 Call this meeting to order and just want to note that item number one on the agenda as it's listed online is an outline of remote procedures for meeting remotely and if folks have questions about that point, I just want to point people to that. I also just got a message from Connor that he's having a little trouble with the link so hopefully he'll be able to join us too. So the first thing is to review and approve the agenda. So we'll do them all together. So unless there's objections about that, we'll do that at another meeting. But I know at least one of the candidates is here for that. And so maybe we can keep that as a footnote and RJ if you want to introduce yourself during that time. That's perfectly fine. I think that is the only change to the agenda. Any objections or concerns? We have a funner. Super. Okay, so. Yes. Yes, go ahead and wear hats at city council meetings. You don't want to see it though. Maybe a couple of months, we're all going to be. All right, so without any objection, we'll consider the agenda approved. So the first item is general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on an item that is otherwise not on our agenda. And so if you would try to keep your comments and mute themselves if they if they want to. Sorry, say that again, Cameron, people can unmute themselves if they have something they want to add. Okay, great. When talking, I can unmute them. Okay, great. So for this part, Cameron. So there's enough people here that I can't fit everyone in one window. Yeah. So, you want me to ask them roll call style if they want to say anything. Actually, could you just give a wave or just say something if you would like to say anything during this time. I didn't see anybody, anybody else see anyone who wanted to make a comment. All right, so if you don't mind, unmute everyone and just we can ask one more time and if someone said just to make sure we don't miss anybody. Sure. Yeah, thank you. Everyone is unmuted. Please say hello if you'd like to say anything. Hi. Sorry, did I hear someone was someone say hello there. Hi, it's Joe McLean, I guess. Oh, okay. Hi, did you, did you want to make any comment during general business? No, I'm fine. Thank you. Okay, great. Thanks. Okay, I will put everyone back on mute. Thank you. Okay, thanks. Okay, so on to the consent agenda. Motion regarding the consent agenda. Move the consent agenda. Second. Further discussion. Okay, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed. The consent agenda passes. And to the development review board appointment. And the only reason I'm. The only reason I'm keeping that on there is because RJ is on the line and he was a is a candidate for that. And so would you like to introduce yourself RJ to the council? Yeah, sure thing. Hey everybody. Great to meet you virtually. Pretty new to Montpelier. I just moved here at the end of February. I moved here. My, my fiance is probably major. She and I lived in Middlebury for 10 years. We were doing this back and forth thing. And it was getting quite a lot. So I put my job on the other side of the hills, moved here and I'm sort of moving into a career in. In small housing, essentially. And I'm currently working part-time as the business development director at wheel pad. We create a. A small 200 square foot unit that can be added to a home in the event that somebody needs. Needs universal accessibility to their home after a tragic accident. And, you know, kind of exploring. You know, helping other folks build accessory dwelling units. So I'm interested in joining the development review board, because I think it would just help you learn a little bit more about, you know, properties and zoning and how all that works. My background is in solar energy and fundraising. And I worked at some common for four and a half years. And I think it's been a whole long time. So that's, that's why I'm interested in, you know, being part of the committee. I was on. A few committees in Middlebury and economic development committee and the energy committee. And the spent six years on the co-op board at the Middlebury co-op. So just kind of trying to expand my. My experience in, in with boards and committees. Great. Thanks RJ. Does anyone have questions for RJ at this point? I know we're not making an appointment tonight, but if anyone has questions, Dan, go ahead. Yeah, I just, one question, RJ, if your work involves building these accessory dwellings, do you think they'll create any conflicts here in Montpelier or any other projects? Yeah, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm focusing on Burlington to get started. Be something down here in Montpelier. I've been working a lot with, or getting a lot of advice from Tyler Moss, but if there's, you know, if there was ever a vote or some kind of decision that was a conflict, of course I was abstained. I only asked if we've had developers on the DRB in the past and it's fine when they're practice, you know, their main work isn't in Montpelier, but when they become very Montpelier centric, it can create sort of a rolling and constant issue. But at the same time, it's really nice to be able to take advantage of that perspective when applying those, those bylaws as well. So I just, it was more of a consideration. I mean, it's definitely something that I've thought of, right? That, you know, I don't want to necessarily by learning about it. I just want to be able to somehow create a new influence. And if I become so successful that it becomes a problem, I will unfortunately have to step down. That's all I have. Great. Any other questions for RJ? No, okay. Great. Thanks for joining us. And we'll have an appointment at a future meeting. And just want to check seeing who else is here. I think we're ready to move on. So we have another appointment to the capital complex commission. And I believe we have. One vacant seat and we have one person apply for that. And let me just get back down to it here. Tim center and Tim, you are on the line with us. Would you like to introduce yourself? Oh, I think you're still muted though. There you go. Is it working? Yep. Okay. Hello, everybody. Do you want to background, but do you want me to answer questions? Well, so it would be great to know just a little bit about why you're interested in serving on this commission. Okay. So I have a background as far as study and history, graduate study and historic preservation, urban planning. The first job I ever had out of school was with the vision of historic preservation, going around to four or five different towns, surveying the historic buildings in each of the towns and documenting them for the state register. And I was here, let's say I was born a month player and lived here until I was 27, then I was away for 27 years and now I'm back. And so I am currently working at Shelburne Museum with lots of good historic preservation over there. The whole idea of the commission, of course, is to preserve the integrity of the historic and aesthetic integrity of the state house complex. And I think that combined with the graduate work that I've done as well as working with other history of taught history, up in Stowe, at a couple of academies, all of it culminates in a good footing as far as serving on four month player on that commission. Great. Well, thank you. Any questions for Tim? I'd like to go ahead, Donna. I'd just like to make a motion to nominate Tim Sutter for that position of the capital complex. A post. Great. And thank you, Tim. Thanks for introducing yourself and thanks for your work on the commission. Thank you. Next time. Okay, so on next. So now the next item is the parking garage update. And I know we've received some emails about this item. I just want to clarify that this is an update and we will not be taking a vote this evening, but I so just to clarify how this process will work. We'll hear from representation from city staff and or lawyers or commissioners and then we'll have an opportunity for the public to make comments. And then the council will have a discussion from that from there. And just to note to the public, as this is about an update to the design, I would just ask that folks keep their comments to, to that topic. So that's all and try to keep your comments in two minutes. If you can, that'd be great. And I think that's pretty much it for me. I'm not sure who to turn it over to first, probably bill. All right, go for it. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. We have with us today. Our architect, Greg, Greg Rabadou wave our attorneys, Joe McClain and David Rue. And I think just on voice is Stephanie Clark, our consultant. Oh, no, there she is. So as the mayor mentioned, I just some of the council members I talked to individually, I may have made a mistake in speaking to you. I thought we were actually filing. We only had to present these, this information to the appellant so they can see it today. So you certainly can look at this. We will plan to run a public process. Obviously tonight we'll take comments and then we'll publicize this proposed change over the next couple of weeks. It'll be on next, the next meeting's agenda when Stephanie will, and all of us will have more financial information. So getting cost estimates on this revised design. And I think our plan tonight is that Greg will walk us through the proposed design changes and why they're being made. And then Dave and Joe will just provide any update on sort of where we are in the legal process questions. We don't really have any legal strategy to talk with the council tonight. But certainly could if we wanted to, we do have the executive session option, but we're not, we're not, we don't see any for tonight. Basically the purpose for doing this was as, as we've looked at the project, listen to some of the concerns raised by appellants and others. We've just tried to figure out ways we could improve the project and address concerns that were raised, but also make it a better project for help. Certainly felt confident on the one the voters approved, but the one benefit of the extra time has been maybe to even, to make it a better project. So I'll turn it over to Greg, he'll walk you through the proposed changes. I think he's going to do a share screen on. So you'll be seeing his PowerPoint presentation, which I did send out to the council earlier today as well. So take it away, Greg. And you're muted right now. Thank you. I'm going to ask, can everybody hear me? Can now. Okay. So if my volume is fine, I'm going to go ahead and tap the share screen and start the presentation here. If I can. So why are we reviewing this project? Why is it coming back in front of everybody? I don't have to deal in detail with this. It's because the project was appealed and we are making efforts to resolve those appeals through council. If there's any legal questions, those will go to David group. But the package I'm going to show you tonight is along the slide. So I'm going to go ahead and take a look at this. And I'm going to go ahead and take a look at this. I received instructions from the legal team and from the city staff to, to make various proposals and modifications to the design that was previously approved. And what we want to do is bring you up to date on what those design changes look like. And to sort of make people generally aware that some version of this is what will constitute the quote unquote design as the project moves through the appeal process. Here is a overhead view, if you will, of the, of the redesigned project. The garage is prominent in the foreground here. You can see the rail bridge and just next to it, the new pedestrian bridge that was constructed last year off to this far left on the screen is one Taylor street. The large red L shape building in the back is the existing capital Plaza. And you can also see in this view of the proposed Hampton and Swedes, which is shown white about the center of the screen and Christ church, Pisco ball at the sort of top right corner of your screen. Just down at the bottom right hand corner of your screen, you can also see an important structure of the over lake. LLC property that butts the, the Haney parking lot and is generally referred to as the garage. The building itself you'll see has been changed in design. I'm going to walk you through those changes, but I just want to take a moment to look at the overall picture and point out that you can sort of indicate, you can sort of see in this picture where the, the Haney parking lot comes in and just, just to the left of that, there's a lighter gray strip. That represents a new feature to the project, which is a continuous recreation path that will connect state streets to the rec path, right about where the bridge converges with the existing path. And other things I'll point out is that you'll notice that the top line or the, the parapet line of this building is level. That's because we're proposing a change in the design format from a ramping type garage to a garage that features flat floors with speed ramps at the end. And I'll explain why that's happening. The goals generally as far as this redesign process was to number one provide for clear pedestrian bicycle connections to the recreation path. I think there was a lot of concern in earlier versions that getting from state street to the rec path was convoluted and maybe difficult. Number two was to make sure that the design of this new garage allows for continued delivery access to the, to the over lake folks, the garage building and the city least Haney parking lot. We also wanted to reduce the visual and physical impact on the Haney parking lot and the views that that lot provides from state street towards the river, especially at the intersection of Elm. And finally to refine the exterior design, create a more conventional exterior appearance. And then there's some design features that we're incorporating here that take advantage of these new level floor plates. And we'll talk about those as I go through this. Here is the revised site plan and, oh, sorry. I'm going to turn off the visuals of the people for a moment. If you see this whole slide, you can see the entirety of the Haney lot up at the top of your top right hand side of the screen is a number one. That's the existing information booth on state street. You're all familiar with it. That is the beginning point of the pedestrian connection to the bike path moving down through the Haney lot. You'll see it number two, that red number two indicates that before the closest garage building in the proposed city parking garage came together was about 20 feet in this new proposal. That's been moved, that's been moved to the west. 27 feet for a total of. Now my people overlapping the design. So I don't see a bunch of the design. You can also, Tony, you can also revise landscaping plan. It's the same as the site plan, but it's a little bit more greened up. And I'm going to focus on the intersection of the. But you can see here. That there's substantially additional landscaping being proposed to be planted in the Haney lot alongside the garage building and also adjacent to this rec path we've been talking about. There are also east and west connectors on both sides of this garage north and south, starting just past the parish hall. There's a little node where there's some benches and a tree and some directional information. That takes you up an accessible route to the main level of the front entrance of the garage where the pay kiosk is. And also directly to my about dross. You'll see a path going north and south between the Hampton and in the garage with some sort of volume. Sir, I don't know what you want to call those substantially shapes that James has designed. That indicates a special pavement program that is used as a directional way finding to get from the lobby of the hotel down to the white path. And also trees planted at different scales. And that right along the north bank of the Winooski there's been a special attention page. So I'd like to just go to the next slide and zoom in on that. You can see when you get to the end of that bike path at the opposite end from the info booth. You land in this little garden like area and there are tools and signage and places to sit. And also, you know, you've got the bridge over the river plus the historic bridge, the river itself, obviously. I think this whole thing is, is worth noting because it's a real effort to address that issue. Moving on. I also want to just briefly point out that we've done the technical analysis. The civil engineers have reviewed their plans to make sure that the kinds of trucks that are currently coming and going from the project may still be served. That includes garbage trucks and typically what we would call a high-cube truck, the kind of thing that shadow cross farms delivers eggs in, for instance. At any rate, this slide also reiterates the point that the building space between the garage and the garage building is now 47 feet, more than double the previous spacing. This is what pulling that building back 27 feet accomplishes. If we stand on the corner of Elm Street and look down towards the river, the view we will see, the garage shows just a wedge of it shows just above the information booth if you're trying to find the garage. You can also see in that view the trestle bridge or L Road bridge. And just in front of that, you can begin to see how the path rises up to meet the direct path. This is, I think, is one of the benefits that now these buildings align in a much more sort of formalized way that reads more like a typical street. This is the same view. I swear the garage is modeled into this, but this is what happens when those mature maples grow up in the summer. They pop and the whole thing will disappear from this particular point of view. But I'm sure once you get up to the information booth, you'll be able to see exactly where you're going. Design changes. This slide deck is available to everybody, so if you don't need to keep notes, I guess. The parking garages I've mentioned many times now is 27 feet shorter east to west. The new design has just three fewer parking spaces than the previously designed and approved 348 space design. I've brushed on this that the parking garage has changed from a garage where the parking surfaces themselves are sloping to one where the parking surfaces are level and that there are ramps at the end. I've got more to say on that in a moment, but that is one of the changes proposed. The recreation path connection. I think we've covered that adequately. And as we've changed that format, as I've mentioned at item three there, the level floor plates are going to have impacts on the final articulation of the building facades. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this slide. Oh, sorry. Because I think people will glaze over if I try to read a chart to them. But in the center, you'll see where there is previously approved, now proposed and change chart. This is how tall is this building now. We recognize that in making the building shorter, we've also made it a little bit taller in order to maintain a similar number of parking spaces. What that actually means is that the maximum allowable is the red line. That's your zoning ordinance. You can see where our highest parking surface is. It's 20 feet below the maximum allowable, albeit five feet higher than the previous design. I did also give maximum heights to other elements, some of which may or may not be required to meet this height requirement. My broad assertion is that any of these things still fall below the 583 maximum allowable, although some of them are a little bit taller than the previous building's design, because we have added that extra half deck. If anybody has specific questions about that, now we can pause on this slide, or I can move on to the next discussion. Hearing none, I'll go ahead and move on. This cross section shows just how this split level plan works. The south side of the garage, which represents half the parking, will start at essentially existing grade, which is also the existing grade of the bike path and the train tracks, and go up five levels. Then there's a half step down or up from those levels to the north side of the building. So there's always five feet between adjacent levels, and those ramps are sloping up five feet in that distance. One level on the north side is actually constitutive basement. So in essence, what happens is both buildings have five levels that look like four stories when whichever direction the building is facing. The only exposure from which you'll truly see all five levels or all five and a half levels of the building is going to be from the Haney lot itself. And you can also see here a little bit, but there are ADA compliant pathways on all four sides of the building, and we did talk about that. Here you can see what that level configuration looks like from the north looking down into the project, and I brought this slide up to sort of indicate a couple of things, but this shows how it relates to the height of the adjacent Hampton Inn. It also shows its relationship to the church and the existing Capitol Plaza building. This north elevation also shows the variety of facade treatments in one place. You can see those prominent green rectangles are actually a living wall system or a green screen system, which is that kind of space frame trellis on which we're going to plant plants, but you can also see something new in this design, which is the introduction of punched masonry openings with stone or masonry trim around them. That is right in the middle of that garage elevation. That'll happen at least once on each of the elevations, and it's intended to read as a more traditional window pattern in the district. It's also one of the things that's made possible by the fact that I now have level floors and I can make sense of such a pattern, both structurally and design-wise. Here you can see the black and white elevations. This is a point where I wanted to make a couple of technical points and throw out a couple more measurements. By your zoning ordinance, the top level of each of these parking bays is a roof and not a story. So typically when you're looking at this from, say, State Street down the entry drive, what you're seeing are four stories. The top elevation shows that precisely that exposure or that actually shows the exposure from the bike path. I'm sorry. But that's the same thing. When you're driving along the bike path, what you'll see is a four-story facade where there are cars parked on the roof. I'm going to interrupt you real quick. I think Jack had a question. Sure. Yes, and I'm not sure if this is, am I on? I can hear you. Okay, good. I'm not sure if this is the time to talk about it, but questions about the change from the sloping to the flat design, because I remember that was, there was a considerable amount of discussion about those, about that choice when we were deciding on the design. And I know, I recall that one of the issues had to do with the flat decks and the load carrying capacity that would be required for adaptive reuse. And as I recall, I think the members of the council thought that the slanting decks would were a better design. I don't remember now what those reasons were and why you now think this is a, could you, so could you talk about that? And why you now think this is a better design? Do you want me to lay this out to start, Bill, and then jump in if you do too? No, I guess not just to acknowledge. So the council did vote on this. And it goes for three votes to have this, the sloped, you know, the ramped floors. And I have mentioned that in this process, just so you know, when presented with this option and Greg will get into all the technical reasons, but in order to keep the number of spaces and achieve the other desired effects, they really needed to change to this style. So I, knowing the council's votes and well, at least draw it up and let's see what people think. So we're trying to ignore your directive, but they also proceeded with my okay. And Greg will give you the, the sort of who, what's wise and where for us for that. So I don't have a prepared slide to answer this question, but I do have the section showing I've gone back to that slide just so we can refer to it as we speak. There are a couple of geometric reasons why this is necessary. I'm going to start with, with one major one, which is that when you park cars on a sloping surface, there's a maximum sort of acceptable cross slope beyond which you can't really open your doors going uphill and you can't really control your doors opening into other cars on the downhill side. We, we were in the original design attempting to keep the parking deck ramped sections at about a 5% slope. Slope is just a function of rise over run. And so as the building has gotten substantially shorter, we fell out of the operative range for that, for that arrangement. Shortening the building is vital to solving all the problems with, with the over lake folks and the other issues we've already brushed on tonight. There are a couple of other reasons why we want to do this too. In working with our contracting team and the, the design team in the wake of the appeal, we came back to this option as a, as an option, whether or not it's intended to be reusable because the vendors were telling us this would be a less expensive frame to build. And we are hoping to achieve some cost savings by design so that we can offset the costs of the appeal. Much beyond, much beyond that, I'd have to have you talk to Bill or David about, about specifically what I mean there, but we've taken it on ourselves to find savings so that the overall project budget, including the costs of what we're doing now, still fit within the framework we're trying to hit. So if, if I can jump in here too, Jack, my recollection of that conversation was that there was some thinking around ADA accessibility. And what's, what's your take on the ADA accessibility of this current sign? Is that directed to me? Yes. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. I thought you were just turning back to the original speaker. Okay. So the, the ADA will require this garage to have something like eight or 10 accessible spaces. So I think our intention is to, is to weigh those heavily towards the lower levels for convenience sake. But the, the project still has an elevator serving the levels that have accessible decks on them. I think the ramps themselves will be too steep for someone in a wheelchair unless they're really gutsy, because those speed ramps are significantly steeper than, than 5%. Or well, then the 20, the one in 20 that accessibility would require. Okay. But there'll be handicap accessible spaces at the bottom. Well, there'll be, they'll be distributed throughout the project, but, but the, the, the North Bay, the Bay facing state street, they'll be weighed on that side of the building. Okay. Which is towards the elevator, but all floors will be accessible via the elevator. Okay. Great. All right. And Jack, did you have something further? Yes. So just to a couple of further questions or observations. One is that the, it sounds as though the paramount reason for doing this is to reduce the building footprint, which presumably makes it more attractive to people who have a lot of questions about the design. And the other thing, which I was more of a question, this, this change in design doesn't reduce the capacity to have as many charging stations as the need develops for, does it? Oh no, there's, there's nothing in this. In fact, our earlier things we've talked about, like the number of EV charging stations, we think all those solutions need to remain in place. And I'll also preface my future remarks coming up by saying, we also think that all our decisions about materials and what's appropriate need to remain in place. There's a lot about this design that's, that sticks to what the work we've already done together. But shortening the building is the linchpin to sort of addressing along this list of concerns. Well, as somebody who supported the sloping design, I think that this explanation is entirely satisfies all the questions that I had. Thank you. Ready to move on or? Sure. Okay. We touched on this slide and some of the features of it. And I also mentioned earlier that the pallet of materials here is, is as it was before, you can see that the building is broken up into alternating patterns of windows or big openings or green screen. There's a lot of variety here as is required by your zoning breaks. But the types of materials that we worked out with the DRB, the design advisory board, I mean, and the development review board through the review process, we've made sure we've maintained the integrity of those issues. And here you can see a cross section of the building. I think this is an instructive view if boring, but this shows you the south side wall as it's facing the bike path with the lowest parking level at 523 and shows you how we get five levels of parking in 43 feet. The actual parapet itself is not notionally the height of the building when it's measured under your ordinance. It's really the parking deck, which is 40 feet above grade, but, but the wall you'll see as you drive by will be 43 and a half feet tall. And you can see there are the projecting trim bands and other features that are required by your ordinance for the downtown business district. There are, there are many different cross sections to this building because we have so much variety. And, but this is, this is the most typical at the green screen. This is a view. I really like this view. And I love the guy Alan Spencer in my office who does this stuff with Boris. This shows you the project with what the confluence of the north branch of the Winooski and the Winooski River in the foreground. This is a photograph taken from behind the shell station on Memorial Drive. And you can look back and see here again in the foreground is the trestle bridge. You can just see the bike path bridge behind that. And then you can see the garage with the birch trees, the green wall panels. And don't forget, we had these sort of public art pieces led into some of the openings. All of those working together. And I think what you'll see is this, this thing is it, it, it's not shocking to see this here. We've taken a lot of effort to get this to blend into the landscape a little bit. It's, it's a big building by its nature, but it's, it's in a neighborhood full of big buildings. And, and I think this view presents the project very well. This view from State Street shows what you'll, what you'll see when you're trying to find this parking garage and drive into it. We're looking right down the existing capital Plaza parking garage, a parking lot driveway to the entrance. To the entrance of the garage, which is clearly marked. And you can see the control arms and some of the other features of the site. I think if I were looking for parking in town and I turned the corner and saw this, I would find this welcoming. I would also point out the relationship with the Hampton Inn next door to sort of show how this is one of those places where having flat floors does make things play together better. I even lose buildings to different of type. You can kind of relate the floor levels to one another and the openings are, I think there's a lot of interest going on there. These buildings are not meant to be cousins. They're really two different things. But again, I think the alignments are there that this looks like it fits. And this also shows it's not crazy tall. This is my, this is my last slide. I have other images of people need to ask me to bring something up, but I want to reach what we think our conclusions are. And then you can challenge me on those. But we think this redesign accomplishes a lot of the goals we laid out for you earlier. The garage does have less visual and physical impact on the Haney lot and while still maintaining the same, almost the same number of parking spaces. I think the pedestrian and bicycle traffic circulation is greatly improved. That's, you know, and more readily identifiable. That pathway along the western boundary of the Haney lot. To access the recreation path. We've mentioned the garage structure having level floors and that leading the structure to have a more conventional appearance. And finally, the garage building is taller, but it's, it's still below district zoning standards and visually looks like a four story building for most views. I'll just let you know that we're continuing to work with our neighbors at Christ church and, and others in the community who have specific utility type related design questions. That process continues. And we are continuing to coordinate. I'm sorry, I can't quite see the bottom of my slide here, but we're continuing to coordinate the technical drawings and permit stuff with our civil team. And with that, I will thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. That's the bulk of my presentation. I think we can go back to a more open dialogue. If you wouldn't mind taking your screen off of screen share. For everyone to see everybody. And I think I saw from Donna. Did you have a clarifying question? I just hurrah. These pictures are so good. They're so good. They're so good. They're so good. They're so good. They're so good. They're so good. They're so good for the meetings. We could look them over. Three and 14, especially put it in proportion. Just very pleasing. I love the changes. Thank you. So before we get too, too far in, is there any, any other clarifying. Questions. No. Okay. Great. All right. So I'm sure there. Oh, Dan, did you have a question? Just, just a few quick ones. Yeah. Is that, is that going to be sort of a raised sidewalk? Well, it'll run along the curb line on the west side of the parking lot. But it's eight feet wide for most of its length and it's, it's an ADA compliant grade from end to end. So you could do it on a bike. You could do it in a wheelchair. But yeah, we need, we need that curb line probably going to need some vehicle curb stops. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because we don't want to have a lot of people overhanging the bike path. When they park nose in. Okay. Any amounts of clarifying questions. Jay, go ahead. Just one quick question. The, the view looking from the other side of the river. And the green screen, it would appear that that doesn't, that it's going to be on the road. I mean, it's going to be on the river on the transit side of the, of the bridge. No, I, I'm sorry, it doesn't, we took our base photographs back when there was good weather, you know, so I couldn't run out in preparation of the meeting and recreate that view with any work that's been done in that area. You know, I know the construction trailers and stuff have been moved out, but. You know, it's not going to be on the other side of the rail tracks from us. That's just kind of what we had to hand when we put this together. Yeah, fair enough. I just wanted to make sure we have clarity on what do you shed would look like from that side of the river, et cetera. Something that's going to change. It probably looks better actually, but that's okay. Yeah. Yeah, I'm good. I mean, these, those slides. I know you're aware. They take a fair amount of resources and time. And for the purpose of the application for the, you know, I think that we really had to focus on the bounds of what we're doing. I think it would be, I don't know, Greg's firm, someone, you know, to, to expand that view to include the, the approved design for Confluence Park. So people can really get an overview. You know, this is sort of on its way to being submitted as a, as a court proposal. So, you know, we, that's not part of this application, but it's certainly be a good high value thing to have. Yeah. Yeah. Sounds good. I just wanted to point that out that those sort of changes, there's some subtlety changes there that are important. So. Great. And we also clarify questions. No. Okay. And I'm sure there's probably some folks from the public who want to speak to this. If. So in order to. Have this go sort of in an orderly fashion. If you have any interest in speaking to this, if you wouldn't mind unmuting yourself and just given a quick hey or hello. And I might try to unmute everybody. Okay. People are having problems with that. And then I'm going to ask you everyone again. If no one speaks up. Okay. Great. So you're going to let us know when everybody, well, I guess we'll see when people are unmuted. This is Sandy. Can you hear me? Yes. So Sandy. So hold on one second, Sandy. Anybody else. So I assume you want to say something, Sandy. Yeah. Happy to wait. Okay. I just wanted to see how many folks were. Wanting to chime in here. Anybody else want to chime in. Okay. All right. So I'm going to mute everyone and then unmute Sandra. Okay. Very good. Thank you so much. Can you hear me? Yes. Go ahead, Sandy. Okay. Thank you. I have a standard of its room from 14 Loomis street. I have just two quick questions. Just asking as a curious resident, not as an appellant. I just wanted. I'm looking at these drawings as you go through them myself. And I see that there's a 10 foot floor to floor. Dimension for the flat floor concept. And I just wonder if Greg has gone through the calculations. If this were to be converted to habitable space. How would that look, you know, how much would the floor. From the concrete have to come up. And how much would have to come down for things like. Waste water drains. Would there be a reasonable amount of finished floor height for either office or residential use. There for the, for living space height, I guess, what I'm saying is it seems like it might be the ceilings might be less than eight feet high. Robin, you are still muted. Greg. Okay. Sorry. I'm using my wife's very slick MacBook Pro because my webcam is dodgy. Now you've thrown me off my horse. The, the ability to turn this into some other use in the future really has to be baked in the cake when we build the building. Because I think the load carrying capacity of the floors is designed into the precast teas, you know, when you order them. I don't, I, I, I don't want to comment on the cost of that in this context because we're going to have a meeting next week to talk about budget stuff. Once we have clarity from our contractors, we can, we can speak as to how much it might cost to operate the building for that. But generally speaking, parking garages have a fairly low square per square foot load, like 25, 30 feet, because cars, while they weigh a lot, they also have a big footprint. So we know we would have to operate the structure to build in that capacity. I think as, as to the ceiling high question, the actual membrane that separates a level from another is only about six inches thick. So in these concrete tea buildings, there's, there's volumes of space above eight feet where you can do things like plumbing. And, you know, depending on the use, you might leave that open structure exposed. I don't want to get too deeply into the idea of future use other than to say the design changes we've made to this point make it possible. David, I know is negotiating with people on this issue. So I don't want to go too deep into the weeds on it. Am I still unmuted? Yes. So I just want to toss it out that it might be useful to the council to investigate that enough so that both for the cost due to the structure, but also because for some, sometimes for instance, drains have to go transverse. And so they'd have to go below the bottom of the tease. And so that, that would either require that there's a lower ceiling in some place. It just would be interesting to know what that is. So that 20 or 40 years from now, the city doesn't get a unpleasant surprise. My other question is it appears that there are fewer parking spaces in the he need a lot now. So I'm just curious. I can blew it up and I think I counted 13 or 14 or something like that. What is the total count now for both properties? What is the total net. Addition of spaces now. I don't have that number of my fingertips. I wonder if our civil engineers are still online with us. Yeah. But we lost a few spaces along the over lake building for a green space. And we also lost a few spaces to a transformer and the landscape buffer that goes with the transformer. So your number doesn't sound crazy out of line. I just don't know specifically. So, but it's, you're probably right order of magnitude wise somewhere on a dozen spaces. Thank you very much. Yeah, great questions. And I don't, I'm curious if I can follow up on that. How, you know, is that is checking into. The expense for, you know, in general figures. So, I think we've done this exercise before, but we did it with the previous design. And I think we would be prudent to go to, to look at it in this specific context. But we've had a very good cooperative relationship with a vendor who's been happy to give us some cost estimating on those differences. So I think when we have our budget discussion, we can come prepared with that info. To that point, to Sandy's point in yours, Mayor, we, the primary reasons for. Looking at the redesign wasn't, and we know there's the, the ancillary benefit of potential reuse. And a lot of people raised that and it would be great if that could happen. But it was really to try to improve the project and open up and address the. Sort of walk in bike way and, you know, access to the path to make, to, to make it visually more appealing to people. So, you know, what's been done was to hit those goals. And now that those goals are hidden and it did require flat. Now we'll try to see what that would take to then add the added benefit of adaptive reuse. That would be great if that could happen. But it was really to try to improve the project and open up and address the sort of walk in bike way and, you know, access to the path. To make, to make it visually more appealing to people. And that would be great if that could happen. And that would be great if that could happen. That's still a work in progress. Okay. Thank you. Other comments from the public. I know we just checked, but I want to check again. If, if you don't mind Cameron, if you could unmute everybody and we'll just do one more check to see if anyone else. Has comments. Or from the public. And then we'll. Go to further counsel comments. So I'll let you unmute everybody here real quick. Everyone is unmuted. Okay. Anybody else have something they'd like to say about this? Okay. I'm all right to everyone again. Okay. Okay. And so thank you. And any comments on this from council. Oh, Lauren, go ahead. I just. I mean, I think today we're just focused on the redesign and we're not at a decision point. We're not at a decision point. We're not at a decision point. We're not at a decision point. And I have been getting a lot of constituent contact as I imagine others have as well. Of just kind of. Thinking about the economic crisis we're in. And you know, does that change any of the economics of the project? Or, you know, should we be thinking about. Any implications. And I wanted to just bring that up. I heard it from a lot of, um, a lot of folks in town. You know, you know, you know, you know, or the mayor could just speak for a moment about, you know, do you see implications of the current, you know, Fiscal challenges that we're going to get to momentarily and how that interplays with the project or not in your mind. So just love to hear. Thoughts on that. Or if you want to like have that conversation another day since we're looking at the design, that's, that's fine. I'm probably addressing either tonight or next time we bring this up, but go ahead, Bill. Well, I'll let you talk about, you know, the vision, the idea behind it. But I would say very briefly, number one, certainly we are in bad economic times and we're looking at our budget, but really. The. This project is funded. By really two main sources. One is the tax revenues from the new hotel yet to be built. So it's, and the other is the actual lease fees and user fees from the building itself. It's not in our tax. We could cut our budget to the bone. It wouldn't touch this project at all. Except maybe the costs of the continuing appeal. Which we all wish we didn't have to bear, but the, but the financing for the project itself is really. Bigged into it now. Obviously, and we are in continued conversations about the viability of the hotel. Right now we're being told that the family plans to go ahead. And remember. This isn't likely to be built until at the earliest next year. And depending on the appeal period, even the year after that. So what can you, you know, we don't know what the economics are going to look like. But I think it's going to be, it's going to be, it's going to be, it may well be that coming out of. The situation we're in that having a new place for people to stay and new place to make. Downtown vibrant. You remember the master plan that you just approved for downtown, which include more bike ways, wider pedestrian areas and all those things was contingent on. The garage being built. And so we're going to be able to, we're going to be able to make plans for the future. For revitalizing the downtown based on this project happening. So obviously it would involve. Unwinding a lot of things, not just this one project. So, but again, back to the finances. It isn't being financed out of our general budget. I say that if we don't build the project. If we stopped it. We would have to issue the bond. We would have to pay for it. We would have to pay for it. We would have to pay for it. We would have to pay for it. We would have to pay for it. That would be one of what we spent so far. And that would then have to come out of future taxes. Because we have to pay for it somehow. We've paid the bills. So that. Does that help. Answer your. Question. Yeah. Thank you for. Yeah. Totally. And I, you know, I could also see this. And I'm not sure if it's a good idea, but I know that we're all being particularly. Important for the vibrancy of our downtown businesses. So. Yeah. But we'll, we'll continue to. Just being dialogue about that. All right, so. Can I take any other. Yeah, go for it. This is an awkward format for people to comment. So just for members of the public that might be watching either on cable or here, we're gonna put these designs up and we're gonna set up a place for people to send in comments or call in comments so that that will be open. I mean, we're always happy to take your comments about any public issue but specifically on this so people can see it, look at it and then have comments and this will be on the next agenda as well when we will have more cost to financial information. So people, this isn't anyone's only chance to weigh in. Yeah, and actually before we move on Bill, do you wanna just speak to that this is the beginning of a comment period for folks? I mean, so that's what you're saying, right? So people have until roughly when to make comments. Right up until the next meeting, April 22nd. So two months from tonight, you know, like I said, we'll get the designs out publicly. We'll try to publicize this through our very social media that it's here with the link. So people can look at Greg's slides and I don't know whether we'll just set up one of our addresses and maybe set up a new, you know, parking garage at popular dash VT, you know, special line where people can weigh in. We'll think about that tonight, tomorrow. It'll be ready to go by tomorrow night. Hopefully. Any other comments or questions, Dan? Yeah, just too quick. I wanted to reemphasize because I think it was a small point to make sure I understood. Greg, your, this alteration keeps the project at the same budget level as before roughly. Is that the representation? That is certainly the goal of the design team. I'm going to be able to answer that question definitively after I meet with the contact contractors next week. And we're going to bring you all a whole breakdown of the updated construction finances for you. It's very difficult as an estimator, I am sure, to sort of try to trend line what'll be happening in 2022. But, you know, we'll do our best to sort of adapt to that. I do expect though that we've done a number of other things that we haven't enumerated tonight that are saving money on this project. And it's been our working ethos since this problem has come up to make that a part of the design solution is to look for economies. And I think this design does accomplish great many of those. So we'll see you on the 22nd with updates. Macro economically, I'm sort of thinking that two things. Number one is that when the economy does recover, it will, I may not be soon, but when it does, it will be very helpful to the public and to have projects ready to go. And I think the other thing is we are expecting that some of the hyperinflation that had been happening in the construction trades will taper off due to a pretty substantial drop in demand. But that's all speculation right now. Who knows what demand will look like on the backside of this. So we'll see you in a few weeks with more up-to-date info on that. Just throw a weigh in on the finances. Two, sorry, just two variables. So basically Greg hit the two variables that we can't control that are part of our thinking. One is what year it gets built and what the costs are that year. And the other is what costs we incur on the project. And obviously even these redesigns and appeal costs and experts, we incur are all coming out of project costs between now and then. So those are key factors that impact obviously the communities. Sure, actually I was just gonna make that point. I mean, obviously the year it's built affects the price because construction costs vary from year to year for materials and labor costs. But the other point I guess I just wanted to, the other comment I wanted to add was building on Lauren's point where I've heard from a number of constituents and then number vocal asking questions. And it seems like that at the very least, we owe it to ourselves and to the city to just constantly have this conversation about where are we at in this recovery and how do the economics unfold? But it seems to me that's in some ways divorced or at least not strictly related to the redesigned timeline that's tied to the litigation that we as a city have to say, and I'm sure the private partnership is making these same evaluations. And it seems like that's something that can continue to ask those questions as they go forward. Great, thank you. Others, any other comments? Okay, well, I'm not seeing anybody else wanting to make comments on that. So I guess we'll leave it there. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks for the updates, yes. Sorry. No, go for it. If you want to get an update on where the litigation is. As in do we want to go into executive session? No, I think Dave can just describe for me. It's been a while since we've been updated. I didn't know. Oh, okay, sure. Yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cut that part off. Great. Dave, or Joe? Yeah, hi everybody. How are you? I'm going to stay away from sort of attorney client advice here and give you sort of the 30,000 foot views since we're not in executive session. There are also some parties I see on the line, but I'll tell you where we went from the local and active 50 hearings quickly and where we've been over the last year or so. As you know, the subdivision approval and site plan approval from the development review board were appealed to the environmental division back in January of 2019. We then had an active 50 hearing for both the parking garage and the hotel in February of 2019, or I think it might have been January actually, and then just back up real quickly the zoning approvals that were appealed were only for the parking garage, subdivision and site plan, not for the hotel, but the active 50 application that we filed were for both structures. The active 50 permit was granted under the downtown development findings procedure. So a little bit of limited review under active 50 as compared to the full blown process. The district commission did approve the hotel and garage with conditions and the active 50 permit was appealed as well. What we did in the early stages of the litigation were focusing on two things. One, party status issues and narrowing the number of parties in the case and two, focusing on the issues because what we're dealing with is a municipal project that's entitled to limited review under the city zoning regulations and state statute. Also, there's a different jurisdictional trigger under active 50 for municipal projects. So over the last year, year and a half, we've engaged in motion practice, I would say successfully with the goal of limiting the parties in the appeal and narrowing the issues. So that at this time, when the appeal was originally filed of the zoning and subdivision approval, there were 18 appellants. Now there are only two, those being Les Blomberg and John Russell. In the, and then in the active 50 appeal, there we also engaged in litigation over the party status or the status of the parties. Three individuals appealed. Actually four, one being Overlake Park and one being Jeff Parker, another being Dan Costin and another being Les Blomberg. They sought party status under a number of criteria relating to water pollution, traffic, historic sites, the statics and effect on public investments. There were about four or five different active 50 review criteria under which they sought party status and after litigation over that, the environmental court only allowed Les Blomberg to participate under criterion eight historic sites and five traffic and Dan Costin under criterion five traffic. So those were the appellants issues in the appeal and we got the number of parties down and then we focused on limiting the scope of review of the project under state statute and modular zoning regulations. It gets a little bit technical here, but suffice it to say the project it will not, at least according to the environmental judge, Tom Walsh will not be reviewed. The whole entirety of the project won't be reviewed. Instead only certain features like the location, the size, the height, the lighting and the landscaping of the project will be reviewed by the court and the zoning appeals. And the zoning appeal issues like traffic are no longer before the court. There still will be issues relating to the parking garages fit or context within the downtown business district and the downtown historic district. We think the redesign does a good job of improving the fit, not that the garage didn't really fit the context before, but now some of the external appearances match up even better with adjacent buildings. So now we're at the point we're almost finished with the briefing on issues with narrowing the scope. We also have pending motions before Judge Walsh regarding whether the parking garage itself is subject to Act 250 as a municipal project. Act 250 jurisdiction only applies if it's a municipal project for municipal purposes on over 10 acres of land. And we are arguing that because the garage is cited on a parcel that's roughly a half an acre and is being constructed for municipal purposes that the parking garage itself should not be subject to Act 250. The appellants have counter arguments obviously and it'll probably be another month or six weeks until we hear back from the judge on that, but those motions are pending. Going forward just briefly next steps, we've introduced the redesign and shared those plans publicly today. We are looking to engage in discovery and deposition practice over the summer, late spring and summer here with an expected trial date sometime in the fall, probably October, September, October, November, depending on scheduling. We are, despite the delay from COVID-19 in business issues, we are proceeding with the current schedule so far and it's built out enough that we think there's sufficient time to stay on target for a fall trial in both the zoning and Act 250 case. So that's where we are right now. I don't wanna get too much further in depth because I wanna maintain attorney client confidentiality but I think that hopefully gives you a good, at least 30,000 foot view of where things stand but I'm happy to entertain questions and answer them the best I can under these circumstances. Connor, go ahead. Yeah, David, just not being a lawyer, we're looking best case scenario, maybe a fall trial. You might take a step back and it's probably not fair question. What's the total best case, worst case scenario timeline we're looking at on this? Some resolution in the courts? With the trial in the fall, best case, the judge would issue a decision in shortly after the holidays, maybe. Lost you, David. David, you appear to still be... He's not muted. He's not muted. David, you may wanna try the audio settings on your computer. Joe, can you help? Can somebody text him? I don't think he hears you. Joe, you're also still muted. Nope. How about now? Yes, there you are. Okay, well, to finish David's thought, we are scheduled to be trial ready by August 15th. It is unlikely that a trial will happen in the month of August. We're probably looking at some time later in the fall with probably a most optimistic, a date for a decision being sometime around the first of the year. David, admit your back, David. I'm just finishing your thought here. David had mentioned that we have a stipulated scheduling order that we're operating under that anticipates discovery in May and June and including the possibility of mediation. Of course, all of those things become somewhat more challenging when you take social distancing into account. So my expectation is that we are probably going to be pushing the long side of these deadlines. And that we will probably be looking at a trial, if the trial goes forward in the fall, we may be looking at a decision date sometime in the first quarter of the new year. Yeah, I don't know where you guys lost me, but I was doing the best case scenario. Okay, so yeah, I'm sorry about that. I somehow my microphone magically turned off, but then if we do get a decision in that first quarter, I would say that in the absence of further appeals, the construction might be able to start in late summer just because it takes time to do construction, final construction drawings and things like that. But there's also a possibility that there would be a further appeal after the trial court's decision is issued. And if that comes in March or April or hopefully more like February or March, and if a further appeal to the Vermont Supreme Court would likely take another year. So it would then, that takes us out to probably March 2022 or so. I apologize again for losing the microphone there and thanks, Joe, for stepping in. Well, thank you, that's helpful. Any further questions for the lawyers here? Oh, okay, Jay. Just a quick question, and this is probably more for Bill than it is for the lawyer specifically, but I think it'd be really helpful to have an understanding of the financial implications in terms of investment from the city on sort of the worst case and best case scenario that they've laid out, just so we're always thinking about the level of investment that we have going. So I know it's loose and it's not necessarily something that we can totally control, but I think it would be as we move forward with these budget challenges, have an understanding of what our general expectations might be. Thanks. Yeah, we agree and part of it, we've talked about how we have your budget meeting next week, that is very much an active part of the budget. We've been getting estimates from the attorneys and the expert witnesses and running out the different scenarios if it goes, how far it goes and what's going on. So absolutely we'll be building those thoughts in. Great, anyone else? Okay, well thank you again for your time. Thanks for this update. This was really helpful. And if folks have comments about the updated design, there'll be a place on the website and instructions on how folks can leave comments about those designs. So all right, thanks so, thank you very much. Thanks so much for all your work. Thank you. Thank you everybody. Yeah, great. All right, so we're gonna rearrange a little bit of the order of the agenda. We're actually gonna jump now to the above and beyond award, which is an award in which we recognize a member of the city staff and I'll turn it over to Bill. Thank you, and I know that she's on. I don't know if she wants to go to video or not. But, and maybe we should unmute her, Kevin. But as you know, we have a monthly award for our above and beyond person. This month is Jasmine Benson. Many of you know Jasmine Lamb in my office, but Jasmine Benson works down in public works and is actually the more senior of the two Jasmine's. She has been a really wonderful addition in the DPW office but got her award. This month because when the whole COVID-19 came, she just jumped right on it and created our cleaning stations around the building and made sure we got stocked on things and made sure that they were, you know, all the right information for us. And in fact, even since this award nomination, she's continued to do that. She's working remotely from home. She's expecting and wants no part of this virus. And she zoomed in with our HR person and came up with a really great list of questions for people, for the furloughs and kind of frequently asked questions and did that all on her own. So she's been just wonderful to have with us and we're happy to award Jasmine Benson our above and beyond recipient for this month. Thank you so much. And I really appreciate all of you guys's support with everything. You've been great to have Jasmine. Thanks for all you do. Of course. Yeah. Thank you for all your work, Jasmine. Thank you, Mayor. I'll go to bed. Not yet. Too early. Great. It's a good that we get to do this award. This is great. It is great. And if you would hear Jasmine, we'd be giving you a big ovation if we were all in the room. That's so true. All right. Okay. Well, so thank you again, Jasmine. And so we're going to move on to the COVID-19 response and budget updates. So I'll turn that over to Bill. Yes. And with the capable expertise of Kelly as well, we're also going to have a share screen thing. First though, I think Cameron, did you want to go through the response that we've come up with or did you want me to do that? Of course. I can do that. All right, great. So what we're going to do is outline the continued updates of things that we're doing and then we'll hit the budget items after that. Okay. So forgive me, I'm working on multiple computers. So this might be easier. But I'm going to go through the memo we sent earlier. We did get some state updates, as you all know, and we do want to state publicly. The state has passed House Bill 681, which allows us to waive physical location requirements for public meetings. So as long as the governor has declared a state of emergency city council meetings and other city committee meetings can be conducted solely electronically like we're doing right now through Zoom. And the options for public participation will be online and telephone only. We will always have the number listed on any public agenda on our website, which is always available. If you want to look for upcoming agendas, that will be where the call-in information is listed. Can I interrupt you right there, Cameron, quickly? I just noticed that there's a lot of familiar names on the screen of folks that are attending. If you are so inclined to shoot me an email about how this experience was for you as just as an attendee of the meeting, not a member of the council, just we're always trying to get better at this. So any comments you have would be really helpful. So sorry, continue. No worries. We appreciate that kind of feedback. We also had some general updates. We've created some new policies to protect our staff and residents. Our public works department has made a formal policy asking all DPW staff to travel one employee per city vehicle. We have added a list of mental health resources for those who might need them on our COVID-19 response page, which is sort of the headline of our website. Also, we want to make it very public and as many places as we can, noticing that the Washington and Northern Orange County Regional Response Command Center, which is a very long name for something that it's a sort of clearinghouse for if you need any assistance publicly, if you need anything, call them and they will help connect you to the people that can help you with get whatever you need in this emergency. Their call line is area code 802-477-5160 and they have a text line at 802-477-5130. We also did some additional building closures and program cancellations. City Hall is currently locked down and closed to the public unless you give us a call and set up an appointment. Our numbers are all also available online due to some safety concerns because there's a severe lack of personnel in the building. Green Mount Cemetery wanted to let people know that they will not be doing certain services for the time being and including general landscaping. So if the cemeteries look normal, Scruffy, please forgive them. They will also not be doing cemetery tours. They will not be conducting funerals with more than 10 people in the funeral party and any burials during the four day Memorial Day weekend will need to be re-scheduled. All, we've also canceled all Montpelier Senior Activity Center classes for the spring. If folks were signed up for that, first off we do apologize and that if the instructors were going to offer online classes, we're gonna connect you directly to those instructors so that you can continue taking those classes with them directly. Kelly and Bill are gonna go into a little bit more about our budget and furlough updates. But we did have some city recommendations based on that recommended furlough. So after you get that information, please know that we do recommend that councils vote to suspend all committee task force or advisory board meetings until staff are able to return to furlough when we're at full capacity, accepting those meetings that are required by law. City staff, potentially, if you do move forward with our recommendations for some cost-saving measures, including furlough, our city staff will be at a severely reduced capacity as they take on tasks that employees on furlough have left and will not be able to support those committees at this time. So I'll sort of turn it back to Bill and Kelly unless anyone has any specific questions on what I just said. Yeah, go ahead, Connor. Yeah, I heard that Burlington for their city employees was looking at housing options that they could maybe put them in hotels or somewhere else if an employee exhibits symptoms of the coronavirus or if they've taken a test and are waiting for the results to come back. Have we looked at talking to the Camp Plaza or maybe the College of Fine Arts to see if there would be an alternative like sending them home with their families during this time where we could expose them as well? We haven't, but that's a good question. No one's raised, none of our employees have raised that issue and we haven't, fortunately, we haven't run across that yet. We've had a couple of people get tested thinking they had exposures, but so far we haven't had any positive tests. Thank goodness, but fair question. I know, yeah, we'd have to look at our options, but we'll add that to the list. Great, thanks very much. Anyone else? Questions on this part so far? Okay, yeah, go ahead, Bill or Lauren, go ahead, yeah. Just one thing a constituent had reached out to me asking about what the city was doing to communicate about the new governor's recommendation and Department of Health recommendation around masks around town. And I guess I just wanted to ask, I was looking on the city website and I know we always are generally sending people to the health department to make sure they're getting the most updated information, but maybe there could be some communication about the current thing put in front porch forum or whatever to just make sure that that's out to people. I definitely am seeing a mix of people around my neighborhood and some people are wearing masks and people aren't and a lot of people out and about, so it can sometimes actually be hard to stay six feet away. And I guess to that point, I just, I saw that there's like Burlington's been closing down some parks and some other things. Are there any areas that the city staff or parks department or anything are seeing any problem areas where there are people are continuing to gather? Are there concerns in that vein that we're seeing yet? I can speak to that a little bit, Bill, if you want me to. Let's do. First off, we can definitely increase our communication about that. You're right, we have been directing folks to the health department, but there's no reason we can't share some of that information, so thank you. Also, I've been in touch with the parks departments and they are having, they are not reporting any issues at this time so people are being very respectful on the trails. And we are really trying to go by the state parks recommendations for our parks department since we understand that really our park trails and our rec trails are some of the only available options to folks right now. So we're just trying to make those as safe and accessible as possible, but they haven't reported any issues to me at this time. We have actually, interestingly enough, we got, we started to get a few calls from residents that are concerned when they see gatherings. In fact, I got a call today from a person who was concerned that like five or six kids were playing basketball of middle school, bumping into each other and all. And I think as the weather gets better, maybe we're gonna see more of this. And so we'll try to do some education on all of that. But in terms of the parks, Cameron really nailed it, but people do need to get out, they need to exercise, they need fresh air and our park system is really mostly wooden trails and it's kind of ideal for that. So we're gonna try to hang on to them for as long as we can until we see a problem or until we're told we've got to get it closed. So it's a fine balance between right now. So I did see that Dan had a question, but I also just wanna follow up on that. If somebody does see like a, what looks to be like a gathering of 10 people or so, what should, do we know what they should do? You know, I don't know. I mean, it's hard to say, are they a family or they, you know, who knows what it is. Yeah, cause I feel like that could go very badly, you know, just so, anyway. To some extent people have to... They're sort of self-regulating at this point. Okay, I just wanted to clarify that, thank you. Dan, yeah. Well, two questions, one to build up on that. I mean, I have seen anecdotal reports and I actually witnessed some on a bike trail where I think there are natural places for people to congregate and have seen, you know, both on the picnic tables at the New Constance Park, as well as that shelter over behind the public utility building, you know, people gathering. And so, you know, it seems like there may be some clear spots on the, that where we may have to put up signage or warnings to people to inform them. And the second is, is to what extent has the state asked us or asked our public safety department, police department to do any of this enforcement that now we're getting guidance about fines and citations for violating? Not extensively. We can send you, we did get a guide in, you know, the police department got a guidance from the Attorney General basically, outlined the rules. I think the expectation of the state is still that people will voluntarily comply or that whatever response would be will be educational in nature to remind people. That was the view of our police even before we heard anything. They don't, you know, I think they're gonna arrest somebody for standing too close, but certainly if they see things and they're trying to get out on patrol more, especially in the downtown and the paths and things, the state has not in any way, I don't, that I'm aware of, you know, I'll check with Tony to make sure this is correct. You know, asked us to pick up the mantle of enforcement, they have given some guidance if we can share that. Okay, so there hasn't been any push to alter our general practice? No. Okay. Jack. Yes, thank you. I don't see him on the call right now, but last night at the Transportation Infrastructure Committee, we had a proposal from Peter Lux, who's one of the members of the committee, talking about things that we could do, the city could do to facilitate more distancing, including things like converting Langdon Street to pedestrian only during the emergency, doing things regarding potentially making sidewalks one way so that people don't bump into each other. And so there, and this went to the mayor and some of the members of the Transportation Infrastructure Committee. I've certainly heard about crowding on the shared use path, although when I was out on downtown, it seemed like people were not crowding each other on the sidewalks. But I think there's going to be some more discussion of that. Well, I expect it's gonna be an increasing issue as A, the weather gets better and the more cabin fever people get from having stayed in longer, they're gonna wanna get out and those the recreation paths are great. And so they are natural places for people to want to walk and you run into people and you talk and even if you're from groups standing apart then another group comes and hopefully, yeah. So I like the idea of maybe some strategic signing where we create places that people wanna be and facilities that they wanna use and people wanna be there and use them. Yeah. It comes around success. That's it. Just in terms of some of the other things that were in that proposal, I'd love to have more conversation about that. I think there's some potentially good ideas in there. So let's keep talking about it, but we can do that offline, I think. So I actually just got a message from Chief Fake is saying that they have been taking those calls and in fact he and I think some other chiefs are having a conference call with the Attorney General tomorrow about expectations and roles and all that. So we'll have more clarity later. That's helpful. Great, thank you. Any other questions at this point? Connor. Just wondering like a breakdown of the furloughs. First off, I think that was a pretty generous furlough offer. So thanks very much for coming up with that. And that's a lot of people who took a 25. Could you give me a bit of a breakdown of the 25? What departments are they coming from? And then the other question was, I'm assuming like first responders wouldn't be eligible for this furlough? So yeah, so yes, yes and yes. And we're about to go through the highlights at least. I don't know if we're gonna go individually, but we do have a presentation about the budget stuff and included that whole aspect of things. Yeah. So maybe that is the good signal that maybe we're ready to move on to that part of it. And any other questions about just logistics of the city's response besides the budget? Okay, great. Go ahead. I'll tee this up quickly and turn it right over to Kelly. As you know, because of the COVID-19, we're experiencing a lot of loss of revenues. And we've been looking at specific ways to address a fairly large shortfall in a very short period of time in the last quarter. We're really trying to focus on year end, June 30. At this point, we know that this problem is likely to go forward into FY 21, but we think looking at that budget and our choices maybe in early June, when we have more information about the situation and the economy and what's happening at that time, makes more sense than to try to guess now what's going to happen after July one. But we really are focused on April, May and June right now. So in Connor, you just mentioned, we did put out, I don't know, we haven't hidden it, but I don't think it was common knowledge. We put out a voluntary furlough program where people could opt out of essentially to be furloughed and go on unemployment. I think that was made, the new federal act, which added to the unemployment benefits certainly made that more desirable for some people and we offered to continue their benefits, which we are allowed to do under this circumstance, which normally you're not necessarily allowed to do, but that was a choice that we made. Hoping to see, we set a goal of 25 that we hoped would apply just given what we looked at, who's essential, non-essential first responders, those kinds of things and a target of the folks and we actually did exceed that slightly. So I think people took the time to figure out what worked for them personally and also financially. So that said, I'm gonna turn this over to Kelly, she's got to walk us right through the numbers. And at the end, we have a real short blurb about how each department is impacted and what that means for services. I don't know if we actually had the exact number of Connor of how many from each department, but we'll get that for you. But we can explain sort of what it will mean for each department. Kelly. So I'll take it from here. We do have the numbers in the slide deck. The specifics around the departments, we don't have those spelled out, but we certainly can get that to you, no problem. I also wanna mention that Donna Barlow Casey is here with me since one of the options that we're putting forward for reductions of the line shares from public work. So if you have specific questions around public works line items, you could ask. So without further ado, I'm gonna share my screen and just go over the high level detail and then we'll go from there. So let's see. And you can still all hear me, okay, right? Yes. Okay, perfect. Okay, so I'm just gonna get right into it. So as we're getting into this, I mean, we are facing some pretty significant downgrades as a result of COVID-19. I'm gonna get into the details here below, but if you look at the general fund on the revenue side of the equation, we've got roughly, right now, we're protecting about $127,000 of shortfall. That is coming from local option taxes to the tune of $67,000 or so. License and permits says about 20K, fees, charges and services, 12K fines and forfeitures about 2.5K. Then ambulance billing is also down. And so we've taken that into account here for about 25K. And then on the expenditure side of the equation, we're running a little bit hot in certain areas. And so these are some of the larger ticket items and rolled up personnel and legal services, 30K, health insurance, 60K, and then public works. There are some items, some specifically salts, but there are other areas that are creating a net effect here. So that's about $120,000. So that's the general fund. So the shortfall with the revenue and expenditures combined is $247,000. And if I'm talking too fast, please let me know. I am kind of a fast talker, so I don't wanna jump past anything and I'm happy to take questions at any point too. So just let me know. But moving on to the parking fund, this is where we're not getting the revenues in. We're not collecting parking revenue around the meters and vending locations. And so that is short to the tune of $255,000. We actually, on the expenditure side of things, are doing better than projected at about $50,000. So there we're protecting a shortfall, revenues and expenditures of $203,000. There are also other areas within community services that aren't gonna be receiving the revenues that we had anticipated, such as recreation. It's about $26,000 in the senior center, $25,000 for $51,250. And so combined. Kelly, just quick, those record senior numbers, and you see that with revenue, those are net of saved expenditures. So we're losing revenues from not having the programs and saving some money without paying instructors. So that's a question that might come up that those have already been netted out. Thank you. Thank you. So we're looking at a total shortfall of just over $500,000. And so, taking stock in that and trying to figure out a path forward, we do have a couple of proposals on the table and how to address a large part of this. But starting with where we ended fiscal 19 and thinking about what we had for unassigned fund balance, we had about $740,000. And that seems like that's a decent number. But in actuality, if we're looking at our fund balance policy, we should have 15% of our general fund expenditures and we don't at this point. And so we'll need to talk about that at a later date to maybe work towards achieving that goal. Setting that aside, the other piece that we really need to consider is that if we were to do nothing and take the $500,000 or so and put it against that unassigned fund balance, we'd be at about $240,000, which we've got still a quarter of the fiscal year left. So if things didn't crack our way, we could be in trouble in a hurry. So we really need to consider shoring that up, but that's a long way around of saying that the unassigned fund balance really isn't an option for making out the deficit that we have. Yeah. Are you advancing your slides on your computer? Oh, no, sorry. Thank you. Thank you for finding me. Okay, got it. I just got on a roll of air. The numbers are so exciting. So getting on into even the next slide here, options to close the gap. So the details will be presented in the slides that are coming up. But number one, there's $245,000 that departments have given up. Everybody has been working really hard to identify areas that we could maybe gain some efficiencies or we're not maybe spending as much as we thought we would or maybe getting creative around, shifting things around. So it's been really nice to work with departments and coming up with this money. And it's a good chuck of what we need to come up with. The other piece is, and we'll touch on this in the slide and we've already kind of talked about a little bit as the furloughs. So parking staff, the part-time parking staff is part of this picture. And then we had a voluntary election which got us a pretty significant amount of money. $192,740 gross and then $152,301 GF parking community service funds that we'll be able to use to offset some of the deficit numbers. And then there are two other options listed here and ways that we might address the 113K or so that were still short. We can end fiscal year 2020 in a deficit position and address the shortage in 2021. And I think that that's probably the way to go just because we're not sure how things will end up in 2020. And it's kind of a wait-and-see approach. We don't know what will come down from the beds or from the state in terms of stimulus for municipalities. It also lets us kind of see where the chips fall in certain funds to see if maybe the projections are maybe a little bit better or a little worse. And we've got a very specific reason as to why it's happening. And so then we would look to address that shortage in 2021 because we would know what it is. So rather than just... Yes, there's a question about that. So when you say address it in the FY21, does that mean make a decision in FY21 or does that mean try to find the remainder of the gaps right now from the FY21 budget? Or yeah, can you just spell that out? Or is it like wait-and-see what the stimulus is or that sort of thing? Let's just spell that out a little bit more. Yeah, absolutely. So it would be kind of a wait-and-see approach. But we would be looking to put plans in place for that shortage. We already have started to look at some of the capital expenditures in FY21 that may be able to close this gap. And so we would be looking at more projects than people. And so we would have some specific items to bring forward. So you would be able to kind of evaluate and see what that looks like. And without really knowing how things are gonna end up in FY20, we don't have sort of a specific detail on what we would be deciding on at this point. The other alternative is you could say, you know what, we wanna take care of this gap now and we would move towards further reductions. That being said, we also are gonna continue to look for savings beyond what we've already found. So we're gonna still keep working at closing this gap. And in a pretty short period of time, we've been pretty successful. And so I'd like to think that with a wait-and-see approach and also looking into other options, we might be able to do something further. But you know, we're also looking for guidance on that too. Yeah, thank you, you're welcome. So to add to that, Mayor, you know, again, we think beginning of June, we'll see where we're at. We'll be looking, you know, by then we'll know, you know, are things starting to come back to normal or are we still gonna be in lockdown for a lot longer? We'll know, you know, what functions. And so if it looks like things are going back to normal and we're still short of this 100,000, we might say, okay, we're gonna knock this one project that FY21 and we're all good. Or we might be facing a much bigger situation. I think the key policy position of this is basically just acknowledging now that at least we're projecting to end in a deficit and we know that and we understand that and we're managing it as opposed to, you know, when we short for June 30, it's like, how did this happen? But as Kelly mentioned, we've come up with a few more ideas today that, you know, may or may not work. So, you know, our goal on staff is to keep whittling that down, but as opposed to, you know, taking a draconian measure and just saying, okay, knock off the rest, but you are the stewards of the public funds, not us. So if you tell us to do that, we will. Okay, thank you. So the next, look, go ahead. Okay, perfect. So the next slide is some of the areas where we are finding the savings for the $245,000. The top three, public works is the largest, then, you know, ambulance offered up their equipment portion of an ambulance that would go towards a bond payment in the future. And then parks actually came in pretty solid too and offered a good amount of money. So we were able to really find a lot. And so the titles of the cuts are, you know, kind of broad-based and I think explain basically what they are. There are a couple of areas that I can get into the details such as parks or public works if you wanted to, or we can keep going and then circle back, totally up to you. Jack and then Lauren. And then I have some questions. Okay. Thank you. I'm a little bit behind here because I'm actually thinking about the previous slide and what we do with the funds. And while we were talking, while you were talking Kelly, I took a quick look at our charter and it appears that under section 1125 of our charter that we're not prohibited from ending the fiscal year in a deficit, although it is required that any deficit existing is required to be eliquidated. Great. Yeah. I mean, thanks for mentioning that. Yeah. I mean, our goal is to really come up with a plan to address what's known at this point. I should also note that these are projections. And so, you know, we will keep an eye on things and, you know, see how things are coming in. So as we get even closer to the end of the fiscal year, we'll have even more of a picture to see, you know, if what we're projecting is coming to pass. And it also just gives us a little bit more time with the whole COVID-19 pandemic to see how things play out. Great. Lauren. I wanted to ask as the city representative for the social and economic justice advisory committee. So I see here the social justice fiscal year 20 allocation is budgeted to be part of this reduction. I think you all received the councilor's memo from the social economic justice advisory committee today. And I'm talking about where, you know, we had been under the assumption that we had money to put forward a request for proposals. So we've been working through hiring a consultant to do work with a, you know, approximately $10,000 budget. You know, obviously given everything that's happened, we talked, we met this morning and we talked about pushing that into the next fiscal year to start that project. When, you know, at this point, a lot of that work was like community building and bringing people together, which will be hard to do for a while anyway. So a lot of that work could make more sense in a few months, but that committee definitely was concerned if we were gonna totally forego this work, just feeling like the urgency of making sure that now so many more people in our community are facing economic crisis that we are really deliberately and thoughtfully looking at the people who could fall through the cracks and are gonna be the hardest hit by this and what kind of disparities we're seeing with, you know, different racial groups and others. So really thinking that this work was more important than ever to get right at the time of economic crisis. So hoping that we're not foregoing it, but maybe just delaying it if that was so. Maybe there's a thinking from the city manager's office of if that's a timing thing, or if it just is a proposal to just cut that project altogether. So insights you have on that and whatever other. I don't think our intent was to cut the project altogether. You know, there are funds in the FY21 budget. So, you know, we haven't made decisions about that yet. And this was really just not to spend what it was allocated for this current year between now and June 30 to try to, as we mentioned, to try to get the year end deficit down. But, you know, I think that this is a policy call whether this is a higher priority than getting the deficit down or, you know, timing that really isn't in your place. But we, to us, this seemed like something, you know, again, not, well, Cameron knows that she's been part of that discussion. I think that the sense is some of the focus groups and the types of things that might have been happening in any way would probably be delayed because you can't hold those kinds of meetings. And maybe it just made sense to start this a little bit later, but no, no, I mean, let's face it, everything that's on these lists are important. They were in our budget for a reason and the same with the positions that are being furloughed. It's not because they're not important. It's just we're really slicing it down to the real nuts and bolts of what we do here. So, it's a priority call. We do have a citizen, our resident on the line. Michael Sherman did request to speak to this issue and do you want him to speak now or do you want me to hold that? It appeared to have lost the mayor. Right. Donna. Yes, she had to take a break, which I was gonna ask for everybody. My system keeps cutting out and people are bubbling and I'm losing a lot of what people are saying. So, I'll try. Yes, let's hear from the person from the public. Michael, I've unmuted you. Yes. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. I'm Michael Sherman. Live on College Street in Montpelier and I'm a member of the social economic justice committee. Lauren said most of what I want to say and I have to, just to a note of liberty here, when we put together this draft, I said to Lauren, this is sort of like a turkey shoot that the turkey that lifts his head is the one that gets shot. But we had a long conversation about this this morning and whereas we were reviewing the three proposals that came in. We did issue the RFP in January as scheduled, we had the deadline, we looked at what we got and we came to consensus on the contract we would like to go forward with. But let me say in response to Bill's comment about yes, we could start this next year and just move those and not use the least funds and just to just go forward with what we have. The budget that we saw was the total of somewhere between 47 and 52,000 for a two year period. So we knew going into this that our committee was gonna have to do some fundraising and we're committed to doing that. But the question is not so much when we start because we know what's gonna have to be after the fiscal year, but how much resources we're gonna have towards that 47 to 52 or 53,000 going forward. And that's the issue that we're looking at and then we're asking you to consider. In terms of its social value and its priority we think that this is a uniquely sad moment in terms of having to figure out where we're gonna go forward with providing, making sure that the people who are the most vulnerable in our community and people who have become or more or less invisible in many ways that they're gonna be heard, that they're gonna be paid attention to. And we have to plan for it because we know that there's gonna be a lot of reconstruction going on in the period after the virus crisis has passed. And this is one way to be prepared for that in terms of looking at training, looking at policies, looking at practices that will get these most vulnerable folks some visibility and some consideration what's going forward. So we think, and of course we're prejudiced here, but we think this is a really important project to push through to keep going with. And that's what we're asking you to think about. Also recognizing that you are making really tough choices and acknowledging that and thanking you for that. But we don't want this to be and one of the low hanging fruits that's easy to pluck. So thank you for your time and thank you for your attention to it. And I'm glad that you were willing to look at the weather even though it came to you rather late. As I said, we had our meeting this morning so we really wanted to hold off until we were finished with that. Thanks. Michael, before you disappear, this is Donna Bate. I had some difficulty. Your reception wasn't always clear. Are you seeing in the proposals you received, the cost was between 27 and 52,000? 40, I think it was 43. Is that right, Kamen? 43 was the lowest for the vendor that we're most interested in. It's a two-year, they're proposing a two-year project. The lowest number that they offered was 43,000 and the highest I think was 53. Okay, there's numbers in your proposal of the email, they didn't mention that. They only mentioned the 10,000 of the current. Well, right, that's because much of this email was composed before we had had that meeting. And it was not until this morning that we knew what numbers we were really looking at. Okay, thank you. And Donna, that's coming in before we do any sort of negotiation. Right, that's right. I just wanted to know his numbers. I couldn't hear his numbers on any reception. And also I should say that the corporation or the company that's doing this also said that these are, they can negotiate and they gave us options. And I think as each of us looked at that, we saw it. Sure, that's expected. Yes, that's good. Thank you. Just want to apologize for having to step out a minute. Donna, thank you for taking over there. So I apologize that I was up because I had a question about this as well. So forgive me if this is repeating, but I had thought that the 10,000 that we had allocated for this was in the FY21 budget. Am I wrong about that? Yes, you were giving us a grant of 10,000 this year, this fiscal year. And I think it was a commitment of 10,000 in FY21. So it was two $10,000 grants. Okay, all right. Oh, thank you. Other comments on this particular topic? So I think this is probably something we can revisit. I think I'd like to go through the rest of this presentation and then if somebody wants to bring this part of it back up, maybe we can talk about it then. Does that sound okay to folks? Okay. All right, great. Back to you, Kelly. Great, so if there are, I can go into more detail on any of the other line items if you'd like at this point, or I can move on to the discussion about the furloughs. I think it's okay to move on. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Oh, actually you have one question. I'm sorry, I almost forgot. I noticed here that there's not necessarily anything from the city council's budget. I know our budget is not very big, but I wanted to just check in to see like, I don't know if city council budget had been left off of this for any particular reason. Like, again, there's probably not that much to squeeze out of it, but I just wanted to say, certainly willing if there's, if you see that there's space. Most of it is the pay for the council members and advertising for meetings and sort of legal notices and those kinds of things. We don't really have a lot of operational things in this council budget other than those basic functions. So the assumption was that we need to do all our legal notices. And so it wasn't much there. We were looking for bigger numbers, so. Gotcha. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. So moving on to the furloughs, we were pretty successful in our campaign here to get folks to sign on if they wanted to be part of this program. We have had a little bit of movement within the numbers, but approximately 30 employees, 20 citywide to parking, the citywide numbers where there's been a little bit of movement one way or the other with certain FTEs. So at this point, it's an estimate based on a point in time. But what we think likely will happen if we operationalize this furlough program is that we would be able to collect just 192.7 gross and then $152,300 in GF, which is pretty good and would go a long way towards solving our problem. And it's just been really nice to be able to count on folks here at the city and wanting to help and do their part. I should also mention that for this, we did also look into different programs. And so I've got the Families First Coronavirus Response Act listed, which allows us to offer an additional $600 benefit to folks who do go on unemployment, plus the 513 that they would have gotten otherwise. So folks making $22 an hour or less, which we do have some frontline folks that will really benefit them. And we also did make sure that we structured package in a way that folks were left whole during this time. So there's that. And then if for some reason folks need to be called back because we need to have the work done, then we can still do that. So we've checked with legal counsel on the specifics and details there. And then we've been really making sure that the essential duties that folks are doing are still going to happen. And then public safety, police, fire, EMS were not eligible for the furlough just based on the current situation we find ourselves in. So that in a nutshell is what the staff furlough looks like. It's projected through the end of the fiscal year. But depending on how things go, that might be shorter, might be longer. It all depends. But I'll take questions if anybody has any. Kelly? Yes. Do you mind walking through some of the additional benefits we'll be offering folks like the merit pay and stuff? Yeah, sure. So we will be offering four weeks of health insurance. We'll be offering folks their merit pay. We'll be advancing the merit pay. So that then for the five day window where there's a gap in employment, people will get that. And it's depending on which department you're in, 650 to $750 just to kind of ease that transition for folks. And then also we will keep up the dental vision and other benefits. And so while folks are out on furlough, they're still getting the benefits that they need. There wouldn't be a gap in coverage. But I can get into more detail than that if needed. Thank you. You're welcome. So am I correct in assuming that based on these figures were at something like $85,000 short at this point? It's a little higher than that. Yeah, we're actually about 113 short. Just because of the general fund split. General fund, got you, okay. Right. So the water and sewer funds will be saving about $40,000 on this too. Okay. Well, it's better than it was. That's even a couple of days ago. So that's good. Yeah, we're certainly getting there. That's for sure. And then sort of our goal here is to survive in advance. And so get through these times and then make sure that we're still thinking forward and using what we can, where we can to make up differences and then to kind of conserve what we can to because we just don't know what's going to happen in 21. So here are some of the operational impacts that Bill had referenced earlier within individual departments. And so we'll just give you sort of a brief minute to kind of take a look at those. Amigo, do you see that? Kelly, do you want me to talk? Yeah, that would be great. So since I wrote this slide, send it to her. I don't want to have to wink it. So as mentioned before, police fire, EMT and dispatch will remain fully functional. Those are obviously essential functions that we're all relying on. Similarly, the water and wastewater treatment plants were being fully functional. Although wastewater plants have come up with a reduced schedule. So they'd never have more than two people in the building at the same time. So they can maintain their distancing. So they're sort of partly furloughing. The DPW equipment maintenance group, which is really only two mechanics will remain fully functional so all of our equipment can remain. The biggest hit is our DPW streets and water sewer divisions, the operating divisions. There's a fairly large group there. I don't maybe Kelly, you can come up with that number while I'm talking. But I want to say it's like 10 or so folks from DPW. So that will really, but to be honest, that's also the department we have the biggest challenge with keeping separate. So that there's been a lot of concern about how do we, you know, they can't work from home. They can't, you know, as we mentioned earlier, you know, try to keep them one to a truck, but then you get more trucks driving around, which doesn't match some of our other goals. And so in this regard, we will be limiting our, so DPW work to really basic stuff, street sweeping, patching potholes and repairs, line striping when the weather gets a little better, really basic maintenance and emergency response. We will be able to respond to broken water mains, those kinds of things. As Kelly mentioned earlier, callback is still allowed. So if we have a big storm, we can call people out to plow and those sorts of things. And so Bill, we've got 11 people remaining within the department sort of on task on the day to day. All right. Remaining or leaving? Remaining. Remaining. So not counting the treatment plan. So yeah, our DPW will be shrinking down to 11 people. The planning and development department is also going to see, we're still trying to work out one last detail, but there will definitely be some delays in permit processing because we won't have the full staff and really some of the committees, one of the people Kevin would be going. So he staffs a lot of committees. So a lot of, they support a lot of committees. And so that is really one of the key reasons why we're saying we'd like to hold back on committees. All programming and planning for future programming and recs and senior centers pretty much going to go away. We don't know about summer yet. We don't know whether we'll be able to open the pool. We don't know whether summer camps will be, none of us know where this virus is going to be or whether people, I think what we do know is that it won't be fully eradicated. And so whether people will be prepared to send their kids to these types of things. We just don't know, but the one thing that is remaining is the feast meals program. That's a very important program, providing meals to seniors and 80 people. And if anything, that demand has gone up and making sure we have adequate staffing for that. Parks and trees, a couple of those folks are planning to take furlough. So we would have limited tree work. We would still have a very part-time tree warden. And so the remaining two people would have reduced maintenance in the parks, but it would still allow us to do some really basic things and observing in the parks to kind of behavior those kind of things. Finance and clerk, again, taking a couple of people out of those departments. So we're really gonna have to focus on payroll, accounts payable, accounts receivable, getting the water and sewer bills out when the time comes. Basic needs, not big projects, analytical projects, notwithstanding what Kelly's doing right now, but that kind of work will really be probably her and her alone. Everyone else will be focused on real hands-on tasks. So that will be somewhat limited. Again, the manager, assessor, community justice and cemetery will be mostly functional. We do have some people working from home. So that just creates some delays and we will be picking up some of the work that comes from some of these other departments. So we'll handle more of that. And again, our recommendation is that obviously we have DRB, DRC, things with permits that have to legally meet to get certain work done. Those should continue, but most are all of the non-legally required communities. We're not sure we're gonna provide adequate staff for, so we toss that out. So we think that's the impacts. It'll be really basics-only city for the next two or three months, but we have reviewed all the operations with the employees themselves, the department heads, the managers of those departments and we believe that we can do the basics with this group for this period of time. Great, so I do have one other question about this. Is this, for the budget projections here, does this voluntary furlough, I know you mentioned that it's not gonna start until after the next paycheck, basically, so that they get that full last paycheck. Does that, how long do we anticipate, does this anticipate them being out? Is it till the end of the fiscal year, or is it, okay? So the furlough would start next Tuesday, the 14th, which is the beginning of a pay cycle. So we're in a pay cycle that ends on Monday. And so the furlough would start Tuesday and it's intended to go to June 30, right now. All these numbers are based on it going to June 30. The federal benefits, the unemployment benefits actually go to July 31st. So if we had to continue that benefit is still available for that next month. We don't, after that we don't know. And so that's why I said, I think we're gonna have to see where things stand in June before we make decisions about bringing people back and before we make decisions is in and out of the FY 21 budget. But the numbers you're seeing are all based on ending June 30, it's starting April 14th. Okay, thank you. Other questions folks might have or comments? Okay, so I've got a final slide here and it's what we've kind of been talking about in terms of what our recommendation would be and how to act just to sort of, we know what we're seeing and to kind of rein things in. We would operationalize departmental reductions. We would take up employees on the furlough program and then we would continue to look for savings and see where things fell to the bottom line to be addressed in 2021 to see where we're at at that point. And then Bill had mentioned and I agree and have it on the list here for next steps is we would come back to you in June with the status update to see how the fiscal year is going, how some of these projections are factoring out and to see if more or less is needed and go from there. And so specific next steps would be really focusing on cash flow analysis, looking at short-term and long-term capital planning into 21 so we can really get a sense of lay of the land and things that we absolutely have to do and things that maybe can be shifted either maybe through doing a lesser project or maybe kicking it forward on the timeline and then we come back to you with more information to that end. And as we come up with, when and if we come up with new ideas, we'll sort of let you know and update you on our projections and we will keep you posted pretty regularly on how things are looking at maybe more frequently than we do normally. Dan. Question about letting some of this debt roll over into 2021 or into fiscal year 2021. Are there any penalties with that and will we have to roll that debt over into a new borrowing cycle and will that affect our ability to borrow any other necessary funds? So this isn't a debt necessarily, it's just an operating deficit. Functionally what we'll have you know Kelly mentioned that we had a fund balance of about 700,000 that is below our policy and especially given the uncertainty of what we're going ahead. I mean, the simple solution to this would be to say just apply the 113 from the fund balance to pay this and be done with it. And that's how we're going to reconcile this. Functionally accounting wise that is what's going to happen but what we're saying is our commitment is to retire is to make sure we've covered it all over the next two years. We just don't know what's coming ahead. So we want to keep as much in reserve as we can for the next year. So it's not a debt that bears interest or penalties or anything like that. It's just operating deficit that we go against our cash. Okay, I just wanted to make sure there wasn't any we weren't going to have to extend beyond or lending or borrowing ability with this arrangement understanding that it's not necessarily a tradition borrowing debt. Borrowing would be, so there's a couple of kinds of debt and this is probably a longer conversation for another night. We have a bond limit for bonded projects of which we have a legal limit of which we're well under. We have a self-imposed policy which we're kind of right at. Then we have short-term borrowing that we do all the time tax and distribution nodes bond and distribution nodes. And so this might require us extending the combination of this plus potentially a fall off in tax receipts in May and June. We may not have the cash we might normally have. So we might have to borrow a little bit more. So there could be some interest costs, but we haven't seen any indication that there'll be a penalty or difficulty borrowing. It's actually on our list to do for this week is to reach out to the banks in advance and make sure that we're all lined up for that. But we've never had issues with that. Right. Well, would any of this fall under any of the CARES Act assistance that we're related to? We're trying to figure that out. It's interesting, a lot of the acts and including the governor's recent declaration, we provide reimbursement for expenses related to COVID-19. So if you interpret expenses as simply dollars out, we actually don't have that high cost rate. We bought some more masks, we bought some more gloves, some cleaning supplies, all those kinds of things. Our costs are the foregone revenues and the cost to do services and these impacts that we're talking about. So if those count, then yeah, that would be great. Maybe these aren't all eligible. Thanks. So my take on, were there any other comments? Our questions. I had a question. Yeah, Donna then Connor. And my question was, I presume you're going to be needing a motion on this bill. And if indeed we say, okay, we're willing to go with a possible shortfall of 113,000, then at a later date, maybe even as soon as May, mid May, you say, oh, it's going to be more or less. Do we need another motion? What I think, what I would say that we would do is be that you would authorize the department reductions that we've put out here and authorize the furloughs as they've been outlined. And that would be it. You wouldn't be saying we're approving a deficit of 113,000 but you would be doing so knowing that that was a potential projected consequence. The alternative would be to say, we approve those two things and we direct city staff to come back by next meeting and show us how they've closed the gap. We want it all gone, projected gap. So that would be your other choice. Well, but you're going to be doing that, I mean. No, I understand, but. Yeah, I see. Policy director would be that, no, we don't want to even project the deficit. We want you to. You'll force you to come more and more because I got. Well, of course. Ask us to. And likewise, then we will decide, if you, if indeed we are going to cancel the committees for a while, does that also need to be an emotion? Yes. It would be great. Yeah. Okay. Picturing those as two separate motions, but. Okay. Lauren or actually Connor, you were going to go next. Sorry, Connor, then Lauren. Just kind of like relevant to Donna's question. I did call up a couple like congressional offices today and their understanding is, you know, the latest $2 billion that comes to Vermont, that stimulus package, it's limited only to state government. So there might be some trees we could shake with the different departments to try to limit this a little bit. Hopefully the next stimulus package will allow municipalities to request a directly. The current one is limited to cities and towns over 500,000 in population there. So hopefully the patient gets rosier. Hopefully we can get stuff, but I think this is a pretty responsible package that the city staffs put forward for the time being here. Great. Lauren. Just two things on this slide. I did hope we could have the conversation before we do a motion of the social justice money and for the committee suspension. So if there was a committee, I'm thinking of like the energy advisory committee that are just such an active group of folks, like are they able to organize, they could still organize their own informal meetings. They just went formally be meeting under the umbrella or would it be like do not meet at all because it's a city function and like what message are we sending to? Well, I get that and I think that's, I think the mayor's right, this is a separate discussion. And I don't know if we wanna go through, pick which committees we wanna keep active or not. Remember that all those committees require open meeting law, they need to be warned. And now that means setting up these Zoom meetings and making sure those aren't conflicting with each other through the various things. So having them meet on their own is probably not really proper public meeting unless they wanna take all that on morning themselves and take recording their minutes and those kinds of things. So I think that's where this came from. It was just our ability to manage all of that and provide staff support to those meetings. On the other hand, if for example, the council chooses to keep the funding in safe and social justice and there's a process moving ahead then presumably that is one, we would want, since that is a very active funded project, I would think that committee would meet to keep that moving at least. So, there might be some exceptions to the rule, but I think in general, it's just gonna be very difficult for us to manage. One of the exceptions that we have are like the ones that are other elected bodies like our parks commission, they're a separate entity that needs to make that motion for themselves. I think a lot of the staff support, we really do have to worry about violating open meeting laws and we can't guarantee that without staff present honestly and we don't have the ability to have staff present right now. Can I ask about that too? I mean, there's the part of the recommended language there was that we would cancel all committees, task forces and boards that were not required to continue meeting. Are there any boards besides, I mean, I get that the parks commission is their own separate thing, but is there any other boards or commissions that would be required to continue? Well, of course the DRB, the DRC, the permits, the planning commission could suspend operations if they don't have a deadline necessarily. I'm trying to think the board of civil authority could have to meet for reasons. The grand list is coming up, those kinds of things, property appeals. There's probably a couple more that I'm... Okay. I can't think of, but and you know, and it may be that they, it may be that we allow everyone, you know, one more meeting in the quarter or something to wrap up where they are or something. Lauren, go ahead. Yeah, and it's just kind of on that point to thinking of, you know, if there are either like active RFP processes, like there is for the social justice committee or if there's, you know, like grants being worked on or something where we would forego opportunities, like just, I think that like, when we're checking with everyone of like, what's in progress right now that is halted and is there anything that feels like really important to facilitate just that piece? And maybe it's not like that there's whole meetings, but just are we set up to not miss like, particularly money opportunities and other things right now? Why don't, let me just suggest this. Maybe we could just say council, like put a temporary hold until the next meeting on committees and then what we'll do is do the check in with the committees and see and maybe we'll come back with a more specific recommendation for maybe it would be some should continue or some shouldn't have some need one more meeting to wrap something up or and try to be a little bit more thoughtful, but what we're real, the real message is, I think in generally we can't expect business as usual with our groups because we just can't support them. So is there a motion to hold all meetings until the next council meeting? So moved. And is that sort of what you had in mind there, Bill? Yeah. Can you just second? Yeah. Second. Great, any further discussion about this particular piece? Okay, I'll try to say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay, great. So I'll look for a little bit more information about that at the next meeting. And so on back to discussion, guarding the proposed land here for the budget changes, furloughs and whatnot. Jack, go ahead. I move that the council authorize the manager to put into effect the department reductions and savings measures outlined in the presentation we received tonight. Including the furloughs? Yes, including the furloughs. Thank you. And Connor, you agree with that, right? Okay. Okay, further discussion about that. Yeah, go ahead, Lauren. Yeah, I mean, I know this is all really tough budgeting. I just hate to be mid RFP and at this moment pullback on what we had unanimously agreed on not very long ago of ensuring that social, racial, economic justice are gonna be front and center whether we look at our recovery and rebuilding from this crisis. So I'm just. So as I know, I would hope we could put that 900 back in. So Dan. Well, I guess in response to that I think that's gonna be in part what we're gonna look at in fiscal year 21, because that a lot of the recovery is going to happen at that point. And I think that that's a good discussion for them. And I see this measure right now is how do we get to 21? So I think it makes sense at this point in time to make those adjustments, but in knowing that it's not anyone's choice, but it's just the reality, but then revisiting it in 21. So one, are you suggesting that maybe we are able to, if we vote to remove this $9,500 now that maybe we find an additional $9,500 in addition to whatever else we're dealing with for FY 21? Right. I mean, I think when we have this discussion, because we're gonna have a discussion in June, and I anticipate we're gonna have a discussion after June when we're in fiscal year 21. And I think this topic may be to bring up those points. Lauren, what's your thought about that? Yeah, I mean, I appreciate that. I do think the timing of this work that makes sense, it's just starting off with less money to do work than every RFP that looked very reasonable and like the kind of work the city should be doing. We're already well beyond what the city budget is. We're gonna have to be fundraising for. And so knowing that we have an odd likelihood that we're gonna be in a continuing tough time so it's gonna be hard to find more money. So of course it's gonna be in a deeper hole and it's gonna make it harder to figure out, do we move forward with the RFP or not? So I think it's just gonna be a challenging conversation, but I fully appreciate and know that everybody's heart is with us on the goals we're trying to accomplish. And these are tough times. So Lauren, do you have any alternative proposals or if not, that's okay. May I address the council again, please? Sure. All right. I'm totally unauthorized to suggest this by our committee, but since it becomes clear that, and I think the committee would agree that you, if you're making this choice, you're making it thoughtfully, not just sort of looking for an easy answer way out. But since we know that we can't really start this process before the end of this fiscal year, if we could have some assurance that you would look at giving us the 95 next year and then consider seriously adding another 10 the following year, that would at least allow us then to keep on a two year schedule, which and gives us time to start raising the fund, the money for that. Now, as I say, I'm totally unauthorized to, you know, to speak on behalf of our chair for one, but for the committee as a whole, but I do see this as one way of going forward with making the cut that you, that you need to make, but going forward and thinking about, okay, we will be sure assured of what we're going to do. We will be sure assured of 9500 or 10,000 in FY 21 when we will be spending half of it and that you will seriously consider then moving the other 10,000 that we or whatever's left into the following fiscal year. And I know it's very hard to make those projections, but at least we could get started and getting started is better, I think for everybody for the whole community than not doing anything at all. Thank you. I appreciate that suggestion, Michael, but yeah, Jack, go ahead. I, I get, I totally get the intent of the comment and what I would say, given that we don't know what our situation is going to be like in three months or six months or a year, the way I would look at it is that this is an effort that the council unanimously thought was important to go forward and to fund and to even fund it outside of the normal funding calendar. And I don't see that changing. And if the budget looks, as we're looking at the budget in the future years, I'm certain we'll be looking for ways to make this happen, whether it's possible, we don't know, but I think we'll be looking for ways to make it happen. Donna, go ahead. I just want to support that totally, Jack. I think you said it. I think our heart is there, but I have no way of making a promise now when everything is so unknown. So I would not support a motion that did that. Yeah, I could see that at the same time. I think if we, you know, in the absence of a motion about next, you know, FY 22 is budget, you know, if we can put that sort of in front of us now as an intention or a thought, I think that's, I think that's valuable as well. And we'll have to revisit that. And I think it's, it'll probably be easier to revisit it in FY 22. If we have it in for FY 21. So. That's, that's how I anticipate that going potentially. Lauren, any further thoughts on this or Michael? If not, okay. Yeah, go ahead, Lauren. So I guess, you know, just work. And this might get styled out with our committee work being put on hold, but just to be able to convey to the committee. So the understanding of the council right now is not that we're also going to be looking to scrape back the 10,000 for the FY 21 people are continued to be committed to this project, but see it more as a fiscal year 21 project. So keep moving forward with the RFP. Don't put it on hold, but this fiscal year's money. Has disappeared. General head nodding. I just hope for far to, or like be working with consultants and then if people, it sounds like that's not what I'm hearing, but I just wanted. I didn't understand her. About the moving forward in the RFP. I think many projects are sort of at pause with any sort of contractual situation. So maybe I misunderstood what Lauren meant. Well, so I, I guess I'm trying to get clarity to bring back to the committee. Like we're my understanding just. You know, we're not going to move forward with the project. We're not going to move forward with the fiscal year. We're not going to move forward with the council. It sounds like, you know, there's obviously lots of unknowns with the fiscal situation for the next six months, but as of right now, we're not saying that we don't want to move forward with the project next fiscal year. So we are going to be in touch with the consultants who applied. So it's just, there's a pause. We'll, we'll circle back with you. Not like we're pulling the plug on this project. Right. You can say everybody like everybody. We're pulling, we'll just pause him right now and we'll move forward. Yeah. Thank you. Great. So there's a. Motion and a second regarding approving. City manager to move forward with the proposed changes to the budget. Any further discussion. Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Opposed. Okay. I think that was an. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that unanimous need passed. And. So, so at this point, we've been going for a little while. I've had a request for a break. And I know Dan and. Elizabeth Parker are still on the line for their presentation. But if I'm going to ask folks to maybe take. Just a five minute break and then we'll come back and. I mean, hopefully we'll still be ending my 10. That's my goal. So is that, is that okay with folks to take a quick break? Okay. Super. All right. We'll see you in five. Elizabeth on the line. So that's, that's great. And if I may just clarify, I'm on the meeting just because I listened to the meetings. Okay. And when I was on Orca earlier. I was on the meeting. I was on the meeting. I was on the meeting. I was on the meeting. I was on the meeting. But if they weren't transmitting them, the sound was as if it was coming through. Some sort of. Sub oceanic cable. And so I decided to come and I just, the quality on zoom has been excellent for me. I'm like Donna. And so Dan will be making the presentation. Okay. All right. So. Again. Thanks, Dan, for joining us. I guess I'll, so this is the point of this is for just to have an update about where we're at with capital area neighborhoods and I'll turn it over to you, Dan. Thank you. I wish I could have a more exciting song and dance to end with, because it's been a very long meeting for you. So I appreciate any attention we can provide. In this crisis, so we've all been accommodating rather rapidly. You know, less than a month ago, we had a meeting in the city council chamber. The Connor and Donna attending to do a advisory council for on demand micro transit. And now the idea of shared transit seems to be far in the future. So we have to shift and we're, and asked us to help with this capital area neighborhood project. And I'm not sure if it's going to work in progress, but it was to see if we could develop the connections. Within the city that are absolutely necessary. And one of the things you have to do as a background is everybody says, okay, we'll put it on the net. We'll put out this notice. You know. And forget that there's a large portion of people in town who actually are unwebbed in many ways. They don't have smartphones, a lot of them elderly. And so the people that you perhaps want to reach the most with emergency communication and all sorts of communication. Not subject to the current assumption that well, as long as we put out a web address for it, it's everybody's going to know it. It's like, you know, people enjoyed reading the bridge, but now the bridge because it's a, you know, difficult to find the money is now printing on the web without. It's hard for a lot of people. So what we realized is okay to provide a link of the connections that's going to be required for people to understand, you know, what's available for them, et cetera, and to move forward. We're going to have to create some kind of more human scale human communications network. And that was where the capital area neighborhoods project had started. And so we were trying to figure out what we were doing on the basis of the. New years ago, 12 years ago on the last financial crisis. To try and connect with people who needed work on either help needed services, but didn't know how to find it. So we tried to figure out how to build what we're doing on the basis of the. Bones of what was left from the last project. And there were a few neighborhoods that were still functioning and discovering is that there are a lot of people in town who would like to help would like to be part of such a thing, but they, they need to be contacted. And, you know, I got to have to thank Dan Richardson for a lot of help for reaching out for with people to help connect to we did form postings, et cetera. And at this point we've had 10 of the 12 original can connect with the community. And we've had a lot of people who have been working with the community. So we found at least one or more coordinators who's been willing to step up and talk about what's going to be required. And what these folks are going to be doing is literally putting together the email lists were possible in the community, but also a process of reaching out with flyers under the doors or whatever so that people can. And I think it's an interesting experience about a week ago with a sort of first run of the flyer where she put some in the downstream and pioneer housing projects and had one lady who, you know, called her up on the telephone, my God, thank you, thank you, thank you. I didn't know this capacity was available. And I want to help get this information. You know, if you have flyers you have, I'll make sure that I'm going to help put them around in the building. And it was sort of like a huge, oh my God, it actually works. Something here is actually happening. And I have to interject here, Dan, for just a moment. This woman is 86 years old and she's such a sweetie pie. So she asked for grocery and pharmacy help and then said, I want to volunteer. How sweet is that? Also, we've discovered that people are actually yearning for the kind of the community connections that are possible that they've been feeling have been not available of late. So we're getting some very interesting feedback already. And besides Elizabeth, we've all had also had Laura Byron, who's sort of taken on the role of the community organizer in this project and has been doing. And was a tent. Nators a week and a half ago. And we discovered that everybody had a different take on things. It was not exactly a, you know, a unanimity of how they wanted to approach things. And so we realized we had to go out and actually work with each neighborhood separately. And so we've been doing that identifying people. And it's, it's turned out to be quite good. Some neighborhoods already have some tools that are available. Others say, Oh, what do we do? How do we help? You know, what do we do? And it's been exciting to see this project begin to emerge. The, I guess the way of putting it, the camp project is a key component of both an emergency response effort, which everybody sees right now. But if we assume, okay, and this is just my assumption, I'm not, you will each have your own take on it. Things may not go back to normal. And I've heard a lot of discussion about that presumption tonight that somehow in a few months, we're going to be back to normal. If we're not back to normal, then we have to figure out other ways of allowing people to get together to be able to connect with each other. And feel like they're participating in the, the life. It was something more than just an emergency response, but as a mechanism for providing the communications that will be needed in the long run of the, you know, and, but we, we aren't taking care initially of the community response. So we are making sure that the volunteers of MMA, that unpronounceable acronym from Washington and Orange counties to, you know, be part of, what? Thank you, Anne. I'll go with that one for the time being. Make sure that they're, you know, part of the information that's being offered. What we're doing is training each of the coordinator groups in each of the neighborhoods in how to find the resources that are needed so that they can connect directly with MMA. They can correct, connect directly with the other things so that if people feel like they need things, it's not like we're the, uh, switchboard. We're the training, we're the resource developer. We're trying to figure out how to make the work that they, it's going to support them as this goes forward. Um, and so that's why we see this as not just a, uh, emergency response for this moment, but as a long-term benefit to the city. And, um, we're trying to develop that way. Um, what we've heard a lot of in the, uh, you know, as part of this, when we've had the, uh, individual meetings with the neighborhood coordinators is they don't want to just stop with the, uh, emergency, that each one of them is basically saying, well, how do we pull our neighborhoods together to do things more in the future? And one of the big ones that's turning out to be an issue is people are deciding that food is an area, you know, that how, how do we begin to imagine ways of creating community food gardens? How do we create, uh, turn lawns into gardens, et cetera? Because everybody's hearing about food issues. I think they go into the store and see empty shelves, not over toilet paper, but from other things. And they begin to say, well, is this going to be a future issue? So, uh, this, uh, project. That way of helping coordinate future, uh, issues around food. Um, and, uh, that's where we hope to, uh, take it now. We're a small nonprofit. We're, we're, we're not particularly well funded. In fact, we're facing some of the same things the city is as far as, uh, you know, originally I had come tonight to say, well, could you help support us in this effort? Uh, but after listening to the whole presentation from, uh, Bill and the, uh, the city and said, okay, well, that, that's a non-starter. So I'll, uh, try and figure out, uh, how to say, well, are there ways that the city. Yeah. That's fine. Resources Connor had mentioned at one point that maybe there are, um, other national or state programs that might be, uh, usable for this. And I'm just throwing that out there, but I would like to request the city's help and finding that, uh, if we're going to continue this project, we're going to be running out of money in a couple of months. If we're not lucky and, uh, you know, that would bring our coordination organizing, et cetera, to a dead halt. So that, uh, that's the challenge that we see right now. We see is also a lot of people in the neighborhoods are going to be facing that fear of unemployment, the fear of being marginalized economically. And so this project, you know, what we're just like this, the 85 year old lady that Elizabeth mentioned is a way of getting people a sense of participation of some agency in their neighborhoods so that they're not feeling quite so isolated as they, uh, you know, suffered, but there's a way to find. Help each other, which is really what Vermont should have been about for a long time and could be still. So that's, uh, where we see this camp project being able to grow into and to be part of our collective future. So that's my quick and dirty on what's possible here. And I'll, I will open up to any questions that people have about what's going on. You know, it's interesting to consider this possibility of, um, I mean, I know we had capillary neighborhoods many years ago and the focus isn't, you know, maybe in the longterm just about COVID-19, but I wonder if there's a case to be made that, um, there, you know, that this could be a cost of the city that could be applied, uh, just some, some of these like state or federal, um, grants. Anyway, I just want to, I feel like I heard that a little bit. So I just wanted to call that out. Um, interesting possibility. Um, any other questions or comments for Dan? Uh, Jay. Yeah. Hey, thanks, Dan. Yep. Thanks, Dan. Um, I'm curious what, besides just online social media email, that type of thing. I'm curious what thoughts you and maybe Elizabeth have around what mechanisms you would use to connect people. I mean, what, how do we facilitate these individual connections? Um, and obviously events aren't really in our short-term future here, but, um, how do you, how do you see that playing out long term? Thanks. Sure. Well, that's why you saw, we gave you a copy of the, uh, hopefully bill of, uh, uh, discerning it, but gave you a copy of the, this brochure, the developing, which is the coordinate, delivering to all the apartment buildings, et cetera, in places we don't, we see the telephone as one as a, uh, connecting device. Uh, you know, and that's probably one that we've all discounted because we live in the smartphone, uh, email age, but, uh, like the story that Elizabeth had about this 85 year old lady, the telephone was the secret weapon. Uh, and there are, you know, Dan, if I can jump in for a second. The, um, the other thing that, uh, for instance, um, one of the, uh, original canned coordiners, uh, Heather from up on, uh, well, actually a neighbor of Jack's, uh, up on, uh, town street. Uh, and when, um, Groberg, uh, did his, uh, you know, community sing instead of doing it late in the evening as, as was suggested, they did it much earlier so that all the children in the neighborhood could come and in a socially distanced way, uh, be able to sing together, uh, with that grouping of three streets. And so I think that there are creative, you know, one of the things that, uh, can is doing is hopefully going to work with, uh, until you're alive, uh, you know, until your mutual aid, but there are a lot of creative ideas. And the wonderful thing about, uh, having everybody, uh, working together is that they get shared. And, uh, so, uh, I think that there are socially distanced events that can be fun and build neighborhood, uh, until such time as it's summer and hopefully we can come together and have barbecues. Uh, and also the other thing, Jay, just as a point of this is, like I said, we've been at this slightly less than three weeks. So your question and we're, we're open to all suggestions about how you would like to see us do things because we're inventing this as we go. It's not like there was a, somebody handed us a manual and said, here, go do this and this. We're, uh, we're trying things, uh, you know, that's why I described this meeting. We had a couple of weeks ago, uh, it was chaos, you know, so, uh, and, and kind of test to that. And, uh, you know, what we learned a lot and that's what we intend to do. So your question, you know, I'll turn it back on you and say, whatever suggestions you have, please forward to us because we're open to all of this. Great. Um, uh, so actually I just want to, uh, note with that story. I mean that I feel like there's going to be so many really like sweet stories that come out of this. And, um, part of me hopes that you, well, I'm sure that you all are keeping track of these stories. Um, but I think it, it could all be really lovely, um, to have a way to like report out, you know, not necessarily like with council time, but like how, how can you all be like telling us the stories of what is happening within our community? Cause it's like, it's lovely. It's lovely stuff. Um, I think I saw Lauren, uh, had a hand in Jack. Elizabeth, go ahead. Then Lauren than Jack. Yeah. Okay. So I wanted to say that I'm in the process of creating, uh, a Montilier can, uh, Facebook page. Uh, you know, we've resurrected Facebook pages like, uh, I heart Berry street, which is, uh, from 12 years ago. And they used to have pancake breakfasts and those have fallen by the wayside. Um, Park West has a Facebook page. I'm talking about obviously electronic, uh, things, but that is going to be potentially a lot of how we share these stories. But we are looking toward, uh, being able to capture a lot of this anecdotal stories. Like I was up in my community garden. Uh, you know, one of the women who lives in, uh, at, at, uh, that over the transit center saw Mike, good 93 year old friend, Don lions in the laundry room without a face mask. So I got to call him up and tried him because his children don't live locally. And, um, it gave me the idea of talking with, uh, Janna at MSAC where I'm getting some of her, um, mask makers to start to make masks. And I'm evaluating all the high density buildings, apartment buildings to see how many masks there are. And I'm evaluating all the high density buildings, uh, apartment buildings to see how many masks we need for, uh, elders who don't have them like Annie and, uh, Don. So they're, they're just, I think they're going to be a lot of opportunities for us. And I think I'm going to be starting an Instagram page as well, uh, just for people to give little clips and little stories. Cause a storytelling is, is so archetypal inside of us. And especially now it's really important. And just finished up before Jack on that one is that, uh, you know, this is the occasion where, were we to have some capacity for printing and stuff may, helping the neighborhoods make little printed newsletters, uh, with those stories that could be shared among each other. Or also one of those things that gives people a sense of participation of, I know it's sort of like backward thinking because everything is supposed to be done on the web or not. But I think we're fine being right now that we're going to have these interesting challenges that technology is not going to save everything. And so it's time to put it more to human scale. Oh, Lord. I, yeah, I just wanted to briefly, I mean, I'm really appreciative of your leadership and as mayor and for, um, Dan and Elizabeth and you all, um, I mean, it seems like the ability to take the, the momentum and all the effort that so many people are kind of stepping up, which is so inspiring in our community for this emergency and how do we like capture the, that enthusiasm and carry it forward when we're not in emergency response mode. So working with the mutual aid groups, the knock rock, however you did the, you know, so that, that's an emergency response group. But what kind of, you know, resources or ideas and things can be tapped into that, that can could help be an ongoing long lived like resilience to the future. Um, so, you know, just look forward to continuing to brainstorm with you all of how we, you know, can, can tap into all this energy we have right now to, to help each other and don't lose that as when it feels like that crisis is abating the crisis of the moment. I just wanted to say that one of the partnerships with MMA is that instead of them just assigning a random volunteer to a person who has a need, we're giving them the neighborhood lists so that they can understand and start to match up people, hopefully within the same street or a couple of streets, so that those can become long-term relationships and repeat relationships. So they're little subtle things like that, that are building community. Cool. Jack and then Dan. Just a quick matter in terms of. The activities that are going on. I know that the same community saying that my friend Heather organized someone in somebody did record that on video and that's been also been circulated around the neighborhood. Nice suspect that. We'll see a lot of that people. Documenting the things they're doing. Kind of in an organic way. Yeah. Cool. Dan. I had a couple of, of thoughts and I've talked with, with Dan on a number of occasions. About this because I think there's a lot of potential here, but one. Bill, is there someone in the city that's sort of. Acting as a point person for the grants or money that's coming out of the, either the state or federal government. We are just. Focusing on that now. Normally that would be Kevin, but he's going to be. So we're actually going to be talking about it tomorrow. Right. But there will be. I mean, it just seems like, you know, that, that's going to be important to keep this, this can group. You know, in mind as a potential, because I suspect if any. Money for sort of community organizing or, you know, neighborhood support. I think that's a direct expense that we could, we could seek to get that kind of funding from the state. So that's the first thing. And I'm, that seems like a pretty easy lift. Because we're going to be looking at that money anyway. The other thing is I really want to emphasize Dan and Elizabeth, that I think. You know, the real benefit of what you guys can do. With this group is to read, is to have each neighborhood really define how it wants to organize and how it wants to. Support itself and the meadow may do it differently than Barry street and may do it different than Berlin street and may have different priorities. And I think that's a really. You know, and Dan, we've had this conversation and I guess I'm just sort of putting it on, on the record as it were. But I mean, you know, it's, it's really important for the neighborhood because there's an opportunity to cross pollinate for, you know, groups to see each other, what they're doing. And learn, but I think it's also important that, you know, what is important for the meadow may not work for Berlin street. And I think this sort of decentralized group. Where the neighbors are really driving it. Are important. And I think it will be great to, you know, I, I, I think it will be great to, you know, I think that as far as a long-term idea that this is something we should really, you know, be looking to do because I think it really strengthens the community by having these neighborhoods get together. And, and we should be looking for opportunities as a council going forward to find, find opportunities to, to utilize this. And just to answer that Dan for a little bit more. I think it's important for the neighborhood. We're sort of clumped together on the map or actually. I live there are like three different neighborhoods that are actually, you know, so that the freedom drive condos are different than the colonial drive area. If you go along. River street below Berlin is different than the upper Berlin street. I think that's, I think there's a big difference between the neighborhood and the neighborhood. I think that's just a, is there a big difference between the neighborhoods and the neighborhood and the neighborhood and the neighborhoods and the neighborhood, you have 12 essentially beginning neighborhoods. End up with. Because that's how people actually relate to each other. That's the individual out of that you're talking about. And I've sat in on all that neighborhood meetings. And I think, Dan, you're absolutely right. our differences and yet there are the similarities of wanting to build community. So it's been fascinating and I think one of the exciting things has been that we have a number of veteran veterans from 12 years ago who are able in one of our first meeting that Ann went to there were some people who were kind of pulling their hair out feeling overwhelmed and with doll just said you know well you know it takes time so it is going to take time and we've got a bit to go but we've made a good initial effort and and I look forward and embrace the diversity of the different sub neighborhoods as they evolve. Connor and then Donna. Yeah just one thought I mean obviously we're not able to write a check today for this thing but I think we can put some skin in the game by as a council each one of us sort of committing to maybe sit in on like one or two of these zoom meetings as each individual neighborhood takes off and just building that tie with the city and these groups I think like for example Jack and I can you know split the baby in district two there and take two each. I think it's a good thing to do just if it's going to be a long-term goal to get this up and running just to build that connection. So it might be worth it when I was talking to Dan about this in the next week or so just hop on a zoom call. We will make sure you're invited. Donna I really like that idea Connor of us being participants as council members. Dan Jones thank you so much for backing up asking for money because tonight would not be a good night. However I do think there's a lot of things to take one is that maybe not have such high expectations but any siege you plant anyway you can get people to start meeting for that group is a wonderful beginning. My old neighborhood group meant until four years ago but the thing about it wasn't intergenerational and I think we really need to look at bringing young people in not just us older adults. So there's a way we can help do that maybe connection with the schools I don't know but I think that would be really helpful and that I think the smaller the group sometimes the better so I like your idea of subgroups of neighborhoods so you have a northfield street but then you may have northfield dash something else they all create their own little name you know that could be much more ownership. I really love the ideas you and Liz have shared and really appreciate how much time and energy you put into it and however much more you can do the better it will be and I'd like to see it folded into our community services and in case anybody's forgotten that's the integrated senior center rec center group and I really like us to have that eventually brought into the city thank you. I just want to comment that every Tuesday at 1.30 well now people are being furloughed but you know we've had different city departments Cameron's been on the call Tony was on the call when you were talking about policing I wanted to jump in but I'm glad he sent a message in because he did give us an update I guess was that just yesterday I guess it was yesterday seems like a year ago but anyway we have RSVP CVC OA the churches so there's a lot of cross pollination that's happening there and we've made a commitment to meeting on Tuesdays just to share information you know how the church lunches are happening for instance you know so we're just sharing that kind of information and Don I wanted to say that your neighborhood on North Street has had a Gmail account for 12 years and there are 140 people on it yeah and so what I'm working on is getting you know Gmail accounts for each of the neighborhoods just you know kind of a big blanket account and then all the southern neighborhoods are you know making choices about how they interact so there's a lot of good things happening. Donna I want to address that we have I she Elizabeth really did highlight that but our community services departments are being very closely aligned with what can is doing our VISTA member Chet has been doing a lot of work with them and so we really are trying to make sure we can support them as much as possible internally through our staff as far as limits allow so while furloughs probably will impact that a bit Chet is not going to that he's a VISTA employee and will be with us through the fall so he will continue to assist them our general staff will continue to be in contact with them weekly. And Chet is doing that some work kind of cross-pollination work that I was talking about of sorting MMA by Akan Streets and so it's been a great help he's been wonderful. Okay so I'm just conscious of the time here any further thoughts okay so I actually one thing I'll just be super short one possibility is that just in terms of non-financial supports that we can offer if neighborhood groups need equipment like tables and chairs to host a you know pancake breakfast or whatever I'd love to see if we have the capacity to let people let groups borrow stuff from the city to do that sort of thing but we can do that I'd like to say that one of our immediate needs are sandwich boards we're borrowing some from Groberg and Montpelier alive but if there are any other sandwich boards that any of you know about we're putting two on Berry Street two up on North Street one out in Toy Town and printing on your printing account with a capital copy so that we can actually make stuff that's get informant informative people but on the sandwich boards. All right any further comments? Okay well thank you Elizabeth and Dan for giving us this update it was great. Thank you for having us. Yep and so we're on to the last item for regular business seating which is council reports I'm gonna go in the same order that I would go in if we were sitting in the horseshoe so I'm gonna start with Donna if you're if you're ready. I'm quiet tonight I keep bleeping out thank you all for being patient. Great thank you Connor. I'd go just thanks to the city staff thanks everybody who's rising to the occasion and Montpelier here it's uh and I think we're up to the task it's stuff but it's been great to see the city come together. It really has the last few weeks so thanks. Jay I'll echo that and then just quickly add that it really was like Lorna Lutitou. I heard from a lot of constituents this last week or two a lot of folks are really invested in in in our city and in our community and worried about each other and our future um so it really is great to hear from folks and get out passionate they are and uh so I'm really grateful for that thank you. Yeah uh yeah yeah um yeah I'll echo the same I want to say congratulations to Bill on being named as a candidate for the uh town manager so the is it the IC I want to make sure to get the acronym correct um but that's a fantastic honor and it really shows that um you know our city manager is a leader within his profession and field and I think that's worthy of note and uh I'll leave it at that. Thanks Jack. Well Dan stole what I was going to say I I agree um it's uh it's a great recognition of the great work that Bill has done for many years congratulations to Bill and I'm sad. Okay uh Lauren. Well it's haven't been counted yet. Yeah I mean I just wanted to echo the appreciation of you know with city staff working so hard to try to keep our city employees as whole and well through this really challenging time and I just think the communication with staff and everything has been excellent and really thoughtful and so really appreciate that that hard work um and the hard work of all of our city staff um and just our our community really stepping up um and just wanted to also say happy Passover you know just Passover tonight um so for all of our Jewish friends. So I want to uh echo what Lauren said about um um I'm gonna thank you particularly Bill for the excellent communication um with city staffs very um I appreciate being kept up um you know kept in the loop about those those emails and they're just clearly very um compassionate and so thanks for for taking so much time and care with that and also congratulations on um the ICMA VP candidacy it's very exciting and I also just want to thank both the city staff who volunteered for furloughs um thank you um it helps and I also want to thank the city staff that are staying on um and particularly those you know who um who need to keep working and and all of our city staff that are essential um and and extend that thanks out to the rest of the community at large thank you to um all of the doctors and nurses um who are continuing to work through this crisis and just an FYI I did put out another video as an update for the city with some recent news and we'll try to keep doing that as any news changes so um that's that's it from me um and so John do you have anything for us? um you know not really all good well actually I do I have a question do you need us so you sent out an email with a liquor license information what do you need for us in terms of signatures we they will still have to be signed I mean it's not immediate because the the liquor control office has extended the deadline indefinitely but um yeah so I guess we'll have them because I mean there's also going to be the warrants so I guess it will just be over at the police station okay so we'll get notified when uh when they're there it should all be there tomorrow yeah okay okay so we'll be there tomorrow yeah great um Bill let you know it's easy what's that we can still let you know that's easy oh yeah um and anything further John yeah that's it okay Bill um well thanks to all of you for your support of my running for ICMA VP thanks to the mayor for her great letter and um appreciate the recognition tonight I wouldn't have mentioned it on my own but since you do um there is an election to be held I will probably be the only candidate Connor still wouldn't take up take me on as a campaign manager though despite those odds um but that's okay uh I I really want to see what what the marriage has said um we're thanking the staff um our folks really took this seriously this last week and we got you know very thoughtful dialogue with people we didn't get you know the kind of reaction you might expect we got people really interested in asking questions and wanting to know and obviously know what it meant for them personally um we went round and round internally how to go I'm really glad we did it voluntarily um it kind of worked out where it ended um and so I thank the people that took that seriously and and I do thank the folks that are remaining they fall into two categories and we've got our first responders and our dispatch people and that are out there directly interacting with um folks in need and folks that are sick and just like the medical professionals everybody else they're really putting their lives and their families lives at some sort of risk here um and so obviously you can't say enough about them and but there's also the folks that are left in the other departments who are now all going to be trying you know as as hard as we say we're going to go down to basics we all know expectations of people and so we're going to have a lot of people trying to do the work of two or three people on their own to try to keep up and so I appreciate those that are hanging in there as well um I actually don't have the full list in front of you we'll get out but we've had some really good response from local businesses offering some support uh that I'd like to mention um Caldonia Spirits as people know is making hand sanitizer and they've donated a couple of big gallon buckets to both fire department and the police department because they were running low and interestingly enough if you buy some yourself on their site they give you a donate option so you can click a donation and they'll donate some two different uh basically you buy them for other public safety or public health people um we've had donations from people who are just bringing sandwiches um we had a was it um so I have the list if you want me to go through it come on please give the list I don't want to forget you might yeah of course um Vermont Mutual ordered sandwiches for our fire and police from pinkies who supplied that for them so we thank them harvest equipment gave um 12 pairs of safety glasses for use for for protective equipment tractor supply gave two full plexiglass face shield Caledonia Spirits like Bill said gave us two gallons of hand sanitizer and an individual named John fate gave us a box of in many five masks and the police also want to thank Birch Grove Baking and Alavita for their support so great so great response from people supporting our our folks and like I said so far so good we haven't had in 1640 yet um at least not with COVID-19 um and but you know we you're still planning as though that won't last um but thanks to and thanks to all of your support and your interest and touching base and your kind words that's it we're done okay couldn't say better myself uh so without objection we'll consider this meeting adjourned thanks everybody night thank you night everybody thanks for everything thank you