 Do we expect Jeff Munger? I don't think he said. No, we don't, okay. All right, let's call it a session this Board of Airport Commissioners. And the first item is the agenda. Is there motion to accept the agenda as presented or are there any amendments? I said we'll move to adopt the agenda as presented. I will add a agenda item at the end, general affairs. At the last item just before, it's sort of similar to our commissioners' items. I put out 11A, I think it's where it is. Yeah, but I put out 11A for whatever reason. Yeah. And the other amendments. Did you get, I don't know if you got a second on that. Did you get a second on that? The second on you. Second. Most of them made the second to accept the agenda as amended. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor of saying aye. Opposed no. We have an agenda. Next item is a public forum. Is anyone here for the public forum in, in the right room at the airport or online? No public forum. Seeing none group. We'll close that item. And we'll move on to a wildlife presentation. With the. Jake. May I introduce him to you? I'm sorry. Can I introduce him to you? Go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. Thank you. Thank you. Today there he is. We have Mr. Jake Borgson. He's our USDA wildlife biologist at the airport. He's been here. Almost 10 years. I believe. Is that right? Jake. We are in our ninth year now. Yeah. Ninth year. You all just recently approved a contract extension. With the USDA. Services specifically with Jake. He has an office on the facility that we give to him and. And he is. Critical to our operations, critical to our training and critical to our operations staff were out on the airfield day in and day out. Not going to steal his thunder though, but Jake, take it away. And you have in front of you lots of the airport commissioners. Chairman Bill Kehoe, vice chair, Tim George. Commissioner Jeff Shulman. Commissioner Helen Ray Lee. And then of course the airport team. Inside the room here. Excellent. Thank you, Nick. Yeah. And first and foremost, I just want to extend. You know, a welcome to you in my virtual platform here. Things have certainly been interesting. We know with all of us with. With the pandemic. The one thing that we always kind of shed light on is. The animals don't know COVID. So we've been operational as, as need be throughout the entirety of this. And you know, I want to just thank Nick and the entire, you know, airport team there for, for making the, the effort somewhat seamless, you know, with the ongoing situation. So I guess Nick, well, I have to just request that you change slides here for me. Is that how you want to do this? All right. Excellent. So what I'll kind of do is just run through a, a brief history of our time here at Burlington. So it's actually extended longer than the actual current nine years, ongoing nine years that I have been full time at the airport, but our involvement with USDA presence on the airport actually began well before even 2011 with the initial wildlife hazard assessment that was performed. So essentially after the miracle on Hudson, the FAA really called certificated airports in general to really start to look at and do a little bit more with, with wildlife on airports and, and namely the bird hazard. And as we all know, and are familiar with that story, certainly it's, it's something that brought wildlife to the forefront of, of airports aviation and aviation safety. So with that, the FAA called a lot of airports to do hazard assessments. Now a lot of you are probably wondering, what is a wildlife hazard assessment? Well, essentially in short, it's a year long comprehensive study of the airport to essentially look at all things birds, all things mammals. So what we're trying to survey is essentially the overall utilization of birds, trends in bird and wildlife utilization of the airport and outside aspects around the airport that may create a hazardous condition as well. So in that year long study, it gives a snapshot for the airport and for wildlife managers such as myself to be able to then look at the airport as a whole and better manage the, the wildlife hazard for aviation. After that hazard assessment was completed. It in turn created what most airports adhere to is called a wildlife hazard management plan. That's where we started to come into play more on a full time basis back in 2013. So yes, birds and mammals have always been around airports. However, in the last 15 years or so now airports have done a lot more with wildlife, try to reduce that aviation safety aspect of things. So, so meetings apparently started not hearing any audio. I'm not sure who that was talking or what the question was there. That's okay. Nick, I can keep going on here. Yeah. Mute out. So what ended up happening in 2013 is essentially with the cooperation of Bruins International. We are able to secure both federal and city-appropriated monies to basically get us on full time. I think we're good now. Let's see. All right. Can you all hear me fine? All right. I'm going to keep moving on. So essentially, like I said, back in 2013, we secured a cost share agreement with the airport as well as with the Vermont Air National Guard for full-time USDA presence. In turn, that basically meant that we were going to have a full-time wildlife biologist on site to work cooperatively with both Burlington International, the Vermont Air National Guard, Army National Guard, and the entirety of offsite, you know, potential hazards. That we run into. We'll talk about a little of that moving forward. And mostly notably since then in recent years, there has been a call for some increased USDA presence in response to the newly acquired F-35s. So we're able to secure some additional federal funds to then have not only myself as an FAA-qualified wildlife biologist, but also the assistance of a full-time wildlife technician. That wildlife technician is enabled to fill in during times of increased wildlife activities such as migrations, as well as to really focus more primarily on the offsite hazard of things. And that being our newly kind of acquired offsite location at Camp Johnson. Camp Johnson often at times does harbor large numbers of large birds, and that was an increased hazard of interest for the Vermont Air National Guard. So that's where we are now. Like I said, over time since 2013, it has been a cost-share funding between the National Guard and the Burlington International Airport. And Nick did allude to the fact that we did just a large five-year cooperative service agreement between Burlington International and ourselves here. So next slide, Nick. So essentially what is the cooperative mission? Well, with us here on board, as well as for the Burlington International, Vermont Air National Guard, our goal is safer skies for all who fly. That includes aircraft, you know, traffic and passengers, pilots as well as birds. You know, it's a conjoined effort for a, for a, you know, wide range of species as well as a wide range of aircraft that we deal with here at this little, little airport here right in Burlington. So essentially what USDA does is assist the teams at Burlington, as well as Vermont Air National Guard with wildlife hazard mitigation. In that, we adapt and adhere to BTB. This is a working document that is annually approved and revised through FAA involvement in standards. Like I said, it's a working document in the fact that as wildlife presence may increase or things change or trends change, airfield utilization changes or offsite potential hazards in the future. So this is a working document that is annually approved and revised through FAA involvement in standards. So as we work on the potential hazards evolve, we can then adapt this plan. With the folks at Burlington and the wildlife team, which involves Nick and the entire operation staff. To create a plan that adapts so that we're on the up and up as far as, you know, evolving to these increased potential wildlife hazards. I can tell you things change from one year to the next, because we're not going to see them anymore. We may not see them in the fall, though, and we may see more of one bird or wildlife species that's a hazard one year where we may not see them the next. Things vary widely by, by seasonality and by even major weather patterns. We may see birds that move into this area from significant tropical systems that move up through the Champlain Valley. We see heavy bird traffic through the migration season. Namely the most prolonged migration being the fall season. So we're not going to see them in the fall season. We're not going to see them in the fall season either. Coincidentally, at the time of this meeting, we are really right starting to get into right now. And I can shed some light on that in a little bit here. So as far as the Air National guards equivalent to BTVs wildlife hazard management plan, we have what's called a bash when that is the bird wildlife aircraft strike hazard plan. Essentially, this is the Air Force's involvement with all the while still maintaining military war fighting capabilities in the presence of wildlife and bird species on and around airports. With all of these plans comes inherent trainings. That's where we also come into play for the airport team, as well as the air guard members, essentially through FAA qualifications. The airport qualified wildlife biologist has to administer annual wildlife hazards training every 12 consecutive months. So typically for us at Burlington that occurs in June, as well as our revision of our wildlife hazard management plan. And essentially it's a, it's a full day's worth of training for all the staff members at Burlington, any new hired operations staff members receive initial training. And as they stick around through that first year, we'll then be lumped into the annual June training. So this is a comprehensive training. It keeps everybody, you know, well-adapt and with the abilities of mitigating wildlife hazards on the airport. And we'll talk about some of those techniques in a little bit as well. With our annual review of the wildlife hazard management plan, essentially what we do, mostly pre-pandemic and hopefully we get back to this is we, we try to get a big group of folks from the airport together to go over this plan. So that we have a wide range of tenant, possible interests, airline or interests, et cetera. So that we can adequately reflect the constituents on the airport for creating a plan that we all agree on is doing what it needs to do. And what we need to do is, is what we feel is the right overall alternative on the airport. We also have a good hand with the, with the BTB team with their annual FAA wildlife review. So when the airport has their annual FAA inspection, basically within that, there is a pretty large section to deal with wildlife. And the FAA will come in and make sure that the airport is in turn doing an adequate job of addressing the wildlife hazard on the airport. So that comes down to not only the airport, but also they look at the wildlife training records for the operations team and staff members. They also look at the observation log that the airport holds. So any of the operations folks who are out doing airfield inspections, it's their job. So that comes down to not only just what they visually observe or don't observe on the airport via either daytime or nighttime surveys, but also they look at the wildlife training records for the inspections. It's their job to also record wildlife observations while out there. This is a standard that the FAA holds. We have an online catalog database for these observations. And essentially it provides a long-term trend for the airport and for us as a management team to also see and study and track what's going on in the airport from one year to the next. Next slide. So how do we do this? Well, essentially USDA's overall mission is to provide federal leadership and expertise towards resolving wildlife conflicts to allow people in wildlife to coexist. So you can just imagine in that mission statement that obviously on an airport, we run into a gamut of different issues to create an environment where not only wildlife and people can coexist, but birds and wildlife can then safely circumvent air traffic. And in doing that, it creates a really complex, diverse environment. There's a lot going on in these airports. And not many folks realize how attractive airports truly are to wildlife. For all of us that have been in an airplane, the best way I can describe it is if you're at high altitude and you cross an airport, literally it's an island of attractive habitat for birds. And just simply looking at it from elevation, you can see it's a unique element, I guess, so to speak, of the landscape. And that alone in itself is attractive for birds and wildlife and birds and mammals. Airports can provide food, water, shelter, cover in a travel corridor for birds. There's a wider range. I could talk all day about what we actually see on the airport that may attract certain birds, whether it's just habitat needs in general, or whether it's food items through invertebrates, such as earthworms coming out of the soil. Stuff like that can all play a major role in this complex diverse environment that we're dealing with to try to make the safest environment for flying that we can. So the program biologists provides technical assistance and direct management operations using an integrated wildlife damage management approach. So like I said, in a diverse environment, such as an airport like we have here adjacent to a major body of water like Lake Champlain, a historic migratory flyway, we use a lot of different techniques to integrate this damage management approach so that we then have a not only just an operations team at the airport, but also a wildlife hazard management plan that then in turn adequately addresses the wildlife concern, whether it be spring, summer, fall or winter. So like I said, we're using a dynamic approach. The best techniques possible. We alter these techniques as technology changes. We try to use them sparingly over time so that wildlife doesn't become habituated to these techniques. But essentially everything that we do really serves on the foundation of habitat management. So you all may ask the question of what can you do on an airport to really kind of create a habitat that may not be very desirable for birds. Namely large birds, which you know create the more damaging or more significant strike events overall nationally. So what can we do? Well, on the airport we can reduce the availability of brush and cover that birds and other mammals may seek as refuge. We can plant grass species on the airfield that in turn are not attractive for say forging migratory Canada geese. In that, you know, avoiding species such as clovers, ryegrass, which produces seeds, which have been attracted to small mammals, rodents, as well as small bird species. When we have prey based items like small mammals that are attracted to say seed producing grass species or fruit producing seeds, we then have a larger predatory aspect of things with larger bird species such as say red-tailed hawks, snowy owls, paragon falcons, and American kestrels. I will talk a lot about raptor translocation efforts here in just a bit. We also look outside the airport. We keep a clean fence line. If you have noticed around the airport, as in the last hint for years, the fence line has drastically been cleaned up. I tip my hat to the team at Burlington for that. FAA recommendations were to remove vegetation 10 to 20 feet around the airport while the airport went to the highest extent of at least 20 feet. And for anybody who has walked the fence line in recent years past, you will notice that. Why we do that is so we can see the fence line. So the fence line is maintained so that we can exclude large mammals from attempting to get on or incurred on the airfield. It also is a great security aspect for the security team at the airport, whether it's on the Burlington side or the Air National Guard side. Also, what comes with wildlife is edge. And for anybody who has any sort of wildlife knowledge, birds and mammals like to traverse on the edges of habitat changes. For example, in the airport when we have a vast environment of grass and pavement, a sea of pavement, so we say, you then have the hard woodline edge in a lot of places. That's attractive for birds. That's a travel corridor for other animals. Birds like to perch on it. So the further we can then move this attractive habitat element away from the runway, the better off we are as far as keeping birds and other mammals away from the runway. While on the airport we have ongoing communication with air traffic control operations, pilots and ground managers. If we're on the airfield as well as the BTV team, if there's birds that are present in numbers that are potentially creating a hazardous environment, that information is then relayed to air traffic control and air traffic control does a great job here at Burlington of alerting pilots in the area of potential bird activity. That could be just simply from regular observations that we've having on the ATIS to say, hey, increased bird activity, use caution in the Champlain Valley. It could be a recent vulture sighting of a towering bird over the approach or departure of one of our runways. That alone right there, just being able to have real time communication with air traffic control can definitely have a dramatic play in reducing or eliminating a potential catastrophic or significant damaging strike with a large bird, say of vulture size. We see bald eagles towering the airfield, Canada geese movements, waterfowl, gulls, raptors, you name it. So what we also do and provide to the airport is continued monitoring and surveying. So I talked about our wildlife hazard assessment and what that is and essentially now moving forward, we have an ongoing wildlife hazard assessment going with our continued monitoring and surveillance. So what we do is we go out on the airport and we do regular systematic surveys throughout the months, throughout the seasons, and we document what we see out there. We vary times, whether it's morning, midday, evening, afternoon and nights. And it gives us an overall ongoing wildlife hazard assessment so that we can then see any potential changes or alterations in wildlife trends on the airport. With wildlife on airports, I talked about the Hudson incident, really getting things on the forefront of where they are now. Well, with that comes wildlife strike reporting. If we did not have wildlife strike reporting and we didn't have the ability of members of staff, such as operations at the airport and ourselves to document and sample wildlife remains discovered on aircraft or found on the runway, we would then simply not have the data set that we have now to really be able to utilize a trend to say, you know, we now can confidently say to airfield and wildlife managers what we typically encounter on the airfield and what aircraft typically strike on the airport. So at Burlington International from the last 30 or so years of wildlife strike data, both the American Kestrel and Ringville Gulls serve as the number one and number two, respectively, birds that are struck by aircraft. Both are birds that are in high or large numbers on or around the airport at times and both can pose significant wildlife strike hazards to aircraft. I talked about wildlife exclusionary methods. Our primary method at Burlington is to keep a healthy sturdy fence line. We do a tremendous amount of dispersal, harassment and translocation on the airfield as well as other direct control measures. Like I said, habitat management serves as the foundation and then all of our methods on top of that enhance that overall effort made by habitat management. So next slide. In the wildlife strike hazard at Burlington is real. These are not catalog photos that I got off a national database. These are photos that actually occurred right here at Burlington. So for any non-believers, these are real true events that have happened that we've collected. So here on the left where you see the 3-7, that is a jet blue aircraft that came in with a juvenile Ringville Gull in the landing gear, did some minor damage to the interior flaps of the aircraft. But you can just imagine the severity of, say, a one to three pound bird if it's in a full ingestion, engine ingestion on any of these aircraft. On the right, this is another Ringville Gull strike on a final approach to runway 15. I believe this occurred right over the Winooski River area. No damage to the aircraft. However, you can see what we have notably documented and referred to as SNARG on the aircraft. SNARG is any sort of tissue remains that are recovered on an aircraft, which we can then sample, collect material, and send to the Smithsonian Institute, where they then can do sort of forensic analysis on this DNA and feather and tissue remains to then give us just about 100% return rate with good samples on what exact species that was. If we didn't have the ability to send the DNA samples or the SNARG out to a facility like the Smithsonian, we would not have the amount of information that we do now nationally for wildlife strikes in general. Next slide. I talked about American Kestrels as our number one struck bird species on the airport. Well, this photo on the left is just that. Here's a leading edge strike to a commercial aircraft. And I like this photograph and I like to show it because it shows the fact that right behind where that aircraft was struck is the main engine. And what can happen with a lot of these birds after they're struck is then they get fully ingested by that motor. By ingested, I mean literally sucked in through the vacuum of the engine. And then for whatever material is left is then exiting out the back of the aircraft. From FAA standards and from wildlife strike hazard documentation over the time, full engine ingestions is our number one cause of concern. Makes sense. When birds go into engines, that's when we can have engine failure and what occurred at a situation like the Hudson and other incidents is across the board over time is with engine failure. And that's when we can have engine failure. And that's when we can have engine failure. Simply we've created an environment now where that aircraft is possibly destined for a crash or a fatality. Jake. Yeah. Can you, this is great stuff. Can you kind of wrap it up in about five minutes or so? Yeah, I'm just about done that. Thank you very much. Yep. What we've got here on the right is a red tail hawk strike. This is with a small aircraft. So quite a bit of damage here as well. Here's wildlife strike reporting nationally. I just want you all to see that wildlife strikes are on the rise. This is a large data set that we have. You can see where we are now currently in light of COVID. There has been a little bit of a drop in strikes, but this is where we are through 2019. Next slide. When does strikes typically happen at Burlington? Well, you can see the vast majority of strikes occur right where we are now. I talked about fall migration. We have seen fall migration picking up in the last two days. Nick, you and I will talk about this in days moving forward. But essentially most of our birds are struck late summer through the early onsets and into mid fall. Next slide. I just wanted to show you all to that birds are typically struck closer to the ground, essentially below 3,500 feet. So when we talk about airfield environments and where birds typically stand around airports, if you're below 3,500 feet or even below 500 feet, for that matter, that's where typically 70% of all strikes occur. So that being said, just remember now that almost or most all bird strikes with aircraft occur in the airfield environment. Next slide. So just to give you a quick snapshot of one of our real success programs here at the airport is Raptor capture, capture birds on the airfield safely. We administer bands on them so that we can have some sort of Markership on these birds to examine the overall success of our program. These birds are very prone to aircraft strikes the way they forge and fly around the airport. This is the nature of how they fly. Birds are then released at suitable habitats at previous years. Locations typically 30 to 80 miles from the airport. And in this, if you can go to the next slide, Nick. We have had about a 1% return rate of all birds that have been relocated or translocated for that matter from the airport. We know kestrels are the number one struck species. This is why we have such an intense program. We've had a decline in overall kestrel strike. Associated with aircraft as this program has, has increased. And you can see here when typically strikes occur and when typically translocations with these birds is going on. Next slide. Here's kestrel strikes in general at Burlington in the last 10 years or so. Right now we have on average two to three kestrel strikes a year. When at times before we really did much. We were having upwards of 10 strikes or more by just this bird species alone. So the overall trend is, is going down. That's good. If we can keep it there. That's a, a slam dunk program. I didn't mean to rush through some of that towards the end. I can talk like I said all day, but if you want to go to the next slide, Nick, if anybody has any questions for me, I'm certainly here. If we have time, if not, certainly can reach out to Nick or the team or myself and we can answer those questions. Any questions of Jake. I'll try to be quick, but Jake, thanks very much. That was a really interesting presentation. A couple of try to make quick questions. So just so I'm clear, your position. Is funded through a combination of help me understand how is your position. Yeah, so to USDA with wildlife services is a unique federal agency in the fact that we operate on cooperative dollars. We simply are not funded on, on federal appropriated monies. We need to collect money through a variety of different sources in order to be able to be operational. So with our program at Burlington international, we basically have a cost share agreement between Burlington international airport and federal monies that we get from the National Guard Bureau through the modern National Guard. Okay. So it's very interesting. All right. Yeah. I'd be interested to talk more about that. And then just quickly. I'm just curious. Do pilots try to avoid birth? Like if they see a flock of birds, will they adjust their, their direction? Absolutely. Yeah. And when I talked about our communication with air traffic control, yeah. The, the tower has the ability to have aircraft even go around. We've had that occur here on, on, on a few occasions where bird numbers were heavy enough before we were able to disperse them effectively. That the, the pilot under their own, um, you know, judgment or tower will, will simply allow them to do a go around. We've even had it happen with military aircraft. Um, in our opinion, it's better to be safe than sorry. Um, so through that communication, we have the ability then for tower to leave it even up to the pilot's judgment for, for even approaches and takeoffs. Um, as to the bird abundance, what they may be the overall location and then they can kind of alter their, their, their course, so to speak, or, or, uh, flight pattern for that, um, you know, increased presence. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? I just have one. Good. So over the last. Collet five to 10 years, what are some of the most significant incidences that have impacted aircraft as a result of wildlife at the airport? Um, the most significant we've had this year, we had a full engine ingestion with a pair of falcon this past summer. Paragon falcon numbers are one of those raptors that's on the increase overall, uh, population wise. Um, as far as this year goes, that's the most significant we've had. Um, years past, we've had other ingestions. We, you know, some of those photos, they just kind of showed you all of those. Um, are certainly some of our more extreme events. Um, but we treat all birds, um, differently as well. How they occupy the airport. Um, overall historical damages on a national level. Uh, to aircraft as well. And if, if you all want some homework for yourself, check out the FAA as well. I've striked database. Uh, you can type in any airport that you've ever been to. Um, Burlington is one of those and you can see, um, the real time data that's there of birds that have contacted aircraft. And I can tell you the amount of birds that'll show up on that database will surprise a lot of you. Thank you, Jake. Any other questions? Jake, thank you. It's amazing. The services that you provide. Just think the million passengers, the community, the staff, the staff, the staff, the staff, the staff, the staff, the staff, the staff, the staff, the staff, the staff, the staff, the staff, the staff, you know, I think that many passengers are coming out of this airport. I have no idea. What you guys do to keep our, our planes safe. So thank you for what you do for us. And appreciate your presentation today. It was very enlightening. Yeah, thank you, I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you, Nick. And the team. the consent agenda. Is there a motion? And move that we approve the contents of the consult agenda as presented. Is there a second? Is there a second? Yes, I second. Thank you. Most of them made a second to accept the consent agenda in the discussion. Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. I'll oppose no. Toward the next one is a 601 status of the director of aviation position. I will waive that because we expect to have the mayor. Oh, he's here. Okay. We're subject to the name, St. Bill Keogh, Barrow Weinberger. Welcome, Mayor, I didn't see you. Come ahead. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Go ahead. Well, I'm glad to be here. Is it our customary pick it off mask when we're speaking? Is that? So thank you for the opportunity to come and just be with this mission as we take the next steps with moving through this challenging period where of course none of us participated or desired. Thank you. I've received communications from many of you in recent weeks. This has been a very challenging time. I am glad that Council took the action they did last week which has allowed us I think to some clarity about where we stand and where we go from here. I care about this commission a lot. You all know I served on this commission for nine years before stepping down when I was elected mayor. And I basically wanted to be here to assure you that city is all just doing everything we can to support Nick and the team in this transition that can I only be meeting earlier today and the kind of full tools of the city hall are available to support the airport in any way needed. I think you're a lot. I believe we are incapable hands with Nick's leadership during this period. I think he's already been in this acting role now for a couple of months and from everything I'm aware of this period has gone very well. And I know he's taking steps to further strengthen the team during this period. And I know there's a lot of positive things happening. I was very encouraged to hear that the second major grant of pending civic assistance funding has come through and that really puts us to think it's very reassuring to know that we have that level of financial support from the federal government when we do see the implements and revenues recovering but that we know we're not back to where we were before. So I think having really encouraged about how I understand the financial situation is being managed and wanted to be available to you for any questions that you had that we can answer in this forum and also available to commissioners in other ways. It has been challenging up until the investigation was done and we got clear about where we're going there's an ability to communicate with you all which is pretty limited but we're out of that period now and I why answering questions I can offer the commissioning support that it is during this period. So that's really why. The question is over there. I have a couple by me. I have one too. How long do you anticipate this search will take place? And secondly, do you plan to go national for a director or have you gone that far yet? Thanks, Bill. Yeah, I am not kind of nailed down all the details about how we will proceed to a permanent director and I would welcome either now or as follow up to this any thinking the commission has on that. I both, for a variety of reasons which I get into a little bit, I don't plan but immediately initiate a search and a whole search process. Again, I have a lot of confidence index and I think we can take some, I don't feel nervous for urgency to move to that at this moment but I would welcome it but from the commission again either here or another way if you feel that that is something that needs to be moved on quickly. I do think generally I do not make permanent appointments without going through a search process and it is, see I haven't completely made the decision that's how we will do this but that's sort of my default is that we will go through a national search process before we name a permanent director but I will welcome the commission's input about that decision and if we do go through a search I wanna assure the commission, as it says in the charter we will have a search committee that will have two members of the airport commission serve on that search committee and look forward to working with the commission in that way on that search. Thank you. Helen did you have a question? Yes I did. Hello and welcome Mayor Weinberger. I was just curious in terms of your thinking and it's probably too soon now but I was concerned in the past about the, I guess the role that the airport commission has in terms of evaluating or providing you and the council the city council of Burlington evaluation about whomever is the director. And I'm wondering if you're considering or working on ways to either include us more or share with the commission the processes that you use in order to make those kinds of evaluations. So we don't have another situation as we've just experienced. Great, I appreciate the chance to talk about that and had noted some comments that you had made and one reason I didn't wanna be here and talk about this explicitly, especially, so let me start by saying what we do do from the mayor's office perspective and what our hopes and expectations are with the existing process and then try to address your question if they're gonna make any changes to it. We, our apartment heads are appointed on an annual basis. There are a couple charter exceptions the tax assessor and the HR director have longer appointments but all other department heads is the mayor has discretion how long the appointment terms are. And my practice as I think has been pretty similar to prior mayors has been to make only one year appointments. I do it that way because I want the appointment process itself to be to add some accountability and discipline and trigger to the kind of oversight of the department heads. When for the department heads, the majority of department heads like the vice director work with a commission and we have had a regular practice of in the months leading up to reappointment requesting input from the commission about that reappointment. And that is intended to be that is a sincere request for any input that commissions have. And some of the discussions in the media I think it may have come across as if like that was a perfunctory step. I wanted to be really clear I don't see it as a perfunctory step. I see I respect commissions. I know you all put time into it. A lot of time into this, you put a lot more time into airport issues in some sense than I'm able to. And that is a sincere earnest request that the commission in whatever way seems appropriate to that commission. We have not dictated that or felt was appropriate for us to sort of lay out exactly how any commission should do that but get to us in either in any feedback you have about that reappointment. And I will say it is there have been multiple times in my time in this office where the feedback we've gotten from commissions has not been entirely positive and has at times started a process of making a change. And so I just I want this opportunity to say to you all directly and say publicly that that that's the feedback I'm looking for you when making that request. And I hope that's clear and that makes sense. We have all that said, I think it is fair for the question, is there additional support or specific specificity that we could ask for? We have at times over the last nine years sent specific goals that we are working on with versus various departments asked commissions to weigh in on the degree to which you feel we are making progress. If there's if there are things that I could do and see how team could do that would be helpful to you going to an annual process of weighing in, we should talk about that. And there may be more that would make sense to do and some change the process along those lines. I will say we are before and I love, I'll stop talking a moment, I love your response. The city's ability, we are set up in a way that gives department heads a lot of authority and independence. And we are not, we do not have a system of deputy mayors, for example, there are something like 25 people that in our system, the system that I kind of inherited basically and I take responsibility for it but I just want to make clear this isn't has been this is not just the practice of this administration. There are a large number of department heads and the city has never kind of resourced deputy mayors or some other kind of level of oversight of department heads that would be required if we were to want a very different system than we currently have. Our system depends a little bit on our smallness. I mean, I tend to believe generally speaking when there are problems in the city, the mayor's office finds out automatic. Our system requires is a, like many, as like as similar to code enforcement, we have a complaint based system in HR basically and ultimately it is that complaint based system that worked here and that brought it up in a short period of time, some attention and action. Those are the systems we have. I would, if we want to move to a different system, I guess I'm trying to say it might require resources that we don't have today, but I'm high too in a little bit. You know, I think we should learn everything we can from this situation and it is jarring that these concerns that were raised so strongly during these investigations did not come to you or me previously. And I think that should have us on reflecting on whether there needs to be changes. I think we should not, I also think, you know, we're, yeah, let me leave it at that for now. I have to talk in private time. Hello, may interject this. I think every year the commission has been given a letter that's perfunctory written and we just signed it. I think that we made some minor changes this past year. I can assure you that we will schedule a review of the director, whoever it is, and we will write that letter and not staff. So you can, you can bet on that one. Well, I think we need to think about how to do that. And I would welcome a little more conversation, I guess, and discussion about how to go about that. I also, I mean, the allegations made it sound as if the staff or the employees at the airport did not have like a safe way to complain or lodge concerns that perhaps is not our bailiwick to develop that. But I think that might be helpful as well. And maybe I'm wrong, but if this was brand news to the mayor, then it would appear that people who felt ill-served or treated didn't have a way to express that in a safe way and not potentially lose their job or something like that. So I think that's another area for contemplation. I don't have the answer to it, but I think it's important to make sure that Nick continues as a good director. And I have a lot of faith in him as well, but I think that's all I'll say. So I appreciate your candor, mayor. And we look forward to having a conversation, I think amongst the commissioners and with you about how to move forward in a better way. Mayor? Yeah, thank you. And I do just want to, we are definitely digging into exactly that issue. Is some kind of new system, why is something new needed for employees to feel safe raising concerns? It does seem there may have been, and I would say I don't think we fully have our arms around yet. The degree to which some of these concerns, the degree to which it is that issue that employees did not have a safe place to go, that is one of the things for trying to understand better and consider it may well be recommending changes. And you're right, I don't yet have a recommendation there. It is definitely one of the things we're considering. It does also as we get deeper into this, I kind of have increasing indications that there may have been some of, I don't, I think some of the concerns and may have been relatively recent in the way in which they became as acute as they were. I think there's some changes in Jean's role during overtime that may have impacted how this unfolded as well. So we are, I think there may well be more for us to talk about. I'm sure there'll be more for us to talk about. I'm not able to address all that in this meeting, but I basically wanted to come here and say, yes, we're working on all this and we'll talk to you further. And thank you, Bill, Chair, for, I don't quite understand how to agree to change a perfunctory effort that was never, I just wanted, that was never my intent. And it never will be my intent. And let's make sure that doesn't happen again. We let that go, okay? I'll accept some responsibility for that. Also, I had some information that's been in the press and I didn't know where to go with that information. I didn't know whether it was Mayor's office or the Commission and I just withdrew anyway. So as long as there's going to be fixed, so we have a whistleblower process or whatever else you want to call it. Any other questions from the Commission? Yeah, Bill, yeah, first of all, thanks for coming to the meeting today. I know it's sort of the first opportunity that you've had since the situation was clarified. And I think we all respect the confidential nature of this kind of personnel matter. I was happy to hear you just talk about the resources from the city that are available to Nick and the team at the airport. I think all of us are, you know, ultimately our focus is on making sure that the airport is thriving and it's healthy. And one of the first things that, you know, one of the realities of this just looking objectively is that we're sort of down an executive level person. You know, Nick had a full-time job before he became the interim director. And I guess I'm interested to hear, and maybe this is to you, Nick, as well, but just sort of, you know, the plan and maybe it's an evolving plan, but just to make sure that, you know, the airport remains healthy and vibrant. And it's obviously a critical time just coming back from COVID. I'm happy to get a first shout at that and then probably just probably have more texture to that, Nick, I think of it. Definitely one of the things that Nick and I discussed today is that there has been a vacancy at one of the deputy director positions for some time and Nick wants to take action to fill that. And I fully support that as well as he laid out for me. And I'm sure a few guys have started to discuss this or not, but if not, I'm sure you will, a related reorg within part of one branch of the airport operations that probably makes sense to do simultaneously with filling that position and that. So I green lighted Nick in developing that and bringing it to you and then the council to get that reorg done. So both moving forward with filling the position, deputy director position immediately and then this modest reorg. Yeah, I think we basically have a situation now that between the decision to keep that deputy position open previously and what's happened with Jean that we've essentially had one person for a couple of months now at least filling three roles. That's untenable, it's got to change. So I think we're looking to address that quickly. What do you want to add to that, Nick? Yeah, I think the critical piece that you mentioned is the operations side of the equation. So safety and security, we just had the presentation from Jake, that's a small portion of what we're going through. And that's why that position that deputy director of aviation operations is the critical path for me to rehire that immediately so that we can have that coordination efforts among both the operations team and the maintenance team on our airfield, on our safety and our security requirements. I think we have an outstanding and a very safe and secure airport but I do think it also is too much for one individual regardless of if that individual is here. So I'm working eagerly with the mayor's office and the mayor himself to perform these actions. Go ahead and do that. Anyone else? I guess I just thought about something. Actually, guys, think about how the performance review process works for department heads. Yeah, I don't focus just on the airport. Yeah, the same issue for this multiple places. So I actually think of what the inputs are going to be part of that process. It'd be great if you sort of kind of maybe a representative of a bunch of different commissions to weigh in on the commission as to how we can contribute to that. Anyone else? That's it, Mayor. Thank you very much for coming. Take the rest of the day off. Well, thank you. It is good to be back here with you and thank you for your service during this important time for the airport. And let's do this again, sir. Good, okay. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah, thank you, Mayor. Oh, now we go to some reeling from that area. I don't know. I was very productive. I appreciate it being here. I think all of you guys appreciate that. Just hear you right from the other side. Next item is the Action Items, the Airport American Rescue Plan Act Grants. Is there a motion? I move that we recommend for approval by the Board of Finance and City Council to accept the FAA, Airport American Rescue Plan Grant Act. That motion remains there a second. Come on. I'll second. Thank you. Larry, you want to explain that? Is that yours or is that? I'll start it real quick. Okay. And then pass it to the room. Yeah, and give us the 10 minute version. The 10 minute version. What? What? What? I don't get any sense. I thought from 60 words. So this is our third grant as part of some of the coronavirus eight packages that have gone out. We've had CARES, we've had CURSA or CRSSN. This is probably the final one, or at least the final one that we've heard of in legislation, totally $7.6 million. Some of that, most of that's over $7 million associated with helping us directly on our operating budget, day to day activities here at the airport, as well as filling in some of the local shares from some of the larger grants that you have approved fast. It's similar to the CURSA grant funds. There's also a portion of this that can directly help airport terminal concessionaires like restaurants and or using gifts and product companies with some of the shortfalls in their revenues as well. The total is just shy of $600,000 on helping them alleviate some of their obligations to the airport. All of these funds essentially do come to us on a reimbursement basis, similar to all of the other grants that you've heard of from the FAA over the years. And we are exceptionally happy to receive these grants and I'll leave you with that. So we are, this is, it's like a really good, we know that there's still variability and uncertainty that will continue with the Delta variant or will continue with COVID and any other variants that is going to affect our traffic. And that traffic has a direct, as it goes up and it goes down and it's going to have a direct and quick impact on to our revenues. So we are, this is a huge, again, you know, positive shot in the arm in terms of, it is a four year grant. It's very important because as the recovery takes time to have it and maybe goes up and down, we're going to get into our revenues, we know we're going to see some vulnerability with that. We just don't know quite what it looks like. But this does help to guarantee and ensure that the airport will continue to be strong, be a lively, financially option here for the airport and we'll be able to continue to use that as we need to support and cover those operational expenses should our revenues not be as high as we'd like them to be. Wow. Well, any questions, any questions on that issue? Any, any questions? Seeing none, are you ready for the question? If so, all in favor, see if I'm saying aye. Aye. I'll oppose no to order. Next one is, did you cover the grant amendment as well? I did not. Okay. So I would like to move that we recommend for approval by the Board of Finance and City Council, EAT 127 grant amendment. Most remade and seconded by somebody. Second. Explanation, who's going to do the explanation? Most remade and seconded. Looks like we haven't lost Jeff Shulman too. He's not here. Stay right. No, there he is. Just regarding. All right, I'll take a quick step at this, Nick. All right, this is, we're doing a little housekeeping for this. We got an email from the FAA, and they, what happens is there are maybe other airports that didn't accept their grants. So they did a little reallocation. We got a $920 or $900, I want to say this right, is it $92 more? We already funded for the second stimulus package. We had already received $3.8 million. So we just wanted to make sure we can let you know that that happened, let you know that we didn't have to do anything special for other than email them. We only had to email them inside something that we're declining that $990. So we're excited. On top of that, just to be prepared, because that might happen with the ARPA grant funding, is the one that you just approved. There's a contingency in that approval that you just passed a minute ago, just in case that there is a reallocation. Okay. Any questions? It's all in favor of the motion, signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed no, so ordered. Next item is sound data, Hannah. No financial package. Oh, I'm sorry, financial package. Very good, Hannah. Very nice. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. I'll just go through. Would you like me to go through my notes? Sure. Okay. So I am, you know, this is, I feel like we've been turning the corner a bit. And on, we've been seeing, probably some of the complainant report, they aren't claiming to have to pause or we're seeing a lot more traffic. We see a few of the people out there. And so as we go through, I want to, I have kind of a, what I've included here is July, our P&L for July, and the cash report, the period ending in August. And then I just have to be able to get receivable. There is no debt coverage score provided for you as we're not paying any other than what is an escrow that is held by the trustee as we have post-blog payments to the refinancing of the, our debt. The, I have high levels, just I'm going to provide for you how we're using the line because we have three, well, we have two stimulus packages, one that you've approved tonight that we expect the annual issue of grants any day, actually. Hopefully, we know what's coming. We, I mean, could be 30 days out. We know it's coming. By the legislation, it has to be delivered by November of this year. Yeah. So we have two that we have re-received and I wanted to keep everybody informed with how we've been using that line. And it's great that we got it, but I think it's important, okay? How much we've drawn down, how much we got left. So for the CARES Act money, we've drawn down $7.3 million out of that 8.7. So we still have a little bit more than a million dollars left. And right now we're certainly reserved that we're able to use that not under the CARES Act for our local share portion on our grants. And the grants that we've gotten in the last like year and a half have all been 100% federal. There's no local share on them, except for the TIP project. But everything, the grant, other grants that we're still doing some construction on are other things some of them still have local share. We're using it on that. The second grant that we got, the CRS is a grant. We got a total actually a $4.404 million, including the concession money and including the money we got for our operational. We spent about $1.1 million. We just drew down some of our money that was $200,000 on there that I couldn't request for every safety tax. But so we still have about 1.7 something million dollars available. And we're gonna talk about, for July as I get a finance, I did not actually draw a need. Our revenues were much recovered. I did not need to draw now. Any of the stimulus money that helped me cover my operational expenses for the month of July. That's the first month I haven't needed. But the revenues have been recovered enough and sufficient enough to cover all of the operational expenses as well. So that was very, I'm very excited as your finance person here to make that. So I'm gonna talk about the year-day revenues. So in July, our year-day revenues were $1.6 million. And this is significantly higher because I last year, but last year, of course, we took a pretty big end. So why don't we let you know it's $736,000 higher than we took in July, 2020. But that was not a year. So I asked them to try to give some perspective to that number and look back two years and say, well, this is how, because just compare last year, sort of it's part of the story, it's not all the story. And so compared to two years ago, which was our highest year ever, if you look at our revenues, we're at 87% of two years of revenues. So July was well for us. And again, it's the more passengers that you have flying, that is where we saw those revenues really dip and those revenues were safe cut back. That'd be pretty well, pretty strongly with those recovered passengers. Our expenses were year-day for July were $850,000. So it's about $100,000 higher than the last, the previous year. And, but when I looked at it, some of the time when we paid a couple of big bills got paid maybe the end of July, when actually they got paid in a little bit in August. So a little bit of difference in timing those expenses. So all in all, pretty even bill or expenditures. Our cash is doing exceptionally well. We, and a lot of this had to do with those revenues that are coming in and July, August, I think it's gonna be as strong as July was. So our cash is up to $4.8 million. Bank, we don't follow the city anything. So we're doing well. I wanted to put a note in here that the annual update is in the finance group is actively preparing to close out the past year and let them do all of the reconciliation to make sure that the stuff that we have to go ahead, post that we posted via the year and our financial statements that we're working on, our auditors are coming in, I think about October 11th, 12th, they're coming that week. And- So they're coming on site because a lot of the audits are- Not, I'm not, I'm not sure I can be physically on site or if a lot of it, we upload pretty much everything they need anyway, we've been doing that for years. They came on site last year and they came on site for a single item last year. So we'll see what they choose to do. We can handle it with all the technology we have, we can handle it any way. So it doesn't, won't affect the outcome at all. And then our AI P2P single, we were owed about $2.3 million from the FAA. This is within the last couple of days. The FAA, they got a system that we use, it's called L-FI, and it's what we put our reimbursement request to get the money to reimburse back to us if we start with these grants. They close it down for about a month because it's the federal distributor that can't see in this September. And they're doing that now. So we just got a pretty much everything that we could go and put a request in, we did. And so it's just a change in the next week or so we're gonna see us about $1.4 million that we get back pretty quickly. So that concludes the highlights of my financial report. And I'm wondering if anybody has any questions. Any questions, Henry? I didn't know. Tim, go ahead. Two quick things. Maybe this was one of those timing issues, but I noticed that some of the computer-related expenses were substantially higher. So I did both versus budget, I think it's 39% for the full-year budget and up substantially from last year. Just as curious as the timing thing or if there's something.