 Welcome everybody get this started so we're going to call the meeting to order and the first thing to do is to review and approve the agenda there had been a couple of addendums to the agenda from its original posting I think they're both on the online version of the agenda so one of them is the discussion of a well one of them was going to be a consent agenda item so I think that's that's that's just the minutes and then the other one is the discussion of a proposed Charter Amendment so I'd like to put that in under like right after after item seven which is after the Green Mountain Transit and so we can call that item seven and a half maybe all right so any other things to add to the agenda okay so that objection we're gonna consider the agenda approved can you hear me okay okay just checking great okay so next up general business and appearances this is a time for anyone from the public to address the council on any item that is otherwise not on our agenda and if you'd say your name and where you're from and try to keep it to two minutes okay good or I think I'm if you need five it's okay My name is Roberta Garland and I'm with on Wilson Street so you can hear me right anyway I'm just giving it a short update about the non-citizen voting we're at because things of things are kind of moving ahead Sheila and Colin and John and myself and some other couple of people from the community have been meeting to come up with some strategies and where we're looking at strategies to do some outreach to legislators as we get it going to the session to educate folks about what this chart what the non-citizen voting means and to encourage them to be for it yeah okay just want to let people know about where we're at thank you very much okay on to the consent agendas they're a motion regarding the consent agenda Donna can use use your mic thank you I had some edits to the minutes they were not substantial such as I was present and I'm not listed a couple of other things in complete sentences so it's not the minutes in its whole just some little grammar pieces that and I had a copy and I'm sorry I didn't bring it with me but if I could pass that on to her I'd appreciate especially being present so potentially we could approve them with your adjustments yeah thank you does that sound reasonable or we could wait what's your preference why don't we just take the edits next time and approve it okay okay so we're gonna not that's the only item on the consent agenda so we're just gonna keep moving then all right so now we get to make some appointments so I know we have some folks here who are interested in well I should say really young people who are interested in serving on some of our city committees and I'm very excited to have more young people involved on in the city business and on city committees so if you are up for it you don't have to but if you're up for it if you would like to come to the mic introduce yourself and say why what committee you're interested in and maybe a little bit about why you're interested in it and you could also sit at the table those are mics on the table too if you don't use either way is fine also don't feel like you have to that's the other cool thing about this if you want to you can if you don't want to you don't have to my name is Jasper Eklund from Mopiliar and I would like I want to like do energy and committee and conservation committee and yeah because I want to make I want to help Mopiliar in its nature ways like help it make the Hubbard Park path like kind of have more stuff and protect the animals from like getting hurt and stuff so yeah great can I ask you a question Jasper I well first of all I really enjoyed reading through your application I saw that you were interested in two committees deep would your preference to be put on just one or both and there's no pressure you can also come you can also go talk about it with your mom if you want and then come back and let us know what you think I'm gonna try one just one okay okay fair enough and do you have a preference for which one or does it matter well that's a good question I think there's a couple of factors in there I mean from what you described it sounds a little bit more like conservation commission but I could I could be wrong that's what I was gonna say to I think be great on either one but I think the focus sounds like more conservation commission maybe okay what do you think yeah I think I would like to do conservation to okay great super thank you thank you all right good my name is Lily fournier I'm a student I'm a peer high school I live up by Vermont College and I am not sure what the right verb is want to be on have been going to some meetings for the Historic Preservation Commission which has is really cool I really like it I think one of the things that makes Mont Peulier and lots of Vermont and honestly New England special is that the buildings are unique wherever you go because people just built them differently different places and so that's something that I think is a huge part of Mont Peulier's character that I want to continue to be a part of protecting super I think that's it thank you any questions okay super thank you so much thank you hi welcome I apply for both the complete streets group and the planning commission but I want to be on the planning commission more because I think that it's really important to have voices in the community and I think that's a great way to do that super well great any questions for Emory awesome well so thankful for your application all right so thank you so much and so at this point you don't have to hang out up here if you don't want to and also thank you for that clarification about which committee you would want want to be on that's great all right I don't think we need to go into any Ian Keen Ian Keen is not here I know he's not here but is he still is his application hasn't been withdrawn no but because it's an ex officio position okay I was I thought there was one per okay yep then I think it's probably fine would you agree I think it's I think we had a point multiple people to the conservation commission it's I love it perfectly okay okay so all right I would like to make a motion I really have it all together am I supposed okay that's a really broad question and I don't have it all together so at this point I would move that we appoint Jasper Eklund to the conservation committee that we appoint the list go I lost it the next one is Lily Fournier yes that we point Lily Fournier to the historic preservation committee that we appoint Ian Keen to the conservation committee and that we appoint Emery Richardson to the planning Commission all is ex officio is ex officio members yes for the discussion are you using that to mean non-voting because I thought we found out that didn't mean non-voting in this case it I think it we're gonna it does mean that's an ex officio non-voting members I amended my motion thank you thank you for that clarification Glenn did you have something okay Rosie I just wanted to say that I'm always surprised during our appointments of adult members to the committees how qualified all of the the folks that we have are and what knowledge and background they bring and I was amazed and pleased to see how qualified even our student members are certainly not something we expect you know we're expecting that that our student members are just interested in a topic but frankly some of them were extremely qualified and had lots of background experience so it's you know wonderful to be in the position of appointing people to committees in Montpelier I just wanted to acknowledge that yeah I'm really excited about all the interest that students had in all these big meetings it's really it's really wonderful that you all want to serve so great all right so for the discussion all right all in favor please say aye opposed okay great thank you all so much congratulations yeah congratulations okay and we'll let those committee chairs know there's no requirement that you stick around for the rest of the meeting unless you really want to well yeah and we'll let the committees know to expect you okay so we have another appointment to the central Mont internet group and is for the alternate position we had two applicants and I know you're both here would you like I know you had the opportunity last time to say something would you like to say anything further or what not if not that's fine up to you sure just want to affirm to you folks but also the folks in the public you know certainly my name is Ken Jones and I've had other positions with the city but more importantly for this discussion I work at the agency of commerce and community development and one of the most important aspects of both commerce and community development in the state is the expansion of broadband and therefore the work that I do during the day some of the work that I do during the day is on this topic so I've been asked up there to provide assistance to those folks developing community communications union districts and so I would there's a reason why I'm interested excited enthused about this position thank you any questions go ahead like I said last time my opinion hasn't changed I'm Richard he's much more qualified I should probably get it the reason I'm talking here I was going to come bring it up in the beginning but I missed it I really appreciate it if we could implement a policy where it's the secretary is sick or the clerk is sick that someone else gets the email because it's kind of awkward to be like hey I applied for that and I didn't get it I'm pretty loud spoken I don't really mind but other people might not be so that'd be cool otherwise he should get it point well taken about having a procedural policy if Jamie is out so do we want to go into executive session team yes yeah yeah I move that we go into executive session pursuant to one vsa section 313 is there a second second okay for the discussion all right all in favor please say aye aye opposed all right we will be right motion to come out of executive session so moved second for the discussion all in favor please say aye aye opposed all right do we have a motion I move to appoint Ken Jones to the remainder of the term for the central remand internet board and this is as an alternate for the remainder of the term yes yeah second for the discussion all in favor please say aye opposed okay and we just want to acknowledge we're so grateful actually that you are interested in this we hope that you we would encourage you to go to these meetings they are public and we also just want to acknowledge that it's wonderful that you've been to our meetings for the past few and that that's not you know that doesn't happen all the time and so we hope that you stay involved and encourage you to you know stay open to other possibilities so and plus these these seats will become open or they'll be up for reappointment later next year well like sometime like yeah the spring so thank you okay thank you Ken okay okay fabulous perfect okay so we have an update and some a budget report from the remand yeah gmt come on up good evening good evening madam mayor counsels I appreciate you allowing me to be here tonight this is my visit for the to kind of update the council on what's been going on at green mount transit what i'm passing around right now is as you may have heard we started the next gen 18 month study on our complete service mark throughout yep you might want to introduce yourself oh i'm sorry mark susan general manager thanks bill i am the general manager of green mount transit have been there for now two years a little over two years so i wanted to come tonight to go back into the next gen information which is the next kind of a next generation of what green mount transit is doing for the future and looking out it was an 18 month project that included all the service area that we provide we're in five counties we are the providers of sugar bush stove service as well and franklin grand aisle and of course washington county what i tried what i was trying was was going to do tonight is there's the Montpelier circulator has been we've been talking about that every year that i've come and i just wanted to kind of update you where we are on what the next steps are in this next gen study what you'll see is there's an implementation timeline which is the first page kind of gives you an idea of the three urban rural and seasonal services that we provide these this timeline is very fluid because of public hearings that we have to have and we're trying to kind of do the urban and rural right now we're kind of working in the world we will be working the urban when i say urban i mean chitin county so right now we're working on the the rural kind the rural timeline um and i kind of it like i said it will push some things out because of timing public hearings etc but this gives you a general sense of what we're looking to do um the first we have two scenarios right now one scenario is scenario one which is it's it's basically some service that is currently goes kind of an opposite direction but is currently has been designed to maximize the area of the city as you'll see very colorful but it kind of gives you an idea of exactly what what we're going to present as one option and then the second scenario is what we call a bi-directional the bi-directional has basically going it goes basically back and forth it gives you more it gives you more service and time points but what it does it also misses an area uh if you'll see in the um was there college green i think it is you'll you'll lose the that area over there so we want to put this out to the public so the public has a say in what this looks like can i ask a couple questions i will explain freedom drive okay so just for clarity so there are three different colored roots on here so one of them is magenta green and orange those are the current roots system so which could you could you just like tell me which ones are which like which is the i i don't know because they change the color scheme on okay okay but like but one of them represents the circulator one of them is like the city loop the way i'm reading it the magenta one is the the circulator and that's the one that changes from one map to the next okay okay so and that's the one that's sort of at at play here is should the circulator do the scenario one or scenario two okay i thought the circulator went out elm street which is green on this map this is this is a a the next step on what was designed by our consultant so this isn't current this is what we're presenting to the public and for options okay currently i have people who are using it on elm street and are afraid of losing it so that's what the green is on this map i believe you're probably right i don't think you're losing it so if the current is both the green and the magenta no i think the current is not shown correct the current is not shown here this is what we're presenting as options and that's why i'm bringing forward to to the to the council because eventually when the public hearing comes out this is what we'll be presenting and we have plenty of time to to have input from public this is why we're kind of doing this because we want to hear from them what they what they think also i can i may add we're also implementing complementary ADA into this area which we never have deviated fixed route so when you do compliment complementary ADA it's mandated by the federal government you go three quarters of a mile off the route and so that will pick up some of these other areas that we're you were talking about freedom drive freedom circle that we've checked into that and that they're actually qualified to be able to get the complementary ADA so they won't lose service so that's complementary so it's just secondary to the to the fixed route so but those are also public hearings um ashley jiff i just want to make sure that i'm clear so with ADA though that's only for folks protected by the ADA correct okay so i just i full disclosure i lived on barry street uh for at least part of my time on the council and for several years before that and i'm quite concerned that that proposal two cuts out in essence all service to barry street other than ADA um you know the co-op is there it stops at the i believe it actually circulator stops at the co-op if i'm not mistaken it does now yeah something does or it's up close to there um and you know the senior center as well i i just feel like that's a that's a major cuts the senior center provides you know a place for lots of members of our community to go and to be um and and not just for seniors either there are lots of classes that you can take there um and and i mean i'm i'm really uh it's a hard no for me on this second proposal um because that cuts out a lot of folks who who need this um and as a former resident of barry street i am intimately familiar with you know the happenings and and you know like i see lots of folks walking to work you know when i was living on barry or walking to the bus stop to get to work and when i leave for work in theory on time which hasn't happened for a while but um you know there's lots of folks waiting for the bus down there uh and and i just i i cannot support a plan that cuts out bus access for that many residents of our community um and particularly um you know how diverse the barry street neighborhood is um and just the sort of diverse ridership that i know relies on this to get where they need to get to be um members of our community thank you that you're not voting you don't really know but i just so i just went to the i just want the council to know that this was done by a third party consultant that does this all over the country they're the ones who make these recommendations based on demographics based on household demographics etc and so i i'm this is a common conversation we have that's why this is not a done deal this is just an fyi for the council so when the public hearing does come um you know counselors are allowed to obviously be there and state their their objections to certain areas or add service so we can it doesn't mean we can't add to this to these recommendations okay and and i i just i wanted this is one of the things that we've been trying to sort of tackle uh in in the committee that i formed but um i i love public hearings i think public hearings are critical to these conversations but there are lots of voices that are are left out of those of those conversations and um that you know i i know that they're you know there there probably is some data to support all this and this is in no way you know to undermine or in any way discredit the work that that this organization has done but you know as someone who represents a large segment of our community district three my you know the the residents in my district are are human beings who have needs that uh if if the council is you know is sort of looking at this only um as a map sort of really misses out on how critical these services can be for people in our communities and so i know i know i have no doubt that this is supported i just want to sort of bring that human element back that you know while money is important uh people's lives are also important and some of these services uh you know central Vermont substance abuse prescription services at pharmacies in the area shopping grocery shopping um you know reach up these are critical services that our community relies on to literally survive and i want to make sure that that is an ongoing part of the conversation if if anyone is seriously considering the at least proposal one on here thank you i don't disagree with a lot of what you said so the last page is the microtransit i believe there was a counselor that went to you did that's what i thought um went to the mic transit meeting i was not there but this was part of this part of the presentation i believe it's an ongoing monthly meeting with a recommendation i believe coming out sometime in february and march and v trans is actually um uh a kind of spearheading these these conversations so we're involved in the green mount transit involved there's a lot of stakeholders that are involved in the microtransit so okay the only other the only other thing i'd like to bring up is just kind of give you a kind of an overview of how much rides we provided in the central Vermont area um 336,248 excluding the Montpelio link uh that's just the service that we provide locally part of what we're trying to do is be a little bit more efficient with the dollars and by doing so uh hopefully with that in the 80 company 88 coming into place that ridership we're looking to put ridership move ridership up it's actually has an uptick right now so it's actually going in the right direction and the Montpelio circulator service had 16,686 rides last year so that's kind of what i have i entertain any questions or um i have a quick question um uh you said there was an uptick in ridership is that uh are you seeing that statewide or is it just Montpelio or both nationally so nationally we we've done our peer we have a peer group we have approximately i want to say 30 other agencies that are similar size similar budgets similar ridership similar service area and we basically about a year a little over a year ago we did a study to see why our ridership had gone down we were down six percent and so we when we did this peer study we actually found that nationally the average was almost between six and ten percent somewhere actually down 22 percent so nationally when gas prices are low public transit usually takes a a hit on ridership so the gas prices go up a little bit yeah ridership goes up a little bit so Montpelio's numbers are also up yes okay um counter and then rosie just a couple quick questions there um enjoying being on that state micro transit committee we found out there and uh it's great to work with some of your guys on that too uh looking at the numbers here i'm looking at the Montpelio circulator 205,000 the yearly costly estimate that's 16,686 there for ridership so it comes out to like about 12 bucks a ride does that sound right yeah i believe it's probably true i don't have the data with me today but sounds about right can i ask you just like broadly as you're looking at the micro transit option some of your folks are serving on like the state committee um does that idea like strike you as far fetched as you're just hearing this you know the micro transit moving to like an uber run model no no no is that something that gmt would be interested in running like absolutely it is okay absolutely okay great good i've got a number of questions um one is i want to get some clarity on what the two proposals are showing for elm street i know donna and i have been contacted by several constituents who are really concerned about losing the elm street service because that had been my understanding of the original proposal and what the board had voted to accept last year maybe um and i understand that and i think this may have happened since some of the studies went into play or were taken but that there are several day care centers that are using the elm street section to get out to the rec fields and the nature center and i want to make sure that that if it is indeed more recent that that is reflected in um you know what your the data that you're using to make these decisions um and there is you know ccv is out there and the rec center and and some other important locations out there so i just wanted to make sure that that's on your radar and hear what the the current plan is yeah i don't um the current plan or the two plans that are in front of you we haven't changed anything since the last time that i was here this has not been implemented at all so what was there is still there uh and i'll i'm going to make notes for your concerns because i'll bring it back to my planning staff so what's the green route through the meadows neighborhood that's shown here because my understanding of of the proposal before was that it was basically gonna stop at elm and spring and that was as far down that uh stretch as it as it was going to go like i said i don't have a much estimate of that here's elm and this is the roundabout now it goes beyond and goes a lot to the right we've been told that it's scheduled to stop here i i believe the rec i believe the rec field was added to that route to go out there and come back uh because of the because of the responses they received during public hearings okay so there is a change from the initial plan that was presented this has been a flu very fluid document so every time we go to a public hearing we kind of add all comments into the you know the formula if you will and then the consultant starts looking at things a little bit you know that okay is this needed is this a necessity then they'll do the demographics and so i would say that that was added probably because of a public hearing okay it would be great if we could get a solid answer to to get back to our constituents on that because that's not that's not my understanding of how it had been so i would like to be able to to say that for sure um uh my next question is i'm a little bit confused about your actual request because there's the forty thousand dollars for the circulator and then there's the twenty nine thousand dollars for general participation in the service answer that is this love is this same as last year okay so we're sure we're just showing one line in the budget for seventy thousand which is forty for the circulator and thirty for their operating it was actually twenty nine and change okay and that's the same that we had last year okay great um and um i also i think i raised this last year but i'm just curious as we consider how we handle the circulator in montpelier um right now we subsidize it and don't charge and it's free and i'm just curious about what the thought is about um charging for writers who can afford it still offering the subsidies that you offer across all your services for low-income folks and seniors um but charging a little bit for that service and does that mean that we can serve more or serve more often or is the cost of collecting fares so much that it isn't worth doing it so the fair there was a fair analysis done when we did this next gen study as well so that's part of the um board document that was adopted by our board and we're discussing fares right now we do have some that are fair free uh throughout our system and then there's some that pay and should there be a fair increase for for this so those are the discussions that are actually happening now that we'll be presenting so part of this final document that you'll ultimately see there will be a recommendation on fares okay and that's something that i would if a fair increase allowed us to expand service and do it more frequently or you know serve more areas that is something i would be really interested in exploring i'm not sure uh what other folks think about that um with the understanding that we're we do have some methods for subsidizing it for folks who can't afford it um and then um i don't fully understand the microtransit proposal i haven't really been involved in those conversations and i wondered if you could just give a little bit of a summary of what that conversation is and how gmt a would be involved in that i think actually the members that were on the committee could probably answer that question better than i could because i wasn't at the meeting but i uh the the understanding about microtransit is basically putting a bubble over the city of montpelier and people would call for rides and basically like an uber um i don't want to use that but uh that they would actually like a demand response ride and within that bubble and if i am i is that the idea is having the technology and app to make it more responsive so that you could also share hopefully that ride not just ride yourself like uber in a taxi but so far it's only been done in larger communities so the whole group is looking at all of that closely so the idea is that gmt a would run that rather than a private company such as uber maybe there's private companies who put in bids who are participating in the study okay who have the technology that right now gmt doesn't have but wants to have anything else that's for another discussion another day if i could chime in rosie just on that like i have to say when i'm looking at like 12 bucks a ride here right and it's okay 45 rides a day for 205 thousand dollars a year it seems like there are other options worth considering so i'm really happy you're saying that because if you do take i'll say the word uber in boston or something most of those trips are going to cost a lot less you know so i think it's a very broad discussion at this point but just looking at the numbers 11 each community and where they travel on a daily basis i think it's worth thinking into so we just had one meeting but i'll be interested anything further i think i'm good for now donna then jack well i'm going to jump to the price because the 12 an hour again i was glad you brought up it's national norms dealing with population base and especially routes that have any kind of small neighborhoods and door to door response is more in the neighborhood of $20 per ride so you have to look at what the norm is for the population base and what that route is doing is it a fixed route or is it a more of a door to door response so and i would also concern i'm glad to hear that you're taking in input because i went back online to look at the posted next gen study and i didn't see any revision dates and so i do have concern about the circulator in elm street as rosie said we have constituents who are concerned but i also have concern for changes you're doing to hospital hill or proposed to do a hospital hill and a hospital hill on barry and montpellier as well as your city commuter as well as a circulator so in a time frame when are we going to be able to have more input i know that the montpellier transportation and infrastructure committee is reaching out to you to come and meet and us to solicit that group to solicit public input at that meeting because some of your meetings weren't well attended i know the one here in montpellier got canceled because of snow and i don't know that ever happened again in montpellier when i looked at the minutes of all your public meetings there was no montpellier meeting mentioned so that concerns me that we hopefully we get you into that group and we have a more extensive discussion about this and we can see indeed whether it's making any impact of change so yeah so i think the timeline that we're working on right now and again very fluid timeline is nothing would be implemented until july 1 at the earliest meaning from now until then you'll have several chances to me talk about it so it's july the the at the earliest would be july 1 and so if the the transportation infrastructure committee had you come would you also be able to bring fares and some of the other changes you're proposing besides just the roots that i found on line absolutely thank you and i'll bring my planning staff who is much more involved in this from the day to day uh we're actually involved in the in the actual study just to add to that to know beyond the transportation infrastructure committee hosting basically a public hearing on the proposed route changes the complete streets group is also going to be hosting a public hearing doing the same so i'm i think that's wonderful to get you know our committee is more involved in the in that process and i would love to see that be a more regular normal kind of thing for us oh i i'm sorry i think jack was next and then matt rosy okay um thanks for being here i have i'm new to this because uh i haven't i haven't been on the council before one observation i would be make is that for future presentations like this i would find it useful to have the first map be what you have what you're doing right now so that then we can go from there to uh to see what the proposed changes are because some of us don't use the bus all the time and i think that'd be very helpful um i don't represent either barry street or elm street but i can tell you that every time gmt is mentioned in these meetings we have people coming in saying they're really afraid that they're going to lose access to the service and so even before you've heard had a public hearing in montpelier i can i can tell you that this it's a service that people really rely on and would be very unhappy to see see it go away um i had a question about the scenario three the micro transit map um it appears that your you still have two of the bus routes on here and so is the model for this that you would maintain these two bus routes and then the uh micro transit or the individually dispatched uh jitneys would be an overlay or supplement to the to the fixed routes i think it's to be determined i think what you see here is some of these these routes right here actually go outside the bubble if you will and because of that we have to continue we'll i think they were continuing those to be outside that bubble um and i think the bubble is really to be determined um as a group i don't think they've really kind of pinned down exactly what that looks like boundary wise so can i add please the other thing about the micro transit its focus is the last mile they talk about so if you take the city commuter from berry into montpellier but they're not dropping you off close to your work or to your home that then you could use the micro transit to do that last mile makes sense and i know i have friends who used to drive the the link up to burlington but it doesn't get you very close necessarily get you close to your office so same thing but there's great service up in up in burlington for the fixed route up there that covers most of the city well they've got more population so they can support it more easily i'm sure good um so two more questions um one is obviously we're getting our new bus station hopefully by next summer and i want to know how that fits into this because it doesn't really feel like you know all the stops are still the overlapping stops are still at shahs and these and we're hoping did not have all those buses lined up in front of shahs anymore and those that'll go away shahs will go away well once the DTC opens and as construction goes on it's it's really hard to pin down a timeline although i was with bill earlier and having a conversation it seems like it's on on the right timeline in the fall at that point we'll have to move everything down to the DTC and at that point we'll have to actually have public hearings to move some of those stops so does it make sense to incorporate that all those changes into one time and maybe it doesn't but so that you're not altering routes for july 1st and then altering routes in october you know we can't be we can't kind of worry about like the construction could have a huge hiccup right so we if we wait longer we're trying to kind of get the impact of july 1 and then see where it goes now if we find out bill's going to say that hey guess what we have a magical date and it's going to be summertime then maybe maybe that makes sense at that point but okay great question the other question i have is i know there have been some conversations with the school system at some point in the last year i know they're thinking about adding service for middle school school bus service for middle school students and there was also some conversation about being able to add service i believe up berlin street for kind of an after school late bus type service and trying to work with gmta on that and i don't know what the results of those conversations were or if anything is happening in that direction so last summer there was a conversation and this conversation came up and the school board was school i'm not sure it was the school board but the principal or superintendent kind of backed away from that for this year so we haven't come around since then okay i would encourage you to reach back out and hopefully the folks who are involved in this here maybe some of our committees could could make that connection again because if we are adding some more school bus service it which isn't our decision here but if the school system is thinking about that it seems like there is room for some more conversation there for next year yeah school so school service and we have that up in berlington it's called school trippers it's a still a public transit system so anybody can still get on those aren't just specific for schools yeah i just want to clarify that because sometimes people think well you know why can't you do well federal transit administration doesn't allow us to do that no it makes sense no i think that it i think there's some um some sense in having one bus or both needs so oh um ashland um so i don't know if anybody knows the answer to this but i noticed that regardless of which plan so whether we do the microtransit scenario one or scenario two there is consistently bus service to national life is that something that national life also pays for in part or is that something that's funded by the city and gmta or what like how come the bus route is encompasses national life regardless of scenario one two or three national life does pay a fee to to to us okay i think the state of ramon too state of ramon now that's our next conversation about the state of run moving um down to berry out of uh national life well and then my agency is moving into national life so probably going to be the same yeah i guess just the the thing that stands out to me i think microtransit is great it works for someone like me but i think that it's also important to be mindful that there are service areas um you know the hospital and and things like that where um while the service is a great service for some people it's it's not something that would work for everyone and some of those services that are accessed on bus routes right now provide really critical support services and other things and uh being able to sort of establish a routine for some of it and some of those things are i think it's incumbent upon us to be mindful that while microtransit's great um for some members of our community and maybe for a whole bunch of them um i i just i don't want to to get away from sort of the public piece of public transportation to focus on the privatizing of that i think it's an important partnership but um dana and then jack and and then i we should probably move on soon okay i want to get back to barry street one of the sad commentaries is the lack of senior ridership with the circulator going to the center that we as a city have not promoted and maybe give some enhancement to seniors to not bring their car to the center that has limited parking space as well as barry street so that we need to look to ourselves as a partner and promote among our citizen the awareness not to bring your car but there are a little more time you can take a bus so i think we we need to be more active partners and likewise you need to be more active with us that's also where the summer lunch program is at the senior center and so i know i've you know i i know because i use a little right across the street i know how many people like take the bus and sort of come in and and hang out until lunchtime and and so i i just important function important but we don't have the ridership we should um jack i don't know if this uh is the full solution but i've i've been hearing that uh they're because of the limited hours of the of the bus routes that they're they're people who are sometimes just at the hospital they get out of diagnostic imaging or out of the emergency department or something and they're stuck there at night and you know that the health health care system doesn't necessarily work for people unless they have a lot of support outside of the health care system so if you're looking at micro transit one of the things i would encourage you to do is to think about uh hours to see if it's possible to cover cover areas you're covered times that the bus system can't you know one one you know one thing i think we're trying to get the hospitals to kind of understand is not all about fixing but it's community so how do we how do we work with the with the hospitals and and and health care to help them get people to where they need to get to for appointments etc and not to just worry about getting them you know it's not all about just the fixing them but it's about the community health as well and so we've started that conversation uh they're not quite there yet but i think eventually they're going to have to come around because it's starting to have a national trend right now we're hospitals and transit agencies are working together for the community so good great just one last thing madam i will tell you that the capital shuttle that we had approved for a year around service will actually end uh at the end of the this legislative session so that kind of puts in a little bit of a curveball so that we were notified by that not too long ago okay and i'm more than willing to any any committees that you would like us to be at and we'll make presentations just let us know and we'll be there right rosy just on that is that a state decision they're funding that okay just just the legislative session okay all right well thank you very much thank you for your time yep for sure okay all right so we're moving on to item seven and a half which is the charter amendment and so i just want to frame this a little bit so back in november when we well prior to november when we were considering other another charter change one of the possibilities was that it was going to encompass all of sustainability and so of course we decided to go with just plastics at that point but that lost a lot of potential changes that could happen around energy efficiency and so i know there was there were definitely got some calls about that and i'm particularly interested in being able to do some work in the city around energy efficiency in buildings and anyway so we've got so we got this language from our lawyer not that long ago so he and i went back and forth a little bit on this to tweak it a little bit so just a couple notes from him so one one of the things that he i just want you to know that he had expressed was that legally speaking he didn't have any concerns about this language he did mention that you know it would be a political risk because this is somewhat novel this is a somewhat cutting edge for vermont and you know we should just have our eyes open about that so that's one thing another thing is that he i mean he admitted that like he's not an energy expert and so i actually had the opportunity to run this language by some energy expert folks including people from efficiency vermont and energy futures group and they had a couple of not terribly substantial edits to suggest which i i could tell you about or i can send later or either or both but the point of this time right now is to just get a general sense of like how are you feeling about it do you want to change something what's you know sort of where this is more temperature taking at this point and then we need to be if we want to do this then we need to be filing language in early january so one of the things that i i also want to point out about this is that this does open up the possibility for for us to to create ordinances around energy efficiency and that might seem kind of scary to to some folks and so i've actually been working with efficiency vermont to put together a program specifically for mont peeler that could help make this just a little bit easier to achieve for folks and so efficiency vermont has agreed to do a particular program with mont peeler which i'm very excited to announce which is that we're calling it a concierge service which the the idea is that any property owner could work with a prepaid consultant paid for through efficiency vermont to help anyone is but especially landlords walk through what the process would be to do energy improvements in their buildings so the idea would be you know that this person would know all of the best pots of money or rebates or incentives and would be able to help find help the the land owner find the best deals and also walk them through doing the the work so it's a it's a really exciting opportunity and we're going to be talking more about that that's going to be available in early january so i just wanted to put that out there as well as part of the context for this and so one possibility is that we could just go around and you know what are what are our general thoughts or questions or comments another possibility is that i could tell you what the energy experts advise we add i guess my inclination is to tell you that first just because that seems like that would be wise so i'm i'm looking at it right now i haven't sent it to you all but i can i can tell you i'll send this around later so there was a reference in here to the vermont energy codes that's sort of right there in the second line i think that has a formal name and so we were advised by these energy folks to call it what its actual name is so the the first line would potentially read ordinance is establishing minimum energy efficiency standards for buildings which may incorporate technical requirements of the vermont residential building energy standards quote or not quote parentheses rbes comma commercial building energy standards parentheses cbes energy or energy codes so they're they're already these two existing energy codes and so we might be taking some of the pieces from that moving on or stretch codes include i'm just going to keep reading and i'll just tell you all the edits as we go including requirements for time of transfer slash listing inspection and disclosure slash certification of minimum energy efficiency standards compliance or non-compliance and this is new or anticipated building energy performance using forms generally consistent with the vermont residential or this is new or commercial building energy standards and then the rest is the same sorry that was probably not that helpful i'll send it around later okay how would this be applied just in general if this ordinance yeah past yeah i mean this chart of change how would we then go about applying it so this would give us a lot of opportunity to create some ordinances around energy efficiency and in enforcement so the current building energy codes my understanding is that they really only apply to new buildings and so like what leverage do we have to particularly in rental housing get landlords to make energy improvements and so there are three there are really three ordinances that this anticipates which is not to say that we have to do them or that you know there's any order to these i mean and there are probably lots of details that would need to be worked out about any of them but the three that this is sort of in reference to one is the the part about time of transfer or listing there's a burlington ordinance that requires that any multifamily building must be at a certain energy performance standard at the time of its sale now whether it should be at the time of sale or time of listing is you know one question so in a certain sense that ordinance has already been done and it might make some sense for us to do that and the i believe they also have a cap on the amount of money that would be required to be spent on energy improvements so as to not prevent the sale of the building if it was really bad so that's you know but that those are all details that we could we figure out and learn from you know their situation so that's that's thing number one number two one of the things that this anticipates is something called home energy labeling which was a proposal back in like 2015 in Vermont State Legislature the the best analogy i think for that is that like if you're going to go buy a car you want to know the gas mileage of the car why would you not want to also know the gas mileage of a house and just like you and i might drive a car differently you have a gas mileage rating based on some industry standards and so beyond just being like hey what are your you know what were your fuel bills you know you and i might operate a house very differently and so again it's important to have that be based on some of the assets of the house so one hypothesis is that the well i forgot that train of thought let me go with a different train of thought so one of the things that came out of the 2015 work at the state was that they came up with a profile that could be provided to any potential renters or homeowner or home buyers and they could so that so they came up with this this profile that would communicate an energy score and that they trained a whole bunch of people to give those scores and so that infrastructure exists but no one is has required that this be done and so the program it's while you know while it's still it's been sort of mothballed basically at this point and so i think of this as mostly like a consumer protection issue as well as being useful in terms of energy and energy efficiency so that's anyway that's why there's all this reference in here to the vermont residential building energy standard certificate or similar state of vermont residential building energy ratings and labels because those have already been imagined if that makes any sense so that's second one and then the third one is captured in the last sentence so there's this classic problem called the split incentive which is the issue of how if landlords do not include heat in the rent then they financially speaking don't necessarily have any reason to do energy improvements on their properties because you know they're not going to see those savings and then at the same time the renters don't have the authority to make those energy improvements so kind of a conundrum so one possibility is that in very you know poorly insulated buildings it's possible that you know we could just say the landlord needs to include heat in the in the rent and then it basically puts the pain where the problem is and would be a financial incentive for the landlord to do to make improvements you know there's a lot that would need to be carefully crafted about that because well there's i could go into that one ad nauseam very very helpful okay and but that was the kind of list you were looking for i mean there are other types of things i can imagine but any of i i think because of the way this is framed it allows for other things as well but it seems to be a carrot and stick which i appreciate that's what i really wanted to hear yeah we're trying to upgrade and motivate and incentivize yeah yeah and just so you know the frame that i'm coming from i there are a lot of carrots out there that have existed and have worked to some degree but i think we're at the point where there there have been very few sticks around this issue and i think we're i think we're ready for that so yeah and i mean to be fair we'll base this all on you know what's what's reasonable and easy to assess particularly learning from what burlington's done so um other sorry i have a lot to say about this clearly um other thoughts or comments uh rosie i have a whole bunch of thoughts so i'm happy to do them all at once or um well let's hear can i take a temperature other other people have thoughts okay go ahead let's do a few and then we'll jump around and we'll come back um so i have three main trains of thought here um one is i have a number of concerns about first i should say that i appreciate that we're trying to figure out this issue of multifamily units or buildings and energy efficiency and rental units i think that's worth us pursuing and i i think there are things that we can do there i'm concerned about this language specifically um first in the the drafting just the way that this is drafted we don't need to get permission to establish building codes we already have that so i think what you're trying to get at is not building codes for new construction it's it sounds like you're trying to rate buildings that already exist yes and so i think we don't that that's first line about ordinance establishing like giving us this power to establish ordinances establishing minimum uh energy codes we've got that power and the state has already established these codes for for the new buildings so there's no point in us re-establishing the code that the state has adopted instead i think what we're looking for is um to establish some method of evaluating buildings that are already built um can i interrupt you yeah um so this i i did briefly talk about this with some of the energy um experts and one of the things that came up was the verb establishing like that second word there and that that might not be the right word um because we're we're not really literally establishing minimums or performance minimums what we're doing is it's more like um having a variety of administrations um or enforcements of those things um so yeah i think that we don't need to take on the this code piece of it we one already have the power and two the state's already established the the energy code so if we wanted to without a charter change we could establish a stricter building code with regards to energy without getting the change i think what you're wanting to do is to give us some powers to establish penalties or regulations around uh charging for heat um for landlords charging for heat that seems like that's really what um and to give us some powers uh around requiring this this labeling um or around sales um and i think those were the two things that i heard you talk about so i'm not sure that um that that's the way it's drafted really gets it what we want to do so i think there's some some room to work there thank you um i also the um residential energy codes those really apply to to new construction and i think that maybe um like a her score or the the certificate program that you're talking about would be more appropriate for buildings that already exist um because you can't take an existing victorian building and say okay you have to do this this and this thing that are in the energy code for a new building it what you want to do is get it a you know a air leakage score and that kind of thing um so that's a different thing that already does exist um and i think that's what we would want to use instead and we do in our zoning we reference hers already so i would be probably in favor of using the same one throughout all our regulations but that's certainly something we could discuss is that's one to use yeah fair enough that i think that's really interesting and i also feel like that's something that you know when we get i'm so one of the things that i want to do with this language is um make sure that we're not well to get at what we want to do but also not um limit ourselves to something that uh turns out to not be that useful so if we it might make sense to reference hers in here i guess maybe i'm it might i yeah um but i'm not sure that um that just talking about the energy code is getting where you want to go there um for the benefit of people who might not know could could someone say what hers is i don't know what hers stands for but it is a score um in terms of energy efficiency that is um nationally accepted and used but it's usually only used for apartments okay yeah um i think it can be used for single family i don't i don't know why it wouldn't be able to but home energy rating system oh yeah so that's pretty self-explanatory um and uh finally the other thing that i want to so so i think we need to get at are we talking about regulating new buildings versus old buildings and i think we need different language for each okay so that would be a drafting conversation no that's great um the last piece is while i think that this is worth investigating i want to be really really careful about the unintended consequences and there are some serious public policy consequences of us not being very thoughtful about this and being really considered um one is that you know i could see that uh landlords rather than going through this process um to you know increase their their energy efficiency the building would just say well i'm just going to add four four hundred dollars to the rent for every month to make sure that i'm covered uh and i'll pay for the heat but that'll cover me if the the tenant cranks their heat up to 80 degrees um and be normally you know in a normal housing market they wouldn't be able to do that because there would be other apartments for people to rent instead but in a very tight housing market there is probably room for people to increase their rents and so i just don't want us to do this and then the result is not increased energy efficiency it's actually just increased rent so can i address that yeah that is one of the one of my biggest concerns with that last piece and i my hope is that we'd be able to craft it in a way that anticipates that um and particularly uh limits that effect because i think the um you know has this potential to further to be a like a spike um and ultimately cost uh tenants more um but the anyway knowing that that's a problem a potential problem ahead of time um i would i would want to be really careful but i agree i guess that's my point want to be very careful in crafting particularly that one i've got one more point but ashley looks like you want to chime in on that yeah i want to do i want to dovetail on that i oh sorry i promise i can't be i kind of have deference on something it's okay go ahead um so i'm glad that you mentioned that rosie uh this is something that i've actually been thinking about for quite some while and i had reached out to the mayor of berry luke herring a couple of months ago now i rented in burlington when i first moved up here um much to my chagrin i left pretty quickly it just wasn't for me but that's okay because i'm here so uh one of the things that i'm very interested in doing uh and i think i'm still the only renter on the council um i have been through the attempting to find an apartment process and that very scary moment of like oh my god i'm going to have no place to live in three weeks if i don't find something right now um and uh i was surprised at the fact that there are almost zero protections for renters here in montpelier uh and i i actually just sent this out to both annan bill i think i may have sent this out to other folks before but um burlington has a very comprehensive set of ordinances that talk about how and when landlords can raise rent the percentages at which they are capped at raising rent there are notice provisions uh there are damage provisions for landlords who violate those terms so if they raise the rent on 30 days notice the tenant can commence an action in civil court small claims court most likely and then seek enforcement of the both the ordinance through the civil court process but also can be entitled to financial compensation for any losses incurred as a result of a landlord sort of jacking up the rent by four hundred dollars a month so that's something that i've been very interested in also security deposits or another piece of this whole conversation when it comes to renting and capping that berry actually has it in their charter that the security deposit basically moving into an apartment you can't collect more than two months worth of rent whether that's apportioned as first and last first and security last and security however it's apportioned um it can't be more than two months rent so i think it all sort of dovetails i would also point out too that with particular regard to this um i don't see energy efficiency just as electricity i think uh water as well as like um you know wastewater and a number of other things sort of fall into that wiring and electrical you know things can also factor into all of that appliances and things like that that are provided i know there are programs that exist but i just don't want to focus only on the sort of heat piece which is a critical piece but there are a lot more things um that i think have sort of fallen by the wayside for renters because uh well it's kind of a transient population in part but also um you know it's not very cheap to live here and so i will confess i've not spent a lot of time thinking about electricity in this context but i think you're right it would uh potentially uh fit into something like that and you know we could spend some time electric heat is a large electric heat yeah for sure yeah no great and so in essence that's another way where the cost gets transferred to the the tenant and i mean that is expensive i've lived in places with electric heat and that's like a 350 to 400 electric bill some months when it's cold so so i just wanted to finish my thought there so that's one major policy concern there one is you know this would have to be kind of more on the extreme end but if we made our requirements too strict i'm really concerned that we have all this historic housing stock in Montpelier that is going to be difficult to bring up to the same level as new construction so if we don't allow for that then um in that that housing stock outside of the designated historic district maybe even some houses within it i can't quite remember how that works but um is not protected like it it seems like oh you've got this 150 year old house you can't just tear it down but if you're not one of those specific houses in the specific area where we do regulate tearing it down or not um what is to stop a landlord from tearing it down and replacing it with a new building and i think if we make it too difficult to own an old building and make it meet our standards we might see more of that and so i i want to caution us that as much as we want to move to net zero we need to be somewhat aware that the old buildings that we really value for their beauty um are not ever going to get to as good a point as a new building and we need to figure out how we want to work that in our public policy decisions and finally i have one concern about um making sure that um in order to sell a building it has to hit an energy efficiency standard um a multifamily building um i think that that could potentially you know if we have a case where there's kind of some some slum lords who really aren't keeping up their building that would why would they want to bother to make those improvements in order to sell the building they might as well just keep it as it is and keep renting it and so maybe there's a way to get around that but i that would be my public policy concern with a policy along those lines is that you might disincentivize the landlords that you might want to sell their buildings to a new landlord from doing so and that would be unfortunate i agree all of the things that you just raised i'm sorry i have so much to say about this those questions to me have to do with the the dial settings of this and like what like you know how much are we capping the improvements add and what can our what can our market handle and um and still make progress and that's yeah your points well taken so i would just encourage that you know as we go down this road we really involve landlords and tenants and all the interested folks in town in this rather than just saying yeah let's set it here i forgot to mention i did also get to meet with down street earlier this week and went over this all with them and they were well to be fair they couldn't say that they fully backed it that would be a board decision for them but it was i will say it was well received so that was encouraging glenn um just a couple of things first back to rosie's uh first comments about the existing codes and so on uh i may be reading it wrong but it seems to me that if we inserted the word existing in that first sentence so that it reads ordinances establishing minimum energy efficiency standards for existing buildings that could potentially uh say more clearly what we mean without changing it any other way yeah i i can take that suggestion and and to just the idea that this is applying to existing buildings back to the lawyer and you know recraft and i don't know if that solves all of rosie's issues with it but but but it it feels like it it does get closer to what we mean um uh i had a question about one of the the changes that you uh talked through i think it was um uh somewhere in there uh i think energy ratings and labels or in no it was standards compliance or non-compliance or anticipated performance yes anticipated by whom is my question there by um by the building energy ratings and labels so some of these uh like the uh so after that comma yeah right there it says using forms generally consistent with the vermont residential blah blah blah um okay so first you label the house and then that right because those those labels um like the the labels and ratings aren't necessarily just about compliance or non-compliance right okay good that answers my question there um and i wanted to come back to rosie's last point too about calling in uh conversation with renters and landlords and and other people and i think that i know a few landlords who are uh come come at it from being builders uh and a lot of their uh mo is to take old existing buildings and uh really improve them as much as they can and then rent them and i think that uh we want to encourage that as much as possible um and make it easier for them to do it and so i think those might be the the the people to to focus on and check and see where our where our dials are so i would love to connect you to some some of those people super um and then also i just want to call back to the first thing you talked about the efficiency vermont concierge service which sounds great uh and sounds like a really good carrot um to be able to as i understand it any property owner can basically starting in january well i'm not sure what the date is yet that we're going to start it but yeah starting at some point soon yeah january can get efficiency vermont to to give them a bunch of information about how they could improve that's great i think this whole thing is uh something that i support awesome uh this the the whole idea of uh making uh the buildings of our city more energy efficient is is very important and we've been having a lot of discussion about uh everything that people have said tonight has just emphasized or has made me think more about how complicated this whole thing is and uh some of the i think i think it's fair to say that some of the complications are more related to what the language of implementing ordinances would be than the charter language itself but on the other hand i do think it's also important to have a good sense of where we want to be going before we adopt charter language that uh so that we know that it's uh it's well crafted to get us where we're going um i had a good uh long conversation with the mayor about this last night and i don't want to feel like i'm backing down from what i said but i think that this might be a longer conversation than we put this together and have worn a couple of public hearings in january and and then go to the ballot on town meeting day because i think it might be there might be more to it than that um and i can envision for instance asking both the housing task force and the energy committee to to look at this um ashley was talking about a whole lot of the tenants rights issues and i know that next month one of our meetings has to do with the rental rental housing standards um and so there's a lot there i was looking at this at the source uh material entitled 30 of vermont statutes which seems to already have a requirement that new new residential construction be built um meeting these standards and i don't know if they are or not or who's enforcing it but not the stretch code okay we could do that uh huh yeah and then how are we going to enforce that but i'd like to understand a little more about how all that works um i i think that some of the things we see in the uh in the rental housing market now in even in my pillar is really pretty troubling you know and i go i've been in a lot of uh units and my colleagues at legal aid have been in a lot of units where landlords have decided the the easiest way to address uh heating problems is to put uh put a renai heating heater in one of the uh one of the rooms in an apartment and and call that good and say well okay now i'm offloading the heating bill onto the tenant and it probably doesn't meet the code because it probably is not the one uh heater in one end of the apartment probably is not sufficient to uh bring the uh the temperature to the uh standard required by the rental housing health code and all the other rooms in the apartment so i i think there's a lot for us to work on that i think we should work on sorry but so i so um in terms of understanding more um would it be useful to have people hear from efficiency vermont or from like i'm trying to think of like uh i mean you mentioned some of our committees i mean the energy committee is looking at it now um so they'll have um time to comment soon i mean we talked about it we've actually been talking about it for the last couple of meetings and um anyway so uh i'm trying to i'm trying to boil down what you were saying into like what are some next steps for you yes i do think having uh having some energy experts energy and construction experts into uh talk to us about how this would work okay is a valuable thing um and veic in their operation of efficiency vermont is right at up at the top and in my view um so yeah okay great thank you um rosie than actually i think donna was actually oh okay so rosie so donna i i would echo jack's wanting to slow this down a little bit i think that we are gonna i would like us to craft the ordinances that we want to do um at least in in part before we craft the charter change that we need um because i think that we have much more likelihood of explaining to the public what we want to do with this and to explaining to the legislature what we want to do with this and you know we have seen before that when we're too vague with our charter changes the legislature is not particularly excited about embracing them and so i think if we can point to this is exactly what we're planning to do we'll have a much it may seem like it'll take longer up front but actually we'll have a much higher likelihood of success if we spend the time to figure all this stuff that jack's talking about out up front so that would be my next steps preference is to kind of do more delving into figuring out what do we actually want to do start crafting those ordinance changes and then work on the charter change to meet those needs actually one thing just as sort of as jack was speaking that sort of stood out to me um in thinking about this proposal is that this is pretty verbose like this is this is a lot of specificity in a document that does require a degree of specificity but does not seem to entail in any other place this level of specificity and so i'm wondering so i sort of see this as a as a two prong thing one we are we want or the council is considering requesting the opportunity to present this to the voters to vote on whether or not the voters believe that the city should have the option to in essence regulate by creating ordinances you know minimum energy efficiency standards for buildings in our community so that's sort of one piece and then the second piece i think is a bigger policy like ordinance drafting question about how we would go about doing that and um it feels like uh this is so so i think what at least to me what what i'm hearing and and maybe correct me if i'm wrong jack and rosie because i think the two of you sort of highlighted that piece which is like how do we go about effectuating these these potential policy changes versus how do we even inquire whether the legislature is willing to give us if the voters give us the authority to to make that request um to me that's that's the sort of question here and so um you know not weighing in on my thoughts about you know some of the particular policy proposals contained herein i think it's sort of a basal question of um you know do you know adding to the city charter the ability for the council to regulate these things rather than proscribing or prescribing particular options for that so i'm wondering if there was one any particular reason that we ended up with all of these yes law talking words on the page yes and so can i ask what that is yep so uh it was our lawyer's opinion that uh having um very specific references like so the the ordinances that this anticipates are sort of all built in here um and that's why it ended up being so verbose so one of the um one of the concerns that that he had right was he wants to give this its best chance at passing and he thought that um having sort of specific references to existing codes to um uh you know the energy labeling work that's already been done um that that um would help its passage um this sounds like a totally lawyer thing to say and i say that as a lawyer it's fair um but i i also feel like sometimes lawyers tend to eat their own in that regard like we get so wrapped up in like what the you know the what it ought to be um and and you know and so i'm sort of looking at this right like so can uh i'm not really clear how this whole thing is like numbered or or sectioned off either because it seems to change formatting like so we've got five dash three oh one a b and then we go one two and then a b c d so but looking at um uh let's see construction of improvements including curb sidewalks lighting and storm drains yada yada yada yada yada you know there are other standards that we have to adhere to like there are state standards that we have to adhere to in terms of width and height and things like that um but it's not spelled out that we have to do that um and so it just seems like maybe we could cut out some of those words such that we still get at the crux of the issue which is utilizing those already existing tools um but taking out the sort of policy judgment or you know policy value piece of this you know in terms of referencing that uh as it relates to rental properties such minimum energy efficiency standards may require blah um you know sort of taking that piece out because i don't know so i sort of view this as like the constitution right like it's sort of this like thing that's left to interpretation um and so then that would give the voters some you know we would be having these conversations at the public hearings what are you know what what kinds of ordinances could be draft um but it would be leaving those bigger more significant policy questions about how we effectuate these things to um to the council to have in a thoughtful way like we did with the zoning an interesting question i mean i so um my only hesitation there is as a non-lawyer um you know i probably must believe our lawyer right to say that like well you know if that's other lawyers too yeah i suppose that's true we do have other lawyers all with super opinions anyway um your points well taken though um before we go to donna um actually you know what i i can i can hold my thought go ahead that's okay well you started out i thought trying to get a measurement of where we were with this ordinance versus fine tuning it and some of the fine tuning it has given us an understanding i'd like us to move ahead with the intention of doing the charter change and that we have to come up with some language that we have public hearings on and we keep working on it but that there's no way we can do everything rosie that you want us to do before this gets posted but meanwhile between when we have to have the ordinance language and then we can work out the policy between then and town meeting as we share with the public what we're about that's what i would like us to have as a vision thank you awesome connor donna said a lot of what i was going to say i think um a lot of what people have mentioned those sphere that held that to me as well um and i i think we need to have our eyes wide open and look at those red flags as we move forward at the same time you know pushing this back to a november special election i think puts us beyond this biennium and into the next one so i think we can to some extent work on parallel tracks with drafting those ordinances at the same time as moving forward with the intent on this one i have my own concerns i don't think our city staff can absorb all these functions as they are now so we'd have to look at appropriation for next year so we've got a lot of work to do but i think if we could and i am looking at the other ones they are written in more plain english in this one yeah i mean if you go to the government operations committee they're citizen legislators like us and they might actually appreciate the simplicity of it uh and not bogged down with the legal stuff so yeah if you're taking the temperature i'd be okay moving forward in the in the broader sense glen did you have something you want to um thank you and i also just want to add uh thankfully the so there's this anticipates three ordinances right so one of them we already can work from burlington's ordinance well let me back up when we were going to be um thinking about banning plastics or plastic bags really um the anticipated ordinance was the same one that bridleboro has um so using models uh should be very useful to us um one the the first one it's very similar i would imagine doing something to similar what burlington has so that should help um two the home energy labeling has actually been adopted by i'm gonna get it wrong it's um it's either seattle or portland it's uh organ one it's one of those two and anyway so i've actually been on conference calls with them talking about how it was implemented so forgive me i feel like i've done a lot of background work on this that has not necessarily included you all and so um you know happy to uh continue to share more and uh anyway but my point is that there exists an ordinance um that's being enforced right right now about home energy labeling um the one that is probably novel novel is the one regarding the split incentive and we can i i think that's something that we could be spending some time with um i saw rose rosy and then ashley so i guess i would clarify that i agree with donna that's a lot of work and i was not anticipating that we would be able to get it done by march and this is such a big thing this is this is as big a zoning in terms of the impact that it has on our property landscape in montpellier and so i would like us to take the time and get it right and i think that looking at our schedule we don't have that time before town meeting day and so i would be more inclined to do this right and do it you know um with a november type timeline for the actual charter change but as we work towards the charter change we're also working on what those ordinance changes would be again to give the public a better sense of what we're looking at and to give ourselves that sense of what we want to do um and then once we have that that language approved then it's it's a better package to present to the legislature um and we're we're in place to go from there um the next thing i wanted to say is that i believe if you want to adopt the stretch code for exist or for new buildings we can do that without this so that might be something that we go ahead and start thinking about i want to think about that more about whether we actually want to do it but that's something that we could discuss apart from a charter change timeline and those stretch codes would be setting different types of standards that would trigger some of these different enforcements potentially no it would um us adopting this the vermont energy stretch code and i don't have the quite the stretch code for new construction in montpelier would just be a building code that we would adopt and we can i think we did adopt it but we didn't require no the state has adopted it but not required so i i think we have it in our it is referenced in our uh in our zoning i think it may be uh if you hit the stretch code you can do x y or z but i don't believe that we've required it and i'm saying that that's something that we could decide to do without a charter change there uh ashley so i'm just i've just been sort of wordsmithing just stream of consciousness and so i guess what maybe i'm not understanding something so i hear that we want to or we are interested or you are taking the temperature of whether the council has the appetite to put this on the town meeting day ballot is that sure okay yeah all right good i'm with you so next question when is the expectation that the ordinance is that people are envisioning or not envisioning whichever uh would happen i would imagine that this would be a all three of those things would be a lot for the community to absorb so i wouldn't want to implement those all at once or even close to each other well then i'm not understanding so we can't i mean we wouldn't even have the authority to enforce those ordinances without a charter change right so why wouldn't we have the vote on just the charter change and then see what the legislature does and have committees working on that while that's percolating over at the state house because committees working on the ordinances correct yeah i just so so to me that seems to be the the sort of the way to approach this have a general request that i don't i'm not super familiar with these terms but something like um d would say enact ordinances establishing and enforcing minimum efficiency standards for commercial and residential properties in the city in accordance with state federal and other uh you know i don't know other like adopted mandated something standards standards whatever um and leave it at that and then therefore that gives the city some idea as to whether or not the legislature is even going to allow the city to do that by approving or denying the request to change the charter assuming the voters approve it then the committee or committees because i could see a few sort of would would be working on putting these ordinance proposals together because i do think there are a lot of moving parts to that but it just seems like one we're unnecessarily limiting ourselves because what i don't want to do is in 10 years when these standards change and we're referencing in our city charter which is our governing document you know things that are outdated it's like prohibition in the constitution right terrible idea you should never put that in the constitution as amendment um you know but but what ultimately did happen is there were other ways to enforce that that that desire um and they did it through other means like you know highway funding um so it just seems to me like maybe a more generalized sort of very short mirroring some of the surrounding provisions would would make the most sense and then you know if there are guidance or or wishes for ordinances that we address those separately from any request to amend the charter so i have lots of thoughts on that um so one is that i think that to me that highlights the need to have the first clause be right um because everything after the which may incorporate um is like here are things that we just don't want you to be surprised if we start to do these things right so it's just i mean the i know our lawyers advice is really about um trying to make it abundantly clear um that these are the kinds of things that we're anticipating uh doing uh based on this amendment that strikes me as as a as the conversation to have with the legislature and the conversation that we have as a council rather than like putting that into the charter couldn't say something like ordinances establishing many many minimum energy efficiency standards for existing and new buildings which may include um and then just let's boom boom boom yeah and that doesn't all this all the all the stuff no that's fair i mean it's such as you know um energy efficiency standards home energy labeling those kind of things and just leave it right the point is it doesn't obligate us to do those things it's just yeah and i think the authority of that that whatever it's given in that first clause should be general enough so that we can um do other things as well does that make any sense actually um it it does i just and maybe this is like my own lawyerly mind thinking like i well one the council is still going to be the gatekeeper of this function anyway so any ordinance if the legislature grants the charter change which is i think is it maybe a much larger hurdle than than any of us are contemplating in this conversation but setting that aside um it just doesn't seem to me that that we would would need to build all of that into this because what if they change the name in a year and then people are reading our city charter and then we have to petition for another charter change to amend even though it's just a technical amendment it's there's still a process by which that all has to you know go through and that just doesn't it doesn't seem like the most most best use of of city um you know city attention and council resources okay thank you uh don did you have something well just that i think we do have to do some of the ordinances as rosie and jack were pointing out along the way so that our citizens understand what our thinking is and it helps us to see the potholes as well as the benefits even though i do think that we should go ahead with the order the charter change language and put it forth but meanwhile we should be working on the other stuff i think good jack um i'm on record in this in previous council meetings already as saying that as a lawyer is saying that people should generally follow the advice of their attorney um one of the one of the thoughts that i have in anticipating how this is going to go for one thing i don't think this is going to be harder to get through the legislature than we think it is because i already think it's going to be really hard to get it through the legislature um but but getting beyond that um i can just anticipate some property owner who doesn't like the way this affects him or her deciding to sue the city and one of the things they'll say is well this ordinance goes beyond what the legislature gave you authority to do and so that's one of the things that we want to think through pretty carefully as we're as we're crafting the the charter ordinance yeah agreed the charter amendment i should say all right so uh thank you all this is great feedback i'm going to take all this feedback and um consult with some more energy folks and the lawyer again and uh and some landlords yes and some landlords are actually there on my schedule and as as well as actually um capstone um who does weatherization work they're also on my list maybe somebody from burlington uh been yep so they've we've been also in touch uh about all this as well but yeah so um but yeah checking in with all those folks i think will be good so i'll have something more or different for you for next time can we have a break yes and then it'll be time for the mdc okay great thank you uh so we're back from break go ahead can we leave the lights on okay great so my name is larga part i'm the executive director for the montpellier development corporation um so i'm here tonight to give our six month update um and that is part of the agreement that one is in the economic development strategic plan but it's also in our memorandum of understanding with the city um i have six month ish because the last time we gave an update was in september of last year um and so with a some turnover with executive directors i am now taking that over um i came on in may uh so we hope to make it six months from here on out so tonight i'll give an economic development overview um and just kind of a general overview about economic development um because i realized um and and donna were really the only two that were on council when the edsp was adopted um so i just want to frame that a little bit for everyone um also go over the 2018 economic development activity that happened in the city and then looking forward the priorities for the montpellier development corporation so here um is mdc's vision and our mission um and this is couched in the economic development strategic plan um but we are a private nonprofit that was created out of a recommendation from the economic development strategic plan um to implement the plan um and act in coordination with the city but to act independently so i see economic development as a forest really and i love to make the comparison in this way um and in a forest you have the plants you have the trees um and i equate these to businesses so our organizations um for-profit non-profit educational institutions um in order for them to grow you need to have the adequate soil rain air quality for them to prosper so i see economic development as providing an environment where these organizations can grow and be successful um i also like this um chart i guess a graph um that'll walk through just because it it gets to economic development isn't just what working with businesses um we touch all points of the community because economic development is the prosperity of businesses but it's also improving quality of life of a community so at the top we have healthy environment vibrant places housing options healthy people quality education arts and culture equity those all work to attract retain and support a talented workforce um and high quality organizations um and those in turn increase our regional income and opportunities public revenues which we then get to invest back into those pieces at the top um to put in a little perspective mdc where we kind of work within this cycle we create and support development that you know influences these vibrant places and housing options and we work with our partners to address some of these other aspects we don't have the expertise to address certain things in the communities such as homelessness but that's a really important aspect that we need to be considering in the grand scheme of things and then the majority of our work is actually working with businesses to support them in their growth to provide more job opportunities to attract and retain talent and to spark entrepreneurship and startups so kind of where i see Montpelier in this process before i came and along before the ESP was adopted there was some activity to start looking at economic development a bit more intentionally um so at the start of this we have the EDSP that was adopted mdc was created and then in this phase which i consider the phase where the EDSP is being implemented we have this first part which is already underway where we're seeing some significant private investment over the past year and we've had commitments for public infrastructure improvements and other investments and to continue this progress we need to continue to have targeted economic development activity and public-private coordination and investment to continue moving the needle on improving quality of life and the the viability of Montpelier so the idea is that all these activities eventually lead to the outcomes that we want which in the EDSP is outlined as an increase in private sector jobs and establishments housing and increase in population so here the metrics that are outlined by the EDSP and again it's saying that we work on these various strategies and our outcome will be an increase in the various areas so by 2021 it has these various goals outlined and so i took some data and looked at our progress as of 2017 so this is assuming that our baseline is 2016 and this is we're going only to 2017 just because that is the last full data set for all six of these metrics some of these are updated quarterly and the sources of these of this data is in the report that it distributed as well so where we are as of 2017 we actually had a decrease in private sector jobs but we had an increase in new establishments and i wanted to put a graph in here just to show that it's it's really hard to get perspective over one year so to break that out a little bit more to look at we've had a relatively steady growth in our number of establishments and we had some volatility in the number of private sector jobs so we have spike in 2015 and we've started a slight decline i have a few theories about this i don't have to get into them now but again it helps to look at some of this data over a greater amount of time but getting back to these metrics as of 2017 and this is based off the American Community Survey we had a decrease in residents we did have 73 housing units approved for construction in 2017 and then we had an increase in our meals receipts and a decrease in our rooms receipts and just to put into context how those translate in 2017 we had 26 million dollars total of meals receipts and 3.7 million dollars total for rooms receipts so here's that same data just in a chart form so going back quickly the line along the bottom is our 2016 baseline the dotted line at the top shows that if each of these metrics get to their 100 goal it would get up to that that dotted line so this is where we're at as of 2017 and as you can see some of those are below the baseline so we have some work to do to reflect some of the activity that has been going on in 2018 there's some assumptions we can make that adding on to those bars here's what it may look like in the next year when we touch back into this data i don't have residents or meals and rooms receipts um on there but we are able to predict a little bit in terms of private sector jobs establishments and housing units okay is that net new establishments it is yes yep so that's considering closures as well to find an establishment does that break some mortar or if i start LLC with a couple people in town does that count as well um that's a great question i'd actually have to look um this is based off of the quarterly um from the department of later they're blinking on the name for it but employment and wages so if you have an employee you're considered a firm or an establishment basically yeah any other questions with this when you look at data like um the rooms receipts for example do you also correlate that with number of available rooms like for example probably wouldn't have affected this data but like Betsy's bread and breakfast is closed and others and so you know does that necessarily mean less people are coming or that there's less places to stay and i don't know how we are being b-fixing to that too right and so that's hard to that's a little hard to determine so there's a few different variables in that data it may be fewer people are coming but it also it also captures any closures so Betsy's b and b going to closing is something that would impact that data um and i there's some data too that i have that shows this over a few years um so it's interesting i'm not quite sure what's contributing to that eight point three percent decrease but here's another area that when Hampton Inn and Suites comes online we we can assume that we're going to see an increase here as well so to bring some color to the dark green on those bars um some of the activity that's happened in 2018 some of our major projects the creation of a tax increment financing district uh which is essential for um providing a space for future private investment and also public infrastructure improvements we had a first bond approved obviously the public parking garage the french block apartments are near completion in their construction which will add 18 housing units to the core downtown one taylor street transit center and housing is under construction also adding housing to the downtown Hampton Inn and Suites and public parking garage um were issued a decision at least at this point um in Calgary spirits the still area is currently under construction and here's a little bit more activity uh just some business openings and expansions that have either been completed or have been announced um elicit some of the closures uh this is an all-encompassing there's a likelihood i've missed some um but it's still an impressive list of what has occurred in the last year so getting to um mdc specific activity um so again i came in in may um and a big piece of uh what i wanted to do at the outset was start building relationships and getting out meeting people and understanding um where are who our partners are how we can collaborate together um and also meeting with businesses uh to understand what their needs are um and what opportunities may lie out there so in the past few months it's been over 200 meetings with partners resource providers businesses and property owners we worked on 12 business retention and expansion projects um and these 12 we've actively participated in so providing resources we're connecting businesses to other resources um we also implemented some software to be able to track some of these this activity that in the future i can translate this activity into jobs retained jobs added in an actual investment into the community um with the parking garage project we provide support predominantly in communication and outreach to the public and spreading information and then to and to stakeholders um and regional collaboration um we had an opportunity to work with our neighboring communities berry and waterberry as well as the central Vermont chamber and economic development corporation to host the central vermont fresh tracks road pitch in august which was a just a great way to kind of cross that imaginary in non-imaginary border to the other communities um and start to to conceptualize some concepts regionally um and the two young women featured in that photo one at the central vermont uh pitch stop um from she fly and they went on i had the opportunity to coach them in their pitch in burlington as well um in their phenomenal group so heading into 2019 um over the past couple months um the mdc board has gone through two facilitated discussions to start to envision what are our priorities heading into the next year so this is considering what does the edsp layout um what are our current opportunities um and what have we learned um over the past year and a half of our existence um so from that we were able to garner our priority areas um i'm still working on coming up with a fixed work plan which i'm happy to share with all of you um that starts to prioritize the activities under those priority areas um and figuring out where we can best allocate our resources um over the next year and also thinking about the long term um and part of that was understanding the key opportunities and threats that currently exist or that we can foresee um and i see key opportunities is really with our business community if we have some really phenomenal groups um but we're not tapping into them as much as i would like to um so understanding their growth plans and how we can facilitate that um among other areas um it's a really good opportunity we're very uh lucky and fortunate to have a pretty diverse mix of industries um some key threats you know it remains to be a threat that we have such a low vacancy rate both in our housing and our commercial areas um so to put in context commercial vacancy rate for retail is considered healthy at between five and ten percent and we're currently sitting below three percent so that just creates some challenges when we are the we're either trying to facilitate growth with existing retailers or we have a displacement like we did we're going to have with the should be i care um expansion and we can't accommodate a change of space um so that along with housing and increasing our housing stock um are key threats that we want to be able to keep in our sights over the next year so quickly bringing it back to the edsp building blocks these are the four strategies that are laid out in the economic development strategic plan again with the idea that if we um put our attention and resources into these areas we will start to move the needle on those metrics so keeping in that keeping that in mind we've um evolved the structure a little bit in the framework um that our mission is at the top so ensure the long-term viability of Montpelier and underneath that is our customer groups so the people that i and the mdc serve directly there's existing organizations new organizations and developers um it doesn't include on this graphic all of our stakeholders and partners that we work with in this which obviously includes the city montpelier live other resource providers both at the local regional and state level um and so underneath that are our priorities that we see as essential to cultivating an environment where these three customer groups can be successful and contribute to the can contribute to the overall well-being of the community um and just bring it back um that this isn't lost we um for our promoting growth but it's growth in line with community values so it's not growth at at all cost it's measured and it's making sure that it's in line with what is appropriate for the community um so going into the 2019 priorities uh just quickly the business retention expansion plan program um this is economic development jargon but basically it's just a formalized approach to connecting and maintaining relationships with the business community um it allows us to understand their needs to be reactive to any opportunistic growth growth projects or retention projects so if you know they're on the verge of shutting down you can be a little bit more proactive with that and at least have that connection it also informs um us about the economy so we take that information back and are able to have a better understanding what's going on um and it also helps us to inform our strategies the services we provide and inform other people's strategies policies programs uh development project management um is mdc was essentially set up to be active in part as the development arm for the city so now that we're staffed and we're functioning we see us championing that in the next year and being able to act in it in an active role going forward um outreach and communication while we spend a lot of time with the businesses we want to be really focused on our um engagement with the community because essentially we need to be in tune with them and understand the community values to uh feedback into the business community as well so it's a two-way street and we want the community engaged in economic development decisions as well um and the last bucket is informed development planning and strategy um and this is uh us wanting to establish mdc is the go-to resource for economic development anything immobiliar and so us being able to take our expertise and the information that we garner from our connections to inform city policies city programs um as well as other resource providers partners in their plans and strategies and really looking at the long term so looking ahead um and future updates to the council uh we plan to give a progress report basically on our work plan where we at um at the six month mark in terms of what we wanted to implement um including our project activity and outputs in terms of jobs and and investment um and then the community indicators and trends uh so we know mere Watson is putting together the community indicators mdc will be overseeing a few of those and responsible be responsible for reporting those um so i would love to be able to do some you know small a bit of analysis to inform you all about what our economy actually looks like and what do some of the numbers actually mean and that's all i have for you guys today and i'll open it up to questions comments um Ashley uh so i i did some digging while you were presenting and it looks like at least the best read i can get is that the department of labor um breaks it down into categories by the number of employees but they do count four or fewer workers so it would seem like an LLC that generates revenue would count as long as there's some person like generating revenue and in the station yeah so in terms of you had a graph about the number of jobs decreasing but the number of establishments increasing am i right about that yes last chart oh sorry okay that one yep yes so is do we have any data about what the wages are for those new jobs or what the average wage is for those new jobs it's gonna it would be hard to extrapolate what the new jobs what the wages of the new jobs are um i can always reach out to the department of labor and see how we could crunch some of that there are uh they have an ongoing average wages um so you can track that over time along with number of establishments number of employees um and it's hard to correlate those but it would help inform that well and just in looking at the new business or the you know the new establishments list a lot of them seem like service sector you know food service or or other markets that are service based um and i was just curious in terms of you know what what's the average like statewide maybe even what you know what jobs in those sectors typically pay and then in the bigger conversation about housing you know are the jobs that montpellier is creating enough to actually sustain a lifestyle in montpellier yeah and i i'd love to jump off that a little bit um with the activity that was mentioned um most of them retailers restaurants those are the most visible and those that's one of the most it's a volatile uh industries um and so we can point to them and say they've opened this year or you know but it's not going to hit headlines that you know one of our insurance companies added 20 jobs but that's some of that data is captured in this but it's hard to it's hard to capture that in show and say you know this is a big announcement we've added something here um but i'd be happy to uh share a breakdown too of where we've added jobs so because some of it's been in the finance and insurance sector some of it's been in in the retail so and do you happen to know also so that the number of employees has decreased do you have information about where those jobs have been shed and if any of them have been like reapportioned in other sectors or anything like that yeah so the department of labor does break it down by industry um so we can start to dive into that a little bit more of where are we losing where are we gaining yeah yeah um i noticed in your report there's a mention of an rfp for the court street block and i think there was some other project that was mentioned and i wondered if there's anything more that you could say main street main street uh 12 to 16 main street um say i don't know much about what those two are and so yeah sure so 12 16 main street um that would probably better fall under the category of informing development and planning strategy or whatever that bucket was um but that's the former mo at property oh yep and so that's can we be can we weigh in with you know what our perspective and expertise and something like that as you all um consider the next uses for it and then that court street block court street pit so and that's more generally can we start to think about our underutilized sites and how do we make them use them for higher and better uses so thinking big how do we how do we think about that block great yeah um and then um i noted that it looks like maybe push tech stabilization policy back she didn't we did i did i so i won't be here on the ninth and i would love to be part of that so i might request that maybe that gets bumped a little bit more um it's a critical conversation um and i need to do it um but i also would like to be here for it if others would accommodate yes um and then i also just wanted to make a general comment that um i know mdc has gone through this transition um and so it's hard to hold you accountable for a year of output when you've been here for six months and um i do want the council to generally be cognizant of in future years you know we are investing a hundred thousand dollars per year in this and making sure that we are getting a hundred thousand dollars worth from this and that we shouldn't take that money and do something else with it that would maybe help businesses or or economic development more um so i don't feel that it's really fair to hold you to that standard this year um but i want to make sure that we're remembering to not just assume okay we're going to do a hundred thousand dollars here every year to really evaluate that each year and hold it to it that you know is this worth spending money on standard so yeah and i appreciate that i just want to know and applaud the council that economic development is a long-term investment and so it is hard to re to show any sort of real return in a few years um so it takes a little bit of trust as well but i i totally appreciate that um glen did you have something and then um first i just want to say i think this is a really good presentation and i uh am learning tons of stuff so thank you and it seems to me that you're you're doing a great job and also i think i want to say as a relatively new counselor and as a counselor who was not involved in uh formulating the edsp and so on um i have some some kind of queasiness about a lot of the base assumptions and ideas uh and while i really do like the specific directions that you've been going on in a lot of ways and and a lot of the particulars um i feel like i should maybe just warn you that that uh that there are some things that that give me a little bit of pause so for example um i like to hear how you let off with the forest analogy um and just when i see that i think yes forests grow and individual plants grow and then they also die um and there's there's a curve and a down and while and i think that that's a useful part of that analogy to apply to human societies and and human organizations that um we do want to make it uh we we want to make material viable for the long term but that does not necessarily mean to me growing maybe not at all at some point i think that that right now there are definitely some some things that i want to grow but there are also some that that i might not um and kind of in the same direction uh i thought that it was interesting to to that that we identified the the mdc's customer groups existing businesses new develop new businesses and developers and that's good uh and at the same time what's good for businesses is very often good for people but not always perfectly and uh i guess i want to be sure that i mean as you said in there and i really appreciated that as well growth and development in line with community values and and and making sure that it it all goes along with that and then i guess a specific question and it's just my ignorance um what is the mdc's funding structure we the city gives a hundred thousand dollars a year are there other funding sources what are they not right now and that's what we're and we realize that too um and so it's understanding to where there are other opportunities for us to diversify because i don't think we all understand that it's not fair for the city just to to fund us as well even though it's an important investment we understand that there needs to be diversity in our revenue streams as well yeah and i guess on that um it it does seem like a worthwhile investment and given that the city is currently the sole funder uh that makes me all the more concerned that we're we're uh we're making sure that the the the benefits and the uh the actions that that mdc takes are not aimed solely at businesses um but at the community as a whole in a way yeah and i understand businesses that's the whole idea but yeah i i hope you understand kind of the and i i love that you you brought that up to part of our conversations as an organization with the board and myself uh we're trying to figure out where do we put the community if they fall under kind of this customer or a stakeholder um and it's it's tough because as an economic development organization we the community is an essential part of you know the economy of success you know it's um they're interrelated and so to me i see the community is almost like our our top stakeholder we don't we don't have community services that we can provide directly to them but what we do impacts them directly so to be aware of that and continuing to really be conscious of our decision making and what projects we choose to support um that's embedded in and how we you know approach projects as well we you know it's almost like a litmus of you know what is the community impact is it who does it benefit um what is what's the return on our investment basically of our time is it resulting in high quality jobs um so we're asking those questions um that's a very fair point um i just want to make to note that our customers are the people that we were actually able to assist um but we're conscious of how that interplays with the community and i'm sort of dug tailing on similar questions i was surprised there was no financial report and i guess i do question assuming level funding especially with not even knowing where you spent the money or if you spent all of it and concern that in looking at the list very worthwhile people on your board i mean it's great but i do feel there are people left out of the discussion and back to glenn's point of where are the workers conversations and the consumers so that it's a hand it's a balance between not only the employment and the business but those who are seeking employment and some input of what they're missing and some of the work conditions that can be enhanced or skills that workers need to have i think there's a a cross exchange that needs to happen that both benefit from that i'd hope that you look at in the future yeah no absolutely yep uh connor oh and then jack sounds like we need some more union organizing drives in town is that one of the most interesting things are you just curious i've been reading a lot about just uh co-working spaces right and how a lot of like tiny towns in vermont yep or sort of bringing this onto a track like freelancers startups you know remote workers there um i was a member of local 64 for a while and i i thought it was like fantastic you know for 80 bucks you could get a desk every month there so do you think there's like a market for more co-working spaces in town here it's it's hard to tell and i know lars is kind of the expert in co-working spaces so i'd love to tap his brain about that um but from where i came from in pennsylvania they had a hotbed of co-working spaces and one of the you know quote-unquote experts um always embedded it in is there a community that needs it and how do you cultivate that community first before you actually put investment into a space and providing you know beautiful like desks all these things um so part of what we need to understand is is there a need out there um can we generate interest or people comfortable just the people who are working remotely are comfortable in their living room i don't know so it's hard to judge where that's at um but i'm working with Dan Groberg from Montpelier live to start to we're trying to tap into the entrepreneurial sphere a little bit more to understand what their needs are because that's another kind of key group that we're not super well connected with so we just had a meeting this afternoon to start to contemplate some of that so more to come thanks yeah and jack hi Laura this might be this is probably a bigger question than we have room for tonight but i think we could potentially use a bit of a tutorial on how do we evaluate a report like this and and really even more broadly how do we evaluate one not only how how the mdc is doing how well it's doing job but how is the is the economy of the city doing what what should we be looking for and i'm thinking of the business openings and closings you list and the business openings are really positive of course but on the other hand we you seem to be talking about net new establishments yet on the business openings there are at least a couple of businesses i see that are in the spaces of businesses that closed and yet those businesses that closed are not listed under the business closings yeah so again it's on all encompassing list and that's where the data can correct me to what i know anecdotally i'm not going to be able to capture in terms of all of our business openings and closings and some happened before my time and so again anecdotally i didn't know but that's what's helpful with some of the software that we have in place as well to start to record some of that and with any openings or especially with closings being able to assess why did they close and that starts to inform to what's going on in the how can we color some of what the data is telling us in terms of our economy and to your first question of evaluating a report like this it is a bit of an evolving thing with economic development it's really hard to track you know what you consider successful so we can track economic metrics but it's really it's hard to make that connection of you know we did this and this resulted in you know and this to some extent we can some extent we can't what we can do is structure our strategies and our activities around addressing key key points so if we want to create more high quality jobs well where are what are existing industry clusters how can we spark or initiate growth in those areas and to do that it's understanding what are the current conditions for that industry what is their capacity to grow what are some barriers to grow so there's a lot of layers to it but i i really would welcome further conversations of how do we assess our activity and what constitutes success and you know is our is our activity worthwhile in your eyes exactly like you there's growth in a particular sector what is it that the Montpelier Development Corporation can do to make it happen or to to help create the conditions in which it'll happen yeah yeah can i jump in there i mean so one hypothesis is that i mean the mdc came out of the economic development strategic plan and that had some goals and so i mean one hypothesis or one way to look at it anyway is like if we hit those targets then you all have been successful and i mean that's not necessarily a holy valid way to to look at it but that is one way to slice it and i'm not sure that there is definitively like a you know a way to say like because as you were saying like because you know you were doing this that caused this i mean there may be some of those relationships but some of them main that some of them are they're they're maybe a link but it's it's just indirect and so it's like hard to necessarily tie it all together like that so anyway i just want to appreciate what you were saying being very modest about it so i think that's right yeah you know as we if we tell the department of public works well we want to have six miles of roads repaired and at the end of the year six miles of roads got repaired we can be pretty sure that it was because the department of public works did it we don't know that right as clearly with the mdc and there are other variables too you know if we hit a recession we could do a bunch of you know a bunch of really awesome things but it may not there's other variables that play into this metrics as well as i've been my activities uh don't know you might have been doing this but i think the new counselors need to see that report i mean it's a very much a learning tool and there's a link to it um in the report i sent out as well and it's on their website yep yep i was just gonna add a couple things on this too just weigh in um i you know we found mdc in general but especially since laura has been here to be very helpful and um has picked up in areas you know supported our work i think i've seen two projects that just by the nature of timing they were not able to be out front on um one was caldoni spirits where laura's predecessor was hired sort of after we were already down the road on that and the second of course was the capital plaza and and in both cases i i could have easily envisioned that the next time around having you know the legwork that i did or sue and i did would have been much you know there were many reasons why it could have been much better if it was done by them and not the least of which is they can have you know more free willing discussions obviously the city is going to have to always be engaged in those kind of things and would support them but i think just in terms of workload and i'll remind people because you know you are right this predates five of the seven people here but this was a conscious decision made by the city council there was an emphasis on economic development at the time in part because if you look at that job graph it had been pretty flat for a number of times and you know was we had had some public jobs but private sector jobs really hadn't grown and uh in housing starts and those kind of things and i think there was you know much like you completed with zoning and to create an environment where more things can happen and there was a sense a sense to do that and so the plan came it was approved and then there was a very conscious decision to create this as a separate corporation and not a city department and you know you can argue the pros and cons of that but that was the decision and the city council actually drafted and approved the bylaws of this corporation and appointed the board of directors so to the extent that people like or don't like the board of directors they were selected by your predecessors and put into into place and then and and so their mission and all of the things that they're doing was a direct product of the city and they chose to fund that as opposed to say us hiring lawyer as the city's economic development director and being part of our planning department and working directly with me and all that kind of stuff it was it was a policy choice to separate it the way it is so that's just you know we can you know times change people change but that is how why it is structured the way it is to me okay any further questions comments thank you laura thank you guys yeah great okay moving on to the sprinkler ordinance amendments for the second public hearing just as an fyi team i'm gunning for 10 o'clock tonight that's total total yeah it that's it okay so um all right so i'm gonna open the public hearing um any comments about changing this okay okay going once no yeah it actually looks like you want to stay so like no no comments from the public okay yeah that's been a thing we should talk about that at some point uh do you want me to hold off for you here go ahead jack the public hearing we're in now is 18-399 the sprinkler ordinance parking parking structures um this one is four parking structures yes okay you're we're good then okay hearing no further comments i'm going to close the public hearing and i think we need to adopt this so we have a motion i move that we adopt the parking structure the sprinkler ordinance is there a second second second it okay we have a couple seconds great for the discussion uh all in favor please say aye opposed okay great um then we have a thank you okay now we have some uh parking ordinance amendments this is also a second hearing they're a little bit changed from um the last time i think uh so i'm going to open the public hearing on these um parking ordinance amendments and so any comments from the public or counselors yes ashley i'd just like to point out i at the at the last meeting i raised the issue with the 15-minute parking in front of 78 Berry Street um still says seven and i know that we were kind of looking for some homogeny homogeneity consistency there you go i'm fading fast and i i know that it's desirable to have that but i know that i think the business is only open till two at the latest and so it's still seven a.m to nine p.m and i know that that mirrors the further down at like 207 or 209 but you know what would you suggest we change it to um i would just you know if so the original one from what i remember from the last meeting was that the further down on Berry street it was they used to be open till nine so the parking was the 15-minute parking until they closed which was at nine um and so i guess my concern with making it until nine p.m is that there's no other parking restriction like in that area and i i i know that mpd has lots of other things to deal with but you know i i could foresee a world in which someone whatever you know and and it just strikes me as uh a bit inequitable that the business closes it too this the the purpose of reserving those spots is for the business and then sort of keeping that at 15-minute parking when there are tax there's a tax preparation service across the streets from there that could use those spots after two o'clock and it's going to take more than 15 minutes um i think it takes anyone more than 15 minutes to do taxes although if someone can do my taxes in 15 minutes i it could be more than happy to be with you um and so i just i i'm struggling with why it has to be nine uh rosy and the jack i also believe that we learned last time that the business further down main street the market is not actually open till nine p.m. anymore so it seems like we should least i i see the point of making them um the same but it seems like we could at least move it back till eight if that's the other business uh jack i i certainly see ashley's point on the other hand um i i kind of think that it makes sense to have it be a standard span of time rather than to be jumping in and out of the ordinances every time a business changes and so calling it something like five o'clock might might be a way to to address that um i have a question will we stop uh the metered enforcement as at five right that was why i thought of five yeah okay um i'm sorry you haven't built yet well i think some of the complaints at the store at least are have been after five because when people come home from work and run in there's been a lot of conflict there over over the years um so just saying that i'm not saying you have to keep them the same or anything else but moving the both the five isn't going to help the store okay this one so further comments uh don tom do you have an opinion i believe it was you actually donna that um was suggested and i believe you checked the minutes um from the last meeting unless i misunderstood that the suggestion was that um it would be generic and we wouldn't have to alter it as jack was just saying for depending on the store and that i was directed to make them both seven a.m to nine p.m so it's your prerogative but we did notify the store and everybody that this was the time period so that's the only opinion i have is that we weren't um this is what i understood the city council had asked for um and this is what we notified the property owners and businesses that we would be doing but they would be both the same and that it would be generic um no matter what store business so i have a hypothesis which is that we should maybe change that ending time to at least not nine p.m maybe eight at the early uh i'm sorry at the latest and um if we can have a third public hearing on this and notify them again with a different language what do you think about that team i guess i'm just gonna i'm gonna ask that pragmatic question which is what would enforcement look like after five p.m i believe um is the chief still here i yeah i i i kind of figured that sorry gv and i know he'll answer this but my my hunch is that there's not going to be any active enforcement but when someone is parked in front of the store you know someone's complaining i think we're gonna end up referring again that there's no place for me to park when i'm trying to go to the store well i'm not saying i'm saying if we were to leave it as is and let's say that someone's getting their taxes done or someone has you know walked down to buddy's burgers or whatever and they're parked there for more than 15 minutes what would enforcement look like after five p.m pretty much what samir said it's um we get a complaint and then what we will do just to make sure to alleviate problems we will time time it ourselves and come back you know if the vehicle is still there so they can get bonus time if you if you will but we found um for the the business further up the street years ago when it was uh kind of an issue and if we get tied up on a call so be it you know we're just not going to come back an issue with you know if we see the car is still there after the officers deal with a call it's not a priority for us that said i don't think that we should have ordinances on our books that we don't plan to enforce and so if it's just like if this is here and we're not going to i want to be clear we're not i'm not saying that we want to force i understand that but i think that was kind of the implication that well it just i mean it just seems and i i appreciate why the bakery i think it was the bakery that raised this right is that that was the original um bohemian yeah sure and so you know further down buddy's patrons who want to park on berry street there have to pay for parking then the tax preparation service that was my old neighbor rated what is that 71 berry street yeah and also that office building although it's i'm not sure if it's still an office building on the corner of uh hubbard and berry street um you know they don't get 15 minute parking and and so i i guess if the issue is uh you know well 15 minute parking has to happen in front of these two businesses on berry street why isn't every business on berry street getting 15 minute parking you know in front of them um and then you know sort of the other piece to this is if they're only open till two and you know so would you prefer i'm trying to like hey you know what what is your suggestion so what i'm correct me if i'm wrong it sounds like you would actually like this to be a separate sentence so that it it might not it might actually not be consistent like if the if berry street market is open later then they get the later time and this other space for now not open that late maybe has a different time and uh businesses may change and we might revisit it yes i mean and i i appreciate that that might not be the most desirable thing it just seems like you know there are other businesses there who who also have people to drive to them and i don't have strong feelings about this what do other people think yeah i'm on the fence uh like on one hand yeah i i do feel it's a bit ridiculous to the 15 minute parking for a seven hour period you know while we're waiting for the business to where it's already been shut down at the same time i don't want to be coming back like if the business changes it to like a three o'clock closure and we have to reopen this any time i don't know if there's a way to just like delegate the authority on this type of stuff we spent a lot of time talking about like uh one's parking spot you know we have these smart meters cannot we set it to be 15 minutes for no it's a non-metered area yeah there's no meters there oh we don't go that far down on the street stops just before the senior center um can i uh do you think we should re-worn if we change it do you think we should change it we should re-worn it i mean you can't you don't have to but it would be good to know if i just in case you don't i i feel like so team my inclinent i'm sorry i just it's it's an equity thing for me it's like balancing all of the interests of business needs and parking accessibility for sure but also like residents that don't have parking there you know like so uh okay here's what i'm gonna recommend uh let's separate out these two spaces and uh let's make the the end time for the spot in front of bear sheet market to end at 8 p.m and the spot in front of um bakery to end it i guess i would say 5 p.m just to make it consistent with the rest of the the metered spaces and if we can re-worn uh the property owners a budding there and then we can revisit it would that be okay that's totally cool i just have like a practical question like how far so the the meter folks they do it on foot right yeah i mean did they walk down or is it usually mpd they have a well they have a car it's one of the things we're kind of challenged with at the moment um right now they're using the the detective vehicle um that has to change down the road so they'll be getting one of the old cars so they'll have a vehicle to them we actually you know so but generally most of their work is done by foot and it's in and it's pretty much in made of downtown correct and the officers also will augment though if there's a call you know hydrogen violation up off of west street uh you know we're probably gonna set an officer we'll deal with that too okay any further comments okay i'm not clear what you've asked uh do we need a motion to change this uh okay it'll be helpful for clarity since okay you had a motion last week yes i don't know if people liked my suggestion okay it's consistent it adds consistency with the rest of the parking enforcement so what's good by me okay it's good by so i think we need a motion who's making it i will move that to be clear that we do this 75 in front of the bakery and seven to nine in front of this 78 in front of the store yes the store um till five so can we use the addresses i just yeah 78 so it's 207 to 209 is further down i think three to 205 is 78 berry street are the two front oh i'm sorry you're right in front of 78 berry so that we designate the parking hours for the two spots in front of 207 to 209 berry street be from 7 a.m to 9 p.m and at the two spots 8 p.m sorry yes eight and then the two spots in front of 78 berry street um from 7 a.m to 5 p.m does the start time for the rest of the parking downtown is that that's at eight isn't it not seven so oh for the meters for paying it's eight o'clock yes eight to five um sorry do that that's fine should we change it to eight um a.m yes can i add something yes the original complaint request was that all day parkers are using the spaces in front of 78 to 80 82 don't know what time they arrive so is that a concern that was what we're trying to do is respond to that request from a business that that uh chief fakers his officers investigated and there's been a long-standing issue about a very number a few number of spaces and it's been going on going on for years um quite literally so um i think the seven changing it to eight may be problematic if somebody misses the sign they're parking there for the day they're doing that for a long time okay sounds fair so we're gonna keep keep it at seven okay i support that as well okay um did we uh so ashley moved that did we have a second second for the discussion all in favor please say i i i opposed okay um yes can i ask a clarifying question yeah i think i heard somebody say it's a separate section am i supposed to separate these two retain them and i think it just leave them the two sentences as they are currently written just change the time all right to reflect yeah but on the second tuesday of the week it's really only the second half of the second year and that's a lot of work actually so onto a budget discussion and the next thank you tom hearing is not going to be on january second because that's strictly a budget meeting it's going to be on january ninth january ninth okay i think we do well so i'm going to close the public hearing in case we didn't note that um jack you want to make a motion to that effect yes i will we set the next public hearing for this uh for the regular meeting on january ninth 2019 second for the discussion all in favor please say i i i opposed okay there was there was one's on fire with them to me i can second them looking over those district three interests yeah okay i had such high hopes for early night to me i will i will note however that the veteran department heads who know never miss any budget discussion no matter how late or how uh overviewing it was supposed to be they learned so i think i said out to you earlier my goals for tonight you may have different goals but one is to go through this presentation you have the budget books on your desks which are your holiday reading but it's just all the detail backing up what we're talking about um to have obviously question and answer and maybe some feedback from the overview last week and the little play sheet you guys have had to work with and then as we gear up for the second which i think can be a really productive night make sure we're focused on the things you want to be focused on for for that meeting something specific information that you want or you know a question you want to answer for that night we can identify that or you know we're already planning to have the chief here and he's here and tonight two people wanted to chief of police um fire chief will be here because he always comes and uh and jeff buyers here too those are those are the two areas where we had the biggest staffing changes so i'm pretty except that people want to talk about that so this is just the overview of the budget our our goal with the budget is to implement the strategic plan that you adopted earlier this year continue our capital equipment funding plan and and deliver responsible services just as a reminder and i like i won't talk through this but we did adopt a strategic plan which included values you know staff mission and values as well as strategic outcomes and then activities under that and we do use that as a guide a lot and so just walk through this budget a little bit now i'll say before i go into these individual items that i'm not addressing everything that we put in the strategic plan only showing how those items that are in the budget reflected so there were many other activities such as the plastic bag ban that we've already adopted uh something you did there's no budget effects so community prosperity um the tax rate at least for the base budget is at approximate cpi 2.3 uh we did include a hundred thousand dollars in funding for economic development that we just talked about it's keeping our planning and zoning staff as we implement our new zoning and master plan they're doing a lot of things and implements our tiff district through it's going to be some extra work for our finance department and those kind of things uh our environmental stewardship we've included the five thousand dollars from meak we've talked about a new facilities and energy position to begin in april we talked last night at c our last money night at cip at length we are including stormwater projects in some discussion the gmt circulator bus is included although it sounds like there may be changes coming to that uh and the energy planning grant is something we're hoping to accomplish through actually current funding um to seek to to develop an energy plan with funding sources i'll talk about that mark our inclusive equitable and welcoming community we funded the community and arts fund uh at a slightly higher number than last year the feast program at the senior center remains in place my pillar alive and our community enhancements programs are all things that contribute to our livability i guess you'd say sustainable infrastructure we funded our cip and equipment plan has scheduled with another fifty thousand dollar increase from last year the water sewer plan is being followed as well that's also an under infrastructure plan we're including again a facilities it's not a different one it's the same one and our complete streets is included in the cip as well as in the parking fund those on the cip know will be looking at maybe the way that's structured in the future but for now that's the way it's set up for this year thoughtfully built uh planned planned thoughtfully planned built environment we've included the downtown improvement district again in our funding for downtown projects and of course we have a lot of projects on the books that are going to be spending a lot of time on so we don't have a lot new for that more housing we've included seventy five thousand dollars for the housing trust fund and of course with the tif implemented that is a can support housing projects public health and safety we're adding an additional police officer we've included funding that would cover public events our flood gauges are included again although we are looking at maybe alternatives for measuring flood flood things our paramedic program continues to expand basically the chief has implemented a paramedic program in the fire department and as we replace people we try to bring in new paramedics we haven't you know required everybody to change so it grows slightly every time we have a staff change and project safe catch and either drug related drug prevention related activities are continuing in the responsive and responsible government we've continuing our communications efforts that we've tried to rip up over the last couple years our employee wellness program is included all of our service levels are maintained at current levels our bridge articles included this year we implemented the envisio dashboard and the monthly reporting as well as the tool for ourselves and that's happening we have a program which you will hear more about is the year unfolds that you don't know anything about now called access Montpelier this is using our GIS program and other programs we looked at what well for lack of better words are a couple of brand name programs like c-click fix and q-alert we actually discovered that we have the ability to create that on our own without spending the money and some of it had to do with the grant that we got through stone environmental that that so dpw zack and cori and ryan in particular under Tom's leadership are really taking this on and so they're they're taking the given we've sort of given them a six month window to see if they can pull it off and if they can't and we think they can they're confident they can and i've seen their demos and i think they can as well so we're hopeful to do that so there is no money in the budget for those kinds of services but we're we're hopeful we're going to do it and basically we've got three areas that we need to use reserve funds for i just rounded it to 50 000 but i'd like to do a citizen survey this year that when you've seen the funding in the bud the potential budget options that's really to start setting aside for future years i think we said we'd like to do our strategic planning effort again this year and this would be either funding or providing match funds for a grant for an energy plan so it may not be as much as 50 000 for those three but uh that would be the highest it would look like so those aren't in your line budgets but those are our activities that are on the radar looking at our strategic plan because we do actually use these these are items that uh you said we said in the spring that we wanted to look at come budget time so one and these are just in the order they're written in the plan i don't know if they're in a priority order upgrade the streetlights to led we have spent some time on that we talked about it with the the cip committee we're looking at the costs and benefits and tax credits and repayments and all that we are dpw's committed to a proposal for next year's budget and or earlier if we find that it has a positive payback and maybe could be done in a way that doesn't require bonding consider net zero fund benefit charge again i think we'd like to seek a planning grant to actually write our energy independence plan for us and including how we might fund that so that would be part of the plan seeking funding to expand our cosa that's circle of support and accountability thank you to work with dcf families uh actually we have some an active proposal before the state right now for a couple pilots on that that would be a new service area and presumably mostly state funded um prioritized non-fossil fuel-based vehicles and equipment plan and these are actually two separate things that combine them into one um we had a long robust conversation about this the other night um and we are looking at alternatives there is a fuel option which could might not require significant fleet changes and we're and then there's one that might and so we're weighing those those differences um one Taylor street just developing funding maintenance plan as you said we don't expect this to be open until october um the the initial operations of the the transit center will be the maintenance will be done by gmt who will be the tenant although we can't charge them rent the housing portion will be managed by downstreet in terms of long-term funding and maintenance again we get to show the facilities position identifying those needs and putting them into the building capital plan so there's no specific funding right now police staffing and training uh we've looked at that and we're proposing a new position replace aging fire vehicles i think that was put out there as just a heads up that those things aren't cheap and we've got a big million dollar one coming up in the next few years um there is nothing in in this year's budget other than funding for the bonding for that vehicle is planned for in our equipment plan and the next i think once the bonding for the present one runs out we'll start the next facility management as i feel like i'm saying this a lot but we do have a position to consider in the budget and funding to increase to address some facility needs in our cip finally it was community services and integration and staffing we do have an additional tree position in the budget additional parks position on the options list we did take a hard look at what we could do for integration we were pretty satisfied that um that if we were going to add positions that ought to be in these service areas and not at the top we may have a retirement this year which you give us an opportunity to look at the administrative functions but most of the actual on the you sort of hands-on positions are already working across all three divisions if you will parks seniors and rec and so we see that as working fairly well right now and uh the pressing needs are really in the trees and the actual parks so those were the list we said we were going to look at that's where we came out on these obviously you've we've talked about this last week but you have i just consolidated down to make it even easier to read but these are the what's sort of in play that you've identified and we've had requests for that presumably we'll be talking about over the next couple weeks what's the difference of this citizen's service it's the difference of this citizen's survey and the one you had tucked in the 50 000 the difference is that the the survey is about $15 000 so what i'd like to do is do one this year i get a baseline and then set $5 000 a year for the next three years and do another one in three years so that we can the last one we did was in 2009 so i know you listed it under the reserve yes so so right i what i'm saying is i'd like ideally we would pay for one now from reserve and do it this year okay and then set 5000 next year 5000 the year after 5000 year after that and do another one in three years so we can compare the data and do that on a every three year cycle so this this would be setting up for the next one so yes there are two separate things so good question um these these are all in your um in your books so i'm not going to spend a lot of time on these this shows you where our money comes from to fund the budget this shows you how we're spending it this shows you another way of how we're spending it's a rather than by department it cuts it apart by your personnel equipment capital in that way so you can see again i've mentioned this many years but we are a personnel driven operation which is one reason why those costs i mean we can automate we can do all these things but it's still people that drive plows still people that answer fire and ambulance calls is still people that are in police cruisers and still people that wait on folks so we're always going to have people and doing these jobs are people that are fixing trees and all those other things um this is if we took the budget as it's laid out and this is what the average person will be paying per service it shows up better in your book than it does on the screen but just it's just interesting to see that you know you know people paying five hundred dollars for police services it seems pretty reasonable to me and some of these other things so it's a good way to when you look at it in aggregate what what you're getting for each individual service so basically the impact the property tax rate is would be by 2.6 cents or 2.3 percent the average sort for an average tax bill of fifty seven dollars uh district heat rates you recently approved those the water and sewer our our long-term plan calls for inflation plus one percent so that would put it at around three point five percent this year and that is to fund the long-term capital needs and then we don't see any change required this year for sewer benefit or the cso sewer water sewer or cso benefits um we have talked a little bit about the cso and whether that should be restructured for funding stormwater differently but for now we're getting what we need so we have our meeting tonight we have a workshop on january 2nd public hearings on january 9th and january 24th thursday you can still just because you hold a public hearing we can still make discussions discussions and changes although there are other items on agendas that night such as barry street parking i care about barry street and i was just noting that that was on the agenda and might impact our budget discussion um and then of course the voting um on march 5th with the early voting to start in mid i guess i never got a chance to finish the typing out thank you so uh must have got interrupted so that's my presentation as i said happy to go back and review any of it with you or take general questions we do have some staff here to answer specific questions and then whatever you want to structure a discussion about uh so just to frame this up a little bit yeah this so this time would be time for questions about the budget and but then any so and if we can answer them tonight we will if there are specific pieces of information you'd like for the second and people that you'd like there we can so i'm wondering if it's useful to do any um like you know talking through what are um of the other options that we might want um if we if we get to that still going for 10 o'clock okay um rosie and then ashley so i want to read my budget book before we have that discussion okay i would like to push that one off okay um two questions that you can answer now or later um i'm curious about how we're doing on our reserve funds i know you're talking about drawing from them and i just don't have a good sense of where we're at right and we're still looking at that too we did spend a lot of them this year so that that would impact you know we might have to not do some of those things but they are they're all priority things i mean probably i would say the survey would be the one we wouldn't do out of those even though i think it's important um but we did buy the conif property and we've you know we put money out for tiff which we will get back but that still comes from the reserves so so i you know on the other hand we are seeing some building fees above and beyond what was budgeted in fact ironically we're going to be one of the biggest contributors between one tailor and the parking structure those are both like hundred thousand dollar fees and the hotel so we will see some surplus in the general fund as well but yeah that's a great question it's we're definitely keeping our eye on it okay um and the other one is i'm sure we heard this earlier but i can't remember what the five thousand dollars for meac was for what they specifically wanted to do with it i don't if somebody can just forward me the email again i'm sure there was one we can have kate maybe come yeah talk about we can see if we can find out they've had that funding for the last couple years i think it was oh i thought you were saying it was a new no it was just continued they put it out as a loan and get it back no that's something else something else something else so no they've had that in their budget for the last couple years and they use it from miscellaneous you know studies or i guess i just want to know what it's used for it could be used as the grant match for the plan for example uh actually um so i have a couple of questions although i think that they are pretty straightforward so if my math is correct it looks like over for so we've granted three tax stabilizations over the last year in essence um and so if my math is right it comes out to a little over sixty four thousand dollars in tax abatements for this tax year assuming that that you know the property would have they would have paid you know whatever those taxes were in full this year um so again my math brings it down so the the difference between last year's budget and this year's budget so if those full taxes that sixty four thousand one hundred and fifty four dollars had been paid that would have brought the difference um to if i read that's right it would have been like 205 205 369 dollars okay um and so i guess what i'm asking is how like could you give us the numbers for the difference between what what the tax rate would have looked like if we hadn't done those stabilization projects versus what it looks like um i can give you a rough estimate okay so assuming the sixty four thousand and i'm not sure they're all completed so they wouldn't necessarily be taxed at the full amount for this year yep i figured that was the case but i'm just sort of running the numbers on that so that would be about 0.7 cents one cent is about eighty seven thousand dollars so we about 0.73 cents that that's worth so if it was 2.6 cents then it would be 1.9 okay so and that on bill you're getting softer or i'm sorry what was the what was the amount it was about 2.7 cents so so it's probably about 16 dollars for the average per average resident okay the 228 thousand median home price okay so six sixteen roughly roughly uh okay and thank you for that i sorry thank you for understanding what i was saying because i'm not sure i understood what i was saying the whole time um the other question that i had in terms of there are like special lines in the budget for you know certain events and things like that um if there were a proposal to leave the funding the same but to allocate that differently what's the best way to put that request um in writing so it wouldn't be a dollar amount change it would just be you know instead of using it for this i'd like to propose that we use it for this other purpose that's related to that but serves a wider group of people rather than a so you could simply make a motion to that if you wanted to send it around and advance so people had it but i mean that is right your job is to allocate funds you can so the council can add to the budget you can subtract from the budget you can move money around in the budget as you see fit um i mean within i mean obviously you can't change debt amounts and things like that right no it's it's a small it's like related to yeah no i know but i just want to be clear the the process is you know i've recommended a budget to you and you've laid out your options and then what goes to the voters that you'll approve on january 24 is the city council's budget so you work from this you can some years it's gone exactly as proposed other years it's been changed drastically other years it's been changed suddenly so i mean that is what you then layer your policy priorities over the staff recommendation other questions connor just in the category of no surprises you know for the january second meeting i've spoken to you bill i just spoke to bob till i think i it's a good thing there's seven of us because i probably had staff in every department um but the one i can't get out of my head is um you know maybe the need we're putting so much on ems and fire there uh i'm looking at the budget line items there and i see a hundred ninety two thousand dollars in overtime i think i just like a little more going to into depth in those numbers knowing that you know it can be time and a half it can be double time depending on what hour people are called in if you added another position for i think the first steps under 40 000 dollars probably with benny's 70 some thousand dollars how much would it eat into that hundred ninety two thousand dollar number so i just asked for an analysis on that yeah and we can do that a little closer look we can we can certainly do that and i don't think it would actually make i mean given the way that the call-ins work for calls and number of people on on calls and a lot some of that is backfilling for people when they're out on vacations so if we're gonna add a new person are we gonna backfill for them when they're gone and so i you know we have certainly spent a lot of time looking at that i will tell you uh and and we will do more of this i'm sure but um when i started here in 95 our overtime budget was about what it is right now and i'm higher and we actually took about till about two years ago when it finally caught up with the way we rearrange staff with the help of the fire department was me but putting people at key times we didn't have to call in as much so we've actually reduced our overtime considerably and i think what we have to understand is that in our emergent actually not only in our emergency departments but in dpw overtime is a necessary evil i mean it it's not even an evil it's actually an efficient way to staff um people because you don't have the benefit cost you don't have all those things and um and it is replacing it is responding to to calls and things so we can shortly look at that and um i'm not sure we would i don't think we would save dollar for dollar but i could i could be wrong about that yeah i'd just like to think about it sure other comments jack i've uh the number one thing that i've heard about i mentioned this to you to you and to the chief in an email the number one comment i've heard from constituents is a question about the additional police officer um so i think that's a topic of discussion that we should be having and we assume that we you know chief i think it prepared to make a presentation i'm sure you can answer general questions now but i know he's planning to present on that on the second and we assume similar with the you know the tree position but you know anything else but yeah and there are very good logical explanations the other thing i would say is that the people i talk to also agree that the chief comes with tremendous amount of credibility based on the experience the city has with him over many years yeah i would say you know simply and and i agree with all of that about the chief um all all of our department units um but you know in some regards to we had 17 and it was cut two or three four years ago and one was cut and i think they've been struggling ever since and we've been able to support with a basically a grant funded position working with the state drug task force so we've been kept a city officer but not paid for so so we actually have had the 17th doing investigative work on that program is ending so to actually go to 16 would be in a reduction to not fill it would be a reduction in the type of service that we've been seeing and i think he can explain that much more detail than i can great thanks donna i definitely want to talk to the park department and last night attending the park commission meeting there's more and more demands from the bike group they did another petition to the parks to expand to fat bikes you know that fat bikes um and so i think we may have some staff changing there but the staff need and some of the infrastructure need is really i think worth hearing so i i'd like them to come forward yeah and as i said we were planning to have them here further comments okay uh i'm gonna assume that we are running out of time so so parks police and fire parks police and fire um one note there was a question um from the energy committee as to whether or not it would be useful to have an energy coordinator from a different city come tell us about what his job is like and i thought that might be useful seeing as we might be hiring someone to do that work what do you think team would that be of value okay great so i just want to put that on the on the on the list well we can we can talk about that more too but um yes donna as part of our budget discussion are you thinking or i guess we have so much to do within our budget i would love to have that afterwards but i feel there's a solid support for facility energy well so one question is are we going to support it at point two five fds basically or at a full time position well so that's that to me assumption at the point two five is just that it's starting part way through the year not that it's a quarter time position it's a full time position that we are planning to fully fund in future years so do we start it now or later that's part of those options yeah okay bring him okay um jack did you have a comment about that okay okay um so thank you great very helpful thank all of you yes thank you thank you okay so we are moving on to council reports well let's uh let's start with Ashley go oh come back yeah okay i don't have a thing okay um just want to mention that i um was chatting with bill today about um making sure that we are clear to the public that we accept comments for public hearings in writing so we often say that when somebody is being a little bit long-winded in their comment but i think we should also promote that on our agendas um as a you know for people who aren't going to show up um a way to contribute to the conversation um and it sounded like that was doable and we could maybe make that happen but i just wanted to highlight that for other folks great uh go ahead uh donna you go ahead um i wanted to bring everyone's attention one of the slides bill brought up reminded me of his reminder that we have a mission statement and values that all incorporated into the draft for our evaluations i used someone else's and so i'll just incorporate that and i haven't gotten any feedback but what questions you i know maybe after the budget gets done but you know what questions you like i mean what questions you want to add a perspective that would be really helpful uh but this week with the cip on monday parks on tuesday and mtac last week i just want to say we have a lot of good feelings out there for the things that we're looking at for options hearing very clearly about some staff needs and lighting needs and other things and more discussion with gmt so i think i'm really pleased that the direction we're moving and appreciate all the time you're all putting in thank you uh not much just a little inspiration um i think it shows that even though we're a small city we can cast a long shadow and that's an outreach from a group in warthington massachusetts uh who would like to ban plastic bags in their town so is reaching out to citizens against plastic pollution in town here to help them set up a process for that so yeah feels good to make a difference other places um i uh want to register that uh we're right in the middle of a pretty busy season for downtown businesses and so i am only about a quarter here and i really have been appreciating all of the work that i'm seeing everyone else doing and i wish that i had more specific comments on a lot of these things and they're coming but uh longer hours than usual and and more intense work at uh at at the day job recently so um it's all fun and i just feel really sleepy tomorrow morning i'll be uh back to full power and up in alert uh and join me at baggitos at 8 30 to 9 30 to talk about this and everything else thank you actually yes um so one of the things that i've spent a lot of time thinking about i've worked with uh youth in in my prosecutorial career but also in my other life before becoming a lawyer um and i just want to underscore how impressed i was with the young people who showed up tonight um and one of the things that i am interested in doing as a city is actually engaging more young people in the work uh that we are doing and i i i have some ideas for what that could look like including maybe like a listening tour that uh really sits down with uh young people and sort of listens to them about what they want for their city because we do that you know we we do that with lots of groups about transportation and infrastructure and things like that and um you know looking at at the the data that laura showed us tonight we're losing people and if we want to get people to stay i think we have to really cultivate that so i'm i'm interested in hearing ideas from the community and from other people about how we can best get that input and and what that sort of looks like i'm sorry but i just wanted to jump on that because there was one other thing in laura's presentation not in the slides but in her um in the part that she she sent to us about the breakdown of the ages of people in Montpelier and it was interesting to me to look at that and kind of see uh i i think that there's a perception that that we're an an older and aging city and it looked to me from that chart uh like that perception may be mistaken uh there are a lot of younger people here i was kind of breaking it down and it looked like we are something like 60 percent under 50 so just i have no update everybody looks a little tired i'll let bill go in ahead i'm trying to work on the mayor's 10 o'clock deadline okay then uh then without objection we'll consider the meeting adjourned thank you