 I'll call the what's the date October 25th, 2023 City Council meeting to order. Are there any agenda additions or changes from staff? I do not have any. From council? No. No. Great. I'll do that. Move on to public to be heard. This is the portion of the meeting where we take comment from members of the public on items that aren't on the agenda. So we will start in the room. Is there anyone in the room that has anything they'd like to offer up to the council or discuss? Not seeing anyone here in the room. How about online on zoom? Pull that up. It's like Annie. Annie Cooper. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. Great. About a year ago, I came to the board to the people I trust and I asked for policies to be written and voted upon for finances and hopefully other things so that our new city could have the structure that would be asked to create the opportunity for growth from a grounded place. And it began with a discussion about the pumpkin event at the red department. But more valuably, I feel that policies and policies in place to to ensure that like, for example, if I go to pay my dog license in person and I pay cash, there's a way that that happens, which is not similar to the way that money goes into other places. And I'm thinking that with a policy in place, it is a very simple thing not to create it. But once it's in place, once you have those things in place, the growth of the city can be really easily seen and tracked and trusted because the policies exist. And so I'm asking again a year later that these policies be created. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Is there anyone else on Zoom? Do not see anyone else's hand up. So we will move on to Agenda Item 5A, Tree Farm Management Group. Looks like there's a few people here. How you doing? Come on up. There's plenty of seats. There's one with a microphone, but there's more. Welcome all of you. We can get you more chairs if you need it. But don't move it too far away. We won't take you out. You're welcome. We need one. No problem. Busy, busy. Just starting the Tree Farm. Welcome. Hi. All right. My name is Sven Eckloff. I'm the president of the Tree Farm. So thank you for having us today. I believe there are five of us, the five board members. There's nine now on our board. Five of us are here in the room. I just, today's meeting is to give you a summary on how the year went, or not quite close. We close this weekend. But I want to first start by just saying that we have nine members on our board, five of which live in Essex Junction, two live in Essex Town, and one lives outside of here. So Essex Junction is well-represented on our board. The nine members are Jim Gowdy from Nordic, myself from Essex United. Giles Willie from Vermont Soccer. Maria Godlasky from Rugby, Allie Vile, from the town, Parks and Rec. Mark from the Junction Parks and Rec. Mike Nick, who represents our adult leagues, which is our fastest growing league at the Tree Farm. He's now on our board. So he's new. Charlie Lancaster, who lives at Audem Pond. He's a neighboring resident of the Tree Farm. So he's on our board. And Mark Benjamin, who also lives near Audem Pond, also is on the board. So we've been tasked to bring up our membership to 11. So we're there. We're almost there. We're at nine. The last two seats, according to the rules, are up to the municipalities to supply membership to our board. We met with Essex Town last week. And I guess they may work with you guys to put something out or advertise or something to get another member on our board, because it really needs to come from the municipalities. In a perfect world, I would love to have someone from the school get strict on our board, since they do use the Tree Farm quite a bit. We've reached out to the school five times this year. No one's interested at the moment. Doesn't mean we're not trying. We do want to get to 11. But we've gone from six to nine in one year. So I think we've made a positive improvement and better representation on the Tree Farm. So this year, I'm not sure if you guys have been to the Tree Farm. Regina, I know you've been there. On a field trip to the Tree Farm, yourself, Greg, Margarita and I, you've never been there before. So I'm glad you had a chance to tour it. It's a wonderful facility right here in Essex Junction. This year, in many respects, it was our best year. But in some respects, it was a tough year. I just put out in front the water and rain this year. It was a huge challenge at the Tree Farm. I think every facility in Chittin County was closed for months on end. We remained open, but it was a real struggle financially. On a positive note, we had our best year on a revenue standpoint. More people are using the facility than ever before. We did raise our rates, so that does show how our financials are revenue increased. But the demand for the Tree Farm is there. We literally can't say yes to everyone, especially this year, when out of town programs and programming needed places to play, they came to the Tree Farm because everything else was closed due to the rain. I expect revenue to come in right around $165,000 to $170,000. I still have to collect a few more checks, but in that ballpark. So that's a pretty big improvement on past years. We'd like to keep the Tree Farm affordable for everyone to use, but it costs money to run the Tree Farm. So we raised our rates last year 10%. And it's open for discussion from our board if we're going to increase them this year. We have yet to be determined. Tree Farm, I don't know if you guys know this, but it's the home to a lot of different organizations, not just soccer. So it's the home to Essex Wreck Soccer, which today, this year, had over 400 kids. Over 50 teams used the Tree Farm. Is that too close? No. So Essex Wreck uses it pretty much there, our biggest user in the fall. Essex United, which is more of a spring soccer club, uses it then primarily Nordic soccer in the high school. High school is all the JVA, JVB soccer teams use the Tree Farm all fall. And then the cross-country team at the high school uses it, they're their biggest fan of the year at the Tree Farm. Burlington Rugby, men and women, Vermont Soccer Association, which is a big program, Vermont Women's Soccer League, and then our two adult leagues versus an elite eight, adult programs, they used to be spread around Trenton County, they're more or less all now focused at the Tree Farm. So demand is high, it's really high, and we had to manage it, like we've never managed it before this year. We had to close a lot of fields this year because of the rain and the damage, but I think we've done a pretty good job dealing with the cards that were dealt this year. I have exciting moves this year. The Tree Farm opened up the facility to other programs outside of just soccer and rugby. This year was the first year we had our first big lacrosse tournament, I'm sure you guys all heard about that. It was, we have learned a few things from that event. It was the first time we had a tournament at the Tree Farm where a member was not on the board, so it was kind of open to a new party that had no representation on the board. So we learned some steps, parking, being one of them in traffic that had never really been a problem before. Ultimate Frisbee, they had a wonderful tournament. They're probably the best people to ever rent the Tree Farm. They're the cleanest. You don't even know they're there when they come and go. So we're happy to have them, and I think they will be coming back every year. And last but not least, we had a football jamboree. First time football has ever been at the Tree Farm. I'm a big Chargers fan, unfortunately the Buccaneers from CVU land came and rented it for the weekend for their big jamboree where 10 towns came. So that was a big win, and I think they're going to be renting it in the future. So all in all, a lot of different sports now at the Tree Farm, which is one thing that you guys wanted in our management agreement, and we're really trying to stick to that. But we do have to recognize that soccer is the biggest sport. It's 90% of the revenue, and we are maxed out in terms of field rentals. That's the current status. I will say I just want to touch on any given week. There's hundreds of kids at the Tree Farm during the weekday, primarily once school's out and works out. And on weekends, we're in the thousands of kids and adults. Really busy at the Tree Farm. And it's a good thing, and the whole community is benefiting, which is great. A couple of focus items this year, and I'll touch on some of the financials in a little bit. But our main goal going into the year, and this kind of stem from two or three years ago, is that we want to reinvest in the facility. For many years, the fields were kind of being overworked, and we weren't really reinvesting in the fields. So starting about two years ago, we really started focused on field rotation and closing down a field or two every single year to let it come back. With the amount of traffic we have in the wear and tear, we had to start doing that. Or the fields would just all go become a bad place. So the reason why people use the Tree Farm is our fields and how great they are. This year, I think we've had hundreds of comments from people that live right here in Essex and Essex Junction that the fields have never looked better. It's the best year from a field standpoint. I think that in another reason, that the man supports what we're doing there. I hope that doesn't, isn't because we got four feet of rain, but. No, well, I will say there's four of us here that irrigate the Tree Farm daily. So I mean, obviously we didn't have to irrigate as much, but in normal years we would. Yeah. One thing that you probably have seen the financials were in the red this year. We were going into the year expecting to be in the red, but not as much as we're in the red. We, after the La Crosse Tournament, so our three busiest weekends, so we're also the three rainiest weekends this summer for tournaments. It was like the perfect storm. And the La Crosse Tournament that was here, and I don't, initially everyone was upset with La Crosse. I think we have scaled that back. It was more weather related versus sport related, but the Tree Farm took a beating. I've never seen before. It was really bad at the Tree Farm. The high school fields were also used and they were closed for long periods of time after words too, so they were ruined. So as a result, we had to make a decision. Some of the fields were unplayable. We had to close it. So we decided to close the main complex, which was an added expense, cost about $20,000. So we weren't anticipating that, but I think it was a very wise decision. And if you've been out through the Tree Farm in the last week or so, that main complex looks wonderful. It'll be open come the spring. With that being said, we had to cram everyone in on the other six fields and that's been a challenge and rotating every three days to make sure the fields don't get worn out in certain areas. I can speak to Crosse, but maybe I'll open it up to Giles on Crosse. He is our treasurer. Crosse are high. We know that. We're aware of that, but I just want to reiterate that the money is going right back into the facility to make it a better place for the community. I'm not sure if you guys have a copy of this thing, but this is a seven year, one back seven years. So it's kind of important to understand how this document has been created and massaged over time. Prior to 2020, the facility was run by Schill and so there was a big one single lump sum that was paid out to Schill and then he did all of the mowing and any kind of field maintenance that needed to be done. So we had no granularity for 2017, 18, 19. That was the case for almost 20 years. Yeah, and so when the tree farm management group decided to bring that feature back into its own realm, we then were able to push some more detail out in our chart of accounts. And so now we're able to tell how much are we spending on mowing and chem applications and hydrangea, all those different things so that when you're looking at your, how much revenue do we have? How much can we put back into the facility? You're making an educated choice as to what's gonna get us the most bang for the buck. Do we have some money like with the complex being shut down? Yes, La Crosse destroyed that whole area. It allowed us though to let football come in. So normally we would have said no to having football come in because they don't make any favors on the center lines of the field. So, but because the complex was already destroyed, we were able to bring the football program in. So it was like this perfect storm of good stuff or making good stuff out of bad stuff. And then when they were done, then S&D came in behind them, flattened the whole field out, leveled things off, seeded, dragged, and then we went to town with the irrigation. And it's funny that with all this water, it's when you get the water that's important. So it just happened when the seed went down, it didn't rain for 10 days. And then it poured after that. So we were, it's a lot of work to do those sprinklers. But now coming into 23 and on, we can actually make really good decisions as to how much money are we spending in different areas? Is it a good return? And because the three biggest users, Nordic, Vermont Soccer, and Essex United. And REC. And REC, yeah. Because we're also users of the system, we get to see the benefits. So it's a good combination of what you're doing and why you're doing it. This year, we knew we were gonna do the complex. So we had to invest in another sprinkler, which was 12,000 bucks. So part of that red is, we knew we were making investments for equipment that would then be long-term, that's a long-term play. That sprinkler should be in existence for years and years. So I wouldn't foresee having a $21,000 red line. And that's gonna get worse because we haven't gotten our water bill yet. And the water bill obviously is gonna be somewhere in, I say, it's gonna be at least, I'm thinking it's gonna be more like three to 4,000 bucks. The amount of water that we put through that thing in this last third is gonna be significant. So it's probably gonna be somewhere in that 25. We got some revenue coming in, a sprinkle of revenue. So probably something like a 25 hit. And but then next year, we won't have to buy that sprinkler. So there's a bunch of stuff that we invested in this year that we shouldn't have to invest in next year. I would also like to note that we also bought all new ochre gold nets and soccer flags. The stuff that we have not done for 15 years, it was time to get that, so that costs the money. That's something we're not gonna be doing next year, obviously. Just back to my comment on our focus this year real quick. Our goal was to increase board members. We did that, expand our user base. I think we've done a pretty good job at that. Our field rotation and reinvesting in the facility. I think we mentioned that. We closed two other fields, but I think that collectively the tree farm is looking really good. And a lot of people in this community are gonna wanna use it and eventually rent it. A couple of areas that we had some problems this year, which I think you know some of them, one is parking on Old Colchester Road. That is, I am determined to fix that. It's kind of, I can't enforce it, but I'm determined to fix it. So I've reached out to the municipalities to look for help in public works. The Hedgerow and Old Colchester Road, all the no parking signs you couldn't see. They're all covered by the shrubbery. So I was hoping they could be trimmed by the municipalities, so it clearly says no parking. It's an interesting impact. That road is narrow and it takes one person to park. It could be a neighbor, because you can park there if you live on the street. It takes one person to park. For within a half hour you have a hundred cars because they all think one person can do it, we can all do it. So it's a really hard thing for us to govern. And we are not at the tree farm 24 hours a day, right? But we have made an effort. We put our own signs up with permission. I went to every homeowner there to ask, that was okay. I asked the police if that was okay. We can put our own signs up temporarily. He said it was good, but I think in the future, if we can have better signage from the municipalities, that just says no parking, that would help us manage it. Yeah, I mean, so when I go to tournaments or used to go to tournaments, I don't have to do that anymore. It's kind of sad. But whenever we were renting a facility, the hosting softball or whatever it was, would have to provide people to ensure that those neighborhood impacts weren't there. So it's something to consider as you start, you know, start renting out to the bigger tournaments. You know, they either, we had to either provide fees or pay enough money so that the facility would provide those people during the day or that the organization coming in and renting it so they could have the tournament would provide those people. So we have parking attendance inside the facility, but Colchester Road is a municipal road. And there were two things like Sven said, the signs, you couldn't, I mean, you'd have to really look for two reasons. One, I think, I don't know if there's a perfect height for those things or a legal height, but I mean, they're up here. And if my sight line is like this, I probably don't see those or I choose not to see them, but who's shrubs are those? It's my understanding, it's the municipality on, because it's on that side of the new walkway that was put in. That's how I understand it. I don't know for sure. I would like some clarity on that. That would be good. I'm just curious enough. But anyways, that's something I'm, so going in the next year, let me just touch this year real quick. Things that we owe you guys is a management plan by year end. We are working on that. We kind of have a management plan, but we've never really formalized it. So I think that would be a good process. It's now our slow season, so this is a good time to do that. I did tell the town last week if they could provide some insight on what they're looking for. Talked to Mark recently. It'd be better for us if both municipalities want the same thing. And we're finding that there's needs, that needs are different on both sides and some clarity there would be great. So we don't have to do two different things of every time we do something. But that's on my agenda to do that. Another one is just improved communication with all of you in Parks and Rec on both sides, on the town, in the Junction. I'm, you know, I think better, good, better communication is we all do, we'll do a better job. And I think it just gives us all a better look at the tree farm. So I, that's one reason I invited Regina out at the tree farm and is just to come see it and see what's going on out there. The one thing that we are working on is our 503, 5013C status. We are working, we have hired an accounting firm. We actually have a big meeting with them tomorrow to discuss our status. It involves some tax returns back in the teens that we discovered weren't filed. Just became new to us over the summer. We've been really working on that to sort that through. So hopefully we'll know more tomorrow what's needed to bring that up. But I just wanted to tell you, make you guys aware of that. I think you guys were already aware of that. But I just wanted to say that we have not forgotten that. And there is a 1231 deadline on that as well. Our focus for next year, is one as our tournaments and how we manage them. First and foremost, that's, our tournaments are a busy time. There's three or four tournaments a year. With, after the lacrosse tournament, I think we all learned a lesson that we need to redo our tournament agreement and give us more authority and power. And we need to be more present there at tournaments. So we can make those decisions. So we are rewriting our agreement now. Hopefully that's ready by year end. So we can give it to our clients who use the tree farm. And part of that will be a traffic plan, which I know we owe you that too. I do have a meeting with the police in the near future. I really want to see their angle to this before I put something together. S6 United who I represent has had a traffic plan, their own traffic plan for 20 years and it works really well. So in all honesty, we're probably going to use that as a template and get some police feedback. And hopefully that works for everyone and keep everyone happy, including yourself. Next goal is to try to add two more board members, but we're really relying on the municipalities to provide those two extra seats. I think we've asked, we're just waiting to hear back. But I think we've done there. And more importantly, next year, so much of our attention and resources go into the fields. Next year, we're going to have, spend some more time and effort and money on our road and parking lot situation. This year with water, the fields more or less did okay, but our road did not. Anytime it rains there and you have 500 cars come and go within an hour, you have potholes three feet deep. So we usually have a dust problem at the tree farm. We did not have that this year. We had a water problem, road problem. So one of our costs is road repair. That was higher than we were expecting, but we have hyper engineer O'Leary Burke. They just did a site plan for us so they can we have a schedule of what we can work on. We can't afford to do it all at once, but year by year. And it's all about keeping water off the roadway and the parking lot. So the engineers gave us plans and a schedule and we're kind of digesting that now in hopes that next year that's our focus is making the road and parking lot a better experience for everyone. And I think last but not least, and Giles you can tune to this this year was a high cost year. I think, you know, I run a business and I'm very conscious of cost. So I think next year our costs will come in less. That's my goal may have a more balanced budget and hopefully put more money back in the bank as a rainy day fund. So this money that we have, we've always looked at as a rainy day fund and let it rain this year. I'm not, it's just funny how that works out, but we had to spend money to keep the tree farm going and we've had that bank balance for reasons. So my goal is to hopefully bring that back up a little bit and we may have to increase our costs and what we charge per field depending on how our budget looks going into next year. So we have raised our rates 10% this last year in January and then 10% the previous year. Prior to that rates, I don't think went up for Jim. He really is. Yeah, probably can't. As for affordability, one of the questions that Regina sent us is the $66 and how we got to that number and tournament costs and all that stuff, what we charge. $66, it used to be 50 something. So that's just what we inherited and we kind of measure the tax increase or not the taxes, the rental increase to reflect our costs. Right, we're not in the position to make money. We're not trying to do that. We're just trying to, in a sense, break even. To your point on tournament fees, if you were rented tree farm for a weekend, it's currently $12,000. That's the fee currently. That was increased 10% proportionally too. So that's the going rate. The tree farm, that may increase because we have discovered that tournaments are costing us a lot more in road repairs and stuff like that. So the board will have to vote on that and decide on that. Kind of think of the rest of the questions. You got the financials, the parking, the traffic plan that's being addressed. I think that was most of it. Is that it? Long story short though, it's been a pretty good year at the tree farm. Demands way up, costs were up as you know, but that's more weather related. I think the board has done a really good job of managing the tree farm this year. I practically am there seven days a week, volunteering my own time. I'm probably 200 to 400 hours in personally at the tree farm. So I'm very much interested and invested in the tree farm and I'd love to see it keep providing what it does to the community and everyone who uses it. I think that's great. I think it was over there the other day. It looks amazing, especially considering. Appreciate that. It's nice to hear that it's been busier than ever. That's the point. I will note, we also added all new signs. I don't know if you noticed that, that was one of our- I saw some, yeah. It's been a few years since I've been over there regularly. Signage was always the thing that we got the most complaints on. Where am I going? So we fixed that this year. Great. I'm sure we all probably have questions, but I'm going to jump into a few. That's all right. So around, I mean, we'll start with like these and things. And this is just, none of these are sort of like supposed to be challenging necessarily or mostly curiosity. So when you're setting rates like that, and what are the comparables? Are there other facilities in New England that you're basing this on? And is it, are you close? I'd say we're close to the ceiling, where I say that there's not a huge, there's not a luxury of field space that somebody could opt to go to. So like I say in Nordic, we're getting to that app where is it worth $68 or $70? But the other question is, is there an alternative? And there's really isn't a viable alternative for a program of size in Nordic or a program of size at Essex United. I wear three hats. I'm on the board of the tree farm. I'm on the board of Vermont soccer and I'm a coach for Mansfield United, which we practice out in Jericho. So on any given decision, I have to look at it from three perspectives to see which do they all jive rarely. So you kind of have to play it out a little bit, see where, what's the best mesh? And I, we can't rely on increasing fees every year. That's just not gonna happen. Coming out of COVID, fertilizer was unbelievably expensive, three times coming out of COVID. Paint was two X. So we had to absorb those fees. And now the good news is we emptied Sherwin-Williams of paint last year. So we ended up having this major surplus. So our paint costs this year, if you were to add 22 and 23 together, it would be a better indicator of overall paint cost. We're looking into an alternative sprayer for next year, a robot. Mark had set up a demo for Harlan. I'm not sure who did it, but so the school, the city and tree farm, if we could all get, say it all worked out and it was the, we get three units. Well, I think we would be, it would help to have those three units. So if our unit goes down, we borrow from the city or vice versa. If there's a big tournament coming in, we help each other out. And it's, you know, Harmony comes back when you have that kind of, kind of relationship. So I will know, we charged S6 United's and Nordics of the World the rental fee, but many, many people who use the tree farm don't get charged that fee. So the rec soccer program, for instance, they'd get charged $15 a player. Comes with about $6,000 this year. If they were to rent the fields as 50 teams, it would be close to $19,000 that everyone else would pay. So that was going to be one of my questions in a minute, was I don't remember if the municipalities are paying for space. They're paying a very reduced, almost they're paying one third of the cost roughly. S6, the school district, for instance, the cross-country meet, they pay nothing. 600 people come and race there, it's $0. We have a handshake deal with them that you can use the facility. They used to do it in Willison and they had to pay $5 or $6 a runner. They come and use the tree farm. Our only agreement is they have to help us maintain the trails that they run on. That's the only agreement in which they do. So it helps us, we help them, and it's a free cost to them. All right, we'll probably jump back to that. But part of the reason I was asking about rates is, you know, going through this, totally hearing your challenges and the success that you had and meeting those and sort of developing the costs. But we're still doing things like using portals. And I'm trying to figure out where we get to the point where we're charging enough to get to the point where we're building actually a physical structure or two that actually meets the level that it should be at, honestly. We shouldn't be having portals all over that facility. There should be a snack bar. There should be a building for people to change. There should be regular plumb bathrooms. There should be a lot of those things there. So my interest is saying, if we're only charging enough to have a small, very low percentage, if any, rainy day fund, where do we get to that we're putting away five or 10 years worth of capital funds so that that building can be built without it coming out of another fund? I'm thinking you would have to do exactly what you just said. You'd have to say every year push 10,000 into this capital fund. And it can't be used for anything but that. We're gonna build a pavilion for the lightning and for maybe a snack bar or something. I didn't even think about lightning, but yeah. I mean a couple of shelves. In that big complex, there is no spot that you can go to. The barn's locked up. So there really is no spot for a lightning hit. And if you're sitting on field five and you're gonna go all the way to the parking lot, that's luckily no one's ever been hit, but it's a concern. And so yeah. I mean, it would be great to have right there where the parking is to have a pavilion structure that could have picnic tables in there or and that's our lightning strike area. It could have a snack bar, but we're talking real money now. There really isn't. In this fee structure, I mean, I've gotta believe that pavilion's more than a hundred grand to put up. So let's say you could put 10 away. Well, even 10 years down the road, you couldn't build it. So there would have to be some kind of a capital fund. Maybe somebody, an endowment of some sort. I don't know. But it would have to be, I think it would have to be outside money because you're never gonna be able to charge enough to offset. I think then another way to put it, I think we can charge more at the tree farm the demands there, but I think, I don't know if it's our mission, but we also wanna make sure it's affordable for programs too, right? If you go to airport park in Colchester, I think they're $25 rental. Is that run by a separate or is that, how is that funded and run? But the city- Colchester Rack. Colchester Rack. Yeah, Colchester Park and Rack. Yeah, so they probably got a different capital structure when they're going to the municipality. And we're a self enterprise fund. So what we make is what we spend. There's no other ways to get money. One area, one reason why I was born on the board is to raise money, field sponsorships, and that's, it can be 15, 20 grand more. In all honesty, I'm reluctant to use my resources there if our term is up in two years. In all honesty. I'd say as we talk about a management plan, I mean, that's my personal priority would be it's behind. And it's not through anybody's doing or not doing. It's just kind of where it is. And it's not, again, not a comment on the amazing amount of time and effort everybody's putting in. But I think having that on the horizon somehow, whether it's short, long, medium, I think is critical. Because I think it will also sort of sell fund over time too. Sure. A little bit, right? But anyway, just a thing. But from a safety and a bathroom point of view, at least, you think you already started to get into who is charged and who's not charged? So that you have an agreement with the school district and municipalities are charged a reduced fee. Significant less than everyone else. Okay. That's all I think I had, sorry. I was gonna say the portal that thing, it's, so that's almost, it's a wash in some regards, like tournaments. Right now we have, we do four and four. So one accessible unit, three normal units at both ends of the facility. And then when a tournament comes in, say Nordic, I think we add another six. Is that true? Okay. That's six. So double it, we did enough. We're too accessible and yeah, okay. But that gets a, that's just a pass through. So that doesn't, that's not sure cost on us. And so we're really maintaining what it takes to get us through a week. And I mean, I can tell you everyone on the tree farm board would love to not have to deal with Portalettes. I imagine it is a, I'm personally the one that adds the toilet paper every week, grunge duty. Sorry. I add the toilet paper every week. Yeah. So it's, I would love it if there was a way to plumb that. I don't know what that would take. Obviously here is sewer down the Ocolchester road. Yes. Okay. So it's doable. All right. That's all I had. I think anybody, Amber, are you still here? Yep. Nothing. Okay. Let me add your hand up earlier. I do have some questions. Sure. I'm just curious to two questions. Is your fiscal year, does it end on May 31st? Calendar year. Okay. So there's a lot of missing data on the reporting that you gave us. So are you looking at which years? I'm looking what's in the packet, income and expense report by month. It's zero. I think you got an old, was that the one you were talking to me about? Yeah. So that was given back in May timeframe. I think there's a packet out there. Every month I produce a packet for every board member. So it's out there on the Google drive somewhere and either Ali or Mark can get us. Yeah. We're missing several ones worth of data. So it would be really helpful to see more up to date. Yeah. So this thing, this thing that we can get that for you is going to give you probably what you're looking for. One reason why I asked for this meeting today is because it's at the point where the tree farm is closing and most of our expenses and income is, if we met in June, it'd be tough to get a real picture of, you know, how the tree farm went. That's fine. I just want to make sure that we're seeing as up to beta steps possible. The other thing is you've talked a little bit about fees perhaps conversation, but is there a fee structure document in your materials that we can see? Yeah. It is something that's requested and in contact. Yeah. I'd like us to see that. There's really only three fees. There's the field usage fees, so the hourly rate and the tournament fee and then the town village player fee. If you would like, we can, we send a packet to all our users in January, February, and then it's up to them to book the space or reach out to us so we can send you that packet. That would be great in terms of communication and keeping us up to date. Like, treat us like people on your mailing list of other things that are in the fridge. Okay. Would you like this year's packet as of last January or you want to wait until? I'd be curious. I'm new on the board again, so I'm not familiar with what you're doing at this point. Okay. It's been a long time since my shift's placed up. It makes it easier. CityCouncil at sxjunction.org gets to all of us or you could send it to us separately. Or Regina. Regina will get it to us either, you know, whatever's. I only had one question just relating to the trail maintenance. I think I heard that it's a handshake agreement with the school district to maintain the operations of the trails, so in our agreement, that's great that you have that. In our agreement what we have in here though is that the trails are to be maintained by the tree farm management group. So how is that maintenance going? School district does it. They, I don't, I think they do a... They just had a big Labor Day event. So they've been, they went through the whole, all the kids, the students, they all go through there and clean them out. I will say CTEs in there all winter and their forestry, natural resources division, they're doing all their logging and cleaning that out too. So they help us out a little bit too. I will say most of our efforts around the fields and parking lot in all honesty, we probably could do better all the way up though. So where the trails, where the grass on the autumn pond side, where the grass translates to just trail, trail head, I know that I brush hog everything is grass, I brush hog. So in some level, I guess I'm doing that kind of maintenance. I wonder if that might be another revenue potential generation venture similar to what's happening in Wilson with catamount and their operation there as a way to encourage people to have the memberships to help generate some kind of revenue to then help offset some costs of maintenance. Cause it does take then additional costs to maintain trails. I think you would have a revolt from autumn pond, but it's not worth trying, right? I do want to real quick, I do want to mention one of the questions was our minutes, our meeting minutes. We have meeting minutes for every single meeting. Our website doesn't make it easy on us to post those. So we put our agenda on there every time we meet and so forth. We can't just upload PDFs, our software that we use is affordable for a reason. It's really good on the schedule side. It's not good at putting minutes on there. So I did talk to the town, and I'm talking to you now about this. I would love to have, we can provide a link for our minutes that we can somehow put on the municipal side of things. We're happy to do that. And we have minutes going back for a long time, so. Yeah, I mean, that was from that question. I don't know if anybody else asked it, but that was for me. There's the open meeting requirement and the agreement. And that would, in my mind, include, I noticed Monday night it was night able to attend, but there's a Zoom meeting. And part of that is the recording. So all of that needs to sort of have a home. Yeah, I would love for it. Where's that recording stored? Whose Zoom account is it? That's been in that, must have been the town's. Must have been, okay. I mean, that would have, again, that would be, if it were your Zoom account, for instance, you would just take the file out, right? But take the file out and put it somewhere on. So we can talk about that. We are new to the open meeting rules. This is our first year that we're following those rules. And in all honesty, I've been, I put the pressure on Mark and Allie to make sure we're compliant. Well, we'll talk about that. So I thought we were going into this meeting. And by all means, we can do what's needed to. I don't think we've ever had anyone. So this whole year we were open meeting. And I don't think we ever had any, for the Zoom in, but it's open. Not that it won't happen, I'm just. Yeah, I just, we can talk about it's offline. It's fine. But if I could. The idea is not to increase cost. Is there a way, is there a way we could? There's probably a way we could figure something out. With you in the town, towards the one location. And we just put the link on our website. With the intent being also that it'd be nice to be for people to have a simple way to get to it. Yeah. So we can, I'm sure we can figure something out. I'm not going to necessarily volunteer staff to do it. But I'm sure we can talk about it offline. It's just something I was thinking about. If that's in the agreement, that's identified, then we kind of have to do it. If somebody comes and says, oh, you said you were. So we can figure out how. Sorry. No, I'm sorry. So I want to ask first about, again, your process in budgeting, because looking at your forecasting for this past year, obviously there was thought and consideration around each one of these line items and how things would go up and down. But it seems wildly varied, depending on the line. And I'm seeing that a lot of these projections seem pretty far off the mark. And so I'm a little concerned about, or I'm thinking about, again, your methodology and how you look going into this year and how you're looking going forward. Because even if I look at field maintenance, your projection last year had it much lower than an actual. And while the cost here, the actual is actually lower than what it was, because my apologies. I think you're referring to the 2022 numbers. So we had this year's number is dramatically higher than we budgeted because La Crosse destroyed the fields. So we had an additional $20,000 hit on that. And then we also decided as a, because we field six and seven, the fields right behind the barn, they get used by the adult leagues. And adult leagues chop up fields quickly. And so we decided we needed to take five down to do a complete rehab. We had that in the original budget. And then just as we were getting going in the spring, we said, well, we need to buy time because five's not going to be ready in time to do what we want to do with it. So we said, let's top dress it with ryegrass. And that was an additional $4,000 that wasn't in the budget, but it allowed us to rest five for a prolonged period of time, get it back toward is now it's great shape. And then so we had an additional $24,000 in field repairs that we didn't anticipate. And then on road maintenance, we had $7,000 that we didn't anticipate, but between the Nordic tournament and the Essex United tournament, it rained and rained and rained. So we had to get Weston in there to do an emergency fix. So let me ask you about something like, for instance, field mowing, which showed up in the forecast, 71,000, yet according to this sheet here with the five years, it's at 44. Yep. So that's more realistic. If you look across, if you look, say 2017, 18, 19, it's embedded in, there was only one line item called field maintenance. Chill took care of everything below that. We didn't have any clue what was in there. And then starting in 20, we then were able to start taking individual line items out. And it wasn't until 22 that we really had the level of granularity that we wanted to have. So it's pretty difficult to go across, say I take a line item like field mowing. It's really, really difficult to take that line. I guess the point is not even just that one particular, like I can skip down to trash more, right? And the cost has gone up and down. It was greater back in 2018 through 2020 than it is, or back 2018, 2019 than it is anywhere close to it this year. But it came down from last year to this year. Your contract of services went up, your rent and utilities went down. So I'm seeing a lot of shifts while overall you're saying that your expenses revenue kind of got up or should go up because of demand. But what I'm also seeing in the overall is just, doesn't seem consistent in your forecasting that the logic maintains line. It will as the more time we have to use the same chart of accounts. So if you think of a chart of accounts that is five lines, then it goes to 10, then it goes to 15, you still have the same expense, right? There's, you just made it more granular and trying to backtrack is difficult. So like in your case of the contracted services, prior to this last management agreement, the person who did the scheduling did it, I won't say she did it pro bono, but she did it pretty, she was an Essex United person and she gave us a hell of a deal. I do want to add, I understand your questioning in the business myself, so I totally understand it. Sometimes it's hard to budget. So picture us like a ski resort, right? The revenue, we're pretty good at predicting where revenue will come in, right? Cause we kind of know where the fields and the hours and so forth. And we only have 13 fields or maybe 20 if we have to consider the small ones. The cost side, every increase in costs here are directly tied to water, field paint, field lining. When it waters, our paint is water soluble. So within two days, the lines are gone. We had to paint a lot more this year. Field mowing, I know it's coming a little less. Every time we mow the tree farm, it's $950. That's twice a week, sometimes three times a week. This year it rained every three days. We had to mow sometimes three times a week. If you don't mow, you can't play soccer on it. So it's all tied to water. Everything else is more or less in line. And the last thing I'm sorry is the field maintenance or the, our largest expense is the water reel. That's cost about 11 or 12 grand. And the main complex was 20. That is primarily by our costs or outside or much higher than what we were budgeting for. So all ties to water. So let's go. Thanks, I appreciate that. So let me ask this question then about the bottom because on the bottom line, obviously for the last five years, according to looking at your net income over the last five years, it's in the whole 26,000. Yep. And it's gonna need more like- For most businesses would not be sustainable for the short-term nor the long-term. So I'm curious about your feelings in this manner from a bottom line perspective, moving forward to the future. And it brings up the question while I totally understand how those fields are designed, how they're being used. And I'm just wondering if you've thought about some other ways, whether it's, is it access to other sports? Is there other ways to use this facility to make this bottom line? So it's my job to make the bottom line better. That's always my goal, first and foremost. I will say, going back to 2017, 2018, the Tree Farm Management Group hired Shill, who did pretty much everything at the Tree Farm, right? Back then, in all honesty, the board wasn't doing nearly the work that we're doing, this board is doing now, right? The members on this board. When they went their separate ways because they actually personally deemed that the Tree Farm was not worth their time financially. So it was a partial agreement they left, and we had to find a replacement, which we have. With that being said, and I've been on the board two years now, so what I've learned is the Tree Farm really needed some upkeep, which wasn't being done five or 10 years ago. So we are trying now to bring the Tree Farm back to where it was, which requires spending some money. But I will say, moving forward, my goal is to, like you said, to start building capital again, like we did maybe 10 years ago. And half of our fields have been redone. If we keep doing one field a year, which is our goal, I think the Tree Farm will slowly come up in our costful lesson. How long do you think that trajectory looks? Is it gonna take another two, three, five years in order to be on a blacker trajectory than this? So the black part is actually not that difficult. We just, like I said, we had the real, we had the 20, we had the- And all new equipment. That was a- Sock reel net for 20 years old. We don't have to do that for the next 20 years. Yeah, so that was an unintended cost that had to be done, right? It wasn't, we didn't have a choice. And so we made the choice to invest. I think that was the right choice, but going forward, we aren't gonna need to spend 12.5 next year for another water reel. We're not gonna have to spend 20,000 in the complex. The biggest less than I personally took from this year, lacrosse and football cannot coexist in a soccer environment without turf. That's my biggest takeaway. Thank you. Anyone else? Regina, any, anything? No, okay. Mark, anything you wanna bring to this? No, I think they did a great job explaining. Can I just follow up? We have, I have five to do items for you guys. Just make sure you're on the same page. Consider a capital plan, and maybe being in the green every year and adding money to a capital project. We'll send you updated financials. We'll send you our packet, which includes the fees. We'll also hopefully work with you guys to create a link for our meeting minutes for the public to use or for you to use if you need them. And one last thing is we need two more board members. We did get somebody from the town who's on the, what's Tom's role? He's interested, came to our last meeting, but we have not voted on his, the town said that they wanna work with you guys and put something out as it's a public advertisement. I'm not sure, it's not in my will house, but they said they would work with you guys and put that notice out, so. Okay. That's what I have for follow up, and I will do my best in the next couple of days to get all that stuff to you. Thank you. Awesome. We do get to open this up to public comment for a few minutes, so if you can just give us a few minutes. Is there anyone in the room that has any questions on this topic? Doesn't look like it. Online, Steve Eustace. You like, take a couple of minutes. Sure, thank you. And for the opportunity to talk, and I wanted to thank the pre-farm people. I don't remember everybody's names, but I think this was an excellent discussion and report data, and very good. Couple comments. You were talking about investments and your focus on beyond the fields, unlike parking and the road and all that. I think that's good. When we talk about trail maintenance, we have to talk about investment there as well. There's areas where there's erosion. There's some work that can get done, and I know Harlan and I have looked at different areas at different times. Places of gravel needs to be added, things like that. Maintenance, I think, of is mowing, right? Or tree falls, removing those branches. Over time, we need to do that. Otherwise, the trails will get too eroded to use and things like that. And the capital projects discussion, I thought that was a really good discussion. And perhaps, I mean, it would be wonderful if all the fees covered the ability to do some of the ideas that Raj had. I think we have to consider, and maybe that's the miscellaneous running the whole property. That would be a lot easier, but at some point, some of those things are important enough. We have to look at a community level on how that might happen. If it can't be handled by the fees. I don't know. We just have to say if it's important enough for the community to have a pavilion or for lighting safety and real bathrooms, maybe that doesn't have to be paid for the trail fees. If it's gonna take 30 years to get enough money to do it. Access, I've been there in the daytime and the gates closed, and I've been wanting to help with trail maintenance. It means I gotta walk a lot farther. My tools and things to do work. And I've had trouble understanding and I've mentioned in previous years on why people can't get there during the daytime during normal park opening hours. So that they can be closer to different things. I think that's important. Yes, I can park at the overflow parking, which is what I do. But that can be a long ways. Anyway, so I wanted to comment on that. But anyway, it was nice that trails were mowed a little bit more often this year. Compared to previous years. And so I just wanted to point that out that it was noticed. So anyway, so those are my comments. Thanks, Steve. Reaction or whatever. On the gate, I'll just say what we find is you get that high school kid who's just got his license and wants to go do donuts on the fields. So we try, since we don't have a presence over there all the time, we have to kind of weigh when's the right time to open the gate. And so if they're mowing, I go over and open the thing about 6.30 quarter seven and one gate partially closed. So it gives the illusion that it's not totally open. And so we just have to be careful because if one donut on a field, just knock out half your revenue. So. Well, no, I get it. I understand the concern there. It's and trying to somehow balance that would be great. We will do a better job with there. So I open and close half the week on my own time. And I recognize that opening in the morning is, I mean, we're really good at closing because once it gets dark at the tree farm, it's really dark there. There's no lights. So in my, in all honesty, it's better with the gate closed at night. I've been there many times when the police are doing rounds at the tree farm and it's a challenge. But I will say in the morning, so the first user of the day at the tree farm is usually, at least during the week is at five o'clock. Yeah. So we try, one of us tries to open it, you know, obviously around eight or nine every morning. That's our goal. I mean, we're not perfect every day. So I apologize if the gate was closed when the one time you want to use it, but we will definitely try to do better there. So. No, no, it sounds like you're trying to do what you can. And that's wonderful. Okay. I appreciate that response. Thanks, Steve. Yep, you're welcome. Arlen, drop off. Arlen, you, did you lower your hand? Yeah, I lowered my hand. It's all good. All right. Thanks. Annie Cooper. Thanks, Raj. I would like to add a two to the tree farm management group for really showing up to where the conversation was when, and anyway, where the conversation was to now, the level of professionalism that you are sitting here with under this degree of scrutiny is I'm so impressed. And I'm so grateful for your, what's the word, transparency about the lacrosse thing and the growth in what you need to decide to do. And you are really being gracious and respectful and professional in the setting that I'm feeling very uncomfortable with the level of scrutiny that I didn't know if I was in like a courtroom or a 1950s Catholic school principal's office. But I hope that the city council turns the same level of scrutiny that they put on you under themselves and all they do. And thank you so much for what you've done and what you bring to our community. And this openness to engage for what the cost should be and your work with the wonderful Mark Breslin and the wonderful Ali Vile. And I'm really grateful for what you do and how you bring this to our community. And thank you so much. Thank you. All right, councilman, nothing else? Thank you very much for spending the time. Thank you. Thanks for coming. Thank you guys. I should have told you you had a name tag on. All right, move on to five B interview and consider appointments to the Chittenden County Communications Union District and Brownnell Library trustees. And I think you're the same person, Marta. You'd like to come up and have a seat. Thank you for waiting. It's delightful. I hope you'll learn some things. I did and I will have to check it out. It's a lovely facility. So just an introduction on this topic. So at the last meeting, you interviewed two other folks for the library trustee position. This is the third applicant. This is coming to you folks as the city council because the library trustees are normally elected. There's a vacancy in that position. And so it is the sole responsibility of the council to put somebody in place to fill that vacancy. And then that seat is up for election coming this April. So that's the one board that Marta is here for. The other board that Marta is here for is the Chittenden County Communications Union District. This is relatively new. It's I think just under a year at this point. And the purpose of the communication union district is really to try to get broadband service to all on and underserved properties. Not necessarily residents or just businesses properties in the Chittenden County Communication Union District. So I have been the rep for the city on that board. It's a tricky process in Chittenden County. The other communication union districts in the state are farther along than Chittenden County because we have so many actual ISP service providers in the region. We were really hoping to actually avoid this step of establishing a municipality to try to solve this problem in Chittenden County. Essentially, we ended up having to do that in order to be able to access any of those Act 71 funds from the state. So that union district is still very much in the thinking process of how to actually do this and starting to think through an RFP to get service providers to the table to serve those folks. I think that was all the intro I wanted to do. Great. Well, okay, so let's start. This is gonna be different. Okay. I mean, we can, we don't have to have you get up in between, turn around and sit back down. I think we can probably meld the two a little bit. I'm sorry, I think I started the interrupt so I apologize, but if you wanna just, you know, introduce yourself, let us know. Sure. Your interest. So my name's Marta Power-Tursey. I've lived in this community since 1998. I love being here. I raised three daughters here. Pretty much was active in the community, although I did work in New York state and then in Atlanta as well. So this has always been a really special home to me because with all the external travel that I had to do, it was always great to come back here and of course my children were here. So a little background on me. I spent the first 10 years of my career as a journalist and the reason I'm telling you this is that it's relevant to some of the application that I put in here. So the first 10 years I worked as a journalist. I covered entertainment in New York City for the New Yorker Magazine, which was again, wonderful thing to do. The second part of my career was in corporate communications with a global company. Transition was a little bit slower than what I'm presenting here, but I worked in crisis communications, community relations, interacting with the community on major issues that the company I worked for had with environments that impacted the local community and also involvement of the schools in the affairs of the corporation so that the community was involved at all levels, children, adults, et cetera. And it was a symbiotic relationship because we made sure that any initiatives that the corporation took involved local people so that they could buy into some of the things that were maybe not so great that the company had to do such as the environmental issues. So that was pretty much second half of my career and the third part of my career, I worked as a consultant, again, in communications with clients who, individual clients and larger clients. So the reason I bring this up is that communications on one level or another has always been part of what I do. And a few weeks ago, I was on Front Porch Forum and I noticed that there was a item in there about an opening on CUD, for the CUD, and as well for the library. And I said, you know, I've done so much work for other people and for my own career, but I really haven't given back to the community in this community. And it's sort of time for me to step up to the plate. And I thought that there'd be tons and tons of people applying. I was surprised that that was not the case, although I did watch the broadcast from last week of two weeks ago. So I thought, I have something that I can bring to this. I'm not familiar, Regina and I had a discussion a while back when I first applied and we talked about the technical information that you might have to have to do this. And I remember I said to her, well, I don't know about fiber optic cable. I wouldn't know one from a noodle, but I have an interest and I motivated to learn and also I'm motivated to help bring about access to people and to organizations that really have not had access. This was very evident to me during Irene and also during the pandemic that without access, without quality access, you're really left in the dark, literally and otherwise. So I'm highly motivated to help in that regard. I have to share with you a story about how far Vermont has come and yet not far enough. When I first moved up here in 1984, I moved to Shelvern and having come from New York City expectation was a little bit different, but we called out our telephone guy to install our telephone service. And this gentleman came out and he said, oh, no problem, we'll get you hooked up. So out he went to a pole, about two or 300 feet from where our house was. And he said, I'll set you up and you'll be just fine by this afternoon. So I said, okay. So he did all of what he had to do and then he came back and he said, so here's your number. And just remember, this is a party line. And coming from the city, I thought, ooh, party line, what does that mean? So what does that mean? So he said to me, well, there are four other people on this line. So at any given time, if you need to speak, you pick up your receiver and somebody might be there and you'll have to find out how long they'll be on. So this lasted for seven months. I would pick up my phone and one of my neighbors would be on and I would say, well, how long do you think you might be on interrupting their convo? And then they'd say, oh, just another 20 minutes. So it was very chatty and the best part of it was I got to know all my neighbors. The worst part of it was you couldn't get anything done it was constant. I bring this up because that was not that long ago and it was a different environment but we've come a long way in Vermont. But still there are sometimes parts of Vermont that I visit where people do not have access or they have inadequate access or I have no access where I'm on the phone and there's just nothing. So that to me is my motivation and I see that as a real, it's a problem, it's a dilemma for a lot of people. And the other side of that is that without access to information or communication or global information depending on how far you are away from that access you might be getting information that's very skewed that might be inaccurate that's not the norm where your information your news even might not be balanced. And if you don't have balanced news and you don't have access to balanced information or equal access then you're not going to be making decisions in your community or perhaps for yourself even that will benefit you. So that's my position on why I'm doing this and why I put my application and for both. And of course for the library that's self-evident I love to read, my children love to read I love to read to my grandchildren. So that was my reason for doing that. Are there any questions or have I covered everything? So I guess I take it you're not worried about the technical part that you should be but it sounds like you're comfortable in terms of the communications district you sound like you have the bandwidth to kind of dive in. I think so. I mean, when I took my position at the corporation that I worked for I did not know anything about manufacturing either papermaking manufacturing and environmental issues but you get to figure out what it is what's going on and able to consult with people who are have the technical knowledge. So I don't know if that's an issue with advancing the different aspects of what needs to get done to move this along. That's your decision. I mean, I know how I feel about it but of course it's not mine. I'm happy to speak to that if you'd like. So at this point there is the communications union district has a planning grant where they have hired a consultant to help work through some of the technical aspects of actually putting the RFP together. They will also be at the table helping to figure out how to structure those contracts for any of those service providers that come to the table. I will say the communications union district at the start was all representatives in my position for the municipalities. We sort of got the governance structure of it set up and folks have been transitioning those to other folks. Some who do have some of that technical knowledge some who do not. So I think from my perspective it's okay. I also think as extension is sort of uniquely situated much like South Burlington in the communications union district where the number of actual underrepresented folks are very low in comparison to the other communities. So it's really for Essex Junction I think some of those things that Marta can bring to the table are pretty helpful in the sense of wanting to try to figure out an affordable option for people wanting to figure out how to make sure ultimately we are well served. So. Great. Thank you. Any questions for Marta from the board? Just one, but I think I already kind of know based on your answer, but I want to get clear. If you chose one of these two boards do you have a preference but you shared so much about the CUD or your feelings around the CUD so it feels like it could only matter. I would be correct. Okay. Well, thank you. Your wait will be a lot shorter than the other folks who reviewed. They waited two weeks. We'll decide tonight, I believe. Oh, great. We'll be in touch and appreciate you volunteering for voting. Thank you. Thank you. Do I? We're gonna do that after the meeting. There'll be a part. Stay and but I'm free to leave. Oh, yeah, absolutely free to leave. Yes. Right. Sorry. We wouldn't make you stay. Then away to the rest of this. You're welcome to. Thank you very much. Thank you. Matt. The next is five C discussion and consideration of health officer. Matt Smith. So I can introduce that if you'd like. So as folks know, we've gone through some couple of transitions with the health officer over the last year after Jerry Furkey stepped down from that position after 44 or 50, something like that years. And we ultimately have the intention of putting together the full time position of the code enforcement, parental registry and health officer position. And so that is our ultimate goal. The person that we just had in this position was had public health degree and interested in it, but it just really didn't work out for their schedule and they ended up getting a full time job. So essentially having gone through this, the hope I think at this point for this next temporary period is really, it would be super helpful to have somebody who is on staff in the city during the day to be able to respond to these calls. These are not like you have to respond as fast as rescue by any stretch of the imagination but they should be responded to relatively quickly. So I think Matt is a really great fit and he is interested in taking this on, understanding that it's temporary. And we did have some other candidates and Colleen and I reviewed those and we really think Matt is the best person for the position. Great. Can I ask one question? I just wanna clarify one thing real quick. And this position is an odd one because it is someone we select that the commissioner of health for the state of Vermont appoints that is under your management as the manager of the community. So it is a little bit odd in that sense and this position has been difficult to keep for everyone but Jerry Furkey, bless him. Just because of the random nature and the fact that let's say you have limited daylight you need to do a building inspection and you have a full-time job and it's December go. So it's been difficult. And so I just wanted to kind of lay out that structure of how this position works, how the appointment and the hiring work it's a little strange. And we are going to get to a point where we don't have to deal with this paradigm anymore. Where? Sorry, sorry, I wanna clarify some things. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. But I also wanna make sure that we reiterate again if you would clarifying this process because there's only a disappointment it's only done once a month. So we don't do something now we'll have to wait another month. The other thing that I would like you to clarify too is when we say temporary, what are we talking to like what do you think is our timeline? Because based on our recent experience with this kind of makes me feel like we should get on top of getting that code enforcement officer and in January, which is when I believe the budget was set up to kind of start for that particular role just so that we can with this piece of it in mind as well as the other things that will work. So that is a good preview to your November 7th meeting where we will have a more in-depth discussion about this. But essentially, yes, your FY24 budget contemplates that full-time position being funded by the general fund for half of the year. We assume the lot fund for the other half but really that concept was just that we want to be able to set up a revenue structure on the rental registry side to try to help fund at least part of this position. We are what is coming to you on November 7th is where the planning commission is with that rental registry program to hand off to the council and we can start thinking through that. So we'll need to get to a comfort level of how soon we think we can actually start revenue from that system before really putting that going out for that position. But the intention is to talk about that November 7th. And I just want to say that tonight's business item is about appointing a health officer tonight. It's not a conversation, not that I'm trying to stop you but it is not a conversation on that position or future decisions that we might make. So we're doing an appointment right now but there's no reason we can't get background on that but I just want to make sure that's clear for folks in the room and folks on Zoom that this conversation is about an appointment specifically for this role or a recommendation I guess for the commissioner of health. Excuse me. So Matt, sorry to keep you waiting. You want to introduce yourself? Say a few words, let us know your motivations. Definitely. So yeah, I'm Matt Smith. I'm 27 years old and for about 24 of those years I've been here in Essex Junction. I now reside in Fairfax, hoping to come back to Essex as his home. I'm currently a employee for the city. I work over Essex Junction Recreation and Parks. I've worked there since I was 14. I've worked full-time for the past six years I believe. In that background, taking care of buildings of which is anywhere from just general upkeep, renovations, everything like that, dealing with some zoning and ordinances. And then obviously, granted facilities, taking care of playground, soccer fields, everything like that. I did a year with safety systems of Vermont doing fire alarms and securities, dealing with life safety. So in and out of multifamily dwellings, commercial buildings, you name it, I've been in and out of them. I've worked with fire marshals. I've worked from the top down to be able to get these things installed and to work with again, just dealing with ordinances and following all of the basic laws for life safety. Did five years with the fire department here in Essex Junction. With that, I got to see a lot of the ins and out of the city. We pride ourselves on growing and I wanna make sure that we stay healthy and safe. That way we can accommodate the people that we wanna bring here. So that's kind of the background of why I saw this and why I wanted to kind of take this role on. I saw it as an NPC that needed to be filled to help the city kind of prolong. Obviously we were graced with Jerry who took this on and did it so well. And then it's been open since the middle part of October and it's been empty since. So it was a way for me to be able to help out where I could and I feel like I'm well versed to be able to take this role on. Excellent. Great. Anyone, Amber or anything? She'd like to ask Matt. I've got a question. Thanks for putting your name forward. Curiously, this role does involve a fair amount of getting into nasty situations, direct as well as dealing and working with community members who are experiencing some levels of crises and helping to navigate the social safety net that does and or does not exist. How is your comfort level with social services to people in tough situations? I can fall back on the five years with the fire department with that. I mean, I've dealt with it. I handle it well. Obviously, like you said, this covers a pretty broad spectrum. I remember when I was going through the health officer manual, it covers anywhere from lawns being too long to rodents and this dog bit this dog or just general composting laws and it could be anywhere from mold. So it does cover a lot, but I handle that stuff pretty well. Obviously, if people are calling, it's because they feel like they're in need and I have to try to put my best foot forward to be able to help them and get them out of the situation or at least get the people moving and get the right players in order to help those people out of their situation. Can I ask about your current schedule, your current work schedule, how this kind of fits into the current work? I'm sure there's a little bit of flexibility and understanding since you're an employee of the city, but I'm curious about your work stream. Yeah, definitely. So obviously being employed here in the city, I'm here typically seven to three, although on the maintenance of the things that I could be here at all hours of the day. When I was talking to Regina, I think it kind of plays in nicely that I'll be here. There is flexibility during the day for the emergent calls that need to kind of be taken care of or I at least need to go look at pretty quickly. But I think it works out nicely that typically my day ends right around three, 3.30 here, which I feel like if I need to be making phone calls, it's about the time most people will be available to take phone calls because they're either getting done their day jobs around four, five, six depending. Obviously if it's a different situation where they're home, I can buzz over either sometime during day, during lunch or right after I get done here to be able to go check in on whatever the problem could be. Okay. Andrew kind of asked my question. So I'm just grateful you put your name forward and, yeah, thank you. Thank you. There is a motion, I have to zoom up so I'll put the transition to that. Do you want me to make a motion? Please. I move the city council make a recommendation to the department of health to appoint Matthew Smith for the position of health officer for the city. Second. Sound any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All those opposed nay. Thank you, Matt. You're approved. Thank you. Regina will be in touch, I'm sure. Yeah. And I appreciate it. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks for stepping up. 5D, department head conversation with Chelsea Bendigo. And she is on the zoom. What about this? If you want me to highlight some information that I shared in my memo or just ask questions? You could, I'd like to give you the opportunity to brag a little bit. If you want to start with the good and we'd also love to hear a little bit about, I mean the memo is very complete, so thank you. But you know, hear a little bit about what your challenges are and what you're looking forward to, you know, from, this is amazing and this is something that's sort of keeping me up and we should be aware of. And we've talked about some of this stuff before, but. Yes, we have. Some of it. So as water probably superintendent, as you know, I wear many hats and hence why there's wastewater, stormwater and sanitation updates. But so I'll just kind of focus on each for a moment. So for the wastewater facility that has been where a lot of my time has been concentrated the past six months, the biggest challenge, yet a good thing is we had major staff turnover, largely from retirements and some folks moving on. But with those retirements, a lot of historical knowledge left and that definitely presented a challenge just because not all historical knowledge to get written down. So we definitely faced some hurdles on that. But it's created new opportunities to learn from each other and improve our systems. One thing that I'm really honestly proud of that I did this summer was create a wastewater internship for, we had two openings. We still have one for the facility, but I had a lot of applicants for our stormwater or summer stormwater internship program. And in particular one person was asking a lot about wastewater and I was like, well I already have some really strong stormwater candidates. So I checked in with Jess and made sure like we have the funding for positions. So why couldn't we turn it into just an internship for the summer to get someone exposed to the facility, especially knowing that we need more folks in this field and seeing if they like it or if not. And other way it could work out. And the good news about this is this person, he really liked his summer internship and is strongly considered coming back once he graduates from UBM in May as a full-time employee, hopefully. So that was really successful and it's something I honestly would like to try to continue even if we don't have openings. It's something that we could help other facilities get some folks into the door because it is a challenge throughout the state. I'm part of this newer network that's being formed in thinking group to try to bring more people interested into the water quality field in the state, not only for wastewater, but drinking water as well. So other stuff that we probably weren't at the wastewater facility is we continue to work on our energy efficiency measures. We are one of the leading facilities in New England for energy efficiency. And so we try to keep going on that. And a lot of that is due to the previous water quality superintendents legacy. And so we had a couple projects this summer related to that. And the biggest thing is our cogeneration system which produces a lot of energy for us is back up and running. That has been down for a year and a half and had to be completely replaced as you might recall. And then I continue to work with Norwich University on looking at expanding our solar energy, hopefully. So that was the highlight of wastewater past six months, stormwater. That has not gone as much attention for me as I would have liked to given it. But a lot of that is from taking on the role as water supply superintendent and focusing on the wastewater facility which was really needed with all the changeover. But I had two really great stormwater interns this summer that helped get a lot of important work done. So that's kind of trucking along. I have, I think more important stuff to say for the next six months for stormwater. So we'll move on to sanitation. Sanitation, we did a full replacement of a pump station internally and in-house with our own operators and assistance from one company but it resulted in huge cost savings and expanded the life of that pump station for another 20 years, hopefully. And then we started, we worked with Aldridge and Elliott to do an assessment on three pump stations. We have four pump stations that ultimately need to be addressed in the next 10 years for sure, maybe sooner. But we have three that are on a shorter timeline. So we started that process. And then the other really important thing is creating the allocation and sewer connection fee, which is going to help put more money into the sanitation fund, which is desperately needed. It's pretty underfunded compared to the wastewater capital plan. So in knowing the improvements that are going to be needed and retrofits in the coming years. Any questions on the past six months? Just having a hard time believing that was just six months? We've got a lot done, which is great. It's done. Yeah. And I think that one thing that keeps coming through every time we have these conversations is just the level of innovation and the amount of collaboration, the plan you all do with outside organizations and sort of coming up with solutions and it's just very impressive. So I'm just, it's really hard to quantify when I talk to people out on the street sort of get really excited about wastewater. They look at people weird, but there's a lot of really cool things happening. Yeah, I haven't even touched the surface of all of what we're doing, but yeah, we've always been really strong in partnerships and I really want to continue that. And I did list a bunch of the partners we worked with. I didn't talk about it, but in the last six months that came to memory that's kind of outside of the norm and especially working with some other facilities and supporting each other when needed. So that's a great thing to continue. Anybody have any questions so far now? I would like to say thank you for your time yesterday. 30 minutes is truly not enough. No. But it was really impressive. I mean. You tour the facility? Yeah. And I mean. That's a fun tour. And you all know. I mean, you can see in the detail, we've seen it in the reports before. This facility is leading the way in all these areas. It's got some amazing partnerships. It's heading down a path of just, I would agree. You could kind of geek out in this and now I can understand. I would not have guessed that prior to being on the council, but it's really impressive. The one thing I would like you to talk about briefly because this has come up in past conversations and do talk about it in the things the council should know is where we stand on the PFA's conversation. Where we've had, you've given updates on this before and we know that at some point in the future, the state will do something and it's going to impact our costs and it's going to impact your logistics of managing those biosolids. So where are we at today? For the federal government to make the requirements or set the standards, if you will, they already have a drinking water, I think the end of last year. And so word on the street is that that is pending and coming probably in the next year or so, which is much sooner than I thought, to the wastewater side, which is definitely frustrating because we're at the end of the pipe so we can't control what's coming to us and it's not really going to create a solution by regulating us, they need to regulate the producers but that's a much longer conversation. So one thing that it's going to require, when initially we're not going to be ready if it really comes out next year, to be honest, what will happen probably is our recyclable material that we cut biosolids and product of wastewater besides the clean water, that will no longer be able to recycle most likely. It depends which compound, PFAS has so many compounds, depends which ones they decide to regulate, but if our sludge doesn't pass, which in the thought is that it's going to be almost zero, the limit, which is what they did in drinking water. We will have to just send our sludge to the landfill, which is fine, but at the same time, we only have one landfill left in the state that is only projected to have like 10 or 15 years left and if you're filling it with, all these wastewater facilities are filling it with their biosolids, which is a reusable material, it's also going to take up a lot of space. I mean, we send out a tractor trailer load a week of biosolids and that's just keeping us afloat. So that's kind of where we're at and then in the long term, they would be investing in removal technology, which we have some things in the works on with UVM and or that's a lot of it's like incineration, which is another issue of the state of Vermont because of air quality standards. So I'm not quite sure what the solution is going to be, but it's going to be a statewide problem. So we'll just lean on the partnerships and see what the facilities can figure out together. Can you also speak to capacity? Because obviously with that's a junction looking to grow a little with Williston, with our, you know, our neighboring communities that we work with, where are we at with capacity and what should residents expect for our conversations moving forward? Because I assume that we're going to have to be looking at expanding your facility. Yep, and that is some of what I highlighted in the six month look ahead, both under wastewater and sanitation. Currently in the wastewater, it's been 10 years next year, since we've had an upgrade from 2011 to 2014. If you recall, we had a $15 million investment in the wastewater facility for maintenance. So right now we're working with Older Genelea to conduct a 10 year evaluation of the facility. It doesn't necessarily mean we need an upgrade like soon. It's just looking at maybe where there's some deficiencies that we've noticed over the past 10 years or different kind of equipment, especially in our solids handling and knowing what's coming with the PFAS issue. That technology has really advanced. So maybe we need to change what we're doing. And so they're gonna come up with some capital plans, but also they're gonna be looking at when do we actually need to upgrade related to capacity. So we will have a clear picture on that within the next year working with them. But I do see it coming because the town of Williston is continuing to grow and they continue to buy capacity from us. Right, this is the last time. Well, I think it's gonna be the last time that we're selling them capacity and they just started their five year block. And so after that, there needs to be a serious consideration on what to do next. And the town of Essex still has a lot of growth in their designated core. They haven't really developed there yet. So I do anticipate that we're going to need to add some most likely aeration tanks, which we have the land already it's reserved knowing that that probably was gonna be the future of the facility. So we'd be greater right now. We're a 3.3 million gallon per day facility designed, we average about 2 million gallons. And so likely we'd probably, I don't know the exact million gallons, but let's just say we'd probably double that to plan for the future. Because there's also city growth too. So, and then it's not only about what the wastewater facility can handle. It's about the collection system and its ability to get to us. And that is where I'm gonna be working with Hamlin to conduct, start. It's gonna be a phase project, but start where we know there's a lot of development. So we're gonna do the West street area or what serves the West street, which is a lot of excuse me, Pearl Street to get handle on how our pipes are doing if they have enough capacity. And then if they don't as development comes through, that's where we might be able to work with a developer to pay towards upgrading that pipe as part of their project. So trying to get an understanding of that so we can take advantage of opportunities that might come along our way. Can I also ask if you have insight into this, I'll say one project that I'm somewhat familiar with, which is the project going on in Burlington Fear Company, because they're huge capacity and the, sorry, I don't know the specific technology is a weight or whatever of that material that they have. Anyway, they have to put another piece of the system to make that load easier for you to manage. Retreat. Yeah, the preacher. It's called BOD loading is the technical term. Is that something that we can use with developers here in the city to make it easier on the work that you're doing down there? Yeah, and that's what we're working with as I highlighted the tri-town high strength waste ordinance. We have a draft ordinance that we, as a group with the other two communities need to review and the idea is that we would use that ordinance to govern how each community would then regulate high strength waste so we're all on the same page. Right now the town, both communities have their own high strength waste ordinance. We do not have one right now in the city, but we also don't have any generators at the moment. It's not saying that we won't. So it's really important that we work on that. And that's also why I'm looking at, it says sewer capacity ordinance, but I think it just needs to be a larger sewer ordinance in the next year or six months working on that project. And because I'm seeing more and more that that's a need that we need to have here in the city. You're sure? Chelsea, I just had a question going back to the PFOS question and the biosolids that if the federal government has stricter requirements and we can no longer, we had to ship our biosolids to landfill. I'm assuming that also means that we won't be selling our purchasing capacity at the lithium farm for them to spread our biosolids. I think that program would probably not be renewed, not because of our choosing, but the state will no longer allow it, which would be a huge loss because we do rely on that significantly for ourselves management at this point in time. He takes two million gallons of biosolids a year from us in the spring and the fall. So that's also why I'm having Eldridge and Elliott start this now because knowing that we might not have that as a resource anymore. And also our certification for that disposal expires next October. So we have to reapply anyways. And I know the current person in charge of residual program is all for land application, but you never know if it will get approved or not. I hope so. We're very, we pass with buying colors every time. So I hope that's a good thing to renew. Hey, remind me, is that a state decision or a federal decision about land application certification? But you do have to follow federal rules for part of the certification. And are you aware of what the lithium farm would do in replacement if they're no longer able to use our biosolids? I've not had that conversation yet, but we will be landifying in probably the next two weeks. So it's a good time for me to have that conversation with the way it comes. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I don't have any for this. A lot of folks here ask my questions too, but I don't have anything more unless there's something you didn't get to cover. Highlight really quickly that we are, I'm starting the process of forming a stormwater utility that's gonna involve certainly some public outreach and public meetings. So that's the target is to have a launch by July one, but the more I talk to other communities that's a pretty tall reach, but we'll try our best. And we had a really successful proposal come in. So I'm starting to work with that consultant to get contracts solidified and start the process. Of a formation of utility for that. Thank you. Thanks for waiting throughout the meeting and thanks for joining us tonight. You're doing a great job Chelsea, thank you so much. Oh, you're welcome. Thank you. And I'll see some of you tomorrow again at the facility and just to say the facility's always open, I'm happy to give tours. Probably an hour would be best if you have the time, but it can be done in half hour as we learned yesterday, so. I think my first one was scheduled for 30 minutes with Jim. I was there for hours. Yeah, I believe that. And we weren't done, I had to go. Yeah, I don't have that record, but Jim I know gave very lengthy tours. Thank you. Have a good night. Thank you, you too. Bye. All right, let's see. Five E acting as cannabis control board commission consider approval of outdoor counter cultivator tier one license. Okay, so, got a memo in your packet. And let me just get that shared. So, as folks know the, you've got the local cannabis control commission to issue licenses for cannabis establishments. The develop, but I make this brief from a staff perspective. We do not think that the, with the changes in age 270, that the municipality can enforce land development code or ordinances on outdoor cultivation, which is what this application is for. That non-action was appealed to your development review board and they supported that part of the appeal. The state Vermont cannabis control board has issued their license. They basically do this in a two part step. They approve the license, but that is with conditions, including having the local cannabis control commission issue the license as well, if a municipality has one. So we have had, have 60 days to make that decision. My understanding is that the state rules have changed at this point to lower that 45 days, but the 60 days is being adhered to by the BCPB because that's what was in place when we were informed about the approval. So the recommendation from staff is to issue this, this license and that's what you've got in front of you. Can I ask you a question? Hold on a second. Can we see the other counselor on the screen? I'm sorry. Is there a way to, sorry, that's fine, I'm sure. And the other counselor has a name, but sorry, go ahead. No, I just wanted to follow up on a question that I asked at the last meeting in regards to the inspection, how did the inspection done? Yes. So the, our understanding is the BCBB does not issue that initial approval unless they go out and they do an inspection. And we also have communicated with the BCBB about the fact that you could see the plants from the street. And so our, so we tell the BCBB stuff, they don't necessarily communicate back with us, but our understanding is that that has been addressed with some material on the fence. And we also separately on the agriculture side of things asked the Department of Agriculture to do an inspection and they did and BCBB was out there while they were there. So we definitely know that they've done an inspection. Thank you. Any other questions? No, we'll go around the room on this one. If anyone wants to make a motion. I will move the S extension local cannabis control commission approved, the local cannabis license for tricone BT, they're tier one outdoor cultivation. I have a second. I'll second. All right, is there any discussion? No, I'm going to call this out at this point. Andrew. Hi. Amber. I'm voting aye, but, but Raj, you've got a hand up for the public. I didn't know if he wanted to take public comment before we voted or not. Well, we're in the middle of voting. I know, sorry. Change that. Aye. Marcus. Aye. Maline. Aye. Aye. Under advice of council motion passes. And that is that we can take comment to try to rectify that issue. Anybody have their hand up still? Stephen. Sorry, my zoom is a little slow. Stephen, sorry, we didn't do and everybody in the public. Sorry, we didn't do public comment before that. The liquor control board and cannabis control board portions of this are a little new to us. Most of our liquor control board applications are in the consent agenda because there's a different process. So Stephen, if you'd like to comment. Yes, I think much of what I'd like to say is now moved. But I think, yeah, this does, it's very important to get clarity from the state. It's the DRV ruling, the paragraphs of seven VSA 863 that they quote, which are summarized in the packet today. They show, so it says that the municipality shall not prohibit the operation of a cannabis establishment through an ordinance adopted, you know, pursuant to 24 VSA, blah, blah, blah. And there were other pieces to that. But, and I think that's in paragraph D, in paragraph A, or excuse me, paragraph B, the local commissioners make in addition to the issuance of a local control license upon compliance with any by-law, adopted pursuant to 24 VSA 4414, or other ordinances, which again paraphrase have other limitations for outdoor cultivators. So, you know, eight sentences away from each other. You know, the same rule says that a license may be conditioned upon 4414 based by-laws and another. And another says that it can't. Also, the wording talks about regulating, excuse me, prohibiting the operation of the a cannabis establishment, not the operation of any cannabis establishment, right? So, the local ordinances don't seem to have a prohibition on cannabis establishments of any type. They merely zone them into certain areas. And the R1 zone is not one of those areas. So, it'll be interesting to see what the state's responses when the letter that was voted on last session comes back. Thank you. Thank you. Move on to... Annie has her hand up, Raj. Yep, sorry, Annie, I didn't see that in my, because I had to memo up. Okay, thank you. Thank you for the moment to speak. I just want to, I'm a little confused. That's a point of order question, but it belongs here. My understanding is that it is acceptable and usual to ask for, maybe I'm wrong, public input, like after the motion gets made, but before the vote, where is that going? Is it supposed to happen every time? Because I had my hand up during an earlier vote, and it's okay if you don't answer me tonight, but I'd like to kind of understand that better so that I could participate properly. Thank you. What's your question is, when in the portion of a vote, once a motion is made, there's no public comment. So then what's, thank you. Then I'm still a little bit unclear about, thank you for that. So is it a thing that every single time there's going to be a vote? There's first the request for public comment, because that's what I understood from the time that I have been participating. Which portion of the, like you're getting a no back and forth, which portion of the, which section did you have your hand up that we did not see? During the previous vote about the health officer. Not during, before you, I had my hand up before the motion was made. Yeah, that was an appointment. And I didn't open that to discussion. I guess, I guess if we could start the next meeting with like maybe a mini rules for people, I would love that. Cause I'm a little confused about how this works. Thank you. Sure. Thanks for the input. Thank you. Okay. Five up discussion and consideration of an application to the VLCT welcoming and engaging communities program. So you've got information about it in memo. Essentially this is, I believe the second year that VLCT is doing this program. It was the application was, I think last year, like the day I started maybe, and we were thinking about trying to get it in and it didn't happen. So would really love to be able to do this program. It's a six month program. Essentially the city would be in a cohort with other municipalities that are in it as well. We would have three participating members. And the thinking is that would be Raj, myself and HR director Colleen Dwyer. So we can really try to sort of build this from sort of internal out. That's the thinking on it. So if folks are interested in applying to it, there is a letter in the packet. And we have some other background information to pull together too for the actual application that's due on November 9th, I believe. It could potentially cost us $500, but if we have good attendance, it will only cost us $100. So. Great. Any thoughts on this from anyone? No. I'd say yes. It's a great program. We're able to buy again, there's another chance. Yes. Excited about it. Looking for the memo, sorry. Do you want me to make a motion? I would love that. I move the city council, sign the letter of interest and authorize the city manager to apply for the VLCT, welcoming and engaging communities program. I'll second. Great, sir. Any, can you rescind your motion for a minute please? I rescind my motion. Is that okay with you? Okay. Is there anyone in the room or on Zoom that would like to speak to this item tonight? No one in the room. It doesn't look like anyone on Zoom. Pulling Zoom up quickly. Sorry. Okay. Yeah, absolutely. I do see your hand, but so. My hand was up by mistake, but right, thank you. Thank you. Trying to do this right, Annie. Honest, I swear. Yes, I understand that. I appreciate you very much. Sorry, would you say your motion again please? I reiterate the motion I had earlier. Great. I'll second. Great. Without discussion, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye, aye. Those opposed. Nay, excuse me, motion passes. Excellent. Thank you. Consent agenda. Motion. We approve the consent agenda. Second. Excellent. No discussion, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion passes. Thank you. Reading file. Yes, okay. Sorry. It's okay. First. So, we are doing a strategic planning process. You haven't heard the survey is still out. We extended the deadline to October 31st. Partially we did that. So while we're at pumpkin plaza this weekend, we can continue to sort of get the word out about the survey and hopefully get some more folks to take it. We are also hosting think tank workshops, both on Thursday, November 2nd from 5 to 8 p.m. and Saturday, November 4th from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. We very much appreciate folks RSV peening for that. And again, just to try to sort of quickly summarize what we're really hoping to do here with this process is try to prioritize, sort of check in on our vision. A lot of the work that was done through Heart and Soul are we sort of on the same track there? And then also really try to hone in and prioritize efforts over the next five years because there is a whole lot of awesome things we wanna do but we really need to focus up and prioritize those. This is not the comprehensive plan. The town is working on their town plan right now. That is a very comprehensive, all-encompassing effort that talks quite a bit about your land use and a whole slew of things. Our comprehensive plan was done in 2019 and we won't be starting that again until 2025, 2026. So that is that. We've got really some good questions on how this sort of plays into all of our other planning processes. And so we did a Junction City News on Monday afternoon about that topic specifically. From the finance director from Jess, we had the audit field work happened last week and they wrapped that up. So we're hoping to have the auditors finalize the figures and have a draft report by Thanksgiving. We have also received the budgets from the departments and we are in the process of pulling all of that information together and Jess and I will be meeting with the department heads to go through that information and the plan is to package that all up and get it to you folks by November 20th. Budget days, December 13th as a reminder. We also have received updated costs from Hamlin Engineering for the capital projects that we've got. So the sort of big picture costs haven't been sort of updated collectively in a while. So that has happened. And so the capital committee files and budgets are getting worked on. Main street waterline. Next week, we are gonna be connecting, well, not me, the contractor, we'll be connecting the lines from the side streets to the main. And so that work is gonna be happening at night, 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. And during that time period, we are gonna have to close the road in its entirety. So the rough schedule right now is on Monday night, the 30th, that would, the Athens Drive tie-in is where that will be closed. Tuesday night, Taft Street tie-in is where that would be closed. Wednesday night, the first press for you drive tie-in. And Sunday, the fifth main street at Densmore. So there will be lots of signage up detour markings in place. How long will folks be without water? And those areas, you don't have to know right now, I'm just kidding. Probably most of the night. Don't know that answer. I don't know, it's probably most of the night for each of them, but, there. Okay, so as we talked about before, part of this earlier, so Mr. Struthers has appealed the DRB decision that is not on the cannabis cultivation side, but the agriculture duct side, and the city has entered a notice of appearance on that. We are doing that to say that we want to know about what's going on. We will probably have more conversations where to go from there. We did a support letter a couple of months ago about for UVM to apply for USDA tech hub, and that was announced this week that we have been given that approval of a tech hub. So that's pretty exciting. I don't know if you have any more. It's, I'm having a hard time describing it, and I don't know how much Elaine knows about it. It's, there's 31 sites around the, I want to say 31 sites around the country that received this designation. It's with UVM Global, a number of different smaller companies, some municipalities, and there's $31 million at the beginning, and an opportunity to then, now the next step is to apply for a larger $75 million grant. My understanding from speaking to folks the day it was announced is that, things that the city might be able to leverage out of this are working with the state and this tech hub to find transportation dollars or not housing, but other workforce supports, other potential infrastructure supports, had a lot of conversations about transportation. And finding ways, this was just an example that some of us were talking about to support GMT to re-institute or increase service in areas, especially around global, things like that. So it's moving very quickly. I'm, I've got a transition, I somehow am the point of contact for this, and I need to transition that to you. I'm scared too, because there's a lot of to-dos. So could it be, there's some to-dos. Well, I think in ours, we have to figure out our level of interest and our level of involvement and a point of contact and that person just needs to stay on it and we need to provide input when required. They're being very inclusive. There's a welcome celebration in a week or two at Hula or signatories, but there's a lot of excitement, especially on UVM campus right now and at global, but within the state level, what this means. And I think if it does anything at really that and past announcements this year really, I think solidifies global's presence for a while, which is outstanding. I'm hoping it also means that we maybe have some more attention than we've gotten from the past development agency to seeing what other entities might be interested in joining that property. And so we'll see how that might play out, but pretty exciting. Still trying to. This is funding from the Chips Act. Correct. I think it's, yes. Yeah. That was a pretty exciting announcement. There was a Zoom call with the White House. President Biden came out, spoke for about five minutes. It was pretty neat. Would you share information about the event at Hula? I will, yep. I'm trying to, it's coming in fairly fast, so I will put some, put it all together and send it out to the group and staff. And there have been some press releases I've seen not come to us, but it might be nice to try to get something out from us as we figure out what it means for the city. I'd be curious to know what it means for the city. Could it also potentially include downtown business development? If we used to have a co-working space, we don't have one anymore. We tried for an innovation space. Like what can the city obtain outside of the campus global that other businesses could access? Yeah. I think that's pretty key. And trying to figure out, trying to work with the Office of Tech and research over at UVM and figure out how all that comes together. So I'll try to get you all this information, some of the information out to the council, but we really do need, I need to pass that along so we can figure out who appointed contact with me. So yeah, very exciting. Okay, I think that's it. Sure, Marcus. So let me first say thank you to Regina and the whole staff for putting up with me yesterday as I did a tour of the city and all the departments. And I got to say the generosity of time out of their day in order to talk with me, answer questions, ask questions, show me around and show me again how the machine works behind everything, right? It was a great time. It was a learning experience and it was also great to deepen the relationships with city staff. It was a great time to do that. I also want to say thank you to SXPD, the chief and Corporal Sorrell for allowing me on a ride along on Friday night. That was another learning experience. I encourage everyone to do it because you will get a lot of information. You will also get to experience the good work that is happening. And I really appreciated that being able to see it behind the scenes. I am actually going to be going out again, coming up on Halloween, so oh, and Corporal Sorrell invited me to go back. So I spoke to the lieutenant yesterday, so we're going to set that up. And my hope is if the calls are light, we'll just be going through neighborhoods, throwing out Halloween gear. So, you know, you know where I live, but again, I think it's going to be at the last. And then again, coming back to Regina and staff, thank you for the work that you did with West Street on the list of projects because I think it looks great. I actually talked to a couple of residents who were coming out of the residential home down the street and love the fact that it was flat, smooth, easy to go down the street. I think there's been a lot of positive comments about it. And I'm just saying it, you know, because of the fact that I live right there. So it's a great, I'm really happy that that project got done and it looks wonderful. So thank you. Awesome, thank you. Yeah, that was awesome idea by Ricky to just get that into the paving contract and the contractor who did that work did a really excellent job. Ricky's super happy with it. So that's awesome. And so just so folks are aware, there will be some fixing of the pavement over on Cascade and Poplar Court. I'll just add the pumpkin paluzas this weekend. Get your tickets, carve pumpkins. I think they still need some pumpkins carved. So let's put that out there. Sorry, we're gonna say. Oh, I have to say. Sure. Okay. Cascade Court, East Street. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The neighbors. That has paid now as well. Also, I wanted to let the council know that I was invited to apply to become a member of the VLCT Equity Committee, which back when I was on the VLCT board, I was the founding chair of that committee. But then I had to step down because I was no longer going to go to the official. So now that I'm back at the elected official, I've been invited to come back. So I have not heard because there's a whole bunch of applicants, but it's possible that I will be there. And I wanted to ask about budget day. I was out for a little while. So I hope I missed a conversation, but is there an opportunity for councillors to provide budget goals? I know the department heads are spending in budgets, but are we doing a budget goal conversation? Is there anything about what we're hoping to accomplish with the budget? We did have, sorry. Well, the way you phrased it, not yet. We did have the conversation two months ago. I don't remember the date. We did have an initial conversation. I think it was surrounding, it was, you know, you spoke quite a bit about returning or trying to get to a place where you might be doing the 1% for instance. I think that's the conversation I'm referring to. Okay, so that was it back then. We don't be doing that again. I think we can do it again. I think largely department heads are, they're kind of underway. And also, I think we talked about it at that meeting, but so we have a salary study happening right now. We have a association contract negotiation that we just had a pick off meeting today on that. So we do have an association contract that we'll be starting July 1, 2025. That will have a pretty big impact on this budget. Also, that health insurance is not looking great. So there are, there will be some progress on the budget, first of all. Okay, yeah, UVM's health insurance went up 15. Great. Okay. Well, we have an executive session to review the appointments, the two appointments and get a decision made. Is there a motion? There's going to be motions. I don't see. Awesome. Well, if you could see. It's too small. I don't think I got that vocal. Oh, go ahead. So I'm with city council enter into executive session to discuss the appointment of public officials pursuing to one day section 313 a three and to include the city manager. Second. Discussion seeing none. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion passes.