 Can you hear me? I can't hear you. It looks like I can hear you. Can you hear me now? Yes, now I can. Yeah, okay. We were talking about see my beta shirt. I mean employees had them on. So I said to Kyle is this or one of the employees do you guys like wear these all the time or is it just for this and they said no some of us do because their flame retardant but we got them we all got them for this event and they all had them on pretty much. It was really cool. And I probably have I don't know what that is. That must be for you. Kyle was very good. He's an excellent speaker. Yeah, he really is. And he had, you know, great little starting things, you know, as he introduced things. Oh, here it is. Steve, I can hear you but I can't see you. You know, you have to. So you want me to? Well, when I got when I got to the hangar this morning, or not the hanger, but the production place, there was nobody else besides beta people there. I was early, but they made it a big deal not to be late. So anyway, but the governor was late and lay he wasn't I think Welch was a little bit or maybe Bernie or something. But it was fun to see all my little old friends again. You had mail. I gave a little plug to Brian two days every the three the three weeks before Thanksgiving. Like it was a Tuesday and a Wednesday or a Wednesday and a Thursday. So we just have to get that scheduled. It was funny at the meeting this morning. I met this young girl and I said, Oh, so what's your job here? And she said, Hmm, and this other gal was saying, This will be interesting. And she said, Well, I just kind of hang out and do homework. And I said, Oh, you're one of the daughters. She was so cute, but she didn't look. I so great who went and she was in eighth grade. And I thought, No, Ruby is 10. That was her birthday. This was her older sister Charlotte. Oh, yeah. So it was just sort of funny. I thought she was an employee. And there's another older dog, right? Yes. Yeah. Well, so I met the oldest one in a small group of beta employees. I was talking because I knew one of the employees. And at the last minute, go, Well, this is cause. Yeah, exactly. That was so funny. Okay. It's the bewitching hour. So I would like to call to order the South Burlington City Council meeting of Monday, October 7th, second 2023. And our first item is to pledge to the flag and Tyler, if you want to pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. And to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Okay. The second item instructions on exiting the building, I think just use words are there's two exits in the rear of the building and then you can go right or left from there. And if we're not monitoring the chat, but if you will want to speak, we will turn the camera on. We'll acknowledge that. Okay. Agenda review. Item three. Are there any additions, deletions or changes in order of agenda items? Okay. Seeing none. Comments and questions from the public, not related to the agenda. Larry, are you here to make a comment? Or are you just here? Oh, okay. Chris, you are. Okay. Pardon me. Now a good time. Yes, it is. It is the time. Nailing timing here. So thank you, City Council. Chris Trombly, Chair of the Affordable Housing Committee. I'm here in my chair role today. I just wanted to give a heads up to the City Council that the Affordable Housing Committee met in our September meeting and an item that we discussed was exploring options to expand the scope of the Housing Trust Fund. So we establish a work group identifying funding who's been tasked with identifying funding strategies, pros and cons of each and presenting to the Affordable Housing Committee at the next meeting for possible action. So with budget season aware, we wanted to give a heads up to the City Council this evening and next steps is we've engaged Larry from the Housing Trust Fund to be a member of that work group so that is a collaborative effort when we make that recommendation at the October 18th meeting. I understand the Council may meet before on the 16th and so we may be back to provide an update at that time. Very good. Thank you so much. Thank you very much and thank you Larry for expanding your, you have an ever-expanding role in this city, don't you? That's great. Okay, are there any other comments from the public not related to the agenda? Please come up front, state your name and your topic and make sure that the conference will now be recorded. My name is Diane Sandy, 50 Bartlett Bay Road and we are here regarding the short-term rental issue that we've been talked about before and we've trust you received the letter that we sent with, we had about probably 30 signatures of residents and 15 properties in the Bartlett Bay also Stanhope Road and Austin Road and you know our concerns continue. We look ahead to May and we've already booked two graduations at least the property next to ours you know which is a 60 foot wide property on the lake so we are like right on top of each other and we're just wondering where the city council is at with looking at the new drafts for for the short-term rentals and we remain concerned and we wondered when we might get a look at the second draft which I understand was going to be forthcoming but we've not heard anything and wondered if there's anything we could do to as neighbors to help. So okay great Steve. I'll take that one so we are currently updating the draft ordinance after the last council meeting and plan to bring that back early November for council consideration based on some of the feedback that was provided to the counselors at the previous meeting. Is that the first meeting in November you think? I think it's the first meeting. Yes I'm getting a heads up yes it is. Okay great okay is it at all possible to see that draft before it comes to you or? It will be public like the Friday before the council meeting. Okay okay good to know. Thank you and we would welcome your comments or observations when we discuss it. Okay great thank you very much. Are there any other comments from the public? All right then we'll move on to counselors announcements and reports on committee assignments and then the city managers report. So who would like to begin? Tyler do you have anything to report? I don't have anything notable to report for this week's meeting. Okay thank you. Yeah just wanted to share some feedback that I hope you know we can address when we next talk about the charge that we gave the charter committee and how we might focus what they received as feedback into some kind of addendum to that charge and I think that they would appreciate something in return so I just wanted to share that. I also sat in on the affordable housing committee meeting and I can just confirm that that was a big a topic on the agenda that they didn't have a lot of time to talk about which was expanding the scope of the housing trust fund and they will be meeting I believe with counselors so I encourage everybody to talk with them. I think it's very interesting. I find that their approach is something that brings together a lot of our goals in the city and goals that we've discussed with other stakeholders. You know bringing workforce housing but for farm workers and how we can develop a goal that we had had articulated on the council which was to invest in some kind of you know program where we can have the Green Mountain habitat develop housing that then they would put on you know they would sell and that they could use those funds recuperate those funds and keep going right and so getting that into motion with regard to farm worker housing I find that to be a really exciting initiative that they would like us to address in this year's budget so I encourage you all to talk with them about it. Just wanted to thank everybody on the energy committee Lou Brezee, Alana Blanchard and all the speakers who presented at the energy festival I thought it was fabulous and there were also volunteers there and it was a beautiful day great attendance and as I was telling everybody I we have our new heat pump so we are moving into the direction that we all need to be moving in rather quickly and many of the presentations talked about the assistance that's available out there including CBOEO talked about assistance that is out there for homeowners who aren't necessarily of the means to to act quickly and so I really really hope that we can get that information out there and make it accessible to to homeowners this is really really critical for us to act quickly so great thank you. Jim? Just a couple things I attended the town fair last week in both morning sessions this is my first time going it wasn't too far away the double tree is actually just pretty close by not killington and it was fabulous I'd never been before and I really enjoyed my time there I met a lot of people I met people from the Montpelier City Hall Barry City Hall talked about their flooding problem I joined a roundtable discussion about short-term rentals and it was very hard to hear in there it was part of the feedback I gave to VLCT was that they shouldn't have the roundtables so close together in one ball room but but there was some good discussion that happened there unfortunately it was pretty short I also attended a session that was moderated by our ex-chief Trevor Whipple for the Police Department right and it was about mental health challenges and the police and they had three people on there on their panel discussion the I think it was the the commander from the Rutland police and an EMT person I didn't catch their name and I think they had about reach from Howard Center so it was very interesting to hear about problems that the first responders have in conjunction with you know the jails and intoxication versus addiction versus mental health challenges and and what the law says about how you deal with each of those and how sometimes services can't be you know put together at the same time until a person detoxes but you know so that was very you know eye-opening for me I didn't win any raffles I didn't gamble any at the gambling night that night and and the food was was great the double tree and I think the double tree for their hospitality was was really good and there were like hundreds of vendors there and unfortunately I walked up to the table to said beta I said oh beta is here as it wasn't beta it was the company that has you know sensors that that analyze your streets and then produces maps for you to tell you what quality your you know your streets are and whether which ones need paving and I went oh you're a different they didn't pass their name I told you exactly what was going on so I also attended the energy fair and gave champ a big hug unfortunately I also gave rally a big hug the next day at the UMass Lowell UVM women's soccer team don't tell anybody don't tell champ you know it's not serious with rally but it was just an afternoon fling and the so it was great the energy fair lots of great displays I brought my e-bike there were a lot of evs and so it was I was I really appraise the organization for that went into it right and the effort and all the volunteers and the energy committee and so I had a good time and it was and then on my way back I trimmed every tree on Dorset Street on that east side above my head so no more trees are hitting people you know walking or riding their bikes seriously trim them yeah I trimmed every single one of them right and Don Leibn can she can testify to that so and then today I was at the beta grand opening with Helen and that was that new facility of course it's spotless and shining and not complete yet but it's pretty close to complete and you can still see contractors up on the third floor running around on those scissor vehicles you know doing stuff but that's that's a heck of a workforce that's really tuned into their their mission what their goal is what their moral responsibility is in accordance with that goal and and the way they've organized themselves you know through through Kyle's leadership is it's really great and so um I wish them all the best and I didn't get to see the fly by because I had to leave but uh yeah so anyway I have some great pictures of that if anybody wants to see them later so but you probably see them on the news and in the paper and so that's all I have other than the fact that UVM beat UMass by six to one sorry UMass Lowell it was a good game beautiful day at virtue field I urge everybody to try and get out and see at least one UVM soccer game men or women before the season's over it's already October thank you Andrew yes so I met um with the Burlington Transportation Energy and utility committee they invited me to speak about what we're doing here in South Burlington particularly the commercial uh solar ready and commercial PV they were interested in and so I shared that and then we kind of went back and forth listen to the things they're doing they were also curious about our kind of solar siting where we require kind of roads and lots of buildings to be aligned to maximize PV and our stretch codes so it was a really really good discussion I thank them for everything that they did that we slavishly copied and we agreed to um continue this really good partnership and and dialogue so that was great um on a process note it was interesting that on that committee with three of their counselors um and which um I think you know made it possible for them to maybe do things more quickly and more with more impact so that's that was interesting um what town was this Burlington Burlington yeah that's right exactly yes yeah yeah but we could have two potentially it was interesting the process it's a minor political party process was interesting um I met with our new school board chair um Kate Bailey the school is forming a climate action committee to help the school implement their piece of our climate action plan they're going to focus on operations that infrastructure their transportation and their curriculum uh they invited me to join that which I willingly accepted they're also hoping someone from our bike ped committee would join and perhaps from the energy committee so that's um a really exciting development I also attended the energy festival and and the beta opening um mighty congratulations to everyone that did that festival just extraordinary event I agree with everything that was said the exhibitors the talks and it was also a lot of fun I learned a lot let me just mention three quick things um one that was someone they're showing off their lawn equipment and I didn't really appreciate how mowers and blowers electric battery stuff has really um you know um gotten to where it needs to be so they had a 60 inch deck battery powered motor mower that runs for eight hours that goes 16 miles an hour which seems like that should do everything we need um and with the iRO the city will get a 7500 dollar rebate for each mower that we buy um so they won't be that expensive so um I want to mention that and really encourage us to look at that very very seriously he also let me try their their blower which was more powerful than the old gas blower that I had that I got rid of a long time ago wonderful battery powered backpack uh leaf blowers that were you know really really super so that that was great that they were there um then um I met with someone from the Vermont energy education program who tying it up with the school board um agreed to come talk to this new school climate committee so that was cool and um O'Brien presented on their new development and they said sorry that's four things did I mention too much I'll let you go for O'Brien presented and um said the new homes that they're selling are comparably priced to fossil fuel homes and will either cost the same or less to run which is amazing that we can do a fossil fuel free home in northern Vermont and hit those price points so that we can do it here right it can be done anywhere and we've got to really tout that and like use this as a model to get the rest of Vermont going and the rest of the country going so that was that was really impressive and um amazing and um beta Helen did a great job I wouldn't have wanted to be in your position following all those speakers um but thank you thank you you're welcome great okay so um I did a very quick visit to the energy fair but I want to thank everyone for their efforts and I understand the 300 free ice cream cones went in the first hour so um there were hundreds of people there so that that's great and I think it's that's how you really start to engage the public in the meaningful conversations and information sharing about you know what you can do is when you think really think about it nothing's really going to change or happen unless individuals do that it can't be just the state saying here's a program do it it needs to be a program that the public understands and can relate to and embrace if they're able so I think that's wonderful that we're putting that kind of energy into educating the public that's really helpful and I did go to the beta grand opening I guess and you know I walked in and I there were 500 people there there's a lot and they all had shirts on like I have and we were all given those shorts shirts mine has my embroidered name on it so I I'm not really an employee of beta technologies but I certainly am a big fan and um it was pretty wonderful to hear the comments from you know senator lehi and the governor and senator sanders and senator welch and um mayor weinberger and then I was the last one so I was the cleanup batter and um I've never done that before with that kind of a list of people um ahead of me but anyway it went well and um it was I think Kyle's opening remarks about the um founding of the company their goals and how they've really evolved um purposefully has it was really um inspiring uh you know I think it's a an example of a corporation that really is um right there with um treating employees well sharing the vision sharing the leadership and engaging all those active smart people to better the company it was it isn't just a vision that kyle had and it's you know his vision it really seems to be evolving with all of his employees so kudos to them um okay the managers report so just jesse from austin texas oh wow nine to eight degrees about 95 i'm in austin at the international uh city and county management association annual meeting um and it's um really wonderful hundreds of sessions amazing keynote speakers i was saying tell and earlier i went to a session today on how communities across the country organized for sustainability change on the staff side of things which was really interesting anyway uh city updates just wanted to give you a few quick updates on things and steve of course jumped in if there's other more emergent issues um nick gingbro joined us today as the information technology director our new it director we're really excited to have him on board he was the it director for um from our college of fine arts and he worked at the at uvm at the business school for a while as well as paul pranking colin so it's a great addition to our team and i'm sure you will cross paths with him at some point um we are also in um what i hope is the final stages of um recruiting our next recreation and parks director um so i hope to have an announcement about that in the next few weeks um as um tim mentioned uh last week was town fair um i had to kick morrow out of the past president role stepping down as the president of that board the day before he his announcement last week um which was um sad for me to kick him out of this role but he would have been un disqualified anyway um stepping down as mayor but we had a great time at town fair tim i was i was really proud to have you there and i do want to just share with council that is something that you all have access to um in fact any of the vlct trainings webinars that you would like to participate in um you can sign up for you have budget to do that kind of professional development so please feel free to talk to me more about it or explore options and happy to set that up for you in the future um and then i know i emailed the council about this but i wanted to just call it out publicly as well um last week we went live with our computer aided dispatch for uh our fire and ems equipment and professionals um this was a huge heavy lift by um chief lock and chief berk and all of our dispatchers and many of our fire on our fire leadership um it's a it's a new technology a new innovation new efficiency for our dispatchers and we think it will really not only improve our public safety response um but also be an improvement for our dispatchers and how they do their jobs as well so we look forward to sharing more with you about that um as we finalize the um kind of dispatch center overhaul in the next six months or so um that is what i wanted to share steve feel free to jump in if i missed anything significant i think i think you had the highlights very well thanks great well thank you okay moving on to the consent agenda we have two items disbursements and approval of minutes from the september 18th 2023 meeting shall move that we approve the consent agenda second is there any discussion no questions from i sent them separately to martha thank you thank you probably by tomorrow okay so if you're ready for the vote um all in favor please signify by saying aye aye so they are approved um number the item seven is a receipt of the transportation implementation plan for the climate action plan and provide we are to provide direction to the staff uh erica quailin is going to present that as the deputy director of public works for capital projects so welcome good evening everyone oh oh go ahead jesse did you want to say something jessie this is once so awkward about this i'm sorry about that um hi erica i can't see you but i'm glad you're there um so i just wanted to start this conversation by saying you know when the council adopted the climate action plan just about a year ago um one one of the things we talked about at that point was that the implementation of that policy then moved to the city staff so as you may remember we have three different implementation plans we're working on this is the first to come to you then there will be the government operations one and then the building and thermal one which we honestly have not started yet um so these are how the professionals that we've drawn together um to figure out how we're going to implement the policy the council has set has developed and it's it's quite extensive huge appreciation to vhb and to erica specifically um to in pulling together this work and i look forward to hearing what you have to your reaction thanks great well thank you thanks jesse and before i get started tim i did the same thing with a beta employee at an institute of transportation engineers conference i uh was having dinner at the same table as him asked him about their new facility it was starting construction at the time he was like uh wrong beta so you're not alone in that uh but good evening everyone again i'm erica qualan deputy director of capital projects for public works uh and tonight i'm going to be giving an update on a lot of work that has been done in the last eight months almost a year at this point on the climate action plan transportation sector implementation plan it is a big mouthful um so we've been calling it the transportation c a i p if you uh hear me refer to it as that so tonight i'll give you a little bit of a background the goals of the implementation plan we went through a pretty robust public outreach process throughout this a review of those high impact action plans that were in your packet the supporting action matrix and then the implications for staffing and budget especially as we get ready to have a lot of budget conversations this will not have a small impact so rewinding a bunch to august 2017 the council at the time passed a resolution on climate change and since then it has progressed pretty steadily to the point of september and october of last year the city's climate action plan was adopted by the task force and ultimately by the council and so our transportation climate action implementation plan began in november so just after you adopted that plan with funding and technical support from the regional planning commission the ccrpc through their annual work program we received funding assistance through that program that we got started on this effort and like jesse said uh we worked with vhb as the consultant working still wrapping up the project so the main goals of the implementation plan here are to first look at the high impact actions that were adopted in the principal plan for the transportation and land use sectors and there were 10 of those and develop a really in-depth step-by-step plan look at some deeper estimates equity considerations opportunities for innovation there and really dive deep on those 10 and our advisory group chose to elevate one of the supporting actions about evy infrastructure and existing buildings to the level of a high impact action they saw that as important and needing more detail coming out of this plan the land use sector uh was more of a technical effort from the hb they produced a land use memo um i don't remember if it that was in your packet okay we can we can share that um and that was a much more paul connor lead effort i'm talking about promising practices other cities that have implemented different types of policies in terms of land use to achieve the high density mixed use type of environment that is called for in the principal plan like i said we had a pretty robust engagement process we had an advisory group that was appointed by jesse at your september 19th meeting i believe she presented how that was going to work and then finally this is all going to be wrapped up into a giant implementation plan and we're hoping this can also serve as a bit of a template for the other sectors as we progress on those ones which includes some background information key definitions on some terms that are brought up the high impact actions the supporting action matrix i'll give you a little preview of and then a kind of round up so this effort internally was led by myself and paul connor uh we had project support like i said from the rpc and vhp and our advisory group was a really far-reaching group um they were an awesome group of people they reviewed the implementation plans throughout the process um we have folks from local policy on our committees some technical advisors here um from key stakeholders that will need that will need to continue working with um some educational organizations and then excuse me maybe i shouldn't have picked a sparkling tea um and then uh some advocacy folks so that we could really take into account equity and they were a big help on our public outreach so the primary effort of our outreach was a questionnaire that went out you probably saw various email blasts and flyers it got the word got out we had 269 respondents which was great considering it was right after the city plan questionnaire went out um so a lot of folks they all lived or worked or some combination in south burlington and some of the key things here was that uh over half of respondents just over half were interested in owning an electric vehicle 13 percent of respondents already owned one um but there are as there always is going to be a chunk of people who like their current vehicle they like their gas vehicle so that was about 24 percent here um and a lot of people expressed interest in compact development using transit more improved walking bike infrastructure so they're interested in a lot of the things that we want to move forward and need to move forward with we also hosted two focus groups uh the first one was with uh the seniors at their monthly luncheon uh that was really helpful um and hearing from a group of folks who might travel a bit differently maybe have different mobility needs uh so we learned a lot from them and um we also we tried to do one with retail service workers um and we did not get much participation out of that so uh we are hoping to figure out how to do it better we offered stipends and lunch and hosted it right near the two plazas that we were trying to work with um but limited participation but there is a new effort that's going on about equity and planning uh in public outreach that paul is going to be working on and some of the planning and zoning folks um so hopefully we can learn how to do it better we thought we had checked some of the key boxes but there's more we can do so uh we'll learn from that uh so quick overview overview on that land use and then we'll get into some of the bigger action items here so like i said this is about the relationship between land use and the admission reductions called for in the principal plan and so it went through three broad categories planning concepts some of these terms you've probably heard the 15 minute city got it's a minute in the spotlight recently uh for various reasons um but the 15 minute city the 20 minute suburb is one that is known a little bit less about um some practices that are starting to be uh looked at in various cities and then practices that are really just tried and true um and how best we can implement them within south berlington so i will make sure that gets out to all of you so jumping into the uh real heart of this plan right now is the high impact action implementation plans like i said there are 10 of these that um were already listed as high impact action and one that was elevated into um a high impact action these are all associated with our 2030 targets you're all very familiar with how the principal plan um works here so the next few slides have a lot of text i'm going to give you just a quick overview so within each of these implementation plans these are all of the different pieces that have been put together uh the high level information who's going to be involved and who we need to bring in outside of the city uh an estimated timeline uh what type of funding and if it's if there are external funding sources available um and identifying some grant programs level of effort which is really identified of if it's going to be really an upfront workload or if it's more of an ongoing planning enforcement something like that effort and if we would need external technical support the key implementation steps is the big chunk of this of how to get from the text of the action to the emissions reduction that we're looking for some opportunities for innovation things that aren't necessarily needed but are good opportunities or things that we could plan for while putting in ev chargers to think about how they have the the vehicle to grid capacity think about things that we can um look to in the future how to really think about equity when these are being implemented where costs might be passed on to folks and how we could try to avoid them and how different policies can be structured so that it's reaching the most amount of people uh some considerations just things that might be hurdles trying to identify at least some of them because there will be plenty identify them before we uh really get into it and then some additional resources if there are state reports drive electric and efficiency vermont have done so much great work that now it's in one place so that we can look for it and then case studies of other cities around the country and many in canada that uh have implemented similar things so this is a sample one for folks so that you could look at them before um i won't dwell on this for very long but you can just see what might be involved within each of these um and too i'll just call attention to you are that focus on equity uh of an example here of how um parking management or maximums could impact folks inequitably um in some ways it can be helpful from an equity consideration limiting parking allows more for more space and less barriers to development of increased housing um if we were to go to a paid parking how to make sure that fines are uh put out equitably on folks and then the implementation considerations like i said just things to think about uh if we had to start managing public parking in a new way um and other ways that we can incorporate it with other efforts so this is a snip of that supporting action matrix the 11 high impact actions all got something like this slide before the remaining 14 the number is in your memo the remaining 14 fell into a matrix that looks like this uh these are just two of the actions and it's much of the same stuff just in an abbreviated format and a lot of these are also ones that aren't as city led so things that the school is taking on uh they'll want to dig in deeper and how they see fit to implement things but um laying out some options and just getting some of the groundwork there so this is the stuff that is very important to all of you setting up there um is getting into how this impacts municipal operations uh first from a staffing standpoint and then that leads directly into budget not just for additional staff but all of the projects that come out of this um so like i said we uh looked at the upfront and ongoing workload requirements and the types of work that we looked at are in two different categories um the first one is scoping planning funding and design so the more upfront work and then bids procurement construction and maintenance is much more ongoing some of these don't have much maintenance others have a lot um so here's some examples of just what type of work would fall under each of these uh the studies finding funding um connecting with all of those implementation partners and then some of these are we would have to hire a contractor to build um new types of parking to put in public ev spaces things like that so there's a huge spreadsheet i have uh paired it down to the pathways that are in uh the uh and i have the spreadsheet open separately if you if you wanted any point to look at the numbers a bit deeper and paired that down into just the pathways that are related to how um those 2030 targets are to be met so this is showing as uh an fte a full-time equivalent and so these are just for the scoping planning funding and design stuff so this is um more of the planning and zoning folks or project management um on design work and at its peak it's an fy 27 and that is two people there's this kind of arc which all of these have because there's a huge upfront workload and then certain things ideally the capital costs have um been passed and we're now into more maintenance mode the um next one that second phase of bids procurement construction and maintenance again goes through a similar curve but as you'd expect it's pushed out a little bit more because you can't do a lot of this until you've done that first step and this um peaks at the end at three people of needing three new people to maintain or do enforcement of new requirements for developers things like that and so those work out to these numbers here of new staff people tap topping out in fy 28 at 4.4 people um it's hard to hire 0.4 people um so between four and five people uh and this was our best guess at what would be on top of the staff capacity we already have and that is for all the pathways or just for these two all of the actions fall into these pathways so all of the uh we don't have to multiply this by six or something no this this accounts for all of the actions so the pathway is t 0.1 and so all of those you would see like t 0.1 0.1 1.3 things like that um and so assuming uh roughly 115 thousand dollars per fte that caps out at 506 thousand dollars um in fy 28 so eric if i can interject for just a second town's question absolutely so how eric answered that is absolutely corrected by pathway for this this implementation plan this is just one of three implementation plans though so i want to asterisk that as well yeah maybe a few asterisks because i have some more slides with larger numbers so and again the 506 thousand that is in aggregate between fy 24 through fy 28 or no it peaks that is the peak so in fy 28 506 thousand dollars would be added to the budget to cover 4.4 people all right for just this pathway for just the transportation and land use yes um so this is not including the government ops or the building and thermal this is just transportation and land use and are are we imagining that we'll do all three at the same time is this an iterative process or are we talking about you know two two people for each segment and that's the rest of determined but i believe it was a 10-year plan right well it stopped at 230 2030 right so seven years yeah so that's why we're showing to fy 31 here and it is a little tricky because this is just the first one put in front of you so uh we don't know where people can be used like that point four might go up to five but you'll actually get double the amount of actions done it won't necessarily be three times the amount of people when you have three three implementation plans to plan for okay well that's encouraging so next is the budgeting estimates not of the people but of the stuff the people will be doing the projects the things that we'll see on the ground that uh are are are the things that we'll be hopefully bringing about the emission reductions that we're looking at on all of the implementation plans and in the supporting action matrix all of the projects just have a simple one through five and so that breaks out to what's shown here it's dropped into a table in your memo that i'll show and so this it's important to note this is only cost borne by the city this does not talk about the projects that a developer would be asked to take on to meet amended LDRs for example this is just for what we would have to pay to get those things done what it would cost to study them what it would cost for the bike pad projects but this doesn't reflect the possibility to find external funding correct for these projects so when we look at those numbers it isn't necessarily tax dollars exactly hopefully will be lots of the federal dollars that everyone is touting and the state dollars as a way to support this so every implementation plan has at least two grant programs shown there so what is generally the local share for these kinds of programs it depends a lot of transportation projects that are state and federal are in 80 20 so we have a 20 percent match i'm not sure i think i saw lou brazil on here but he might know some more of the like federal energy programs what their match is but transportation is 80 20 and it i will say it doesn't ever get better than that but it's between 50 50 and 80 20 and that includes the bike things as well yeah that's part of the transportation dollars yes okay yeah so like the bike pad grant that was just received for heinsberg road we have a 20 percent match okay and this is only fte costs not capital costs we're moving into capital costs now before that 506 was the fte and now we're moving into actual projects and just to be clear everything they were looking at does not reflect any federal grant or so this is these are the gross aggregate costs correct so those 11 high impact actions that received their own full fully fleshed out implementation plan they fell into this category they're pretty spread out the two to really know are those more than five million dollar ones one is a park and ride or park and rides which are there are different opinions on how well they work or not but they are expensive there are some opportunities for innovation that vhb laid out in the implementation plan that could potentially reduce costs but something like that is also ripe for grant funding that's a transportation project that there is support for efforts like that and the other one is the walk bike plan and it's not that the creation of that master plan costs five million dollars it's that coming out of that plan there will be a lot of recommended projects so all of those other projects I come to talk to you about all of those combined are that greater than five million dollars some of these it strikes me I'm wondering like the park and rides potentially have the um ability to be shared between several municipalities yeah I'm thinking of the people who drive to like the staples plaza area some some are interested in working in burlington or at the hospital or uvm or downtown and then others in that area come off the interstate and they they're working at beta or you know on logic or whatever our big employers are yeah partnerships is a huge one that's in the opportunities for innovation in this plan uh whether it be with the private property owner if we strategically site it in a grocery store or shopping area that has ample parking maybe we lease 50 of those spaces 30 of those spaces so there are a lot of opportunities for that to be less but again worst case scenario is what we're laying out here no federal funding we're putting in the platinum version here so okay since Helen's jumping in here in addition to lane reductions how are we encouraging people to stop driving in their single occupancy vehicles right well I would even say electric I mean everything comes from a source of energy so I mean there are there are um you know models out there where people basically say no cars within the municipality you park on the outside and you use public transit in I mean is is this um you know a way for us to move towards that the lane reductions for instant would there be then the bike lanes the pedestrian lanes more space for for bus lanes I mean what are you thinking about here so a lot of these obviously work really closely together so lane reduction a lot of the spots where that might be recommended will probably come out of the walk bike plan um and things like high density development is going to call for different types of streetscapes that would be doing a lot of these so I wouldn't say that there is one that will do that the T2 point any of those falls under the pathway of reducing vehicle miles traveled for the one point or all electrification so all of these are taking really a different approach to that some of them are about increasing transit to just make a different option more appealing to folks and more convenient and then others are about making it maybe more difficult to get to where you want to go whether that is making parking harder to find or having it be paid or there's just not much there and in a walk bike plan it might say oh this road can actually go down to two lanes from four and would we be able to do that on state highways if it is a class one so wilson road for much of it through south berlington is a class one so we have control over it which is why we could put in those two crosswalks without asking v trans to do that for us hindsburg road is not a class one that is v trans owned and maintained all of 116 and it is the same for shelbert road we have some maintenance agreements we take care of the sidewalks on shelbert road but the state manages within the curb so we have a lot of flexibility within a class one and much less so i'll be wilson and dorset street we have control over yep that is not a state highway that is fully a town highway spear right okay so uh looking before we move to the next one it is a tiny little bullet here but it's flushed out more in your pack in your memo in your packet that for all of these when trying to lay out a better guess at what the cost would be like yearly a number not arranged had to be applied to all of these so what i did was i picked the middle uh so under 100 000 i i put it at 50 when i laid it out 100 to 500 to 50 okay um and so for the greater than five million i mean who knows what the middle is there um but i did uh seven point five million dollars okay well that seems logical i thought so for a working draft uh and so the way that this got broken out um you have a larger spreadsheet in your packet as an attachment to your memo and i also have it open so happy to show you under the hood of this if you want to um but so the fte's were broken out by year and so what i did was took the ratio of that year's fte to the total amount of fte and applied that same ratio to that total cost uh so if it was point one fte out of one and the project was 100 000 that means 10 000 was applied to that year um and so that's how it was broken out and so when all of those actions this is high impact and supporting actions um and all of the supporting actions fell into that less than 100 000 except for one of them that fell into the 100 to 500 000 i believe it was um so all of the actions are included here all 25 of them and they broke out to this much uh needed per year um and again this is worst case scenario with that estimated in the middle with no external funding required um is what this worked out to be and this is showing it summed with the fte's and those project costs that we just looked at and so this tops out a little bit sooner and that's because of where some of the fte's for the more expensive projects landed uh so it tops out at about five million dollars and that is not far away that is an fy 26 um so i think i need to get to grant writing um but uh so fy 24 it's we put very little there um because we are already months into fy 24 but the spending really ramps up um and that's not to say some of these projects aren't already in the budget things like some of the paths or um ldr amendments that you often see are moving towards some of these actions already uh so that 1.75 maybe half of that is already in the cip as planned um so that will be something that will all be tasked with in our departments to really lay out um and as we dig into these more and more but uh so this is kind of your worst case scenario is that we need a cool five million dollars in two years so are you suggesting that um with the current staffing has some of the capacity to go after grants not necessarily manage those projects um that the grants would pay for or are we really thinking that we really won't have a grant writer um or this kind of energy person till 2025 i see you getting ready to talk Steve so go for it i think i think it's a yes and no because some of these are capacity we already have and so those project costs some of us are already working on that um the fte's are the above and beyond so there are folks already working on some of these grants and are keeping an eye on things that are coming down the pipeline so it's a little bit of both um okay but but those am i correct in stating that those resources that we have we don't actually have excess capacity for grant writing at the moment right like if we were to read they'd be redeployed on writing grants for existing projects or for other city municipal functions i think it goes back to where you're saying there's there's capacity to do a little more but i but you're not going to get you're not going to get the horsepower you need to do all of this work with existing staff okay so i don't think you can see me can i jump in yeah please we were waiting can you see me i don't know if you can see me oh there we go yes there you are okay um so i what i just want to go where steve was going there i would argue that that especially this well i think there are a few cip projects that are currently on the books that double dip with this work this is all new staffing i think if we are going to deploy staff to start writing grants and managing these projects it means we're not going to do some of the other capital projects that you all have on the list so i guess i would really encourage you especially coming off of our budget goal conversation where you had pretty strong conversation about not wanting to erode our current level of service on you know building out city center and investing in housing and public safety and whatnot that we don't that this is not in place of core what i consider core municipal services this is in addition to that to further the policy goals you all have set not saying it can't be offset with grants but grants aren't going to pay for the staffing we're going to need and grants are not going to pay for in total the capital investment we're going to need okay and but does staffing is it included in the 80 20 split no the staffing is that separate number the um so that's not in 80 20s right it's okay that is that is ours too um okay so this fte line is not something a grant could cover um the project costs um are things that there are grants available for um but again those projects like jesse is saying um those projects can necessarily be done without those fte costs being taken on to bring on more folks so grants don't never pay for project oversight they just pay for the materials for something um they will pay for um sometimes they're in kind services where our time towards it can be tracked and be used as an in kind match and in other cases where maybe it's a construction grant it will pay for our construction inspector to do that type of oversight but not for um our staff to be um so when we think about the ARPA money which we have in a bank account somewhere that could be deployed for some of these fte's at least in the first or second year to really get stuff going i assume once you start writing these grants and getting some familiarity with what's available um that it's a little easier to identify the next round for projects and for grants so that would be helpful so you're suggesting more than one fte with ARPA because right now we just have one fte with ARPA i i i don't know the i hadn't seen this so that's a conversation we could have i think my my question is and am i are we allowed to use ARPA funds legally for headcount yeah yes you have to buy anything yeah i think it can pay for people and we've used it for the last couple years i think jesse probably has the real answer for below a threshold so because we took ARPA funds as lost revenue funds which any community in the country um under under um 10 million dollars of income loss could do um we are we are allowed to use ARPA funds for any anything that is a typical municipal service within our jurisdiction so because the state allows us to work on climate change things we can use ARPA dollars for that i think the thing i would suggest the council think about as they're thinking about using one-time funds for those is that one of the reasons the implementation advisory group laid it out this way was that there are ongoing financial commitments that will be required not only to meet those goals but to meet the net what i anticipate to be the next round of goals so if you're going to use one-time money are how are we hiring staff that has some certainty to know they're going to be able to continue this work out to meet those f y 30 goals and that's not with one-time money yeah and i just want to keep in everybody's mind too this idea that the affordable housing committee and the housing trust fund committee are going to bring forward with those revolving funds so that we can get into kind of that virtuous cycle of continued workforce housing development so there's a okay a lot to do you have some additional thoughts i'm just going to wrap up with some next steps um but one thing i will say is that these fte's and the project costs really build on each other because when you bring someone on for example to write grants um because i was writing the bike ped cip draft today um the money that we got for a path um is now five years worth of one project work to do design construction and then it gets turned over to maintenance uh so these really build on each other assuming that the grants are well written it results in more projects um so just another thing to think about and why you're seeing the kind of offsets in those peaks right so um if there is nothing else on that i'm happy to wrap up here and answer any other questions Andrew has one or two or three so i have um actually two sets of thoughts comments i want to talk um give some strategic comments and some some tactical thoughts um let me let me first start with the strategy it's it's i think it's some of these numbers are pretty daunting knowing that we have to do another two right invitation plans which are gonna gonna add and um it would help me to think about this to have a little more data in the following sense i'd love to come up with something that i would call an effectiveness score which would try to estimate um the greenhouse gas reduction from each of the 11 items that has costs and fte's associated with it divided by the net cost to the city of that item that's another fte you know and when you know when i mean net costs like estimate how much grand funding we think we're gonna have how much we allocate so we get really a true picture of like is this you know how much bang for the buck are we getting out of each item would help me because it may turn out and just as an example right when you look at the plan two-thirds of the reduction come from the ev actions and only one-third is intended to come from the vmt whereas the vmt actions are a lot more expensive than the ev actions so you may find that like the vmt actions are like you know one tenth is effective or like something like that just and it'd be helpful to kind of be able to prioritize and see that like how effective how much bang for the buck are each of these actions giving us um and i know it's it's it's hard but i think rough estimates would be really helpful and i think you can derive some of that from the data in the climate action plan because the plan does have really precise percentages right for how much the actions how much of the mission reductions each of those those big actions give and then you can like per rate that across the the sub actions within that so we can talk some more about that but i think that'd be really helpful um then um tactically um thank you for the presentation i know was it tremendous not to work and i joined many of those sessions um i i i have some thoughts i guess on what i think would be easy quick wins while we're going through this and i'd be interested in your thoughts having gone through through it what you think could be easy quick wins but kind of in my mind um you know we can pass regs to require ev installed ev ready like you know like and have only buildings have more ev charging so we're not like digging our hole deeper and have to retrofit um and i would really urge us to like think of that as a quick easy win and do that you know with we do haste um then for you know for uh parking management i think of tdm um you know i think there's some really quick wins there also on the regulatory front like burlington has unbundled the rent for parking spaces from the costs of the rest of the lease to rent the apartment um and what that does is like checks a lot of boxes one if you don't have a car you don't have to pay for the parking spot right which could help a lot of loan people but also incents people do not have cars because right and unless you unbundle it none of those really great things are going to happen um and that also seems like a really easy win for us to just like do that and we can regulate that because we can regulate rentals you know and just like start that virtuous cycle so um there's some other things we can talk about but i'd love to like while we're comprehensively thinking about this and budging out for the next 10 years also what are the things we can do in the next three to six months that are easy quick tactical and let's get started yeah absolutely do other folks on the council want to weigh in well i just along those lines i remember a project hearing about it years ago on my computer where in a multi-family uh unit home or building they had car shares as opposed to individual parking spots yeah so that's also i would think a pretty short to i don't know but i would assume that that could be a short term um project okay so the first one i'll um just to back up because we've had that conversation internally as a project team wanting to know that effectiveness to be able to get that kind of benefit cost and so in talking to folks at the ccrpc the emission reduction goals uh laid out in the principal plan they were deemed possible just by the pathways and then within the pathways it was a decision around what were the actions that would fall within it so the 42 percent emission reduction by switching to evs was that was what was shown by the model not that t.1.2 will give 13 percent of that and 1.3 will give another 12 percent of that because i i would love to look at that number and say okay this has the cost the benefit cost of it no i understand that i understand we couldn't get that granular data but i think i'm hoping yeah we can do some i get some rough sense because without that um it's it's really hard to know how to prioritize these projects what seems obvious is without the plugs the plug in hybrid vehicles don't serve a purpose i mean they don't because people they don't serve a purpose if you can't plug in and recharge your car you're going to be using your gas in a heavier car because that electric engine is so heavy right yeah so i mean that seems to me to be the pretty obvious thing is you have to be able to plug in your car we need to be charging yes yes ev charger right yeah and so to get to that exact point which dove tells into the second one in terms of what are kind of the quick hitting wins from these looking at the implementation plans the planned achievements for many of these are amended all the arse that is the planned achievement for a lot of these to figure out what that shift needs needs to be in terms of which parking strategies are the best or the most effective and how to determine what number of ev spaces are required does require some background information and some of that studying we're going through a TDM project right now with a consultant to do a lot of what is in the TDM and some of the parking but a lot of TDM effort which is a supporting action in here but those ones that are amended LDRs if those are ones that the council would like to pursue more actively again those are also they do still have the FTE costs always coming back to those of folks who can manage the projects and manage those studies but they are things that it's upfront on the city to get those LDR amendments but then we kind of pass off to say development community these are our new LDRs and so next time you come to us with a request they will meet XYZ right I mean another quick in on EV charging I would have thought would be to publicize or somehow encourage folks to for instance take advantage of those generous grants we learned about two meetings ago which basically fund right EV charging for municipalities and businesses right I mean it's out there we just have to get people to know it's there yeah Tim so these targets are aggressive um and and we if you have you know dense apartment buildings that don't have any EV charging stations right there's no incentive for people to to get into an EV or a pluggable EV right um but the other problem there is there's there's two chicken eggs scenarios going on one is like ability to charge if you're a renter and can I get into a vehicle that I can afford and right now the trend by the vehicle manufacturers is is cruising from 40 to 50 to 60 to 70 thousand dollars for a car which is I mean that's not where the price point is for the average renter right so we're kind of to rock in a hard place on what the vehicle manufacturers are doing for average family income Americans right who would like to get into at least a pluggable EV that gets them around at least 40 miles on electric and the rest on gas if necessary right and so I we have to pay close attention to what the federal government's going to do to try to incentivize those companies to get a 25 thousand dollar pluggable hybrid car out there the cheapest one I know of is a is a Prius Prime and that's 33 33 34 thousand dollars and that's the base model you know so their trajectory is going in the totally opposite direction to what the country needs because the vast majority of these cars are driven by middle-class Americans and they're just going to work coming home going to the grocery store and they're not going to shell out I mean I I'm not going to shell out $50,000 for a car even though all the cars are getting more expensive you know so I just want to point that out that we're challenged on that front as well but I totally agree with Andrew and Megan that you know find the low-hanging fruit first the ones that that we've because you can lead a horse to the bus but you can't make it get on right you can lead a horse to the to the Ford dealer you can't make it buy it a Maki right so it's people are only going to behave according to the opportunities that they have so obviously there are things we can they're easier and cheaper to do to move you know the ball forward and we are in a hard situation because of the supply chain issues I'll just share the story of my son now he does not have a plug-in hybrid he has the hybrid that recharges when you press on the brake right and that is something that he could afford and he was lucky to get the last one I mean that's the thing is we're up we're up against a lot of headwinds here and so the car share to me seems to be really something that could and I don't know what's happened in Montpelier I just heard about it at a conference in Montpelier when they were implementing it putting into place and this was again probably 2015 or 16 so I would love to have feedback on how that has worked out for them and would it be doable here yeah I didn't know about that program I have seen places where an apartment building might get a priority space for the actual car share Vermont car where a car is hosted there and serves as a hub but I haven't heard about a couple of units sharing a space yeah I will look at that other comment just one thing I'll mention on cost um most of these vehicles are eligible for tax credits if they're leased if they're leased if they're leased because the corporate owner can claim the credit and pass it through the lease so the previous through the lease would wind up costing 28 29 through the lease so that's a potentially very efficient way it all comes down to the electric car the monthly payment right and the and and the uh the credit rating of that person when they walk into the to this dealership and how hard that dealership is going to try to rip them off right because dealerships are not fair when it comes to taking care of customers to make something affordable for them right we've seen that again and again and again right and so I you know unless we bring back the Saturn model which will never happen again you know okay but so to that point right at the at the vendor energy fair the gentleman from the uh the Toyota dealership right he had the the bzdr the Toyota all electric right and so I said well what he could only get the the uh tax credit through a lease program and I go okay well what model is this oh it's the top of the line okay well how much is that going to be for a lease for 36 months over 600 bucks a month and I go well that blows that one what's the base model take 100 off I'm like okay so now we're $500 a month and that's not affordable for the average family I think for a car payment you don't need a car that costs that much to begin with but that's the cost to the companies right mixing all these you know the battery costs with the other cost but then actually there's less labor because it's not as complex as when I see e-car so it's also cheaper to own and operate a lot cheaper yeah it may very well be but at the end of the day if you have a family that's already struggling to put food on the table there are a lot 50 percent of the people in this town rent because they can't afford to own a home the capital outlay that's required to buy one of these vehicles is in it puts it out of out of reach it's inaccessible yeah no but again if you lease Tyler and you're saving gas and you're saving maintenance you just gotta do the the numbers it could wind up being cheaper that's what my son's doing he's got a Toyota yeah I can't remember so the model we need to give you some direction so have we yet there's definitely some around looking at um to the best that we can with data that we can find um work through what some of these are going to be kind of the low-hanging fruit and look at some of this prioritization it sounds like that is one of the biggest asks from council tonight is to just understand how best to use this money uh-huh that's one of the biggest things I think it's fair but I think that um because of supply issues we're going to have to look at the LDRs I really I really think we're going to have to so can I jump in to get out of there yeah single occupancy vehicles okay Jesse you wanted to weigh in so just on the direction I mean I think Erica summed it up well but so the the LDRs is a great point and remember if we're if this is in addition to other priorities you've already said you have a four-phased um LDR updates that we are currently working on I think Paul may be in the room so could talk to you about how some of those other LDR changes are going to layer into um what's already on the planning commission and your agenda this year for those things um so I think that's another kind of resource not money resource thing but kind of political time and energy thing that we do need to think about and then I guess I would be curious you know obviously the team will um finalize this implementation plan that was our charge and we can add um in additional information based on your comments tonight but if you did have any other direction for us as we are you know staff is very hot and heavy into building the FY 25 budget right now if there were any um parameters you wanted to give us about what you would want to see in that budget tonight we're happy to take those we're happy to take those anytime before you finalize the budget for the voter so it doesn't have to be tonight but if there was any guidance coming out about that um that would be useful as well okay okay well I think we're we're looking at chargers well I I don't know personally I would assume maybe two FTEs for rather than one it sounds like we're going to need at least two FTEs across all these implementation plans and probably more and that should I think it'd be our baseline I I tend to agree I mean I don't think we're going to get a lot done if we don't have the people to write the grants manage the projects get them done I would agree that going after low hanging fruit makes sense and some of that might be generated by well grants are available I mean it may not be the lowest hanging fruit but if that's the the most amount of money to fund it it may make more sense to select that as a priority you need to have a project to write a grant right right so you need to have we have those and for clarification and thanks to bring back in terms of those FTEs um are you thinking that those are something that you want immediately for us to present both in FY 25 to kind of stagger those over the next two fiscal years um an idea of is this focused on the grant writing is it something a bit more comprehensive that you're imagining because we've talked about a lot of the different components of these projects we've given you I think we need to make as I was going to say I think it's that we'll bring them back some ideas so what those people what what those people would be used for absolutely we can do that well and I think we could use the ARPA money to phase it in if that's um more amenable to budget writing we can lay out some options of how that can work of what they will but I I at least I mean just uh are most people thinking we need two people I know Tim your role in your eyes there or roll it over two years I'd really like to see well I suspect Jesse would say she's going to bring back a plan that shows this on top of the normal operating budget yes and so that you would see the impact of not only core government operations but this on top of that right and what a phase what that would look look like for the tax rate could could we also since land use regulations have been identified in that um development of a proposal or proposals um Jesse can we get a sense or can you get a sense from Paul about um their capacity to uh what they're working on now that might dovetail with what these projects could be and then you know you pick a couple more that what what does that look like because I think that's what some of us feel is kind of low hanging fruit but it isn't if you don't have the staffing and the capacity of the planning commission to act on that yeah absolutely Paul and I've been talking about that a lot how that how this phasing is going to work with the four phases you've already identified so we can bring that back to you adding in this conversation okay that would be helpful others well if we're going to if we're over I just don't want us to over index on I'd like to better understand what the what the changes are that we're proposing with the LDRs one of the other concerns that we have and that we've all addressed is the cost of housing and availability of housing and I just want to make sure that as we're looking at modifying an amending LDRs that we're not doing so in such a way that's making it that much more difficult to build new housing or that it's making it more costly so at at some point some how are we going to account for that in the process what does that look like and what input are we getting from members of the development community along the way to make sure that we're we're not solving one problem to create yet another well certainly the housing crowd was front and center in your advisory group yeah absolutely I'm assuming they made that case now maybe there wasn't a developer a for-profit developer on there I don't know but there was not a developer on there and we also heard a lot in our comments area and our questionnaire also which was answered by a pretty wide range of folks and one thing to know on this last side here is we will have a public meeting next week to go over all of this stuff here to hear about if residents are thinking like oh I'd really buy into that action and that one doesn't seem like something me and my neighbors would want to do things like that to have a another touch point to the public where we can bring them something a bit more complete to look at instead of just bringing a blank slate that's here yes it will be here on October 12th there will be a big outreach push in the second half of this week so that's next Thursday next Thursday of the time 6 30 6 30 in the auditorium yes in the auditorium it will go out in the next city news on front porch forum all of the city outlets and it's great specifically the transportation and land juice yep c a i p yes the information I brought to you tonight is going to be the framing for that conversation great okay can I just respond to Tyler and just say that you know if you're planning a 40 unit new apartment building right I mean with the regulations that we want to have in place you know there's a percentage of parking spots that they will have to provide the conduit you know when they pour the foundation to bring it out from the building and bring it up to the edge of the parking lot wherever that might be and then there's going to be a pedestal there with a charge point charger or they partner with somebody right who actually administered the charging and and and then you know the person that lives there will probably have to have their own you know account to take care of that but it would probably be some relationship between the owner property owner that provides electricity to the charging station and in the way that it gets built and stuff like that so it means very doable but it's much cheaper to do it during new construction that is to do retrofit right so I mean all these buildings that have underground parking I can't imagine what that would cost to like I'm sure it can be done right but there's just a cost to it right you know and that makes total sense I guess all I'm saying is I'm I want to make sure that we're accounting for the voices of the folks who are actually doing it right so that we're not inadvertently introducing a lot of cost that's all okay we hear you good all right is that enough to go on are you I think so Jesse yeah we will okay we will do our best and come back especially during budget time and budget retreat to talk through a lot of the options okay thank you very much Erica thank you this was a lot of work and we appreciate yeah thank you very much all right so moving on to item eight is Kate on she's not in the auditorium is she yeah there she is so item eight is consider and possibly approve a school board request to fund traffic monitors at school properties and we received an email hi Kate um that outlines what this ask is do you want to go over that briefly Kate or yes to just ask questions or I'm happy to frame it just for a moment I think I was happy to catch the beginning the conversation previous to this and I see our asks around street safety and traffic monitoring around our schools is very tied to the climate action goals and making our city more pedestrian and bike friendly so um I'm glad they're both on the agenda tonight and a couple of weeks ago I joined district staff and officer Bree was there and and about 20 25 parents most who had were elementary school students to discuss school safety broadly and transportation and and um school safety on the streets came up and I do just want to share my reflections on on that meeting because I think we did talk about you know why don't we bike or walk to school and it's more energy efficient and and really the answer was um that the infrastructure and that the the culture of walking and climate needs to to change and because our schools are located on some of our busiest streets stores it um white street we've talked lots about market streets increased traffic and development and even you know orchard being so close to shelter and road it just feels like um it's a hard ask for parents especially of younger kids to give up the safety of a car the perceived safety of a car so um I think that there's some long-term work to be done on that but in the meantime following on the conversation if my memory serves earlier this spring we made a request for a crossing guard funding at rick mark hot um historically there's been a crossing guard volunteer chamberlain school and we had a volunteer crossing guard through the last school year um so they were unpaid but we did request funding last fiscal year from the city and I believe it was approved in April as well as the signage for the school zone at chamberlain and so I'm coming back with you tonight on behalf of the school board in the school district to see um we do now have the staff for a crossing guard a paid crossing guard at chamberlain and rick mark hot and and we would like to see that funding um as a part of the permanent city budget if possible I see that as part of um as aligned with the experts on traffic control and traffic monitoring in department of public works um police officers there's a lot more um traffic control experience in the city than at the schools and um we would like to take the approach of all of our campuses I think our priority would be the elementary schools that we've already talked about but um I think if we had more of a culture of crossing guards as our city becomes more urban more developed than um that may promote more walking and biking as well as keeping our traffic under control and preventing an accident um on busy streets at busy congested times of day before and after school so that's a quick summary and I'm happy to answer questions can I just clarify you're requesting the city to fund six traffic monitors at approximately 10 000 a piece um is this for this current school year or is it for is that correct so it's this current school year it's right for this the my understanding is that the approval that was made in April was for one school and for that fiscal year so this is a new request for this current school year this current year yes and for um all of our campuses okay and you're also requesting that this become um a city side of the ledger budgeted um expense annually that the school will never contribute to this is that right uh for you for your consideration yes okay jesse okay jesse no no sorry cake you two just clarified what I was going to clarify that the vote that you all took in april may was that you at that point were requested the contribution for f y 20 23 the year that ended in june and funding for that one crossing garden f y 24 um at marcott at that that time you decided to fund the f y 23 i think it was about seven thousand dollars request um but hold on future year fiscal planning um and now this additional request has come in and now there's the long-term request so that's the kind of sequence of the conversations you've had to date okay so thoughts for the council um ander yeah so you have any questions yeah no thoughts and questions look um if we need the crossing guards we should hire them right the kids need to be able to get to school safely and hopefully that will encourage more biking and walking um but to me this is kind of an accounting question like how should we account for this should we account for it in the municipal budget or the school budget tax base are going to bear it regardless and i guess dropping my thinking in terms of how we should account for it are a couple of questions one is like who gives the crossing guards direction as to their you know day their responsibilities when they show up who's going to monitor them who do they report to you know like um kind of you know employee type firing and firing like all those kind of things you'd ask about to figure out um you know where employee fits in the hierarchy so i think the and k correct me if you have a different impression moving forward but the conversation the superintendent and i have had to date is that this is um funding given in lump sum to the school district to employ folks that because of the connection needed between the school administration you know scheduling hours of service in service early dismissals vacations etc those professionals really need to report up through the education line but that this would be funding how it was going to work in fy 23 is they were going to pay for the staff and then we were going to reimburse them for those costs we never ended up doing that so that money is still in in the fund balance because thankfully sue who um is also on here i think yep sue connolly um jewellery generously volunteered to do it um but but my understanding is that these staff would report up through the education side of things and we would give them a grant i think if you do approve this as a permanent cost moving forward we do need to think about what we need to come up with some kind of legal agreement that allows us to do that because i think that we could i'm not a lawyer i don't know if i'll into the room but i think we could get into some sticky x 60 issues with you know more privileged communities municipally funding things on the education side burlington does do this um on the municipal side when you scheme on pillar do it on the education side so there's examples of both in the state and we just want to come up with a really clear legal agreement of how to do that jesse so we there are no other there are no other items in our city like this if they're prohibited by x 60 the only other item in our city that's sort of like this actually works in reverse which is um from time to time the recreation department has access to school gymnasiums to run programs um that are that we have access to that building and it's obviously a school asset school staffed our staff goes in and runs the program but we have access to the asset and the solar panels might generate some access that goes to the schools right yes yeah good that's right yeah 40 percent yeah goes to the schools well whatever's depending upon the production whatever the wastewater gets it first right so no i think i mean the the solar field that we have the farm yeah the landfill no 40 60 percent comes to the city and 40 percent goes to the schools i thought there was a cascading and if there's enough power to satisfy that there is but if there isn't it it does it falls off i think as you go down the cascade well maybe anyway so um i would like to comment on this yes so um i understand the request um i don't favor uh the city funding this money except for in the market street corridor as long as there's construction that um conflicts with you know the safe passage of kids so i i wouldn't have a problem like as long as there's building going on that's you know reducing sidewalk width then i i think the city has some responsibility there to the school department but but not for the other two schools i don't want to get entangled like this long term at all i don't think this is our responsibility to pay for this okay other thoughts i i tend to share tim's viewpoint it would it would definitely set a precedent and um you know never say never but i think that um it has to be stated that this would be a precedent and it would um you know be a divergence from from long-standing policy which except for the two examples with regard to recreation and and solar energy credits um really keep the two budgets separate um if we could have a conversation about this at our dinner uh coming dinner november um have a more you know lengthy conversation and thoughtful conversation i'm assuming that this comes from some budgetary needs um and and i i'm you know aware that there have been some unexpected cost uh overruns with the zems um so this would be something i'd want us to talk about as a steering committee and we certainly do not want the school you know to to not be able to provide for its students so but i i'm not prepared tonight to to to set a precedent without kind of a more thorough discussion of it i oh go ahead i i i i'm on the respectfully disagree i'm on the exact opposite end of this the spectrum in that if there's no if there's already prior case law that suggests that municipalities do do this for the purpose of traffic safety and it doesn't interfere with act 60 and that we don't have exposure there i think that keeping our kids safe is our top priority and i'd like to see our school dollars the school budget dollars go into educating the children as much as possible and not be used uh to make sure that they don't get mowed down on their way to school so and if we're if we are entertaining uh policy measures that could increase and i know that there's there's caveats and i know that there's grants but if on one hand we're we're looking at uh policies and procedures they could potentially increase our overall budget by 10 percent for climate change can we find $60,000 to make sure that our kids don't are aren't at risk when they go to school if we're going to be encouraging them and we're going to be incurring all this extra expense and cost to get them to get outside and to get to school safely safely i feel like we need to deliver in other areas i.e. do whatever we need to do to make sure that they can do so safely um kate did you want to comment or respond yeah thanks uh i'll take the chance to respond so thanks tyler i much of uh what i wanted to reiterate i think um you shared there is precedent already set um both in burlington and by the approval of the crossing guard funds by this council in april so um i just wanted to clarify that the request isn't really tight because there are budgetary concerns with the school it's more of a philosophical um belief that our school funding should should in our education funding should stay within the school operating budget and and be focused on educating our students and we see this as um traffic control public works traffic safety and i think that you know the agreement for the initial lump sum that was established i think would be a great i'd like to ask for your consideration to extend that at least for rick mark hot and chamberlain through this school year and then perhaps um so just for those two schools and then perhaps um we can have a longer term conversation with more information and a different agreement for more of a long-term permanent solution but i do think that as our city develops our streets change that it's important for um our traffic monitors and crossing guards to be aligned with what's happening with us in our cities with construction with development and not solely um isolated to the the student safety in schools but really seen as a community service yeah and i know i'm sorry i i apologize if i am um under misunderstanding here but we're also paying for the chamberlain school crossing guard right now not just the one here i know market street okay okay we're not paying for any right now we did you did authorize um i think it was seven thousand dollars four that seems high now that i say that a lot you authorized some amount of money for the remainder of the f y 23 crossing guard at rick mark hot but they were never able to hire anyone so we never they never drew down those funds and we did not approve at that time the f y 24 request thinking we would come back and revisit it if it continued okay thank you okay i just to be the devil's advocate kate is this the nose under the tent so to speak so that um a couple years from now the conversation is well busing is a safety issue um the city has far more experience with managing roads and lights and busing um i mean i just i i appreciate the need for children to be safe i also would want if we're going to take over some of these costs to have a better conversation or thinking about um if we have crossing guards then is there a way to identify neighborhoods that are really close to a school where with a crossing guard all of the children in that neighborhood could walk to that school i mean i have to say i was sort of startled when we were at the um opening of the cht building and um the school bus while we were there stopped and 10 children got out from mark hot not from the middle school no it was from mark hot they were little kids and i thought oh my goodness we're using a bus to take kids two blocks uh and so i you know it's it's a to my mind it's kind of a broader conversation if we really do want kids safe and we also want a walkable safe community um how do we or where do we have the conversation with the school i guess about so are there areas where we're not going to offer school busing because you can walk safely because we have crossing guards or crossing lights or whatever so i'm i'm reticent to pay for all of this just as a matter of course so a slippery slope to school safety is is probably a slippery slope i'd be willing to happily go down but i have to say that my uh the school district and school board's intention here is simply to address a rising concern about our students access to buildings safely and um i appreciate the stop signs and the school zones that have happened and this is part of a larger conversation to address um students and families not feeling safe in our current infrastructure getting into our schools and and it's not a transfer of costs because we don't have crossing guards um anywhere the the crossing guards that we've had have been on a volunteer basis at rick mark hot um and chamberlain sorry i i misspoke earlier so you know we have hired chamberlain and rick mark hot crossing guards those are the only positions that currently exist so it's not that this school district is currently paying for um 70 000 that we want to transfer to the city it's that we would like to see a further investment in the city on street safety impacting our students in our schools andrew so as i i said i we should have the crossing guards i think to me it's just an accounting question and it's it's pretty clear to me that because the school decides who to hire who to fire when they work how they work where they work whether they're doing a good job or a bad job it's properly accounted for on the school budget if this was a dpw employee that we the city hired and told where to stand and where to work and how to work and went to work then it would be our cost but it's just it's pretty self-evident to me that this should be on the school budget because it aligns with the responsibilities and obligations i i respectfully disagree because i think that the responsibility and obligation of the city is to make sure the kids have a safe way to get to school and if we're not providing that with the current infrastructure then that should be on us and we should be willing to to foot the bill to make sure that it's safe until such time that we're willing to make concessions elsewhere for that to do that on the school to make sure that the kids can the infrastructure around the school is safe for them to walk to school i don't think that that's i think our school's responsibilities to educate our children and not to try and play municipality i i'm open to the philosophical discussion i i guess um to to my mind um the crossing guards are at the entry to the schools um so it is on you know the school grounds and i would assume that the schools also just like andrew explained did background checks like they do on everybody even who wants to you know take kids on a field trip um so there there are you know there are requirements um that clearly the school would have to handle with regard to these employees and the money comes from the same taxpayer pocket i mean i just i don't quite understand why it would be on the city budget as opposed to the school budget when it comes from the same pocket right and i'm open to the philosophical discussion but to my mind we're talking about the entries to the schools so we're talking you know along the same lines as the school buses um and i i understand that that's been the philosophy of the school district um you know i've i've long said you know why not let kids take the city buses to school you know in my neighborhood for instance um the kids could get on the city bus um and my kids have gotten on the city bus but that's my right saying i allow my kids to go on the city bus and the the answer for the school district has been well we are in charge of getting the kids to school safely right unless the parent takes it on themselves so there there is something that's already in the school philosophy so we i would need to hear more about how the school philosophy is changing um to really have the city take on you know the this part of i think barb service wanted to make a comment we did see her face there we can hear you barb you're on i did thank you helen um as a as a taxpayer and a former administrator um i have to say that i think andrew probably said it as clearly as anyone i'm gonna have to pay for this either way i think it belongs in the school district budget because it's part of what happens for kids on the other hand i don't and i'm sorry i don't remember who but someone talked about if we need special guards when there is construction going on i think that's a totally different issue i don't think anyone disagrees that we want our kids to be safe but if the school district is going to hire they're going to fire they're going to supervise then let's put the money in that pot and let them be responsible for all of it and you put that in that part of my tax bill and then let the city do its part i think it has great potential to be really muddy i am concerned about what it could mean in the future um and i think it is easier to all agree that our first concern is the safety of the children and that we share that but beyond that we need to keep some of those things separate um and so what happens from the time that that youngster is on his or her way to school whether that's on the bus or walking and let's hope there i mean as a kid who walked to school um and i didn't walk in three feet of snow um but you know as a kid who walked to school um that was a good thing for me to do and but i think that we need to separate those two functions that this really is a school function especially when you're talking about the school district is going to hire and fire and supervise then i want to pay for that out of my school dollars and trust the city to do its part to do things like put up the signs on market street and people are still rolling through the soft signs but it's getting better um but keep those two functions separate so i would uh i would lobby um strongly for um keeping the two things separate but agreeing that our first concern is the safety of the children and the taxpayers are going to pay for it either way thank you well i guess if i could helen yeah i would love to hear from yeah the school board and the superintendent about what does would putting it in the city budget do with regard you know to kind of the city values i mean we all agree that we want the kids to be safe so is is the philosophy have to do with well then the city meaning you know that these children are like residents and and so we are going to put it in the city side of the budget is is there something that the school board sees as the public will support this i i i just i need to have that philosophy um really fleshed out for me because to my mind i i don't separate the school budget from what matters to me right it's just part of that umbrella so i i but if that is a concern i i want to hear that and that's why i want us to have a discussion because clearly this request comes from a philosophical viewpoint so i want to hear it i want to i want to well is that a conversation we have um we've got someone in the audience who would like to speak you have to come up to the mic please but um could i just have a question about the the decision when does this decision need to be made Megan wants a philosophical conversation potentially at a dinner or at a steering committee meeting of some sort to talk more broadly and i want to be convinced i'm not convinced kate and so i want to give you the chance to convince me although if we vote not to fund this tonight it doesn't mean we can't come back to it if there's a philosophical argument i guess i i started to i just would like to know from kate if we vote not to do this tonight does the school board have the ability or have the budget to be able to execute on it if they don't necessarily have the budget either this isn't in our budget either well we have but we have a tomb well we have a surplus well that good yeah we're spending it on lots of things yeah that's we're struggling over how we're gonna get to do what we want to do i i i have a hard time thinking that there's many too many things that are more important to making sure well kids don't get run over on the way to school particularly when also what's not it's not forget and i don't i apologize if i'm being crass um but um we also i think it's also important to recognize that we the city also changed the game on at least in central school with how market streets constructed and the new traffic patterns and the volume of traffic that's going through there that's that's new and that's different um and in the ongoing construction does does create an ongoing concern um so i guess my question is kate if if we don't vote on this tonight what what does the school board have the ability to do this year in order to make it happen and number two if if the answer is nothing would we can be willing to consider doing something as an interim measure tonight but calling it just that so that we could just resolve the problem immediately and then figure out how to deal with it long term moving forward this is why we need the philosophical discussion the city center has been on the books since the 1980s right the steering committee has been in since the beginning of south brolington so let's just really be clear the city center did not come from nowhere and and everybody was fully aware that it was in the process so i i don't mean to be accusatory like i feel that you are being a little bit accusatory um um we all are in favor of the safety of our kids okay i just want to make that really really clear and no one is saying otherwise in addition did the city helped um take care of the uh markout schools three acre stormwater rule with the interaction with the parking lot and the and the stormwater facility they're erode into the school right i mean there are a lot of changes that happen city center and i think that's where the focus should be on what we said we might be able to help with right from during construction when there's no sidewalks i understand that in general from a philosophical point of view this is a school budget responsibility it's not our responsibility i would be supportive of your comment earlier that for the duration of construction construction on market street which i think is going to go through the whole year because we got some new stuff coming on across the street so it's going to be torn up for a while i think that that's a fair enough and a reasonable and philosophically it seems to make sense that that's um could be seen as a city responsibility but i i do not want to go down the road of setting a precedent that we're going to be spending 60 000 dollars forever and then they're going to need 12 crossing guards because it's you know more kids are walking and and you know i'm pretty soon it's real money and for us to raise i mean because it's a bigger penny more of one cent for the city side to raise these dollars than it is for the state and i believe there's probably state money that offsets some of the like transportation issues for schools like the buses and stuff that isn't you know so i don't know about crossing guards but um jesse do you have anything to add and then we'll listen to carol and then we'll get back to kate um so i think it's a really interesting conversation i think it would be great to have a steering committee i i do also want to point out it's not related to the funding request but it is related to um our shared goal of kids and families getting to school safely that vila and her team have done a really great job in the last couple of months kind of beefing up their safe routes to school efforts and assigning a staff person to work on that and connecting that staff person to the bike ped committee and i think a lot of those a lot of the conversations the city has been having in the last decade or two around walkability and bike ability are there's a huge then diagram to the same conversation at the of kids and families getting to school and i think the more we can integrate those conversations at a policy level as opposed to the you know kind of the band-aid of the crossing guard i think the better so i just i don't want to lose sight of a lot of those policy conversations are starting to happen between staff and the committees already um and that's really too you know to the superintendent's credit to identify that as a part of the long term solution okay well that may be a really excellent topic for our next steering committee if we can figure out perhaps an interim step but carol mcquillan wanted to make a comment i think helen had a good point and i think jesse is alluding to it so as a teacher at orchard for 20 years um carol i can't hear you i'm sorry that's the light on is it is it bright thank you that's um so as a teacher at orchard for 20 years we would we wouldn't uh know that there are children living one two and three blocks away from school that are hopping on a bus and there might be the cost savings between looking at the parameter of where kids could literally um get to school by walking safely with guards in lieu of paying for that bus and you might have a cost um breakout that makes it uh safe and um a good practice so it's just a thought that um um many many of us have had conversations that kids live very close to school and are getting buses so maybe instead of the bus you'd have money for guards just a thought thank you okay kate you wanted to make a comment and then i'd like us to sort of figure out what we want to do tonight and then move on and i think if we clearly need to have a longer conversation so kate yeah i just want to respond to a couple of points hopefully um i'll capture everything so this is a continual conversation that we've exchanged letters about since the spring and discussed at our steering committee meeting in july and so i i do see this as um that we've had this conversation in the past it's not that this conversation is coming out of nowhere and that these this asks specifically for traffic monitors is a direct response particularly at rick mark hot to the the development that's happening in our city um like tyler mentioned it's it's happening fast and it's happening right now and so there's a real need to respond i believe funding the traffic monitor especially at rick mark hot would be that interim step that we're talking about to relieve some of the um pressure so that we could have a longer term conversation the we we currently have a person who will staff the traffic monitor and they've been the hiring my understanding is that it went through the district out of necessity because the position was hard to fill but the district is absolutely open to this being a city staff member i think you know it's easy enough to coordinate with the school calendar it could be a city staff member similar to the way we have our school resource officer who is an employee of the city police but she spends the majority of her time my understanding um with in the schools and with our students so there are um i highlight that as another way that we could adapt this for the long term the district is not um eager to have sort of this accounting hr responsibility it is uh it's fallen to us out of necessity as a reaction to um real concerns around safety at the end of last year the end of last school year through the summer into this year which is a continuing conversation that we've had um for several months now so my ask in short i'm understanding that maybe this is an ongoing conversation in collaboration with climate action goals bike ped um since we have the staff member uh this staff who would like to be the traffic monitor for rick marcot if you could at least extend what you've approved in april and approve the staffing cost for the traffic monitor this school year through so that would be 10 000 well we did seven already so three thousand two hundred twelve dollars it's different fiscal years so i believe it's a different approval but my my point is that you've already approved this before and so my my ask is for you to approve again a rick marcot crossing guard at the bare minimum okay well i think we could potentially have a motion to approve the continuation of the crossing guard at rick marcot um and you can let us know what that cost is since there's some already in the budget unexpended expended is that right no it's not so it's when that when we did not last year's money last was vote was to spend last year's money when that was not spent it has stayed in fund balance oh okay so you did a motion for the 10 the 10 200 one position 12 dollars and 20 cents that's one person okay that's one position yes okay is that i would make that motion okay is there a second second where is this person stationed right at right at the crossing be on school well it's not school street we haven't named it right yeah this elaine the driveway from marcot and market street right at library corner the closest there that's right who crosses that all the kids who walk they go they have to cross twice they because they can't go in that last so they don't have a crossing guard where they we have a path that went from their apartments we have a path i know but there's kids who come from other places i guess i don't know okay i'm okay i'm i'm certainly comfortable with the school determining where the best place is for the crossing guard i don't want to micromanage that yeah i don't want to hire them i don't want to have oversight for this next fiscal year i'm willing to support covering the cost and then we can have a longer conversation because kate when we did talk about this it was one guard we were never originally talking about it's going to be six right at sixty one thousand dollars right so fund balance or not no fund balance sixty one thousand dollars is sixty one thousand dollars right it's you know it's not a rounding error um so we have a motion on the table barb one last comment and then i'd like to one last comment one last comment sorry that this basically it deals with the issue of a crossing guard in your construction yes and you might want to stipulate that in your motion just a thought okay i'm worried about precedence that's related to construction so for the duration of construction and marketplace we'll fund a crossing guard for marcot school at a cost of ten thousand two hundred and twelve dollars and twenty cents per year per school year for how long for what for this next year well i think for construction until the construction's over so it would be for f y 24 but i think the direction we have would be we would add that into the draft f y 25 budget and you could then make the decision whether to have it remain there or take it out but that's we need an annual review right okay so we have a motion made and seconded is there further discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed okay thank you very much and we'll continue the conversation kate thank you um item eight is now other business is there any other business just a quick comment we just did nine that was the traffic monitors eight i mean i'm sorry nine excuse me uh at the town fair i attended a like a 40 minute presentation by a gentleman that runs an it company that specializes in cyber security i just wanted to point out that one of the social uh hacking methods that that they will use is to distribute free flash drives you know around an office building or they might have a they might have some sort of like a giveaway on um on on iphone charging cables iphone charging cables and the iphone charging cable right when you plug it in it actually has a transmitter in it right and if they're nearby they can pretty much read everything on your phone it looks absolutely like the normal you know apple product but it inside of it it's got you know the ingredients to be able to sniff out everything and the usb you know the same similar problem but also they could be loaded with a you know a virus no free gifts except no free gifts the moral of the story is the moral of the story is do not plug anything into your computer that you did not buy yourself from a trusted and responsible proprietor right and second of all lock your bikes with a kryptonite or otherwise our public safety guy lock your cars and don't leave your valuables in them those are the three main security recommendations by tim barrett thank you okay thank you tim all right so there's no other business so um i would like this to consider entering into executive session and tim you have the motions i do have the motion and uh so just to um uh hold on a second let me bring this up um so there are our four topics tonight for the motion and i'm going to go through each one so i move that the council make a specific finding that premature general public knowledge of the council's discussion of one contracts and negotiating or securing a real estate purchase or lease options and two again contracts and negotiating or securing a real estate purchase or lease options three pending civil litigation to which the city is a party and four labor relations agreements with the employees which clearly place this public body at a substantial disadvantage second all those in favor all right all right so i now move the city council enter into executive session under one vsa 313 a1 a b and e and one vsa 313 a2 for the purpose of discussing one contracts and negotiating or securing a real estate purchase or lease options two the exact same words i just spoke three pending civil litigation to which the city is a party and four labor relations agreements with employees now i'd like to invite into the city council for the second session um jessie baker steve lock paul connor collin mcneill and tom and janet bellavance for item one uh jessie baker steve lock paul connor collin mcneill robin jeffers carol mcquillan in decession two with the council and also then uh jessie baker steve lock and collin mcneill for items three and four okay second second all in favor aye and we will not be coming back um with any votes so we will adjourn all right and we're going to okay