 Good evening and welcome to Montpelier City Forum. And this is a new year of these and we're going to be discussing what's going to be on town meeting day on March of 2019. We're gonna start with the city budget, which is a good place to start. And the best place to start with the city budget is with our mayor, Mayor Anne Watson. Why hello. You've sat through how many hearings on this already. Oh goodness, at least three or four, yeah. No, it's been more than that. Yeah, I think it probably has, actually. What is the budget process? When does it start? So we usually start the budget conversations in November and then we start having a more serious dialogue with the council in December and then we finalize our decision in early January. What is a conversation about it? I mean, every budget is sitting throughout the entire year and you've got forward planning and then it results in a budget. What is the conversation? Just what does it entail? Yeah, well, so I think there are a couple of key questions that we discuss along the way and one is should we be stopping anything that we're currently doing? Should we be starting anything new that we're not doing yet? Or are we at the right levels? And for a vast majority of our budget, we feel like, usually, at least my time on the council, the answer to most of the items in the budget is we're probably at the right levels and this year we've, well, we're dealing with some new challenges and in addition, we have some goals that we would like to meet and that requires some funding. So there are a couple of new things, a couple. There's a list of some new things in the budget this year and I think they're all needed and I'm really excited to get into them. Well, budgeting is always on the margin anyway. You're not, for the most part, you aren't gonna be cutting serious amounts out of a budget. Right, well, and I should add the other factor that goes into the budget conversation is what is the limit? We already have relatively high taxes so how, what is our tolerance for increasing or potentially decreasing those rates and so I'm just trying to keep in mind that tax rates are high. When the schools come in, the hidden factor is what the state contributes. Right. In the city budget, the hidden factor is healthcare costs. Sure, yes. Could you talk a little bit about healthcare costs and how they came in? I'm not asking for specifics but I think from my incomplete knowledge, they came in reasonable this year. Yes, and I can't really speak to it much more than that but that is also what I understand is that the healthcare increases were pretty minimal. So, which was really helpful. Oh yeah, right, it was very helpful for forming this budget. Now, how long have you been on council? Well, I was on the city council, just as a counselor for about five and a half years and this is my first budget as the mayor. So, basically you've watched the healthcare play out in the city budget over the years? Yep, and there have been good years and bad years. I mean, there was one year where there was a huge spike in healthcare costs and we had to work really hard to keep the percent increase relatively low. Now, how do the city contracts play into this? They'll be negotiated after the budget is voted on? Yeah, they're negotiated separately and they don't, like the timing of them. As far as I can tell, it was staggered and sometimes ongoing, so. So, really, that doesn't play a factor. We pretty much understand the rough parameters of that budget before we started. Right, exactly. So, we've had our conversation, now we're going into December. After the conversation, what happens? Do you set a goal, a percentage increase that you would like to target? Well, so we did that all sort of in combination all at the same time. So, I think it's really important that we keep in mind that we need to be focusing on what the services are that we want to be offering as a city and then also keeping in mind what the percent target is and then sort of tweak it from there. And where we ended up is a little, not all honesty, it's a little bit higher than I would have liked to have ended up at, but overall, I think it's pretty reasonable. And then the other thing, so just to continue to answer your question. So, from here, so the council holds a couple of public hearings, which have passed at this point, and that finalizes the number that will be on the March ballot. And so that between now and the first Tuesday in March, voters have the opportunity to check out all this information, which is why we're having this conversation and get informed for March. And it's on the city's website. And it's on the city's website. And then if it's a- The annual report will come out. Yep, the annual reports, yeah. I think we had to have all of our writing. I had to write up a little piece for it and that had to be in already. And so then whatever budget, well, if it passes in March, then that will go into effect this coming July. Okay, now for those of you who watched this before, and I've been doing this for a few years now, you will notice that on your screen is a fancy graphic. The fancy graphic has been borrowed from the city. Our city manager put this together. So Ann is quite familiar with this. Would you go over the points for us, Ann? Sure, so there is a tax percent increase. I was aiming for more like 3.5% back in November when we were discussing the budget. I mean, I think it's always reasonable to incorporate what inflation is. And inflation at the time was about 2.2, 2.3%. So I was aiming for about 3.5% because we do have some, I mean, if we were doing everything, if we were only just maintaining all the services that we provided, then that would have been basically a 2.0 half or a little more than 2% increase. And there are some new things that we're gonna- Which we'll discuss. Which we'll discuss that are gonna be included in this budget. There is some additional cost than just inflation. So that does constitute an increase in taxes. And then- Now the four cents just for the record is four cents on the $100, a price. Yes, yes, right. The average tax bill rising $92 will be for a house that at the average house of 222,000, I believe. Yes, great, thank you, yes, exactly. So for some people it'll be a little more and for some people it'll be less. For those of us who've moved to this town more recently than you and I have, District Heat, what is District Heat? And who pays those rates? Sure, so just a little background on District Heat. So underneath that tall smokestack in the middle of town, which is not actually putting out very much or any smoke really. Anyway, underneath that is, or connected to that, is a wood chip burning plant that's heating hot water that sends hot water through pipes underground to a variety of buildings in the downtown as well as all the municipal buildings. And so those rates are unchanged. So, well, because we approved them earlier in the year. So that's just sort of a note that like that hasn't changed. Water and sewer. Water and sewer. So there was a planned increase in water and sewer rates that was established just a couple of years ago. And so that called for 3.5% increase. And so as per that plan, that's sort of where. Will that be 3.5% every year or is that just an issue? I would have to go back and check, I don't think so. I think that is, it changes I think every year. So, but I can go, we can go back and dig that up. Our sewer plant, we voted bond for it. Yes. What is the status on that? I think we're, so as you mentioned, so we passed the bond back in November for that. And I think we're working out the contracts for that now that the money was approved. And I think we're also applying for some significant grants to help offset some of that cost. So that we could pay for the whole thing, but it's likely that we may not need to. So that would be wonderful if we got some grants to go towards it. Now you and I discussed this last year. And when we discussed it, you were talking possibly that it would be generating and making money off of generation. Well, so where it landed is that it's, the plan is for it to be generating heat. And so effectively the buildings on site there with the Water Resource Recovery Facility will be self-sustaining in terms of heat, which is really wonderful. And the way that we're setting it up, we have the possibility or the opportunity to do some modifications in the future to get it to be generating electricity as well. So that's sort of a phase two. And so we're just gonna settle into phase one right now and look at that. When can we anticipate that it might be finished in its construction? Well, that's a great question. I don't know. Okay, no one left. Yeah, no, it's a good question. How about the politics of our water plants? On upstream. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Did you just discuss that for a second? Sure, yeah. Does that have an impact on the 3.5%? Yeah, absolutely. So, well, I assume that you're really referring to our recent water main issues. No, I'm referring to getting it up to standards, to establish standards. Didn't we have to do some work on our power plants? On our water plants? Not to my knowledge. Our water plant is meeting all the standards. You're thinking of the wastewater plants, there was some question about the phosphorus input into the river. Yeah, so we did just hear recently that the state thought that our levels of phosphorus in the effluent was acceptable, which is good for us, yeah. Where are we on Berlin Pond? We're on water. Oh gosh. Well, nothing has really changed. Gosh, we haven't talked about Berlin Pond in a little while. So yeah, we're still of the opinion that nothing should be constructed near or around Berlin Pond. And to my knowledge that the state is still planning some kind of a boat launch. But I don't know where they stand on that, so. So basically, it's a cold war effort at this point. You know, I, right, I haven't heard the latest there, so nothing to report. No change is required for the sewer benefit. What is the sewer benefit and what is the CSO benefit? So just to explain the CSO, so that stands for Combined Sewer Overflow. So there are places where our storm drains are connected to the sewer lines. So those are combined sewer overflow points. And so those are charges, so and with the sewer. I mean, those are charges that are associated with the water and sewer, your one's water and sewer bills that ends up paying for the maintenance of those lines. And really the goal with the Combined Sewer Water Overflow money is to help reduce them, to eliminate them. Because these are the points where if we have a significant rain event, we might see those sewer lines overflowing and then you get things sort of backed up and nobody wants that running out into the streets, so. Well, speaking of running out into streets, you mentioned it a few minutes ago when we were ice skating down Main Street on Saturday. Yes. Can you discuss just briefly what happened at the traffic circle and what happened at Nelson? Sure, at the traffic circle, do you mean Elm Street? Yes. Okay, all right. By the traffic circle. Oh, yes, I guess it is by the traffic circle, isn't it? Right, so as I'm sure everybody knows, we had a pretty major leak on Elm Street. And I mean, I got into this. Well, that was the city's boiling instruction. Oh, yes, right, the whole city was on a boil water notice. I got into sort of the physics of it, like I was very interested in like, okay, so why did this happen? Now, why did you get into the physics? Oh, because I want to know like why. No, because you're the physics teacher at the high school. Yes, because I'm the physics teacher at the high school, yes. In addition to being the mayor. So in any case, just a little background on some of this. We do have a very old water system in Montpelier. I mean, some parts of it are over 100 years old. And actually, it's a lot of the portions that are the oldest are actually not the problem. Those pipes are, a lot of them are made out of cast iron. And there, somewhere between the 50s and the 70s, there were some, the new going type of replacement was something called ductile, excuse me, ductile iron. And those have turned out to be corroding faster than expected, than the cast iron, yeah. Anyway, and so those are the ones that are problematic right now. So when, well, and one of the things is it, they don't, as they're corroding faster than expected, they just end up being a little bit weaker. And so what we, we're looking at really with what happened on, with the Elm Street break. So it is really that, with the freeze thaw cycles, the ground is moving a lot. And some of the pipes, they just can't tolerate that much movement if they're not strong enough. Or the water gets into the connections and itself goes through a freeze thaw cycle and ends up damaging the pipe that way. Anyway, sorry, that's probably more information they really need, but the physics geek and me really likes that kind of thing. How much of the city is susceptible to that in future lives? Well, that's a good question, I don't know. But one of the things that, so with a major leak like that, once it was repaired and the pressure was restored, there's a phenomenon called hammering where when the pressure increases or decreases, rather suddenly, as one would have after sort of a major shift like that, that can cause waves in the pipes really in a physics sense, maybe I shouldn't go too deep into it, but the point is this hammering action can also end up potentially damaging some of the weak points as well. And that was, so it's kind of like an aftershock with an earthquake, and so that's what happened with the leak on Nelson and Marvin and Bingham Street. I understood that the leak on Nelson, of course, I'm the ultimate source for things. I understood that we didn't lose pressure up there. That might be, I don't know. That's what the police, that's what the fire told me. That would make sense, but... But a lot of water. But it was, well, that's just it. It's funny that we had, it did flood a lot of downtown, right? But one of the reasons that it did that was because the storm drains were covered in snow and slush. If a leak of that scale had happened during the summertime, we would have seen just some water running down the side of the road, and like, oh, there's a little bit of water there. But because all the drains were covered, it accumulated. And really, once the city was aware of that leak and they were able to clear the drains, then the water receded really quickly. So, having said that, it seemed like a major leak, but relatively speaking was actually, for the size of the pipe and what it was, it was actually relatively minor. It just accumulated. Almost been horrible working in those potholes. Oh, my gosh. It was so cold. I can't imagine. I'm so grateful. I'm so thankful for our Department of Public Works crew. They've been just working so tirelessly between clearing snow and snow plowing and then fixing these water lines. And then waiting for the spring with the many potholes that have emerged from this. Yes, oh my goodness, right? Isn't it remarkable how, you know, over a matter of 24 or 48 hours, just the potholes are just coming out of nowhere. They're just springing up. When will council be addressing the water systems? Yeah, so. So, if people have an interest in this. Sure, yeah. So, we're actually gonna talk about the water mains and sort of what's been going on at the next council meeting. So, that'll be the 13th of February. Which will be on Orca. Yes, it will. But it's also, you can go down there and ask the question. Or you can come down. It's probably easier to watch from home, but either way. Now, you'll notice that we go to the next slide, which, you know, this is a fancy presentation. And this is the slide that the city is using to explain where your 2,566 dollars if you own a house of 228,000 is going to. Let's start with the place. Yeah. We're picking up a new officer in the budget. Yep, so just to talk a little bit about why we're adding a police officer this year. The reality is that the way that we had scheduled the police officers that we have right now, it was turning out to be very difficult for some of the police officers to take time off or to get enough rest. And that was causing some pretty difficult situations for the police officers. And especially for the kind of work that they do, it's really important that they are well rested and ready to work. And in addition to that, we are continuing to see significant amounts of opioids and heroin and just other drugs passing through the city. And so, you know, they have their work cut out for them, but they've been doing a great job. Will overtime be impacted in theory? I believe it will be. Which in a sense helps pay for the position. But it doesn't fully, you know, it's not going to offset it entirely, but are the overtime, so it is still an increase. But even so, it should help with even just the overtime aspect specifically. Other things on here. What about our fire? What are we doing with that? Fire is- The paramedic program is expanding. Yeah, the paramedic program is expanding, but otherwise it's unchanged. One of the things that we have been looking to do with our fire and EMS is hiring people who are dual certified to be both firefighters as well as EMTs. So we're gonna continue to try to do that. Are we still talking to external communities about we have this capacity that the externals don't have? Yeah, well, so that was one of the big focuses of the Central Mont Public Safety Authority. And we are actually, well, I should say, I've met with Tony as well as Bill, Tony Fakus, our chief of police, and as well as our city manager to discuss where we wanna go with that. And so I'm actually really excited to have a statement to come out with, let me rephrase that, we're hoping to come out with a statement very soon about where we hope to go with this CPSA. Will there ever be a unified dispatch unit between the towns? I sure hope so. Is that effort still alive? Well, so I believe, yeah, I think the answer is yes, and we're gonna talk more about the specifics of how we see it going forward in that statement. So that's upcoming. Keep tuned in for this. Yes, yes, exactly. What is Project Safe Catch? Project Safe Catch is a program that was advocated for by our chief of police where, which I think really views the drug and opioid epidemic that we have. It views it more as a public health crisis rather than a criminal situation necessarily. So, which is to say that if there is someone who is an addict that they can turn themselves into the police and get help and not- And this effort will continue in this budget. Exactly, yep. And it's been a great help to a lot of people. So it helps them avoid charges but get the help they need to stop being addicted to break their addiction. Equipment replacement. That's in the general services, in the government services section of this. Sorry, what were you just referring to? The equipment plan or no? Yeah, the equipment plan, would that be in- The equipment plan is on- It's separate, yeah, it's on- What is going on with the equipment plan? Is that kind of like the streets where we put a certain amount into maintenance every year? No, the equipment plan is more like vehicles, snow plow, like sidewalk plows or buying new light duty trucks. So it's a replacement for that. Yeah, and there are aspects of equipment that are not vehicles and that's also included in there. But what you're thinking of with maintenance of streets and sidewalks, that's really more in the capital plan. Okay, in the capital plan, we don't have a capital bond issued this time. Not this time around, yep. Is that good data or just happenstance? I think it's just happenstance. I mean, it's where we... So we do have some scheduled bonds over the coming 10 years or so. It'll expire that we can renew. Oh, well, no, even for like just specific projects. And but I think you're referring to the just like the debt like we're gonna be paying down debt on some other bonds. Again, that's our general indebtedness. Yes, but even so, we have some planned bonds upcoming but none this for this March, but we will likely will in the future. The ballot items, you increase the funding for that. How much more was put into that? Oh, I'm not gonna remember these numbers exactly but it was, we were anticipating the scale of something like $120,000 and I think they asked for more like 130, 135, it was somewhere in there or maybe 140. So there was an increase, but that was based on the request that went to the... The board. Yeah, the community fund board. And then trying to think if there is... And there's nothing on the back of the ballot from someone who is rejected, which I suppose shows that the system might be working. Yes, well, if someone goes, if an organization goes to the community fund board, theoretically they're waiving their rights to put something on the ballot. In theory. Yes, in theory. But you know, that people could just not go with the community fund and put something on the ballot. Parks and trees, we've got two of the, we've got a program coming up with the two people who are running for the park commission. Oh yeah, right. One for two years and one for five years. We have physicians. Yes. Could you talk about those for a second? Yeah, so there is a couple of positions that we're adding to the budget this year related to parks and trees. So one is a position dedicated to combating the Emerald Ash borer. So that, if you, are you familiar with how that, or maybe I'll just explain it anyway. If you want to ask me to, whether I'm familiar with this question. It's not important, yeah, yeah, fair. So the Emerald Ash borer is an invasive species that has really been decimating ash trees wherever it's found. And it has been hugely expensive to clean up for many communities as their ash trees come down. And Montpelier has a lot of ash trees. So it will actually be cheaper for us. In the long run, if we can hire someone ahead of time and be proactive about managing the system so that it's not. How would you manage that system if they're all over the place? So, well, so you, one of the things that you can. Now all over the place, all over the place that means they're in North Branch, they're in Hubbard and they're in their yards? Yeah, potentially. So there have been a few places located in Montpelier that have Emerald Ash borer. But one of the things that we can do to slow their migration or their progress is to purposefully cut down some of the ash trees around infected trees so that they, so that it doesn't spread as quickly. And just be, you know, instead of trying to clean it up all at once, you know, take it in pieces. Do we have the resources to cut those down? Well, so we just added this full-time position and, you know, there's differing opinions about this on the Council. My estimate here is that it is probably good to start with a position and then see if that is, you know, really panning out to be as necessary as we think it will be. Or if they're totally overwhelmed and overloaded, should we be adding some extra either, like either a position or a contracted help? Now we're going to go to the third graphic in our advanced graphic series. Okay. This is the actual budget changes. What is CIP funding? CIP stands for Capital Improvement Plan. And so this is where the funding for roads and sidewalks where their maintenance and refurbishment comes from. And so we have been adding to the CIP every year for the last many years, except for, I think, maybe last year. So we are adding in an additional 25,000 to continue to maintain our roads and sidewalks adequately. This is a part of a larger plan to get our funding for infrastructure up to sort of a steady state level. Now what is the, now I know the steady state, even though I can't say steady state level, I know that the steady state level means that you're bringing it to routine maintenance standards. How far are we on the streets now? So we are very close. We're about $25,000 short of that now. So next year I anticipate we'll add an additional $25,000 and then we'll be at steady state. Now what does that mean in terms of Berry Street? Do you mean in all the potholes, whatever? What does that mean in terms of the streets of our town? Sure, so that would mean that we're funding that for as many miles of road as we have and are responsible for maintaining, we are funding them at a level that means that we can be doing routine maintenance that will end up helping those roads to have their full, useful lifetime. And it will mean that we can be doing a deep retrofit for roads every, something like 40 to 50 years. And a deep retrofit would be something like what we did on Elm Street or Northfield? Right, yes. Which roads are gonna need over the long term. But it should mean that the life of our existing roads should be extended. Now we see the police officer that we just talked about. We see the new tree position that we just talked about. What's the new parks position half time that starts in January? Yeah, so we, well it's really full time that starts in January. That's where the half sort of comes from. But the idea there is that we are losing our, so our Parks Director, Jeff Beyer, is gonna be retiring over the next year or so. Which opens up a house. Well yeah, I guess. And then so we'll be hiring someone to fill his position but particularly with his transition as well as we are adding more park space. Where's the park space coming from? Where are we adding? Well so we're gonna be adding Confluence Park, which is not a lot, but in addition to that, I would add that there was a sense on the council that there was just not enough positions dedicated to the maintenance of the parks right now. There's the thought that Jeff works a fair bit of overtime right now. And though I don't think it's technically overtime, strictly speaking, but he works really long days. And so we wanna honor that and see how it works with this additional help. Now I know that I can't get out of a discussion of the parks without talking about dogs. Okay. I had bicycles. Yeah. What is the status on dogs and bicycles in Hubbard? Well, so I can tell you that we just opened some new trails over at North Branch Park. I mean, I know that's not Hubbard, but that was very exciting. And my understanding is that we've posted the canine rules of conduct in Hubbard Park and are hoping that dog owners and odd dog owners will be conscious of what the rules are for dogs and keep their dogs within control, you know, either within voice control or on a leash. And that if there are any problems, you know, the police wanna hear about it. Is there any discussion whatsoever of a dog park? Not yet, but it's something that, well, I've seen it on Front Porch Forum. You know, it's come up. Exactly. That's why I'm asking. Sure. I mean, it hasn't come up in council, but I think it's something that we could look at in the future. While we're on bicycles. Yeah. What about scooters? Are they coming back in one way or are they coming back? Well. See, this is the time I get to. No, it's fine. So we actually had it on our agenda to evaluate, you know, how had the pilot gone and you know, should we be renewing it? And so that agenda item got pushed back and I think it's, again, it's on the agenda sometime in February, but I'm not sure when. So we'll see. And so it's not clear yet whether or not they're coming back. I think there's a lot of interest on the council for that. I will tell you that I'm more, this is just speaking for myself, but I'm very interested in electric, dockless bicycles, as opposed to scooters, particularly because they might have a basket, but all of that is already yet to be fleshed out. Well, there still has to be a legal definition of what these things are from what I gathered. It's a state question as well. Sure. Yeah, well, and I would also like to be looking at our, even just our ordinances within the city about electric devices on the bike path. I mean, I know where I've seen electric skateboards and I mean, I would actually really like to get one of these like electric unicycles that you don't sit on it, but that's just like a platform for your feet. They look so cool, but. How does that differ from segue? You're not like hanging on to anything. Yeah, right, like there's nothing that comes up. But anyway, I think we could do, both at the state and the city level, I think we could do a lot of work cleaning up our ordinances and the state statutes as well. What's the new facilities sustainability director? Oh my goodness, I'm so excited about this. So we have needed a facilities director for a long time. I mean, just like the classic example here is that in the past, the maintenance of the building of like say the police station has been left to the police chief, but that's not his area of expertise. Like he's a great police chief, but you know, he's not gonna necessarily know what the best technology is for replacing an air conditioning or how to necessarily go about that process. And plus there are lots of energy saving just really small things that we can be doing to make our buildings perform better. And so having someone who is looking out for the facilities as well as for the energy that we're consuming is gonna be huge. So this person in addition to that would also be helping to manage district heat, which right now is under the Department of Public Works and they've got a lot going on right now. So for example, like trying to find more customers for district heat like that is at least like right now when they've been so busy, right? Like way on the back burner, but this would be a part of this person's job as well as managing the parking garage. Now while we're on utilities, internet. I think wasn't there movement on the internet project? Well, so we made some appointments to the Central Vermont, Internet or Central Vermont fiber and- Would you explain that project to people who don't know the inside of it? Sure, yeah. So there is some really substantially faster internet technology that's called fiber and Montpiler used to be a member of a group called EC fiber, which was based out of the Upper Valley and they have brought high speed internet to rural parts of the Upper Valley, which is really remarkable. And so Central Vermont Internet or Central Vermont fiber is basically an iteration for this, of that same type of model, but for Central Vermont. So the hope is that we'd be able to get high speed internet all over, all over. Now we're not only talking municipally, we're talking in the households as well. Oh yeah, right, I'm sorry. Yeah, extending to all of downtown, if not out into the more rural parts of Montpiler too. If this were to roll, when do you think it would roll out? Well, that's a good question. I couldn't say, but I believe Jeremy Hansen is the board chair, so yeah. So everybody look up Jeremy Hansen. Yeah, Jeremy Hansen. And I, wait. Bombard him. Yeah, so I haven't heard much yet about their timeline, but I feel like I did hear something but I don't want to speculate, so. Okay, increasing the housing trust fund. Yes. 50,000, and I happen to be at Council sitting in the crowd when they presented, and I believe they were saying that 50,000 actually generates funding for them, additional funds, and actually pays for itself largely. Could you explain their rationale? Yeah, sure, so one of the things that they do, or one of the programs they have is the first time home buyers program. And so one of the great things about that is that it brings more families into town who otherwise would not necessarily be able to afford to live here. And then, especially if they have children, then that means they're a part of our count for the school population, and that ends up bringing in even more money to the school district. So I know those are two different pots of money, but in the end it can end up paying for itself. But they also, our local funds helped to leverage federal funding, right? Sure, sure, yeah, right, exactly. With so many other nonprofits, if you start with some amount of money, or donations, then that can help leverage further grants and whatnot. And while I have you here on housing, what's going on with Sabin's pasture? Anything, any movement, whatsoever? Well, the last I heard was that we have some zoning issues that were sticky, or tough to deal with for development in Sabin's pasture, and so we're gonna be taking those up relatively soon. Weren't those part of the master plan that we just dealt with? Do you mean the zoning? Yeah. Right, so it's from since then, the practice of it, right? Like as it has rolled out, and we're seeing how it works, we've discovered that there are a few things that are not working out the way we anticipated, and so we're gonna re-examine a couple aspects. The New Art Commission funding. What is that? What is the Art Commission? Sure, so we, yeah. So we just minted a New Arts Commission that is gonna be, I think we're gonna be appointing members to it relatively soon. And so this is another situation where we're gonna be giving them money, something like $20,000, yep. And they'll hopefully be able to take that money and then leverage further grants and donations from that starting point. And then they'll have their own processes for vetting projects and selecting locations, and we're very hopeful that we'd have some public art on the parking garage. But there's lots of other opportunity for public art, so I'm really excited to see how that works out. I'm gonna go for one that's not on there because it's not an extra funding thing that's significant. The Invisio Dashboard. Oh yeah, okay. That's one of yours. Yes, yes, I'm very excited about it. What is the Invisio Dashboard that's coming in? Well, so as I mentioned, I teach physics, right? So I love data, and we have started a couple of new data initiatives with the city. One is around performance measures. So how is the city taking data or collecting data around how well we're doing? And then the other is community indicators. So these are general pieces of data that we think are important and good things to know about our community. The city itself may not have direct control over these things, but we may have some indirect influence over them. There are things like, for the biggest strokes, it's like population or demographics by age or by race or looking at what is the median income or even, I mean, we're even drilling down into things like, do we have health data about our population? Like how healthy are we? Or are even looking at our sustainability, like how many electric vehicles do we have registered in Montpelier, that kind of thing. Well, we go on the level like Burlington does of how many police calls were there, or how much road salt was used, or... It might not be quite... Is that granular? Well, it might not be those things specifically because we want the data to have a purpose, right? So why, you know, thinking about like road salt, right? So like, what... What affects your budget? Well, it affects the budget, but in thinking about, like just thinking about road salt in general, we could consider how much salt we're using per storm, let's say, or I shouldn't be making these up because the city department heads actually came up with a whole bunch of metrics that's in our budget book, and they're wonderful. I'm really excited that we're starting to keep track of these things. And then soon we'll be able to keep track of them over time and see what the trends are. And I think, I mean, one of the things that I'm really interested in is looking at how we are making improvements. And I'm not sure that the improvements are always very visible. You know, pavement condition index comes to mind, right? Like people might say, oh my gosh, our roads are terrible. Fair enough. What we can show you is that there's a measure for that and on average our overall pavement condition is getting better. Or maybe it's not, right? But at least we have some data that can be objective and tell us about how we're doing. It's coming to the next one. We've increased our funding to Montpelier Alive by 10,000 and we have our Montpelier Development Corporation at 100,000. Have we developed metrics for success on those two that are really a lot softer than pavement condition? Yeah, so we have some pretty clear metrics for the Montpelier Development Corporation. Those came from the Economic Development Strategic Plan that the city put together a few years ago. And there are things like net new businesses and housing starts and jobs and things like that. So that's one, we don't have as well-defined metrics for Montpelier Alive, but that's something that I'm interested in talking about. In terms of the community fund, you increased it 17, 750, we talked about that before. New childcare for meetings. I'm sure that would interest people. What meetings can they get childcare? Well, so we were considering that there may be some impediments for people to come to the city council meetings themselves. So this is really for city council at this point. And it's an experiment, we're gonna try it out and see how it goes. Yeah, we want people to be able to come voice their opinions, even if they need to be bringing other members of their family with them. Now, I should be prepared for this one. The Funding for the Energy Plan, Strategic Plan and Community Survey, is that at all connected to the charter issue? No. Okay, I wasn't prepared. No, that's fine. What is that then? So those are three different things, they're separate. And they're, as far as I know, those are things that we are looking at, coming out of just some of the extra reserve funding that we have. So the Community Survey is a survey that we used to do every, I think it's, well, we've done it in the past and it's, you know, Ballpark $15,000 or so. So we may just start allocating some money for that and do it in a couple of years or we may just do it now. What would the Community Survey tell us that we don't know? It's, in the past it has been things like, you know, where is the public on a variety of controversial issues, for Montpelier? Would this be like the survey that was done for the Recreation Department? Well, it might incorporate some aspects of things like that, but it'll be much broader than that. The energy plan is really more modeled after the kind of thing that Burlington is doing. What is the kind of thing Burlington's doing? Well, so both Burlington and Montpelier have a net zero energy goal or I would say like an energy independence goal. And so Burlington just hired a firm to come up with a roadmap for them to figure out how are they actually going to achieve energy independence? And this is sort of our version of that as well. So this has been needed for a long time. I mean, we have an energy committee but they're a volunteer and they're not gonna necessarily be able to come up with the roadmap. So that's what we hope to get out of that. Yeah. So what is the charter change? It does not deal with energy as well. Do you wanna talk about the strategic plan? Yeah, let's do the strategic plan first. Okay, well, so the strategic plan is something that we do every year as a, or we're gonna start to do every year as a council shortly after March as a part of our goal setting for the year and we have hired a consultant to help us walk through that. So that's what that is. But anyway. I thought Bill was doing that now. He had the action steps and all that for your goals all set. For this year, but not for next year. Okay. But he had already started that process, I thought. Yeah, no, we're starting to plan for expending that money, yeah. But charter change. The charter change. Yeah. Doesn't that have to do with energy as well? Yes, it does. So the charter change. Which is why I got it confused. No, it's okay. Yeah, well, and understandably so, fair enough. So the charter change is about the city's ability to regulate energy efficiency in buildings. And so there are a few ordinances that we've been discussing with the council that have some traction, which I'm really interested in and excited to have further conversation about. And to be fair, the charter change is more or less asking permission to have this conversation. Because right now. What conversation? Enough. So the ordinances that we have been discussing so far. Again, to bring up Burlington. So Burlington has an ordinance that says that any multifamily building that is sold must meet a energy efficiency performance standard. And if it doesn't meet that standard, then there's a cap on the amount of money that the seller might be required to spend in order to get it up to that standard. So as to not prevent the sale. Now, living in one of the older homes in Montpelier, living in a 170 year old home, how do you set standards? So many people here are living in homes that really are 75 to 100 plus. How do you set a standard for a home that old? Is it like an old car where you're gonna set a different standard? First of all, that if it's just your single family home then that wouldn't be affected by that rule. So it's just multi. That's multifamily homes, right? Because the idea is to protect renters. And particularly because renters have no efficacy or agency to make the changes themselves in wherever they're living. So multifamily buildings gets to that. Could that make, since affordability is so difficult in rentals in this town, when there are rentals to be had in this town, doesn't this possibly affect affordability since it would be passed through to tenants? That is, this is exactly like the same next question that happens like pretty much every time I talk about this. And I think they're knowing that that is sort of an obvious predicament, right? That like, oh, is this not gonna increase rents? I think that there are gonna be ways that we could frame it so that, so as to deter that. For example, when, I mean, the situation's a little different with capstone, but my understanding anyway, is that when capstone refurbishes or does weatherization work on a rental property, they have some clause in their contract that prevents the landlord from increasing rents by a whole lot. Because they're getting such a heavily subsidized deal. Now to be fair, that's also an incentive, but there may be a way for us to, and the intent here is to have both incentives and regulation at the same time. So actually, I've been, in addition to this charter change, which would be the regulation side of it, I've also been having conversations with Efficiency Vermont to say, how can we be providing carats for people to do these changes? So basically what I'm understanding you saying, is that what the city council is looking for right now, is an opening to open a discussion, a community discussion that will result in an ordinance that will have how many hearings? Oh, who knows, I feel like many, well, I should say at least two, but I imagine that we're gonna need to talk about this a lot more than that, and rightly so. And you brought up like, well, how do you set a standards for a very old house? When it comes down to it, even for multifamily buildings, that question still remains. And I think what we're gonna need to do is figure out, well, what are the right dial settings for Montpelier? Because certainly the goal is not to make Montpelier unaffordable or shut people out of construction or doing the work that needs to be done to weatherize their homes, but we can probably find the right levels for our market and encouraging people to get some work done. Now, even though this isn't budget related, there is an elephant in the room, the parking garage. Yes. Tell us what is going on right now in the legal perils of the parking garage in terms of the planning of the parking garage, and what those of us who've lived here a long time call the car lot or one Taylor Street. Sure, well, and something I've noticed is that I think people get very confused about these two projects, because I mean, even just today, there was someone asking me like, oh, so they're building the parking garage now over on Taylor Street. I have to say, no, no, that's not the parking garage. That is the transit center. And so. Let's start with the transit. Okay. What's going on with that? We see that there's movement there. Yeah. What's going on with that? Well, it's just continuing to be constructed as planned. In very cold weather. In very cold weather. I think it's good that they've sort of enclosed some of it so they can keep some of that heat in as they work. So they're starting with the building and I think I just saw some of the work done for the abutments, for the bridge that's going in. That was kind of exciting. Only you would notice that. Yeah, well, I think I saw that. I mean, maybe it was just a giant cement thing over there, but I'll have to go back and check. And then, of course, the Peeler Beverage Building came down and that site was. What's going on with that site? Well, so all I can say is the plan is to have a bike path next to the railroad bridge and then next to that will be the road that leads behind Obashan's, et cetera, drawing board. And there's a lot of interest, I think, in trying to figure out what to do with some of that extra space there. We have the opportunity to maybe extend Confluence Park from the west side to the east side, but we still either need to buy out the state's interest in part of the parcel that's there or we'll need to sell it and put a building there to pay the state back. So there's some questions that we're still sort of wrestling with and we will have a public process to discuss what ought to be done with that site over the coming months, so that's upcoming as well. Now, before we get to the Thorny Garage, how's the distillery coming? Oh, it's coming great. I was. That should be open sometime in 2019. Yes, yes, in a mere matter of months, so relatively soon. But I'm trying to think if there's anything else about the transit center. Now, I mean, work is continuing and things are good, so. Okay, now onto the parking garage. Onto the parking garage, okay. Planning is continuing while the legal thing is being sorted out? Yep, so just in case people don't know, just to catch people up. The bond passed for the 10 and a half million dollars to build it which would be paid for through revenues generated through the parking garage itself, which is great. And then it was the subdivisions or two of the subdivisions were appealed by a group of people, there are 18 folks. And then we also went through an Act 250. Act 250 being land use. Being land use, yep. And so that's sort of in addition. So we had our first hearing about that. And there were a number of people who, I'm not sure what the right verb is here, maybe petitioned for a party status. To be plaintiffs. To be, yep. So there was one fellow who was granted party status but the whole group is appealing for party status as well as the one fellow to be party on more items than just the one that he was granted. So we'll see, I mean, I am. Are the two sides talking or can't you say? Well, so I can say that I have a meeting with a couple of those folks coming up and I'm looking forward to it and just talking through their concerns and want to be just really up front that I'm really receptive to whatever they have to say. I mean, I also am a young mayor, right? So I am still learning and that's okay. So. In town. Right, yes. And these are our neighbors. And these are our neighbors, right? And I want to make sure that everybody feels hurt. One more. Since we're in that parking lot over by the Heaney parking lot next to Julio's. Yeah. The farmer's market. Yes. So we just approved a new, the council just approved a plan to have the farmer's market be sort of in both places, a little bit less so into the parking lot, the Heaney lot there, but spilling out onto State Street. So we can anticipate that we're gonna be closing State Street often, maybe every Saturday over the summer for the farmer's market between say like Elm and Main Street, which I think is gonna be wonderful for the farmer's market, for the downtown businesses. I think it's gonna create just a lot of vibrancy. It's gonna be great. When do the way faring signs come? Is that ever going to happen? I don't know. We did just recently, like within the last few months, look at approving the plan. And so they were going through the DRC and whatnot, but I don't know where we're at with that. But they'll happen eventually. They'll happen eventually. Yeah, they're coming. So anything else in the pipeline I didn't get to? Well, no, I think for now that's pretty good. Just to add another word about the energy efficiency conversation that I've had with efficiency Vermont, they've put together a program for Montpelier landlords, specifically that they're dedicating part of this woman's job to helping landlords find all the best deals and help walk them through the weatherization process and connect them with all of the best rebates and low-interest loans and whatnot that are out there. Well, it sounds like the city is doing some really good things. Yeah. You guys are working hard at it. Yeah. And we have a ballot measure that will pay you and the other city council people, and I'm sure you're getting rich off of it. Oh yeah, oh yeah. Oh dear. And for you who are watching this, I'd like to thank Anne Watson for presenting her budget and a state of the city, so to speak. Yeah. Get out and vote. And make sure that your friends get out and vote. Each of these candidates who's running for school board, who's running for city council, who's running for parks commission is going to have their own television show along with me and watch those because these are good people and basically these are entertaining shows and informative shows, but most important, get out and vote on town meeting day. Thank you very much. And I want to add one thing if I can. Sure. Which is to say thank you for being so dedicated to doing all of these interviews. I think that's a real public service and we are all better for it. As is my wife because she is away from me now. Yeah, fair enough. Thank you so very much.