 6 p.m. Special City Council meeting on Monday, July 10th, 2023. We have one possibly two counselors who will be remote. We're hoping that Megan Emery will be able to join us from the west coast, where it's probably sunny, but hotter than here. And Tyler Barnes is remote. So we'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance. And Tim, you want to start that? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Item two, instructions on exiting the building in case of an emergency. Thank you for those attending in person. You can go out either side of the rear of the auditorium and then go left and right to leave to exit. For those participating remotely, thank you for joining us. If you'd like to make a comment during any agenda item, please either turn on your camera or indicate to me you'd like to make a comment and the chair will call on you. Otherwise, we are not monitoring the chat for content tonight. Thanks. Thank you. So third item is agenda review. Are there any additions, deletions or changes in order of the business? Okay. Seeing none, we'll go on to comments and questions from the public, not related to the agenda. Are there any? I don't see anybody in the auditorium and nobody online. Okay. Then we'll go to item five, counselors announcements and reports on committee assignments in the city manager's report. Andrew, do you want to start? Okay. And it hosts us for an hour and it's on the web. It's hosted on the community watch and sent to third one here. So it was great. It was fun. It was exciting. I attended the meeting of the climate action task force, climate action task force transportation committee, where we talked about different strategies for reducing vehicle models traveled and getting people into EVs, including amending our regs to require more charging, do some transportation demand management strategies, more density. So really exciting stuff there that I think some of that will have a big, big impact. I attended the planning commission meeting last week where there was continued discussion of the comprehensive plan and a very interesting discussion about really how to frame it right at the top and how to think about the four goals and whether all those goals are equally weighted or not. And I think the result of that discussion was a vote to say not, which we'll have to consider, but to put climate change as the overriding priority and everything else really important, but through the lens of climate change. So I think that'll be really interesting to talk about here. And then finally, just to let folks know, I hosted a number of folks in my home to talk about the Hubbard area. And it was a very good discussion. Folks had some strong views. I think at the end of it, at least among that little group, folks were able to kind of coalesce about around something that seemed pretty reasonable, but we'll have that further discussion next time we all talk about Hubbard. So that's me. Thank you. Tim. Not much report other than fact that I went to the Lake Monsters game last week on military appreciation night. Oh, nice. So I have in-laws and the son-in-law is a pilot for the Air Force and we were able to enjoy the game and pay our respects to all the different chapters that are here. And they lost, unfortunately, the Lake Monsters. So that's, that's all I have. Okay. Tyler. Any report? Not much to report just gathering data from a number of different nonprofit organizations pertaining to the discussion on Hubbard. I look forward to having that conversation next week and following up on Tim. I think it was a really similar to Tim. I went to not one, not two, but I think since we last spoke, no, maybe it has only been two Vermont green games. And I got, I have to say, I don't know who the individual or individuals are who own the team who brought that to our community, but what an amazing resource and what a job they've done creating something that we as a community can be proud of. I am not a soccer fan. I'm not a soccer fan. I'm not a soccer fan. I'm not a soccer fan. I watch Ted Lasso. That's just about as close as I get, but it was riveting and just to see the crowds of people that they got and the engagement and support, all positive. It was, it was really remarkable. And I'm really excited that we have something like that in our community. Thank you. Okay. I attended an airport commission meeting. We had quite a number of individuals from the public who came to the airport. We had a group of people from the airport who came to the airport with both in person and largely online. Apparently this is a group that is very much opposed to the basing of the F 35s. And they've linked it now to a concerns with the, of climate change. And have a resolution that they are bringing forward. And I think that's one of the reasons why we're proposing this. And we're urging the commission to take a stand or to support it. It was, I think a little less about climate change and more about the basing, but they did one of the other. I haven't seen the resolution. So I don't know if this is included in it, but there was also a lot of comment on. Having the airport ban the use of private jets because they are far more polluting. And per, I think it's passenger mile or something like, I think that's the, how you, how you measure that. They had spoken to Nick Longo about that. He had spoken with the FAA who have assured them that that's not legal. That a lot of federal dollars have gone into and the airport and that you can't deny whole classes of planes to land. But they still believe there's a chance. And I know our experience has been with the FAA that sometimes if you ask a couple times, you get a different answer. So I don't know what will come of that resolution or that comment. There was also an update on the sound insulation. Things got held up a little bit because the windows that they had ordered. I don't know the company went belly up or they didn't get them. So they had to find some other vendor for the windows. So they have submitted. You have to go through quite a bit of effort when you use federal dollars, I guess, probably more so than state dollars about vetting different companies and making sure that they're okay to work with. In spite of that, I guess we still have, you know, $30,000 basins and toilets and things that some of these vendors sell to the military. But maybe that's ended. I don't know. So that will continue. Phase two is the next 52 homes and that will start the outreach to those 52 homes in August. Helen, can I ask a question? Yeah. How many homes have they completed? Well, 16 are. Yeah. And that was the pilot. And they've sort of made that because of the windows, I guess, they've included it in or these next 52 into phase one. They keep changing the faces. So it's moving forward. And the feedback from the residents is positive. I haven't heard anything negative. So I haven't, I think they would have shared that. Yeah. They also talked a little bit about the noise exposure map. And later this summer we'll have the first meeting and they will create, there were two committees that provided oversight. So they'll be in touch with the city of South Burlington and other people. I think Paul Connors was on one of those committees. There were some public members, people from Winooski. There's a variety of public who worked on those. They have identified the consultants for that new noise exposure map. The base year is going to be the noise generated in 2023. And so that, that base report of noise has to be submitted by the end of the year. Can I ask what's changed that would create a different noise map at this point? The F-35s. They're not in the previous? No. No, they hadn't arrived yet. Oh. Yeah. Oh, they modeled it. They modeled it. But now that they're here, we actually know the number and we have data. And then lastly of interest to South Burlington, they've put an order in for the fencing for the cemetery. And that should arrive and be installed the end of July. And they are going to get in touch with Tom, D-Pietro, because there is apparently a row of cedars where they need to put the fence. I mean, I haven't driven by. I've seen some shrubbery or whatever. And so they want to work out with you exactly how you want them to trim those so they can install the fence. And I did talk to Peter Taylor. So I think he shared that with the Sexton Committee. So that's all I have to report. Thank you. Helen, can I just, when they, in connection with the sound proofing, did they also talk about weatherization? We didn't talk about that then at the last meeting, but that is part of the conversation and part of the work. So I've asked that and they've said, oh, yes, we, we make that connection. So it's also how we got the match for the first round, right? Through, through VGS. Yes. Yeah. Weatherization commitment. So I think that's how that works. But I will, I can ask that again, you know, get an update, but Megan has joined us from afar. Does she want to make a comment? Can you hear me? We can. Okay. I'm going to keep my screen off because I have limited battery. I just hope that everybody is okay. I am out of state and learning from both local and national news sources about the heavy torrential rains. I just, I haven't heard self Burlington in the news, but I hear that people are watching Burlington overnight in addition to Montpelier. And I just hope everybody's okay. Thank you. I think that's pretty much the status here. Yeah. Yeah. The biggest hit, I guess, was in the Ludlow, London, Dairy, Weston area. Right. Right. And are the people still cut off from emergency services there in Ludlow? This is, they're predicting that this will be significantly longer lasting than the tropical storm Irene. And you know, they've already gotten seven inches of rain and it's still raining hard. Oh my. All right. Well, I'm thinking of you all. I'll be home tomorrow. I hope. I heard that the water. And the interval is. What? And the interval. Yes. People will hold on emergency to come down and harvest. Yeah. The Essex Dam looks like a chocolate fountain. Well, the Winooski River is one of the rivers that there's so many tributaries, so much. Right. That that. Right. So I think the real impact for our county will probably be tonight. That's what I read that the Winooski River was cresting. Yeah. All right. So just on that note, and I will save the rest of my comments for next week in the interest of time, but we are the chiefs in Tom are watching overnight. We are expecting another two and a half inches of rain here overnight. We're not seeing any significant issue at this point, but we are monitoring it and assuming we don't need a lot of local resources and emergency response tomorrow, we will offer our assistance to other municipalities who may need building inspectors and heavy equipment and whatnot. So more to come on that. So while we're thinking about our municipal friends across the city or across the state who are really struggling, I also just wanted to mention that we are thinking tonight of our friends in Rutland who are mourning one of their new police officers. Officer Eben Hauser who passed away on Friday in the line of duty. We've been thinking about her. That's so tragic. That's always hard to manage when you're killed on the line of duty. Moving on to the consent agenda. We have two items, the disbursements and approving the minutes from May 15th and June 5th. Do I have a motion to approve? I will move to approve the consent agenda. I will second. Is there any discussion? Any questions? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Oh, I'm sorry. We have to do a roll call since we got two. If it's unanimous, you don't. Oh, if it's not unanimous, you don't. So Megan, are you supporting the consent agenda? Of course. Yes. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. And that is unanimous. So the consent agenda is approved. Moving on then to the really big item tonight for this meeting is the municipal approving the municipal tax rate and set the installment due date. So Martha Lyons and Jesse will manage that conversation. So as Martha comes down, just a reminder, this is a formulaic approval. We model what we project the grand list to be as we developed the FY 24 budget. The grand list is then lodged effective April 1st. And then there is a formula based on the money to be raised by property taxes that the voters approved. So we're not exercising any discretion here. No discretion, but you are legally obligated to set the rate. Okay. Martha provided their director of tax assessing and collection of the data of the state. So if you have any questions, we can answer those. Or Martha can talk to you through them. Would you like to be walked through? I mean the public might like little walk through. An abbreviated walk through. Sure, if you have her, you can put it up because I don't quite haven't memorized. It is kind of long to memorize. So why don't I do a Martha? I, that will take me a few minutes. Okay. So why don't we just. Oh, there she is. There we go. Thank you, Martha. The other, Martha. Yes, the other awesome, Martha. I just started off by giving a little blurb of what is a grand list and what does it mean? And the grand list contains information such as property owner's name, mailing address, assessed value, size of the lot. And this information is set, as Jesse said, as of April 1st each year. And then there are several reasons why an assessed value may change during non-reappraisal years. And that's if somebody does new construction or gets a permit to add a deck, finish a basement, do a second story addition, or demolish something on their property. And then I know Tim had asked what the average range was for residential house and condo. The residential real estate market and condominiums is still increasing in sale prices. However, that doesn't mean our assessed values change because we did our last reappraisal was complete with 2021. So I have to use those same tables when I put values on properties now going forward. So the new construction that was just built last year in 2022 or even into the beginning of 2023 is based upon what our houses were assessed at for 2021. So therefore, the average house remained the same. The condos went up slightly to $296,408. And the main reason for that is like at O'Brien Farms, that's a PUD, the Planned Unit Development. So all of those, even though it looks like a single family house, it's in the condo database because there is no land value with it. The commercial real estate market is not as robust as the residential and the condos. However, the values that were set in 2021 are still holding steady. And for commercial properties that have sold since the reappraisal, they're either selling, they're starting to sell for a little more than what they were assessed at, but there's not quite the gap like between residential and condos. And this year, the grand list increased by 2.38% overall for the entire municipal grand list. So we are now a little over $4.1 billion in value. I broke out the percentage increase between what happened in the TIF district. I lumped residential and condominiums together in the commercial real estate market. And most of it was due to new construction. The TIF district increased by 14.6%. Residential and condos increased by 1.64% and commercial values increased by 4.46%. And then when we started building the fiscal year 24 budget, we assumed a 1% growth in the non-TIF grand list and 9.6% in the TIF grand list. And on town meeting day, the voters approved with a 73.1% approval rate, the municipal budget of a little over 55 million with 19,388,298 and some change to be raised from property taxes. During the budget process, we modeled that the FY24 tax rate would be an increase of 5.75% over fiscal year 23. And that would include pennies for pass and open space. And with the increase that we had in the grand list, our tax rate is actually increasing by 5.43%. And that's better than what taxpayers anticipated when they approved the budget. And that will decrease what their new tax burden is going to be. In that case, Martha was solely talking about the city tax rate, not the combined tax rate. Yes, and then once we received the state education tax rates, I was able to meet with the other Martha, the finance director to calculate the TIF proceeds, which goes into the city operating tax rate. And then the formula that we use to come up with our tax rate is we take the voter approved amount to be raised by property taxes, add in the TIF proceeds, and then it's divided by the grand list value, and then we are per 100 of assessed value. And that's where the tax rate comes from. And then below that, I showed the math. Okay. Well, thank you. Any questions, comments? Thank you. Sounds wonderful. Thank you for the report, Martha. Okay, so are you ready for the vote? I guess we, I need a motion to set the FY, or I'll make it, I moved to set the FY24 municipal operations tax rate of 0.4712 cents for a total municipal tax rate of 0.4916 and set the installment due dates of August 15th, 2023, November 15th of 2023 and March 15th of 2024. Second. Any further discussion? All in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, that's unanimous, so that's approved. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Martha. Thank you, Martha. Martha's. Move on to item eight, approving the council resolution, excuse me, 2023-13 establishing the FY24 water, wastewater and storm water rates and related allocation fees. And Tom DiPietro, Public Works director will run us through that. Good evening, everybody. Good evening. So hopefully this is pretty straightforward. We did this last year. So for our enterprise funds, drinking water, wastewater and storm water, we proposed a budget that council have reviewed and in the budget book, that information was presented to taxpayers or ratepayers in this case, I should say. And what the resolution contains here is raises in those rates that match kind of what we talked about back during budget approval time. I can go through the specific numbers if folks like. I have them on a dollar basis that I have the percentages in front of me. And then also this resolution changes some of our allocation fees. So when there's new construction that needs, for example, a wastewater allocation or additional drinking water, we charge them a fee to help pay for future capital costs. And so this also updates those rates. Okay, and we're still the lowest. We are still the lowest. And the memo mentions again that we're gonna come with that rate study very soon. And I look forward to that meeting. Okay, thank you. So this is just our normal annual update yet to update our rates for the new fiscal year. So, yes. So I move that we approve resolution establishing the fiscal year 2024 water, sewer and storm water rates and connection fees. Second. Okay, any questions or comments? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. And that's unanimous. Okay, now we move on to the final item, right? Yes. Approved changes to the planning and zoning fee schedule, including altering the timing for payment, but no change to the rates. So Paula's not here tonight, so I am doing this one. Again, this is on our annual fees changing night. So we thought we would bring this to you at the same time. So there is actually no fee change associated with this change. It's solely a timing change. So we are recommending that you approve this update to the planning and zoning fee schedule to alter the time at which the certificate of occupancy fee is paid. That is a hard thing to track down at the end of a project. So we are recommending we change the point of collection to the point at which property owner applies for his zoning permit application. They will still have to come in for their CO, but it will be a less of a hurdle because they will not have to pay at the same time when they are ready to occupy. We did have the conversation internally about if at points projects can be permitted and then never constructed. So if that were to happen, we would, as we do now, we would walk back the fees and return those to the developers. Okay, comments, thoughts, okay. Would you like a motion? I would. So I move that we approve the change to the planning and zoning fee schedule as presented in the meeting tonight. And the second? Second. Second, yeah. And any comments or questions? Seeing none, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. So that concludes the special city council meeting. So I would invite the school board and Violet, I think that's all that's joining us. So we can convene as a steering committee meeting. Hi there. I'd like to get on the Zoom meeting. Pardon me? I'll have to get on the Zoom meeting as well. Hadn't occurred to me that I need to do that. Oh. Well, you don't need to get on Zoom. No, okay. You gave me a Zoom link, so. Oh, no, you don't. I guess that's we're all here. Great. Okay, and are you just you or the rest of your members joining by Chelsea is on Zoom and whereas I need to join this evening. Okay. Oh, I see. Okay, sometimes I can't read that. So all righty. So I will convene the steering committee meeting of Monday, July 10th at 6.29. We're right on time and I welcome everyone. We might want to do introduction. So do you want to start? Can you? Sorry. Make sure you the green light is yeah. Okay. Brian companion, a 40 year resident of South Burlington retired for 30 years. I work for Pizzagalli Construction as the risk manager. The last 10 years of my career there, I was in charge of the construction project and project health and safety program with from development to implementation to monitoring and four months on the school board. So here I am. Okay. Okay. Hi there. I'm Kate Bailey. My pronouns are she, her. I have been in South Burlington since 2017 and on the school board since 2022. Good evening, Violet Nichols, South Burlington school district superintendent. Excited to be here today. Thanks for having us. Can you identify any of your staff that's in the audience? Yes, I'd like to, I'll have two introductions. I'd like to introduce Tim Jarvis, senior director of operations and finance. He is here in person. We've also got Lissa McDonald and she's just turned her camera on. Lissa has joined us via Zoom. She's the principal as she's known at Rick Markott elementary school. So thanks for being here, both of you. Thank you. And I'm Alex McHenry, serving for six plus years on the school board and now in the capacity as chair and I'm enjoying it immensely. Great. And Chelsea, can you turn on your picture or not? Sometimes. Yes, I can, hi. Hi, I'm Chelsea. I'm also a member of the school board, South Burlington, that's good. Okay, welcome. Well, I'm glad we could. Oh, and so thank you. And so I'm Helen really, and I chair the city council. I've been on the council for, this is my 12th year. And I'm Jesse Baker, I serve as your city manager and I've just started my third year and joining me tonight is Martha Machar, our finance director, Steve Locke, our deputy city manager and fire chief, Tom DiPietro, our public works director, Sean Burke, our police chief, Erica Quallen, our deputy director of public works for capital projects, and Martha Lyons, our director of tax assessing and, or tax director of assessing and tax collection. And also Lou Brezi is online, who is our energy projects manager. And Sue Alnick, of course, taking minutes. Taking minutes, yes. And I'm Tim Barrett, I've been on city council since 2016 and on Thursday, celebrate 42 years at IBM Global Foundries. Go figure. Andrew Chalmick. Look that old, yeah. He was a child prodigy, right? Andrew Chalmick, so I've been on the council since March and recently retired. Okay, Megan. Yes, hi, and I am gonna keep my camera off just so I can hear the whole meeting and save some battery. Megan Emory, this is my 14th year on the council and I am just happy to participate. I apologize for being virtual, but I will do my best to follow and to participate in all of that we'll be discussing tonight. Thanks. Thank you. And Tyler? Sorry, wrong button. My name is Tyler Barnes. I'm a new member of the city council. I joined with councilor Chalmick in March, but a long time South Burlington resident on and off since 1985-ish and a product of South Burlington schools. So very excited to have the opportunity to work together to continue and share the wonderful experience that I had with another generation of students. Great. Okay, so agenda review. Are there any additions, deletions or changes in order of the agenda items? Okay, seeing none, I would ask for approval of the minutes from the March 6th, 2023 steering committee. Yeah, can I just make one correction, please? I believe, Kate, did you notice it? Your name is misspelled at the top. It is, Tim, sorry. How did I miss that? K-B-A-D-B-A-D-E-Y. No. So if that changed, the minutes look okay to me. Okay, would you like to move them with that adjustment? I would like to make a motion to approve these minutes with that spelling adjustment. In a second? Second. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, thank you. So we've approved them. We need to approve the minutes. Item five. We need to go back to three. Oh, I'm sorry. Excuse me, I'm sorry. I missed comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. Is there anyone wishing to make a comment? Seeing none. I knew. We'll move on to five. We'll get back to five and receive an update from the city staff on the engineering analysis for traffic and pedestrian travel around schools. And Jesse Baker, city manager and Tom DiPietro, our public works director, provided a memo and they will walk us through that. Sure. So just table setting here as Tom gets settled. So we also have Erica Quallen here to speak on this and Chief Burke as well. So the school board provided us a letter on June 21st falling up from our April letter. So we provided this back and would love to have a discussion about what's included here. I guess I would like to start by just saying we are, we as city staff are equally committed to the safety of our streets. We take that really seriously, especially bike and pedestrian access at the policy direction of the council. And while we have very strict statutory rules we have to follow and best practice engineering rules we have to follow. We do endeavor to ensure we're always protecting all of our residents, especially our kids and families. And many of us have children who are in schools and certainly see that as a primary goal as we maintain the city's infrastructure. So I'm assuming you would like Tom to walk through what is here for the school board and the public tonight? Sure. And do we wanna have comments or questions item by item or would that be most helpful? Is that okay? I think from staff's point of view a discussion would be most helpful. So as Tom walks through this, if there are areas that people would like to talk about, let's talk about it. Okay, thank you. Hear me? Yes. Good evening, everybody. Tom DiPietro, Public Works Director. And thank you, Jesse, for the introduction and thank you all for the opportunity to come here and speak about this. I look forward to, like Jesse said, having a discussion about this and letting you know the work we've put into this so far and kind of the process we're following to meet some of the requests that we received in this mid-June letter here. So I'm gonna go through them. I think I'll just go through one at a time. Yes. And we'll go there. So the first request is related to traffic at the intersection of Market Street and Rick Marcotte requesting a timeline budget and related information. So in brief, the update on that effort is retained a traffic engineering consultant, VHB, who has done work in the area. And we're also working with the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission on the traffic engineering professionals there. We have expedited the schedule for data collection so that the information the engineers need to do the kind of analysis that's necessary can get done, was done during the school year when there's obviously more traffic in the area, schools and session. So they've collected turning movement data for the area, traffic volume data, collected speed data on Market Street. Folks may have seen the sensors out there during the end of the school year. And the next step in that process is for them to take that information and do an engineering analysis. In the memo, I included some information about the kind of warrant analysis and the engineering resources they use, the MUTCD, the Ash Tome Manual. I didn't wanna overwhelm folks, but I just wanted to point out some information, kind of what the engineers are using and what they're using as resources and why those are important, kind of what those are used for as they make determinations for traffic and pedestrian safety. As far as schedule goes, so final engineering recommendations will be available at the end of July or early August. So on schedule to what we had initially planned and what we signed contracts to do with our consultants. And then the next step is to evaluate sort of timelines and budgets, figure out any funding request, some interventions can be done pretty quickly, right? If the suggestion is, and just as a for instance, stop sign a four-way stop, that can happen pretty quickly. If the recommendation is something more like a traffic signal, that'll require some additional engineering, obviously some budgeting. So once we get this information back from our consultants, we'll be able to have those discussions as well. Any comments or questions? Straight forward for everyone? Alex? Yeah, sure. Are there any other studies currently going on? Sorry, I'll take care of them. Yeah, quite a few. So in Market Street area specifically? And in any other areas around our schools? Yes, okay. I can move on to item two then. That's an item two. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay, so if there's... Yeah, are there any questions or comments about item one? Yeah. Oh, okay. So Brian, go ahead. Okay, your turn. So the engineering and the studies happening with the current circumstances of Market Street, does it factor in any of the future growth or how does one build upon the current traffic study that's happening as the city center develops more and more? Yep, so that's what your question confused me because there's multiple studies in this area. The other one is a traffic model that my colleague, Erica, has got additional information on as of just today even. So we are looking at the whole area, the intersections sort of from Heinzberg Market, all along Market Street, down to Dorset, Dorset-Williston and updating that traffic model. And so we have the existing conditions data with that traffic volume information that gets plugged into that model. We also know the new development that's coming. And so when that gets through our development review process, they provide information on additional traffic. So the next step there is to plug that expected additional traffic into the model and then we'll be able to see what's expected at each intersection. And if that warrants or calls for, you know, signalized intersections, just as an example, right? And so that really helps us lay out a plan which helps us lay out kind of the budget tarry needs for, again, maybe it's a traffic signal or whatever it might be. Yeah. Okay. Just, I'm gonna complicate that just a little further because I can't help myself. They run different scenarios too. So with Garden Street open or closed, what does that do? So it's gonna be a pretty holistic analysis of the area which I hope folks find as interesting as Erica and I do. Can I also add one other thing? Because I can help myself to this one. So I think this modeling is actually the critical modeling for our downtown in the years to come. I think one of the big picture things to think about as we think about specifically bike and pedestrian and vehicle safety in city center is that the growth that we were projecting in city center last year at this time and the growth we're seeing on the ground is incredibly different. So last year at this time, we were being told by the developers that we were gonna see one building a year come on over the next decade. And thanks to huge institutional investment from UVM and UVMMC, we're at a three month mark now. So we have a new building starting every three months, which is a very different reality on the ground. So about a year ago when we were planning for this year in, we started this work on the comprehensive traffic modeling and are fine tuning it as we know what's actually being permitted on the ground. So we have been proactively planning for that and it's just happening much faster than we anticipate what then the development community was telling us it was gonna happen. Okay, was that your? No, I have quite a few. It's a different, oh, okay. You mentioned that you've collected data and everything and that's great. Has your consultant come out and taken a good look at what it looks like when children are being dropped off between 720 and 810? Yes, sir. One of our consultants actually has a child that goes to the school, so he's very familiar. Because that, I come from construction and we have a saying, inspect, don't expect, go see it yourself. So I did three or four times over here at Marcott and also at Chamberlain, I walked that district and I even counted cars. There's 100 to 140 cars that go through in a 25 minute period and probably 75% of them in a 10 or 15 minute period. And just getting back onto Market Street is difficult. Coming from the East, you've got the construction fence with a blind corner, the fabrics right up on it. It's hard to see. Coming from the West, it's kind of a curve with cars parked and plus that heavy school traffic also has the morning traffic where everybody's trying to get their day started. And I can understand if it's accelerating with your building going much faster, what is Rick Markoff gonna look like next year when 550 beds come online with UVM? I guess one of my other questions has to do is what is school going to look like when Rick Markoff opens? Is what are we gonna, are we gonna see any change from what we saw from last year at the end of the year when we had Sue out there directing pedestrian traffic, vehicle traffic and so on? Because we're six to eight weeks away from school. Is there any change the city is going to make? I guess it's a question. So I think this is getting a little to number three so we can jump there if you'd like. Are we ready for that? I'll just ask my budgeting question that in your April 10 letter and in this letter it talks about funding a lot. How long are we looking before something will be installed there? I'm assuming your consultant's gonna come back and say something has to be done. So maybe we get to that in number three if you want. So my quick answer to that and Tom can provide more detail. As he said earlier, it depends on what the recommendation is. If it's a recommendation that we can do in-house or with a small contract, that's something we can do very quickly. If it's a traffic light or a bigger intervention that's required by the engineering standards, that's a different conversation and we just don't know yet what those recommendations are. That's what we anticipate getting at the end of July. Tim, did you have a question or a comment? Yeah, you talked about in your model of having Garden Street open. Is that a condition where the entire street is open or just two sections? And then in addition to that, did you look at opening Mary Street as well? I'm going to say yes, all those conditions are in there as different scenarios and Erica will correct me if I'm mistaken. Violet, you have a question. Yeah, thank you so much, Tom. I really appreciate the information here. Yeah, I too, I'm thinking about the start of school already and I appreciate, Jesse, what you said about the expedited pace of development and I'm wondering, not my area of expertise, I'm wondering if you can share any information about the timeline for a development of a school zone. I know that that has been a request of the board and so I'm wondering if you could share a little bit about that. I'm going to jump into item number two then if that works for folks. Yeah, that's what item number two is, so why don't we go there? Great. Okay, so just again, I just organized these, kind of how the letter came in. So item two is a date for when school zones will be finalized and each of the four school campuses currently without them. And so this is going to be a longer answer, I apologize for that, but kind of four different scenarios here. So just to go take one step back, we did not have in our ordinance in our resolution, our speed resolution, school zones at all until October. So that's something we moved forward pretty quickly and that was based on speed related concerns on White Street in front of that school. So Councillor Emory, I think had brought that to at least my attention and others originally and we worked on that kind of at a faster pace than any of the others, because that one came before. So we did the kind of analysis that we were talking about now for Rick Marcotte a few moments ago, collected all the data recommended to school zone. So once that was all done, we ordered the hardware and lighting and all of the signage and all the things that are required to kind of put the school zone in reality. It's just on paper right now in our ordinance. Due to just delivery, we are still waiting on that hardware. They were supposed to ship it this week, past week. So I'm hoping it's going to show up very soon. So if the schedule holds, that will be in place before the start of school. That's that one. If I could just jump in there, if that's okay, Helen, sure. I just wanted to give credit to our principal, Holly Ruel. It's thanks to her letter that that was fast tracked. I simply was kind of like a nudge that was following up to make sure that we knew the timeline going forward. So thank you, Tom, for giving me the credit, but I really want to give the credit to Holly of Chamberlain School. Thanks. Okay. By the way, go ahead. Yeah, thank you. And to clarify, is that for Rick Marcotte specifically, or is that for the other four campuses? For the total of our remaining schools? That was just White Street area in the Chamberlain School. So I'm going to go through the other three. No, sorry about that. I mean, the timeline that you just gave, was that for, I thought you were referring to Marcotte. That was just the Chamberlain, yeah. So I guess more specifically, is there a timeline for when that could happen at Marcotte and then the other schools? I'll go through those now, yeah. Can I ask a question about Chamberlain in the timeline before we move on? Can you lay out from start to finish, when did you receive or did Megan receive the letter from Principal Ruel and when did the school zone become an ordinance? You're testing my memory there. I know that we, in the memo I looked it up, it was October 3rd, 2022, was when we updated the city ordinance to allow school zones and create that school zone within the ordinance. And it must have been some months before that, where we had done the data collection and kind of worked with the traffic engineers at CCRPC. I don't recall when it started. It was end of May, early June of 2022. And her initial letter was in fall of 2021. And so it was brought immediately to the CCRPC because that's how school requests, according to Tom's predecessor, they are fast tracked. And so when they had extra funds at the remaining of their fiscal year, they could fast track it and put it in the actual year that that initial letter from fall 2021 was sent to the CCRPC through our director of public works at the time. So that's usually maybe not the case, that they just happen to have funds, but I would assume that if they have funds because of the nature of this being a school, it would be, that's how it was explained to me. It was put at the top of the very long list. So thanks, Megan, for clarifying that. That helps a lot. I just want to point out the nature of us being here at a steering committee and hoping to develop our partnership and collaboration working together. I feel like it was a real missed opportunity. I was on the school board in October of 2022 and I didn't know that this conversation ordinance was going into place. And I would have advocated that at that time when the ordinance was being changed for Chamberlain that we could have added at least Rick Markot since it's an active construction zone, if not all of the schools. We also had the accident right outside Dorset Street. So it feels like a missed opportunity and I just want to point it out and ask when these issues come up again at a specific school, if we can, if city counselors or whoever receives the request can just take that moment to zoom out and check in with the school board or with our superintendent to see if any issue that's happening at one school, maybe where your kids go to school is more of a district-wide need. So that we can order the supplies for five school zones at once rather than piecemeal one by one. So that's more of a request than a question, but it feels relevant to the conversation that we're having tonight. Thanks. Sure. I'm sorry. Alex? Sure, thank you. So a quick question I guess for Tom. It sounds to me like with the way I'm thinking about it, it's a roughly, it was a roughly two-year process to go from Principal Ruel's letter to getting the hardware in place, which hasn't quite happened yet, but we aren't at two years away from the fall of 2021 yet. So can you clarify that and confirm that my understanding of that is correct, that the concern was raised almost two years ago and we're almost at the point where something is being done about that? I guess I can tell you, I've only been in this chair for about 13, 14 months. So I can tell you within weeks of my involvement, we were talking about the speed limit resolution and how to move it forward. I wouldn't say it's uncommon for these kind of things to take a year or more to get through the process and just a point of clarity, when you go to change a speed on a road, that has to be backed up by an engineering study and a speed study. So part of these school zones presumably will be to lower speed limits during certain times. So that information is also required before we can move it forward. So we've got to go out and collect that data. It's not just a simple matter, it's just writing it in the ordinance. There is certainly room for looking at all schools together, but we would have had to have done the data collection and engineering analysis as well. Yeah, all right, thank you. May I ask a question? Yes, you may, certainly, Chelsea. Thanks. So just knowing that these studies take a long time and that they're really necessary for these changes to come into play, I'm just curious about like how permitting works for all of these buildings. If it was projected that there was gonna be one new building a year and now it's more like four new buildings a year. It seems like it's not just schools that would be greatly impacted by that rapid change. And if studies are projected on one building a year and then they're actually building for a year, that seems like, I would just like some explanation as to what the city or the steering committee can do to make sure that either we're getting the projections we need before buildings are going up or is there a way to slow it down? I'm not necessarily, I'm very new to all of this. I'm not saying that slowing development down would be good, but certainly it going too fast is having these retroactive, really hard negatives on our community. And so I'm just, I don't know if that question is clear, but it seems to me that like buildings going up four times as fast as all the studies that all of our safety information is based on is a problem. So is there any clarity around that? I guess in response I can offer, so we have an opportunity once a year to request the assistance of the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission from this UPWP program. So in one respect, a year and a half seems like a long time in the other, we have an opportunity to present this information or make these requests of them and their staff once a year. And so I would say at our next available opportunity, that's what was done. And as far as the planning process goes, I guess that's, I'm not sure I'm prepared to answer you. Jesse, go ahead. So Chelsea, I think that's a really astute question about the long-term planning aspects. So I can tell you through the permitting process for buildings that are permanent citywide, each building goes through a permit, a development review process where Tom and his team review it for water and wastewater implications, traffic implications, et cetera, public safety reviews them. We do on a building-by-building basis look at the implications. City center is really different because it's all the buildings in one place really fast. That's why we started that modeling about a year ago to make sure that we really understood what was coming online versus just the land potential of the acreage. So we are looking at that. An example of that is, and often what that means is when we see, okay, there's gonna be an implication here, there's a permit condition that says when X happens in the development, you have to put into place Y intervention. So folks may notice the new light that went in right up along Tilly Drive. That's an example of a permit condition that was installed during the development process of a series of acreages. Great, thank you, that's really helpful. Could I just? She's not done, Megan. Keep going Chelsea, if you have another question. Sure, I'm just curious what sort of permitting conditions were in place for city center around like school safety and how, and maybe that's getting into a different part of tonight's discussion, but I think that the tension here is that everybody cares about school safety, that's obvious, but we're retroactively trying to prevent really severe safety problems. And so I'm just curious if there are permitting conditions that can kind of leapfrog these studies to make some adjustments that will help in the meantime. So the condition that was, Tom, do you want to take this, sir? The condition that was applied for city center is the payment of impact fees. So sometimes developers are required to do something onsite. Sometimes if it's a specific project, in this case, the identification of traffic and pedestrian safety around city center, they're assessed an impact fee. So the developers have been paying that. That is a funding source we may be able to use for installing any of the improvements we need to make. It likely won't cover all of them, but that's the mechanism by which that condition is assessed here. Okay, Megan, did you want to say something? Yeah, thank you, Helen. I just wanted to clarify again, it's always hard to understand history, but since I was pretty, I mean not as close as others were, but I was fairly close to it, is that I didn't know this was gonna be a school safety zone. That was a result of the study where people were simply asking for a red light as opposed to a yellow light blinking so that when people press the crosswalk sign to go across increasingly and very busy street, which is White Street, that the light would turn red. So that was the initial request that a resident had made to me. I then contacted the director of Public Works at the time who said as long as the principal thinks it needs to be done and the principal writes a letter, there will be a study. And we had no, at that point, expectation that this would be a school safety zone. So I just want that to be clear to people that at the initial outset, when Holly wrote that letter in fall of 2021, it was simply we need more than just the blinking yellow light because there are people zipping through blinking yellow light when there is a crossing guard in children and families crossing. So I just want that to be really clear that it was an organic process and it was based on a resident's request. They addressed it to me. I have always walked my children to school. I have not felt unsafe going to Chamberlain School. So I just wanna make that clear. This was not, let's do this for Megan Emery or my daughter kind of requested. Truly was coming from a resident and there was no expected outcome. It was thanks to the study that Holly requested that that outcome was determined to be a school safety zone. So I just want that to be really crystal clear for everybody. Al, did you wanna, did I? Nope, I didn't. Oh, okay. Yes, Violet. Yeah, thank you. And then we'll go to Kate. Thanks. I just had a follow-up, Chelsea, thank you for your great question. And Lissa, I wanna be sure we didn't, in trying to finish up item one, which was Rick Markott. You know, I wanted to learn about school zones. So I wanna make sure we give you a chance to revisit. But two, I don't see Chelsea on anymore. Maybe she's just not on the screen. Wanted to follow up so, and thank you for your response to Chelsea's question. You know, knowing that impact fees took effect July 1st of this year at 50%. I was just wondering, you know, and we started that conversation a year ago. I'm wondering about the other sort of, I'll call them reparations or, you know, what other supports could we put in place to keep up with the anticipation? Well, with the expedited timeline that wasn't necessarily anticipated by the folks in this room. You know, and the impact fees going into effect last week at 50%, when permits are pulled, we won't be seeing, you know, impact fees even at that rate for these properties. So wondering, you know, how do we then, what options are available to support the opening of school, particularly at Markott, given the development, thinking around, you know, thinking through that. Again, back to Chelsea's question on, you know, what supports could we put in place? Sure. So a couple of things. One, the impact fee I was referencing was the transportation impact fee, not the education impact fee, different impact fees. To, you know, I certainly want to talk about how we open school and partnership to make sure all of our neighbors are staying safe and we can get to that part in the memo. I don't want to lose sight of the fact that this city is enormously benefiting from this development happening much faster. So if, when we were planning on one new building coming on a year in city center, our TIF modeling, our ability to repay the debt that the city had incurred to build out city center was possible, but it was going to take 20 years. This is fast-tracking our ability to pay off that debt, which more quickly returns funding to the city coffers and to the TIF coffers and to ultimately the state education fund. So I just want to counter some of that, that this is a bad thing that's happening. This is a really, really great thing that's happening that our institutional partners are investing in city center. It will prove the health of our TIF district for the next 10 years and into the future. So in terms of, sorry. I thought you were done, sorry. Well, I just wanted to go back to, I think what you were suggesting was what are the possible ways we can leverage funds into ensuring that our children and families get to school safely in August? Yeah, I'm certainly in support of the development and wanting to make sure that we're just at a school level open to a conversation about what resources can be put forward to supporting the safe opening of all of our schools, Marcot in particular, given the growth again, which is not something that I've intended to speak to the quality to. It's really just the safety piece and thinking about how can we as a team really support the safe opening of Marcot? And of course, I'm grateful to Tom for, and your teams on the work being done and really just wondering, not knowing anything about the required processes, what specifically could we expect as next steps given that the growth is gonna continue? Yeah, so specifically we'll know that when the data comes back at the end of the month and then we can talk with the count, we will bring that back to the council if we're funding and we can move forward together. In terms of opening, I'm just gonna skip to three because I don't mean to tap dance around it. Sure. You wanna go first? Okay, why don't you do your comment and then make your comment? So I just wanted to clarify that in no way since this came on my radar since January at our last year in committee meeting, none of us has had anything negative to say about the development and the growth and the plans around city center. Our asks have been very simple and straightforward. Looking globally, we've been asking for school zones at all of our five campuses. And very specifically, we are responding to the fast tracking of development and construction that's happening in the city center and would like a parallel fast tracking of addressing the traffic management and street safety of our kids. So I don't like the notion that there's, that we're pinning projects against one another. What we're simply asking for is like, Megan was explaining with Chamberlain, looking for the magic words and I'm just responding to that process and I'm glad that we have Chamberlain so close so we can sort of mirror that and understand that process, learn from that experience. But I'm trying to find the magic words and I think my school board members here as well, we're trying to speak the city language and understand the traffic studies so that we can get traffic mitigation that matches the fast tracking that's happening with the construction and development. That's all where our concern and urgency lies. Thanks. Yes. So I have a question for Tom and Jesse. While the studies are ongoing and while we're collecting that data, there is construction going on. Do we have discretion to set up a construction zone and lower the speed limit on a temporary basis? Or is that, do we also need to wait for that? Like can we do something on a temporary basis which addresses some of the safety concerns? I guess I'll note the speed limit's 25 mile an hour already, right? Which is sort of the lowest we can set unless it is a school zone at that point in the statute. We can go down to 20 like we've proposed on White Street. We did have the, I do have the ability to restrict certain parking due to construction, which is another step we took in collaboration with Lisa, looking at ways we could kind of improve some site distances out there. So we've done that in two different locations or two different sides of the street here. Can we put a stop sign in on a temporary basis? That's what we're gonna get to with our study, yeah. They're gonna record. On a temporary basis like because of a construction zone? Are we permitted to do that? You mean just like tomorrow? Yeah, I mean, do we have discretion to do that? So that's the question. No, we're waiting for the results of the sort of engineering study. No, no, no, I know, I know. But just to respond to the concerns that I hear about the immediacy of the school year starting and I understand that to do anything on a permanent basis we're obviously going to want to follow what the professionals tell us is necessary, but acknowledging that it is a construction zone right now, if we have the discretion to put some other safety feature in there on a temporary basis, do we have the discretion? Is that something we should consider? It doesn't even matter that it's a construction zone. Even without the construction zone, they were backed up and they've been backed up since we made the improvements to the street. Okay, well, I don't know. I mean, school doesn't start till the end of August? Mid-August? What's the date? 29th is the first day for new students. Okay, six graders, the second graders. Okay. The 30th is the first day. We do have staff coming on the 21st. New staff will start on the 21st in 20 seconds. So if we get the data, the end of July, and they recommend, whatever they recommend, let's say they recommend a signal light, which will take longer. In the interim, we could do the four-way stop, and that could be in place not very long after we get the study back, correct? If I might jump in. So I don't wanna suppose what the engineers might say, but they'll come back in that study and recommend, let's just, yes, we should have traffic light there, maybe that's what it'll say. In the interim, this would be a solution, is my expectation of how that scenario would go. And then, again, it's not a heavy lift to put in the stop signs for the cost of that intervention versus the signal. So is that expedited enough to meet your concerns for the moment? Yeah, thank you. I mean, it doesn't solve everything. Sure, yeah, and peace of that safety. Yeah, we appreciate the process too and understand that that's certainly required for long-term solutions. But thanks, Andrew, that was really the essence of what we were trying to ask is, how can we work together now to improve safety at Marcot specifically for the fall, but certainly at all of our campuses as well? Knowing that we have this active construction zone, what can we do together? And so I don't know if it's a stop light, a temporary stop light or a stop sign, but now I'm hearing that those temporary recommendations will be made at the end of a month from now. Is that correct? Yeah, I mean, they've been out there looking at site distances, speed, like I said, traffic volume, it's kind of all-encompassing overview of the... Right, I understand the information. Collection elements. I'm just wanting to make sure I understand that the next step is we can expect to hear some temporary solutions as well for the start of school. But can I just interject that if... It's a potential, right? As part of the study, we're going to see what they have to say in it. I don't want to commit to it. I do think they're going to offer up some ideas and solutions and we will take that and then we can update our ordinance so that, again, in the example, maybe it's stop signs, maybe it's a four-way stop. We can update the ordinance so we have a four-way stop at that intersection. It's enforceable. Okay, so regardless, maybe Jesse and I could or the city school team could put our heads together and talk about temporary solutions if there aren't clear temporary recommendations articulated through the data collection. I think the data collection, what we're going to learn at the end of the month is what is the information we need to take these steps. So I'm just, and to address the timeline, it seems to me the timeline is that something will be in place before school starts because we'll have the data the end of July, which will drive the recommendations. And since we don't know what they are, I can't tell you what's going to be stop signs or whatever. But it'll be something. That's great, thanks. But that begs the question that if the data, let's say, worst case, the data comes in a little bit late and we're getting really close to August 29th, right? And we don't have, what is the minimum stop gap measure we can take? If it's four stop signs, what does City Council need to do and how many days do we have to back up from August 29th to make sure that they're in place by the 29th? If we don't have the data, we don't have a recommendation, but we want to put something there so that people can get out of the street. Is that the biggest issue, right? Is parents can't get in, parents can't get out because of the traffic going through, right? Well, that's one piece. There's also the kids crossing the street. Exactly, yes. That's a separate thing, but if the cars can't get in out and they back up and everybody gets mad and... Interrelated, yes. Yeah, it gets worse. Yes. So I have a general observation that it seems as though what we get with the rapidly growing city, which is not common in Vermont usually, is that we have an increase in traffic and then ultimately, which that leads an increase in the hazardousness of the threat or the danger to either pedestrians, people going there or not, and we're more or less in a reactive mode rather than an anticipating, I don't want to call it proactive mode, but we're in a situation where we're reacting to hazardous conditions for pedestrians rather than anticipating them and taking action as it happens. So for instance, this past school year, things now on Market Street are about the same as they were back in, I don't know, maybe August of a year ago. There was construction going on, lots of traffic, kids walking to school, not a whole lot different. I mean, there's that, the lot of trees has been turned into another construction zone. We've lost that Northern sidewalk on Market Street, but it's not a whole lot different. So we had this one year in which the risk to pedestrians and perhaps traffic as well was pretty high and perhaps higher than it should have been because of this traffic study and the nature of the way we're dealing with these things is that we end up with this lag between where we have this long, maybe a year or perhaps more, and I'm in which the traffic is, or the situation for anybody in the area is pretty dangerous before something is done about it and Holly Ruel's letter looks like it took about two years from the letter to the implementation for it to be done and so perhaps we can step back and see how can we address this situation in which we're not reacting to dangerous situations. Well, I do think one of the sidewalk issues was dressed with the walkway between the Catamount Run and the school. So that didn't take two years. That may have taken longer than people were comfortable with but it was remediated working with the developer. Now, is your comment that they should have known that and put that in before they started their construction or, I mean, that's another, I guess, challenge for the DRB. Right, Tim, if you're gonna require things that potentially are a safety issue or any kind of issue and put it in before you know it is. Yeah, I mean, certainly that path between the housing and the school is useful for those kids but what about the people who park on that northern side of Market Street and can't get to their car through the sidewalk, so if they're going to City Hall or the library, they have to cross Market Street, go down a little bit and then cross Market Street again to get to their car. So it's still a dangerous situation having lost that sidewalk but it's also a temporary situation because the building's ultimately gonna be built soon and the sidewalk will open back up but then right now we're talking about a traffic situation which we have, I guess, two or maybe three completed large housing blocks and so we're dealing with the traffic and the pedestrian situation that we have then, not the traffic and pedestrian situation that we're gonna have in a few years in which perhaps three buildings per year are built so that's gonna double the amount of large buildings that we have there and we're gonna, in a year from now, we're gonna have a traffic safety mitigation plan that is built on having only three of those buildings and the 2023 level of traffic rather than the 2024 level of traffic and we're gonna have to go through the whole thing all over again because we've got, in a year or two or three, we're gonna have so much more people and cars in the area. So two points, that's exactly why we are doing the Comprehensive City Center Traffic Modeling. That way, as we know what's coming online, we can plug that into the model and know what's needed as things are being planned and permitted. So I think we are trying to accomplish exactly what you're achieving, kind of getting ahead of what we're seeing on the ground for traffic and safety. And then the other thing, just because I'm sitting here looking at her, what I call out is, I know we're talking about very immediate solutions you want to kind of hardware at intersections. I do just want to compliment Principal McDonald and Tom and the developers and Sue and others who, while they didn't install signs, did a huge amount of small course correction over the course of the spring to make the perception of unsafety in that intersection go down. And so while there's certainly more we can do together, I think we have been trying to make incremental change at the staff level and the volunteer level and Chief Burke and Officer Brie. So I just don't want to lose that great moment, day to day little action that was done to ensure that we were both holding the safety of our kiddos. Can I just make one call? Sure. I like construction projects. Again, I've been at Marcot and watched what goes on for four or five days. Other than the fence and some pedestrian issues, I don't think the construction project is contributing to the traffic issue. The traffic issue is the drop off time, high volume and it's people getting their workday started in using that road. And this is common. We worked with a lot of developers all over the country and very often you just don't get it right out of the box. I think it's good that we're looking long range, Alex to address your point, the long range look, we need a fix to take care of the opening of school, yes, but we don't want to be back here in two years talking about this. We want the solution that works two years, four years, five years down the road, hopefully. And it usually works its way out. These folks are usually very good. We worked with a lot of them. All right, thank you. Do we want to move on to some of the other computers? Could I just make a comment? This is Lyssa. No, it just goes. Sure, go for it, Lyssa. Yes. There are just a couple of points of clarification and first of all, I just want to say I'm really impressed that I knew the answers to all of the questions because of people like Tom and Jesse, people who have worked with us. And so I knew the answers to all of the questions the school board asked about how this is going to progress. So I feel like this has been a big learning curve to address Alex's comment about how the situation hasn't changed very much over a year. I just want to clarify that when we have construction, when Snyder homes came in, they worked with me immediately because there was a big difference for pedestrians. Our students have to cross the road six times. They have six crossing points if they want to ride their bike, for example, from the garden street apartments to the school because the path is a woodchip path and they can't ride their bikes on the path there anymore. So we were really thankful for the woodchips because that eliminated the problem of mud at the end of winter going into spring and some students were still able to walk that path. But right now, if they want to walk on a sidewalk instead of the path or ride their bike, they have to cross six times. And that's why Sue Conley and I got involved. The other thing, and maybe this is a question for Tom, is the situation of the buses trying to make the corner, to make the turn out of the parking lot because Sue Conley and I have had to stop traffic before they get to the intersection to make sure the bus can make that turn. If we have stop sign or a traffic signal, if it's too close to that intersection, there's still going to be a problem with the buses making the turn with parking on both sides of the street. So I was just wondering, Tom, if that is being considered in the traffic study, the length of those buses and the amount of space they need to turn back out onto the busy street. You also, so we have, sorry. We have talked about the buses. We are looking for information about kind of the turning radiuses for what it would take and what the plan was when that intersection was initially designed. I don't have that with me this evening, something we're trying to track down there. But it is my observation as well, is if somebody comes to that stop bar and a bus is trying to turn in that they need to either let them in or the bus is turning into that lane. So that's something we will be talking about as well. Okay, yeah, that would be important. I'd hate for things to be installed and for us to still have a problem because the buses can't make that turn. And then there, you know, I also have been in some communication with people from Allen Square because of the alternative route some people have tried to take and out of my school parking lot and they turn into the Allen Square parking lot. It was really helpful to block off my parking lot so people couldn't do that. Full time when you close some of the parking spaces for us and I just didn't continue to keep those, I'd have to make a change. But until we find a solution, I'm just hoping that we can continue. I think things got very smooth at the end of the school year. Took a lot of time and communication. So I'm just hoping that we can at least start with some of those decisions that we made in place when school starts again. And I'm hearing that I should turn off my camera because you can't hear me. Sorry. Are there other comments on two or three? I mean, I know the issue about school zones is a hot one and we only have one at this point. And you'd like, I guess, three others. Four others, so five in total. I think that the high school and the middle school and the high school middle school could be one, sure. I would think it'd be one because it's the same parking lot. I don't know, but whatever. One big one. Well, yeah, but it's a big campus. So I think the details suggested that that's not waving a wand either. That particularly the one on Dorset Street, the high school, middle school will be additionally challenging because it's so many lanes. And I don't think you can actually award a school zone unless you really have a plan in place. So I think it sounds as if we're trying to move forward with all of those. I suspect orchard is probably less urgent, but I don't know. It seems to be on kind of a quietest street, but it's sort of close to route seven. I don't know what the traffic is like or what that gets, how that gets backed up. And if there's challenges with kids, I don't know how many sidewalks. I don't even know if they have any sidewalks, but I hope you understand that we're moving towards that, but we really need to act on data. And the data takes some consideration and there may be another, it sounds like another contractor to really help with the Dorset Street issue since it is so big or broad. But I hope this memo has addressed that. We certainly will keep you. I don't know if all the principals need to write letters. I'm not quite sure, but you apparently, I think as the school board, you've requested that. Well, and that's really to get into the data collection phase that we're already in. Right. If we're moving off this agenda item, can I just make one final point? Of course. So the heart of the third request, I just don't wanna lose to Andrew and Tim's point earlier. It's really about what are the options that can be put in place? What does city council in the city have in particular, since we've been using ad hoc volunteer crossing guard, can we have a crossing guard or what are our options to guarantee the safety and there's some change before school starts on August 29th. So we didn't properly maybe get to that request and I just wanted to hear if there was any more on that before we move on about the start of school. Sure. So I think we've, again, it will depend on what comes out of the data for the infrastructure changes per Lisa's point. And I don't think we directly responded to that, Lisa. I think at a bare minimum, which I'm not saying we're gonna do, but the baseline now is what we'd established, baseline's better than bare minimum. Let's go with baseline. Baseline is what we'd established in partnership with Lisa at the end of last school year. So, you know, the infrastructure, the smaller infrastructure changes that Tom and his team and the developer made. And then, you know, the council allocated fund balance last year to pay a crossing guard for the remainder of the school year that wasn't utilized. Thank you, Sue. At that point, there was a discussion about whether you would come back for an FY24 allocation request to help fund your crossing guard. I think the council was open to that then. They will be deciding on those fund balance requests in August. We certainly, you know, it was great to see Sue every morning, she helped city staff a lot too. We would support an employee, a school employee, being a crossing guard there. And of course, our police department staff stand by ready and willing to train anyone who is going to do that work. You know, our position, I think it's in this memo where we've said it before, is really that because of the extreme coordination that needs to be done between that professional and Lyssa and school staff, that we would really, we think it will be easier if that is a school employee for that ease of communication. But it's, you know, that I think is a financial policy call of the two boards. I just have to say, Jesse, that I tried really hard to hire a crossing guard and nobody in the community applied. And then I tried to pay Sue to be the crossing guard and she remained steadfast at wanting to be a volunteer and not a school employee. And so then I scheduled my day to be out there every afternoon because it was a little more challenging in the afternoon. So I can't guarantee that I can hire somebody to do that job and that's part of the problem. That's what I was hoping for. You know, if I can't hire a human, I was hoping that sooner or later we could get some help with signs and lighting. I just wanted to make that point clear. Yeah, thank you for clarifying. And I certainly did not mean to insinuate that you did not do an amazing job trying to locate that professional. Quite frankly, I don't, to just be totally transparent, I don't see the solution to that is us trying to hire somebody. You know, it is very hard to hire lots of different kinds of professions in the world right now. So I think, I'm not sure we're gonna have any better luck at that if the crossing guard is our employee versus a school employee. And you- May I ask a question? Yes, Chelsea? Oh, sorry, did I just interrupt someone? Nope, you're fine. I tried to turn my camera off so I could hear better, but sorry. Would it be possible for the city to station a police officer there until somebody is hired? Chief Burke can come in and talk to us about that. Loud and clear? Yes. Shawn Burke, city's police chief. Thanks for having me. So the way that we are positioned in staffing, there is no way that we could commit to having a resource at any given spot during the day. We have three officers assigned to each shift and their first role and responsibility is to answer 911 calls. So I guess no, Chelsea. There is a resource officer, a school resource officer, right? At the high school? No. Are there no resource officers? So currently there's one officer assigned to all the schools and her work is very, very complicated, follows up on a lot of different things that intersect between social services, the schools and families in the community. And I couldn't commit that she could be there all the time because we have to prioritize what comes in. Helen, if I could just jump in here. I do not know the status and my daughter right now is entering seventh grade. So it's not for my daughter or for me, my family, but there is not a crossing guard Chamberlain as of June 16th, 2023. After haps they've found somebody. I don't know the status, but I just wanted to say there are potentially two openings. Okay. Have you pursued at all like volunteers? Cause a lot of communities, the crossing guards are volunteer. We have. I mean, you have one. Excellent one. We just, don't you have any friends? Yeah, this is a critical shortage for us. I wonder, you know, appreciate Chief Burke and Officer Brie and all that they do. And, you know, Chief Burke has been fantastic in there had been times I've said, hey, can you, you know, assist at this time? And he and Brie have, Officer Brie have worked to support that. So, you know, I want to thank you all. I don't know, you know, staffing wise if there's a staffing is of course the issue. And I don't know if there's other staff that that might be available to help figure. It's worth asking the question while we're at it. You know, if you've got any other folks, I, you know, I certainly understand Chief Burke and his team are unable to support. I also want to flag that I commute into Burlington every day and see the crossing guards in Burlington. And they are positioned at intersections. They are, it's not the crossing guards job to stop the traffic. It's to guide the traffic. And I think that there's a fundamental difference when you're walking people across a cross guard where it's already part of the flow of traffic and there's a red light and a green light versus being asked to put yourself out there to stop the traffic where there is no stop sign or traffic light. Yeah, fair point. Fair point. That's the issue. It's a really strong. Yeah. Something I've observed in a much larger city, Salt Lake City, where two of my children live and their children go to school. And they have what seems to be, I mean, they have a lot of traffic too. And the streets are very wide. They're too lane, but they're for kind of stuggle wagons with 10 horses, I think, to get around the corner. They're huge. But they have flags and little containers at each side of the street. And you pick one up and you wave it and you walk across the street. And I don't know if any child has ever been run over, but it, and then there's a thing to put it in on the other side. And it, you know, it might be an option for some of the other intersections. To actually flag people down. It's not foolproof. It's not a police officer or a stop street or a light, but it's another alternative that a city, other cities have utilized and might be something to think about. And, you know, I don't know. Do the school PTOs have any interest in trying to generate some volunteers? I mean, it's their children. So I'm sure they're concerned. I have asked. I definitely have asked about that. And I went to Allen Square and I offered to pay people there who might just wanna have, you know, make a few dollars a week. I think the difference is what Kate mentioned. There's no extra help. You really on some days I was really worried for Sue and myself like we really had to, like people didn't see us and we were standing out there with big red stop signs. So I feel like people aren't, people want us to be out there to help the children cross and to help with a little bit with the traffic control. But I'm just think the community members are thinking I'm glad it's them and not me and nobody stepping up to volunteer. Yeah. Okay. I would concur with principle McDonald's here. I think that the two crossing guards that I've known, you know, on my daily walk, not only when my kids were at shameless school, but with my dog, they were incredibly generous and responsible individuals who did, I would say, put their bodies between the children and oncoming traffic. And I, that's why, you know, that when that resident said, couldn't we put a red light there instead of a blinking yellow light when someone presses the crosswalk sign. I thought that was a really good idea. And apparently it was a good enough idea that it kind of got the tension. So I would support that kind of traffic signal. I don't know if it's better to have a stop sign than a red light, but something where there could actually be tickets, you know, being issued if people run through it. I think that's a really, yeah, I think that's really important. Okay. We have a person in the audience who'd like to comment. Would you come up to the microphone, please? Please introduce yourself. And is the bright light? No, it has to be bright. Oh, that's very bright. Yeah, now it's on. All right. So Essex pays their crossing guards $25. Name first, I'm sorry. Brian Doyle. Essex pays all of their crossing guards $25 in the morning and $25 in the afternoon. And crossing guards are killed on the job at a rate three times higher than police officers because of many of the dangerous situations with cars being frankly one of the most lethal things that we deal with on a day-to-day basis. Thank you. Are there other comments or questions or thoughts about this update? It certainly won't be the last, but it's what we have for you now. Yeah, yes. Can we set some type of date where we get notification from Tom what will be happening when the school year starts? I mean, if the data comes in and you made a decision to do something in the interim or whatever, but at least some type of maybe three weeks before school starts, here's the plan. So that we can plan. Yeah, sure. We would be, I mean, I think we can commit to sharing the recommendations we receive as soon as we get them and then an implementation plan from there just so you know that something is, what is happening? I think communication is the key here. We have our August 16th is our school board meeting before the start of school. And so if there is information available, I think with that we would be amenable to inviting you to provide an update then. So that is a city holiday, sadly. So I have a hard time asking my team to be there, but we certainly could provide an update then. I'm sure we will actually provide an update before then, but we will be sure to make sure you know what's up on that date. Thank you, yes. And so we will be, we have a policy governance model and so we're monitoring school safety at that time. So we'll be providing information with community members inclusive of school safety at that time. So anything that we have we'll certainly share. Great. Thank you. Okay. So if we're finished discussing item five, I'd like to move on to item six, which is discuss the shared planning for the future of 575 Dorset Street. So I think I'm gonna kick this one off, but then turn to buy it. So. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Chief. Thanks, Erica. So Violet and I had a really, in my opinion, exceptional conversation last week about lots of things, but specifically around 575 and 577 Dorset Street, the fire department and the school administrative offices. So we've developed in partnership, a kind of a six week plan, what we do between now and August 16th to consolidate some of the materials we have still at 575 and to make some other kind of changes that will benefit the employees working in that building now. We then started talking about a longer term transition into the school taking ownership of that building. Of course, that's conceptualized and at least the council and the school board always thought that that might come to be. So what we started talking about was to have that happen. There are quite a few steps we need to go through. We likely need a surveyor. We need to determine what kind of transfer it would be, whether it would be a condo or a land lease, a straight up sale. We'd likely need to think about a lot line adjustment and then how to separate the systems that are currently serving those buildings. So it's a chunk of work our staff need to do in the next X number of months. But we, I think both think that it's a good thing to work towards. So anticipate coming to both council, the council and the school board to take an action directing us to do that in the next couple of weeks. There's one more point I was gonna make on that, which has flown out of my mind. So that I think is the summary that we talked about. Is there anything else to print out if you want to add? Thank you, Jessie. You know, I think from a school perspective, we're of course facing enrollment crises at two of our elementary schools. And we're really trying to think about how we could get some staff who maybe doesn't work directly with students into the central office building and to create some space opportunities for student learning for the fall. And we're also thinking about how to support all of the students in our system. So recently got in the news that center point is having some programmatic, significant programmatic modifications in what they're able to offer. And we have for the first time ever, last school year, really significant wait lists for students who need alternate programming. And as we use state and federal dollars, have been, you know, Jessie and I discussed that if the school were to take ownership of 575, 577 with the exclusion of the fire department, you know, what potential could exist for us to, you know, develop an alternative program, could we potentially use that space over in 575? It's something we're looking into. So I think, you know, from the district's perspective, this is really an educational decision centered around increasing educational programming and supporting programming through, you know, our facilities. So glad that, you know, really happy to enter in the conversation with Jessie. I think we had a fantastic meeting and I think the next step here, Jessie and I can, you know, certainly connect, but I think we should set up a conversation on how to move forward. I know the agenda's already been worn for the school board's meeting on Wednesday, but I think we'll likely add that to discussion. And it'll be on our August 2nd meeting for further discussion as well. Good, and so you found a way to move forward with the space that we're using now? Yeah, so right now the city is, Jessie and I did a walkthrough of the building which was really helpful, you know, finding like, here's a filing cabinet of sewage, Tom's not here, but he'd get a chuckle about this thinking about all of his sewage plant discussions back to budgeting days, but, you know, like a filing cabinet with maps on sewage plans from the 60s and, you know, things like that where like, we could move these over. There were, you know, there's emergency radios and a server and there's, the city is occupying pieces of 575 and 577 and Jessie and I talked through a plan to sort of consolidate the city's use of the space so that by May to August we could have the larger rec room in 575 and the office is off of that for kind of office space. That wouldn't be, you know, student facing, of course. So, you know, appreciate that timeline. I know it's a busy time for Parks and Rec and also that would allow us to get some staff into that space, you know, for the start of school so that there can be a little more room in our schools. So, appreciate that collaboration there. Good. So, really agreed on everything. Really the incremental step is that consolidation onto one side. It will, part of the long-term land transfer will be where we store that material moving forward. The city is going, that's going to be a new cost to the city, but that's the, that's why we need this longer runaway for the second half of that conversation is to do those legal steps and that planning work because, you know, as Violet said, our E-901 radio console server is in 575. We need to figure out how to even move that and then where to move it to. So, the other part I was going to say that I forgot, you know, just to manage expectations, I think what Violet and I were talking about was, you know, a January one or a next July one transferred time, so seeing how long it was gonna take to put together some of those pieces and then working towards kind of that six-month window. Good. Okay. I'm glad you found a way forward. Everyone's smiling, so that's good. Okay. It's a true old map. Pardon? We've been missing those maps. Yeah, right. They're all on GIS now. All right, so why don't we move on then to item seven, the shared goal of partnering on capital planning. Sure, so, you know, I think this is something I certainly have heard from the council and the community and in-stairing committees before. We, so I will speak for a minute on behalf of the council, but feel free to jump in. We certainly understand that there are some real capital needs on the school side and I think we, as a city side staff, really want to be your champions as you think about what the capital investment looks like over time. So, Violet and I spent some time talking about strategically layering bonds, being thoughtful of how each other was thinking about the capacity of our taxpayers in the years to come. Violet was able to share some great information with me about what you all are thinking about that was really helpful, so I think with that I will turn it over, but just say in summary, we want to help, let us know how we can help. Yeah, really appreciate the partnership and the support of the council. You know, I've said this during budget time and I'll say it again, you know, I support the development within the city and with that it is my responsibility to ensure that we are able to offer the high quality of educational programming that I believe is a huge reason that folks come to our region and stay in our region. I hear this time and time again and so I do believe that strong schools are the heart of our community. I believe we've got the best schools in the state. I say so frequently, I wouldn't be, you know, I wouldn't do this job anywhere else and I really mean that. I believe in our system and our educators and our students and our community members and our parents who make it as exceptional as it is. And, you know, one issue we've discussed at length in the last year, so I'm entering my second year as superintendent and we've really come back to facilities time and time again inhibiting how we're able to support our students and how our educational programming has been curbed or impacted. And some of the considerations on that have really been focused on the elementary level. So we had an enrollment committee made up of community members, parents, educators and many other folks who contributed to that. They brought us the ZEMS as a temporary elementary level space solution. So with that though, although we've broken ground on the ZEMS, we're very much engaging in the conversations that led to the 2020 bonds, which we're looking at greater facilities solutions. So, you know, we're fortunate to have Brian and his expertise with a construction background as well as Laura who is an educator who are leading a fifth grade committee and that committee right now is doing the work of evaluating the community's desire to or not to transition the fifth grade to the middle school building. And that decision is really critical because once that decision is made, so the fifth grade committee will make a recommendation to the board based on their committee's information and data collection. At that time, we'll again engage in the process that we did that led to the 2020 facilities bond vote, which is, so in 2020, for instance, you know, that was a middle school renovation. There was conversation about a house model with fifth and sixth and then seventh and eighth in a middle school that was renovated, connected to a new build high school directly to the east of the middle school. And that was important because staging is a critical element when we think about any facilities, projects, wanting to minimize the educational time that is lost or impacted due to construction. So this fifth grade committee came together and really early on, you know, it was violent. We can't move forward on any infrastructure decisions until we know where fifth grade is going. So if the community, you know, if a decision is made on fifth grade and say it is moved the fifth grade to the middle level, I'll go with the proposed plan from two years as an example to share what may or may not happen based on this impact of this decision. So with the 2020 proposal, there was a new build directly attached to the current middle school. And this allowed learning to still take place in our current middle school and our current high school buildings. Once if the new high school is completed, then current high school students would move to the high school that's just been completed, allowing middle school students to transition to the current high school while the current middle school is renovated. This would pretty significantly minimize the impact of, you know, trailers or one wing at a time, which were all evaluated during that process that led to the 2020 bond as well. You know, with that, we know that we've got the ZEMs buying at least five to seven years at the elementary level, buying time at Orchard and Marcot. If there is a decision to move the fifth grade to the middle school, you know, I think at that time when the high school and middle school, if and when those are completed, you know, there might be a consideration of redistricting right now, particularly in some of the new neighborhoods, we've got situations where we have neighbors living next to each other on one street and going to three different elementary schools. So, you know, we could really minimize the impact if incoming pre-K or K students hadn't yet matriculated and you have, say, upcoming planned fifth graders going to the middle school and then who would be the, you know, upcoming new, the upcoming sixth and then fifth graders transitioning at that time. So those were some pieces that were discussed in the past. Our fifth grade committee is engaging the community now and our educators in that process. And once that recommendation is made, then members from the fifth grade committee, and I should share this as well, there were also members from the enrollment committee who brought the ZEMS decision forward to the board on the fifth grade committee. And then we would be recommending that members from the fifth grade committee be on an infrastructure committee to work with the community, really partner with city council at that time around thick engagement with design timelines. We know that we would need a pretty significant political effort and, you know, many of us sharing benefits of facilities, projects at that time. So after the decision of fifth grade is made and we, you know, get to a point where we have, you know, we're working with the community and we're developing plans that work, you know, working to share that information with the community. And of course, here information back would be a really critical time for support. Jesse and I did discuss funding, which was critical. The first time Jesse and I got together, we talked about part of our partnership needed to be a financial partnership. And I said this the other day, we had a donuts and discussion where Brian and Laura shared some information and had a listening session for parents on the fifth grade decision. And, you know, what I said in that meeting is that school safety is number one, education is two and finances are three and in that order. But another way that we can partner is to make sure that we're supporting our community and that as we work together, we're not double bonding in significant ways so that we can ensure that school bonds are moved forward and city bonds are moved forward. You know, I definitely felt that Jesse was able to share information about proposed bonds but not coming forward. And we discussed to the rec center. Some of you have heard me say, you know, I of course support a rec center and really feel schools need to be a priority before a rec bond. Again, just not wanting to compete one with another. And you know, some of you in the audience will recall, you know, part of the last proposed bond that was brought to the voters in 2020 was this really robust field house or what could have elements of what might be a rec center. And so, you know, while during school hours we know that we cannot have school facilities that will be used by students, also used by community at the same time. But we had some conversation on my wonder if we could partner together to use, to have school facilities that are also available for public use and what could that look like and how could we partner on that, you know, financially and as a project and as a way of us to, you know, get rec opportunities that the community is asking for as well as improve our sports facilities. I don't know if you know, we're kind of a sports powerhouse as well coming from the bookworm, but yeah. So, can I add to that? Of course, yes. I just wanted to add we had a presentation from our high school green team and our student representative rising senior Rama in June before school ended. And they gave an awesome presentation that I would love to share with all the city counselors about climate resiliency and our climate action plan. And I really see this as an opportunity for us to collaborate with the city's climate action plan. And, you know, I think that the next phase of our fifth grade committee after we have that decision will be an infrastructure committee. And I would really welcome representation from some of the intersecting infrastructure committees, particularly I was on the energy committee. So if there's somebody from the city energy committee who would like to join our infrastructure committee and have some more liaising through the committee system so that our infrastructure plans align with the climate action plan. And also they made a great point the students and their advisor that when we have climate resilient schools they also serve as hubs of climate resiliency for our community. So when we think about needing to have shelter when there's tornadoes or flooding or excessive heat if we have up to date schools that are already built around that infrastructure and preparing our students needs that's really a need for the community. And I say this as a taxpayer without any kids in the school district. So that's the benefit that I would be directly getting from our new school infrastructure. And I think that that's one of the great ways that I would like to see us work together. We would love to do that. Actually, one of the reasons Lou is on today is he is helping write our government operations and implementation plan of the climate action plan. And a part of that talks about partnership with the school. So we are ready to go. We would love to do that. So in my notes too of things to add to this I have a few climate pieces that I think are really interesting. When Dorin Whittier evaluated the middle school for a renovation, they estimated that 99% of the materials could be recycled. And that as some of you know, our high school has been ranked one of the top priorities for building facilities improvements in the state. As we think about like the windows in the cafeteria alone which are original, the energy efficiency being so low. There's a lot of potential for a new build to, and then Jesse and I talking about the city's climate goals having been met with this new build that we're in today, moving from the district's current central office. I think about the energy efficiencies that could be attained with new schools. Dorin Whittier anecdotally shared with me that they're working on some projects in Massachusetts where the state isn't actually allowing renovations of schools, but they're requiring new builds because of environmental factors. Energy efficiency being a leading one. It did have the opportunity to tour Winooski's new building, which was phenomenal. And I learned a lot about how they were able to use geothermal and energy grids to make their building really efficient. So absolutely would welcome partnership from the council on those pieces as well. Great, thanks. Comments, Andrew. Father, thank you for all that. There was a lot on the pack. I just, a couple of questions, and really just for my understanding. I guess when I thought about this conversation that we were going to have, and the bond that was contemplated a few years ago, in my own mind, I think there needs to be a process to make sure we're all on the same page, that we need a new facility, and that we as a council, if we decide that's true, feel that this is something we can champion with full hearts and full souls to the public, because the public was not sold on that. And so for me to be in that position, I need to know a lot more. I would love to honestly understand the studies that you're referencing, to tour the building, like to persuade myself that the only thing we can do is tear this thing down and build a new one, because I'm not there. And from your description, it sounds like you're of the mind that the fifth grade decision drives the decision to construct a new school, which just feels funny to me that that's the process. I would have thought the process would first be, do we build a new school? What's the infrastructure like? What's the capacity? And then where do we house our kids? I could just, maybe you're right. Maybe the right decision is where's the fifth grade, but it feels a little backwards to me honestly to let that drive, do we need a new middle school and high school now? So I'm not there with you honestly. I need to know a lot more. Yeah, we're just, again, no one's there yet. We are not at the point, to be very clear, we're not at the point where decisions have been made. The board is seeking engagement around fifth grade, but there could be a recommendation in any direction. The, you know- I wasn't referring to the fifth grade decision. Right. The community has done, you know, there was pretty significant engagement around this question about facilities, you know, from 2017 to 20, right? And so I think this board and our administration is reopening these conversations. The current conversation is around fifth grade, but we're not even close to the point where we have drawings or tours or proposals. So, you know, while I walked us through sort of the process of what happened leading to the 2020 bond, my point was to say we need to re-engage in thick processes similar to that where it would absolutely take everyone in this room and more to be fully informed and to share that with the community. So wouldn't expect you to be there at this point in time because we don't know what is gonna be the recommendation or what that would look like. But we do know, you know, we've been ranked by the state of Vermont as being, you know, targeted for great need at the high school for facilities improvements. We know that we're gonna have capacity issues at the middle school very soon. And we know that we've, you know, just put a band-aid on the elementary issues. So, you know, I do think the community has awareness that our facilities need attention. But the next few years we'll be figuring out what does that look like? And we will have many, many more conversations through that process in partnership with, you know, providing significant information. Sure. It'll be quick. It's right now involved in the discussion around buildings, but it is not a building decision. We're driving this as an education position. Where is the best place for fifth grade students? So it's student-centric, it's outcome-driven. It's not because, wait, we may have some capacity in this building and we would have to spend less over here to accommodate them. That is not the plan. We haven't even talked buildings in that group. We're strictly talking about, we've looked at the configurations of grade fives across the state. Where are they? You know, what, is it five eight? Is it six eight? Is it K through six? So we're not talking buildings there and we won't talk buildings until we have a recommendation that's approved. So it's education-based, student-based. Tim? I just wanna say thank you for saying those words, possibly move fifth grade. I think that that, I'm gonna say that the school board is taking a very bold move. And I'm thankful that you've said those words out loud because they haven't been said out loud as far as I know for years, right? Where they could have been contemplated back as far as 2016. And you've also said the word possible redistricting, right? Which is another bold thing to say, which I think has not been stated in a long time for various reasons, right? So I'm really glad that you've started the path down all those conversations that you're talking about and engaging the community, engaging the parents. And I'm excited to see what comes of that. So I'm prepared to work with the school board. That's great. Okay. Final thoughts? Okay, sorry. Oh, wait, sorry, yeah, Tyler. You've been quiet tonight. No, that's quite right. No, one thing that I heard Violet and please correct me, don't please don't let me put words in anyone's mouth. But I do, again, I think our, I agree with you that our schools are a tremendous resource. I think they're a key driver for our community. And I think that's something that it's imperative that we retain, that we enhance our proud tradition of having exceptional schools. I think it's something that we have taken great, we should take great pride in and I think we should continue to do so in the future. When I say, I just wanna make sure that I'm hearing you correctly. My personal, I'm concerned because I feel as though there is a little bit of an urgency to this in this sense. And I'm not saying we should rush to judgment, but we're already in certain areas of the school in particularly at Central, we're already at capacity. We've taken great strides and I think I'm very proud of the work and kudos that we've done to all of you who've worked so hard to find solutions with these modular units. But if I heard you correctly, these deals have a finite lifespan of five to seven years. Is that correct? Yeah, thanks for the opportunity to clarify. So the ZEMs have all things. Okay. Could you hear that? The ZEMs can have a hundred year span life should the, and this is new learning for me in construction, should the piles that they're placed on being the associated with the foundations be non-galvanized? However, we have to go galvanized at Marcot, TBD at Orchard. So we're looking at about 85 years likely for these ZEMs. They're movable. So we could use the ZEMs for staging if necessary for to support middle and or high school transitions. We do need to keep them in place for a minimum of five years at Marcot and Orchard to recoup the 91% of impact fees associated with those projects. Some of the council members might recall when we discussed impact fees, we talked about a phased approach where I wanted to be clear at that time and to have a shared understanding that the district would be seeking potentially impact fees for a middle and or a phase three high school and in whatever order that ends up being in to support those projects impact fees being tied to the physical infrastructure in this case. And the, you know, well, Andrew's comment was we need more engagement. I fully agree with that. And to your point, Tyler, it is the time is of the essence. You know, we do have the over enrollment right now at two of our elementary schools. And those are our greatest enrollment increases actually at the middle school last year with the sixth grade cohort bringing 50 new students to that building. And so we know that quickly we will need middle school solutions, significant modifications. Right now we've been, you know, we've had to change the way that we offer physical education programming. So we're having a curriculum, a learning impact because we don't have gym spaces to accommodate all of our students. We're serving school lunches earlier and later in the days, which impact how students learn, you know, at 10 35 AM lunchtime is gonna impact how a middle schooler who, if there are anything like me as starved at all times of the day, I don't think Tim's ever walked into my office when I'm not having a snack. I get to eat lunch with someone every day. It's great. But my point being, I mean, that those have, we're already experiencing at the middle level and certainly the elementary levels, these space challenges, the high school, not yet, the high school is the most deteriorated physical plant. So yeah, we absolutely need to have the conversations with thick engagement. This is, you know, we can certainly learn from the failed 2020 bond. I think lack of community, I'm not blaming. First of all, you know, I wanna thank everyone who worked on that. And if there's one thing that I have learned in my short tenure here, it's that, you know, we need to always communicate more and better and differently and have thicker engagement. And I think to re-engage the community on any facilities bond, yes, we need support now. And we're grateful that the community provided that with the ZEMs and we really need support. As you said, you know, certainly in the next five years, if we're sitting here and we're, you know, we have a bond for that's been approved for middle and high school, that would be exciting. So I will seek an enrollment, an updated enrollment forecast this fall as I did last year, and we'll continue to track enrollment carefully, but that is a big driving data source for us is, first of all, the city, the state rather's assessment of our facilities and then the enrollment by the numbers, of course, associated with development. So yeah, and thanks for, you know, just kind of sharing, highlighting that piece of it too, Tyler. Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head and I think you articulated much better than I could or did in that we're talking about these changes in terms of the impact and putting the education of children first and being creative in how we, and to Tim's point, being creative in how we get there, but always looking at it through the lens of the educational experience first. The ZEMs are an incredibly, if I'm hearing you correctly, the ZEMs are an incredibly creative and thoughtful approach that provide us a lot of flexibility, but at the end of the day, if we're looking at it strictly through the lens of the educational experience first they do yield some compromises. And they're not, in that sense, it's perhaps not a long-term sustainable solution. Again, if we're looking at it strictly through the lens of the educational experience. So in that sense, what I'm hearing is yes, that there is some urgency and I think it's important that we, as a council, we recognize that as we move forward. Could I ask you to clarify, Tyler, what are the compromises in terms of educational experience? Well, I think as we just, I don't profess to know, but from what we heard, the crowding issues that we have at already in some of the schools are already starting to impact how, what the educational experience is like. What I just heard from Violet was, again, that lunchtimes are being adjusted, how and when kids can conduct physical education activities are being adjusted. And that's a function of what our facility, that's a reflection of what our facilities currently are like. And while the ZEMs provide some flexibility, they're not a wholesale fix. But she was talking about the middle school. I just want that to be very clear. If I understood correctly and Violet, please correct me if I am misunderstanding, but for my understanding is that lunches and she was talking about the middle school, but we also have, I believe, free lunches continuing forward, the state has done that. And I just simply want to say that if someone did say very publicly that I would be very happy if the school court determined that it was necessary that my daughter needed to be in a ZEM that I had no reservations at all about the educational experience that she would receive, I myself have seen ZEMs in action, they're a classroom. And just as I would say, much of a community, a learning community as any bricks and mortar building could be, and I really want that to be very clearly clearly discussed. And I certainly don't want any kind of innuendo about educational experiences being diminished because of the use of the ZEMs. I have full confidence that our school district already vetted that and determined that was that first priority after school safety that that was meant. And I furthermore just really want to say that something that I've read in the thing with Spermantzinger is now that we have our neighbor, Burlington, having to pay for a new high school, this was that or their children were being educated at all. But in addition to that, they're having to refund police officer positions and other challenges that have created, I would say ill-bind because people are being outpriced in Burlington. And I'm just reading the tea leaves that I have access to about what happened in 2020. It was being the fear of being outpriced, the fear of maintaining one of our core values as a community, which is making this a place for everyone who wants to live. And we're still working towards that goal. It's not something that I would say we've attained yet. So I just want to keep that out there that these M's are not only a creative solution, they are meeting several goals that includes top educational experience, which all three of my children have had there, as well as working towards that goal of being a sustainable community in terms of how much we pay taxes. And I just want to applaud the school board for that decision. I know that there is a lot of fear of the unknowns, are these M's truly a classroom? I'm here to say I've seen them in action. You get a good teacher and into a ZEM and they're gonna have as excellent experience as a good teacher would give to any student in a traditional Brickson Carter school. So we have the teachers. Thank you. Thank you, Megan. I think the school board appreciates your strong support of the ZEMs and their efficacy as a wonderful educational setting. So that's great. Is there any other business? Yes. License to treat this as a little bit of a working group session, because I've not thought about this before. I just want to throw something out. Sure. And it may be a ridiculous idea. When I grew up, what we call the elementary school was grades one through six. The junior high was seven through nine and the high school was 10, 11, 12. And what I'm hearing is we have real constraints in the middle school, right? And at the elementary level, if we were to build a new elementary level and move the sixth grade out of middle school and the ninth grade out of the high school, would that address capacity constraints? Yeah, so thanks for all the conversation. Though that exact conversation, that configuration and many other were discussed leading up to the 2020 bond vote, we certainly want to reopen those with the community and absolutely the council to share what that looked like and the drawbacks or the pros and cons of all of these models and then go through a process where the community ultimately brings one design forward. I highlighted the decision that was brought forward in 2020, but what you've proposed was certainly evaluating. I'm not proposing anything. I'm just trying to think that it's a lot probably less expensive to build one new elementary school than teared down. You joined the committee, that's the thing. I'm happy to. It'd be great to have you on the team. The high school. The council liaison. Yeah, yep. And there was a lot of conversation around that. Again, no decisions have been made, nothing is off the table. I can share, there was I think a fair amount of community feedback around elementary schools being really community-based and really neighborhood-based. So that was one of the deciding points with that. Yep, just pros and cons. Can I just add to another piece that we haven't really touched on tonight is where we were at with our bond for this year, which is that there's been a lot of delayed and deferred and untouched maintenance. And so what we're looking at with most of our buildings from the 60s, particularly the middle and high school, as we survey and inventory and go through what's been done in 2018, 2020 about fixing what we have, do we continue to fix what we have? This, I don't have the answer to this question. I think that this is the question. Do we fix what we have or is it more cost efficient to build new? And so we haven't done a lot of the maintaining what we have. I think we've had a lot deferred. And so that makes that price tag of just maintaining the buildings that we have higher and higher. So I just wanted to add that in as we talk about potential for new, it's also taking care of what we have. And then I wanna just close the loop on the ZEMS conversation. So the ZEMS are absolutely fully functional classrooms that have project rooms just as classrooms within the building. So those are really not trailers. I want folks to be clear. Those are really excellent spaces for education. So to just make sure the record is clear on that, I think there are fantastic learning spaces. Again, there's gonna be plenty of space mirroring those in our buildings. And we do have certainly challenges with cafeterias and at the elementary and the middle level, the gym example predominantly at the middle school at this time. Thanks. Well, it will be a long and interesting and I think complicated conversation. There's a lot of pluses and minuses about everything. I taught in a middle school that was five through eight and I loved it. And I thought it was a terrific learning environment. So I mean, but that goes back a ways. So maybe it's out of sync now to have that. But anyway, it's a conversation that the community needs to have and certainly will. And I'm glad you're embarking on sort of being in some ways courageous enough to bring up issues that had been discussed and shot down, I guess, a while ago, because times change or people change. And I think they all need to be part of the mix. And so I think it's important that we continue to really communicate as well as we can as the elected city leaders for what's really important for our community. So we're ready to work with you. I think we always have been. So we can go forward with that. And I don't wanna forget still having some kind of dinner. So we'll work on that in late August or September or something, food, yes, I can always get Tim involved. So if there's no other business, I think we have set another steering committee date. Have we not? You know, should we now or should we wait and have the dinner and then figure it out? That could be it. You can do scheduling, even if it's not a... Yeah, we're without one board member right now who, and as a teacher, I would hate to run into a parent teacher night sometime in September, October. All right, well then let's not set it now. We can come up with a time when everyone can tell us what their schedules are and what works. I just didn't wanna forget that I think it would be really good to break bread and have some other conversations too. I mean, you can really have some free-wheeling conversation because we've all been in schools. So we all know about them, right? That's what everybody says. Yeah. And it's true. Well, we all have our own experiences. Okay, so if there's no other business, I would entertain a motion to adjourn in a second. And all in favor? Aye. Thank you very much. Thank you, Helen.