to stop further losses of housing i separated that out on purpose and i'm hoping that mike is still here mike can i call on you to sort of discuss this briefly before you do well while he's walking out i also wanted because because i looked at this too your overall goal was to create more housing so if your strategy is increased available housing you're saying the same thing i think daddy is how do we take your goal of creating more housing what are some of the strategies to achieve that goal so some of these rules are we're splitting them apart into the chunks that we're going to work on to to accomplish that goal if we just say our goal is to create more housing in our strategies to increase housing units we haven't really narrowed it down at all so we might want to maybe maybe we need to look at this whole section that you can back with a read you out he doesn't like us combining them all so the short-term rental policy was yeah the short-term rental wasn't actually increasing the amount of housing which i think why we had talked about putting it out before our goal is to increase housing these are the tools to do that and if our goals do something else then so i'm back at the question of like are we combining that first one consider housing task force recommendations with increased available housing units or leaving them separate i mean they're from a from a person who works with the homeless community and homeless families they're all interconnected right so can afford your housing you end up homeless and then the snowball continues so yeah other thoughts on i think the first two are two intertwined like you know like yeah any implement the zoning there if you're going to work with developers to get something off the ground that's a good point right actively how about we make life easy for you and well it's clear that you know that housing is a huge priority maybe we could just take a look at this section and redraft it around and try to group things a little bit differently so that it they go together sure in a different way we'll just consider all of that a priority strategy the okay so we'll revisit that this would be tough this would be done as number one right yes that's fair that's fair okay um so that was a junk done all right um the next goal is practicing good environmental stewardship uh this splits funny i apologize about that um the first strategy there was promote conservation of river water and land resources to support parks excuse me gosh y'all i'm sorry it's okay oh oh boy so it's actually support parks expansion um which um discuss uh the green print and some um other uh support for the folks so i get hands raised for that thank you then the next one is promote conservation of river water and land resources this one discussed feasibility studies for dam removal conservation around urland pond um our urban forest it discusses PFAS and some other uh rivers and wetlands servant conserving oh man i'm done all right no words i do but i'm okay um all right can i get hands for that one oh thank you steam i appreciate that oh sorry no bullying no bullying i think the best i voted more than 10 times i feel like there's a lot of there's a lot of heavy things in that it could take a lot of time there's a lot there's a lot of time all right so i feel like this is a good time for me to announce publicly that i am not sick and that this is in fact old old things all right so um the next one is address climate change issues and that one really was our net zero plan recommendations and some other uh policies internally for um environmentally responsible purposes and i get hands for this one all right councillor bait doesn't believe in climate change i think counting is about to win it she thinks 95 percent of states are wrong oh my goodness oh dear okay well um both of those are uh high priority so thank you um next goal is build and maintain sustainable infrastructure um the next the first one and i'm going to point at it so i actually read the first one is address new or improved infrastructure needs um which really talks about i think one of the bigger ones is stormwater utility the rec building renovation options and some other initiatives there so can i get hands for that item all right also a lot of heavy hitting things there too yes so there there are some things that i think when we come back next week or next meeting when i come back with this draft plan though some things will be highlighted that we'll need extra votes like the initiatives will need votes for inclusion and i think those are some of the newer ones that have been brought to the table yeah so we'll i think we can work through that no problem and so the next one is implement long-term dpw infrastructure plans uh again not saying that this won't happen if it is not a priority so can i get hands for this item that 11 votes our streets need you so next is continue infrastructure funding strategies oh oh sorry oh okay because uh one of mine got merged yeah so yeah i'm gonna throw my name in there all right well all of those then are i had a majority vote thank you all right last vote the captain now the voter fraud is rampant i think this is the most it's not who votes it's who counts the votes this is the most quotable council meeting i have ever been maybe delcore is the headline tomorrow i haven't figured it out the strategy is if everybody else votes you save it you don't you don't have to save it for the next round that's the flaw of this this is wild okay all right improving public health and safety the first one is addressing homelessness in the community we added the workforce development initiative and the peer support outreach worker to this strategy and i get hands all right the next one is implement regional public safety i've put regional in there twice it's fine implement regional public safety improvements this includes the cvpsa telecom needs assessment and capital fire mutual aid again these things will not happen if you do enough for them so can i get hands well yes yes exactly um the next strategy is provide policing that fits my players needs which is really uh reviewing and considering the police review committee recommendations and what that entails so there is some budgetary impacts of that carries with it i don't have a total in front of me but it does have budgetary impacts um so can i get hands for that and there's a lot in that report we're having our last meeting Laura and i to go over public uh input and then we'll get into the council so the next one is improving local hazard mitigation emergency response and infrastructure so again um these are looking at some of the um higher cost items identified in the local hazard mitigation um plan um we are working on a lot of these that we identified here um so can i get hands raised for this one i'm the only one with hazard in mind you and me don't you you may be the only one but i last but i do hope that we do that i know i need to go for it but like this is important yeah this is one of those we're just throwing it away yeah right i'm not gonna happen very well you know we we will complete e911 renaming so how many do you have that are i will go through it in just a second um the lab there's two more in this goal there's provide effective mental health response um but that also again that's talking about the CIT program and what level of priority of spending you want with that and the again we talked about the peer outreach and social worker programs within the impede so that's a little different than before so can i get hands there thank you and then the last one is the restorative justice strategy which talks about um incorporating CJC more into our goals and expanding their support and i get hands it had more i know right all right so going through um the goals i'm going to sort of start at the beginning and say whatever people voted for so we can go through that so under improved community prosperity goal we had actively supporting economic development with the added caveat of outdoor economy um the next one would be provide the responsible and engaged government which we're going to workshop um the communication a niche or strategy came out on top there along i know that's it sorry i can't read it do anything create more housing as a goal we had implementing the housing task force recommendations along with actively achieving and increasing available housing units under practice good environmental stewardship we had the promotion of conservation of river water and land resources and addressing climate change issues under build and maintain sustainable infrastructure everything passed so as priorities we have new and improved infrastructure needs our dpw infrastructure plans and our infrastructure funding strategies under improving public health and safety we had addressing homelessness in the community and that one is your priority there does that sound right to folks it does i also appreciated your comment earlier bill that was like we're a small organization like we still hear you yes on these you know so you know for those of us that voted for things that did not get four votes like you know i i'm sort of trusting that like yeah either you've heard us that like even within these goals that goes rise to a level yeah so what's going to happen i think is that at the next meeting we will draft this into a plan you'll get a chance to weigh in on that emissions particularly the ones that the newer ideas so and maybe maybe we'll do the prioritization of the goals in some sort of order um and then you'll get to see the whole plan as it was earlier how we based on these conversations still your plan so so what i can also do and i think will help relieve some some i don't want to say the word angst because that's wrong but just wanting to know what happens with these initiatives right so for instance feast program growth is an initiative under providing community support right to residents in need if feast let's say you didn't vote for that one um feast is on our senior center directors work plan that's a big initiative for her that's something that i track as her manager to make sure that that's happening because she stated that as a as a initiative for her for her work plan so i can go through these and tell you where they're they're ending up if they're not on your strategic plan where are they going what are they doing are they in a parking lot because there's something that y'all created or are they in someone's work plan so i'll turn that around for next time so it's also the opportunity just just i'm just using that as an example i don't think this is real life example but if on any hand this would be your chance to say we don't really want this is also a chance to tell us you know i mean we're assuming things we have programs in this priority there's something in here you don't like to chance to say please don't tell us you don't like the feast program i have accomplished what i needed for today honestly i think what this gives me is an ability to go to staff and say here's what the council's prioritized strategies are let's talk about the initiatives and build this out so that we can present that to a council for more cohesive discussion about those initiatives because i think right now you're right some of them can't move around some of them are squishy and it will really help me to have y'all's priority strategies to talk to to staff about to turn this around to its full plan so i have what i need from tonight if you want to go into further conversation about the initiatives i have no problems staying doing that right now too so that's sort of up to y'all where you're at um yeah my thought is we should keep moving just in general but um but there's a couple comments lauren and jay so one last pitch for a moving something that might then get four votes um so we had i didn't totally see who voted but the provide policing which fits my failure needs and then we've got provide effective mental health response those are like a huge chunk of the police review committee report is like tied to that so to me those are kind of there those are some strategies that are tied to it or like they would be one of the same so how we might get four votes of if those were lumped together and that's to me like a third part and parcel of the thing it's part of providing policing which fits what really needs is the writing effect seeing a lot of nodding that makes sense sure all right do we have to do we actually have four votes can we get hands for a combined providing policing which fits my peers needs with effective mental health response oh wow well i know that i'm really ties very closely thank you more and i appreciate that i know that ties very closely with chiefs um you know really big push on the CIT program so thank you cool uh jay yeah yeah i i want to move forward on this i don't want to dig too deep into the details but i do think karen one of the biggest challenges as you dig into the initiatives list to kind of come back to us what the staff is like really trying to focus in on action items um you know there's a lot of you know review this consider that um and you know things that tend to be a little bit more passive and sometimes you know like if it's a bigger picture thing like you can't you know we can't like fully commit necessarily but i think if we have things to respond to like improve the website well what is it what exactly the like let's think about what does that mean not that we need to do a full analysis and budget analysis but like hey this is what needs to be improved around the website that i just use as one example so having those things like kind of thought through by by the department heads and staff before you come back i think will be really helpful for us in terms of prioritizing action items yeah thanks yeah and i think so so just to flesh that conversation out though i think at least in terms of now um the fact that improving the website is really important and you state that you know i don't think the council necessarily needs right now to be getting into you know what vendor we're going to use or what things are going to be on it's like you've said this is important to us and then at some point when we do the budget we'll come next i looked into this and this is how much we recommend the website so i think you really want to you think of the plainly ending in here you're kind of halfway there now you're saying here's where you know here's the runway we're going to pick but then that's kind of it and in also on that when we talked about the things like consider you know i use those words specifically on those because a lot of those are council decisions so one of the things we're going to add in is sort of whose whose action this is so like the housing task force point you have to decide if these are policies so so the idea is that it'll be on your agenda to consider unless you say it we're absolutely going to do these right now so it's not meant to be squishy it means that you've got to come back and you know even the thing about social services is sort of a we've got to decide this and to clarify the role it wasn't you consider decreasing or make a policy decision where some of these are what we're going to do so we'll try to also figure out which one of these things are sort of council things staffing so you can really focus your time on the sounds again you know this is a process that i've at least in my mind is going to be on the agenda for another two meetings i think that the next one is to look at initial draft and then sort of get community feedback on that initial draft and then adopt that at the following one so um you know thank y'all for this process i know it can get a little messy but i think that's like the fun part of having these conversations and deciding um sort of what what goals you have for the next two fiscal years really so it really does help us and i'm very grateful that we're aligning it with the budget process because i think that'll be very helpful for us and that was just what i was going to say that i really appreciate um having gone through this last year and now again that this like so sets the stage for the budget process where we're make committing and making decisions around these action items whereas before we did it and it was a sort of like well let's see what happens over the next six months and but now we're moving right from this into the into owning the decisions which i think was a really smart move and i appreciate um you know your thoughts on on and force force and making that happen so yeah okay so you don't need any other vote from us tonight on this because we're i do not it was all just a strong pull really um okay so we are gonna move on then um so because i anticipate that there is a um executive session on land acquisition um we're gonna jump to the council reports uh and so um jennifer just so you know this is a maybe you already know this um this is a time for um any counselor to share like reports out from committees there on or there's these upcoming local events that people should check out or heads up you know like i there's this thing coming or or you know there was something in the past that happened that was really exciting yeah okay um so uh and for whatever reason i just always start with donna if you don't if you want to i can go the other way i'm ready now you're so good who want to go there this is why i wish you feel neglected um i mean everybody seems to always have something to say that's different i'm amazed all of us are so so unique and contribute well i just want to give a heads up of the october 20th council meetings that are going to be joined between mom pillier and barry and the center vermont public safety authority will be doing a presentation our consultant will be here from the televets report i'll be redistributing those so you'll all get that and you'll also get a letter that we got from the twin city teams which is barry and my player emergency service staffs came up with recommendations after they read that report so you'll get that to compare the two and i really want you to make myself available call make an appointment i'm really glad to go over this 117 page study but the executive summary is really important and the twin city team recommendation letter is really important if you could put your attention on those two and then go into the report that would be really good and it's all about public safety telecommunications and i'd also like to put on the agenda for the next time is the letter from the young girl nine years old that wrote us uh i believe her name is marcie marissa marissa uh url centers you asked us to consider halloween and i thought it was a wonderfully written letter and i would love for us to respond to her and all the other kids who want to do something around halloween absolutely it's really worth talking about right uh it should have four or five specific recommendations coming out from the homelessness task force the next meeting with appropriations attached to those as far as the arpa funding so i think that's the probably the most specificity you'll you'll have seen from the homelessness task force so far so keep an eye out for that uh i saw some council former councillor richardson's first burlington city council meeting um just just one quick thing um you i don't know that you all will remember but we've had um a few folks in the city who have been dealing with some noise issues um for for a long time i know councillor richardson mentioned it i've mentioned it in the past um and it's been it's we've been supporting them trying to um resolve the issue it's it's been a long road um and um we we hired a consultant this was something that the council approved a few months ago um to do some testing um and we have been trying to work we've been trying to pinpoint um the the issues related to the noise um and tonight we finally were able to do the additional testing that we needed um we got rained out numerous times it's been a long road and so i just um want to publicly acknowledge donna barlow casey for her perseverance on this and and hopefully um the testing that happens tonight can bring some resolution it's not it won't give us necessarily we'll get us to the finish line but we'll give us some answers about what next steps might be so i just wanted to to thank donna and and our constituents who've been working through this issue um for a long time that's it um jennifer you feel free to pass too i thank you just two things to mention one i i doubt that she's uh watching tonight but it was just reported today that our veteran journalist and former assistant city manager sue allen was just named the new editor of the bennington banner so congratulations to sue wow and second is that many people are aware that as of tomorrow the general assistant's hotel program was due to be terminated and due to uh thanks to my advocacy by my colleagues at vermont legal aid and other advocates we were able to get the governor to push back the end of the ga program for 30 days it doesn't solve the problem but it gives us more time to advocate for a solution and i think this is really an object lesson in how concentrated community advocacy can affect policy great um just two quick things one it was mentioned earlier but for the police review committee we have had a public comment period and i've heard from a number of folks and we do have um one last meeting to finalize the report tomorrow so if anyone wants to join us via zoom 4 30 p.m tomorrow um we'll be you know looking at the public comments and um working to address and work through those um so if people wanted to come and explain further or have a last voice um that will be uh where we'll be finalizing the report that then we'll be providing to to council um and out to the public um and then only other thing i have been getting a couple um kind of queries about how we're going to be making decisions for the American Rescue Plan Act money that is not allocated and some people have been sharing some ideas of public engagement and stuff so just looking forward to i guess at some point maybe just like the timeline if that's going to be just right alongside the budget or do we want to do it differently so it's not i know the budget itself is such a big hard thing um anyway i don't know if we want like to try to do it on a slightly different track or something to give us a little more brain space but i also think it's a great i mean how often are we able to be like we've got some money like what are our best ideas community and you know we just did our strategic planning so i just know some people are thinking about it and want to be um you know involved and helpful in thinking through how we can you know make some good thoughtful forward-looking investments for our community so looking forward to figuring out a good process together yeah go ahead got another email the treatment plant odor i've gotten several complaints about it from people on state street i just recently got one from my own neighborhood do we have any resolution as to why it seems to have been stronger this summer and quite like even today okay yeah it's fine i have a couple of things one is that there's gonna be a art opening the tw wood gallery october 1st they recently acquired a new painting that was by tw wood so just want to let folks know october 1st 530 you know check out the the new painting they acquired should be cool second thing slightly actually very unrelated um just want to put this out there that one of the things that i am thinking about um that i feel like i heard from the equity report was the possibility of paying of folks for their participation on committees and so one question that i that i'm thinking about and i'd be interested in in your thoughts on this is how who do we pay and how much do we pay them um and then uh you know i'm picturing like our pay is on a separate line on the on a ballot do we do it that way do we build it in you have a thought on that um the social and economic justice advisory committee was um discussing that this morning um so they're uh shana casper the chair of that committee had started doing some research because essics has um is going down this road they're planning to do it so we have some lessons learned from um how they're approaching it they're just putting it into place i believe going into effect in january so they're you know it's relatively new there too but they've figured out some ways you know who might get it and how to um how to structure it so we have some learnings that we're collecting and and viewing that as something that we want to like put forward i think a proposal to bring to council on okay great as a part of the budget conversation yes okay great especially you know i know we're not in budget season yet but it is coming and so i'm anticipating that um okay i guess that is it for me when we don't have some work here at least not oh my god i've been here the whole time here never mind taking advantage of the technology this time around so i can be in two places at once i just should mention you know i was gone for most of the last week um i'm going to be gone for most of the next week i just can't take two clean vacation weeks in a row because i can't really be gone two weeks um but so we'll have to get caught up on the minutes which are all done and posted all those little silly meetings y'all are having so many meetings um but we'll just have to put them on mass into one of these coming up but they're getting done but yeah so don't look for me in the next week i'm gone again i'm going to the mountains awesome all right thank you uh bill thank you all for your remind everybody i know that you know when we first did this we had someone come in and we spent two really long evenings consecutively four or five hour evenings work on this and then also the staff during the whole day so we're trying to convince this especially we into you know bring your other agenda items so may seem like it's long but it's because of the way we're opting to do that so thank you for for working your way through that um otherwise i don't know that i have anything specific to all right um and we are not anticipating coming out of an executive session to take a vote um okay so uh thoughts on uh is there a motion to go into executive sessions for the land acquisition discussion and include the city manager and the parks director okay negotiating your security real estate purchase or lease options there's a motion a second uh further discussion okay uh all right so we do not anticipate we will come back in the public session but we will not be taking any formal votes