 Call this meeting to order the Montpellier City Council. Our first order of business is to approve the agenda. We are going to make just a shuffle. A couple of things because part of the TIF workshop is going to be in private session, so we'll move that to the end. We have two agenda items. We'll just move those up and we'll do the council reports and so on beforehand and then people will have to wait around for us to go out and be in public. So we'll just do that last. And then I think that's it. Two addendum items. Anything else? Donna? I would like, probably I don't do this now, but I would like to move the Charter Amendment family with a clerk out of consent agenda. Okay, well we'll just go ahead and do that. Okay, any other changes to the agenda? If not, without objection, we'll consider the agenda approved. Next item is general business and appearances. It's an opportunity for anyone who's here to talk about something that's not on our agenda. To do so, I understand we have somebody here. Welcome. If you wouldn't mind just coming up to the mic, introduce yourself. Good evening. Hi. Thank you for having me here. My name is Sarah Deusterhoft and I am an AmeriCorps member serving with the Vermont Youth Development Corps. I'm the team leader for the program and I serve off the Bill Washington County, and I just wanted to bring to everyone's attention an event that I've been planning for Martin Luther King Day this coming Monday, January 15th. Every Martin Luther King Day is a day on, not a day off for AmeriCorps members and AmeriCorps members all across the country as well as community members are encouraged to volunteer and be active in their community. So I was responsible for putting together an event in town here and poster, poster for which I have here. It's just later on town. There will be a community lunch, a community dialogue and art project at the Unitarian Church on Main Street, and it will go from 11 a.m. to 3.30 p.m. So of course the lunch goes from 11 to 12.30 and then at one o'clock we'll switch gears to the community event and the art project that will focus on Martin Luther King's legacy, some of the issues facing our community, some of our strengths and ways to continue the efforts of my Martin Luther King and do find this community to remedy some of those issues. I think it will be a wonderful opportunity to get to know the AmeriCorps members who are I guess around central Vermont. We have about 10 of us or so, maybe a few more. So you'll see those faces there and of course community members as well. I think it will be a really wonderful time if you're able to attend or know someone who will be interested in coming. I strongly encourage and invite you to attend. And I'll leave this poster on the back table if that's all right. Sure. I have a second one, so if anyone wants to take one, post it somewhere they think it would be visible and useful for someone. That would be really wonderful and I hope to see you all there. It should be good food, good conversation, and thank you for your time. Thank you. Thanks so much for being here. And AmeriCorps, it's a great program. Yeah, it is. I'm very, very glad to be part of it. I appreciate all the work that you all do. Thank you. We've had great success with AmeriCorps VISTA people in our city. Yeah. We've already found in the area a lot more than in lots of other states so that's a great position. Great program. And I'll leave, I don't have business cards yet, but here's my contact information. I'll put it on the poster so if anyone wants to get in touch with me. Thank you. Okay, thanks very much. Okay, next item is the consent agenda. So we'll take off item B. Do we have much to approve the item A minutes? I'll move to approve it. I just want to confirm that we will discuss it tonight as it's a timely measure to get it on the ballot. The intent is to make a decision tonight. Yeah, the charter. Yeah. Yeah. Move to approve less. Second. Second. All in favor, please see aye. Aye. Opposed? Okay, so we'll get to the presentation by Public Safety Authority. Welcome. John, could we, that's the case, could we go ahead and do the... Do you want to wait a few minutes or we do a couple other things? Sure. Which, let's see... Yeah, sure. Let's get a couple other, I mean we've got some other things we could do. We'll just kind of keep going and raise your hand when you've got who you want. We don't normally move this fast. Yeah. I'm sure Tom's shocked. We start out, we start out fast and then we... Okay, Donna, do you have any concerns or issues about the charter movement? Well, I was trying to understand this. Is it everything under $100,000? Or is everyone is not charged their first $100,000? The first $10,000 of taxable property, if you have, or I should say, if you have $10,000 or under of taxable property, your bill will be zero. So if you have more than $10,000 of taxable property, then your complete property is taxed at the standard rate. So what it would do is get rid of these really tiny bills that everybody hates. The cost would be to the city between $11,000 and $12,000. Part of the reason why it's a good idea to do it now is that we're expecting much more than that to start coming in for the next tax year from some of these new businesses that are opening. So it'll be more than offset. So what it looks like, I'm going to say this and give away my political colors, which everybody already knows, it's a distribution, really. So it takes the pressure off the really smaller, lower income businesses and leans it a little heavy by default towards the bigger ones. It wouldn't change the rates. It's not going to change the rate. It's just a charter change that would exempt little tiny businesses that end up with $20, $30 bills. It's going to change the rate for everybody by $11,000 for all property tax players, including personal property tax. Well, in the sense that it would be offset. When you say that, you confuse me, Bill. When you say for everybody for the first $10,000. The numbers happen to be consistent. So there's the value of $10,000. We're talking about exempting. That results in $11,000 we won't collect in personal property tax. So all of those are part of the grand list. So when we set the taxes next year, we won't have that group of... So the entire grand list will have to pick up that $11,000, which is 0.12 cents or something like that. It's divided by 8, something quick. 1-2-5, I'm sure, as written it would work, by the way. So it would... Not only other personal property taxes, but regular property taxes would have to absorb that difference. That's what I'm saying. And this is a low enough marker because one of the pieces we got was a comment about not putting all of it on the bigger businesses. So is it equitable in that way? Well, I'm not sure what you're asking. It's looking at it from the opposite direction. It's looking at it from... John wasn't... I'm not trying to cut you off here, but I know what she's referring to. It was an email we got. So Jean asked about what would happen if we exempted everybody under $500,000. And the idea would be more business-friendly. And it turns out the bulk of our money is in the $500,000 and over, about 75% of it. But it's only seven accounts. So I just posed the question, is there an issue of... Are you creating a tax for seven accounts to bring in this money? And where's the equities? Burlington, for example, exempts their bottom $40,000. But I just don't know where that line is drawn. Or if there is a... You're talking about eliminating all of it. Then you're just whopping a tax on a very small handful. I'm going to get out there and support it, but I couldn't support that. So there's the politics of it. There's also the legality. Can we actually do that? I don't understand that. We're drawing a line just no matter where you draw the line. But is there... I don't know. If you draw the line too small, then you're going to set up an argument that they're specifically being targeted. This is an arbitrary tax that is just targeting them and a few other businesses. It's got to go through the legislature, too. And the argument may not stand up, but it's an argument to be made, and it could be a compelling one. And it has to pass the legislature. Okay, yes. Oh, Jean, and then... I wanted to go back to the concept of drawing the line. And these questions today, and thank you, Bill, for the info, were really spurred by the question that Burlington is asking about if to charge the personal property tax, if to continue with that, do they want to bring more business into Burlington? What does this tax mean for folks? Does it... Does it... And I don't know about this. Do these taxes for smaller businesses would a business think, no, I'm not coming into Montpelier because I don't want to pay $214, which I think is sort of an average of one of these categories? Or is that so small? On the other hand, we see our downtown struggling and so can we... Is this a bit of a carrot? I don't have the answers. I just thought we should ask. Right. So it's my opinion this isn't based on any factual study, but I think you're on it. I mean, it's the people with the big... the people in theory might not be exempting other ones that actually could be making locations because they're in the thousands of dollars. I know for Caledonia Spirits, for example, they have lots of business personal property, all their tanks and all their equipment, and it was a real factor for them. It was, you know, we're looking at other communities that you do. You know, if free mountain power decided to build a new facility, you know, they might say, well, if we build it in Middlesex, we won't have to pay this large tax every year. So it seems to me, you know, I think that's what Brawlington's looking at is completely doing, you know, Barrie's done away with it, other places have, others haven't. We can certainly get the list of those that haven't, and it's certainly a long discussion. You know, if you're doing it to attract business, there's a suggestion of you to get rid of all of it, but understanding you're putting $440,000 on to all the taxpayers. You know, you're shifting it from this one group of taxpayers onto the general tax rate, including, you know, those people's property taxes too, but it's about 5.1 cents on the overall tax rate. Yes. As the person who's really pushed this, including going back a year, I am going to express some frustration about this for a year, and now the day it absolutely has to go through, we're talking about it. That's a little frustrating, and it'll be frustrating to Steve too, but can I just say this was, put it to the voters. You're not making the decision today. You're talking about putting something to the voters. Let the voters have it. And I would say, don't mess with a good thing. I mean, it's not something designed to bring in business. It's something designed to give a break to our smallest businesses, and that as itself is, I think it's a good enough cause. You know, we don't necessarily have to pile all of our wish list onto that wagon, but if you like this mechanism, then I would say, talk about it again next year. But, you know, don't throw out the baby with a bath water here. This is a nice thing we can do for the small businesses in town, and if we over complicate it, boom, we'll blow it up. I don't think we're about to throw it out. I think it's appropriate, the council is to vote on it, and I think it's appropriate first to have a conversation about it. I mean, it could be done by petition too. It seems to me that the issue isn't to John. I think just to help out here, I don't think the council is arguing about the exemption. I think it's a question of the policy of do we continue this tax in general, and what are the... But that is such a dramatically different policy question. That's all I'm saying. That's a whole other kettle of thought. Well, or where you draw the line. I mean, you've drawn it at one place. There's an argument to make it, to draw that line on a different side. And the higher we draw the line, the more it's going to shift on to the general. I mean, I'm not making that argument, but I'm just saying that's not an unreasonable conversation. And I think, Jean, you're the one who raised that. If you've been, could you have... No, I agree with you, John, in the sense that tonight I do think, though, the council moving forward can begin to think more broadly about the impacts of this tax and the consequences, and maybe or maybe not make some changes. Just as an example, I think I've sent to you in 98, the city council did propose to the voters to do away with that tax and proposed to phase it out over five years, and the voters turned it down from 900 to 1200 or something like that. They did put it to the voters. And I agree with John. I think that this needs to go to the voters. I think that's what our role here is, is to present that to the city and see what the city has to say. But I, too, share some of those same concerns. I mean, I guess I'm also struggling with shifting that burden on to property taxpayers, because that means rents are going to go up and that means other things are going to happen that might be unintended consequences. But I absolutely agree that this is something that the voters, I mean, I think our job here is to facilitate their ability to vote on these things that affect their city directly. And many of them are property taxpayers, so they might be interested in what that means and their business owners. And so I do want to revisit the policy conversation, depending on how this vote does or doesn't go, I guess. I think it's a worthwhile policy conversation that we as a council need to spend some time thinking about. I think Justin is first. Well, I certainly can appreciate not wanting to shift the burden of these taxes on to property owners. An easy way to avoid that would be to contain future budget spending by $11,000, and then it would not be necessary to shift that burden. I'm in favor of eliminating this petty and burdensome tax. It mostly is targeted at small businesses, people who are just getting started. And frankly, I think we would benefit a lot of them here. I would be in favor of exploring future relief, but given the productive and functional nature of this budget cycle in particular, I certainly am not willing to do that at this time as we're very close to finalizing our budget. And the impact of that would be undue and unfair on the city manager. I just wanted to add a comment from the economic development study we did and the consultant that came in. And he said the one thing that he found that no taxing as it is to businesses is not a factor of them not coming here. I mean, it was in the study. So I think this is a fair way to approach it to start with the smaller businesses. It isn't that I object to it, John, or that I don't want to put it to the voters. I just wanted to talk about it. So I would move that we approve the Charter Change Amendment as put forth. Do I have to go to each one of them? No, you can do all four of them. The formal action is filing the language of the Charter Amendments with the clerk. It has to be done at least 10 days before the public hearing, which is in 14 days. So if I read this here, I make the motion to file the attached Charter Amendments with the city clerk to replace amendments filed on January 3rd, 2018. Second. Hi. You guys ready to go? Presentation by the Central Mont Public Safety Authority. So let me introduce everyone before we start. Thank you everyone for having us. Thank you very much, Mike. And presentation of our budget requested for this fiscal year. A lot has happened since the last time we met. We met with the very council last night where this plan was received with a general positive vibe. They had some critical feedback that we were taking back to the board to discuss, to see what can make it better, how we can work forward, the role of CDPSA, and how it can help with the process of regionalization as we go forward. Part of the change in focus or direction that we're going to be presenting tonight came about from a meeting that Bill Frazier, myself, Donna, and Chief Fakus and Chief Gallin had about a month ago where we discussed what would be the role of the CDPSA and how could we be most effective over the next and to come to some type of conclusion in this venture, whether it's up or down, or whether we move forward or not. And from that meeting, one issue that has been highlighted continuously has been the need to address infrastructure first and to be able to control some of the problems that are facing both the area and Montpelier, as well as Capital West. And I apologize for the cough for the past couple of days, so from that discussion, we've kind of taken it back to our board and we come back with a proposal of how we can go forward over the next year. We'd like to do it with no funds needed or no requests from the towns going forward, but we realize that we're probably going to run with the funds we have and we've been good stewards with the funds that have been allocated from the two towns. We still have about $40,000 left in reserve funds so we're prepared to use that in this final year to prove a value. With that, we feel that will get us to October or so. October, November, timeframe. From there, if we're successful, we feel we'll need extra funds and this proposal really is geared towards that. How do we get, if we are successful in what we're proposing between now and November, how do we get from November to the following June? We could potentially not ask for funds this year, but I think that would be disingenuous to the voters. I think the voters have a duty and an obligation to understand if we feel we're going to go down the path and get to levels where we think we will be, we will need some funds to really push us through and get us to the next level. That being said, we've offered trigger points, exit strategy, that when we get to the point in November where these things aren't working, where we haven't met these obligations or Capital West hasn't decided to join us as a third member, we can get out and we feel it's better to ask for money and give it back than to not ask for money, be successful in our proposal and then have to come back to you guys in October and November and ask for a set of funds. That's the reason for the budget request. From here, I'd like to play a little clip. Can I ask you just before you go forward about the budget request, are there any offsetting savings that you're projecting to the city from the revenue that would be raised so quickly? Offsetting savings to Montpelier from the money that we would be allocating. So you're asking for 20, whatever your number is. Yeah, 25. 28,200. The idea of the authority has always been to consolidate, to gain efficiencies than reduced by the bearings. The goal of authority has always been to long-term create a system of which we can expand regionalization and supply our emergency services as well as dispatch. It's never been just about dispatch. It's always been about creating a system of where we can not go it alone from Montpelier's perspective. Right now, you're functioning as a regional entity in the police department through their dispatch operations. You have contracted obligations that have limited terms that could end within, you know, a six-month notice from Capital West. I'm not saying that's going to happen. At the end of that contract term, I think it exposes Montpelier taxpayers to a significant amount of risk. I think what this proposal offers is a way to spread that risk. Does it provide immediate savings from Montpelier? No. I think Barrie City had those same concerns last night. However, one of their concerns was raised by Mayor Lausanne in that, would the board consider if this thing is successful amortizing some of the previously spent costs from Montpelier over the lifetime to be spread out by the new members, either through bonding or through, you know, integration of the single-site system or that. So it is definitely a concern that we don't want to be an extra burden forever. We feel there is a finite life to the Central Public Safety Authority if it isn't successful, and that's why we're offering these exit strategies. So with that, I'll play this clip, and then what we're going to do is we're going to give it over to Paul. I'm going to explain our proposal. Public post to VPR's coverage of cities and towns from around Vermont. Vermont's emergency responders rely on radio communications to talk to each other in critical situations. The clear lines of communications are not available in all parts of the state as VPR's Amy Noyes discovered. That's the sound of a French Canadian taxi company coming in loud and clear at the Capital West Dispatch Center located at the Montpelier Police Department. Capital West Dispatch is 23 fire ambulance and EMS services throughout Central Vermont on the same frequency as the taxi company. They also share the radio frequency with the Berry City Police Department, which dispatches several more agencies. Scott Bag is chairman of the Capital Fire and Mutual Aid System Communications Committee which runs Capital West Dispatching. He says all that radio traffic can be confusing. So it can be very complicated when you're trying to dispatch on a fire emergency and here comes these Canadian taxi companies trying to talk and operate their business and it overrides our system. As frustrating as all this radio traffic may be the situation worsened earlier this year when communications from fire departments in Grand Isle County started coming in loud and clear over that same radio frequency. Bag explains a recent equipment upgrade for the Grand Isle system led to more interference for dispatchers and responders in Central Vermont. They actually attempted to get off our frequency and they have recently had realized that their system did not work for what they needed they came back to on our frequency and their transmissions were overriding our transmissions and became operating problems. Fred Cummings is the dispatch advisor in Montpelier. He says too much radio traffic can lead to dispatchers missing transmissions and that he says can have life or death consequences. If the transmission that you miss is critical it could mean somebody is hurt or killed. So that's the concern that we have with everybody being able to talk on the same channel at the same time. Communications Committee Chairman Scott Bag says there haven't been any dire consequences yet but he's afraid it's only a matter of time. And that's why Capital West is looking to switch to a new system on a new frequency but the switch will take time and money. He says the Federal Communication Commission needs to approve the change and because it's close to the international border Capital West will also need permission from the Canadian government. That process could take almost a year. And if they change frequencies Bag says it's also a logical time to upgrade the Capital West communication system that's been patched together over several decades. We want a system that is being able to transmit and reach all of our towers simultaneously at the same time. And we want our responders no matter if they're in Cabot or Roxbury to hear each other and be able to talk to each other through a unified dedicated system and it will cost hundreds of thousands dollars to replace. Bag says Capital Fire Mutual Aid will apply for a Department of Homeland Security grant and other grants to help pay for the new system. He says he doesn't think it's viable to ask the 17 towns whose departments use Capital West dispatch to pay for the upgrade. It would be extremely difficult for all the towns to bear the weight of such an upgrade. I would almost say impossible. In the meantime, Capital West is making do with a crowded radio channel and a complicated system to reach emergency responders from Cabot to Faisten and Roxbury to Walden. And Bag says it's a problem that's likely to come up in other parts of the state as well. As more and more technology and radios come available, more and more people are trying to talk on the same frequency. We've run into this problem and I'm sure that other agencies are going to run into this same problem. Meanwhile, Grand Isle County Fire officials have been in touch with Capital West and say they're making an effort to restrict radio use to essential communications at least until a more permanent solution can be found. For VPR News, I'm Amy Noyes. I played not to scare you guys, but it's a reality that's going to face this council regardless if the CVPSA is here or not. You have a contract with Capital West. You will need to partner with them in some way, shape, or form to come up with some way to fix this. And as a taxpayer peculiar, I would not like to be the recipient or the person that needs that fourth call or fifth call because we're having problems with dispatching in Worcester or in the outer areas because of our contracted services. So the basis of this discussion is not to highlight the problems, but to highlight how we as the Central Public Safety Authority can use this as a way to help to solve a problem or help to come together and bring the council together with Capital West as a new member. And we have a critical meeting next week. Part of the process has been working with Capital West to join. We had a meeting in December with them where it was unanimously voted at that meeting to pursue discussions with Montpelier and Berry in becoming members. And one of the problems or one of the discussion points we've had have heard loud and clear at the council level says we need another member. And I think Capital West becomes an integral partner to help us solve some of these problems as well as solve some of the common policies and protocols that are required. Montpelier does a great job. We can't do it alone. And I think if you take anything from this message, regardless of what happens with CVPSA over the next six months that will need to be part of your capital equipment budget. It will need to be part of your steady state financing plan and it will need to be considered how you spread those costs needs at the equation. So with that I'm going to throw it over to you. Would that require a positive vote of every jurisdiction that's a member of Capital West in order to join the authority? In other words, every select one. We've had legal opinion that says they can join it. Paul Gillis has told us that they're eligible to become a municipal member. It's a separate entity that has their own funding formula. They'd have to agree through a memorandum of understanding to whatever funding requests we have. And so theoretically, if they become a member, they would be part of the equation and whatever goes forward would then be split amongst them based on some funding formula that's to be determined. It's a separate municipal entity Capital West? They have their own municipal entity. We've been given legal advice that they have limited ability for bonding. They've told us they have ability to bond. I think there is some interpretation that needs to be clarified, whether or not they can bond alone or not. If they can't, it would have to even come to Montpelier or some authority that does, whether it's Berry City or something like that. We feel we could be the glue that holds these together and offers a place where issues and ideas can be vetted on a more regular basis than what council usually entails. This has come about from our meetings with Bill and this could be a highlighted function just with Montpelier alone as we had highlighted before. It really didn't make sense to turn over the employees and cause undue hardship or concern at this point. We still hold true that that potentially would be a logical extension but we wanted to focus on measurable goals over the next six months so we can prove value and if not we can jettison the project and do it as a lost cross. With that, I will turn it over to Paco to present our budget request and then we can answer any questions. Thank you. I don't know if you want the PowerPoint presentation. I think the people at home might be good to have it on the record. I don't know how to activate it. I got it here but Who's got the clicker? Oh, there it is. How does this work? Do you got it? Change the router? Nope, I see. Okay, good. Well, hello everybody and thank you for letting us be here. I want to see if I can add some just a little bit of clarity to what the chair mentions. It's my understanding about Capital Fire that they are a municipal district established by law and as such they are a municipal entity that would allow them to join the Central Vermont Public Safety Authority. The question about their funding is still at an issue. The question as to whether they can vote as an organization to join our Central Vermont Public Safety Authority is not a question. They can vote independent of funding. They may have to go back and seek funding from their municipal or from their towns if there is an investment but that is something that we want to continue to pursue and plan for down the road. Now over the last several months we have presented I have been involved with preparing three separate plans for dispatching. Two of them involved what I call the two center concept and those were not well received and we always left with more questions than we were able to answer at the time. After our last visit we prepared another plan and as a result of that it really boiled down to and or the feedback we got was the only way to advance dispatching is to look at a single center or single site facility and there was a strong suggestion from staff that the real problem with communications in Central Vermont is the radio system as you heard from this clip which is why we prepared this clip and why we have focused on our efforts the rest of 2018 to develop a single site dispatching plan and to try and advance the project of developing a analog simulcast radio system and that's at the heart of the operating budget proposal for fiscal year 19. The funding proposal calls for continuing with an executive director working on developing a single site dispatching plan and advancing the new simulcast radio system while working collaboratively with Capital Fire and Capital West we're going to continue funding the bridge between the Berry City Dispatch and the Montpelier Dispatch Center. It's important to remember that while our budget for fiscal year 19 is level funded at 100,000 we are reducing the appropriation request 40%. We intend to use $40,000 of reserve funding that is projected reserve funding it's not that we have 40,000 sitting in reserve at this point but we are projecting by the end of this fiscal year to have approximately $40,000 in reserve to port towards the fiscal year 19 budget that leaves Montpelier's contribution that we're requesting at 28 to Berry City contribution at 31-8. Now, we realized that this is our fourth year of funding request and we realized that we needed to come in with some concrete ideas about what we're going to do to performance and more importantly we want to articulate the deliverables that meet those performance expectations. So as the chair as Tom has mentioned we have ongoing talks with Capital Fire Mutual Aid System about joining CBPSA that is one of the deliverables to have them as a member of CBPSA. Deliverable for the simulcast radio system project is the plan for funding and acquisition of a new system that will be delivered no later than November 2018. A plan for a single site dispatch center delivered no later than November 2018. We intend to have this legislative use this legislative session to aggressively track the 273 which is a bill that has been proposed in senate government ops. It deals with a variety of issues who include the removal of the 911 call taking function from state police and the creation of a public safety planning grant program that would be grants would be given to regional planning commissions. And then finally we want to establish some aggressive organized public outreach and to distribute the comments and feedback from those public outreach sessions of which we plan on having a minimum of three to include helping to facilitate perhaps a meeting of both city councils again to hear from the city councils relative to their integration, regionalization and consolidation ideas. The deliverables there is no magic to the deliverables we're planning towards for the fall so that we can have a discussion around those plans and a go no go decision to coincide with the beginnings or the fiscal year 20 budget process. Along with the performance expectations we have realized that we need to articulate an exit strategy and what's going to happen moving forward. The deliverable as all reports and plans should be delivered to the city councils for action by November 2018 and no action or not moving forward in any way spells no further work by the central Vermont Public Safety Authority. I've established and I've put up here a couple resources. This is a link to why a summercast radio system to the audio that you just had and that is our website. And that's pretty much a summary of our budget proposal for fiscal year 19 establishing why we're asking for it and what we intend on presenting with the funds. Thank you, Paco. Would you please explain why is that bill in the senate so important? I don't think it was clear why we care about that bill. Well, it leads to we expected it will lead to a discussion about the state police least getting out of the 911 call handling business which will mean that the enhanced 911 board will have to redistribute how the call handling, 911 call handling function will be handled in Vermont and who will handle it. And I think we need we in central Vermont need to be very mindful and watchful of where the 911 calls in central Vermont may go and be handled. Along with that I expect that there will be a discussion concerning dispatching and the cost of dispatching by the Vermont state police into whether they will get out of the dispatching business for municipalities or whether they will charge municipalities for that service. That's a game changer for many well, it's a game changer for 105 municipal agencies that are currently being dispatched for free by the Vermont state police. One of which is Berlin? Yeah, one of which is Berlin. That's why I feel that. I'm glad you're pursuing that. It seems to me just to be kind of an equitable system. It is. It begs correction in my view. It's always been the stumbling block for us when I hear people talk about trying to increase the market. Yeah, we get this freebie. So why would we pay if we get it for free? It's not fair. It's been the huge stumbling block in adding new municipal members particularly the local municipal members. Why should we pay when we're getting it for free? So if there's another question for authority, I'd be interested in hearing from Tony if you're able just to respond in part because so much of this is premised on what is viewed as a flaw or vulnerability of our existing dispatch center system. So if you're talking about this but if you're assuming this is not a new topic, so if you're able to respond and just talk generally about the proposal that would be very helpful. From a general perspective with everything that's been said this is a vast amount of fundamental differences and not clear current and liability if you will. And things that are happening in the landscape and technology and who owns what how that can be funded. I just spoke with Chief Taylor, Gary Taylor yesterday of St. Alton Police Department. Chief Taylor was two years ago I think to the CDPSA about their model. St. Alton owns the equipment that puts us out of the signal for their clients. And Chief Taylor advised me just yesterday that their revenue went from $600,000 to $300,000 this year. They're holding a nail in that. What I absolutely agree I'm not saying that with or without CDPSA, but one thing that is in honoring Monterey's best interest as well as capital fire mutual aid and the component of that which is capital west those that were actually contracting with those accounts that we do absolutely need to move beyond the contract to even more of a partnership certainly laid I think a very strong foundation in the last five years before that partnership. So that is the difference with our current contract and how it's structured and they hold the equipment. So in other words since I've been, as Bill knows since 2007, I'm incredibly cautious about building out a creating a large business model that I could not always be sure I could maintain because we're talking about the Monterey employees Monterey expenses just to meet contractual needs but the relationship with capital is so strong I typically put faith in faith or whenever the challenges were occurring between very town and very city, I absolutely refused to take on very town because we just didn't have that time we didn't have the infrastructure of the past times of change so is the system needed? Yes, how we get there it's going to require bonding and I also think that Bill's example of how we deal with wastewater is a good example of if the structure is purchased collectively and then a lot of short contract something that's got to get out of the skin of the game then the other and I was also talking to one of my colleagues at Ginning County there's a lot of right out of the gate a lot of pitfalls right now what they're proposing looking at at Ginning County they're kind of ending up with some similar directions but I think what CBPSA is now but I also want to be clear from what I see this is absolutely not going to be cost savings I think we need to be really clear on that especially if we deal with may or may not because of 273 for example we have to become not only a dispatch center but a one step as we've heard in the past we're not going to be able to do that certainly out of the two locations and we're not going to be able to do that we're going to be at the floor having the Toronto proposed that would be that stand alone facility that's solely dedicated to to communications so that's otherwise right now and I'm concerned about what various cities as always what a various city want to do they also have some clients that are part of Applefighter Me Too Late what they want to do with the various city police department so again where does that all fit in because otherwise we have Montilier and we have Capital West and with or without the CBPSA we are moving in that partnership direction and Montilier for now would be well even Gurley is the distillation so it sounds like you agree that or maybe you can just say do you agree that we have the vulnerability that they described with the competing frequencies is a is a real one and if that's the case then assuming the authority doesn't happen or if the authority didn't happen what would be the plan for addressing that within the Montilier is that assuming that you know legally Capital West as a especially defined municipality if you will is Capital East and Capital West that they can bond I don't know what that looks like for example in the town like Cap let's say Cap chooses no we don't want any part of this I don't know how that works and then Montilier would be and on that bond the city would be on that bond as well as the various city's clients so there are a lot of moving pieces there you know what I think an end game is all these communities have to say we have to have skin in the game because seeing how things are grappling using most recently all of these because a new stand up described as a very small independent communication center in Middlebury for example that was just one of the things that pulled some of the clients away so for long term public safety stability you know I want to be really clear that we all of us need to try to avoid these contractual relationships I've also had conversations with somebody that has had a lot of I think influence in helping Senator White with the graphing of 273 it covers a lot of big issues and I don't know really what the honest expectations are of this bill it has to do with company's training to suddenly going from dispatch and throwing in the whole piece out and I will tell you that Vermont Chiefs are very concerned and I will be testifying on 273 various components of it but it is not in the best interest for right now public safety or the state to get away from doing the PSAP aspect of communications but certainly and I had to get up the opportunity back in November to tell the committee the concern about the equity of how they currently bill and not bill oh I'm sorry what's PSAP public service answering point right now in the room I called 9-1-1 it's most likely going to be answered by a 9-1-1 call taker most likely Williston they're going to take initial information they're going to see that it's a medical call in Montclair City Hall they're going to contact our dispatch to get all the real detail information about a call and give it to the Montclair Fire Department to get the resources to do it that's what I think by two steps a single step facility would be you'd still have your dedicated call takers but they're going to be in the same proximity so the dispatcher is in real time we have this 9-1-1 call where they can even be the same person trying on how it's trained and then you get it in other things and we don't have in Vermont that there's medical dispatching which is a certain these are all standards but you have to have a lot of technical technology in place and systems so we have to think and I would agree with the board anyway we have to think big and really strategically on this but I set the landscape to change it radically right now and the one thing that I'm comfortable with is that we have a strong partnership with the relationship with Capital West so for moving forward with strengthening that relationship with Barry and Capital West and for just Capital West not Barry well I mean Barry we'd like to I mean we've come a long way because of the authority so just Capital West is the entity that we have so if we're going to strengthening that and dealing with the technological problems that exist and you said I think you said we can't expect any cost savings with this proposal so what advantage do you see from us in supporting right but I think you were saying you're moving that direction anyway so I'm trying to understand what advantage we get from funding let me just make sure to understand the question I just want to understand the advantages or disadvantages from continuing to support the public safety authority based on the technological limitations of our existing system so you're planning to fix understand you have a plan to do that but of course I don't know about others but I'm trying to understand does this make sense for us economically or some other basis for us to pursue what makes sense is that we have to bond at some point that's one that will be out but we don't need an authority to bond and we can do that ourselves that's part of that policy conversation on that side because one scenario would be that one city of Montpelier the partnership between a treatment center as an example there's a lot of legal things that have to be made sure that we're absolutely clear on and then most likely what is our capacity as fiscal agent for the ones to manage that and using so that's one example but that's a state radio frequency that very city would be utilizing at very city's clients but it's something that we're going to all of the patients all the members of the capital fire mutual aid which goes even beyond our technology which is even brought in by the communities that neither of us dispatch for this is a radio communication system that so if we got this system even just ourselves would Berry City or town be potentially benefiting from it without the very clearance build out that I mean how like very city will benefit very city will benefit absolutely so I guess my follow-up question is I mean it seems like simple math to me that if we're going to get the same infrastructure regardless that spreading that liability out over more towns works out would work out better economically for us so I mean if Berry City Berry Town are going to benefit from it I'm sorry right right sorry I shouldn't lump them in but then yeah and to have them involved would mean going through the authority at this point is that correct it's what the authority is proposing right so it seems like that I mean seems logical to me that it would overall be cheaper for us to go and let me give you an example a million I think we ran the example of like a million and a half bond a 20 year amortization like 4% it translated into a payment stream of about $100,000 over the 20 year period spread out it's either my people who does it alone they have to figure out how we get that $100,000 we spread it out using the similar type of funding formula Montpelier share in that formula was roughly 20 Berry's was roughly 20 and so that's the current formula we haven't really looked at that that's kind of what we're proposing to do see how do we split up that risk liability to get something we all need and by November we'll have that answer if they if they join us we'll know more next week you know next week we have our meeting with where they've asked us to come in to discuss membership we'll know more next week unfortunately this meeting before that I wish I had more clarification on that I was very encouraged by Berry City's response yesterday so they're still at the table I'd hate to get down the road two, three, four years down the road this thing is dissolved and we don't have the vehicle to actually do this and you don't have the momentum to do it it'll be hard to recreate what we've done over the past couple of years you know I'm obviously a lot faster than this so you can tell me how what happens if Berry doesn't approve the Berry City approve the proposed appropriations well it's a collective vote it's not an individual city vote we add up the votes from Montpelier and the votes from Berry both pro and against it's like spaulding vote for them and they understand that they might not be happy they think they've always passed it by significant margins we've never run up against that that may be a bigger issue recently this council resolved to support exploration of regional public safety with the caveat that that was going to come out of Montpelier dispatch in terms of our participation there is there any update there that the standards for participation were to be determined by Montpelier dispatch Mr. Cummings or someone else has been involved in making that happen or has decided that that's not in the interest of the city or has that proceeded at all? Mr. Cummings he's a supervisor he's seeing what we're doing so I'm not really clear on your question sure let me try to state it another way I think we do intend as the authority to help create policies and protocols and using Montpelier as a model is what we were proposing I think that has changed we haven't got that that's I think part of the process over the next 6 months I can just add I think along with that through this past year we've been adding active 911 as an additional way to accurately communicate location of fire calls we just had at the local music planning committee meeting last night in the hospital I did an after-action review exercising the Montpelier police department's company of operations plan and part of that and now to I was informed of almost the potentially 8 to 11 fire departments are now having active 911 so as far as the regional I mean the energy as far as working collaboratively is definitely there and that was also very city matter of fact that was Deputy Chief Joe Altsworth that gave me that because I thought it was only 5 departments so in terms of our department always looking to improve even with what we do have for technology and also even something as simple as my big push now that what I've put up to try to get all of our chiefs is to have them all of our client communities to sign up for model work and be like 3, 3 or 4 tier deep things like that so again if we had to get a message out that we had to evacuate our police department we lost our site and we had to relocate in very city we can get that messaging out so does that help as to what we are doing I have no doubts that Montpelier police department is constantly improving and looking for ways to improve service I guess my question was more focused on the role of the central Vermont Public Safety Authority as it connects to the Montpelier police department and that for me has been a concern over the last couple of years how do we get everybody to the table and how do we get this to move forward it's been a concern of mine obviously and it's been some things have been frustrating some things have been great opportunities as I can reflect back even if nothing happened this would have failed we are so much further along because of the work that's been done in terms of our bridge for example the interoperability that we are trying to balance the city and and back to the meeting that Tom talked about as far as that part where I walked out of a meeting excited about something that was it because it was clear we are nervous because a lot of things that stay here we certainly don't want to be in the situation of a community that suddenly has a layoff of employees and is sending on infrastructure that they can't use or being in a community where public safety is at risk because we don't have absolute rightful things that a community can afford and that's kind of where we are now with this infrastructure that's where you nailed it and you said this is why you look at regionalization because nobody can do this alone do you support this proposal I have reservations still but it's part of the infrastructure part of it I am concerned about I guess what I'm talking about is the proposed budget essentially the budget request and then the related planning that goes into that budget request with an outcome of what they proposed if you didn't have any history and you read the proposal that you all see there's a lot of really good things in there I just don't know about some of the deliverables quite frankly my barometer in terms of 273 you're not in my conversations with the commissioner I don't see a lot of that necessarily happening at least certainly out of this session and I don't know what capital less wants to do except I do know that they want to do it with us so I think there's still some discussion so whether or not the budget that budget amount I'm going to leave that one up to you we're still working with capital less we still we still know we need a partnership but I'm only looking at that's very near sight that's just my failure in capital west I'm still trying to get my head around the whole thing would look like and down the road I do think we're all going to need one location and that's going to be very pricey and we all need to be in that together I just wanted to follow up on the budget comments which is just that I believe if I'm not mistaken the city manager has not recommended these funds as part of the budget process now certainly this council can add whatever we like but that recommendation was developed within the budget congress that city staff participated in well yes and no we only received that budget request specific budget request after our budget was submitted and so based on the last time the board was here they told us in the meeting that this would not be the budget request I did meet with the board in late December and it became clear that they might have something coming but we didn't have it so I think as soon as we received it I passed it along and flagged on January 3rd to you that we now have a new request for 28-2 and you asked to have them in this week so that was last week so that's why they're here I'll just say so that everyone knows when I met with the board I told them at that time that we had zero in the budget and that it seemed to me that I couldn't predict what the council would do but that I believed they had to have very clear deliverables that people were getting tired of spending money without seeing results that based on our conversations with our staff Bob and Tony and Bob and Donna that the infrastructure was the thing that could benefit the city and the region the most because it would get even whether we ever became a regional service or not that we again synthesizing what I believed to be the case and being clear that I was speaking kind of for myself that the city initially went into this with the idea that it was going to be four communities and it ended up only being two and that having broader membership would be an important goal whether it was Capital Fire whether they could get Barrie Town back in or Berlin or somebody and that speaking strictly for myself that my our view on the regional dispatch was we like the idea but we already run a very large regional dispatch system and it runs pretty well so until we see something that is an improvement financially or service wise or both over what we're doing we can see a reason to get successful so what I would say is that this is my first time hearing this but the request at least I think is consistent with the message I gave them in December a couple of questions but I don't know about the 282 where that comes from or what that wondering whether we have some sort of steady state plan for public safety infrastructure in outlined already in our we have funding for facilities and we have funding for equipment in our plans they're not specifically outlined but there are some fairly large facilities funds this would be something we would have to overlay into that and work that into but it is again as Tony said a lot of the work that this group has done has been very helpful and crystallized the things we just lived with and understanding better the problems and the potential solutions as technology teams I think whether there's ever a regional system or not if we somehow had a technological platform that Berry City, Berry Town, Berlin everybody was on public safety is going to improve I'm not all the way schooled that we're ready to merge systems just yet operating systems but the question is do we need an authority to explore that another question maybe Tom for you I think I'm hearing that you met with Berry City yesterday or recently last night you said they expressed interest they didn't shoot us down they didn't shoot you down we had told them and I apologize the issue of not adding any funds in the budget and I explained it exactly as I tried to do now it's like I don't want to come back to you November after we've made progress we have a bond proposal it's a simulcast system presentation and we wouldn't be able to see it through to the end of this year even if my failure takes over at that point I just wanted to be able to front that we have funds through late October, November based on our modeling and so to get us through similar level of funding by Seattle going on fiscal year for the next July we'll need these amount of funds and that's where the we took the hundred thousand from last year and we backed out the 40 grand we figured we split the 60 it wasn't anymore that's how we came over to my payment number well my question really has to do with I understand about Capital West and then we have Montpelier so at the moment it sounds as though we have three potential partners all firmly planted in midair and so I'm sitting here wondering and I actually would like you to succeed I would like to see a regional public safety authority I think that our area can support it and would benefit from it so that's my inclination at the same time are we waiting for the first commitment how what is the timeline of commitments and are we all waiting for somebody else to commit first or how does this how do municipalities at Capital West make their commitment how does this happen well we have a meeting next week with their board our board and their board to discuss terms basically of what they would feel are acceptable or not and so we'll know more after next week or maybe there are subsequent follow up meetings if there's further questions so it's going to happen I think relatively quickly it's going to be a no and no go on their part whether they just want to be a contracted member or not you know I would have hoped to have that meeting earlier but just timeline couldn't get everyone to the same table I think from there you know I believe dominoes will fall because as you prove success or as you build up a system I think you'll prove the value and possibly you'll bring other towns in but I don't think we have the capacity to bring other towns in until we've set this up so will they wait to hear that Montpelier is supportive or I'll give you a comment from December from December when we had our joint meeting a comment that was made to us which was frustrating in a way because they said well we would have been forced to join if Montpelier had ceded authority so our original request remember was to cede authority and it was frustrating to me at that point because we pulled back that because I felt that if you had that type of event it would force sort of the dominoes to fall so people would view that this is the entity that they have to go towards and I'll give you a comment maybe a year ago if I phrased it a little bit differently I think everyone's right there I think it's a matter of building trust I think it's a matter of building partnerships having these public discussions both with councils as well as dispatchers to get their opinion on what the true system needs to be developed I know Caroline and she's been instrumental in helping us at our board level to bring in the dispatcher perspective and to see what do they need and I think that's going to be tremendously valuable I think everyone wants the same thing it's just it's hard to break down everyone's individual barriers and everyone I think it just needs to be equitable and definable and explainable and then we can make the road show once the different towns but I think what Jean's also asking would it help capital far mutual aid to have a month there say yes we support this yes it would be tremendously because I'm going to a meeting next week and I think a vote of support or not would steer them in what direction I think they would feel comfortable committing to or not lukewarm non-committal versus a wholehearted support would be viewed differently I think in their deliberative process and might that also impact Barry's decision as well or are they waiting for capital west or Barry cities in they're not they didn't vote us down and they were supportive of our vote and their you've got the support for this budget proposal we had great feedback one of the points with one of the council members and I can Mike Smith as a former council member for Barry you know they're concerned about the mobility representation on the board so it's this territorial thing that we're trying to overcome so they want us to review the charter we're trying to overcome all these barriers but you know they were supportive they included the support of the mayor he did support it I was pleasantly surprised with Tom's support and you know they didn't vote but it was a consensus decision that they understand what we're doing they understand the deliverables they understand the exit strategy some questions so I thought I read this in here but I couldn't find it a second time you all did add a seat on your board for people from dispatch no they've been at our meetings and they've had tremendous amount of input but we haven't changed our charter to change any voting membership there was a conversation last night about dispatch having representation on the board and that's when I went in and said that originally this was the public safety committee looking at fire police dispatch everything and through all the roads we've taken we've narrowed it down to we've got to start with one in dispatch and that was the question that was asked and certainly we're going to focus on dispatch and why not to have some representation there whether we can do it as a board member or not we have to look at the charter and see what we certainly want that input without them just as a follow up on membership too as you go to capital west next week is your intention to have some mechanism by which they will have representation on this board should they choose to become a partner that's what we hope the charter has a mechanism we welcome their feedback part of the issue you get back to in terms of creating policies and protocols some of the things we've heard is that we have the policies and protocols it's getting consistent people following them in all of the towns in the same manner and sometimes dispatchers have a difficult time in that I think having them at the seat at the table can address these concerns very quickly and be a very efficient manner I would like to address one question the membership of a dispatcher as I recall was intended to be on our dispatch executive committee we have acknowledged that we have over the course of our planning time not done a sufficient job in embracing the dispatching staff in this planning process we have heard that loud and clear intentions of including had all intentions of including the dispatchers in the dispatch executive committee but after our third proposal meeting with less than satisfaction from the Montpelier staff it became obvious that we are not moving forward with dispatching as it's currently planned and the message was loud and clear that the only way to move dispatching forward needs to be in a single site facility which is at one of the cores of this budget process that is going to involve a reconstituted planning process and I can speak for myself that has to it has to include dispatchers in order to advance this in any way working through management and working on my own to develop a planning process has failed and I need to say perhaps working by the board and on myself alone it has failed perhaps less than management although I have tried to focus myself through management and that obviously is not worked. I'm wondering how we could decide we are going to offer support for their plan moving forward something that they could take with them to their meeting at Capital West does it have to be a motion? well if you wanted to do that you could make a motion sure I wouldn't support it but that's just one voice can it be a less formal vote or should it be a motion? well I think the only way to I guess it's up to you I think a motion would probably be less appropriate alright so I move that we support the actions of the Central Vermont Public Safety Authority to move ahead to create a partnership and at this time would I also include the funding or is that a separate question? that would be the same I would include the request as long as you're supporting it and that we wouldn't agree to support their request for $28,200 is there a second? a second? discussion? well Tommy earlier in this meeting you gave us an option of either to ask for the money now and give it back later if you don't need it or to succeed and then ask later and I guess I'm more in the camp of giving you another 6-8 months to fulfill your mission and this as you all know I've been working very hard for several years and hundreds of thousands of dollars later and I do feel like we are getting closer there are buds on this tree whether they will flower or be pollinated or bear fruit I think still remains to be seen a great deal of confidence in our city manager's ability to find $28,200 in October from our general fund if that were in fact the case and we were able to bring this back to the future councils well just to clarify what's approved by the voters it's an additional item appropriated outside of our budget we chose not to go that route as a board because we didn't want to put a council in that position so we wanted the voters to hear our plan and leave us with the flexibility that if they come back to us and say we don't approve it we ran a check it would be the easiest 2 checks we write to clear out our checkbook you guys all our checkbook anyway so I'd just like to articulate why I why I don't support this I was a very strong supporter of the regionalization proposal I strongly supported as you recall Tom when you were on the city council creation of public service authority the involvement of the city of Montpelier that was I don't know how many years ago and it was three years ago several hundred thousand dollars later ago and the goal of that at the outset was clearly to create more efficient services it was to and I know there may be some disagreement about that now but at the time and I very clearly remember this the goal was to create cost savings by providing more efficient delivery of services by having better greater capacity than we have now and I appreciate the effort it just feels to me like we have created this authority and it continues to look for a purpose and so we found this flaw in the dispatch system and so that becomes the raison d'etre of the public safety authority as opposed to a broader regionalization with multiple towns that was originally the vision that we thought we were creating and I feel like now we're chasing a purpose rather than having the purpose drive the authority and I don't really let me just finish and then I'll turn it over to you if you like this may work I just think at some point we have to say and us enough and we've spent my failure well over $100,000 I don't think we're going to recoup that money and I think that what you're proposing it sounds to me it's something that we could do internally and do it well I don't think we need another layer of bureaucracy to accomplish what you've highlighted is a problem and I'm sure that's a benefit that you all have have recognized that brought attention to a problem but I suspect well I don't whether it would have come to the attention of the city or not I assume it would have but I think it's one that the city within the partnership with these other organizations could address more efficiently without creating another level of bureaucracy and another level of funding and I just don't see that we will ever get the returns that we were expected at the outset when I supported this so that's why I don't support the continued funding that's been proposed I just want to make a couple of comments one, I think public safety is the number one funding priority of any city in Vermont and I may differ from people's opinions but I think it's the core function of any city government and so because of that I feel this is vitally important two, this issue didn't find us this came about through discussions with dispatchers, board members, city council members, city managers police chiefs, fire chiefs people are actually doing business so it didn't find us, this is how it's evolved, we've presented different ways we felt we could make a positive impact, this is the latest iteration that we think we have a meaningful chance third, we're offering an exit strategy that we know regionalization is difficult, we also know that there needs to be some time commitment and commitment from outside communities or it's not going to happen at that time and we've offered that through this budget process so I appreciate, you know, I think regionalization is the answer for a lot of different things, this being I think one of the most important and so with that OK, in the comments Anne. So I just want to express that I really appreciate Paco that in moving forward you would be including voices of dispatchers as a part of the process that's really important to me and in addition I mean with this bill that may end up increasing the fee for what is otherwise a free service right now might position this group really well to take up people who are sort of abandoning what used to be a free service but won't be so we may be able to pick up some more customers after the session if everything goes really well so we'll see I mean I also feel like this is the what's the right expression the Fisher cut bait year and so I'm willing to you know support this and if it works great if not I mean we've certainly learned a lot anyone else sitting for the discussion here none all in favor please say aye any post guys have it thank you everyone I appreciate the time okay so let's say we have three more items budget discussion workshop on tip which we're going to do last appointment and then imminent domain finding so why don't we do the budget discussion next oh yeah sure alright we'll take a five minute break and then we'll be back discussion about the budget before moving to the other items Bill did you just want to run through the list of things that you had and then anybody who has others could add to it the last week when we had our budget discussion there were only a couple items flagged we tried to get as much information as we could one was central law public safety authority just taking a vote on that it was a question just I think more information about the special events costs and we tried to break it out as best we could and get that to you question of whether Airbnb revenue was tracked by community the answer was no question about council pay and I sent you out some information about that GMT has sent us some information today they will be here at our next meeting so they have anyway you guys got their letter we can talk about that if you'd like and there was a last question about if we wanted to warden's review and what did we decide was 8,000 we thought was probably what sufficient to do so those were the notes I had is pending issues can you give us a top line if we were to do all of those things what it would add well about half a cent well if it was 8,000 for the warden's depending on what you decided on council pay the options were looking at my sheet so those two items say that was 12,000 or 13,000 and then that is PSA so that's half a cent about $87,000 is one cent in the percentage terms we read about 2% before we'd be at 2.5 yeah the cents and percents run pretty close so if we were at 1.9 we were at 2 cents 1.9% so we'd be at 2.5 so probably 2.4% okay why don't we take this one at a time council paid did somebody have a proposal they want to make or discussion where do you want to go with that so Donna you sent an email out about this what are you speaking for now go ahead your email said you were thinking of increasing 2,000 for the council and 4,000 for the mayor oh that one I couldn't remember what I said I did send an email in response to bill that I thought 2,000 to 5 didn't seem as balanced to me as 2,000 to 4 that was just that sounds fine to me motion I could certainly make the motion we'd be raising city councils annual stipend pay to 2,000 and the mayors to 4,000 that would be 5,000 to $100 you want to make that a motion John Odom did you take that as a motion I tried to present it as such is there a motion how about that I would like to make the motion that we increase city councils pay up to $2,000 and the mayor to 4,000 second discussion well this council just a few minutes ago decided to spend over $28,000 in additional money outside the city manager's recommendation to contain the tax rate to around that of inflation this is particularly important to me because as many of you know there's a significant portion of the residents living on fixed incomes well that has gone up a little bit this year the Medicaid reimbursement has gone down effectively eating up much of that increase and so as we weigh increasing the burden of taxation on our residents I think giving ourselves a pay raise may be something to consider and I can certainly appreciate the equity issues but I can't support it at this point because we've already gone over what I thought we had agreed as a target and I understand that's certainly the privilege so one of the main things this council and all councils do is spend other people's money but to do it to give myself a raise I can't support any other comments I would just observe that you're not giving yourself specifically a raise I appreciate Justin's comments but I do think that there is a matter of equity in terms of who gets to participate in the decision making process and in the short term by short changing not short changing but by underpaying the council in order to save the taxpayers money which is my initial impulse but by doing that over a long period of time I've decreased the value that we put in serving on city council and decreased the ability of lower income residents to participate and folks really do have to decide can I afford to spend an extra 5, 10 hours a week on this and I will say that I spend a lot of time reading I spend a lot of time at both these meetings and at our subcommittee meetings and I don't think that's an overestimate of how much time it takes and in order for somebody to make that commitment and really be here and be present and be able to make that decision those really important decisions they need to have the financial ability to do that and I don't know that we can fix that just by going up 800 bucks but I think that we can try and move in that direction to make it more possible for folks with more diverse economic backgrounds to serve on the council Any further discussion? Let's ask a clarifying question I should have asked the same question about the CVPSA motion but I didn't this motion is to is addressing the wording that you will then put on the ballot because it's worded as though you're assessing that money now and the CVPSA kind of was too it didn't reference the ballot or anything so I mean I can make that inference and make some adjustments but I just wanted to be sure we'll be approving the ballot at the next meeting anyway so we don't have a chance to do that but the CVPSA charter actually calls for it to be ballot items so the council can't you don't do that wording, we'll send you the wording no I just mean in terms of the wording of the two motions that were made I'm like this is fine to make sure the council pay is on the ballot of separate items but we've always accounted for that amount of money in the budget as well so we would put it in as though it had passed I don't know what happens if I assume if they don't pass it in zero well I won't worry about the wording as long as it's clear and consistent I'm just going to put it as it is keep my hands off just checking so but on the ballot it says approve this much amount for councillors and this much amount for the mayor and that's the amount I was stating what I would expect to see on the ballot well right just that the motion was simply move to pay $2,000 for councillors and the mayor to $4,000 period so that's why I was checking and so once the pay went up I'm assuming they would then be put on the ballot that way you put it on the ballot if it passed then that's what it would be but we would put it in our budget and that's assuming it was going to pass so we would account it for projected tax rates we usually show people the effect of the ballot items on I think and again I'm just going to come back to this I feel like this is something that people should vote on and I don't think this is the council saying we're taking a pay raise from anybody I mean this is us saying and I think Rosie's point is poignant because as someone who has not necessarily been in a financial position to always have the option of doing something like this which is probably one of the most important things that I do with my time I mean time translates to money for a lot of people in our community and I think that it's important that we're cognizant of that that all of us right now are in a position where we can give up that time from other things that generate a livelihood for us to be here and I think it's important that our constituents hear this conversation and I think that it's important that they have the ability to vote on that and if they say no that's fine I still have frankly the luxury to show up because I'm in a place in my life where I can but I also want to know I want my community to know that I support everyone having the option of standing up and saying yeah I want to serve my community and now I feel like I'm in a place where I can because I'm going to have enough to pay you know for someone to come in and sort of pick up the slack where I can't right now because I am serving in such an important role in my city I'd just like to express my gratitude for the training line items and also the copying line items that historically have been part of the city council's budget I know that that budget is proposed to shrink significantly but I hope that future councils see fit to leave those in place for me making those copies was an expense that I really appreciated the city bearing the burden of and that those other supporting line items within the city council's budget besides just compensation that to me were very valuable as well Who else? All in favour please say aye All in favour please be closed Alright, GMTA received a memo today I just I think I just wanted to make note of the frustration that I had about this process was that I and Bill and I have talked about this back in November was concerned about having seen the ridership numbers that this really was not a viable that it didn't look to me to be raised a lot of concerns this was an appropriate place for us to put our money. So we'd ask for certain information about ridership, prosper riders, then wanted to meet with them. Just hadn't gotten anything and then see that we're scheduled to meet with them and the night we approve our budget. So I felt like we were being put in a box. So Bill and I've talked about that. As always, we did get a response from them, a memo and I think they are taking those concerns to heart. They maybe were pursuing them anyway. But we do have a proposal here. It sounds like they're going to propose a reworking of this route in response to the ridership. And I just want to say I'm very supportive of GMTA. I just don't want us to put money where it's not effective. I just want to spend money on mass transit. I want it to be used in a way that's promoting mass transit. And it looks like they're responding to that. So I'm satisfied with this. Rosie. Do you have a sense? Are they asking for $40,000? Do we put that in there as a placeholder? Well, that's what it has been. I don't want to speak for their agency. I would not be surprised if they came in with a revision. If they rework this, and particularly if they do it with a capital shuttle because that's funded by the state, I think one option might be they come in and ask for less money for the rework route. They will be here at the next meeting. They were here actually physically here at the night. We finished the zoning. And after two or three hours, we decided to let them go. And I think they have plenty to talk about then. We hoped to have them last week. Couldn't make it. Hoped to have them tonight, but they are here. So it's unfortunate at the timing. But I've had a couple of conversations with Mark Sousa. They're in general, and I think they get it. And they don't want to support low-performing routes either. So the $40,000 was based on prior appropriation. So we'll know more on the 24th about whether that's the actual number there. In general, I just want to say that I've been following along on their next-gen planning process. And I'm really impressed by how in-depth they've gone. And they're really all the routes. They've really been trying to figure out how to make this work better. And I really appreciate that process that they're going through. So I think I look forward to hearing more from them. But it's an interesting process. I'm curious in those discussions, are they considering autonomous vehicles much in that plan? As many of you know, this week was the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show. And several major manufacturers have unveiled autonomous vehicles. So there are some significant players working on solving this challenge sooner rather than later. And I am, for one, I'm very interested in starting to set some amount of money aside in anticipation of the reality that this technology will be coming forward perhaps sooner than we expected. If we have, I'll just speak anecdotally, many times when I see these rather large, heavy fuel consuming vehicles traveling our streets, they're not full. And I know that they provide capabilities for disabled or other people that perhaps a smaller vehicle may not. But in the suite of options that we may explore to get people from A to B, I certainly hope that autonomous vehicles are one of the things that we're thinking about and considering in the not too distant future. I can just say from having read their materials, I didn't see anything on that. But I did see that they were looking at shifting some of their ADA and medical rides more to a demand response like individual vehicles rather than relying on the buses for those. I think that was part of observing that. Again, can't speak for them by having read the publicly available materials. That makes a lot of sense. If you've got often one rider, I think their number show, virtually one rider on a bus at a time, it's going to be a lot cheaper to have a smaller vehicle and do it at a better service for that person. And a lot more convenient to the users, Ashley. I would just like to highlight that I don't have to rely on public transportation living in Vermont. But I've lived in other areas where that was my option. And I think for a lot of folks, that's the only option. And I would hate to think that as a council, we are willing to send a message that we are not invested in making sure that everyone has access to employment, to medical care, to grocery shopping. I mean, some of these are basic necessities that these services provide. And while I realize that maybe the numbers aren't what we would want to see or what we had hoped to see, that this is a significant function that city government performs in providing access to life-saving services to people. And I think as a council member, it's incumbent upon me to point out that while we might not need to rely on that, there are folks who live in our districts that do. And I think that we need to send a clear commitment to ensuring that those folks still have access to reliable, safe transportation that gets them to their necessary and sometimes even fund appointments. And I think that that's a part of what we perform as a function as a council. It's a good point because the circulator is not a density like your commuter bus going by or even the capital shuttle. It's for those, it is a demand response. So you have a base route, but you go off the route. And it is for people who don't have other options for whatever reason. And we made that commitment, I think, to our citizens who don't have access to our roads any other way. And we've even made it no fee to encourage that. So to feel that we're now paying at $40,000 is just 20% match of the federal and state money that supports that route. It doesn't cover that route. And at that rate with just even 18,000 people, that's $2 and 22 cents a ride that we supplement. So small. We do much more than that on the road to every car driver. So I really hope we keep a balanced picture. People never quite understand what the car costs them because it's there, you pay your insurance, you pay your gas and you drive. So when you translate that to a bus, I think we sometimes forget that's all. Keep an open mind. Keep an open mind. Cost. And I totally agree with you about both the need to support low-income individuals who need transportation options, but also public transit generally. But I think we have to do it in a cost-effective way. I mean, if you're talking about $10 a ride, no one of us would even know what it is. The gross cost on the memo is the gross cost for boarding, $10.79. Now, that's not our cost, but I don't think we can just look solely at our cost. That's the subsidized cost, is $2.19. Oh, for demand route, that's cheap. So $10 a ride, or I mean, that's just none of us would ever consider spending $10 to get the car and drive somewhere. I mean, that's just a very high. The point I'm making, I think, they're getting, it is we need to be cost-effective in how we deliver services. That's all I'm asking. We're not just right. We can't just spend $40,000 a year. Let's just continue to do it regardless of whether people use it, and people don't. And that's the unfortunate problem. People don't use this service on any kind of significant basis. It's 70 rides a day. Where are you going to? What's going to happen to those rides, John? Well, I think that's what GMT is working on. I think we're going to hear what their proposal is. Just to be clear on my position, I was not suggesting that we cut funding this year. I was trying to draw attention to the fact that there are new options available. Now, there is no autonomous car today. I've used the bus to get to medical appointments myself. I can certainly appreciate how helpful that was. I'm encouraging us to think beyond what we have today because we look at this every year and we put money towards it because it is a worthy cause. My point is, how can we get those people where they want to go better? So I'm also very excited about autonomous vehicles. That'll be a great day. Separate from that, though, just thinking about how to creatively consider getting ridership up, there's going to be a working group of people from the school and I believe also GMTA to talk about. Because right now there are no, there's not buses that go to the high school or to the middle school. And so thinking about how we can use that service specifically for kids or potentially design some of the routes so that they're convenient for kids to take, I think will be very exciting. So I'm a part of that group and if anyone else would like to join us. I'm wondering if the city is talking with these folks about construction plans for next year. That's also part of what they're working on. That'll be more riders, probably. That's the challenge right now. OK, well this isn't anything we need to take action on. So does any of the pilots be taken up again in two weeks? Yeah, they'll be here for the 24th. OK, what are the last ones? Warden's revisions? I don't know. That was me, yeah. So just thinking about next year's goals, something that we've talked about is that our ordinances could use some overhauling and some aligning with reality, perhaps, and also incorporating restorative justice practices and enforceability, et cetera. So we did not pick that up for the goals for this year. So in thinking about that we may want to do that for next year, we may want to anticipate putting into the budget a sufficient amount of legal fees to support that work, because that's going to be where potentially a lot of the lift will need to happen legally. What are the goals? What are the things you're hoping to see? Well, so this is an idea that a lot of our ordinances say things that we don't actually enforce. And we've heard from a number of different folks and then all of us have noticed things as well where our practice isn't quite in line with what our rules say. And so I would like, and I think Anne would like, and others were agreeable to next year, perhaps instead of having a whole bunch of projects that we want to focus on that our big overarching goal for next year, continuing on the new member to join us, of course, would be that we would do an in-depth look at all those ordinances and all those policies and make sure that we narrow it down to what we actually want to prohibit and allow and encourage and that our policies say what we do. So that was the idea. And if we're going to do that, we probably need to have a little funding to support that process. I'm curious, roughly how many ordinances do we have currently? No, it's that book. Thousands, tens of thousands? Oh, not tens of thousands. Probably hundreds. Hundreds. I assume that part of that budget line is for a lawyer to review. So this is like a perennial complaint of mine as a resident here in Montpelier. I'm really curious, and this is, I realize, maybe not the best time, and I have asked about this before just to community members, I'm really curious about how much we spend on legal fees and whether or not that is something that we need to look at bringing in-house. I know we're a small city, but we seem to rely a lot on retained counsel for opinions, and that is not cheap. I'm a lawyer. I know how much I don't make in civil service and how much the private sector does. And I think it's a very important function, and I struggle sometimes with the notion that we get these long memos back because I know how many hours those take. I mean, I've done that research and I have written those memos, and I just, I want to sort of keep that on people's minds if we're gonna do all this work, which I think is really important to work, you know, the legal costs associated with that, it might make sense to start thinking about bringing that in-house seriously. Just on that point, do you have those budget numbers that are available, or maybe you get them just like? I have it. I'd be able to hear today what we spent on attorneys and what we budgeted, or maybe I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I think you're today don't hold me to this, but last I glanced at it, we were in like the $12,000 range, so this year has not been a big- Oh, that seems like you're credibly low. Yeah, our budget for the year has been between 40 and 55 between last year and this year. Way more than that. Historically. Proposed for next year is 42,000. Personnel issues and other contentious issues, we were well over 100,000. Adopted for 2018 was 55,000. Yep. So- And that's general fund, we also have some of the water and sewer funds. That's right, for burn-off funds. It's not a huge company, so we're tracking well. That's great. Okay. That's good news. Let's keep up the good behavior. Thank you. And our thought with this is that some of this work will be done with an intern and then in-house and then we would send it just for review, not have a lawyer drafting everything that's- It just strikes me that to me, that's a function of city government and rather than paying a private attorney who's billing at whatever their rate is, it's usually over a couple hundred dollars. I mean, it just seems like something we as a city should really look at and sort of see what the going rate would be to bring it in-house, what the salary would look like, and I know it would be adding a city employee position, which there is certainly a cost associated with, but it just strikes me that it's something that if that's what we as a city are spending on legal advice, maybe it is something that we need to really think about bringing back to the city. One of the struggles that we've had with legal opinions is the level of expertise within any one office or within any one attorney. And I think, at least in my time here, we've gone to a number of different folks. So I don't know if there's one person or even one office that could fulfill the variety of questions. Great thing about lawyers is they have networks. Well, I mean, that's certainly a conversation we could have. I probably, I don't think I'll solve that one tonight. No, and I'm not saying that it needs to be solved now, but I really, I feel pretty strongly that if, if we're relying on lawyers' opinions for things which we should be, that's prudent to do, and we're spending, if we budgeted $55,000, not saying that that would be enough to compensate a city attorney's salary, but I think it's an important question to ask. I just wanna add that I would really be interested in seeing those numbers, so Bill. I think it's a great point you're making, historically, financially. I think it's a very strong case to be made in terms of historically. There's a double entendre there. We exceed the 40 or 50 or the small increases that we've put into our legal budgets. I'm glad to see there's a correction this year, whether it's long-term or not, I have no idea. I certainly, even in this budget cycle, if we're currently allocating $42,000 for legal fees, I don't know, no problem, you're marking $8,000 or whatever the number was, 42 less eight, with the intention of exploring ordinance. Makes seems to make sense that if it could be saved in lawsuits, then we could use it somewhere else. We have a carrying over a balance, significant balance from this year. All right, so the question is whether support for, and we wanna make motion to add this funding into an additional case. Well, I guess I wanna ask then, Bill, do you think that this is something that we could just use the fund balance left over from this year's savings to do, rather than having to add it to the budget? It's not a huge amount, and if it becomes a council priority, we'd make it work. As I said, our thought was a lot of the sort of grunt work, so it was people who'd run by it, we'd hire an intern over the summer and do that at a lower rate of pay, and then only have the final results reviewed and are actually, we planned it out, having the League of Cities in Townsend and their hourly wage is a lot cheaper than most of the private practice. It's still much cheaper than a private firm, et cetera. I think there is a tremendous amount of work that can be handled in-house, just silly things like fee rent for ourselves. Yeah, all specific fees that may be in some of them. Yeah, so I think one staff, it takes a first crack at actually updating everything and then, by the time legal looked at it, we'd have a pretty solid document. Well, and I should add that it's really my intention personally to, like, for me personally, this is my priority for next year, and I don't intend to be making lots of other asks of staff, so I'm hopeful that that might generate some. Sounds like you're chairing the committee. Yeah. That's it with this one? So is your thought then to take the leftover, which is gonna effectively be reserved money for next year? Or you take it out of the budget of legal funds. If you're comfortable with doing that, Bill, I guess I would. That's fine with me. I just wanted to raise it as an upcoming issue, so. Okay, any others on our budget list? All right. Terrific. I think we just said one other, two items before we- And just as a wrap-up, you've added 34,000 tonight between the council pay and the 28,000, conceivably, if the GMT gets reduced next week, that net could drop. Wouldn't you expect that? Well, I don't know what they're gonna put on. I know, but don't. You seem to promise it. I wouldn't expect it. I just- Well, it's based on account. I mean, this isn't- He's not making this up. Well, I talked to him, too. I just wouldn't- It's great if it happens. Here, over here, I guess. Where are we? Okay. At 34,000, where are we at? I guess you can send it to us after. Yeah. Okay. Or crunch it out while we're having the next conversation. Okay, next item is to make an appointment to the ADA Advisory Committee. We'll get point Tina Wood to the ADA Advisory Committee. Is there a second? Second. Favorite place, the aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank her. If you're watching Tina Wood, thank you for your service on that. It sounds like you're eminently qualified for that, and we appreciate that. It's an important committee. Next item is to approve the findings of fact, conclusions of law and order regarding eminent domain of the Cummings Street property. So the council, Matt, had a site visit on December 6th, 2017 of a property on Cummings Street. It's necessary, the city had proposed a necessity of taking of a small amount of property to allow for a bridge replacement on that road, which provides access to the Cummings Street departments. City had a site visit and then held a hearing that night. We met in the executive session a week ago and reached a tentative agreement at that time on a proposed order. I've circulated that order. Didn't hear back of any changes, beyond what I tracked based on the conversation with last week. So with that, do we have a motion to approve this proposed order? Is there a second? All in favor, please sit. I'm sorry, it's a discussion. I think Councilor Turcotte wanted to. I do have something to say, which any time that a body considers seizing personal property, I think this is a very, very important matter. Our founding fathers knew this in the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, if I may, Mr. Mayor, read very briefly from that, that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses and papers and effects against unreasonable search and seizures. I think there was agreement amongst this body that there was a necessity in repairing this bridge. There are a whole bunch of people that live on the other side of it and the state saw that it was in very ill repair and needed to be replaced. What was less clear was the value of the yard, which included absolute water frontage, mature trees and someone's lawn. While this Council did reach a decision on compensation, my advice to any residents who are faced with eminent seizure of their personal property and the future is that you consult with and retain an attorney to be sure that your interests are well represented. Thank you, Justin. Are there any other comments? I'd just like to highlight that it's actually the Fifth Amendment that deals with eminent domain and takings for public purposes. The Fourth Amendment deals generally with constitutional law regarding the issue of warrants for criminal proceedings, but the Fifth Amendment. And I agree with Councilor Turcotte that this is a significant issue. And I think that the Council deliberated this in a thoughtful, meaningful way. And I understand that potentially the outcome is not what some may have hoped, but that I think that this project is significant and important to our city. Is there any other discussion? Is that all in favor of who would say aye? Aye. Opposed? Nay. Okay, we're gonna do, because we're gonna do part of our discussion with you folks on TIF and Executive Session, we're gonna wrap up everything else we'll just take, I think a couple of minutes. Councilor Portz, Donna? Pass. Pass. Justin. I just wanna thank the residents for their patience in the snow removal over the last couple weeks. The city has many veteran staff that have been through dozens and dozens of winters, but Mother Nature still has a few tricks up her sleeves, but people need not worry, DPW does as well. Thank you for being patient. Rosie. I'll pass. John and I were both at the rink opening today. It was delightful, as well as Governor Scott. And yeah, so go check out the rink on the state house lawn. I'm all set. You know, do you all wanna know what money, since you were talking about money and taxes and ballots, what's circulating? Oh, in terms of petitions. Yeah, petitions. Yeah, it would be useful to know. As Bill was running through all those, I realized that doesn't move in a pretty significant amount hanging out there. Yeah, I mean, I hesitate to bring it up because I don't wanna be a bummer on your all's discussion, but I thought maybe I should mention it. The only thing that I know of that's money, there's one petition going around with three asks on it. And just so you all know, they approached me and asked if that was okay. I didn't think it was, but apparently the law says yes, it is. I don't like it at all, just out of principle. I mean, I can imagine this ballot with a bunch of, it just seems rife for fraud or manipulation, but it is the law. So the three that are out there are Central Vermont Home Health and Hospice is looking for 20,000. Good Samaritan Haven 4,000 and People's Health and Wellness Clinic 2,000. So I haven't heard of any others, so I don't think there are any others. So. Thank you for that. And I guess I would just say, we had this long discussion. I think this is an issue that the next council really needs to address because what we've done is created this fund that was based on a certain amount and now we have this significant amount going off ballot and it's increasing it by 30% beyond what we used to spend. So it just, I think it doesn't really work and we haven't figured that out, but I hope the next council does figure out some way to sync up these two processes because they don't work together now. Bill. The only thing I have is meeting start times. Because the suggestion or question would be the next meeting, you know, we've got fair amount on the last budget hearings and GMT and all that. It's just six, but do people want to go back to 630 after the two February meetings? Yeah. Is the next meeting the 17th to 24th? 24th. Good. 630, it works a lot better for me. It's just hard to... This is our assumption. We moved it up to six because of zoning and then we kind of roll it into budget but it seems like... I would like that. 630? Starting work. Yeah, it's fine. Starting February. Sorry for that. Okay. That was it. That's all I had. 630 starts in February, not 24th. Not next week. Not next, two weeks. Keep saying next week, but I don't mean it. I'm sorry. Turn back, Larry. However, next week, the sprinkler committee is meeting at 430 on the 17th. That's true. Good. We're making good use of our Wednesday. Is that it? You're all set? Okay. Okay, so we'll move to the workshop on the TIF program. So while they're setting up, I just provide guidance about where we're going, understand and because some of this involves some private properties, you'll be asked to do a public portion and then at some point we'll need to do some of it in an executive session. And I don't think, you know, obviously we choose for us to continue phase two of the grant would do that in public session, but more would you do that at the next meeting, whichever you prefer. That's it. And these three are gonna lead us through that. I think there is a presentation piece. Does anyone ever bring their jammies to these meetings? Welcome, lovely. Oh, man, this is early. Where'd this get started? It's early. Okay. I'm awake. This is early. You guys deserve a raise. So, we will have a PowerPoint up shortly for you, but just to start out, we are from Whitenburg, scale Henderson King and I'm Stephanie Healy. You guys saw us back in July, I believe, approving the first phase of the work we were gonna do for you on the TIF district. So tonight we're going to, if I can just pull this up, we'll walk you through several, the kind of big picture findings of phase one. We started in phase one of our work and then we're prepared to talk about phase two and the goal is to move forward to phase two. Whether that happens at tonight's meeting or in two weeks, we have a slot, I think reserved in two weeks in case we don't get through it all. If you want more time to digest or ask questions and we need to come back and answer them, we've built that time into the timeline a little bit. So, I guess, again, I wanna emphasize and the materials were pretty thorough, sorry they were long, as you and I heard you say like taking 10 hours to read them, I hope they weren't all on ours, I'm sorry, but to give you enough, I mean we haven't seen you in six months and we wanted to give you a thorough update on everything we've been working on. And so, what I wanna emphasize is that tonight's discussion is really not about, and even the next step, which is going to phase two is not about any major projects. It's not about making any decisions for any particular project, private infrastructure or approving any public infrastructure or approving any private project. It's really process-oriented. This is moving the ball down the field in the process of establishing a TIF district. So, tonight we're going to go through a quick recap of what is TIF because sometimes it gets stale, it's nuanced, it's worth just reiterating. Good. Seriously, jammy time. All right, so I'm speaking, so I'll just be watching you just keep away. And then we'll talk about what we did, what phase one included, what our purpose was to find viability. What did we look for in order to determine whether or not there is viability here for a district? What were our findings? And then some of the questions that we see and we've seen in other districts that the council and the legislative body needs to answer for themselves in order to move on to the next step. And then what is phase two and next critical steps? Now, a lot of these, as the manager said, we have to go into executive session. There's some nuances, there's some things about the findings that we learned that were confidential and also things that we determined that could potentially impact your position negotiating going forward. So, with that, I'll turn it over to Gail to walk you through one more time just a quick refresh on what is TIF. Thank you, Stephanie. So, development challenges often in downtowns are can affect the viability of projects, brown fields, infrastructure, just an example of those. And TIF is a tool that can be used to help address that challenge and be able to make projects move forward a little easier. So, what is TIF? It is a financing tool that, I'm sorry, no delight, I'm a little, so it's a financing tool that's used to help spur public projects by building public infrastructure to help spur private development in an area that the city has determined or a municipality has determined needs improvement. And the way TIF district works and it's kind of a little bit in this diagram is that you start off determining what is the existing value of a property. So, for example, an existing property may be worth a million dollars today. After redevelopment, that site then would be worth five million dollars, so the difference between those to the four million dollars is the increment of growth that's happened on that property. And then for the purposes of TIF, the taxes from that four million dollars is what the revenue from that is what's used to help fund projects for the public infrastructure projects. So, a municipality designates a TIF district and it can be inclusive of potential, ideally of potential projects. Sometimes they're more real than others. Others may be more speculative. And oftentimes that district will be defined or an include a designated downtown, a growth center, or some other area including that area. This is Hartford's TIF district area plan. And so the way, what happens, this is a little bit of how TIF works and I'll just make this fairly quick and simple, but when the TIF district is created, the original taxable value of all the properties in the district is set. So that's what all the properties currently pay for taxes. So that any improvements that happen, the increment difference of what the value of the property is today to what the value of the property will be afterwards is what is the funds that I'm sorry. The debt service. The debt service will be, it'll be used to pay it off the debt service. So TIF can use both the municipal, a portion of the municipal taxes, but the reason that TIF district is created is because you're going to be retaining part of the state taxes that go to state education. So legislation allows up to 70% of the state taxes to be withheld and used within the TIF district. So that's what happens for 20 years within a district. And then at the end of 20 years that the total taxes then will be going to both the municipality and the state as they would have before the district is created. So you're increasing your grand list and improving your designated area within your TIF district as a result of TIF. And interestingly, I was actually just a legislature yesterday testifying to the Senate committee about TIF. They wanted to know more and kind of an update since they passed the new legislation last year. And in researching that, I found a statistic from St. Albans that for the five years before they approved their TIF district, there was $20 million of growth in their grand list. Since that creation of the district, there's been five years since, 65 million growth in their grand list. So by a factor of three. So that's where at the end, hopefully of 20 years it'll grow even further and now you've grown your grand list by that much. So that's the hope. So we embarked on phase one. Really it was to determine if Montpelier had viability. Is it, does it have enough projects to and need and demand to be able to, is it a good tool for the city? Is it what it passed the VEPSI standards for the statutory requirements? We started with just gathering all the data you have so far. Tons of good studies, lots of information, a lot of data already gathered. Then worked with the local folks, city management as well as regional development to talk about what properties are coming to the forefront and what are their needs? What are their demands? Infrastructure demands. And then did some initial number crunching, met with property owners. And what we're really looking for in the viability is to start with what is that infrastructure demand and what would be the project viability after the project is, the private project is done. Does it fit within statutory criteria? Is there sufficient increment? Is there enough that it would net positive? Our point is to look for net positive at the end of 20 years. Can you pay off the debt service with those incremental taxes? And then cash flow is another piece of it though because you may be able to net positive but are you able to cover those early years of debt service? Which we'll talk about more in depth in our executive session because I gave you more notes than you needed on that. So our findings are that this is a viable community for a TIF district. What that district looks like is to be determined. There are a lot of factors. There are a lot of potential projects that could happen. Again, this is all subject to change. That's what phase two is for, is to actually develop the plan. But by looking at the range of potential projects we were able to run a bunch of numbers. We were able to make some assumptions and plug that in and see that there are a few different ways this could be set up that it could work. So some of the potential projects we did not list all because some are still confidential. We can talk about that in executive session but a few of the potential projects that stand out are ones that have been talked about a lot in this community. So the Capital Plaza building, the new hotel but they really can't go forward and do a project without parking. They're just, I mean, talk about tight, tight site and the demand would increase so much and currently their parking is being used for the public as well. And so there's just a big constraint there and downtown parking is really expensive. Water and sewer upgrades there as well. And then out on Berry Street, the Vermont College of Fine Arts property has been discussed for a possible housing project and then savings for a possible housing project which I'm sure this is news to you but we learned. It was great. And there are Berry Street improvements that would be needed. The water and sewer to be upgraded, the road, the infrastructure, the bridge, their bridge and culverts on that road that have to be upgraded. And those costs really can't be borne by those projects. I mean, those are things that if they could be they'd be done already. The demand is there. So the market is there demanding it but at the rate that would be needed to be able to make those numbers work is not there. I mean, we're not in a place where you can charge us, you can only charge so much for retail space, office space, housing. So where we got to with this is that we started digging deeper on at least one of these projects which is Capital Plaza. Capital Plaza is you are a fortunate community that you have a project that is teed up and ready is a project that really has marketability. It has investors that are at the table ready to invest but they have this infrastructure demand and they can't, they're constrained there. And so we need to do further research and discussions with them to be able to, and by we, I mean city management and the city as a whole to be able to understand what a parking garage would look like, structured parking would look like there. So the parking garage issue, what's interesting is that in some communities, some municipalities they have a district that they've put together conceptually. They don't have any actual project that's right there ready. They put together a general roadmap, which is what this is. When we put together the plan, it's just a menu. It doesn't commit the city to anything. It just gives kind of guardrails so that the state knows what to expect. You don't have to go back to the state every single time you wanna make a deal and do some sort of infrastructure project but they don't really have anybody at the door. So there's that model, that was St. Albans. St. Albans had a general idea but they didn't know exactly what the deal was gonna look like. A couple years later, they did a development agreement with the hotel and state office building and they made it happen. In another, on the other side, Bennington, for instance, already had a deal, commitment with their local private entity and said if TIF passes, this is what we'll do. You guys are in the middle of that, which is there's some will to do a TIF district but it hasn't been created yet. There's a project that could really use infrastructure help and could support to be able to make this possible and even feasible but they have to be timed a certain way. So there's a little bit of concurrency happening here which is where this gets a little bit more complicated but also more fortunate. So as we looked at this, we said okay, there's more to be done, there's a lot more to be done. We have to dig in deeper and we're not prepared to come back with a plan yet because that's not part of the scope yet but from what we can tell from these initial readings, this bears out very similarly in proportion to other TIF districts that have been approved. And you saw some of those materials in your other material, confidential materials. So when we went ahead and mapped out where these parcels were, where the projects were located, we actually started with a much bigger map. There were a lot more projects here. We met with Vepsi, we met with the state and they said some of these aren't really gonna meet the test of the project criteria, the location criteria. So we said all right, let's shrink it up a little bit and that's where we got to this outline, this border boundary. And you can see in this map, which is a little further out, that there's also, this is within the, all of it is within the growth center and a major portion is within the designated downtown. And that's important, the state cares about that and I believe that a lot of local people usually care about that as well because you wanna concentrate your growth and your stimulation for development in the areas where you've already planned, you've done all that planning. I see a question about that. Have you just zoned this to draw a line essentially through this part as rural and this is post for development? So I'm wondering if- It has to follow property line, John. So it has to follow the property lines themselves. It can, it doesn't require you to do development in those areas. I would say, if the property line changes, if they buy for, subdivide, then you could change that. There's no real downside necessarily with making it to incorporate that whole thing, but it's a good question now. So here are some of the council, the questions that legislative bodies have asked of us before, and I'm sure you have several others, but these are the kind of litmus tests that we like to make sure we've hit before we go on to the next step, which is, are these projects, the ones that we're gonna talk about more in a moment, in line with your planning and your development goals? And so, we don't wanna put something out there that is, you're not committing to it in the plan, but it should be city supported, so you wanna make sure you're comfortable with it. And then are these the types of projects? Is this the type of infrastructure you could conceive of investing of in the next five to 10 years? So it is a five to 10 year horizon, so that's why some of this gets more and more speculative, but are these the types of projects? And then for our part, we think the next portion of what we'll talk about hopefully answer this is, are there a sufficient amount of options that you have confidence that we'll be able to come back with a reasonable plan to you in a few months and have a reasonable approach to how you set this up? So our hope tonight and or in two weeks, whatever you guys decide, is that we would move forward to phase two because we do find this to be a viable district. We need to now spend time gathering more data and putting together the TIF district plan and how that goes is actually there's a process with if we're going forward in the hope that this is gonna become a district, we have to apply to VEPSI with a letter of intent. We have to submit a letter of intent 60 days prior to applying to the state. We have to then, then we draft the TIF district plan, bring that to the public and to the council for approval and then prepare the application that goes to the state. And that is the scope of our phase two. That's why I'm calling it that. That's really what the second half of our contract would be. Now what I mentioned earlier is about capital plaza specifically and about a parking solution here. And so what I wanna emphasize is that again, because you guys are in this unique circumstance where you have something very real that's happening as you're also developing the district, these are actually two separate concurrent processes. So setting up your district is not dependent on getting a development deal signed. Setting up your district is not dependent on who is actively gonna make something happen as soon as you sign the papers. But you, because you, if you, if that project is one of the projects you want to include, you wanna make sure the most current and the most realistic scenario is included in your TIF district plan. Because assuming that that gets approved by the state, then you wanna be shovel ready and be able to move forward. So we recommend pursuing the development agreement and pursuing even not even the development agreement itself, but the negotiation and the discussion concurrently so that you have, because the right, you need to include the right information in your TIF district plan. That would be a separate contract, not inclusive in the phase two. Whitenburg has done this for other companies, specifically our president, David White, has been the person to negotiate development agreements on behalf of other municipalities. Whether or not you hire us is not the point tonight, but just letting you know that that would have to be a second step and it would have to be a concurrent step to what we're working on. So just to recap the milestones and timeline, because everyone likes a good timeline, or at least I do, due diligence, and development discussions would have to happen over the next two months, following pending your approval of going forward. In February, we'd submit that LOI and in February, March, we'd spend time developing that TIF district plan with city management, with stakeholders trying to get input, hopefully a core team. And then in April, our plan would be to present this to the public. We'd do a public meeting, hopefully out of city council meeting ideally, to be able to present it to you and also the public. And then we provide a feedback period so that there's a chance for property owners who haven't been interviewed yet, who could potentially provide more data and input. And then the final version with all that feedback incorporated gets sent to the council for approval in May with a quick turnaround, short turnaround to submit to the state. Sorry, what's LOI? Oh, sorry, letter of intent. Oh, okay, thank you. And that's their terminology for that process. And then in May, after we submit, if we can submit by the end of May, we could potentially even be on the agenda for the VEPC hearings in June and they take two to three meetings to decide. And the reason we've aggressively moved towards this timeline, which is a little bit intense, we've put a little bit of buffers in there, is because if there's a project you want to proceed with in the very next year, because as soon as, I'm gonna double back. If there's a project you wanna proceed with, you might wanna be on the November ballot with that project. If there's an infrastructure project you wanna do and in order to be on that November ballot, you have to warn that by September and start the voter education at least in September. So we wanted to build enough time in. And where I was about to go with that is that as soon as you, the council vote on the TIF district plan, you've started your clock. You've started your TIF district. You now have 10 years from 2018, let's say, to incur debt, only 10 years, which is not that much time actually. So you wanna make sure you maximize that time and to start retaining increment, you have to start incurring debt. So all of it happens pretty quickly and it's not committing you to that just by setting up the district, but I put that out there as a fair warning as part of the legislation. All right, I've talked enough at you for now. If there's any questions on that component before we go into executive session, I thought we'd pause. Questions? I think we're all set in the lights, thank you, John. Thank you for that presentation. Presumably if we had something on the November ballot. Sorry, yeah. Technical question. You needed this for the executive session. Yes, please. Oh, excuse me. Yeah, just, yeah. I've got another slide, John. Yeah, anyway, I'm just thinking about our budget process. Now, obviously this is separate from that and so we wouldn't be anticipating any capital improvement plans for any of this work at this point, right? Right. Right, so this is all separate outside of your operating budget. Right, right, right, yep. Yep, that's the beauty of it. Other than I asked Bill this question, the additional fund, so if we're going to proceed with phase two, we need to enter into the contract with Whitenburg for the next section. And that would be in, that's on this cost budget. You would take that from the same reserves and then, so I understand that we can take that into, yes. We can roll that into a project. It's a related cost that you put as an explicit line item when you go to the voters so that they know and then it's reimbursed by the internet. It's on yourselves. Who wants to go into executive session? I have more slides. All right, do we have any, what's the executive session? I'm not sure the proper. Second. We have a second. So, yeah, just to discuss real estate and contractual matters. So you include Stephanie and Gale and also Sue and Todd. I would, well I move that we find that you would put the city at a substantial disadvantage to have this conversation in public. Second. All right, any discussion? Don't unfairly say aye. Aye. Okay, thank you, and we won't be returning.