 Well, let's dive in. I think we have many presentations that we are planning to get through tonight, so I think we should dive right in. Hopefully we will be. I see we, in addition to Councillor Carpenter, Councillor Hanson is with us, and these, this session is being recorded and will be available for anyone to review later. So, I think let's get started. Catherine, or would you like to. Well, in a moment, I'll hand it over you what opening remarks I have on this. This is the beginning. Well, this is the next step of the FY 22 process. We had the overview. Last week. Right. Last, last Monday. But we remain at the stage of the budget where there is. Although, you know, we definitely think we have the kind of trajectory we have that a lot. We've identified the major changes, the major new initiatives there is a lot of work going on still. And, you know, I think even particularly so this year with the challenge of just how dramatically different this budget is from the one a year ago and how differently last year's budget was the year before their salon and pieces to it. We, we will get into depart into some detail now in each of the different departmental areas. And, you know, I've had the question from counselors like how what's, we understand that last, I think everyone's agreed we would like to avoid some of what happened last year in terms of, you know, we had we had some conflict last year late in the budget process and I don't think was very satisfying to everyone to anyone. How do we avoid that this year. I think is that with these additional sessions tonight and three next week, we can really get into a level of detail that we're not able to with the pandemic last year and we can flush out areas where counselors do have concerns or questions need more detail. And that's what these sessions are for. And hopefully it's, it's, it's challenging because even with four nights there is a lot to get through. And we have found this to be for many years now a useful way to try to get this joint task done together so with that, before I consume any more time. I'll hand it over Catherine for also to kick things off here. Go ahead, Catherine. I see that counselor Paul wanted to be recognized. Okay. Thank you for either one who's recognizing me thank you so much. I think that, you know, I think it's, I think all of us know that the, there were challenges last year, and I think that in the interest of being able to be collaborative and move forward at all except some level of responsibility for the fact that not only was it a difficult year with things beyond our control, but there were things that, you know, dynamics that were at play that were very new and number of new counselors and a process that we did not do as we had the year before and in years past. That was challenging on what I would just simply like to say as someone who's been doing this for a little while is that there is no department head who is not approachable. There is no department head who is not capable of taking whatever amount of time is necessary on to answer any questions. We don't talk about any line items in their budget. When I first got on the council there were department heads who barely knew their own budget. That is not the case at all. Department heads know what their revenues are they know what their expenditures are. They know what their line means line items mean, and if they don't they have the CAO. What I would just simply ask is that the amount of time that we have to do these budget meetings is very limited. And that is just simply due to the fact that we have a lot of departments and only so many days that we can do this. I would just like to say that any department head is available to discuss their budget whenever and to set up a time and discuss whatever any counselor wants. And I would just respectfully ask that if there are questions that if changes are sought, that at the very minimum that department head is consulted. It was disappointing to me last year to find out that with time with with the same amount of time. Department heads were caught completely off guard had no idea that there were items that affected their budget that they would have been happy to respond to. And we're not given that opportunity so that would be the only thing that I would respectfully ask of all city counselors is to please please reach out. Be collaborative on and and and sometimes you may get the you may get exactly the answer that you're looking for, but you won't know it if you don't ask. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Paul. I appreciate, I appreciate that and certainly want to amplify that back that up that it certainly be intended department head team to be as responsive as possible than any questions that come up. I think we will continue to practice if there are questions that are sent by any counselor will try to make sure we'll try to collect those and share those often. You know, questions are, if maybe one counselor asking about many counselors would like to know that answer will circulate that information to the full full council. And I think it's a very good point that even even with something like eight hours of budget discussions over the next two weeks that is a very limited amount of time for 18 departments or 19 departments now and 20,000 some odd budget line so some of this conversation can certainly no one should feel like this is either going to be possible to get every question answered in these limited presentations or that this is the only forum for digging in and for for follow for for for asking questions and having and getting additional information and my team will work as hard as we can be responsive to those requests. So with that, before we take any more time out of the night's business, the the night's work, I do want to just note I actually kind of did not point out we do have a public forum this is a formerly warned meeting their next item on the agenda is the is the public forum at this point there is no one signed up for that public forum, Jordan has come on to nod that we have just a few attendees, none of whom have their hands up or appear to be want to be recognized. If you are one of those phone numbers and do want to be recognized please. I guess maybe hard as a phone number to raise your hand but you can send an email to Jordan can the email is is how do people let us know if they want you can. You can email public forum at Burlington vt.gov. Okay. And book if I get an I don't see an email any emails in there now and if we see one will come back to you. And since we don't have any we'll close the public forum and now I will again turn the floor over to Catherine to take it from here with the first presentation. Thank you mayor. And I want to also thank you counselor Paul. I want to echo that speaking as a department head and seeing some department heads here and having spoken with them. We're all really eager for your feedback. So anything you have for us after these presentations. I know any of us would be pleased to have those conversations, emails, whatever you'd like to do. So a big picture on the budget. As you can imagine with this being my first budget. I knew it was going to be hard. It's totally overwhelming. I'm thinking back to the day when Karen Paul interviewed me and asked me why I want the job. I literally did think about that today Karen I was like why did I want this job. Persevering morrow and Jordan and Bob Rustin have been great. But I will tell you sort of where we're at because you know there's still a lot of things in play and so there's some things will review tonight in my non departmental big picture overview. So there's some things we'll keep reviewing kind of as we go. So the exciting news is that the draft tax sheet is out and I think that's probably the most exciting things for people. And so that is where I imagine we'll spend our time. And I want to be cognizant of not hogging the time because I'm first and we have lots of other budgets to get through. So we've already went through that highlights memo. So that's a big advantage. That's something that in years past we've gone through in this time. So we've already gone through that although if any questions have come up I'm happy to answer them. And then I am happy to do. I don't have a fancy PowerPoint. I'm like the cobbler who has no shoes because I was looking at everyone else's PowerPoints, but I'm happy to do just a quick review with you of the budget for the non departmental items flag areas that and just see if you have questions things that are not here a full general fund budget. You should see that either next Monday or next Wednesday. And I will tell you sort of where we're at is still using the $5 million, you know that we're saying is arpa reimbursed of unassigned fund balance. It's a plug figure of $5 million and trying to make the budget work. There's still a little bit of a hole at this point, but as Bob Rustin said to me today like you're in striking distance. So there's you know still lots of things that we're adjusting such as attrition and you know it's amazing when you go through a budget that is that many line items I'm constantly finding things so I think everything that is in the budget memo has is standing. So there's no big changes there. I can imagine some of you are eager to look at the full general fund budget. Some of you are like, I never want to see that. But for those of you who are eager to see it. You will and I will let you know what the timeframe is on that. So Jordan has up here. The non departmental budget if you could just scroll to the top Jordan. So all the way to the right on column H is the 2022 requested. Here are all of our taxes, and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the property taxes because our next slide will be going through in depth. So all of the tax rates, but I will say line 24 is the local option tax, and that is an area where we have exceeded expectations for this year. It doesn't look like that, but that's because this is only half of the year. We are expecting a may payment and then a payment in August but it is credited to FY 21. So 2.7 is certainly realistic for 2022. So for each receipt, two lines down, you will see we picked sort of a midpoint between, you know, we were up in 2020 to over $4 million of gross receipts. In 2021, you know, we'll be lucky to hit 2.5. Hopefully, if we have a good June, you know, so we are hoping to see things improve but given the uncertainty, we've put that at 3.5 so scrolling down. These pilot numbers, where you see changes, those are changes from the reappraisal. And then we've got our fee for services. There isn't a lot to note here other than Awakening Sanctuary. This is a very small number, 57, but due to COVID. We have given them forbearance or, you know, we have waived those fees because they are a long term care facility that was really hit by COVID. Point of information. Catherine. Yes. Yes. I was just wondering, how would you like the questions? Should we gather them until the end? I am fine if you interrupt me. That's fine. Do you have one now? I was wondering if you can go back to the pilot a little bit. Sure. And you mentioned there were some changes due to the reappraisal. Yes. I could not understand. Yeah. So these pilot, and I see the mayor has turned on his camera, which is great because I still find pilot a bit confusing, but so pilot stands for payment in lieu of taxes. So these are all agreements with organizations. As you will see, several of them are the city water wastewater, storm water, and then Burlington Electric. And instead of paying us property taxes, they pay these agreements. So due to how those agreements are structured, which is as complicated. So as Bob Rustin sent me this spreadsheet, but they are all tied to the property tax rate. Mayor, please help me if there's things I didn't explain well or got wrong. I think you did a pretty good job with it, you know, and about my level of understanding too, but exactly right. They're essentially these are not taxes, but the way that they are assessed on the different entities, particularly the internal entities is there is an attempt to treat them. They change as the property tax rate changes. It sort of tries to essentially act like a property tax. So I also should point out that our pilot expert is Jeff Hurwood. He has been out unexpectedly with a family emergency. So I want to give kudos to Jason Gao and Bob Rustin who helped me figure this out. There may be a couple of slight adjustments as Jeff gets back at the end of this week. And we refine these but I think they're in pretty good shape. Lastly, based on. No, go ahead. I'll go ahead. I'm sorry. Based on your projection. Do you think that what the city may be collecting will be over 5,359 based on the reappraisal of those entities. Um, so I don't expect that number to go down, but I don't know if it will. I am not certain it will go up. This is my best estimate as of now from the information I have. Thank you. Councilor Jang, I just want to make sure that often when pilot discussions have come up in, you know, in recent for the last decade, almost always that discussion has been very focused on a subset of the overall pilot fees. And that, you know, there was this system that used to, you know, as you're well aware that used to exist, where some of the pilot fees were shared with the school school district, and that that was then found to be inconsistent with the state law. And that's not the entire I just want to be clear that that was just it was a it was not this whole figure it was the part that used to be shared was the Burlington Electric Department piece alone. So just want to make sure there's no, given that that's usually the way this topic has come up, I just want to make sure that was clear to everyone. Thank you. Councilor Carpenter. There's more. All right, you know, Councilor Powell had been. Oh, so we'll go to Councilor Powell and then Councilor Carpenter. Okay. Well, thank you. I, my question isn't, you know, and that and thanks. Thanks, Councilor Jang for asking because I didn't want to didn't want to interrupt you Catherine. In the middle of your, in the middle of your thoughts but the question that I have is just it's you can either do it on this or on the, the PDF that you sent with the tax rate. There is a $1.1 million difference on between last year and this year for police and fire. I think that I'm assuming that that $1.1 million is the difference between the fact that we are now going to be assessing the, the tax. I don't know if there is a way on the PDF that you had sent. When we do, when we used to do the do to do from, you know, sheet that Rich often did for board of finance meetings, there were little a little B little C when there were when there were things that required additional explanation. And I think it would be helpful for the public to understand that the tax rate for police and fire is going up for a specific voter approved reason. I think that that might be helpful in terms of, you know, as you refine that that document because that is going to be a document that a lot of people are going to look at. And I think it would be helpful to know the rationale behind that. And then also, when you do get to that, if I'm not really sure exactly how it's calculated, but with reappraisal on, and the fact that the tax, I don't know if the tax rate, if the calculation changes as to the value per penny. In other words, a one penny, a one cent increase in the tax rate was $330,000. Is that still the case does reappraisal and the fact that we are changing that the base is different in terms of the per In terms of the fact that it's a different rate, like per 100 of assess value. I'm just wondering if that changes as well and I probably should know the answer but I just, I don't and I think it would be helpful to be able to try to put that in dollars if we can. That's all. Thank you so much. Thank you, counselor Paul, you may have noticed although only very detail oriented people would that I have made a few tweaks to the tax sheet to make it a little bit more user friendly because it wasn't accurately reflecting the correct names of the taxes. I changed the name to raider rates capped by voters to more accurately so I appreciate trying to make that more user friendly we want the public to be able to understand the tax, because, you know, as the reappraisal was happening people asked me for the tax rate. It's, you know, as you know, built up by so many different things. And I think it would be helpful for all of us to help our citizens to understand that so that's great. I will work on that for the next draft. I really appreciate that and I actually I did like that. I think it is important for people to understand what fluctuates on why it fluctuates which ones are voter approved which ones are not. And that their formula driven some of them are formula driven so so anyway thank you. Thanks very much. So just in a future draft, the city attorney hasn't had time to do it but she is working on where in the charter language and just a couple of them are by resolution you can find all of that so that people could look that up more easily too. Great. Thank you. Okay. This is going back just on your revenue from property taxes. Is that whole first section all property taxes. Let's go up. So it's 4,000 through 4715. Yes. You've got gross receipts in there. As well. So I just so lots of it is, you know, but yes, only really these things labeled property taxes, and then sort of the commercial tax assessment and DID also factor in. Catherine, I'm going to pull up the tax. Yes. Thank you. That's really where we're headed. I was thinking we might start there but it's okay we wound it up there. Okay, because I was going to suggest that. That be subtotal a little bit more so we could call out probably tax the other thing I was going to ask if, and not tonight obviously but if some of those subtotals, you could put a percent next to it like percent of the revenue. Oh yeah. So how much is of our revenue is property taxes, how much is local option tax, how much, you know, these varied categories. Yeah, we certainly have that. You know, we know sort of a rule of thumb, but it wouldn't be hard to do. Yeah, that's a good idea. So here we have the FY 22 taxes, and you can see I have highlighted in yellow, the new taxable grand list up at the top, yep, $53 million. So that is exciting going from 37.8 to 53.3. So as we have told everyone through the reappraisal process, that means our tax rate will drop because the reappraisal is revenue neutral. So you will see, as I mentioned, the tax rate is made up of multiple tax rates. So these first three general city police and fire, which maybe we should call public safety, because that's also what we call it. Capital and green belt are all revenue neutral. And so those rates have been adjusted. You will see the projected taxes go up by 0.09% to account for organic growth. And then the next category, we're calling rates that are capped by voters. So you will see if you look at FY 21, what the rates could be. But we know that the taxpayers have been stressed by the pandemic and the recovery has hit people unequally. So we are in this iteration of the tax rate have floated these rates down in FY 22. That is the difference in this category of $1.2 million that we are foregoing, but believing that that is the best thing that we can do for our taxpayers. Then at the bottom, we have four rates that are driven by the budgets. And then at the very bottom, we have a rate that's almost not worth mentioning because it's so tiny. This local agreement rate. That brings us to a draft rate at this point, moving from 90 cents last year to 67 cents this year. Does anyone have questions. I'm going to ask the governor. That service. Is that that service for what, and if it's that service for city things. It's confusing to me. I guess these categories are confusing to me a little bit like GMT and the county tax are out of the control of the city. Again, that service. We chose to borrow that money. So obviously that's our obligation, but it's, it's a city thing as opposed to a county thing, if you appreciate what I'm saying. I'm just curious why we sort of segregated that way. Because the charter tells us to, and this is what we're working on with the city attorney, frankly, is these are this is all specified in our charter that we have to have it like this. Believe me, I was like, can we do a charter change to kind of clean some of this up and make it more streamlined. So if any of you are interested in talking about or sponsoring that, please contact me after the budget process. Thank you. And I am cognizant of probably hogging time but I know this is also important. So if there's any other questions, please let me know. Yeah, I think what it's maybe a funny label but just the budget driven rates is connotating it's it's really not a discretionary decision, driving those these all each of those tax rates is either set by sort of an outside city or by past decisions that have kind of locked in those rates. And so we don't really tend to signal that those are not rates we can really they're driven by essentially decisions that have already been made by others, or by prior versions of prior prior city decision makers. Is there more Catherine you're hoping to get to with your budget or with it with this section number. No, unless people have other questions I think these are the real highlights. Okay. Great. Well, I think in the interest time since you're trying to get through seven more budgets tonight we're sort of showing the challenge here where we will move on but again just to reiterate any obviously a lot of big kind of foundational get captured in Catherine's presentation there so please the floor, you know, invitation is out there for for further questions and follow up with that we will move next to the discussion which is also in, well, I think rich maybe is giving this the office of the clerk treasure. Well, is the next stop is that you Catherine or is that rich. It's rich and I just want to say a huge thank you to him for doing all of the work on this while I was working on other things. Take it away rich. So for the viewing audience. My name's rich goodwin and the director financial operations and what I'm going to try to do in the next five to seven minutes is to go through this budget and just open the floor for questions so. Next slide please. So these are all the functions that our department does. And it hasn't actually grown substantially. You know purchase things relatively new, but we do the purchasing for the city. We've been doing that for about four or five years. The insurance administration and the retirement administration has actually it's now being done by the clerk treasures office. We have a new project, retirement department one time. And again in the last couple of years, we have picked up that piece. So again, those are just the basic functions that we do a lot of people know we do buying is accounting. Let's go to the next slide. But this is just the organizational chart. You can see that we have Martin Keenan that we brought into our department. We've hired a new senior accountant recently. Thank you very much for the approval to add that position. What is this chart showing we have 24 fte's. I think it's interesting, even though we picked up all these additional responsibilities. The clerk treasures office is the only department in the city that has zero growth in the fte's and I went back full decade. And we have not grown in size. So enough on that next slide please. Clerk treasures office is only one of two departments within the general fund that is actually a profit center. Not a lot, but our revenues exceed our expenses by a couple hundred thousand, you know, I'm not going to go through the detail general ledger, but the piece that's pretty telling on, I call it the pie chart here is 54% of all our expenses, tables and controllables is actually built a non general fund. That's $1.5 million. So that's the support that the team at CK does providing oversight for water resources, airports, special funds. So that's again, sizable in nature. Another growing revenue stream. That's not, for some reason it's not showing on this chart, but it exists is our purchasing savings is, you know, in the ballpark about $375,000 and that's the work of the department that's doing that. And you can see we have some other fees. Enough on that. Let's take a peek at the expenses. Next slide please. Thank you very much. And you can see expenses that 2.7 million dollars and what I try to do is look at what we have for like called discretionary spend and interesting enough. You know, 77% it's payroll and fringe. And that's about, you know, almost 2.1 million dollars. Then we get some mandatory expenses like elections that's 10% of our budget costs for meetings. We only have a small sliver of operating expenses that's 213,000. And I could probably further reduce that if I looked at utilities looked at phones. So again, this is a very tight budget. Let's look at the next screen, please. So again, these are the major revenue drivers, which I just described, you know, the purchasing savings. You know, we do the virtual payments, you know, licensing fees that's pretty straightforward. Let's look at expenses, please. Next slide. So these are the drivers for the budget. You know, again, we have two elections budget for FY 22. It could be possible this three but we know of two at this time. The other areas that we have an impact on the entire city is, you know, the examples of the savings that we do. This is an area that I do find fascinating because I feel that everything you touch every day as a city employee has been negotiated by the Clark Charges office like you know the police vehicles. All our vehicles we negotiate the fuel prices. All the printing all the copying all the phones. Basically everything we reduce the cost of waste removal to a trash removal. Salt. So again, we negotiated pretty much every commodity for the entire city to reduce the overall spend again it's been, you know, our team working with all the different departments within the city. So the next slide. So audit findings. You really didn't have any findings, but we had four recommendations. One is to improve capital project accounting. I think that finding will go away this year. We've been working with CLA. And as you know that was approved by the Board of Finance and City Council team. We've just identified that we need to do a better job in managing a federal grants, and that will be inherited by the Clark Charges office it's going to be centralized. That is going to take place in 2022. We had a recommendation on the pension plan, but it really was the fact that when new hires were coming on board we were not gathering and saving critical information. Birth birth certificates proof of birth. Beneficiary information. We worked with HR to ensure that we have the appropriate backup in the HR files moving forward, and that we have to, you know, work on our closing. You know, we're in the fourth consecutive year that, you know, we received an award for financial reporting. There are only two cities in the entire state of Vermont that has achieved that that goal so it's something we're very proud of. Next slide. Initiatives. I believe fiscal year 22 is going to be the most difficult. The most challenging for our department, because we're going to be taking the lead for the grant reporting so we're going to be working with CLA to get through that. Our department is responsible for all fixed assets for the entire city, airport water resources. And we've been struggling to get through that we're looking to streamline that that process. Our department is also absorbing all the responsibilities for the state audit. And the other piece is we will be managing the funds that come from ARPA. And just to give you an example of the magnitude of that is captain. It asked me to make some adjustments for the budgets. And a couple of hours later, she wanted to know how I was doing. And I said, I'm a little bit overwhelmed. And I'm doing my best to get the numbers updated, but I started the day off where we got a $600,000 credit from ARPA that there was a forgiveness of debt, 600 grand. And a future debt load is going to be reduced dramatically. So I had to basically fill out some forms I had to certify who I was and agree it was a debt but then I'm thinking. We just finished up the budgets for the taxes but within the last hour, it appears it may change. Because I have to identify that debt, it could result in a reduction in dedicated tax, or it could result in less debt payment, debt for TIF. So our budgets are really changing. I'd say not on a day, but an hourly basis based on those dolls that are coming in, it's making it very challenging. It's very difficult for capital to pull together those numbers for taxes based on the fact that it's changing. I think that's it for my presentation. Any questions, concerns that I may answer for you. We've got Councillor Jang and then President Tracy. First and foremost, Rich, I mean, thank you. Thank you so much. And also congratulations for the recognitions. I think it's a great, great work. Thank you. Being the one of the two cities in the whole state that received that recognition is amazing. Thank you. And also thank you for the presentation, for making it very clean, very easy to understand, very neat. I really appreciate that. Thank you. Now, what are your hopes, basically your dreams, your aspiration, knowing that FY 2022 would be the hardest, maybe for you and your team. What are some recommendations? What do you want from the council or from board of finance in order to keep on doing your job well? What we needed to support from the city council is we have given an example being is the city council has approved $100,000 for three different projects that are being done by done in coordination with CLA. We're looking at improvement of fixed assets, improvement and centralization of grants in the other area that we're looking is a review of CETO and its organizational structure and trying to simplify that process. Another thing that the city councils have done and thank you again is your support for our contract with Municap for our tip. And they're working with us to improve our reporting to streamline cash flows. So with those two approvals and in the fact that you've given us a senior accountant that has been very helpful to the bringing in Martha Keenan who we work side by side every day to implement these processes citywide. We have clerk treasures citywide has been exceptional. The key, the key thing that we need to do is just manage these projects and make sure that we address the findings and again just continue to improve upon our processes. So thank you. And thank you so much. And lastly, it seems. I was just wondering what the COVID-19 has taught you, or have you identified things that you were doing in the past that no longer relevant anymore that you could perform without doing those activities. COVID-19 has actually created additional, you know, work for our department for the tracking. So we've been working with CETO on this initiative, but again, it's, you know, we had an individual that was supporting our purchasing savings and efforts that was delegated to that. To make sure that I'm answering your question is that as a result of COVID, we've actually found that our department functions very well remotely that that's excluding, you know, the front desk staff that still provides exceptional, you know, customer service there. Yeah, Lori Olberg, another individual, but the accounting and finance team, except for, you know, a few individuals. They've been working remote and it's it's been, it's been very productive as a result. And it's actually helped us streamline some of our processes for approvals. Period. Catherine have at it. I would just add and thank Rich and his team for this. One of the things he was already working on and that we've moved up is before COVID, we had an entirely paper based invoicing system, if you can believe that. And so we are moving to a paperless system. And so that was really his innovation and it started right before COVID and then it got slowed down a little bit but that really COVID showed us the need to push that up. And so we are close to rolling that out and that will really maybe put us in the 20th century, not like the 21st, but anyway, we're getting there. Thank you. Thanks, Mayor and thanks Councillor Jang really like that last question that was a really good one and I think it kind of ties into what I wanted to ask about which is I saw that meeting line item or that meeting portion of it. And, you know, there's that this kind of transition that we're going to be going through over the next year and not totally sure as to when meetings are going to transition back into that in person kind of phase but I think it's conceivable that certain things that we've learned from COVID in terms of ways that we can increase participation make meetings more accessible will continue over. And so, and that those things may require additional technologies to do them well. Thinking about, you know, how you might properly run a hybrid meeting I honestly have not seen anybody do a good hybrid meeting where you have some people in person and not in person. I don't think that that's something that we can't do or can't figure out but I think there may be need to be investments in order to best facilitate that. And so I just wanted to understand how we might be budgeting for that transition in place in the city. I was just going to say, Mayor, would you like to handle that or would you like me to. Well, and I think we have the it budget coming up tonight to where we have been doing some thinking on that already so I think Brian low maybe best position to speak to that. What I'm going to say is the short answer President Tracy is that. And we also have the airport team so this is very serendipitous at the leadership meeting today we talked a lot about this and the fact that director Richards and his team have been piloting some new technology. And so I think that the rest of us did the rest of us to come look at it at the airport and director low is looking at that and figuring out a lot of that would be good for maybe smaller conference rooms and we're trying to figure out is that that can be scaled up for a city council thing if so how and yes there is money in his budget and the capital budget to do that is the ultimate answer to your question. Wonderful thank you so much. That meeting budget is really to pay town meeting TV, who's here. Thank you town meeting TV. Okay, and I mean they're okay understand that thank you. I think this is worthy a little more discussion when we get to it conto is creates me some special challenges and problems that I don't know if we have totally figured out but more to come on that counselor Paul you want to get in here. Yes, thanks. So, I have the pleasure of being the CCG the town meeting TV rep, and how and was last year on just got in there just at the start of coven and this has been an ongoing discussion about on, you know the fact that I think we're not going to be alone with other municipalities that have, you know learned that there has been a silver lining to the amount of participation due to coven and due to meeting by via zoom and they have come up with a plan for hybrid meetings. It is more expensive on the, it's more expensive to run them. But it's also a one time cost of upgrading certain amounts of equipment and I believe that I'm assuming Catherine or to Brian. I don't know if Brian low is on here on that not to get ahead of ourselves but that that has been a discussion and there have been. Well, I see Brian he probably can speak to this better that there has been a significant amount of, you know, a planning that has gone on at town meeting TV to to accommodate this because as I say we are not the only ones that have this interest. Great. Brian, did you. Do you want to respond to that now. Sure I can give a quick answer now and have to talk more about it as well in the IT budget is up but I think there's a number of different elements that will contribute to, you know how the council wants to proceed and how the mayor and team want to proceed I think there is a number of policy decisions about when and how those meetings should should be conducted and then there's an IT element about making sure that the infrastructure is in place to conduct them in a way that the mayor and council want, want those meetings conducted I think con toys is a bit of a special challenge just in that the renovations are not completely done for City Hall, and I don't know, you know, group size comfort level. So I think the question is about what and you know when and how con toys will be reopened. But I think there, there are certainly ways to make that a very accessible meeting room. Okay. If there are no further questions I do think this is this last topic is one we will continue to speak about. And I saw a presentation to your email earlier today. I'm eager to start figuring that out with you to. Back to you presentation. Yeah, no I just wanted to say for counselors like I envision us just for for folks I envision us having work sessions to discuss like how that'll take place what people want in that I think that we need to have some work sessions and further discussion I just wanted to raise it in a budget context just to get some help framing but definitely for CS having work sessions on this and once we get a sense of when that date is we can kind of backwards plan from that and have those figure out when it makes sense to have those work sessions so just wanted to to know that is something that's on my brain. Great. I don't want to get. We could get we could we could spend a lot of time on this and we probably shouldn't but I will just you know it seems like maybe relevant on point with this to share I mean we are we are certainly having internal discussions about how we shift out of the posture that we've been in for more than a year with about half the city workforce basically working from home required, you know, required to work from home. We are we are seeing the beginning of June and the beginning of July as significant milestones and sort of shifting away from that but you know that's a significant public announcement we'll do we're not quite ready to lay it out exactly how we're going to do that but we know that this is an active discussion and near term discussion from my perspective as we see you know today we had two infections in the whole county, we are we are. I'm very hopeful seeing you know the end of the pandemic coming here and the opportunity to you know move back to a much more normal footing in general so. So with that, I'm going to close out the club treasure office session here, thank you rich. Next up, we have HR human resources and Catherine and Lynn, I think are going to tag team this one. I would just like to introduce Lynn Reagan quickly Lynn, are you okay to do this presentation or would you like me to this is how crazy things have been. I can certainly try to address any questions that might come up I have not been through one of these presentations so I'm not sure exactly what the highlight. All right Lynn, I'm on it. This is teamwork. Thank you. All right, so you have seen the budget, and we can go through that, but I was really excited as I was asking the team to update this presentation, looking at the changes. The FY. From two years ago, because we had so many vacant positions, and that had really impacted the team. And as you can see here, we are pleased director derpy will start May 24. And we still have one vacant position the administrative coordinator but you have approved that and we are actively recruiting. And as you know from the memo, we have also included in our ask this year, another HR manager, we have three of them for the entire city, including BED. And we do expect this to be a very busy year for HR you'll see the initiatives, they come at the end of this PowerPoint, but, you know, speaking frankly, as people return to the workplace from COVID we expect that to stir things up in both the people who are coming and the people who have been at work, and for there to be team issues. We are really excited to support the anti racism training from REIB, but we know that will also require HR support as that affects people individually and also as a team. And wanting to be ahead of that. I see that we don't have enough resources and so that's really where that that ass comes from. Next slide. So, here is the budget I think there's more if you want to click through Jordan. Oh, no, okay. Well, I'm confused about why there isn't showing up the what that stands for. And I think there's a PowerPoint issue so yes let's move on. I thought that slide pulled up pulled up if you want me to touch on that pie chart. Yes, let's go we'll go back to that in a minute. So, let's talk about the services provided by HR. You can see them here. They are really comprehensive from comp and benefits. As you know there are a lot of operations and just day to day compliance issues. There are special labor relations issues related to unions, and then just regular employee issues. Talent management recruitment and then this team has been a special partner with REIB on equity inclusion and belonging. And then the next two slides are really where we see our focus for the next two years. Obviously it's a bit awkward to do this with Karen starting so soon. So, you know, these may be tweaked slightly but these are things that as I've been working with the team. And this is a really strong team. It's pretty clear where some of the basics we want to focus on. And some of that is internally ensuring that we have HR records digitally. Again, like we spoke about with the clerk treasures office and making sure that we have invoices electronically this is a similar issue. Implementing the HR information system. This comes in many different modules and will help us to do several different things online. One of them is online training. We'll talk more about that in a minute. One of them is called perform and that would allow us to implement a citywide performance management system, which we've never had, which is very exciting. We are also looking to enhance our process documentation. I know everyone's looking forward to union negotiations that will take up a lot of time from HR over this next year. And then the next slide. One of the areas that has been really important, I would say over the past 18 months, two years is since we've hired Vanessa, she has really spearheaded this training program. And so we are just about to roll out a new online learning platform that will allow employees to access a variety of trainings online on their own time. We are working on supervisor manager training. As I mentioned, we're supporting our AI be and then we've got some ideas around mentorship exit interviews how we better deal with that data succession planning. I talked about pandemic reentry support. One of the nerdy but necessary and time consuming tasks we've been working on is going through line by line, the entire HR department and the city attorney's office with Justin and Eileen, going through the personnel and policy manual. We haven't done that in a long time and there's a lot of areas that need sharpening. All of that will need to be reviewed by the HR committee and the unions, but that's a mammoth task we've been working on. And then lastly, working on this new work from home policy that the mayor spoke about. So now we can go back to that other slide. Oh, here we go. Thank you. So, as you can see, not dissimilarly to CT, a lot of the budget is salary and benefits. You will notice. There is a new cost for the accessibility committee. I'm not sure HR is the exact right place to put that but I did not want to lose that cost. Vanessa is the head of that committee. So they asked for, I believe $15,000 so that's there. There is $50,000 in total for travel and training education. That is not entirely for the HR department. I can't imagine that they could spend that on so few employees. So that is to ensure that as we are getting that training program off the ground that the HR department has resources at their disposal to be able to bring in trainers from the outside or to be able to provide departments money if they have run out and their employees have training needs. And then lastly, you will notice there is more in recruiting. Well, we okay we call it legal notice and advertising. But what it is is for inclusive recruiting. And as we spoke about a week or two ago, we do want to make sure that departments are able to advertise jobs to reach the broadest array of candidates the most diverse array of candidates we can. We have learned that cost money. Some departments included a little money for that not everyone did. So we feel it's important to have a central pot of money there. Lynn, what did I miss anything to add before we open it up for questions. No, I don't think so just want to emphasize I think the importance of, of adding to our team with that additional HR manager and would greatly appreciate the consideration to, to help our department become less reactive and more proactive for the city and I think that that piece adding to the team will help us do that. And I'll just lastly say, you know, this is an amazing team. This is a team who for the past year hasn't had a director at times, I've been super involved and I love them. And at times like now, I have completely abandoned them because I am in the budget, and they are able to get things done and manage themselves and they are amazing. I just publicly want to say thank you to Lynn and the entire team. You guys are really an unrecognized resource in the city and we couldn't do it without you. Thank you so much. Open to questions. This is just really common. I just want to say as the chair of the HR committee who, to be honest, hasn't done much in the last year. I mentioned to Karen that soon after she gets on board maybe into June, but I want to have an HR committee meeting to educate me about all the department and get into the nitty gritty and I'm saying this publicly because it might be something that other counselors would like to go to. Where we can have just a more detailed discussion about more of the nuance on how the HR department works. It's a good idea. It could be like we never did an HR kind of orientation. So that's fantastic. Councillor Carpenter. Thank you. I have a quick question, Mr Mayor. Okay, go ahead, Councillor Jay. Thank you, Vanessa. Thank you, Catherine, for the presentation. Yeah, I don't know if Vanessa has the staff is here. No, but I'm sorry. We are happy to try and answer questions or bring them back to her. The presentation, the one thing that I was expecting and could not find is about data collection. You know, there has been so many staff turnaround and, you know, I think we tasked the racial equity inclusion belonging we tasked some data collection from HR. And I was just wondering if that's a scope of work you're looking into and. Yeah, but can you shed light on that? Why it's missing on your projection? Yeah, I can start with that. That's I think an excellent question. And I think we we touched on it slightly by indicating that we wanted to bring in some systems that we definitely will benefit from to try to be able to collect that data going forward. And capture better pictures of our are really encompass what the city looks like when we're hiring and then the separation and through that. And Catherine touched on the HRIS system, and certainly modules that we're going to be incorporating through the Neogov system are going to be the tools that we need to be able to produce that data. Wonderful. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you, Lynn. And let me, I want to echo amplify Catherine's comments that the HR department has really held the city together through a challenging period here on last year's really been something else from an HR perspective. There's so many emergency policies and initiatives that needed to be run and to have done all this most of it without any kind of director has been exceptional. Thank you Catherine for essentially taking on an additional senior leadership role in your first year with this department. And you're all excited for Karen's arrival shortly. Yeah, I'll just echo that mayor if you don't mind I just want to thank Catherine and give a thank you also to Justin St. James who played a key part in assisting our department. But we have met with Karen a couple times and I can speak for the whole team that we are excited for her to join. We're counting down the days and you can see from this presentation we've got a list of things to get her up to speed on very quickly and I think she's got the talent and leadership to do that. We're excited. Excellent. Thank you for sharing that Lynn. We'll keep us moving. We, I think we're, we're about halfway through. And we are now going to hear from Brian low and innovation technology. Hey thanks very much mayor. Thanks for having us tonight. So this is the innovation technology department, everybody's favorite department. And you might go to the next slide here. It's a relatively small and straightforward budget. It is an outstanding team. I'm really, really grateful to this team that has done a lot during a pandemic year as well and really stepped up in a variety ways we weren't expecting as a team. One theme of the presentation that I want to make explicit at the outset is that the IT department, in addition to kind of information technology infrastructure. It's also something of an incubator space and so the, the structure of the department does evolve over time and that's something that's definitely going to be happening in FY 22 and you can see here a list of some of the different initiatives and concepts that have been incubated in a pre pandemic era. So you've got your innovation technology department and then two wings really the IT wing represented there in the on the left side, and the innovation wing on the right side, with a couple currently open positions. Next slide please. So, this, this slide talks a little bit about what the department did during the during the coven 19 response and I do think it's worth detailing some of this work in the sense of, it really is a department that took on a number of roles that wouldn't traditionally fall to IT, like an accordion expanding and now it's time I think to begin to contract that accordion so you see at the top there in the red circle. The IT team really restructured how the city works. We had about half the city workforce, leave the network leave their workstations and the city has in some ways, you know, a very advanced IT network and in other ways, a much more advanced IT network and so the shift to remote work happened quickly, it was something that we were able to prepare for and something that we were thinking about, not in a pandemic sense but in the sense of wanting to get people more ability to be mobile with their work over time. And so the team did really an excellent job and many a brand new information management system for the city on short notice which is our 0365 system, giving us access to programs like teams like Airpoint OneDrive, ways to save and share information, ways to work collaboratively on documents at the same time which is something the city had not been able to do previously. The second circle there, the orange circle, if you go clockwise, talks about how the innovation and technology team helped build an analytic team which is really similar to a fusion cell used in different operating environments where you have to make a series of high inputs and the quality of information that you get is really vital to the outcome of the decisions that you make. And so this this analytic team, you may have spoken about it publicly a number of times just it pooled together all the different positions in the city that have analytic capability associated with that position so folks from the library, REIB, CEDO, police department at the beginning of the pandemic to really focus on identifying best practices for us as a city, learning what we could from other cities as they were hit by the initial waves of the pandemic, what worked, what didn't, and trying to begin to aggregate data in a way that would inform decisions we could make as a community, inform decisions that the mayor would need to make. The purple circle right below, often the outgrowth of this research and analysis would be a new initiative, and there's been many of them over the past year, whether it's community masking, planning for the people, kind of gleaning people's backyard gardens, dealing with kind of food security and mental health issues, BIPOC vaccination sites that the mayor spoke about on that briefing today, coordinated with UVM and Champlain for student return, figuring out ways to support people in quarantine, etc, etc. The team here really helped with a number of other departments pursue initiatives that made sense there. And then speeding through some of the rest of these circles, INC was well placed to leverage local data, we started a wastewater monitoring program so we could move testing resources and vaccination resources ultimately around the city to where they're most needed. And the collaboration with the state throughout the pandemic, focusing on setting up vaccination sites, testing sites, and leverage 14 different city employees with the help of really the library and the planning department to support the state with contact tracing during some of the worst days of the pandemic, and a variety of other different initiatives in collaboration with the state. We also took some responsibility for supporting HR and the really outstanding safety manager for the general fund, Nicole Blow, helping support employee health as people became ill, figuring out who needed to quarantine very quickly, working with VDH and their contact tracers and stepping in when those contact tracers were overwhelmed. And then finally on communications, we helped design new communication protocols for the city. During the pandemic, everything from leveraging how we use North Avenue news differently based on feedback from our senior providers in the community to new protocols for how we share information to BIPOC residents. So a lot of different changes. Next slide please. And as the pandemic begins to, you know, hopefully wind down. I think it's time to really take stock and think about where and how this department should begin to shrink and so I've listed a couple of these changes here. The early learning initiative which I'm happy to talk about more but in the interest of time I'm going to try and limit some of the discussion, unless counselors have questions, is going to shift to support the economic recovery and that's something that will come to the for the Board of Finance and Counselor view on the 24th of May, creating a new position supporting economic recovery there. Analyst positions in the city, IT department which are highlighted in blue on the visual here would be shifting to the planning department as part of the budget resolution that will come before you in June. The positions in yellow, which are the health equity positions would shift to REIB. And then a new tech support specialist we're hoping will join the IT department and that in some ways is a really critical position. I'm really grateful to Catherine the mayor for supporting us in a temporary sense thus far and hope that the council will consider this. I think the statistic that puts this in sharpest relief is right now we have one help desk person one IT tech support person for about 450 city employees. And what that means is that in the best of times it's a very challenging job when you have many people remote with laptops that break more frequently with kind of more tenuous connections to our network. It's not something that we want to continue. And I think having a testing it out with a temporary position currently has really shown this is going to save a lot of time and money for the city over time. Next slide please. You know, briefly, what is the IT department about it's about continuous improvement and I think there's really some opportunity looking out to FY 22 for the kind of nexus of IT and continuous improvement. We have new platforms in place I'll speak briefly to some of the IT upgrades that have been made. But those platforms can be leveraged in different ways that should be able to save the city money I think we've really helped the team really has helped bring a couple of programs forward both Microsoft office program I spoke about but also our permitting system and things that we can do differently with that system now that it's in place. It's an incubation space for new initiatives as discussed earlier. It does in some ways and sometimes support tech related innovation in our community, and it has a data driven role. Next slide please. Not looking at COVID for a second but looking at the more kind of core IT functions from the department. It's been a really productive year. And I think the team's done a great job of overcoming some of the challenges of working in a very decentralized way. And we talked about Microsoft 365. There's a new permitting system in place. That's also going to be much more public facing. It's hard to imagine honestly but until about January 2020, when the renovations at the pine street building were done and all three of the different departments that have a piece of the permitting puzzle. We're sitting together. You would have had to as a homeowner or a resident go to multiple locations to secure permits now you can go to one location, or now you can do it online. So I think these are these are important steps that should make it easier for people to get permits to invest in their homes, and to follow the rules in the city. Another thing I'd want to flag here is that, you know, I think it's something I should say in every presentation just, you know, the team continue to improve IT security in multiple ways that continues to be a kind of major concern and focus for the team. There are a lot of risks out there and as a city team I think we have to continue to focus on that as a primary goal. Next slide please Jordan. So where we headed. I thought I spoke briefly about the kind of nexus of information technology and continuous improvement. I think it's really a core nexus of what, what the next couple years are going to bring. We know that remote work can function well in a city environment. We have new platforms in place, and it's time to really take stock and capitalize on some of those new capabilities and capacities that we have in place fear what else we need to put in place, but expand on those existing programs I think this is really going to have to be a core, a core function for the department in FY 22. We are also looking at how we can support DPW's asset management program I mean I think that is another kind of crucial program for the city. I'm grateful to to Chapin, Catherine, Martha Keenan and many others who've really led that effort. I think it is going to play a crucial supporting role in that effort. Next slide please. This is a budget. I mean it, it is a relatively small budget. It's about a little less than half operating costs that operating costs for FY 22 represents a about a 15% reduction over the operating costs in FY 20 which I think is the right comparison it's budget. And I think that's a good thing I think that's the result of a number of one time costs incurred in FY 20 that have since been eliminated. And I think it's a right size budget for the department. Next slide gets into a little bit more detail. You know, there's really two budget lines where most of this money is concentrated and I thought from a council perspective I wanted to make sure to call those out one is the professional services line. This is support for the department when it comes to security services or some some additional vendor support at times there are very specialized problems that we encounter and we do need some additional outside assistance at times. And then there's the building services cameras door access that are in that line. The computer licensing line is by far the biggest line in the department budget. It's about 581,000 of the 70744,000 operating costs. The reason that line is really large is that that is really the licensing and software support costs for for the entire city groups into one line. And there are some additional network infrastructure support services included in that line as well. Next slide please. So our last slide just wanted to make sure to call out that we are looking to get that second it position made into a permanent position for the reason stated earlier. So I think the last slide is just a thank you. And happy to take questions. Great. Thank you, Brian. The floor is open for questions. Councilor Jane, go ahead. I would not just hear Brian and not ask question or comment. And I think Brian, you know, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart for all you have done for the city of Burlington, you know, I think this department has you brought so many so much leadership and innovation into it. We have seen it evolve. And we have also seen or witness your hard work during COVID-19. And it's this unfortunate that you are leaving the city. I don't know, or you are leaving this position but at least I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you. But wanted to circle back also around the language access plan, knowing that it was approved by the city council. And I think it has to still be completed. I was wondering if you can send some light around, you know, where we are at and when can we expect, you know, new information and just getting it done and move forward. I think this is the time where it's going to be. And the great question. So it is very much in my mind because I'm transitioning and so I'm grateful to pet keomani van in CEDO who's taking kind of the main leadership role. And so, so here's where we are and here's where we're hoping to go. And I want to acknowledge as well that it hasn't moved as quickly as we had hoped and I know you have requested so the policy was approved by the council in November of 2020. The next step is a needs assessment that is almost complete and is about to be underway. It may actually already be underway I just know that there's another set of emails that have to go out to begin formally the needs assessment. Actually, no, I can say it is actually formally underway it has begun the listening sessions and there will be additional surveys that go out. When the needs assessment is done, there needs to be an implementation plan, what did we find, what did we learn, and what are the next steps to change how the city works as an entity. So, I'm grateful to pit and that she is stepping forward to take over the kind of primary responsibility for that work with my departure, and to mariel Matthews, who is currently in innovation and technology department but would move pending the kind of budget resolution decisions by the council to the racial equity inclusion and belonging department who has done a great deal of work to help us with that initial needs assessment. Thank you. And for this specific budget of fi 2022 there has not been any demand or ask for the language access plan. There is, and may I should defer to you you may know more. Oh, Catherine yes. Yes, Councillor Jang. We have put that in the CEDAW budget. Director Lowe had asked for $40,000. And then you might remember the details of this mayor but there wasn't an additional $50,000 ask for bringing a set of core city documents, all into it. Right Brian sounds like he knows what this is $50,000 to bring a set of essential city documents into all the languages so that $90,000 now is in CEDAW's budget so you will see it during director can assistant director can sense presentation. And I think Brian might have more to add. Oh, thank you. And Councillor Jang I think the we know that we need to do a number of translations before the needs assessment is done we don't need to wait for the needs assessment to know that our core city documents have to be translated into more languages and so that's what that additional $50,000 in the mayor. And we'll go to support over and above the $40,000 I initially asked for. Thank you. Thank you. Let me just leave it to that. But thank you. Thank you for all you have done with the city again. Thank you. Thank you for saying that Councillor Jang. Brian certainly has had free distinguished service with with the city throughout his this time with us and we're going to miss him a lot. Is there any. Any, any further questions for Brian at this at this time. Okay, seeing none. I am going to move next. Thank you. Thank you, Brian. Well done. Good. There's a lot in that and appreciate you addressing the structural issues that will be, you know, they're definitely part of the discussion and certainly welcome any councilor feedback, you know, not just on the numbers but the kind of structural changes that are being laid out there. I hope by you know counselors will reach out if they have questions or thoughts about that as well. So with that, we will go next to Jean Richards and the airport and welcome Jean welcome Marie. Good evening. Like everywhere it's been a really challenging year at the airport and I am like many other department heads are very thankful for our team and all the efforts. I'm going to have Marie Friedman just give a quick overview of the numbers and then I'd like to open it up questions and from folks. So Marie, why don't you start off and we'll help out where needed. Thank you, Jean. I just, I want to start off by saying I appreciate the opportunity to present this airport budget. It's been what a year it's been. We've had a lot of challenges, and we've had to do a lot of thinking and figuring out how to manage our budget and our revenues and the changes. This light is going to wanted to express and our team wanted to express sort of some of the challenges and things as we look forward into our upcoming back budget. Our fiscal year 2022 budget, it really reflects the current state of the travel industry we the travel industry was, as other industries was very much affected. We do appreciate the vaccine that has been been rolling out and of course the leadership of the city and the leadership of the state of Vermont and trying to keep Vermont or safe. And the numbers that we had this year reflect the lack of implements that we've had however going forward. And that's what this budget is looking at. We're assuming some moderate recovery, we are seeing that happen now we're seeing increases in the number of people that are choosing to fly which is, which I think a lot of folks that I know are flying because they've gotten vaccinated. We're seeing a return to that we do think it will take some time it will take multiple years hardest to project I don't have a magic ball to predict how quickly our implements will get back to what we were seeing two years ago. The FAA and the federal government was very their stimulus grant money has been absolutely a lifeline for the airport and we are very appreciative. Had it not been for that this year would not have gone the way that it did. So in May 2020 of last year we did receive $8.7 million under the cares act. In April of 2021 we received another $4 million grant allotment and we are expecting and have been appropriated to receive approximately $7.6 million. So that'll be forthcoming we expect in the next few months under the American Rescue Grant Act. The implements and I thought you would all be very interested to see what actually happened at the airport. So looking back a little bit to give you an idea of the the impact that we had from COVID-19. So this chart says it all the blue is what we saw the previous year so right before COVID from April of 2019 to March of 2020 so as things were shifting and transitioning and I'm giving you the exact same time period and the orange. So it's pretty dramatic we had 83% less people flying which is not unexpected given what happened this year and that was about 561,000 people. Our cash flow management important aspects that we did in addition we didn't know there was no guarantee on what federal grants we might receive. So we were proactive in getting a revenue anticipation note for $11 million. We intend to renew that and just make sure that we have a healthy backup plan, because nobody really knows for certain how this will play out. Next slide please. So the revenues I wanted to talk a little bit about the overall revenues. We have a lot of revenues that are driven by the number of passengers so we call this sort of our variable revenues. Then we have some revenues that are more fixed. So some of the the revenues that are airlines actually pay us are fixed they do not fluctuate. They do not fluctuate for what they pay for the terminal and for their access to the airport that is going to be the same whether they have fewer people flying or not but many of our other revenues that highly support the airport. They are incredibly affected. So I, whoops, I went back three years or two, you know went back to 2020 2021 and 2022, because it's really, it's really interesting as we look at 22 and what we're looking ahead. We think that recovery is going to be so our parking garage revenues. You know you can see where we were above $6 million and we're sort of looking like we're going to be about three and a half million dollars so to give you some idea on those very revenue variable revenues. We are conservative in our approach and we're hopeful. We're seeing good growth right now, but we're hopeful that our passengers will return to at least rebound at least 55% of what we had pre COVID where we're you know we just we have to be optimistic but we also have to be reasonable in our approach. So the airport is also planning to use a bunch of that stimulus money next year that is how we're balancing our budget as our revenues come back and rebound. And you know I've just showed you some of the highlights and the individual sort of our biggest revenues, just the differences that we have. Next slide please. Oh, the one with green. Yeah. Yes, thank you. So this. I know that there is an attachment in our presentation also that you can look at all the individual lines that the airport has we have multiple cost centers if you are looking through that. And you're going to see it go down through the administrative cost center we have a terminal cost and we have airfield, but what I've done here, because it's kind of on a wieldy look at that. But you're certainly welcome to and I encourage that. This is just a high level, giving you a breakdown of our mate, all of our revenues are just consolidated and grouped together. So our total operating revenues for 22 fiscal year 22 about 16 or 13.6 million dollars. We have some non operating revenues about $2 million is our PFC and some reserves that we have in there, and then you can see how much we have coming in our fiscal year. So cares act in American rescue and our Chris I grant. So overall, our budget for all of our revenues for the airport are 21.6 million dollars for the upcoming year. Next slide. And in our expenses, we're, we're keeping our positions level funded. We do not need to reduce any positions in fiscal year 20 the current year that we're in. We did have some that maybe we didn't fill as quickly, but anything that safety related. Those were too important, and we're not able to to to leave those open. But we would hold off if something was more administrative and we were able to hold off on a few hireings for a while. The highlights, I wanted to tell explain we do have an increase in our operating budget for this upcoming year. And I wanted to give some texture to why we have that the largest area of increases as our repair and maintenance budgets. So what we did for this year, we had to slash the budget, we looked at everything that we could go without. And we cut way back. And so this year when you look at 21 and you're comparing that to 22. That growth is really because we did a lot of slashing. And that's fine for one year but you, you, you can't ignore preventative maintenance. And we also have and wanted to give you an idea of some of the things that we are doing and why you're seeing such a big increase in the repair maintenance budget. We're doing a lot of safety repaired on the runway we're doing. We have some asphalt things that we need to, to go ahead and target and do some some major repairing on. We're doing spending some of that money on painting and markings. We're doing preventative maintenance in the garage. We're placing two roofs on two of our buildings. And we're also we're doing some repairs and some other properties we have. And another thing that we feel is an important initiative is the, we did, we have spent money this year on energy efficiency. We have been buying some things like electric mowers and electric blowers and we've been going ahead we just replaced 200 light fixtures in the airport terminal that are much more energy efficient. So where we've been able to go ahead and do some of that work we've started that this year, but we recognize how important it is to get toward you know net, net neutral and with our energy usage we want to be part of the solution. So we, we have budgeted we, it was difficult, you know, Jean would have liked to have more money in this budget for energy efficiencies. But we felt it was really important to take a stand and start to budget more proactively for energy improvements and Jean is planning to put together a committee and we're going to be looking at, you know, what sources are there for grants for this what sources are and what rebates for this. How do we smartly and wisely move in that direction as the rest of the city is so so wonderfully doing. We did have some increases in our professional consultant budget and against some of that is because we slashed it for this year. So you're seeing some of that increase. There are typical unavoidable expenditures, utilities and insurances and de icing things like that's no removal costs. And, you know, an important part that the airport does use police. We use the Burlington police services, we are required under TSA to provide services and security checkpoints and things like that we have to have these things on site. So there's a very specific time response and onsite that we have to do when we do contract with the Burlington police department to provide those services and appreciate the good job that they do. In addition, we did have a win this year with our budget, our debt service we were able to significantly reduce that due to our refunding. We did have to budget some for like some interest that is getting paid on on the existing bonds but that money is all sitting down and it will not affect our cash flow so that was that was helpful. Next slide please. Yes, thank you. So this is just taking all of the detail for all of our cost centers and rolling into the categories that makes sense. So I wanted to just provide something easy so that if something jumped out at you you had questions that it's really easy for you to ask me, and I did want to point out that the the addition of the energy efficiency line item that we budgeted in here. Next slide please. And I, I thought you would be very interested in seeing a little bit more about our in playments, since, you know, when people think of the airport with there's a lot of things we do. And there's, but the main part of the airport and the main purpose is we have people that are utilizing the airport coming in and going out. So this really shows and highlights what it looked like pre COVID. You can see those numbers, and what it looked like as we were going into 2020 those numbers were great, and then you can see exactly what happened in March. The percentage change is from fiscal year 19 the fiscal year 20. And in 21 I have through March here because our employment numbers that get reported lag a little bit. So these are the latest that I have, but I'm just showing you we are starting to see that in the numbers we're seeing on a weekly basis. But we definitely see a lot more activity going on in the airport and we expect this to be reflective of this when we come back to you at some point and show you in plain. But I wanted to just really kind of show what happened and, and the effect that we had and at the bottom. I also wanted to give you an example of just highlight over the years what has happened. As far as our employment and show you over the overall the years so that you can take a look, you can see very quickly and very visibly what happened. And so quite a change that we've had. Next slide please. Looking forward, we're optimistic, you know, like I think the rest of the state we're very excited for what's happening. We're seeing at BTV, and we're hearing with our partners across the country at other airports that the flying public demand is increasing slowly and a lot of that is really parallel to what we're seeing in the vaccination rates that are happening. We do expect, you know, challenges in the upcoming fiscal year there is uncertainty that we're all going through and we're all experiencing and we're not quite sure how that's all going to play out month by month, and over the next 12 months are. I want to reiterate that our budget was balanced. We've been able to receive the stimulus money. And we're looking forward you know as the money every month gives us more information, and we are closely monitoring our expenses if things should change in this upcoming year. Absolutely. We're absolutely able to respond and react to that very proactively. So, and then Jean maybe you'd like to discuss we have a picture here and data because we have, like I said airport is more than just what's going on when you see at the terminal. Yeah, sure. The, why don't I see if there's any questions first for anybody I want to make sure we use you know the counselors time in the best possible way but some of the, you know, very happy with the progress like I said beta has been, you know, ongoing doing very well and many of you are aware of the successes we've had within where I've come out and toward and that continues to do well and we continue to build that relationship will be probably coming to you in the very near future with some good news. The mayor has been working with us to negotiate and talk, you know, just find out what's best for beta what's best for the city and we're, you know, working on that right now. There's a just to pretty dynamic plan and I'm excited over the next month, you know, to bring it to you and show you what's going on with beta, but there's still, you know, many other great things that are going on at the at the airport. You know, we have the sound mitigation program that's been one of, you know, our initiatives from day one and, and Nick Longo his bird working his tail off and, you know, went out and got a program that was suitable to our community to help mitigate the noise and not homes but insulating them, we're well on our way we've secured dollars and we feel very, you know, I feel so great about the entrepreneurial spirit of that program and how so many people that, you know, really need that insulation for sound and for insulation. And it'll be good modern upgrades and that will be able to participate to help build, you know, our community in a good way. And we're real excited about that. We also have news on monitoring that's coming in this year. And again, a grant for that Nick, do you want to talk a little bit about those things and I don't want to take your time. No, I think I think you hit the key points there Jean and I think the implementation of our entire noise compatibility program is ongoing as as we speak right now and the noise monitors are being installed and implemented and going online. This summer, as well as the pilot program for the 10 house pilot. We're working on the installation project that genius referencing as well as studying the next 50 houses. And I think one of the big things that we're working on right now is additional funding from the Department of Defense to move this project forward, even quicker. We're able to access that additional funding. So I think overall it we're on track with our noise compatibility program is not ahead of schedule to fully implement the noise projects. We're starting our teeth. It's called our tip terminal integration project will be later this summer, and that will again bring another efficiency to the airport in the stop a lot of confusion I think for the traveler. There'll be one entrance to TSA, and we expect you know that to be done in about 18 months. But again, these are all, you know, grants that we've gone out and we receive. A brand new security system for the airport that'll be done in about 10 weeks Nick, is that about right approximately and that's a big deal as well. And again another grant. So, as well as a new apron project that we've been working on around the beta. So, a lot of things are going we did not, you know, we were, I believe we're very active with COVID as well. We really tried to participate and help the city out in every way that we could the team was active and doing deliveries and making masks and all sorts of things. So, we did not sit idle during the time of COVID and, you know, we were created and I think worked really hard, you know, with the direction from the mayor to, you know, he kind of gave us free reign to help out in any way we could and it was a, you know, I guess that's what probably got us all through it. And I think that is whenever you have the opportunity to give back. It feels better, especially when there's so much uncertainty. And for me, I am a real people person and it gave me the ability to go out there and even though I got yelled at a little bit. You know, you know, as far as probably went out a little bit too much but I had an excuse that I was handing things out and giving things away. So that was a really good thing for me. And that's the, you know, we have a survey that you'll be getting the next couple weeks on the police and we look forward to coming and talking to you about that as well. Good news is that Boston route is already sold 500 tickets and, you know, again, that's new opportunity for people. And if you look from boutique today on how happy they were with sales, that will help us also down the road, you know, get a larger aircraft, you know, to service that market, which we believe, you know, there's great demand for. And then there will be a test market in July, going to Dallas that's our 16th biggest market. And I know that isn't sound right, but it is. And everybody says why Dallas, and I said, well, why not, because that's where the people are going. So there's a lot of people that go to Dallas and so that's why American picked Dallas. And so good things, you know, going we are recovering I'm very optimistic. Next week, we will come extremely close to 6000 as I tell Nick, I would have said 6000 in front of you but you know it is on TV that is being recorded. So I want to say it's 5700 but I'll call it 6000. So we're doing very, very well, and with our employments. So I'm very happy about that. We're growing the demands coming back and really excited that we're growing slowly too much would probably not a good thing. So that's my scoop. I do want to thank you, everybody for your support and hard work during this. I did feel the support from all of you. And it's, you know, for our team, you know, it's a big deal. Any questions on our presentation. Thanks, Jean, I think I counselor Paul had her hand up. No, I'm sorry, Miss, Miss for that. Are there any, are there any questions for team or the team. I thought I heard you say something about the police survey but in your budget there's like 1.2 million for security is that the police contract. It is the police contract. Yes. Okay. And TSA is all separate and different. It is. That's our pop. Thanks. Just a counselor carpenters aware the survey that I directed Richards referred to is the city council resolution, which we passed a couple of months ago about the survey of how other airports handle their TSA requirements. And I did, I did hear back from the airport team that they have done that work and are in the process of organizing the information so that it can come back to the council. And since I'm answering the question, I guess I could, I just have to say, like, it's no secret that I'm a huge fan of the airport and a huge fan of the airport team. So here are just four of the many people that make the airport run, and they do it with, they do it with hard work and dedication and professionalism and there's a reason why we have a great airport and that's because we have a great airport staff so thanks very much. Thank you. Thanks for all you do. Thank you. Yeah, I have a couple questions and I think the first one is about the debt service. It is estimated as a reduction of 2.5 million right now. And wanted to understand the debt service in general, or you were able to reduce the desk during COVID-19 by 2.5 million. We were able to refinance. That was part of our strategy this year. We came and got approval to take the debt service that we had coming up next, like the next two years. And we packaged that up and we went out to market and we're going to be paying that off in 2029 and 2030 so we're just pushing it out. And the reason we did that was because of such uncertainty, we wanted to make sure that that it wasn't unburnt you know this created quite a burden onto the airport to come up with that much more money. And so it just gave us a little bit more breathing room and protection, all the way around, not to have to run into issues or run into noncompliance with being able to pay that debt service. And that's what we've done. That's what you're seeing as part of this budget and you'll see it next year as well. And really what we did is because we really can't come to the city and ask the city for money that you know we're an enterprise zone we're out on our own. So we have to think a little differently. So what we did is we hedge. We will, you know, if we have, we do very well, we will put the money towards that debt. We have no, you know, the mayor was pretty strict about you know when we had the discussion on yes yes do it but. And so we will, we expect to do well. But I just don't know, and I would rather have the instrument in place. You know it's a good defense is the best offense. And that's really what this was. And that's the same thing with the line you know we had the line, and we didn't use it. But I'll tell you what when you need money, you do not. And that's what I when I came into the position, I couldn't get any bank to talk to me, which was terrible, you know for the in regards to the airport. So they said we'll give you money. That's really bad that they would give me money but not the airport. So we're never going to be in that position ever again. So we're in really good shape now and it was really, I didn't say it was easy because I didn't do the work rich good one and Marie, but you know we put a lot of effort into it and it puts us in a really good position to, you know, I would say, go through the next 18 to 24 months. Thank you. The other question is about the operation budget. But before, you know, let me tell you that you are not on your own, basically, and I think you have the most complex system of governance, you know, compared to all the city departments because you are in a different city, let's say municipality, you are also governed by all the surrounding municipalities, but compared to all the enterprise fund for the city, I think you are unique, but you're not alone. Yeah, right. But now the other question that I have is specific to the operation budget, basically, I see that in 2021. It shrank a little bit and we all understand why, but I also have seen a huge gain. It went up in 2022, as per your request, and was just wondering what COVID had taught you and yes, what has it, what COVID has taught you and why basically all the good work that you have done to minimize expenses. And that's what we see now operation budget going up in 2022. That's a great book. That's a great question. And I, I did my best though it's hard and such a quick presentation to explain this well. We, we did learn a lot from COVID. We did cut back where we could knowing full well that it wasn't long term to keep cut back and have such a strict budget each and every year is not in the best interest of the airport. And the reason is your buildings need. We were in a good place coming into our budget last year because every single year, we had been pecking away at deferred maintenance and pecking away at roofs and HVACs and other things. So we were in a good place as we came in the fiscal year 21, just to literally just stop spending unless something was an emergency on those kinds of things. And in fiscal year 22, you're seeing a return to a return and then adding some to where we were in the prior year where we were spending a lot more on repairs and maintenance. That's the biggest chance that you're seeing and a lot of that has to do with the needs of the airport and keeping the runway safe and keeping the building safe like we know we have roofs coming up that need to be replaced. Thank you for a second. I just want to finish that. What it's taught me and excuse me is to be lean and continue the practices that we started in this administration was to come in and use good business practices, and we have just used more of those. And that's the bottom line is we were extra diligent. We dug deeper worked harder and cut corners wherever we could. But as you know, as you know, we have to be very careful with safety. So, you know, we that's what we did more of but I get the bottom line. What I learned from this is I just learned to appreciate every second, you know that I love my job. I love my community, and I appreciate it that much more now. You know, sometimes we go so fast in our day, we forget, you know, what we're here for and what we're doing. I really am just a much more appreciative of everything and everybody. So that's the bottom line for me. That's what I learned. Thank you. And now I think you know, in terms of innovation, we have better technology at the airport. There is, you know, some talk about the new hotel, possibly soon. And what is next, what is what is the big thing that we, you guys are contemplating. And I just love what you do to tell you the truth. So our big thing is, and again, this is the direction from the mayor is that we need to work harder at our carbon footprint. We have to be extra diligent and we have to go outside of ourselves. You know, I've been challenged, you know, to do that, and to look outside and don't look at other airports, look at other methods. We're doing that. We're putting together a committee. And I hope to come to you with things that other people aren't doing, things that other people are doing, but that will help us achieve that goal. You know, we are, you know, our footprint is huge. And we have to work hard. And I think one of the initiatives that we're doing is, you know, the whole beta technology thing. It's a huge contribution that is bigger than the airport that we will be contributing and being part of. But there will be a lot of internal things that we'll be changing to participate in that activity to make it powerful input at the airport. I would say that's my biggest goal. The business comes to me somewhat easy. You know, the day to day operations and stuff I think about all night long. I enjoy it. It's the things that I don't know that this is this the carbon footprint I want. I know how important it is, and I'm going to work really, really hard to make that change. Thank you guys. Thank you, Gene. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Jang. I think in the interest of time, we will close it here for the airport. And but thank you for such thorough presentation as usual. Great to see the whole team team here and we'll talk to you. We'll see you again soon. Thank you. The next up is the mayor's office budget and Jordan is here to help with that help with this budget together this year. That was a short PowerPoint. This will pull up. What's that? I was going to say it's a very short PowerPoint. Shorter than these other departments, which is a function of the simplicity of the mayor's office budgets, of course. The basic is it is for staffers. And some, you know, the expenses, the customer expenses for a four person office. We are basically restoring the budget lines, you know, the modern modest non personal budget lines to where they were prior to to the pandemic one. The most notable change you'll notice we have increased the travel and training budget. And that I'd like to be able to support the team team members and continuing to pursue some professional development and get some additional management training in particular Jordan who's now been with the city for how many years now Jordan. I think six years six years. I would like to be able to support her getting some additional management skills and continue to grow. If she, she is sticking with her commitment to to the city. So, beyond that, you'll see in the budget, there's very, very little change. I'm happy to take any questions are about the mayor's budget. Happy not to as well. So, and I know there are the other two there might be more discussion and interested in it is getting late so let's go to the city council budget. Which, who is Catherine is Catherine and I together could just briefly present the city council budget, which is the salaries for all city counselors, as well as the $50,000 city council initiative fund. I think the main change here is that we reach on programs was traditionally under the city council budget and we have removed that to be its own category within the budget. I'm not sure. Councillor Paul is paying sufficient attention. But this is the process. Sorry, Councilor Paul. But this is your at your request, but it was a very reasonable request last year, which was to separate city council from regional programs because they were two totally different things. And that is what we've done this year and I would just add that at the top are the salaries, and it can be confusing because the salaries are the same as then the expense accounts, which are then listed below. $5,000 for salary, and then $5,000 for the operating expenses and then line 26 is the councilor initiative fund. And that is items that come before. It's the entire councilor just board of finance, but that have to be voted on. They cannot, you know, it's not just up to each individual counselor. And as we know, there are strict rules around the councilor initiative fund. They are used only to help counselors to do their jobs, whereas the councilor initiative funds are for things. And the dumpster mine is one counselor Jen got the dumpster for neighborhood that needed it. And the board voted on that, and I believe it was maybe like $1,000 or maybe even less. Great. Any, any questions on that. Okay, then good I'll bring us to the last. Last budget of the night, which is the which is the regional programs budget and maybe if there's a way to, yeah, increase the size of it so here. Again, the major part of the budget was cut substantially last year in the pandemic. And basically we have most of what's happening here is the restorations that pre pan pandemic levels. Go ahead. The two highlights for this budget are first that all of the program funding has been restored to FY 20 levels after some reductions in the FY 20 budget or FY 21 budget. And then we've also added funding for two additional programs, Vermont city marathon and jump. Great. If there's no. Go ahead, Councillor carpenter. For my own curiosity, how does CCRP assess towns when they're fabulous I just curious how the assessments work. Yeah, that's a great question. Councillor carpenter. I believe it's done on a population basis and I'm not 100% sure that Catherine I don't know if you can speak that understandable if you can. I don't know if anyone else is still with us that can we can come back with an answer to that it is they, and I felt I feel like they've been fair to us and trying to keep the increases quite modest over the years. I'm sorry my dog was totally melting down. What is the question. Yeah, I'm just curious to know how the CCRPC assess actually I'm also interested in DCLT just again I'm a strong supporter I'm just curious. Yeah, yeah, there I know more definitively as the chair of the board with the LCT that is strictly on a per person basis and it's not accepted by the board and assess the towns and pretty remarkably every every town in the in the state voluntarily is a member at this point I'm pretty sure you pay additional costs that so that's just for VLCT membership. And I think that is that, if you want to be one of the VLCT insurance funds, those are, you know, that's a separate service and a separate cost for that. Did I assume the CCRPC is also on a per capita basis of some sort. And, but I'm not as conversion in that. I believe that's true but I will get back to your counselor. I mean, how similar the cost were to this. Maybe they're using the exact same per capita formula or pretty close to it. Council Paul did you have anything out there. No, sorry. No, thanks. Sorry. I don't know why I keep jumping the gun in there. Are there any further questions. Seeing none. I think we will call it a night for this first of four nights together right I think we got. I'm not forgetting something am I Catherine. And Council, Council Paul go ahead. Thanks. Could I just simply ask. So, for next week. We have. The first one is on Monday, the 17th, and I'm just trying to. I think the, the information for that one hasn't been posted yet. So I'm just wondering if you have a, you know, what your plan is as far as how, how you're going to be posting that information. Especially given the fact that we have one on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. That's a lot of reading in a very short period of time and today is. What is it today is Wednesday. So on, you know, what your plan is just so that we, is it possible that we're going to have the weekend for some of the other information, not the, not the Monday, but perhaps for Wednesday and Thursday. Yes, that is entirely possible. And that is my first priority for tomorrow is, you know, as you have seen, there are some maybe budgets, shall we say, like police and REIB for Wednesday, but there are also some like planning and for Thursday, I know BED is in great shape, permitting inspections, the library. So some of those certainly can be posted ahead of time. So I would suggest that I send an email with a schedule, probably midday tomorrow, if that's okay. Okay. All right. The, it's just that it's, you know, it's, it's hard to, I think it's going to be hard for all of us to balance reading all of this information. I just, I think Catherine's saying we will get as much as we can up on Friday and I think it will be significant, significant budgets there are definitely some that a couple that is going to probably take some work into into next week to completely finalize but we'll try to minimize, minimize the latter we'll get as many up and to you by Friday as possible, and, and, you know, certainly understand your interest and want to accommodate it as best we can to get it by the week. I'm sure other I'm sure there's others that feel the feel the same. Thank you. Okay. Yeah. I've got a, I've got a lot we're getting done now I've got an MP a meeting to go to still tonight so we will adjourn here at 716pm and I will just share with my colleagues here that next Thursday is is my wedding anniversary and and I am going to miss that one that one night is the plan and Catherine I have coordinated ahead of time. So, just so that's not surprising when I'll share that with you now. And, but otherwise I will see everyone back again on Monday and Wednesday. Have a good night everyone. And if we don't talk, have a good weekend. Take care.