 Folks, can you hear me? There's no sound coming from you. Can you hear me now? Your mic is off, Rosanne. Yeah, I didn't know if the sound was turned out of the room or not. It's great, it's one of my little- The South Brongton City Council meeting to order on Monday, September 20th, 2021. And we'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Say, second item is instructions on exiting the building in case of an emergency. So, just as a reminder for all of us, there are two doors in the back. Exit doors on either side of those doors. You can go left or right. And for those on the go-to meeting, I just wanna also remind you that we are no longer using a chat for comments. If you would like to make a comment, you may do so through the chat and we will be sure to call on you. But all comments in the record do need to be verbal. Thank you. Okay, item three is the agenda review. Are there any additions, deletions, or changes in order of agenda items? And I think Jessie has one. Yes. I would like to respectfully request that we add one item to the consent agenda, a new 6B. This is a three-party agreement between the City of South Burlington, the Skating Association, and TD Bank. It allows for the refinance of a pass loan that was offered by Mr. Cairns that you all approved in January 2021 and transitions that financing to TD Bank. We, and when you approved this in January, you did anticipate that once the construction was complete, that financing would move over. And so this is the request to do so. And we're requesting that today because they are trying to close on their financing. Are there any other additions, deletions, or changes? Okay, seeing none, do I have a motion to accept the, oh wait, I skipped, excuse me, announcements. Oh no, I'm right, excuse me. So I'm, Is that the addition? Yes. So no, so we're all set with the addition. Okay, now I'm sorry. I think you have to approve the agenda as amended. Okay, so approval of the agenda as amended, all in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any post that carries five to zero. Comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. Are there any? Yes, I have a comment to go through to my camera. Is it, is it Shelly? My name is Shelly, okay. Thank you. Ken, you're made tonight. That's the good stuff. Yes, we can, thank you. Thank you. So good evening, my name is Shelly Mathias. I'm also Michelle Mathias. And I've been a Southboro-Lincoln resident for 10 years. I live in the Stonehenge townhouses. And I'm here to advocate for not only retaining open lands, but more specifically for developing building and development guidelines that have a rigorous stance on reducing environmental impact on air and water quality. We've all seen the impact of climate change increase year after year with wildfires and floods and violent storms increasing in frequency and severity across the country. And I would like to see the city of South Burlington adopt a stance of environmental stewardship through requiring net zero energy consumption for all new structures, residential or commercial. The incremental costs of net zero technology can be mitigated much in the same way as food processors mitigated the appearance of rising prices with less volume or weight in their packaging. Housing developers can marginally reduce the overall footprint of structures to accommodate the investments required for net zero buildings and can market the significant annual savings and energy costs to the buyer which can be factored into the annual cost of net zero home ownership. We need to institute a building standard that requires net zero infrastructure in the plans that are submitted and that the infrastructure must be verified during inspection for occupancy. The other piece that I think is really important for our environment is the level of permeability and impermeability in our development. I've been very disturbed by the increase in impermeable surfaces being installed in more recent developments in South Burlington. And by permeability, the ability to absorb rainwater is really what I'm talking about. Newer developments include or including sidewalks on both sides of the streets as well as paved bike paths, none of which use permeable materials. Older South Burlington neighborhoods don't have sidewalks and residents peacefully enjoy strolling in them safely. We must have a firm limit to the level of impermeable surfaces permitted by the city for new construction. The fact that an individual can afford to build a large home and pave large amounts of their property doesn't really give them the right to impose additional environmental impact on the rest of us to clean up. I applaud requiring developers to revert to preserve fields, forests and wetlands surrounding their development to mitigate, to maintain green space. But none of those elements mitigate the value of the land lost to rainwater retention because of the impermeable surfaces created by structures and paving. The footprints of houses, pavement for driveways and sidewalks all create additional burden to downstream environmental conditions which then end up in the ground water and the lake. South Burlington needs a more stringent set of guidelines that provide a ratio of permeable to impermeable surfaces for development, residential and commercial. And impermeable surfaces, there's stay mat, there's all kinds of technologies that can be used that still provide a lovely place for people to live. Gandhi once said, there's enough in this world for every man's need, but not enough for every man's greed. And sustainability requires long-term thinking and action. And yes, a little sacrifice in the sizes of our homes and the way we use our resources. I thank you for your time and your service on the council. Thank you very much. Thank you. Any other commenters? Barb, I think Barb's service. Yes, please. Hi there, Walker. Good evening. Good evening, it's nice to see you all. Usually I come prepared with remarks tonight. I confess that I'm not, but I just wanna come and say some kind words. Many of us, I think last I heard there were about 80 who were appealing their reassessment. I was one of them in the pipeline. And today I told Donna she could take my name off. And I wanna tell you that Martha Lyons has been extraordinary in terms of looking at data and saying, oh, we didn't have the correct information. It is not the city's fault that the wrong information was there, but she was open to the conversation, looked at it and I found her to be much more hospitable than the first round of appeal with the company that was doing that. So I just wanted to come and say, Martha and Donna have been extraordinary in terms of their patience and help. And the good news is the Board of Civil Authority will have one less appeal to listen to because we were able to get to the bottom of where the inaccuracies were, et cetera. And there are a lot of them in summer woods alone. So I'm sure there are a lot across the city, but as one satisfied taxpayer, I wanted to come and give a kudo for a change instead of somebody coming to complain. So my thanks to Donna and Martha and to the way the whole process has been working. Well, thank you very much. And we appreciate people who can work out their differences before having to come before the Board of Civil Authority. It's been a lot of work these last couple of weeks. So thank you and I'm glad. We do appreciate withdrawals. Yeah, we do. And it's really nice to hear the compliments for Donna and Martha. It's been a lot of work on their part. So thank you very much, Barbara. Are there any other comments by individuals? Rosanne, okay. Yes, hi. This is not a criticism, but it does fit in with your efforts to address the climate crisis. Last week, I heard a news report on what Burlington is doing regarding gas-powered lawn equipment. And apparently they just passed a regulation prohibiting the use of gas-powered. And I don't know if it's all lawn equipment or whether it's just leaf blowers or trimmers or, and it's gonna be phased in. It doesn't start immediately, but it's gonna be phased in. So I'm encouraging South Burlington to learn what Burlington is doing and consider and possibly do the same thing here in South Burlington. They cited in the news report that the reason Burlington is doing this is for multiple reasons. One is fossil fuel use. Obviously using gas-powered equipment uses fossil fuels. The second thing is they're very polluting. And the third thing is the noise. If you've ever been around commercial land or lawn services, the noise is incredible and disturbing as well as are harmful to us. So I'm hoping that South Burlington can find out more about what Burlington is doing, learn from them and hopefully discuss and maybe enact this along with your other measures to take action to mitigate the climate crisis impact. The second thing has to do, and I sent you an email. I don't know if I have to say this, but I'm going to, since I'm speaking with you now, is that would you consider allowing me to save the three ash trees that are in front of my house? I'd pay for the treatments. I'd sign a contract agreeing that if I don't keep up with the treatments or for some reason they become infected and have to be taken down, I would incur the costs of doing that. I'm asking you because two of the three trees have blue ribbons around it, meaning they're going to be cut down this year. And I would hope that you could at least discuss it and give me a yes or no before those trees are cut down in case you say yes, because I'd like to save the three ash trees that are in front of my house. So thank you for considering this and thank you for your service to our city. Thank you. We'll consider that later, I guess we should ask. Okay, another speaker. Yes. Hello. Oh, right here. This is great. I'm gonna say hi to everybody. My name's Steve Melitzia. Oh, you can hear me well. I will take that hat off too. Just like to take a couple of moments and I'll say everybody's name to recognize you. Tom Chitin and I Know Who You Are and Megan Emery Two and Helen. I think we've become friends on Facebook. And Jesse, I know we met recently. Welcome, Matt, I Know Who You Are Too and Tim. I'm here just to spend a couple of minutes to let you know that I've been a South Burlington resident for a number of years but he could help get to the exact date. And I love living here. And tonight I wanna tell you one of the reasons why I love living here. Because something, you probably have seen the other paper, I'm sure you've all read it. And I bet you there are people in here in this room who know Katie O'Brien Barrett. Some quite well, but. When I think about Katie and happen to know her and see the way she has worked very hard to organize public art to help beautify South Burlington, Vermont. And I'm sure, like I said, you've probably have read the other paper, the article about the mural underneath. And it's a great article. I know because I reported it. And I say that because while it's a very good article and it tells the story as it was, it doesn't tell a complete story. And the complete story is why I'm here tonight. Because thanks goes out to a lot more than just the folks listed here. And I wanna make sure that, because I tell you what, it's hard to get a hold of everybody that volunteered for that project and took an idea and saw it through. And so publicly tonight, I wanna share my thanks and gratitude for the help in creating that mural here in South Burlington. So I'm gonna start with Lauren Purnell, Patio Grain Wood, Sue O'Neill, I'm sure many of us know Maida Townsend, Barry Gerard, Melissa Boyle, Orange Schaefer, and Cara Worthley. And you probably know, Phyllis Bartling had a lot to do with the design of the mural. What you don't know is that your very own Tim Barrett and his wife, Katie, sketched it out before she got the volunteers to come down in paint. So I just wanna say from the bottom of my heart, all the folks that I just named and to everybody that was involved in helping that mural come about, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Steve. I think we all love to wander around South Burlington and we all have our special favorite painted boxes and murals and we hope Katie a long life in continued painting. Thanks again. Thank you. Are there any other comments? All right, we will move on to announcements and the city managers report. So Tom, you wanna start with announcements please? Sure. So I did go to the September 11th ceremony. It was a beautiful weather for the event and I really appreciate all the work that goes into that. So the fire department and the police department that were there as well to make that and pull that all together. Really an important event and I'm really glad the community has continued all these years. I also, I wanted to just bring up that I'd love to invite, I remember when I first came on council we had Jean Richards came before us a couple of times just to connect with the airport. I'd love Nick Longo in the future if we could bring him in just to hear how he's doing and his new role and maybe talk airport stuff. If that's something that the council would wanna do in the future. I also did receive a correspondence from Lisa Kingsbury from UVM and I forwarded that to Jesse. So I did have a nice coffee with Lisa from UVM with some concerns that UVM is raising to the PC with regarding some of the recent restrictions that we're looking at in the planning commission that I think the council will be seeing soon. Thank you. Megan? Yeah, just a question. I did write to Jesse earlier and I just am hoping that the council could review the tree ordinance. It's the second resident who contacted me in so many weeks about a tree, not in this case pruning, but actually being cut down without notice and sometimes the pruning occurs on private landowners trees without notice and in this case it was on a public area but very much kind of a playground area for the neighborhood kids tree that kids have climbed on at least for the 20 years that I've lived in that neighborhood. And so just wanting to understand better about how we could indicate to landowners what's going on, what the plans are, why the plans are in place because trees do mean a lot. Murals mean a lot, trees mean a lot, ceremonies mean a lot, these things mean a lot to people. I think it's probably central to quality of life issues. So I think it's important for us to have some clarity. Yeah. Okay, I think that would be a great idea and we certainly can invite Nick. We should think about if there's other individuals from the public that the council would like to hear from on a regular basis or once a year once every other year or something but I think Nick would be good enough. When we get at the end of the agenda I will give an update of our last commission meeting. Matt? I'd just like to say that I went to the recent South Voluntary Business Association SBBA event at the International Guard and I also attended a planning commission meeting. Planning commission meeting, I was gonna highlight the work that the South Burlington City volunteers on the planning commission do. Speaking of very arcane language, if you've ever read the LDRs, you know that's a lot of acronyms in terms that maybe I'm familiar with and I wanted to catch up on that language as we approach the end of interim zoning and the discussion of what we do next. And so that was the reason why I attended and I just want to highlight the incredible difficult work that the planning commission has undergone the past three years as they try to achieve the consensus, so. Thank you. Tim? Yeah, like Tom, I attended the 9-11 ceremony over Lick Park on September 11th and it was very well done and I think we missed it. Did you suspend it last year, I think? Yeah, so it was good to resume that. Great crowd of people there, very introspective and beautiful sunset. Right place, right time for it, yeah. I also attended a BC meeting on a Saturday and did a subsequent house visit the following Monday and wrote the reports and then attended the same SBA meeting that Matt and Tom were at on Thursday night at the International Guard, thanks. Okay, thank you. As I mentioned, I had an airport commission meeting, I'll bring you up to date on that later in the agenda. I went to the BCA meeting for commercial property so this was a little bit different than the housing based on their finances, it's pretty amazing. And made some visits to a couple of them today and I also sat in or listened in rather on a planning commission meeting just to see where they were and how they're doing and I couldn't make those other meetings because I was at a celebration of life of my brother-in-law who had passed away and it prevented me from going to quite a few events which I'm sorry but I had family issues that called me away. So our manager reports. Thank you. So just a couple of updates tonight as always I'm sorry with our COVID monitoring so we are encouraging, continue to encourage everyone who visits us here in City Hall to be masks. Thank you all for being masks tonight. We actually saw the exact same number of cases last week as we did the week before. 22 of our neighbors were diagnosed with COVID last week so it's a 3% increase that we are maintaining so it's not going up. And then additionally in advance of the VOSHA regulations we assume are going to be promulgated in response to the president's vaccination guidance. We are preparing for that and building our internal systems to require vaccinations of our staff. We'll obviously continue to watch that and encourage everyone to be vaccinated. Just for the community, we did have email scheduling conversation which is allowed under open meeting law and have set our policy priorities and strategies retreat for October 30th in nine to three. It is anticipated that that will be here in the senior center but of course we will warn that as we get closer to the date. And we all wear costumes. I'm sorry? And we all wear costumes. Extra points for costumes. We get extra priority dots if you come in costume. Well you are in costume in a suit and tie. You know you didn't used to wear that stuff. We are thrilled today to welcome three new firefighters and EMTs for our team in a conversation about this a few weeks or months ago. Alex McCarthy, Dan Mullen and Evan Giard all joined each have firefighting and EMT experience and we'll be starting our local academy and we're thrilled to have them on board. Will that bring us up to full? That will bring us up to the 29 budgeted positions. Right. We have one that is still frozen, along with the three other four total positions that are still frozen. Two quick project updates following up on past meeting discussions in response to last public comment you heard two weeks ago. We have installed the traffic monitoring trailer on Market Street to try and get some data about the actual speeds happening on Market Street. And we have also ordered yield to pedestrian signs for mid-crosswalk placement. Four new ones of those for across the city. One specifically will be targeted to Market Street which is a step to addressing those concerns. We've also installed Market Street signage on the Dorset Street light fixture. So hopefully more awareness of what is now here. And then two other public events I want to call your attention to. There'll be a community hike in the Hubbard Natural Area this Saturday at 9 a.m. The researchers that are doing the climate change study in that space will be on hand to answer questions. So folks are interested in that should join us at Hubbard Natural Area at 9 on Saturday. And then as I shared last time we will be having a virtual forum on the 23rd this week, on the 23rd on the future planning of the Hubbard Natural Area. So folks can attend here at 5.30 or virtually at the link that is on the website. That's all I have. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Any questions for, yeah. Question for the city manager. Is there any private report on the Kimball Avenue Bridge? Whether it's on schedule, behind schedule or? As far as I know it is on schedule. They are moving quite quickly. They did not encounter some utility issues that they were afraid they were going to encounter in the first couple of weeks when they had to move all the telecoms off from underneath the bridge. So as far as I know, they're on schedule but I will have an update of that more comprehensively at our next meeting. Thank you. Tom. I don't know. I know this isn't South Burlington's responsibility but city manager comment, and if we all agree that I noticed the interstate exits it's just looking a little chaotic. If we, lots of trash, overgrown bushes and it actually affects visibility. So I don't know if we want to ping V trans on that but I just, I don't remember seeing it overgrown in years past. Which exit? So the entrance is 14 and then also 189 getting on there. I'll get out there with a mower if you want me to, Jesse. I just thought we might want to mention that. 14 or 13 or both. So 14 and then also 189 getting on. I didn't show the road. I showed the road. Going into Shelby. I noticed the line. That's always junkie, I think. Seems like it's a... Oh, pedestrian visibility just seems to be in here. That whole plaza at 189 is a completeness. Yeah. Okay. So moving on to item six, we have the consent agenda. We have two items, consider and sign the disbursements and then the three-party agreement among the South Burlington Skating Association, the city of South Burlington and TD Bank to allow them to borrow money to finance the addition and work that they have recently completed. So I move that we approve the consent agenda? Second. Is there a second? Second. Okay, so the consent agenda has been moved in second. Is there any discussion? Yes. Go ahead, Tom. Just one clarifying comment. Since the public didn't know we were going to approve that contract, it has gone through legal review. Our lawyers have seen it and we are not the only one looking at that, just making that clear to the public. And we also, back in January, it was a January, that was part of our discussion with albeit a different council and city manager, but we understood that that was their intention, that they were moving forward with the largesse of the Cairns family to get the project going and the understanding that they would go to the bank for funding. So this isn't a surprise to anyone, maybe with the exception of that, on this council. So that was my question, is why they were going to switch to TD instead of the Cairns, Tony Cairns for financing? Because that's the change of the contract, right? Correct, that is the change. I believe my understanding from reading the historic documents and talking with them is that the Cairns Foundation was financing it initially during construction to get through construction, but the intent was always to refinance with the bank. Okay, let's move on then. Oh, we have to vote. I'm sorry, are there any other questions? Okay, all in favor of the consent agenda, say aye. Aye. Aye, and it passes five, zero. Moving on to item seven. This is receiving an update from the attorney general's office on the current opioid settlement discussions. So. We have deputy attorney general Josh Diamond here with us this evening. If you can come up to the table, if you'd like. The table is just fine. This is something you've probably heard about in the news that the attorney general has taken a strong lead on and his office requested time to address you all directly on status and what happens next. So deputy attorney general, thanks for being here. Thank you, and welcome. Madam chair, members of the city council, Joshua Diamond, deputy attorney general, and I appreciate the opportunity to talk a little bit about the settlements that have been reached with the opioid distributors and J&J, Johnson & Johnson, and subsidiaries. I believe a memo has been presented to you from our office as of last week that provides an executive summary. So I'm gonna just do some top level highlights and then take whatever questions you may have with regards to the settlement. But let me acknowledge what may be the obvious. It's just the scope of harm that the opioid crisis has to our communities. In terms of human life, I believe back in 2020, we lost 157 of our neighbors and fellow Vermonters to opioid overdoses, a 38% increase over 2019. I can speak for myself, but I'm sure there are many others here where there is a loved one, a friend who has been impacted directly by the opioid crisis, and if not, then you're just one degree of separation from somebody else. And so while we believe that these settlements provide meaningful dollars to help abate the crisis, I just want to acknowledge that there's probably no sum of money that can replace a lost spouse, son or daughter, child, who's been lost or impacted by the crisis. So with that said, let me dive into the details. The Attorney General's office has been, since certainly General Donovan has taken office, made holding those corporate entities responsible for creating the opioid crisis responsible as priority number one for the office. And we have engaged in litigation, in particular as it pertains to these settlements with McKesson and Cardinal, those are two of three large distributors of opioid drugs here in the state of Vermont. We also have ongoing litigation against Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers as well. And so this settlement is in part resolving that piece of litigation with regards to the distributors, but also multi-state investigations that we've been performing with our sister states involving JNJ as well as Amerisource Bergen too. So the distributor settlement involves a nationwide settlement that includes the various states, but also those jurisdictions that have sued cities and towns. But what it does, it provides relief for cities and towns even who did not sue. And it's no different than had you been sued. So had you, don't feel that you were left out of the process as a result. It's a $21 billion national settlement with the distributors after attorneys fees that in some other offsets, that leaves about $19 billion to be shared amongst the various states. And in Vermont, what that means to us is about $53 million over 18 years. And that allocation was based upon a formula that looked at the number of morphine milligram equivalents that were flowing into our state over a set period of time, the amount of opioid deaths, population, and a few other factors. Our population, our pro-rata share is usually about just less than two-tenths of 1%. And this settlement reflects about 0.284%. So it's better than if we were just doing a pro-rata population basis. The J&J settlement represents a $5 billion national settlement paid out over 10 years. And after deductions for attorneys fees, that leaves about $4.264 billion. And Vermont's share is approximately 12,265,000 over 10 years. These monies will be set forth in buckets, if you will. There will be 15% that goes to the state general fund that must be used for remediating or abating the crisis. 15% will be distributed amongst the Vermont cities and towns and counties who have populations greater than 10,000. So Essex and Grand Isle will not be included in that. And then 70% will be dedicated to a statewide abatement fund. Those monies can be accessed through a national administrator. And there will be a designated state agency that will make the request for approved abatement purposes, which is one of the exhibits that was provided to you. I believe it was exhibit E, so a very broad set. But what you can't do is use the money to build roads and bridges. It has to be used towards abating the crisis. And that could be housing, that could be medically assisted treatment. It could be for first responders, prevention education, things of that nature. So very broad uses. And to help guide the state agency that will be designated for making those requests, there will be an advisory board. And under the terms of the settlement, half of the members of that advisory board have to come from Vermont's localities, cities and towns and counties. And then half can be state representatives. So that the voice of the localities that have been on the front lines will also have the opportunity to make recommendations about how that money should be spent on an annualized basis. What was a motivator for the distributors, NJNJ to settle, was from their perspective, not certainly ours, the desire to get global peace. So the way this deal has been structured is there are base payments, regardless of the level of participation with one caveat, which I'll talk about in a minute, and bonus payments. And the bonus structure was to encourage not only the states to agree to the settlement, but also for the localities. And that's where you all come into this and why I'm here in part tonight. But let me dive just a little bit deeper into that, and I think it'll become self-evident about why the Attorney General's Office is making a request that you all approve this settlement. With the distributors, the base amount is 55% of the annualized payments. The remainder would require both a sign-off from the litigating localities. So in Vermont, that's Bennington, Brattleboro, St. Albans, and hang on just a second. Brattleboro, Bennington, Sharon, and St. Albans. And then for every town with a population over 10,000, we'll also need to sign off to maximize the bonus structure. And that's Burlington, South Burlington, hence why I'm here, Colchester, Essex Junction, Rutland, Milton, and Williston, along with 12 of our 14 largest counties. And if that happens, we can maximize the payments coming through. But it also helps in getting approval of the settlement. So the distributors still have the ability to walk away unless there's a sufficient number of localities which are going to sign off on the settlement. And that's why we need you all to make a decision, hopefully in favor of the settlement by January 2nd. After January 2nd, we'll tabulate all the localities who've signed off. We'll present that to the distributors and they will make a decision as to whether or not they want to go forward with the settlement. So there's twofold. It maximizes the payments, making sure the settlement goes through. And a third for you all, you all get a piece of the settlement under that 15% bucket as well. Similarly, the settlement with J&J is organized under a similar structure with a base payment. It's a little bit less, it's 45% and the bonus is 55%. And it also requires sign off by the litigating subdivisions and those over 10,000 people. But one of the added benefits that was negotiated into the J&J settlement that if we can get everybody on board, meaning the litigating subdivisions as well as those over 10,000, we can expedite the first four payments within 90 days. So we can, I think yield close to, and don't hold me to this, I think it's in the memo, close to $6 million much more quickly if all those folks sign off in a timely way under the settlement. So that's the settlement in an overview. On or about the 24th of September, the National Administrator will be sending to, I believe the city manager, the city council chair, and maybe select others, a mayor in some circumstances where they exist, the notice of the settlement which will be similar to the memo that we provided earlier, but it'll be a little bit different format as well as other instructions about how you all can sign off on the settlement when you make the requisite decision. So in addition to the economics, there is injunctive relief which are very important pieces to this with regards to the distributors, it requires them to set up a framework where they are tracking suspicious orders. They're communicating to each other so that the left arm and the right arm know what's going on so that if suspicious orders are being noticed by McKesson, McCardnell will then not turn around and then ship opioids to the same pharmacy or provider. And somewhat related to J&J, they've also agreed that they will no longer continue to market the opioid drugs. They'll still sell them, but they will not market them, which was one of the allegations that we had made was that they were driving the market by advertising inappropriately by misleading providers, patients about the benefits or the erroneous benefits of the opioid product. So that is the settlement and a nutshell. Thank you. Are there any questions? Tim? Oh, Tom? Oh, I'm sorry, that's all right. Just curious how much South Burlington would stand to receive. I believe the percentage is in exhibit G. So you take the 15% of those annualized payments and then there's a percentage of that 15%. And I don't have it with me and I apologize that I didn't commit that to memory, but that math can be worked out. So I actually didn't include that exhibit in your packet because it was very large. I will email you that number tomorrow. Okay, yeah, and the numbers just seemed, I don't know, and there must be a reason for it, but looking, for example, on page two under the settlement funds of the $21 billion total settlement figure in the first point, it seems to say 19 trillion. And that's not the only section where there was an extra three digits. Yeah, extra three digits. So it's also on the top of page three. No, that's right. It's a billion. I think that's 19 billion. That is billion. Oh, that's right. That's me. Yeah. To bad it isn't 19 billion, isn't it? Because then we'd really get closer to making a real difference going forward. That's very true. Billions these days mean nothing. Being sarcastic, but thank you. Yeah. I apologize. Other question, Tim, did you have one? And then Matt does, I guess. So I hate to be the pessimist here and thanks for coming in and presenting this. My thoughts when I was reading the document was like only lawyers could have come up with that. But you know, it's much sobering the bigger picture about why you're here and what you're telling us. The question I have is these companies can be slippery. So what is the probability that you think that all the money will be paid out over the number of years? I mean, are there ways that these companies, could they just go bankrupt and then just? Well, there's a provision if they go out of business. Yes, well, so yes, there could be a bankruptcy. We're dealing with that right now with the Purdue circumstances. But this deal, and I must remind folks that Vermont wasn't alone in negotiating this. We were, this was a collective effort by all 50 states and over 2,500 other jurisdictions. So it was an immensely complicated negotiation. But the distributors wanted two things which eventually were conceded. One was if they experienced financial hardship under certain measurements, which I could get more details for you that trigger it, they could withhold those payments and then have to pay it out on the back end. And there are certain restrictions in analyzing that, how much money can go towards shareholder dividends, things of that nature, how much debt they can acquire. The flip side is they also have the ability to prepay down the amount subject to a discount rate that was negotiated as well. And the following question is, I think I read that the Attorney General didn't want to join into the settlement with the Sacklers, is that true? So this settlement that I'm talking about today does not involve Purdue and the Sacklers. So to that end, the state of Vermont has objected to the bankruptcy proposal that had been put forth by Purdue and the Sacklers. It wasn't sufficient, we felt as a way and it was essentially releasing the Sacklers from liability when they were not subjecting themselves as debtors to the bankruptcy court. The bankruptcy judge just issued their order on Friday, ordering the bankruptcy and the terms pursuant to that proposed plan and our office is considering options, including an appeal of that decision. Thank you. Thank you. Matt? Thanks for coming in and talking with us, Attorney General Diamond. I know it's a difficult decision by your office and by the offices of everyone involved in it because well, it seems like a big number for anyone that's been touched by this crisis. It's not enough. That said, the terms, when the money is distributed to the counties and to the municipalities, what are the, who is going to ensure that the spending is done by the terms of the settlement? Is that the job of your office to make sure that we're spending in a way that is legally appropriate and abdibides by the terms of the settlement? And then the follow up is that it seems to me because this crisis knows no boundaries that perhaps the money collectively could be spent better at tackling the opioid crisis rather than individual municipalities and counties for which we have no, I don't know how you get 10 of 12 largest counties to sign off when there is no county government. I'm not sure how you pull off that feat, but good luck. Basically my question is, what are the restrictions on how it's spent? Who's the overseer of that? And is there any prohibition on us working collectively with other neighboring cities and towns on getting more bang for a buck in terms of how we spend the settlement dollars? Yeah, all good questions. So under the terms of the settlement, the localities are bound to spend their portion of the monies for abatement purposes consistent, I believe with exhibit E. And for purposes of the largest pool, the abatement pool, a state agency will, I envision it as kind of akin to an invoice if you will, it may be a little bit different. You have to say before you get the money, we're gonna use it for XYZ purposes that are consistent with the terms of the settlement agreement and exhibit E. So there will be that, there'll be some degree of oversight, the Attorney General's office will not be policing that though at the end of the day. Now, the third part of your question is could there, could the localities essentially a sheet or have the money go back to the abatement fund where it could be used more on a collective basis? And the answer to that is absolutely yes. That's up to your own discretion. And in fact, if you are a locality that doesn't sign off on the settlement. So let's take, I'm gonna pick on the town of Cambridge for a second, a town that I feel a lot of affection for, but I'm not trying to pick on them. They are not required to sign off for purposes of effectuating this agreement. It's not gonna impact the bonus structure or the incentive structure on this. But if they want to, they could get a probably a very modest piece of the settlement given their relative size. But if they choose not to, their portion isn't lost, it floats to the abatement fund. So whether South Burlington wants to do that or not, I leave that to your wisdom. If I may just follow up. No, I guess my question was more specifically. So say, for instance, our municipality and the neighboring municipality view that the creation of a crisis center, a treatment center is most appropriate use of these funds. But one is better than two, especially when in boring towns, could those municipalities work together using their funds or does it have to be spent within the border? I'm not aware of a prohibition, the way that you've described it. Okay, Tom, did you have a question, Megan, any? Well, I don't necessarily have a question, but it's just sort of a recent experience. And I don't see this addressing it at all. So my, and I'll tell you the situation and then looking through a lot of the ways you could spend this money and there was a fair amount of education included in this, but nowhere was it educating insurance companies. And my husband's having hip surgery Thursday. So I went to pick up five or six prescriptions in preparation for that. And one of them was OxyContin and my husband never uses opioids. And I said, well, we don't want this one. He won't use it. They said, well, you know, you gotta take it. And in fact, they told me the prescription was originally just for four days, but the insurance company will only fund seven days. So he gets a ton more pills, none of which he's gonna use. Fortunately, they gave me a little packet so you now can dispose of them safely. And I said to the pharmacist, well, why would they do that? That's the whole problem that we've had with opioid addiction. And he said, well, the insurance company believes that if you have more stretched out over seven days, you're less likely to abuse them. And I looked at him and I said, you gotta be kidding me. So here we have a insurance company insisting that you take more so you can take them longer and fewer to somehow reduce the probability or the chance of addiction, yet, you know, he has 40 pills. And I just know we're in the settlement. Do we ever talk about getting insurance companies to also start to kind of walk the walk? And I'm just curious if that was any part of the conversation to your knowledge and how do you address that? That's a great question. So I'm not familiar with that dynamic so I appreciate you bringing that to my attention. I do know that the areas for education are broad so there may be room for creativity on the needs. I can tell you, I know just anecdotally that Vermont really has been a leader in many respects in educating our providers. Maybe more needs to be done with the insurance companies about creating protocols about what is appropriate for prescribing and we have a lot to be proud of, I think, in Vermont's leadership on that account, but maybe more education is needed to other aspects of the healthcare system. Well, it's probably related to Medicare because there's a big pocket, a deep pocket and so you just throw in a couple more days and they'll pay for it. And then it can be abused or you have to destroy them. Which, so, and I know we only have certain controls over, I guess, which insurance agencies can do or insurance companies can do business in this state and it's really hard to throw one out but it seems to me that's another avenue for pursuit to get opioids out of such common use and potential overuse. I can provide at the opposite side of that equation, right? So another anecdotal, which I have some personal knowledge of is that for people that do have valid prescriptions for certain types of opioids, right? In the state of Vermont, the insurance companies are like, they're like bear traps, right? And they will fight you tooth and nail to get that prescription fulfilled until you jump through three or four hoops and every time it's like it repeats over and over again. So it is an impediment, which is probably good, but so there are several different stories here on this spectrum and so. Thank you. I appreciate you coming tonight as well and to share this with us. As Matt pointed out, good luck with the county issue. Get the courts, we have county courts. So, you know, get them to say yay. Are there any other questions? No, thank you. Okay, well, thank you very much. Thank you, folks. Nice to see you all. Yeah, me too. Yeah, thank you. I'm gonna check the elevator. Okay, item eight, interview and consider appointment of Sexton's. So, Jesse, you're, we have a couple, don't we? Sure, we have two candidates before you tonight. Donna, our city clerk, who I believe is on the phone and here is here. She was there. You know, I can't recognize people with masks. Yes, okay. I wondered who that mask man was. Yes. So just a reminder, last meeting, you interviewed two candidates and appointed both of them. We have two additional ones today. That's the compliment of folks who have applied and you can appoint as many as you would like. Okay, do we wanna do Donna first? Sure. Oh, she's still there. Donna, you wanna show your pretty face? I'm trying. There we go. There you go, bigger than life here. Yes, yes. Hi, thank you for having me tonight. My involvement in the cemetery has gone on for many, many years and I was the one who kind of was pushing to get more Sexton's appointed. We had four who were very long-term city residents and unfortunately, they started dying off. Utilizing the cemeteries. To the point where we had one left and Bill Semeski wasn't in the best of health. So I lobbied to become one of the sections we were getting a lot of the phone calls in our office already. People asking about, you know, how do you get a plot? How can I find where someone's buried? And since we're the keeper of the record, it kind of made sense for the clerk to kind of be on this committee or be a Sexton just so that I have the access to the information so I can help people when they call in. And I don't want to steal all of Peter's thunder because Peter and I, along with Tom were the original Sexton's appointed three years ago. And we've made some progress on things, but we still have a lot to do. So, you know, we want to look at, Shelburne Road still needs work. We did some hedgehogging and clean up around and actually did a lot of work on that one Saturday, just what in the spring, but we still have a lot more to go. We need to make a formal plan of the cemetery to show kind of reference it like an Excel sheet where it's a plot, it's a plan and it's got all the rows and columns and so you know where you can sell and what the lots look like. So, I mean, there are things improving fencing. We're trying to get park benches for the, I applied for a grant which you guys approved of a couple of months ago and went looking today and we were not granted any money. Which would have been nice, but it was kind of a long shop, but we figured we'd try for it. So, I hope to be re-appointed. It's just, we've got a lot more still to do and I really feel strongly that we need to make sure that these residents in our cemetery are well cared for and the land is taken care of and their stones are taken care of and I hope to be able to continue providing that service. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate your interest and I think it is a good use of anybody's volunteer time. Tom. Donna also is well earning of the Sexton of the Year Award for three straight years. And the other thing on your list, we still have that mystery box that we need to dig up. So we did do sonar of the graveyard and there is one unmarked grave that we is on our list to figure out what it is. We don't know if it's a grave. It's a box-like object. Oh. Yeah, we actually found another group of a group. I'll just leave it at that. And we're not sure if that is the War of 1812 soldiers who passed and they just did like a mass grave or if that is this, at that point in the town of Burlington's where they buried their unfortunate people that couldn't afford to be buried. So yeah, so we found a lot through that sonar. So it was really kind of interesting to go through that process. Cool. Well, thank you. Any other questions for Donna? I think it makes total sense to have you on the committee. All right, well, thank you. And thank you. We'll see you at the next BCA meeting. October 7th. 7th. We have a couple weeks to go. That's right, be there or be square, yeah. Okay, thank you. Peter. Thank you. All right, good job. Peter has been the runner-up for the section of the year award. That's good. What a wonderful room you have here. I know. Isn't this beautiful? You're everybody. Oh, good. Good. Very nice. I've served for three years. Worked with Tom and Donna and the council. We've provided a couple of reports to you and plans of what needs to be done. I want to thank Tom for his three years. I can understand why he's moving on to other things or just reorganizing. So I'm interested in continuing. If you'd like me to. And I think we've still got a lot of work to do. There's a lot of stones that are broken. Donna and I have talked. There's a couple of cemetery groups in Vermont. We're going to be following up with them and seeing how we can best get a proposal for fixing those stones. And what do you do to maintain them once you fix them so that they don't get broken? And I think one of those ways is by beautifying the cemetery. So it doesn't look like it's just overgrown bush, which much of it does now. And I guess the other quick thing is that two things that I think need to be taken care of. One is Eldridge. There was a car accident there and a section of fence was taken out. And we were told that the insurance had been paid by the vehicle owner that had the accident. And somewhere there may be some money floating around to repair a small section of that fence. Glad to talk with Jesse about that. We've tried to figure out and we haven't been able to identify if the money was received, how much it was. We were told it was received. Then we were told that section of fence was part taken down, but you can go out there and see the stakes in the ground where they were chopped off by the car accident. It's right where the veterans that Donna mentioned are buried right on that front right corner. And then the other issue, I guess, is to maintain the work we've done at cleanup. And that's gonna require a little extra effort by Public Works. And I sometimes think Public Works keeps getting more and more things added to their schedule. I think Jesse's idea about clearly identifying who's gonna do what, when, and where, rather than just people talking and saying, oh, we'll take care of that or we'll do that in the fall. I think if that's what that plan is gonna do will be advantageous for everyone. So we will not expect things that aren't gonna be delivered and we'll know what those things are. So those are just a few thoughts and I'd like to continue if you'd like me to. Okay, well, I do know when you start working on something, you stick with it. So I would personally love to have you continue and to maybe even provide some of the leadership. Are there any questions that anyone has or comments? Tim. Yeah, quick one. Peter, the fence that was broken, is it cast iron? It's an iron fence. I don't know if it's cast iron. Is it old? It's old, but I couldn't tell you whether it's 40 years or older. It's that black rail at Alders right up front there and it's right on that right corner. And it's like four or five, three or four posts that have been knocked out. The airport actually took down a fence that was on the right side. And we were supposed to hear back about what are they gonna replace it? Whose responsibility is it to replace it? And we haven't had any feedback, or at least I haven't heard any feedback. Well, maybe with the energetic new committee, we can follow up with that. I didn't realize they had taken down one of the fences so we can certainly, we should follow up on that. But not that front corner. Right, right, okay. I was just making a comment because if it was like a cast iron, older style fence, it might be worth more than insurance knows how much to pay, right? So I mean, not being involved in it. I mean, some of those cast iron fences, you can't replace it, they don't make it anymore. Right, right. Just any one point in time told me that they had received some insurance money on that. But I've lost track of, I haven't been able to follow that up and find out where and how much it was. My guess is it's already been paid. So that may or may not come into play, but you're right if it's really, really old. Okay, any other questions for Peter? Well, I would entertain a motion to appoint Peter Taylor and Donna Kinville and Chris Thrain and Maureen O'Brien. So moved. Second. Any further conversation or discussion? Okay, all in favor signified by saying aye. Aye. Great, thank you. Thank you and I'm sure we'll be back. Yeah, right. Thanks, Peter. Moving on to item nine, approve appointments to the common areas for dog committee. So I provided a brief memo to you in your packet and Betty is here as well. So at your August 13th meeting, while your July meeting, you approved a new charter for this committee. August 13th, you appointed the sitting members of the dog park committee to this new committee and as well as the representative from natural resources. Tonight, we recommend that you appoint Mike Siminoe who has been appointed by the Recreation and Parks Committee to the committee and then confirm the terms as outlined in the memo and presented by the sitting members of the committee. So they talked amongst themselves, came up with these terms and we are bringing them forward to you. I'll move that we approve this membership for the committee on common areas for dogs and their appointment lengths. Second. Any further discussion? Okay, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. And the motion passes and thank you all, dog lovers. We now are moving ahead with that, we think. All right, moving on to item 10. This is approved appointments to the climate action plan task force. So similarly on August 17th, you approved a charter for this new task force outlining membership coming from sitting committees. So each of those committees has nominated somebody for your consideration. Economic Development will be talking about this again at their meeting in September. They did talk about it in August and wanted to have further conversation so that we'll come to you at a later date. But we did wanna get this moving at least give them membership to be able to meet and have a quorum. So the proposed motion is to appoint these six members to the task force and for the charter, you also need to select a city councilor who will serve as a non-voting council liaison with a non-voting staff liaison. And I am happy to volunteer for that. Climate action is important to me and I would appreciate being part of their discussions and reporting back to the council. So if that's, if people are amenable, unless someone else has a burning desire, spend a few more hours on a committee. Yeah, okay. So I will move to appoint these seven committee members plus Helen to be our liaison to the climate action plan task force. And so we will just go along with the economic development committee. They've, well, I would recommend you appoint these six and Helen and then we'll bring you back on a future agenda, the economic development. That's right. Well, that's why you said six. Yeah, six plus Helen. Thank you. No, six, including Helen because the economic development committee doesn't have a name for energy. Oh, I'm sorry. There's two for energy. Excuse me. So the motion's good. I'll second it. I think it is. Any further discussion? Yeah, just who's the staff person this one? This will be Paul Connor. Yeah. Okay. Okay. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. I'm sorry. Michael, did you have a comment? Yes. Michael Mitai. Just, would you name the six or seven that you're talking about? Oh, sure. Affordable housing is Daryl and Peters Bicycle and Ped Committee is Maddie Luxper. The Energy Committee have two, Andrew Chelnick and Ethan Goldman. Natural Resources and Conservation Committee is Bill Wargo. Planning Commission is you, Michael. And excuse me. And I shall serve as the council liaison. Okay. Thank you very much. He's on the committee if he doesn't know it. He is on the committee. Yeah, he knows that. All right, let's move on then to item 11. And this is the letter drafted for the open space plan property owners that we asked Jessie to come up with. And she has. So this is also, so I have drafted this in consultation with our city attorney, Colin McNeil, who provided the, provided comment as well as the citations to meet the goal of allowing for responses to be part of the future confidential negotiation process. But all comments and feedback are more than welcome on this draft. Okay, are there any questions or comments on the meat of this letter or the questions that are included or seeing none, I thought it looked good too. And this will, Tom I know you very definitely wanted to look at it. Yes, thank you. So the only comment I have is you all remember and thank you for including the resolution regarding the open space committee final report. In it we, I remember going back and forth with attorneys both ours and those of some of the landowners to include item four and therefore. So the, I find the letter to be factually correct. My only comment is, and I'm glad to hear that Colin McNeil did in fact look at this. I'm just not worried, worried is the wrong word. The opening statement seems to imply something that was I think very delicate in that discussion. So just the first sentence, your property located at insert address was identified as a high priority parcel for conservation by the city of South Burlington's open space interim zoning committee. I'm just wondering if we are completely comfortable since that was a delicate point that we spoke to and work through an item four. If the high priority parcel for conservation is the right term, and if it should not be that your parcel had high priority ecological value. So parts of your parcel had high priority components. I just, if Colin McNeil saw this and looked at it with the second context, I'm generally comfortable with it. I just, I feel incumbent to comment that the first opening sentence, I just don't wanna run afoul of what we agreed to in the secondary memo. So that's my comment. Well, I do think in the bullets, it does indicate your whole parcel or a portion of your parcel. So I think it does make it clear that the conversation would allow for adherence, I guess, to that sensitive conversation. What if you just, excuse me. Pardon me? Yes, Matt. I don't wanna speak out there. What if you just write some or all of your property has been identified as a high priority parcel? Well, it's the parcel then. No, the parcel, and then I like that. Some or all of your property has been identified as a high priority for conservation. Yeah, that's fine. That sounds good. I disagree. I think this is worded perfectly the way it is. I mean, because we have those parcels that are identified as parcels, and these parcels are on the list and we're identifying them distinctly to the owner and saying, and here's the resolution that we passed for it and here are the questions we're asking you quite honestly and in confidential purpose. Would you be willing to talk to the city about this property? I don't see any problem with this whatsoever. But the challenge would be for me is that not entire, in some cases, not the entire parcel is what is the important part that we wanna preserve. Oh, absolutely. Well, it says that right there, but is it in whole or in some portion? The opening statement really gets you. You wanna make sure that the opening statement from my perspective, you want them to read the rest of it going, okay, not being, I just think a little softer on the opening statement. It's all about communication. I think you're worrying about it too much. I think it states its purpose pretty succinctly from the beginning to the end and it's a soft approach other than the fact that, these people will receive these letters. They don't have to take any action if they don't want to. That was spelled out in the early resolution that we passed. So, I mean, we're trying to find out, we're trying to get some communication from these property owners to see if they have any interest at all. So why not be right succinct and to the point from the opening paragraph, the opening sentence. Mac. Tom. Yes. I liked your suggestion, Councillor Cota. So I would go with that, but to Councillor Barrett's point, I also could see benefit to addressing the implications because that's what that other resolution was to just taking that first to that first opening thing, referencing the committee report and putting it after the bulleted list. That to me would, maybe I'm overthinking this. I just remember going back and forth for multiple meetings to get that other resolution passed. So I could see this letter reading just as well if we took the whole your property located at insert, because that is a factually true statement to Councillor Barrett's point. I'm just concerned at what it's implying and if that runs afoul of what I believe we negotiated with that other resolution. Clarified to me, what do you believe it's implying by using the term parcel? That the city has targeted as a high priority parcel for conservation because it says the city of South Burlington. And then after that, it's corrected to the open space interim zoning committee. I don't believe the city, meaning the Planning Commission, the DRB has identified it as a high priority parcel for conservation. It's actually true statement. I'm overthinking it. Yes, you're right. I think this council did. We accepted the report as, and we actually commissioned the report. So I think we did. In fact, identify those top 20 to 25 parcels. But to Matt's point, it's very clearly stated in the report that it's sometimes just part of the parcel that contains those high priority natural resources. I liked Matt's statement, but I could stick it out. I mean, I felt that your concern was more legal and liability, but I just, I don't see that since we already have put it into our written resolution when we accepted the open space report. So following up to that, Councilor Emory, I'm just looking at item four in the second page of that previous resolution where it just makes clear the report has not been incorporated in any way into the land development regulations. So all of that, that's where I'm coming from. So I'm just being excessively cautious because lawyers were involved and other concerns that have been percolating of late. So I don't need to vote yes, if you have four yeses on the language as is, but if you want a yes just to get unanimous, I think I'd be comfortable with either Councilor Coda's language or moving that entire blurb to afterwards. But I don't want to use all our time. It's a fine letter. I'm not concerned, but I think it could be better and with less implications that could have raised legal concerns by adjusting that opening paragraph. So just to remind myself, Matt would like to just eliminate the word parcel. Some or all of your property was identified as high priority for conservation. That was my suggestion, remove parcel and replace your with some or all. I think that's the reason for the letter. I like that being in the opening statement, but as I said, they are listed by parcel within the report. So it could go. I have a quick question. Yes. For the city manager, is this going to be a snail mail printed mailed letter? That's the intent. That's the intent. That's the contact information we have for the property owners. Okay, so then would we include a second page that has the resolution that's referenced by the link in there instead of having the link since they can't really press a link in a piece of paper. And then I want to go type it all in. Make it a tiny URL or something. So that's why I actually included the full link is that so they could type it as opposed to making it a hyperlinker. Oh, I can make it a tiny URL. That's true. The report. So this actually links directly to the final report of the interim zoning committee. So that's, we can print it out and send it. That had not been my intention. That's kind of big. Yeah, that's like 30 pages. Yeah, no, no, no. I mean, they'll think they're getting it. The resolution that we passed, could that be included as well? Did you already say that you were going to do that or? That no, I had not intended to do that. I just included it for you all for this discussion. I didn't intend to include the link to the open space report and to the master plan, conference plan. I don't know that we need to send the resolution. I don't think we do. Yeah. I mean, these people, I believe all of them were aware that their parcel of property was being reviewed by the interim zoning committee established by the city of South Burlington. I mean, maybe you have information that we aren't privy to Tom, but I just can't see that this is opening the city to. So this is on the city letterhead from the city manager and just with the delicate nature of that other resolution, I would just feel more comfortable in either Councillor Coda's language or moving it to the bottom. But again, if you got, we can just move forward. It's not a big deal. I can just be an A and we do it. I guess I just don't understand why you would vote against this one. In principle, you think it's a good idea to reach out and that's, and it's to have a confidential conversation about property owners concerning what a committee found. So I'll state my reason why. I'm concerned that this states that the city of South Burlington wants to has a high priority conservation interest in all of these parcels. And I don't feel comfortable with that statement. So I don't like the language as is for the entire parcel. But you got the votes, four zero or four to one. And let's move forward. Well, Tim, if we change the language, are you gonna vote against it? No, I wouldn't vote against it if you change the language. I just don't see the reason for changing it because this is a very targeted letter that has a distinct objective behind it. And it's to try and derive some interest from landowners who have some conservation in their back of their mind, that's all. And the resolution that we passed goes on to say that nothing goes, the report is used for planning purposes only. The report's results may be implied in the development of the future city fund. The report carries no policy weight without further action by the council and is not a regulatory document or supporting documentation here too. So it's pretty obvious that the resolution disconnects the open space report from any distinct action the city would take if the city's trying to figure out, these have been identified, you're the owner, what's your feeling about it? That's all. Well, it would be nice to get a five-or-vote. If there's no other comments by the council, Michael Mittag would like to make a single comment. And then Roseanne. The use of part of all of your property is a problem because Alanda may have a lot of property that is not necessarily on this list. So pointing to the parcel is a much more precise way of doing it because that's the parcel on the list which will accompany this letter. Okay, but I think- We have the address. Yeah, the address is there. The address is there, so that's not an issue. No one's gonna think we're, yeah. Well, when it says address, I mean some of these properties, if they're just wild, they have no homes of them perhaps, right? So in that case, how is it denoted? Is it a parcel ID? In which case, then we're back to a parcel again. It's the address listed on the property tax bill. Oh, okay. Oh, but that could be a mailing address, right? Each unique parcel, so it is parcel, each unique parcel in the city has a address or a parcel identification number associated with it and then a mailing address for it. The mailing address for the property tax bill. But if it's four acres in the middle of a wooded area with no homes on it, it doesn't really have an address. No, but it will be indicated, so address might be wrong. Insert, it should be, I guess, property tax parcel number. Maybe that's a better way of doing it. Yeah. Is that okay, Tom? So your property tax parcel number was? Identified as containing or- No, the brackets indicate where we will put in the actual name of the parcel we're talking about. And then summer all was identified as a high priority for conservation. I like the summer all, or I like moving it to the bottom, but that's just where I am. Well, I think you're going to be in the front because that's the whole point of the letter, right? To put it at the bottom, it's like, right. What are we talking about here? Right. Summer all as a high priority for conservation. I think it's a true statement. Oh, we're splitting hairs, and I don't mean to use our time because I like short videos too. Okay. Well, are we? It's Roseanne still. Oh, I'm sorry, Roseanne. Yes, I have one comment. I think it's a great letter. I heard earlier that your lawyer reviewed it. So if your lawyer is okay with it, I don't understand the concern about any legal matters since you have a legal review of it. But it's a letter that doesn't bind anybody to anything except just wanting to open a conversation. But my comment is about one of the sub bullets and I'd have to flip back and forth on my screen to get it, but it's the, I think it's a last bullet that talks about, are you interested in selling your however land or parcel for other priorities of the city? That seems a bit contradictory because you just, these are the parcels that have been identified because of their natural resources as areas to preserve. So, and you start out by saying, we know that we want that we want to talk about that. And then you're saying, yeah, but do you want to sell it to us for other things? That doesn't seem to fit with the whole purpose of the effort to identify natural resource lands for conservation and preservation. Well, unless it's a portion of the parcel and when we are looking to solve some affordable housing concerns, right? It would be great to be able to have a parcel that the city could lease or could donate to a, you know, Habitat for Humanity or some other entity, since some of these parcels were not fully covered with high priority resources. So you're talking about the areas that do not contain natural resources that the city might want to purchase for housing? Is that, about, okay, I guess. That's possible. I think it's just opening up all the different possibilities. Yeah. I thought the effort was to preserve the areas that had natural resources, but if you're interested in purchasing other land that's up to you, I guess. I think that it asks the question. I mean, you know, are you interested in conservation? If you're not interested in conservation, are you interested in something else? And what might that be, if you could tell us that might, you know, be in line with some of the other city's goals, that's all. At least you would find out, right? It's information-gathering. I mean, it is, there's nothing. All right, yeah. That is, all right. So do we have the language that we're gonna consider? Remove your, the first word. Replace it with some or all of your property. Replace your property with what? Some or all of your property or property. Some or all of your property located at X? Yeah, was identified as a high priority for conservation. Why don't you just say your parcel, your land parcel located at X was identified or your property parcel. I mean, was identified by the city of South Brallington's Open Space Interim Zoning Community. I'm comfortable with that, to dropping the high priority parcel. Was identified by the city, okay, open space, okay. Okay, well, I mean, everything that they identified was, I mean, you know. I think you need the high priority for conservation because that's the point. That's what we want to have a conversation about. We don't want to have a conversation in general about your 40 acres, right? Get, is this? Yeah, go ahead, Matt. Is this a bad time to say who's having these conversations once these letters come back? It's Jesse, and whomever she pulls into. And then are we having these conversations in executive session? Yes. Yeah, it's confidential. And they're only, we're not part of the conversation. I don't believe the council. Unless it's getting to the point where. I actually think that's important, but I think this was just an attempt to get a handle on how much, how many parcels or portions of parcels with priority natural resources that someone might want to conserve would like to continue the conversation with the city about what they want to do with it, or if they're interested in. So can I? Yeah. How Colin and I envisioned this going is that we'd send out these letters. We would get back whatever we get back. We would aggregate that. And once there was a policy decision for the council to provide us direction about how and when to enter into some kind of formal negotiation, we would bring that to the council. Very good. Well, I think there's a step before the formal negotiation. And I think that is a meeting with the property owner about addressing those questions. Well, that's part of my information gathering. Well, okay, I'm sorry. It's not just, here's a letter we got. What do you want us to do? Okay, okay. We need to put together a strategy for you all and then bring that back to you for your policy consideration. And that could be a financial policy discussion. That could be a negotiation policy discussion. Okay. Is that, Tom? That sounds fine. I have another, so just the other point to this is it is possible that the recommendations and planning commission are going to trigger concerns about any takings or otherwise. And I would guess maybe we need to have some legal consult, but if this letter goes out at the same time as people are also feeling like their property rights might be infringed, I just, I'm worried with the language as it is that we are stepping into areas where we're going to incur or have this be used as evidence from city letterhead, city manager. So I still feel more comfortable from the previous discussion with the summer all. Maybe I'm being overly cautious, but I think the summer all is still, is truthful. It is entirely truthful, it's accurate and it better represents, I believe where these conversations have been and are going. And from the cautions that have been given from the PC, I think summer all is a good statement. Well, I'm happy. I'm okay with summer all of your property located at blank was identified as the high priority. I think you can include parcel, but whatever you don't want parcel for conservation by the, you could also say by the open space interim zoning committee established by the city of South Burlington. If you don't want this to be policy, then that's, I mean, that's factual too. Yeah. And then it takes away this concern you have that someone's going to read this and say the city of South Burlington wants to take my property. When in fact, all we want to do is find out if you're at all interested in any number of things and then we'll work with you. And if you're not interested, fine, you own the property. Like what you just said. So I would support that language. All right. So I will move to approve the letter as amended. So summer all of your property was identified as a high priority for conservation by the open space interim zoning committee established by South Burlington, by the city of South Burlington. Located at? Yes, yeah. I can second that. So you have that? Got it. Okay. And are there, there's no other concerns with any other language, correct? All right. And we have a second. Are you ready for that vote? All in favor of the language as amended of this letter signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. So there's five zero. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Further? Okay. Tim just went to unplug his empty. Okay, it's eight oh one. Oh, good. We are like going fine here. Okay. Item 12, receive a report on the FY 21 year end financial. Can we take a two minute break? Cause I feel like this is going to be important from the beginning. We're down to at the moment. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize we were down to. Okay. Yes. So we won't have a break later. We'll take that break now. Okay. Thank you. Well, I'd like to call back into order the South Wellington city council meeting of Monday, September 20th, 2021. And we are at item 12. We're going to receive a report on the FY 21 year end financials. From Martha Maycar and Andrew Balduk. No, Balduk, Balduk and Machar. Oh, Machar. Okay, I'm sorry. And I will say just by table saying 12, 13 and 14 are all linked. We did call out specifically 13 and 14 cause they were our active decision points. We have three, but the three are linked agenda items. Okay. So we'll be taking up 12, 13 and 14 with the intention of having specific votes on 13 and 14. Right. Alrighty. Thank you. Yeah, I think it'll be easier from a record setting standpoint. Well, Andrew Balduk, deputy city manager and with me is Martha Machar, the city's finance officer. I think when I was appointed city treasurer a couple of months ago, I made a comment about what a great position we were in. And I think this is exact evidence of that. We're closing out the FY 2021 city budget a year that was full of a lot of uncertainty. And one that I think the prior administration appropriately protected against projected revenue shortfalls instituted a number of both cost-saving measures as well as some sort of creative problem solving. And I think the most significant of which being refinancing the city's pension loan. So at the end of the year, before I get to sort of the bottom line, just go through a little bit of sort of high level kind of deficits as well as some surpluses that we realized in FY 21. The most significant deficit is one we can probably all imagine. I think every community in Vermont face this that has a local option tax. Our room and meals, we were down a significant percentage, $384,000 this year. Interestingly, our sales and use tax was actually up a small amount. So we did not take a huge hit throughout the pandemic, the ongoing pandemic I should say. Ambulance billing as well. There was a deficit, electrical inspections, special events, recreation as you can imagine. I think that's been reported a little bit previously. And another big one was our investment interests. We went into the year expecting a 2%, I believe it's approximately 2% yield with TD Bank in our general account. And we're currently sitting at 0.2% in that account. So significant shortfall there. Just for your information, we're still above where we were from an interest standpoint with Community Bank before we made the transition to TD. Critical surpluses, fire inspections. I mentioned the local option tax sales and use. Recording fees, as many of you know, we had a huge boom in refinancing as well as home sales. FEMA relief was extremely helpful as well as the workers' comp insurance reimbursement. So from a total revenue deficit standpoint, we were over 600,000 in the red. So we're talking a little bit more about those expenditures and cost savings. The budget freeze that was instituted way back in kind of at the start of the fiscal year impacted I think library the most that accounts for about a third of that $300,000 number. Planning and zoning, the budget freeze that you're aware of there. And the police department is probably another third of that $300,000, which there was some obvious increases in overtime as a result of that. But just from a flat number, it's about a third of that. Training and professional development because the budget freeze, a lot of that was put on hold. I will note that the fire department has requested to sort of make up some of their certifications at this point as an impact there. The PD vehicle replacements, they were initially asking for three new cruisers. And so this has been reduced down to just one, just two. The garage expansion, which we'll talk about a little bit more it's a CIP project that was put on hold. The recreation CIP projects as well as tree care. And just to note cost savings, the move to captive health insurance was really a gift. The savings that we realized in year one are extremely significant. And years when health insurance costs kind of seem to be going up and up exponentially to realizing a huge savings there in year one. The pension note financing, I think Tom talked about in great detail, but that's also a great gift being able to refinance that with TV. So as a total number getting to the bottom line, the city in FY21 has a surplus of about 1.46 million dollars. And of course these are values subject to change through the city's audit. So with this surplus, obviously it's a significant surplus here that we're talking about. And again, a lot of credit to both Martha's work and also Tom Holbrook's work and Sudori's work kind of navigating as well as all the department heads who sort of had to make some really challenging decisions. Gonna recommend two actions for council tonight. The first is to use some of this surplus, particularly all of our cost savings and from the captive this year to establish a health insurance reserve special fund. And at a prior meeting, I think Tom sort of high level outlined the reasons why it's recommended by our insurance consultant. That in order to move into a captive insurance model because we're essentially self-insuring, you need to sort of have tail coverage built into your model. It's called the IBNR. Apparently it's the term incurred but not reported. And this is to ensure sufficient reserve for the city to ever leave the captive model. The recommended value for this would be 148,000. The second recommendation is to kind of, if there is a year when you have a positive or a surplus or savings, the consultant recommends that you self-insure against future health insurance increases or years with higher number of claims they consider probably about one in five, you'll have a year like this. The value recommended for that purpose is 180,000. That's a one-time allocation. But that's just to establish that balance reserve. You can certainly add money to that in future good years. So that is recommendation number one is to establish a special reserve fund for that dual purpose, the tail coverage, as well as this kind of reserve fund to self-insure against challenging years. So I guess, I guess I'll leave it there if council was just on that item. If you have any questions on sort of the first recommendation or closing out the fiscal year in general before sort of moving on to the garage expansion second recommendation. I'm happy to make that motion that we approve the health insurance reserve special fund resolution and allocate $328,000 to the fiscal year 21 surplus to fully fund this reserve account. I'll second and I have a question though. Certainly. So just to confirm how these funds work, we're putting it in there, but it's still city money. And when, if and after we have to trigger this the remaining money won't have any strings attached a future council will then be able to add that back to whatever fund is needed. This is just creating a safety net but there's no permanent catches on monies that we put into these funds, right? From the special reserve fund. So if you want to reallocate these monies towards something different, a future council could buy same similar resolution unencumber these funds. Yes. But without that action, they are specifically for these two purposes. Correct. Staff can't do anything with them other than this until the council says, yeah, sure. Go ahead. Absolutely. Thank you. They are, they are encumbered. They are. They are encumbered. Yes. Yes. I would want them to be. Absolutely. I think they ought to be used for this and I would probably not support moving them somewhere else, frankly. I mean, this is the kind of a minimum amount to cover those two possibilities. Right. I think. Yeah. Yes. This isn't, I think over funding reserve. My first question is, is it too little? Well, it probably is, but it's a start. Do you believe it's too little? This is certainly on the conservative end of what our medical expert consultant has recommended. So again, with the amount of surplus we had, we said, let's go on the conservative side. Yeah, so it's a good question. I mean, I think the captive model in itself is self-insuring against bad years. And so I think it's already built into the model. But if there's a future need to get out of a captive, this having this fund and convert is critically important. Absolutely. To deal with captives. Yeah. It almost goes part and parcel with joining captive. Okay, Tim, did you have a question? Right. So the IBNR fund, that demands contribution every year? No, it does not. That's also, that's also one time allocation. And just, we draw from it that we want to replenish if needed or. Not the IMB or IBNR funds. That would only be. Only if we terminated captive. Correct. Right. But then the second fund, it also was a one time, but we would replenish if needed, right? Correct. Okay. Yep. And so then in the motion, it mentions using of the fiscal year, 21 surplus, but it mentions that we would use surplus and some budget from the next year, right? Nothing from next year. No, this is just surplus. Okay. Yep. Yeah. So there's a portion of the, sorry, I just need to. There's a portion of the, our total savings for healthcare in FY21 was 312,000. So the initial thought was just, let's just move whatever we saved on that budget line into this. But in seeing where we came out this fiscal year, the concept, let's not, let's fully fund it based on the recommendation. So we're adding some surplus found from somewhere else to get to 328. All right. Okay. Was there a second? Yes, there was a second. Other comments or questions? If I can just take perhaps one obvious thing. So you're now on to agenda item 13 with this resolution. So with this motion, you are also approving this resolution that outlines these specifics, including the two different buckets and how those can be used. Right. That's what's establishing those, that future guidance for staff. Okay. Yes. And if people have questions around the key cost savings and the budget freeze, we can go back to that if you're comfortable. I don't think they'll have an import on, or an impact on this question. No, I just have a general question. Okay. Yeah, I have some too. All right. So we have a motion on the table that's been made and seconded. If there's no further discussion, all in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. There's no opposed. So we support that recommendation. So why don't we just, before we move on to the next one, why don't we go back to, are there any questions about the analysis of the revenue, critical surpluses, you know, any of those questions? So Megan. I was curious about the tree care and what specifically was stopped or what was the, these funds not used for? That was the house borrower trees cutting and that didn't happen. That was the CIP that Justin presented a few weeks ago. So it's the cutting down of the trees. It's not the replacement of the trees. It's probably both. It's both? Yeah. And they paused the whole effort while the staff was furloughed. That was last year. Right, we're talking about last year. So we restarted it for 22, right? Yes. Yeah. So during the pandemic, we didn't spend that money even into the trees. Okay. Okay. We're still in the pandemic. All right. And this adaptive signal, that is along Dorset Street and Williston. Is it Williston also? The portion of Williston Road. Okay. The thing that we've been waiting for forever. Right. Okay, so, okay. So that's, is that in the budget for this year to go forward? I can't remember. And FY22, what are we in? 22, 23? Yeah, I believe so. 21, 22. Correct me if I'm wrong. But yeah, every year we sort of set it up both as a revenue source when we get the funding from the state of Vermont, as well as an expenditure line. So I believe that's been carried over to FY22. So will it be done? Will it be done this fall, this spring? Yes, it's actually going on right now. I think the process has started. This is a grand funding project. And if you look on the revenue side of it, the revenue are budgeted the same amount, 600 and the expenses are 600. So the project didn't happen. That means we did not actually get the revenues as well. So the project will continue to happen. OK, good. All right. Call healthy living if they're not listening. Tom. So this is great work. And I'm going to the next time I see Tom Hubbard give him grief about how he was trying for my entire time on Council since 2015 to get us to 8.33% minimum balance. Andrew, you did it in just a couple of months. But to that point, that's no small lift. And I am seeing that we're exceeding the minimum balance. We are going up by an additional $325,000. I'm comfortable with that because we're still not at the target balance. But I just representing the taxpayers, do you see any reason to also maybe use $325,000 this year to everybody's been hurting during this pandemic? But did it go through your mind in preparation for this to consider transferring that on to the coming budget year to give some additional relief to our property tax owners so that we would translate some of the savings that we incurred to them for their benefit? Certainly considered it. I mean, I think there's always that balance. It is our, I talk about it a little bit in the memo, how long it's taken for us to get to this kind of more comfortable, less kind of emergency depletion level in our fund balance. But I think it's something moving forward, thinking about kind of revisiting the fund balance policy, making sure that those percentages are accurate and kind of go with conventional wisdom or common practices at this point in municipal funding. And sort of revisiting in future years when we do have a surplus, I'm very happy that we're above a minimum level at this point. But yeah, revisiting both the percentages to make sure that they're consistent. And to think about what the council might hear maybe come back to the council with a revised policy or suggested policy on what we do in years when we're above sort of that target balance number as a way to potentially bring some of that savings back to the taxpayer. So is the target balance, is that like 90 days of everything? It's two months. Two months? 60 days. OK, so 8.3 is approximately a month worth of all operations and costs. OK, and that target, was that the auditor's target or is that something? Did we just, I mean, I don't recall voting for that target, but I may have. Yeah, I don't recall exact process for some of the finance policies that brought up, whether those went before council, my assumption is they would. They did go before council at some point. But in our finance policies, that is listed out there. OK, but I don't think it's a bad target. I just don't recall us. To your point, Sherry, really, I'm pretty sure it came from the auditor. So I think in the auditor's report, they've been recommending every year to get us to that minimum. Yeah, that's what I was saying. Just this language, this policy. Yeah, all right. And I believe the policy language was recommended by our auditor at some phase and brought before you for approval. Other questions, Tim and then Matt. So I think I remember Tom saying that we received some disbursement in August from the state for local sales tax and rooms and meals, right? And part of it's for the previous fiscal year and part of it's for this. Has that been read? That would have been in August. Have you received that? And how's it looking compared to the previous? Do you know? We have received it. And the projection that we made back in June when we received the allocation through the month of May was exceeded by what we received. We received more. It was last than what we received last year, but it was more than we had anticipated. And yes, a portion of F-21 was reallocated back to F-21. OK. Other questions? Matt, you had a question. Two quick ones. So not being on the city council in 2020, when we put together the budget for F-21 regarding rooms and meals tax, that was pretty early on in the pandemic. Was it a conservative? I mean, maybe the council could answer this. I guess what I'm trying to get is an idea of where we set the budget for the local option tax for rooms and meals compared to where we've done it for FY-22. We always go forward with a conservative forecast. So then when it comes to collecting the local option on the rooms, all of the displaced individuals that were staying in many of the hotels and motels in South Burlington, do we collect the 1% on that? Or was that do we not receive funds from the federal government through the state for that program? I believe we collected it on that, but it was at the dollar amount at which the state was leasing those rooms was lower than the market rate. So while, yes, we did collect the 1%, it was lower than we would have collected had they been on the open market. Got it, it was like a pilot. That makes sense. Yeah, kind of like a pilot tax. Right, yeah. And then the last thing, and this might be a question for Jesse, but the $3,790,112.01 from ARPA funds, is that going to be in our budget discussions for 23? What's the status of that? So we believe we're going to collect closer to 5.6 all in and over the next four or five years. That will be one time money that we will ask that you all need to vote to allocate towards something. It can be done in conjunction with the budget process. My hope was that it will also be done in conjunction with the policy priorities process. So one of the things that we are doing as we develop recommendations for you in that process is to think about things that are ARPA-fundable. So as we're identifying priorities as a community and weighing those against each other, thinking about where we can plug ARPA dollars into that to offset the municipal tax rate impact. Thank you. Thank you. If I might have before I do it, I go back to Tom's question about using a surplus to defer to return to the taxpayers. That's always an option you all have. You can also direct us to think about how we use those dollars to essentially buy down debt as we take on new projects. So instead of borrowing a million dollars, we borrow half a million dollars, which over the life of the debt has a much lesser impact on the taxpayers through interest rates and whatnot. So that's also a direction you can opt to take in the future. And that is something I wanted to say too, that if we brought it to 8.33% and then use that what's left over during the budget discussions and not be an option to include it, to go up to the 9.57% as opposed to various, you talked about paying off debt, you talked about ways that, right, right. Or we talked about the idea I had about saving some of the ash trees, planting two for one, there are various things that we could talk about. More of those one time, I think that's interesting. All right, Tom. So to that point that you just raised, Jesse, you definitely would do that, though as we go forward, if things come up, we're about to go in and adapt for something. This fund balance is a buffer, so you would know and bring that forward as an option for us. Right, this is a savings account. So if we're looking to do a $2 million project and we know we have a savings account there that we could pull from, that is always something you can consider. Other questions? So we have another item, and that is the expansion of the garage for, excuse me, public works. All right, and so do we need to discuss on this? I'm happy to move that we assign $200,000 to the VISTA year 21 surplus with the previously approved public works garage big capital project. I'll second that. Any comments or questions? Yeah, so does that mean they have to build an addition onto the garage or another garage? I believe it's an addition to the garage by the half. So they're gonna add some base on the concrete floor that they use today and they don't have to add garage doors or no structural problems to the frame of the building. It's just, you know what the details are and it means that they have to add garage base. So my understanding is that it's within the superstructure of the current garage. So there's the roof, there's the flooring, this is different providers and bringing machinery to those providers to make sure we can fit more vehicles into space they have. Okay, so they have to add doors to the garage door? I don't believe they have to, I'm not sure we can do that for $200,000. Because it has a reef door in there one time. It's pretty cool, I mean it's got a lot of services in there for maintenance and stuff and I just, it's pretty big, I was just surprised that they would need more space, so. But that's fine, I just, is there a diagram that we did? Does anybody have a diagram of what they want to do? Yeah, I think he showed it to us at one point, but you know when we were going through the CIP last year, I just can't remember because we look at so many different things. Right, yeah. And that's part of the reason why we're requesting that which has been previously approved by Councilman. Yeah, I believe both FY20 but also FY21. Because I think it's done with the crew actually into this last year. Another question, yep. Since you had said that the adaptive signal was going ahead to be done without us having to make a special motion on it, is the $200,000 for the garage expansion just recognizing that we are going over the $135,000 that it was budgeted? In part, I mean this is a little bit different because this is the, we don't have sort of a ready-made contract yet with the contractor to bring this forward so that it would be eligible for an accrual which does not require a council approval. This is a little bit different than that. So our auditor recommended that this require a council approval for kind of using surplus for this purpose. So even if it had been $135,000, we still would have gone forward. That's not true because we have RACCIP projects, the DPWCIP adaptive signal project and that's not requiring the special vote. The adaptive signal, no, because I believe it's already in FY22 budget, but the RACCIP projects will not be going forward. Those were frozen in FY21 and moving forward. Okay, and so of these things, we learned that the professional development is that going forward, the training and professional that's being held off too. Okay, and the vehicle replacement's being held off. All right. All right. And the treat care, we are going forward with that or? All right. Yeah, we are just going to go forward with what was budgeted for FY22. All right. And then we have the salaries. I'm assuming that went forward. So I just want to clarify the going forward language. Yes. So for salaries, for example, that 300,000 is already built into the FY22 budget. Not, and it was when under spent in FY20. So it is continuing in that we are staffing at the same level with existing tax dollars. What this does is transfer that $300,000 into fund balance because we don't need it for operations costs in FY22, which means it's in your savings account and if you decide at a future date you want to do, you want to bring back all the REC projects, for example, you can reach into that savings account and say, we want to allocate that, we want to allocate that $115,000 to that RECCIP project. You can always do that. So the savings account being this 9.57% that we need. Okay. Yeah. All right. It's not going away. Yes. All right. Okay, are we ready for that vote? Okay. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. So, is that it for you guys? That's it for now. Yeah, thank you. Good work. Thank you. He'll be back. Oh, I have financial account in hand. Budget goals, yes, they will. All right, so we're moving on to item 15, which is receiving an update on the financial accounting of the 180 Market Street construction, Alana Blanchard, the Community Development Director. Good evening. I put together PowerPoint. Will you move the mic a little quicker to you? Yes, my apologies. You know, I think you have to put it up too. Then you'll have to crook your neck so much. I'm also speaking through a lot of mask layer, so I apologize. We all do. Yeah. So, well, Alana logs on here with her presentation. So these two items are also tangentially linked in that in, as you have probably seen in the agenda planner, we are anticipating bringing to you in a couple of meetings a request to do a substantial change request to the Vermont Economic Progress Council. So in order to have a full picture of what that is, we need to finish, understand the full financing of this building to understand the debt picture and then understand the current modeling of the TIF district with the reappraisal of the new tax rate to understand what we will have capacity, tax capacity for as we go into requesting a substantial change. So Alana has laid out these two items for you to give you that background information in advance of us coming to you with that substantial change request. Thank you. So I put together a brief presentation just because it's a lot of numbers. And so I wanted to start with with 180 Market Street, the financials. And so with any project, there's a contingency fund, there's change orders, there are things that we omitted from the original construction contract. So I wanted to go through each of those and just give you a sense of where we ended up with the project. We're not fully done. There are still outstanding change items. There's still things that we're working with contractors on and that we expect to be completed generally over the next few months. So we don't expect long lingering items, but there are a few items that need to be resolved. But generally the good thing is that our costs came in under available funds and we expect that is how the project will close out. So I put together a summary for everyone of the costs and how it broke out among the major cost areas, land acquisition, design administration and commissioning, construction permits and fees, miscellaneous furniture, fixtures and equipment. So I would note that for design admin and commissioning, all of the commissioning during construction, I put that into the design line because that's really a consultant cost, although it's really going through and working through the mechanicals and making sure that they're all running and the building envelopes. So it's very much a construction phase cost. So some costs that were not in the original construction management contract or the solar array, we also incurred additional unplanned costs to construct the roadway when we went through the land acquisition negotiations. And then there were some COVID costs that were unplanned as well as change orders related to things that were encountered during construction or the design in order to respond to the contractor questions, et cetera. And then also the library board of trustees was able to raise funds. They were successful in that endeavor. And because of that, we were a bit more less stingy when it came to some of the AV equipment and furniture than we would have been otherwise as well as some of the millwork, especially in the library. And millwork is like the fun tree type things that we might have been otherwise taken a really hard to look at on the project. And so that's where I think I sort of covered this. So we did receive the funds from the foundation. We also received the electric vehicle grant which we weren't sure we would receive. We used impact fees for the roadway cost so that did not have an overall impact on the bond funding and the availability of those bonds for the rest of the project. And then we also used energy reserve funds for the solar array as well as flexible load management and we received some funding from Efficiency Vermont for that project. So that was very helpful. And then we use some other miscellaneous funds. For example, the clerk has a fund for vault replacement. So we're able to access that for vault shelving. So that was, so it all sort of worked together. And then for any funds that are left over, those are, we will not use the full 700,000 that was approved from the reserve fund. So anything that's excess would go back to that fund. And the impact fees were just transportation impact fees? Exactly, which fees were those? Just transportation. Okay, and so, and who paid those? Is that fees all over the city or is it just the development of city center? So impact fees are, they're paid by all developers through any project throughout the city pays into the redway impact fund based on trips. Okay. So those were, so the, so city center roadways are an allowable use of impact fee, roadway impact fee funds. And so for that reason, we were able to use those funds for the construction of the new street. Okay, thank you. That's a good thing. Yeah, so that was able to fund the addition, like the wider sidewalk that connects along that street to the school, the new lights on both sides of the road, the curbing and then the stormwater for that. Tom? But to chair really's question, I thought that those impact fees were just within like the TTIF district, but these are impact fees from projects all over South Burlington, we were using for the city center project. Correct. And then impact fees that are collected on buildings in city center can go all over the city also, it's a. Future ones. Okay. Yeah, so it's a general current ones as well. That's a lot. I didn't realize we had that much in that little bucket of money. Yeah. So, and then so moving on, I think Jesse did a great job of setting the table related to the financing plan, the substantial change request that we're working on preparing. So essentially we are going to be audited next year and our plan is about six years out of date. We want to make sure that it aligns with current goals in terms of spending, current capacity in terms of spending, the development that has occurred since the inception of the plan and what we expect to happen moving forward. So you probably aware that we did receive an extension until 2024 March 31 to incur debt. So the door is still open for additional projects and now is really the time to update the plan and to make sure that we're ready for the state auditor. So, and I think in the past, when we looked at the plans, they were seen more as roadmaps, but I think now they're viewed by the auditor's office as blueprints. So we want to make sure that our plan really aligns more closely at least what we've done. So that's a known thing that they can look at. And then we want to tie it more closely to where we're going. So we'll be updating the revenue model, the list of projects and their costs and their timelines and the related cost. And then there's also a narrative that goes along with this. And so we'll be presenting that to you in October and in terms of a timeline to bring this through to VEPSI, we would need for the council to have a public hearing on November 15th and that will allow us to package it up and send it to VEPSI by the 19th if you're willing to approve it after that public hearing. And so then we would be able to submit it in December and that sort of gets it in the pipeline. And then there's a presumption that it is being updated prior to when the auditor begins their audit in April or at some point next year, I think they have an extra community to audit next year. So they're not exactly sure when they will get to us, but they will let us know in November when they will be getting to us. So just briefly to look, we did provide a handout and so in that handout, there's a TIF increment model. And so both models assume that everything that's been permitted or semi-permitted does get developed. So we're relying a lot on existing permits, how many units they say they'll have in them and then other conversations that I then had in terms of what the intentions are in terms of timing and so forth. And then there's two ways to look at it. Every property over two acres that's got some room on it, hey, they might in the next 12 years decide that they wanna develop or hey, maybe only a few that have really thought about it are going to sell their property or partner with someone or develop or self-develop their property. So there's a low and a high model and that this is preliminary, it may not be the, neither of those may be the right model. We may look at something somewhere in between or closer to one end or the other for what gets placed into the substantial change. And so up here, I have all years going forward. And one thing that I would notice is that this is the first year where the increment has been enough that it's backfilled all of the debt that we've had to pay up until now. So- The really big important thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's a- The model is working, in other words. Well, it's, you know, it's, I think we've been very slow at easing into our debt payments. We've been able to delay principal payments. So it's been able to push it down and allow the tip to catch up. We still are not at a point where we have large properties coming online that are at market rate. And we're still a few years out from that. So I think what has happened this year is that enough properties have been subdivided and the value of the land, especially with the new reassessment or reappraisal has really recognized what land has been selling for in this area now for several years. So that's allowed us to collect a amount reflective of the investment that we've been putting in the area. Oh, Tom? Yeah. I want to make sure I understand what you're presenting us here. Those are today dollars for future revenues that you're anticipating with what we know that in today's dollars over the remainder of the TIF, the high end, we're going to bring in $51 million of capacity low in 37. And we have only bonded for 10 million, 5 million for this, 5 million for the market street. So we have minimum $27 million more dollars of potential TIF revenues that we could borrow for if we have a vote before 2024. Is that what you're saying? Correct. If we believe the model. If they believe the model. So the high and low, are there assumptions about the percentages of units in those future buildings that would be nonprofit managed because they're affordable income and that effect, is that folded into the model? So the model sees that the model assumes that the development that has occurred is specifically first night of Raymerman, for example, that they are developing all their affordable housing upfront and that they would not no longer need to develop affordable housing going forward. Because their site would be looked at as one unit. So the increment we've realized in the last couple of years with the affordable housing that's in place is in the model. But I'm just thinking that there may be future properties that are also affordable. So that could decrease the, I mean, the assessed value. Is there a difference in assessed value or a difference in taxation on that assessed value? I don't know. There are a lot of variables that go into the model. So there are a lot of things that could be different. So you're right. There could be somewhat, it could be that no one wants to develop market housing ever and it's really just, it becomes an area that people really just want to develop affordable housing. That would significantly change the numbers. People could not develop at all. People could what? There could be less, no development. There could also be a different mix of commercial, retail owner and rented. So generally most of the units that I have in here are apartments because that's sort of, the market is very hot for apartments. And there's very limited retail, very limited commercial. There is some retail and there is some commercial. Most do tend to have a higher value. There are some townhouses, but not many in townhouses right now or also have a very high value and are very popular. So did I hear you say that right now anyway, Snyder, Braverman have completed what they believe to be their affordable housing and the rest of their development they anticipate anyway or would like to have it market rate? Yes. But then there's lots of other property owners. Yes, there are other property owners and then if they change their housing type some of those would need to be affordable. Okay, and then do we know, I mean, you must know how many additional properties or plots does Snyder Braverman have control over and will be developing? I mean, that new one they're doing is market rate, correct? Correct. The new one that's underway is affordable. Oh, that's affordable also. That's affordable. They have a project in subdivision that has three different lots on it. That's at the corner of garden and market. That's pardon? That's in, I'm sorry, it's in site plan. That's at the corner of garden and market. And that has been described in their application as market rate. And then the building that was presented to the council, I believe last year or the year before, Prospect Place, which is on garden next to Trader Joe's, I'm sorry, next to Healthy Living, that one is market. And then they have two additional sites, which are fairly large, one north of the market and one south of the market, that they have not subdivided yet. But that have space for, it depends on what they wanna develop it with, how many lots it becomes, but they're fairly sizable. Okay, thank you. Tom? And I'm sorry, there's one more on the other side. Oh, I'm sorry. There's one more on the other side of tributary three. That's a small lot. It's about one acre, so it's not a large lot like the other ones are. Okay, thank you. Tom? For clarity's sake, for mine and many voters, any voters watching this, the way the TIF works is if we don't put forward a bond, and then before March 2024 for another project, a TIF eligible project, and that's the real question is right now, what are we gonna prioritize as a council? Then that additional minimum $27 million of potential TIF revenue, South Burlington doesn't get that, doesn't go to a kitty, it is left on the table, goes back to the Ed fund, and South Burlington misses that opportunity. Is that a true statement? So if we don't bond for something in the next two years, worry with what you're telling us if you believe the model, we're leaving at minimum $27 million on the table that would otherwise be infrastructure to benefit South Burlington without property taxpayers paying for it. Why 27? Because we already bonded for 10 million. Is it just 10 million the market street? Correct. And the 5 million of this building? Garden Street, did we vote on Garden Street? Yes. How much was that? 3.52. So 12.5 million, we've tiffed it. Yes, but it has not been bonded yet. Do you have a one of these slides, the project slide? The last one. The list of possible infrastructure projects that we took at the bond point, yeah, there we go. It would be nice. Yeah, so. Let's see. Yeah, and I would also say is that the substantial change you're not pledging that you will absolutely put those forward to the voters to vote on. The substantial change update to the plan is really just holding the door open, creating the opportunity to continue the tiff district, but it's right sizing the expectations that VEPSI has for us in terms of what might happen. And then we can, at the end, once the period to incur debt is completed, we can do another substantial change to say, okay, this is what we're actually doing, but this is less of a commitment than a bond bonding. So by bonding for those things on the list, what that means is then, as Snyder Braverman develops their other four or five parcels, we can, even if they're built after we bond for these things, presumably they would be, we still will generate in a shorter period of fewer years, but that tax incremental financing that will help fund those. Is that right? Do we have to take the debt or the vote before the deadline? I think it's what she's asking. It has to, yes, the debt has to be incurred prior to the deadline. So we have to start working on garden street phase one and two, Williston roads, you know, those things, pedestrian bicycle bridge, and then they do their development and whatever timeframe they have established as long as we've undertaken debt. At the moment, they're not coupled. We don't have a development agreement. So the city is operating, the city is investing more as a revitalization and creation of a downtown that enables other private sector projects to thrive. I understand that. Yeah, okay. Makes it more enticing for them to build something because we had kids walking over the 89 and her biking and. Right, and so just to briefly give you the status of these projects, garden street, obviously, phase one and phase two are both at about 60% design and phase one has the bond approval from the voters. So that one is once we have that ready to go, we can bond for it. Phase two is the intersection at Midas Drive and then some improvements on Williston Road. Williston Road Street scape, we have 800,000 in federal funding. That one is more at the 30% design level. And then the city center parking board connection, we have that as a conceptual design and that has been included in the developer site plans in terms of laying out where that can go. And I am not sure what the status of those dedications are in terms of land for that. And then 189 pedestrian bicycle bridge, that one, we have a grant application into the federal government. And so that's really, that's a huge project that would only be fundable or conceivable if we receive federal funding, right? Three times the charm with that one, right? Because we're gonna get it this time. Matt? So I'm sorry, the on the list, that's not everything that's TIF fundable, right? Correct. So like the TIF tisher doesn't include the 189, like that area, right? So it currently does include that. And then on the right hand of the screen, it currently includes four projects that we would be removing. She's talking about the substantial change. This, we've now moved into talking about when we bring you the substantial change, this is what we're proposing, what stays on the list and what goes off the list. Thank you for that. Tim? Is the Boardwalk Connection something that we heard that there might be some funds coming from the federal government that would? They turned it down. They turned it down. Yeah, that's for, yeah. So the board, you're talking about the earmarks, the Senate earmarks? Right. The park Boardwalk Connection, there was some pedestrian small bridge? Yeah, they submitted it for a congressional earmark. Which was turned out. Oh, it was turned out. The pedestrian bridge, Alana worked there. We've failed three times on that so far, yeah. I didn't know where we were. But it was a good effort, too. Two. Two. The third time is the winner. That's how it goes, Tim. And they knew it. The sidestern, okay, Tom. This is great. Could you refresh my memory of the five that are staying on the list? What percentage of them are TIF-fundable? They're not all hundred percent. Are they? No, so Garden Street is a hundred percent. Wilson Road Street scape is 50%. 50? 50, and so one of the reasons that we have, we applied for funding, federal funding. The Boardwalk Connection, the overall project, we include that as part of City Center Park so that becomes the last phase. So that entire project is 95%. We did use park impact, recreation impact fees for that project and a considerable amount. So I believe that would be entirely TIF, or a good portion of it would be TIF. And then the I-89 pedestrian bicycle bridge is 30%. TIF District, I guess, well. So this would be, it's 30%, and we would use this as a match for the federal. So 80, it's an 80-20 match, but then this would allow us to use it for non-participatory federal, things that we could not use federal money for as well. All right. Okay. We shut. Okay, keep going. All right, so, and then we would also take the opportunity to update any costs. So for example, 180 Market Street is different than what we anticipated it would be six years ago. And any others as necessary, I think most of them, they're actually pretty similar and still to what they were. And that's the part of the change plan. Correct. Let's change those. Substantials, okay. Yes, all of us. Because you have to identify every single little thing, don't you? Yeah. We want to cross our teeth and dot our eyes. We've been through a TIF audit before. Very precise. So part of this is we'll update the debt schedule and in the handout, and this sort of tries to bring it down to the TIF fund balance and what happens to the TIF fund when we're going out ahead of private sector development, which the TIF debt incurring timeline requires us to do. And so if there's a lot of revenue and everyone's developing, it's not very, it's not much of a nail biter, but if there was fairly gradual development, which is somewhat, it's sort of, that's done what's happening. And so we may see that going forward, especially as you get into, I don't know, oh, you can. Okay. So as you get into, 25, you know, essentially year seven until year 33, when development catches up with the city's investment. So there's a period where a lot of units have to be built in order to catch up with the city's investment and to ensure that our payments are covered by the tax increment financing and not by interim means. So we are, sorry, we are accounting for this as a overall 20 year fund, but in the interim, we would be using the reserve fund as a cushion for those costs. So there are and depending on how much debt is taken on and the pace of development, other funds may be necessary. So at this point, nothing is necessary because no debt has been taken out and we're not at that point yet. But I wanted to say that the amount that we're including and we'll work with the reserve fund, I'm sorry, we'll work with the revenue model to make it both realistic, but also clear that it is something that can be managed and how we would manage it. So is the reserve fund cushion funded by the $860,000 of general funds that we... Correct. And that's all, there's no other... So that is the cushion for, but that doesn't mean that any other reserve funds can not also be used, but it does mean that the city doesn't wanna be out on the limb on other things at the same time. So... And we're bumping that up to, I mean, we bumped it down to 700, right? Or 720? It's currently at $860. So it's back, yeah, it was at $860 and then we went down to seven something one year, so maybe $760 and now it's back up to $860 and that's what you're estimating going forward. We can stay at $860. That's what I have in this model, yes. Okay, thank you. Just a couple of questions, yes. With this spreadsheet, this is what is currently built, this is what is still in the to be built column that you're showing. So year five, six, seven, eight, this is all future. So this is fiscal year 2022 moving forward. So it's once on the still to be done list. Right, so this represents the TIF fund balances. So it's what we're spending out in payment of debt versus what we're taking in in tax increment financing. And so it shows the top two lines are on an annual basis. So it says, okay, in this year, we actually have 122,000 surplus. In the next year we have 84,000 surplus. And then in the following year, the debt payment is higher than what we're taking in an increment. And then the lower two lines are showing the cumulative year over year. So cumulative, okay, correct. And the second question I have with regard to the cushion is will we be reimbursing the operating fund, the general fund as we go forward? So is that money that will reverse to some degree the loan that our taxpayers have been giving us in this project? Yes, so as we use the reserve fund as a cushion, we're not, it doesn't ever actually leave the reserve fund, it gets depended to the TIF account, but we just wanna make sure that the city is solvent. So it's never actually leaving the reserve fund. It's just saying that there's the savings account there so that we're actually, we are paying our bills. But eventually we will get caught up. We will no longer be including that in our annual budget. And so that is quite a savings. And would that, have you built that into your model in terms of bringing it down incrementally or all of a sudden we have an $860,000 windfall, so to speak? Correct, so that does. So by building up this reserve fund, this gives the council a lot of options. One is you can use it as a reserve fund to do roof replacements, or other large capital infrastructure needs that owning buildings and other things always result in. It can be a capital replacement fund, so replacement of assets that are outdated and it allows you to pay as you go or at least pay a chunk, or you can reduce the amount that's going into the reserve fund and use it to reduce the tax rate. So as you become more confident that the TIF district will be able to generate the increment that's needed, if that happens and once that happens, you'll be able to have that conversation. Would that roof be in the city center district since it's a reserve fund for a city center or are you speaking city-wide? That'll be a council discussion. I mean, right now it's a city center reserve fund and I think down the road that's your purview, so. Tom? So I'll need a refresher similar to Councilor Emery on what the strings are to that reserve fund if and when we get to that point and what the voters approved and how that can be used. But my question is on the date. Can you back into March 31st, 2024 in your experience, if we need to incur the debt by then, when and you reasonably, do we need to have the vote by, is that a year prior, six months prior, three months prior? Yeah, I would say at least nine, six months to, yeah. So we would be. March 2nd, 2024. Well, we would need to go to, we would need to have the vote sufficient time past the vote, which I believe is, I forget if that's 30 days or 90 days past the vote. Is it 30 days? I don't know what year. For what? That it can be a field or that it can be challenged. Well, I think, yes, that is the case. I think more than that, assuming we want to continue to use the bond bank when we, which we have, they only bond in the winter and the summer. So any bond vote we take in March in 2024, it's too late to bond through them. So that, I mean, it's a good question, Tom, and we should do that timeline backwards to see what elections we currently have the opportunity to make use of and I don't know that off the top of my head right now. So I do. And what I was thinking of is that really means the March 2023 town meeting day without having a special election is really the last chance to take out tip debt. And that time flies. So that's March 2023 for the last tip. Well, you can do it in November 2023. Oh, either the six months or the nine months to be tight. Yeah, but. You have an August 20th. Or August or something. 2022, but not 23. Wait, wait, wait. Well, if it has to be done six months, it says deadline to incur debt is March 31st, 2024. So in December of 2023, you could have a vote, right? A special election. It would be very tight. Right. And we would probably go to someone else for our debt than the bond bank, but conceivably absolutely yes in a pinch. That's worth doing that, that timeline. Yeah, no, it's important because it pushes work on these things. Yeah. Because she sits there in bonbons, I can tell. Yeah. May I make my last comment? I promise. Yeah, right. You can claim this will be your last. I will zip my mouth. I just think realistically, you're really looking at March 2023, just the way things work and time slips. So that's really our time. In my mind, as we look at our discussions, we need to line up before then. I'm done. I won't see another thing. Okay, I'll hold you to that. So if we look at the project list that was presented were more than halfway through the authorizations in terms of the amount of debt that's being considered. We will put together just one revenue model for the substantial change. And so we'll need to think about moving forward what that should look like. And then just generally, just to reiterate that the substantial change is just to hold the TIF district open, make sure that we're in compliance, but hold it open through whenever that last vote is and to enable the city to incur debt should the council choose to move along that path. Okay. Any last questions? No. Well, this was really helpful. Thank you. Thank you. I think I could follow it. So that takes us through item 16. So we now move down to item 17, which is the FY23 budget council discussion of budget goals. So that's Jesse and Andrew. Bullduck. So at your last council meeting, you approved as Andrew's being set up the schedule for the FY23 budget process. So Andrew and Martha have prepared some data for you to consider as you think about goals you wanna set for us as we build a recommended FY23 budget for you. So skipping from FY21 to 23. So just as Jesse sort of table set, just have some sort of general questions and sort of opening comments around sort of what the tax rate history are provided some of that sort of background data, the budget history, grand list values. As you know, we went through the reappraisal. We have a grand list value that is significantly greater than it was last year when we went through this. So just sort of a reminder on some of those, I think kind of key numbers or statistics I outlined them in the memo. If we factor in a average 1.1% annual grand list growth which projected over 10 years, it's been our average growth number. It's estimated one cent on the tax rate would raise a little over $400,000. If we talk about this in terms of tax increases from one year to the next, our current tax rate is 0.4350 with a 1% rate increase that increases it to 0.439, which would raise approximately $176,000. And that's based on the increased grand list value or projected grand list value. If you wanna get sort of an idea of what a cent on the tax rate, what that increase would be. So to get to $400,000, that's about a 2.3% tax rate increase per cent. I sort of have again in the memo, sort of just a general idea, 3% will raise approximate a little about 5.5, 100,000, 5%, almost 900,000. Also have just sort for your general, this is I think in the budget book for FY22, what your property tax dollars are currently going to support, about 2.3 million for fire and ambulance, 3.4 police, 2 million for highway, HR administration, 3.4, just some general numbers. You can look at those if you wanna understand what your tax bill is going to, those proportions will tell you how much of your tax bill is going to police, how much is going to highway. Just to talk a little bit about those fixed liabilities in these projections, we used a, if we maintained our current employees. As you know, we are at the end of our collective bargaining agreements in FY23. We're just starting the process of negotiating those that will commence relatively soon. In the past, we've tied the cost of living increase with CPIU Northeast region for the August to August dates. If we look at those numbers right now, it's really high, as high as it's been since I've been here. It was 4.4%, which is significant. We've also negotiated in our contracts in the past a bracket approach to COLA so that it shall not exceed a 3% increase, shall not go below a 1% increase. And of course, step is typically 1.5% from one step to the next. And police is our only contract that's a little bit outside of that, which is a 2% increase in step. Calculating those numbers out, along with sort of very rough first comments on sort of our group health increase, sort of our other contractual benefits dental. Vision, workers comp, insurance, what that increase in premium will be, as well as property and liability insurance, sort of forecasting 10% increases there. We pull all that together, group health being the greatest as well. Sorry, salaries being the greatest impact as well as group health. We're looking at 1.1 million increase in fixed liability. Of course, it's important to offset that with sort of projected local option tax or grand list growth, talked about 1.1%, which is again, is just a flat average local option tax. Also is, of course, we had a very different year last year, but that also seems to average around 2%. So those offsets are about 277,000. So just to sort of get to the summary, the nitty gritty here, if talk about that fixed assets with the offsets in order to maintain sort of the current levels of service without anything additional added, only in order to meet those liabilities, the tax rate would need to increase 5% to 0.4568, which is a little over 2 cents on the tax rate. Since we are in a contract year, Martha ran the numbers on if the COLA was sort of within that bracketed approach and only increased 3% that would reduce our total costs by 146,000, which brings the total down to about a 4.25% increase, which is a little under 2 cents on the tax rate. So those are just sort of an initial rough projections just to sort of where we stand and what we're looking at for next year, just to sort of help frame your own thought process as we go into the budget season. Okay. Compared to last year, that's quite a jump. We had 0.98%, we were under 1% last year. Right. So if I could just stop it, I think the key questions we're looking for you to provide guidance on, no votes or anything like that tonight, but just guidance as we develop this budget do you have priority areas for us to consider funding? If we do need to make reductions, are there areas you would like to see reductions? And what is your council, what's your tax rate goal? You would like to see us develop a bring in a tax rate that's two additional cents that's less than two additional cents, those kinds of things. Just your comment, Megan, about tax rate history for me, this is all new to me for South Burlington. I do all of this data for Winieski, but I didn't know it for South Burlington. I think one of the things we're seeing is both the fact of the economy in a 4.4% COLAF that was at 1.5% or 2%, that's a far different story, which is where we've been for the last five years. Additionally, if you look at the first box on Andrew and Martha's memo about the municipal tax rate history, if you look from FY16 to FY20, there were about five years in there where you were averaging 4% increase, 3.5%, 4% increase every year, and then the last two years, that's been to 2% increase and then below 1%. So we're coming out of two years of really minimal growth following pretty high growth. So just by way of context. So is that a typo? It should be minus 1.51%. No, the tax rate went down after the reappraisal. Oh, 21%? But if you look at the footnote, if we use the previous grand list, it would have been a 0.98% or 1%. Yeah, that's what it was approved as. So that's why there's sort of that budget number as well. Did we, I don't recall us putting forward budgets that were 6.59% or 6.75% or? I don't recall any numbers that were done 4%. They just don't dive with my memory at all. I remember the 3.75 and the 327 and the 212, but the sixes and the fours, I don't recall those at all. So this is based on the actual approved tax rate. And so that might be some of the reason why there's a little bit of a difference, which, so after, you know, it's just sort of a projected number prior to voter approval when the budget's brought forward. So this is what the tax rate ended up being once all the other calculations were made. So that might be for part, explain part of that. Yeah. So what Andrew is saying is, when you approve a budget to send to the community, you're approving that based on assumptions of what the grand list is gonna come in. So we're building a budget, assuming the grand list is gonna go up 1%. If the grand list doesn't go up 1%, if it only goes up half a percent, but you've already, the voters have already approved the amount to be raised, then the tax rate is actually higher than what you thought it might be when you approve the budget. And you're telling us that to just have the status quo is needing a 5.01 or something? Again, that's with a number of assumptions, but correct. Yep, a little over 5% increase in the tax rate. Okay. Well, now you wanna hear our priorities. Is that right? Well, I think we should talk about what we think is a desired tax rate, tax rate increase for next year, what our range would be. We've always talked about, we're really comfortable between, in the three range. I've never been, I don't think I've ever voted on a five. I think there was one, there was like four, but there was a reason behind it. Yeah, because the year before it was really low. Two years before, I mean, but caught up with this. Right. I just, I'm real sensitive to the fact that, the burden shifted from commercial to residential because of the reappraisal. And then you have a lot of homes that were, that the appraisals went up because they're really old. So you have a lot of tax bills, I think that were higher than have been in the past. So then if you put a 5% on top of that, it's an extra poke in the arm. So I just wanna be sensitive to that fact that right after reappraisal, we're not Burlington, right? Where it's gonna be even worse for a number of reasons, right? But we did have in some increases, so. Well, so if they're projecting a 5% increase for status quo and you're saying, I'm only comfortable with three to four. The status quo is always negotiable. I mean, the status quo includes a lot of things in it. And some of those things don't have to be there and then you can get down to the 3%. I mean, that's one path you can take. I mean, I'm not saying that that's where we're gonna end up, but. I don't know, some of those status quo, like striping, I have to just say that the striping has been. That the what? The pluriball, the striping, the road striping. It's just, we're in September and some of our roads still aren't striped. It's, it's, there are some things that I just feel that and I don't know why if it's budgetary or, you know, because there was the furlough and COVID and all these things that caught up to us. But I think that we have to be careful to make sure that some of the basics are met, like road striping, I think that. No, we have some roads that are in dire needs. Yeah. The person street is a mess. Yeah. Right? And I don't know what that priority list is for paving for next year. I mean, hasn't been determined yet, right? But there probably is a list. There's a wish list of it, right? Now I said I wouldn't talk on the last item. I can talk on this one. You certainly may. So I agree, Tim. I much more comfortable by giving them guidance to increase taxes by more than 3%. And I'd even go back to our earlier discussion and question the fund balance and maybe taking that 325,000 over the minimum and using, I know Tom has done those types of things before in order to give us, because the taxpayers I think will support about a 3% increase. And that would be the target. I as one counselor would impress upon management to try to get to, including messing around, not messing around with, but thinking of that fund balance. Okay. I'd like to look at that in sustainability. I mean, if we get to serve ourselves from that savings account, but next year that we deprive of the future council of that opportunity. So what portion of that? I'm still staying in bulk of it. We'll go to the fund balance. I didn't even cut you off. Sorry. Yeah. Right, but what, you know, I wouldn't say it's all or, you know, I think we have to think about long-term. Well, yeah, I do find 5% a little bit steep myself. I agree. And don't forget there's a proposal for four pennies on top of this too. Right. But it is a proposal. Right. This doesn't include penny for paths. Right. So, I mean, whatever the final. Well, the penny for paths is already in the tax rate, isn't it? Or in the budget. So, is it included in this percentage? The penny for paths. Tax bill, but I don't know if it's part of it. It's part of the tax. The penny for paths is included in the budget. 5%. Is it? Okay. So, we got a couple of people saying 3%. Well, we can't include penny for paths in that 3%. I mean, penny for paths was on top of keeping our business services running. Right. Matt, what's your sense? Well, yes. Well, sometimes it's not. 3%, so is that, all right. Which could be difficult because we are seeing, this is gonna be a very inflationary year. And we have not started to see the increase in energy that we're going to see. Right. Europe is suffering incredibly right now under huge natural gas price increases. And even in this country, natural gas wholesale prices are double what they were a year ago. And that's because of the pandemic and the crash in energy prices, right? Half those guys out there cap their wells and says, I'm not gonna open them up until the price comes up. And they're very slow to turn them back on and we're shipping like 10% of all of our natural gas liquefied to Asia right now. Or to Europe. So the problem is that we can produce a whole lot of natural gas but we're shipping a lot of it elsewhere. We're not producing as much as we were. And that's gonna drive the price up. So I think heating costs are gonna go up and electricity costs are gonna go up. Maybe not so much here because a lot of it comes from hydro but in other areas where these a lot of natural gas fired turbines, they're gonna see huge. And the wind's not blowing in the North Sea if you didn't know right now, right? So England and France and Germany are suffering from a lack of wind power out of the North Sea because there hasn't been any wind. So they're forced to convert over to more natural gas and coal where they have all these coal plants sitting there idle, they gotta fire them up. In England, there are no coal plants in France. These forces will affect world energy prices. So what I'm getting to is that, you're gonna have energy increases, healthcare increases, right? All these are inflationary plus all the supply chain problems and all the parts you wanna buy are gonna cost more over the next two years, two to three years. I mean, you can't ship a container from Asia to the US without it costing five times what it did two years ago. So. I tend to agree that this pandemic precisely because we have not been able to get control of it. We have a population that has not, I would say risen to stepped up to make sure that everybody could regain control of our economic future. And we are very much finding ourselves like we did after the flu of 1918. That is the reality. We can't hold our own population necessarily responsible for it. I think Vermont has been very responsible. But as you said, we're part of a global community, right? And specifically a national community. And I do hear from people that they do want city services, however. So it's a, yep. So yeah, it's a lot to balance, Tom. Was part of your interest in this discussion, Jesse, beyond just the 3% percentages, but on the larger things, I saw Chief Francis was here. And I just know multiple times over the past few years that second ambulance has come up. And is that some part of this discussion here? And are we gonna hear from our department leads? And they're- Oh, yeah. Yeah, all of our department heads will be presenting their, or the leadership teams propose budget to you absolutely. This is really meant to, you set the schedule, you have this initial conversation, and then we go and do months worth of work. So it's really to give us that kind of high level, where are you at? Where are you at balancing other things? If there are things that you really want us to think about, this will also come up through the policy and priorities conversation. We can also have some of these conversations there. Where are the areas you want us to focus? Maintaining funding, adding additional funding. It's not your one and only chance at this. It's just to help provide us some guidance as we go and set some expectations with the team about, you know, we're not gonna have 10 new staff people this year. We're going to do things within budget. How does what we bring you through the general fund budget line up to $5 million of ARPA funding? Where can we offset some projects to continue the core government services for the community, but also continue the high level goals of the council and the community? So high level guidance is what I'm looking for. Hovering around three very useful guidance. Thank you for that. If there are other kind of- That's the penny for PAS. I mean, to include the penny for PAS in that 3%, I find to be a little challenging because we agreed to have that be in addition to, right? And for us to take that away from basic city services, I find that to be a little bit troubling. So this is helpful. I don't mean after such a great night of other interesting conversations, I don't mean to end on such a downer. It's just looking for guidance. Well, Tim forgot for us. You can thank me. There'll be downer over there. Yeah. But it would be nice to have a measure periodically about the effect of inflation on your current budget items that you planned for last year. Do you're finding they cost 8% more or five, or whatever it is. But I do know in terms of a priority, and I know you'll be working on this, but I think there are departments where we don't have enough staff to really do what the expectations are. And that's always hard to add staff because it's costly, but it's another piece of what the public is looking for. So somehow, I think that needs to be included or pursed out in the future, like how do we get from here to there? You know, I mean, I know you can't add like quarter people, but I think that's important and... Yeah, we have to know. I also think we have been extremely careful, I guess would be the right word, with our paving. And that's a huge complaint, but that's an expensive thing. To fund, but it's also kind of one of those issues that the public talks about. And their expectation is that's a pretty basic city service. So those are unfortunately how we can add to the budget. But I do think it needs to be in the conversation. And if we can't, then we need to lay that out for the public. It says, okay, you wanted X. The only way we can do that is to add Y, and that means a tax increase. So help us balance this. Tell us what it is you really, really want, and then don't complain with the decision. Ha, ha, ha. But anyway, but those are two areas that I think have been issues for the city, always. Useful, thank you. Thank you. That's enough, okay. All right, great. Well, thank you. So item 18, those are reports from counselors on committee assignments. Attention, busing. Did you have a? The GMT meets tomorrow. I'm very optimistic on our progress with our labor relations. Okay. Well, I'll give a brief airport commission meeting. So you all know that we have a interim that will continue going into the future. The mayor was at the meeting. He was not. Like a commission meeting? Yes, our commission meeting. He recognized that there really was need for some changes. He offered support to the staff at the airport. Was this after the six hour meeting at the city council at the time? Yes, this was after the termination. The 11 to one vote. Yeah, yeah. And he also said I'm not going to a big national search right now. I'm pretty comfortable with Nick Longo. So we're gonna keep going along that path, although they need to hire someone else because Nick was director of operations and he can't do both. I have a fair amount of confidence in Nick as well. So I think that's probably good. We had a really fascinating presentation on the USDA wildlife biologist and technician, which is a jointly funded project with the guard. And after the miracle on the Hudson, with that crash, the FAA along with the USDA said all these airports are gonna have full-time biologists who deal with mostly birds, but not only birds, those are the big problems for planes. And it was just fascinating to hear what they do and how they take them to other places and do brush cutting so there aren't places where the birds can like to be near the runways and so forth. So that was kind of interesting. I did mention to Maro that I thought that we needed some, either the commission needed to have a real peace in helping evaluate future directors or something needed to give. And that I thought that the staff apparently didn't feel like there was a system where they could share with anyone. I mean, no one ever came up to me as a commission member and said, you know, this is a problem, pretty much. I mean, you had an interlude and I knew about that. But, you know, so they need that. And he acknowledged that and he felt that they'll try to work on that. I mean, this is a little wishy-washy frankly. Yes, I mean, he really didn't have a good answer because it was clear that even his own counsel said, there's a lot going on with the directors. And Maro's answer was, well, Burlington has a design where all the directors really have a lot of autonomy. So there isn't that kind of oversight that I presume you have with your directors. You know, they really sort of go do their stuff. Which is, I think as he's learned that that might be a problem. We need to do some other things. They still have a lot of American Rescue Plan Act money. Oh, and then the really good news. So that's good for their solvency. The whole noise issue. Two of the stations will be ready to provide access to the public real-time access mid-October. And, Your website? Yeah, yeah. And you literally will be able to determine the time of the noise and exactly what planes are flying. So you can link them. The bad news is that data will not be added to noise exposure maps. That's another process. But this will certainly allow the public to check. What was that noise? Who was flying? And then you can, and the airport will know that. So, you know, that's a positive development. And it soon will be kind of an incredible amount of information because it's military and commercial jets. It's all of them. Oh, yeah. The military is going to give the information about when they're flying. Well, they have these monitors and you don't turn them off when the military. So the noise is, oh, that was the military plane. They don't tell us ahead of time. Well, no, I'm saying you can ascertain that if you hear it and you go on the site and see this spike. But is there another set of data underneath that says, you know, Flight 437 United Airlines? Yes. And then is it going to be a nothing there for an F-35 flight? Well, that I don't know because they're trying it out. You'll have to, you'll have to. They all have tail numbers. Queue in, but apparently you will. Okay, they don't tell you when they're going to fly, but somehow you know when they do. Well, yeah, no kidding. So it was a good meeting and we'll move ahead. So that's my report. There's no other committee? No, none down there. So is there any other business? None. Rosanne wanted to talk about the trees in front of her house. Were we going to talk about that now? Oh, that's right. She recommended, shall we allow individuals to support saving trees in front of their own? Is that what she's asking for? Yeah. She wants to treat it with pesticide. One to three trees, one to three trees. One on her property and two with neighbors. I feel like she should go through DPW on this. She really talked to Justin. Well, yeah, okay. Yes, Jessie. I feel like if this is something you are interested in us exploring, we should bring you a recommendation from both Public Works and Legal. I think if we're gonna do this, there should also be some kind of, she assumes liability if they. Of course. If they, if something were to happen. Well, there could be several choices we have. One is that we take no action, right? And second is that we delay cutting of those trees but don't allow her to treat them. Or we allow her to treat them and we don't cut them. You know what I'm saying is. Right, several. So the easiest thing we can do is just delay the cutting period, right? And then say, but please don't treat them because there are trees right now. I mean, their city trees are owned by the city, so. But Justin can have a recommendation on that. Right, right. I agree with Tim. Okay. Amenable. Is everyone amenable to that? Yeah. Okay. Well, I read it. Stop cutting all the ash trees, please. Okay, is there any other business? No, all right. Motion to adjourn. No, no, we have to wait till 10.05 because. Oh, I'm sorry. Have a long. Hi. Hi. I was wondering who will be doing the next counselor corner. Oh. October. Tim Barrett is October. And then followed by, is it Megan? I didn't know I'm doing December. I'm November, yep. So Megan is November and I'm December. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Okay, motion to adjourn.