 On Monday, January to order this regular meeting of the Winduski City Council. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance led by Deputy Mayor Hal Colston. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. You're welcome. Agenda review. Any questions or concerns about the order of items? All right. Motion to approve the agenda. So moved. Second. Motion by Mike, second by Amy. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Public comment. I know we have a couple of folks who signed up for public comment specific to item 8B. Regarding Act 164 in the Canvas market. So if you are here to speak to that, please wait for that agenda item. If there's anyone who would like to make a comment not related to an agenda item, now is the time. You can use the raise hand feature in Zoom or put in a chat. And if you're here by phone, you can press star 9. Great. Seeing no public comment, we will move to our consent agenda. We have two items today. The first being council minutes from January 4. I'm going to separate these two items because Amy was not here for our previous meeting. So, uh, motion to approve the minutes from the January 4th meeting. So moved. Second. Motion by Mike, second by Jim. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those abstaining. I abstain. Motion carries. Thank you. And so item B would be the accounts payable warrant ending January 8th and subsequent to payout for November 2020. Are there any questions on that item? All right, I would take a motion to approve. So moved. Second. Motion by House, second by Mike. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. This brings us to council reports. So normally I go last in this situation, but I did want to start. Just to make a brief statement about current events. I just really want to thank this council, everyone who sits up here, city leaders. Leaders of our community organizations and really all of the residents of Winnowski. For our city having really a culture of welcoming and respect. Not just, you know, respect for everyone here and also respect for the processes that we follow in local decision making. Even when we disagree with each other. You know, what's happening on a national political level is not okay. And that's something we want to see trickle down here. And I wanted to encourage folks to use this as a moment to reflect. I know I'm reflecting on my own behavior, but also the behavior that I accept in others when I do and don't act or do and don't speak out. And what that can lead to sitting here as leaders, what we say and do matters and when we also don't say or do anything that also matters and and can lead to further inequities. So I just hope that we all continue being committed to working together and focusing on what's best for Winnowski. As I have seen us do up until this point. As far as other updates, I actually just have one this morning I joined Mayor Weinberger and our shared Burlington and Winnowski legislators. Some of my council fellow counselors were there as well as some members from the Winnowski school district. In a sort of legislative briefing of issues important shared issues important to both Burlington Winnowski. So we discussed with our legislators, pandemic response, our priorities of more housing stabilization and food security funding of bringing community members to the decision making making table as it relates to vaccine distribution and maintaining efforts to encourage the development of more affordable housing and touched a little bit on regional dispatch funding policing issues and our airport shared issues. So just wanted to share that that those conversations were happening with our legislators. With that, I will move to Amy council reports. Thank you. In late December I attended downtown Winnowski's December meeting and the group spent the majority of that time onboarding three new board members. They also had to say goodbye to three outgoing board members whose term limits were up and I just wanted to take a second to recognize those three people for an incredible amount of work and the contributions that they gave over the past six years to Winnowski. So, those people are Kelsey Adams, who was the outgoing chair, page freezer, the outgoing secretary and and Vernon, the outgoing treasurer. So, thank you to Kelsey and page for all that you contributed. Thanks Amy. Jim. I, I mean, I just want to share in your reflection on national events mayor I've just been shocked and angered by these actions and rising rising white violence supremacy in our federal and state capitals this past week I just still feel kind of speechless going into this meeting. I just have a hope here that those of us at this meeting all the folks in our city in our state that we can stay strong and keep working on this. We need to have civility and kindness and love and commitment to our deals even when we're different, but even when we're watching others fail on national TV I just don't feel that we can take that as a pass because we're here in Vermont I think we need to keep working on this. So, I'm proud of the work that people are doing here and I hope that we can continue to hold that up as an example of what this one could be like instead of what we're seeing. Aside from that I was really honored to be able to attend a consultative session with students and administrators at the school they're developing a demands, a set of demand working groups and having a steering committee that will oversee that work for the Winnowski racism. Demand action items so be a working group for each and they're looking for feedback on how to make the steering committee representative while centering the students and the students demands. So there will be some recruitment for that steering committee coming up here in the next couple weeks and so if anyone is interested in participating in that steering committee with what should be a pretty intense but not intense but focused and high functioning group I think you should keep an eye out for that it could be a good opportunity and I'm glad to see the school working on that other than that I have no other updates. Thank you Jim. Mike. I have nothing to report at this time. Thank you. Thanks Mike. How. Thank you, Mayor. I just have a reflection to share along with you and Jim. I think that too was really shocked and really disturbed by what happened last Wednesday. And sadly, I was on a call early this morning with the social equity caucus in the legislature. And we had a very sobering conversation about safety, because we know for a fact that there are white supremacists in our state who are mobilizing. We can only imagine what their plotting is to be serious so we're now looking at all kinds of different safety protocols as legislators to make sure that we can be safe as we do our work. We passed the resolution last week condemning the behavior and that of our president and many of us signed that document knowing that you know we're putting ourselves at risk putting our names out there people can figure out where we live. So we're not immune from this. What happened last week is now reverberating in our state. So the only thing I can say is how important it is for us to reach out to those who are different than us who think differently than us with empathy and and try to understand and listen to why they feel the way they feel, because we have such a divide in our country. That's not just going to be wished away. We as citizens have to dig deep and and understand how so important it is for us to try to connect with each other, even though we may not see things the same way. We're not enemies of one another if we differ. And I think we need to figure out how can we be a part of breaking that cycle. But rest assured it's here in inside the borders of Vermont. So I encourage you to bind the courage and to step out and reach out and make connections with people who don't see things the way that we see them. Thank you. Thank you how we will turn to city manager Jesse Baker for a city update. Well, I want to start tonight as I do most city updates in the last six months with a COVID-19 update. I apologize that a lot of this will be repetitive from last meeting but I think it's important to keep saying especially with potentially new folks watching. December 13. So in the last month, we've seen 194 new new COVID cases and when you see the state has also seen a huge uptake in cases. Those 197 new cases and when you see have been an 87 household so often more than one case per household. 18 of those cases in the last month were associated with the outbreak at our Lady of Providence. What we share tonight is that the cases are decreasing week to week we are going in the right direction, although we are still too high in our numbers so over those last four weeks working from December 13 forward we had 81 cases in the first week, 48 the second 38 the third and 31 new cases last week so again we are, we are getting our hands around this and reducing the numbers but it's still a lot of new cases, a week and when you ski. So as a reminder of what your elected officials and staff are doing. We have partnered with VDH and CIC health to stand up daily, daily at COVID testing and when you ski. So those are Monday evenings from five to eight and then nine to three every other day of the week, including Saturday and Sunday. So right in the community room of the OCC, you can register for a test but you can also walk in and we do have translated materials and interpreters at all when you ski testing sites. Since December 15 we've had we've continued our daily huddles with Vermont Department of Health and our community partners as well as the school district and CHCB community health centers of Burlington and UVMMC as well. We are really shifting our focus right now to vaccination advocacy and making sure that our residents have as best access to vaccine as they can. We're clear about what that will look like in when you ski so with that we're moving to three day a week huddles with more leadership at the Vermont Department of Health in the hopes of doing that advocacy and implementation work of around vaccination. I want to thank Chief Audie for his work with Our Lady of Providence as they work through staffing support and PPE needs. And then the most important thing I can share with our neighbors is the continual VDH guidance of not spending time with anybody who lives outside of your home, wearing a mask when you're in the presence of others, socially distancing and washing your hands. So that is my specific COVID-19 update for today. I do have two other tangential things I want to share with you. You'll get a more complete written report about this and next week's 2021 priorities report out. I want to share with you some of the financial numbers. So our tax delinquency rates right now are actually relatively good for quarter one this fiscal year. So the beginning of the year, we are at a 0.65 delinquency rate. So under 1% for quarter two, which is the quarter just passed, we're at 1.5% delinquency rate. Again, you'll get all of these numbers and writing with next week's report, but I want to share them today. The utility delinquencies are up a bit $15,000 up as compared to last year for water and 20,000 up from last year for wastewater. As I have previously mentioned, we did work with the state on that utility arrearages assistance program, and we're able to collect about $1,000 of outstanding balance from six accounts. Additionally, we've secured $167,000 in COVID related grant funds for the city. And that includes our full drawdown of our elders grant application, which was the money the legislature specifically set aside for municipalities so huge thanks to the leaders on this staff leaders on this team and Angela for all the work to process that work. And just a quick side note that if the legislature were to extend that grant opportunity, just because we planned well and only asked for and were able to pull down what we requested, we would respectfully ask that that be new funds be made available for us if that is going to be extended. And then finally on the COVID-19 front, you probably have read there is a new starting this week they're reopening the paycheck protection program for businesses. This will prioritize new bar, borrowers and certain existing previous borrowers and is really meant to focus on small businesses, of which we have quite a few in Winooski. So downtown Winooski has already put this out I know Heather is working with some businesses but we just wanted to mention it here in case anybody else needed access to that and those funds will be available through March of this year. Three other quick unrelated to COVID updates for you. Last Thursday the Winooski fire department held their semi annual regular blood drive. Thank you to Captain Erica Bailey for organizing that and she usually does. We have 42 folks registered to participate in that blood drive and 35 units were collected including three first time donors. So great news for our community and huge thanks to Captain Bailey and the chief for organizing that. Before in late December the chief the school resource officer and I participated in the school, school safety and security meetings at the school trustees meeting last week the school trustees assigned Liz Edsel and Steve Rebeco to lead the next steps in that process including outlining a education and outreach process in advance of school decision making about the future of school safety. So we continue to stand by to engage as we're invited into those conversations. And then finally the fun stuff from community services. Ray like how I leave this for the end. This Saturday recreation is launching a cross country ski program at Gilbrook from 10 to one. Thanks to a partnership with catamount trail association we have equipment rentals available at the entrance to the park, and then encourage folks to come out and cross country ski or try it for the first time. And today the when you ski libraries launched fresh reads raffle. So now through January 25 every time anyone checks out a book from the library they'll be entered into a raffle to for the chance to win one of three gift cards donated by downtown when you see so thank you downtown new ski. And of course you can check out books by signing up for browsing hours or calling the library for curbside pickup. So any raised team through recreation and the libraries is working on our next round of arts kits that will be released this week those are collections of materials and instruction and information that we are have been distributing to families in the community. And specifically targeted around Martin Luther King day. There'll be a virtual reading of last stop at marketplace, and then the instructions to do an activity around making a collage of your when you ski neighborhood. So keep your eyes out for that. There'll be more information on the website. Thank you very much. Thank you, Jesse. So we'll move on to our regular items the first of which is a on for discussion town meeting TV annual presentation and I believe we have Megan or work from town meeting TV here with us. And then I then there you all are. Hi, welcome me. And do we also have here with us. Kevin Lumpkin from our board for your trustee. I don't see him here. Kevin over now. So hi my name is Megan work and I work as a town meeting television. No all of you through the work that we do recording your meetings we title them live stream them air them share them and archive them. And I will run down. I have forwarded a memo that I think you've all gotten. Is that correct? And I can walk through that memo or I can just open it right up to questions. Is there a preference? If you want to do a very high level summary for any viewers or folks who haven't read it. I think that could be useful, but nothing too. Right. So, in general, we're coming to you for the annual budget request. In the past, this resource that we shepherd for you as municipal members. Government access television has been paid for largely by cable subscribers and that's outlined in your memo. With the decline of cable revenue and the increase in methods for delivering these meetings to folks live streaming. We've added clickable agendas, the various platforms that we are sharing these meetings on and the archiving. We are realizing the need to shift our shift the ways that we raise money and part of that is asking the municipalities to shoulder some of the costs. That's what you see in the table. I don't have my memo open, but I think it's on page three. Our municipal members are Burlington, Essex, Junction, Winooski, Williston, South Burlington, and a corner of Clichester. We are coming to you. You are the only municipality that we are asking for an increase. It's a 13% increase from 6 to 7,000. Did I get that right? Excuse me. And that's because last year we did not double your increase. We decided to step the Winooski increase over a longer period of time. And we recognize that this is going to be a hard budget year for a lot of folks. So we're hoping that that extra $1,000 is going to be doable for you. And then you can see the five year projection there that we're hoping to work with municipalities over the coming year. So I'll leave it there and open it up to questions. And introduce Kevin Lumpkin, who you all publicly know and is your trustee representative on the board. So we love having him, first of all, because he's enthusiastic and because of his amazing skills and also he is representing your interests as well. Thank you both. I did want to ask a question about the funding. So for a little background for anyone who hasn't been around. So last year, you all came to the municipalities seeking a funding increase because of the loss cable funding and discussed a stepped approach. So we increased $1,000 last year in our current budget that we moved through meetings. We do have this additional $1,000 built into that. I saw in the memo that the study was completed for trying to find new ways to address your revenue with the following revenue from cable. And that study is to be complete in February 2021. Now to foresee this cable, these protections changing in light of that study. We have no idea yet. So the legislature was asked to do a study and did put forth some money to pay some consultants who are undertaking that study now. And the idea is then to as the best I understand it is to encourage the legislature to come up with ways for supporting peg access and peg for those of you who aren't familiar stands for public educational and government access. And this is a this is a resource that has been built over the last 30 years in the state through regulations that have managed to move this money out of the cable companies in exchange for the public rights of way. And as you all know now with so many people literally cutting the cord of cable and moving to over the top services which are not regulated in the same way that cable is regulated. We need to work to find new ways to pay for this service public educational and government access that people have seen the value of. We're part of a network of 27 access centers around the state that are all working together to say to the legislature what can you do? And how can you find a way to support this very important local community media resource. So Christine the short answer or excuse me Mayor lot the short answer is that we don't have an answer yet there. So I just want to clarify one quick thing and Megan correct me if you have a different understanding the way they're reporting their fiscal years is slightly different than how we report them. So what we have budgeted in the FY in our FY 22 budget is $8000 which is $1000 up from our current level of funding at $7000. I just wanted to clarify that for the council but yes that is in the current FY 22 budget as proposed. Thank you. And I'll also respond to I see a comment in the chat about the percentage of this increase being high while it is. So last last year all municipalities were asked to double their increase and how many TV to work with us to not have such a large time. So this is a lower sort of reduced approach from that. I think many municipalities went from 6 to 12 that were in the same 36 meetings a year. And we do and in town meeting TV makes this makes these meetings accessible to folks archived. I think also something an important service that you provide is the candidate forums and election issue forums you know that's something that municipally we don't formally get behind a candidate and put out the information so you as a community resource makes it easier for people to access you know who's going to be on their ballot. Yeah, to be to yet to underline that the the municipal allotment that we're talking about is the 36 meetings a year. And the seven and a half said there's a little footnote there that says you know we generally average about seven plus hours at $93 an hour which is our you know the municipal rate that we put forward. That is just to cover municipal meetings and I think in FY and our FY 20. Last year, we did 43 of the 30 we did 43 meeting at meetings actually for when you ski so that's part of like we had a week. We will we will do more and I will tell you that Paul Sarn advocates really well to make sure all of the meetings that you are owed are covered. And then we have figured out a way to add in some more numbers tip for that. And that does also not include what we think is also an incredibly important service is the election forums, other kinds of interns. We do work, you know, just yesterday I had a conversation with Richard Watts at UVM about working with their interns to do more programming around when you ski that's that we can support. And that is so there's a whole bunch of kind of interstitial extra things that the community media organization does outside of that municipal meeting. Are there questions from other counselors? Mike, I got a quick question. I see that ours and maybe you already answered this or maybe I didn't see it on. We're going up 13% raise on our last year's fiscal year and I'm looking at the other ones you have not asked for. And then I'm looking at the chart continuing on and you're asking 5% from the other communities when you're keeping when you get 13%. Do you know why that is? Can we answer that question for me? Yeah, so we are we are asking from when you get 13% raise last when we first started doing these municipal requests. And I let me I'm going to I'm going to look at my when I look back at my things. So pardon me if I disappear for a second. So in F way 19 you'll see that for example in Essex we asked for 6000 and then in the next year we doubled the request. We realized we needed to move this along that we were not going to reach our projected goals and be able to do the service that we were doing without doubling it. So we went back to every municipality last year and said, can you double your initial offering? And when you said, can you can we can we make that can we stretch that out over the next 5 years and we worked with Mayor lot and Jesse Baker to see that extended. So you'll see that by F way 25 when you ski is expected to be 10 spending 12,000 compared to the 14,000 or so for a comparable municipal member. Does that make sense Mike? I'm just questioning that the tax base so the populations of of each of these cities and towns with retrospective. Yeah, I'm wondering if that's a question for you or if it's a sidebar question for the city manager and the mayor to go over this. I mean, you know, there's a lot more population in Burlington or in Essex Junction than there is when you ski. And I'm not sure if when you ski wants to do 13% every year. But that's, I don't know what question I know who's responsibility or that conversation goes to you. Can I jump in and speak to this issue? So I've been a witness he's trustee to town meeting TV for the past year, year and a half. And I've been kind of coming up to speed on all these issues over that time. And what I've learned is that generally all the non Burlington municipalities are roughly treated the same way in terms of the funding requests. And that's not necessarily based on the population or their tax base, but it's really based on the number of meetings the town meeting TV is likely to cover. I mean, you can have a city population 8000 South Burlington's got more than that some others have got less than that. But generally speaking, they will that got the same number of community meetings that need to be covered, you know, the information needs to be being straight to the constituents. So when you see historically been kind of an outlier among the municipalities and that we've been paying less. And I believe two or three years ago we had a jump from like zero to 6000. And then everybody jumped from 6000 to 12,000 and we're taking a little bit more time to get there. I think the goal of town meeting TV is to have everybody kind of roughly equal with Burlington being an exception, because Burlington's often exceptions to most things. But, you know, we've come meeting TVs work with the city to, you know, understanding the budget constraints to get there a little bit more slowly for that 5% is coming off double the base that we have right now. And we're doing bigger percentages but off the smaller base. I hope that made sense. A lot of it. Thank you. Like, you're absolutely right in that there could be a different way to approach this in a regional way. And that's something that we have discussed with the mayor and Jesse Bakers. Is there a different regional funding that could be used it's not how this was set up originally, because the cable revenue was paying for it all. And now you're right as we need to lean back on the on the municipalities and say, you know, if this service is of value, and we could get into what the value pays for. Then, is there a different way to look at it regionally and we are we're more than happy to have that conversation and that may be something at the legislative level as the peg study moves forward and the legislature thinks about how they pay for this across the state. You could see, you know, just like regional dispatch just like regional transportation, regional wastewater there could be regional media community media services. Don't get me wrong. I think this is a vital tool for us, especially for non mobile residents of our community to look back and see what the city is doing or and watch our meetings. I'm just looking at the tax base and I'm thinking, you know, I know when it's these tax bases a lot smaller than. But that's a different conversation for different day. Thank you. Absolutely. And as Megan shared, Jesse and I did discuss alternative funding formulas last year, which how many TV have not pursued it since then it would have to be a discussion amongst all the communities and frankly haven't had yet hasn't been a priority this past year. But it's still on my radar for future. Thank you. Other other questions. Jim. And thank you Megan for the presentation and Kevin for being here for this. I did want to this maybe more for the city, but I know it's one of the items. For a hybrid media participation structure, which I think is really hard investment. And I notice it does call out some participation by or expects remote control. So I guess I'm curious if our staff has a capacity to be on that basically that someone might need to be in the room. I don't know if you have the city staff capacity to look for that one that is that we're in. Yay. Thank you, Jim. I'm so glad that you brought that up because I didn't scroll that far down. So the hybrid meeting participation section is there as like a as just like to to what your interest. We recognize it was it was designed pretty generically with the city of Williston in mind. We need to have a conversation with your municipal folks had a conversation with Paul Sarn about what that would look like. And we don't expect it to look a lot different for your municipal employees in terms of how they're working. It's really just a way to continue the amazing what I think has been pretty amazing participation anecdotally from communities through remote times. But obviously there's also going to be this need to get back together and to how do we how do we keep the best of what we've learned and through remote participation. When we go back to meeting in person or through that transition time so that that is not something that we're asking for any financial support of at this point. We are trying to figure out ways to raise the money to support that and we would then have to work with your municipality. We would ask your staff to help us implement it in terms of installing the systems. But I don't think it would look I hope that it would be a little bit easier than this. Then the zoom then the zoom meeting period. If that answers. So to be clear that budget dump is proposed here doesn't actually mean funding to set the systems up in the department of municipalities or it does. We are not at this point asking for you to put any money towards that. But I think generally speaking Jim to answer your question. We took it as as Megan outlined it's kind of like an introduction of the idea that we would have future conversations about. I think we would be supportive of it and I do think that Paul much as he is kind of stepped up in coven during to manage and facilitate these meetings that we have seen that as a added benefit for our community conversations. We would be inclined to partner on what that will look like coming out of hope it and use the lessons we've learned of remote meetings but also look forward to being in a room with each other and how we might merge those two things together. So I think we are we are ready to partner when I mean TV wants to talk about those ideas. And I'm mindful of the time I can I can talk your ear off about it but I'm mindful of the time and definitely future discussion. Other other questions from Council. Any questions from the public as a reminder you can use the chat raise hand feature. Darnein if you're on your phone. So last last question Megan I just wanted to see how our camera guy Mike is doing as curious what your camera manner up to these days. So during most almost all of our field staff has been furloughed to use that term the way that folks are using it now. Mike is up in his homestead gardening away. A few of our local field producers are still doing a little bit of work out in the community they've done some press really press conferences I know. Mayor lot you had a press conference and I think we had somebody there recording outside. So when we can record things that we're doing that. On on the meeting tonight with you is a different Kevin Kevin Harms who's a longtime staff member at Tom meeting television. And you'll see that I'm stumbling I do want to point out Tom meeting television in May. We were switched from channel 17 on Comcast to channel 1087 on Comcast. And we had to so we're now we've now lost the channel 17 town meeting television and we're just on meeting TV and I having worked here for a long time I have to struggle really hard to rename us. And I appreciate your support in that and if you've lost us on cable, if you've got Comcast, you may need to program your remote and go up to channel 1087. We are in a peg neighborhood. And that is also something that we had to do during that happened in May so that was really fun to do during COVID as well. Well, please send him our well wishes from a new ski. And thank you for coming in today. Thank you, Kevin for joining as well. And we'll see you at our next meeting. Not you specifically but Tom meeting TV. Yeah, thank you all. Thank you very much. Okay. Thank you. I'll move on to item B. This is also on for discussion. This is Act 164 Act 164 overview regulation of cannabis potential consideration for a future ballot item. I think Jesse you and Eric have some introduction. Yes. And I will turn it over in a quick minute Eric who put together this information for us. Just a table setting out though we are not asking you to take any action on this tonight you and members of the community had asked for background on the legislation so really the question tonight is to give you that background and hear your feedback and if you would like to consider placing this on the ballot. We will, we'd be happy to bring you that specific vote at a future meeting that vote would need to happen by January 25. So I will hand it over to Eric to walk through the information he presented in his memo. Yes, thank you very much. So included with your agenda packet was an informational memo that I've put together based on the legislation that was outlined in Act 164. This is not intended to be a comprehensive overview and this is my understanding of the bill so it may not actually, you know, this may not be how it ends up but this is my understanding of what the bill language includes it's a it's a the actual two pages long so there's a lot of information there. But in general what it what it talks about is the fact that municipalities are able to to to start licensing and allowing for cannabis retailers or integrated licensees which are basically a combination of the various types of licenses that the state is offering whether that be the cultivators testing laboratories manufacturers wholesalers or retailers. So municipalities have the ability to to license those the integrated licensees or retailers locally. But in order to do that first, the town or the municipality has to take an affirmative vote at a at a annual meeting or a special meeting of the of the voters of the municipality so that would either happen at town meeting, or a special meeting to be to be had in order for the municipality for the city of when you ski to start taking applications and and start allowing for these these cannabis operations to exist in the city. There's also the state is putting together a cannabis control board which will be doing rulemaking and providing a lot of the guidance that the municipalities will have to follow. What the municipality can do and how they can actually regulate the uses is going to be pretty, pretty limited to a land use component. This will function I think in is my opinion that this will function similar to how you all operate as the liquor control board right now where there's a state component and a municipal component. So there's there's again some of that still needs to be worked out through the rulemaking. And that's, you know, there's there's still some unknowns about what's happening here but I think in in when you ski it's, you know, we're a geographically, we're a small area small city geographically so depending on what the rulemaking says there may be opportunities for for the city to incorporate, or to allow for cannabis establishments, but also potentially not so I think it's, you know, a lot to be a lot to be determined yet. So, if the municipality however does not, if the vote is not to allow for cannabis establishments then there's no need to move forward with other aspects of it until that happens locally. So, I will leave it at that to see if there's any questions I know there's, you know, like I said there's a lot of information in the bill itself. But this is really to provide a quick summary of what what options are out there and what other municipalities are looking at as far as specific language and how complex that needs to be. Thanks Eric Amy. Thank you. I'm curious if we were to put something forward on the March ballot about, you know, potentially setting up some sort of cannabis market. Would we have the ability to pick and choose which aspects of that we wanted to move forward with or is it sort of all or nothing. So for example, could we vote to put sales forward on the March ballot but not manufacturing. I understand it. The, yes, the, you have the municipalities can regulate retailers or integrated licensees. So, you could put forth a question to allow just retailers, and that would be the only license that would be allowed for for for when new ski. I understand it it can go forward as two separate questions whether it's retailer and then an integrated license question. It can be a combined question or I think you can do them individually as well. Thank you. I see you. Me jump on this manufacturing stuff with Amy. This is cultivating and I'm pro new business I think new businesses is great, especially for a city looking for new businesses. But what I've been reading on this is there's no established location. It's kind of prohibits where they can set up shop. And that's a concern I remember the last meeting we had about this I had brought up some, some, some of that about where can we establish where shops will be, especially when it comes references to schools or residential areas. And if we get into putting this on the balance and broad spectrum, because it's not finalized yet. We're seeing it now, where the drying process down at the carpet or at, I call it the carpet factor because that's how I know it has brought up some huge obstacles for residents down that area. And I'm just concerned about if they start setting shops up, are we going to have the same issues going on in the future that that has brought to light. So, there is the, I guess, from the, from the retail side I don't think the the issues that are going on with the property at Elm Street would be a factor, because there wouldn't be any any manufacturing at the retail establishment. Some of our land use regulations will dictate where where the establishments can be located so for example if it is a, if it is something that's more large scale a manufacturing type of operation we would we would most likely require that under our current regulations to to be located in our industrial zoning districts. So that's going to be limited to the the Tygan area or at the property down at Elm Street. With that, the same nuisance standards the same performance standards that we currently have in our regulations would apply to any of these new uses. We may need to, to revisit those regulations to make sure we're covering all aspects that would apply here, but those same performance standards would apply to any new land use the the legislation specifically talks about the fact that the cultivation and the at least the cultivation for sure is not covered under the required agricultural practices through the agency of agriculture which would allow for some of the exemptions that farming currently is afforded because of the nature of their of what they do so so the cannabis operations would not fall under that category and it's specifically outlined in the legislation that they would not have that exemption so we locally could regulate, as I understand it through our current regulations our current land use regulations or revisiting the performance standards to add more more language for for those issues. Jim. Thank you. And thanks for preparing this. Hi, Eric, it's great to have a kind of high level overview of a pretty complex bill. I had a couple of questions I think one is on the licensees the first. So I have my understanding is there's six licenses and we can only choose to regulate two of them, retailing and integrated licenses. The others are not subject to local decision making. So I guess I'm curious if that is the case or not can we have a processing or manufacturing business in the city because it's not a retailer or an integrated license. And then kind of along the same line. As I understand the integrated licenses are for their five and the for the existing dispensaries in the state. So are any of the existing dispensary five existing dispensaries within when you see already do we need the integrated license or would we be is that kind of moved. And so I guess it's some questions around the licenses that we would be approving I know we can only choose on the retailer and integrated does that mean we could see a licensee of a different type coming into the city. And then I so I can stop us out there but I had another question on the nuisance ordinances. Sure. So, to answer your second question, the existing dispensaries we do not have any none of those are located in musky currently. So, we don't, as far as I'm aware we do not have any, any operations that are are selling cannabis or medical marijuana right now. The question on the licensing as as again as I understand it the, the retail licenses is is pretty clear I think that that's for retail, the integrated licenses any combination of the other licenses so we could have a situation where we where we do have a a wholesaler that also is retail that sells sells the product out of a retail storefront but also sells more broadly in a wholesale environment or manufacturers and wholesale or manufacturers and retail so there there is the potential that we would have some of the other types of licenses but they would fall under that integrated license category. So, to answer your question. That helps with the integrated licensing piece. And then I guess, you, I think alluded to this already I are public nuisance statutes may or ordinances may need to be revised or upgraded in order to handle kind of any concerns that might arise especially around over. How much. My understanding again is that we can't really make those changes until the rulemaking is done at the state level. And so we're going to kind of wait to do our ordinance updates until the rules come out from the state or can we start making those changes now ahead of any state rulemaking. We can make, we can make the changes to our regulations at any time I think if we're going to make changes that are going to specifically talk about cannabis. It's possible that the rulemaking may address some of those already. With that said, I don't think any changes that we might want to look at I think we should be able to apply to any uses, so that the nuisance component is going to be equally and equitably enforced for any type of use so we're not necessarily singling out a cannabis use versus a, for example, a soap manufacturer, so that they are, you know if it's if it's a smell issue it could be a nuisance, depending on what the smell is. That's really more of a subjective thing so really what what I found anyway at least with the, the, the current situation that we have at the Elm Street facility. You know, it's, we want to make sure our regulations are going to address the address any complaint at the, at the same level rather than focusing on a specific use and what complaints might come from that use. Thanks. Are there other questions from Council. Mike. Yeah, I'm a quick one. Now, as, as a council, if we act as the board, will we have the authority to say we only want to pass or present one or permit one license same just retailers, and there will be no Do we have that authority. If this goes to the ballot or are people that want to open businesses and when you see going to want. Are we going to get stuck in a catch 22 situation where it's all or nothing or are we going to be able to say this is what the license that only when he wants to provide is just for retail. Do we have is that. I think you do. I think the, and I think that depends on what question you put forward on on a on a ballot. You could just ask that question that to allow retail licensees only and not even ask about the integrated licensees. So I think that is an option that you have as as a municipality as as council. And I correct me if I'm wrong, I read a letter for Mr. Herrington to which he's got some experience in this I believe he's on so that might be. I'm kind of out in the loop out. I don't really understand this whole cannabis business anyway, and what are general people looking to do in a city front. Are they looking just for retail space or they looking to manufacture it in a city location, or they looking to truck the product in and just have the retail storefront. Is that a question that any of us know or anyone in the participants know. Yeah, I don't have a sense of that personally so I can't answer that. So why don't we move to public comment I know we have at least three people sign up for this. Paul can usher them in. Thanks Chris dance. First we have Dylan Dylan whenever you're ready. Hey everybody. Thanks for the opportunity to share my voice regarding this vote. I'm not here to benefit to when you ski opting in but I'm not here to convince you guys of that. I'm really just asking that you allow the people of when you ski to decide earlier than later, whether when you ski should opt in or out by putting this on the ballot in March. So more importantly, one, what I really want to emphasize is waving the signature requirement needed just in light of the pandemic it's just not safe to go get the signatures right now to put this on the ballot. I think there's enough support behind this. I hope that we could get the signatures if we need to but it's really just a concern for public health and a waste of resources for everyone involved if we have to go physically get signatures. I'm pretty sure Brattleboro Burlington Willis Tim on Pealier. And I'm sure there's others to who are putting it on the ballot without the physical signatures needed so I'm hoping that we can do the same. Thank you all I've got thank you for listening and I'm happy to answer any questions if you have any and also if anyone wants to reach out, reach out to me outside of this meeting, feel free. Thank you. Thank you Dylan. Paul you want to bring on our next public commenter. So next we have Adrian. Adrian go ahead when you're ready. Hi, can you hear me. Yep. So first I'd like to say Dylan your dog in that picture is adorable. I'm a husky fan. But that being said, I also am aligned with Dylan's message around one the safety and the requirements of the signatures I think that if we can bring this to the ballot without having to go through that process I think that that would be probably an acceptable exception due to the COVID pandemic. And secondly, I really do feel like if we have the opportunity to get this on the March ballot, the more participation the better. I have been in some meetings around my neighborhood, where people either hadn't participated in council meetings or been paying attention and there wasn't a lot of communication. And so they feel ostracized from from some decisions that the city has made so I feel like if we can get this on the March ballot that's something that's going to allow more people to participate and I really do think for this decision process that's very important because there's a lot of education around it. And I do believe there are a lot of benefits as small business positive community to at least putting this on the ballot and starting some discussion around it. And again I do think time is of the essence I much rather that the city of Winooski is thinking ahead rather than behind the eight ball on this. When it comes to making these decisions getting the proper guidelines in place if we decide to move forward, or, or, you know, really fundamental reasons, if we decide not to. That's it. Thanks Adrian. I do want to respond to the comments about about item. So we as council do have the authority to just choose to put something on there. If we did not choose to. There's the signature process. However, a couple meetings ago we did approve that we would accept virtual signatures for town meeting date and physical signatures so that that's there if it turns out we don't want to move forward. Okay. Thank you, Adrian. Paul our next person. Eli, Eli whenever you are ready. All right. Welcome. Thank you very much. All right. Yeah, thank you very much for having me. I did a letter earlier and I do just want to I will I want to thank all of you my mom was on the Winooski city council. So I know what a dedication this isn't really appreciate it. So, you know, I want to echo what the previous two speakers said you know I think this is about getting this on the ballot and normally you know getting the petition, getting signatures would not be as much of an issue but during you know trying to get it on would be great. As far as the the language, you know, I'm coming at this from the standpoint of somebody who is interested in opening a retail shop, working with a whole sailor, you know, kind of a group of farmers and, you know when he's he's an attractive place for a lot of reasons. So, you know, one thing that Winooski has going for it that you all are aware of obviously is the local option tax, you know that 1% tax makes it much more clear what the benefit will be for Winooski. You know, and I think it's going to be up to up to people like me who are trying to apply to do kind of the community education and outreach. And really think about is this something that people want and if so how and where, you know, so I can I can go into some of the other stuff you guys talked about like I mentioned, I have been an advocate for a few years. I'm a registered lobbyist, my only client is myself. You know, and I'm interested in a wholesale license. I grew up in the Northeast Kingdom. I do hemp now and like switch THC and, you know, I'm looking at different locations for possible retail around the around the state and you know Winooski's home, where I grew up so it's a place that obviously is near and dear to my heart, and is someplace that's super appealing. There's a lot to be worked out between now and then. I think this is more kind of procedural. I guess at least this this first question and so I would definitely appreciate this being in the town meeting day ballot. Love to be a resource in the meantime. And you know if there are questions about, you know, taking with it with a grain of salt. You know, I'm an interested party here but I am very familiar with this legislation. If you guys did have quick questions, I'm happy to share what I know and direct you to others who might know more muted. Eli, Mike, did you want to pose your question about I got a comment about the consumption lounges before the manufacturing. I also read that they do not allow manufacturing at retail businesses. Am I reading that right, Eli? Yeah. Yeah, the way that I understand it is that there's not going to be co location of any kind allowed right so you can only do one thing and one physical location at least at least for now. You know now people would love to be able to sell it off of their farm in the future. We'll see but yeah as it stands, you know, you couldn't grow it in the back and sell it out of the front in the same building. So how that changes in the future we'll see but yeah the other the other thing you had mentioned was the and you know like I said consumption lounges, you know delivery, those will be the next two licenses that are probably looked at in addition to these next ones. You know so I think that's something that people who are retailers are going to be asking about you know it's something I'd certainly be interested in and how that compliments the rest of the food and beverage scene in downtown Winooski so you know I think that's something to consider but no I mean I think it'd be retail only and you know that'll be enough work as far as parking and security and all the other fun stuff. Thank you. Yeah, is now is this the bill that's going forward to the act 164 is that for only integrated licenses or is that for all licensing of the man in fact or the development of cannabis. Right so the way to think about the integrated license is as a kind of master key that allows a medical marijuana dispensary to do all of these different functions with one streamline license. You know the idea is that they already got licensed by the state to do all these things for medical. So, with an integrated license, they kind of can get a master key and do all these things at once. Now, advocates like myself and other people think that gives them an unfair advantage, because their license kicks in before others. So the question of the timing of these licenses and and who's open first is really a big deal, you know I mean millions of dollars. And you know there's a huge interest in being being open first so right now the way it's listed the integrated licensees, these dispensaries, they would still need presumably to get local approval on a retail sales component. So the part that we understand that you folks the local government need to opt in for, at least explicitly is the sale over the counter. You know those other activities are allowed by default, you could still zone them out. You know like you said if you, depending on how you define different things or, you know whether it's manufacturing is that something that happens in a kitchen or does it need to be in an industrial so right so I think regular zoning is going to dictate the rest of the other types of licenses, you know and whatever lessons you've learned good bad or otherwise from hemp, you know we'll see. But the thing with the integrated license that that people are going to be talking a lot about is that it allows these dispensaries an opportunity to get into the market first in May 22 versus October 22. You know if anything people like myself would like to see that language say, shall the wheel out retail sales and not include the integrated licensees, you know and then we're not giving them the same permission to operate as we are independent retailers. And so we would effectively be kind of keeping those big guys out from our perspective so you know that's kind of the factor when you know independent retailers you know or perspective retailers like me and maybe others here. That's kind of what we're thinking about with integrated is them getting a jumpstart on us in May versus October but you know presumably everybody's going to have to go through the same process of getting your fire, you know inspections and you know and figuring out the zoning. And that's where this is allowed to happen and then finding the specific real estate within there and you know making sure everything is up to code and parking and traffic and all that stuff so I think the first question is just going to be, you know, will the do do the with what they know, and at least in Winooski they know there's a 1% local option tax so there's a much more clear benefit to the taxpayer Winooski then a lot of other towns and, you know, I think Winooski's got a better chance of passing this maybe on town meeting Dave and some of these other places because there is that certainty of the option tax. So that's Thanks Eli. You're welcome. I just want to warn Council that our next agenda item is going to be an update from the partnership for prevention and I think they'll have some information to share on this topic as well. Amy I see your hand is raised. Yeah, I did. I did have another question and maybe I should just save it for the second group but I think you know to me the biggest concern here is the fact that the cannabis control board has not been established well it's been, I think appointed but they're not up and running. And that's going to be the body that makes the rules that we would then have to adhere to. So it seems to me a little bit like putting the cart before the horse and I'm just curious from your perspective Eric if you think that there's risk in doing that. And if we did go ahead and approve it to go on the ballot. And then low and behold there were some sort of rules that were regulations that we weren't comfortable with. What do you think our options would be at that point. Yeah, I think so. I guess I'll answer that by saying we if if when you ski ops in if that's the choice that's made by the voters. Any licensees would still need to follow our local land use regulations as they exist for how they would where they'd be able to be located. So, you know anything that comes in as as retail would have to go in one of the zoning districts where we permit retail. The signage would have to meet our current signage regulations unless the state has more more strict standards on that through their rulemaking. So I guess I don't. I don't envision that the rulemaking would if anything I think the what the rulemaking will do would limit further where we would permit some of these uses to occur or put more controls on how they advertise the security the potentially some of the the additional needs that the state might have to have. And I don't think it will necessarily impact what we have in our existing regulations now for how we would regulate it. How we would regulate any type of retail business, or any any other use that we currently have as far as our zoning districts where they're permitted and how those uses would would be categorized within our land use regulations I'm not sure your question counselor Lafayette but that's No, that is helpful. Thank you. I'm kind of the same wavelength is Amy so any retail space in the city that means it could be up by the high school, or it could be by any school or any And because there's retails there's retail areas everywhere in the land use. Is that something we will have to revisit if this passes to make sure because I don't think it's a good idea putting a cannabis retail shop near school or or a daycare by any means. And I think those are the types of questions that the rulemaking will probably come up with and if they didn't I think then that is something that we may be able to look at so I would I would see some of the rulemaking coming out talking about proximity to parks or places where Children gather or things of that nature to limit either the use or if nothing else to limit the amount of exposure the use could have so it doesn't. So it looks like a nondescript building rather than something that's advertising the specific use inside. I would, I think that the council would have that authority right or would it have to go to vote for the voters to decide where we, I mean how's that all work. Well in that case it would be we would look at updating our land use regulations and that is a decision of council. Okay. Thank you, Eric. Jim. So, I agree with Amy that this feels like putting the car before the horse and I guess I just see a potential situation where we put this on the ballot or March, and then rulemaking happens. I doubt that it would come out so poorly for us for the community that we would then have to ask voters in the subsequent town meeting day to take this back, because the rulemaking doesn't work out for us, or create some real problems in our community so I don't think it's likely but I struggle more with the so that's one thing I would hate to see council end up doing is putting this on the ballot, finding out what the rules are and that we aren't going to realize that much is being potentially depending on how fees and the half percent we actually get from the options tax comes back to us. And then having to ask our community to change their mind. And then I think that's less likely so I'm not so concerned but I do feel like we have to be aware that's a position we could find ourselves in. One of the things that's more troubling to me is that we have two months to explain ballot question where we actually don't have many of the basic answers and I, I, I, on principle have a hard time doing that, the reason that I would still support doing this town meeting day, and I know we're not making the decision today but I'm just explaining my thinking is that there is going to be some operational benefit for the city to have a longer time to plan and prepare for implementation and there's going to be an economic benefit for our entrepreneurs and business developers to begin making plans for issuance of licenses. So those are the two things that to me can outweigh the awkwardness of having to pitch a question that we can adequately answer all the details around to voters. So I guess I kind of have that as a question for Eric and a question for someone like Eli, are there economic constraints on the business and operational constraints on the city that we need to be thinking about. And, you know, these licenses won't be issued until for 20 months. So our licensees can't even apply for 20 months or retail licenses and will be issued for longer than that so if we wait 12 months or something less than this town meeting day. What are we risking and what would be the downsides. So I guess that's a long winded question but basically are there operational benefits to doing this now as opposed to later. And are there economic or planning benefits for business community and doing this now versus later. That's great question. I think one of the potential benefits is that if based on the rulemaking and everything else that comes out there are no major red flags for the community. Licensing can start happening right away. And there's no need to then hold a special meeting or wait for the next town meeting day to occur for the for a vote to happen so it positions the city to be able to take action. I think in that regard. And to that point I think, again, as I am understanding the legislation, the, the, the local board that the local cannabis control commission that's established needs to issue the licenses as well before a retailer or other integrated start operations. So I think that provides whoever that commission ends up being provide some ability for them to hold off on providing any licensing until the rules are in place that we would want to make sure aren't in place to protect the city. So I think those, you know, that doesn't necessarily then provide all the protections but I think that gives some, some level of ability for, for the municipality to, to have some of that time necessary. If, if something goes on the ballot in, in two months at town meeting day. Eric, I want to add on to that. I think number one, having more time to do land use planning is always good can be pretty slow process for us to update these regulations. And then two, I've spoken with folks potentially like interested business owners. And the feeling there has been, it takes so long to start a new business to go through permitting securing space, just all of the steps of getting up and running that the earlier they know that this is a possibility and when you see the better position you need to start out, you know, come fall 2022 when it is actually time for licensing. I think another thing to consider is that New York State is also working towards commercial cannabis legalization. Vermont is sort of ahead on that. Do we want to put ourselves ahead on this side of the lake versus if they make some changes over there. Like I see your hand raised. Yeah, thank you. Now, if the state sets a set of rules. Am I wrong thinking that the minutes municipality would be the authority having jurisdiction and we can set our own rules, even if they're stricter. I have a, I would think that we can as a council and as a city we could as long as we're within the rules but we can set our own standard. I would believe so except for an example the national electrical code is the minimal, but the inspectors, the electrical inspectors of the state have authority having jurisdiction so they can, as long as they're within the code they if they see something that they want fixed, we have to, because they're authority we do what they say. So I'm just wondering if the miss, miss the municipality will have that same jurisdiction. When it comes to the city, and we'll have, if we see that the state of Vermont rules are kind of lacks if we can set up our own set of rules, as long as we're in the guidelines of the state. So that's a Jesse Baker question. So, so my answer to that by Eric chime in is I think it 100% depends on how the cannabis, cannabis commission writes the regulations. Traditionally in Vermont, as a strong what they call Dylan's rule state, we can only do that which the state tells us we can do, not the reverse. My guess is if the state sets standards while we still have the right to do our own land use regulation and all the things Eric has previously mentioned, we wouldn't likely have the right to go more extreme on non land use things that the cannabis commission has regulated, but we won't know that until the cannabis commission has actually promulgated regulations. Eric, do you want to answer that a different way. No, I think that's right. As long as I think it depends on on what the regulations are there are I mean in general so for example, with from a land use side, the legislation was just passed related to accessory dwelling units and that the legislation says that we cannot prohibit an accessory dwelling unit that's at least 900 square feet in size. However, we could say we would allow by right an accessory dwelling unit that's 1000 square feet in size, because we're still no more per we're less permissible or we're not prohibiting any more than the state does. So we're allowing it to be more relaxed so it depending on what the rules actually state. I think there is going to potentially be some leeway in that regard using the land use example. But it's really going to depend on what the rules are and what those what those components of it are fleshed out to be. Should we are there additional questions. Oh, I don't know how is there anything that you want to chime in on the legislation or have we kind of covered that. No, I think it covered it well and I guess I want to see what's going to come up next with the presentation because what one of the big concerns we had when debating this was how do we make sure we're providing safety for our children. So what what does education and prevention look like. What's going to be at the core of this. So, it'll be interesting to hear what's going to be presented because that that was something that we really made a point in the house to amend the the bill that came from the senate. There was virtually nothing in terms of funding to do that work. So at the heart of all this, we want to put up a stand up a healthy industry, but also make sure we have all the protections and make make it safe for for everyone. Thanks Hal. What is the transition but we have I see Eli Harrington's hand is raised so I'll bring him back in for one more public comment. Thank you very much. Just just wanted to clean up and thank you again I mean I've talked to other local governments and Eric and Jesse so far above and beyond. I think even the Vermont League of Cities and towns at this point so really appreciate the depth that you guys are are getting into here. You know, just the only thing that didn't come up is, you know, yes, there's an advantage to being to knowing early, at least generally, you know, is that the central business district and a retail location. I think there's there's benefit to knowing that early on, but they're going to be specifics to be worked out and, you know, the elephant in the room is what is the cost of that retail license, you know, which is something that we don't know from the commission at all and presumably could be different from city to city, you know, or town to town, and be a different factor to either attract or deter people from coming in. You know, so there are a bunch of different questions, you know, still to be addressed and, you know, I think if it wasn't going to go on town meeting day. There would probably there would at least be some benefit in setting a date at some point in the future. I think that's dedicated to the question, give folks some time to have some, some longer discussions if need be about things like signage and education and funding and all that. So, you know, I think that ultimately, there are ways to over complicate, you know, to over complicate it when we're talking about something basic but I would just say if it wasn't going to go on town meeting day I think there'd be a benefit to at least setting a date in the future so that people can look to something and, you know, let's say June. So that they can at least know if when you ski is going to be moving forward but no I appreciate the conversation that the chance to speak and being a resource in the in the future. Um, so we will revisit this item was only on for discussion this evening. Maybe some follow up information of some of the questions raised here. And, well, we'll also be getting some follow up information we're going to move on to item C, which is an update from the when you ski partnership for prevention. And I know that this is one of the topics they wanted to cover. We have Kate Nugent the executive director here. I'm going to give Kate a moment to bring her into the meeting. Kate welcome. Hello. The first time being zoomed from a webinar to so that's fun. So I think you have some general updates for us but maybe you want to start with the Act 146 fact sheet that you shared to follow up on the previous discussion. Yeah, sure. I can share that if that's helpful to or if you all have a copy. Yes. We have. Awesome. So I'm sure you've read it super thoroughly. You have only thing on your mind. So we worked with a set of attorneys who specialize in public health law. With prevention works, which is a statewide organization. So I'm going to look at Act 146 and with the eye of what, what municipalities could do and couldn't do. And also the timeline involved. And so I guess just to follow up on some of the discussion that I was hearing before. Kind of what Jesse was saying that I think because the way Vermont is set up and that it's a Dylan's rule state. And especially this cannabis control board is going to have a ton of power in terms of what this looks like in Vermont. And our understanding is that it's going to be very difficult for cities to amend their laws zoning or ordinances. And so the rules come out. So, whatever you don't have in place before that, it's going to be really challenging to put something in addition. So, and in a lot of states this may or may not be the case in Vermont, but those boards are very political and they're often, you know, people who are on our industry. They're most they're based their main focus. So I guess to summarize the main gist of that memo. We think that it makes sense for municipalities to wait, because you have two years so you could still vote on it. If you decide that you would like to do that, so that you have time to put the, you know, to amend your zoning, how you would like considering all the issues. And, you know, it's not an ordinary commodity. It is an addictive substance that comes with a whole host of challenges. And the tax revenue is probably not going to kick in for at least two to three years. And that's another thing that the control board has the power to set the taxes, even beyond the legislature. So, I think that was those are the main points that I think are most important. Thanks for sharing and for providing this memo for reference. Did council have any questions specific to this before, before you move along. All right, I think this ties in well with what was discussed before. It was there. I think you had some additional general partnership for prevention updates you want to share with us. Yeah, I have a brief slideshow that I can share, which I think I'm sharing. Can you, can you share, can you access the share? A special permission. So, Kate, I just made you a co host and down below you should have option to access the share screen. Thank you so much. All right. So I thought it would be good to do this. And I think it's really great when people recognize their interests in the topic. So, you know, but we're a nonprofit. We have two paid employees. And we're funded mostly through grants through CDC and SAMHSA, which is a substance abuse and mental health services administration. And some of those are funneled through the Vermont Department of Health. And we are located at the O'Brien Community Center. And we are members of the coalition of anti drug coalitions of America. And the chin and prevention network. So in the slideshow I have some examples of prevention, because we've done this before and other for other topics. Some information that's relevant to act 164 that you might want to consider, as you're considering how. And if you would like to allow retail in your in the city, then some updated data that I think would be relevant to your work. And then specific to that some underage drinking enforcement perception that we have learned from our surveying and things like that. And resources for further interest and some upcoming learning opportunities. So, depending on how old you are you might remember going into restaurants when there was smoking allowed or when there was like a smoking section when that didn't really do a lot but we tried. And also marketing towards youth through cartoon characters like Joe camel. And then there are cigarette vending machines that would be in the, you know, hotel lobbies or restaurants. And, you know, nobody was monitoring them usually. So all you need is some money and put them in and you could get a pack if you want. As far as marketing goes, seeing tobacco use in children's films like this one. And even though it's the villain in the film, it still sends a message of normalcy and some acceptance. So I know you're probably so I don't want to spend a ton of time on it but just to get you thinking about if you do move forward with marijuana or potential other ways to further prevent tobacco use among youth. The main methods as far as municipalities go would be reducing access reducing promotion and stronger policy so we have cigarettes behind counters and stores and you have to show ID. There's limitations on where it is advertised in terms of media that is seen by youth. And we also do compliance checks to make sure that store owners are not selling to underage youth alcohol is a little different. It's, you know, has a longer tradition in the world. And, you know, there never was a big lawsuit against them so they self police their marketing for the most part. There are researchers who monitor where ads are being seen and where they're being put up and because of that research places like New York City, they ban them from subways because obviously, you know, you get a big general audience there and it's a lot of user exposed. And then the other thing I think we're all keeping in mind more and more is how this impacts minority communities and LGTB Q and youth. And so there's a lot of research that is available about how these substance industries target those communities. And that's really, I think, something that everyone is paying more attention to now. So that's alcohol. So as far as marijuana or cannabis prevention, I, you know, you could consider a lot of the same types of things. You know, how you reduce access by youth, how you reduce promotion, and how you, you know, you might incentivize compliance or non compliance as far as like stores go selling to youth. We don't recommend putting a lot of penalties on youth themselves because it doesn't tend to be effective and it just penalizes the wrong person for the wrong party in that. So as far as I know, there are no fines right now in Act 164 for selling to minors. So that might be something the state could look into. But other things you could think about are buffer zones around schools. You could also do that for tobacco and alcohol signage restrictions so that, you know, youth are not exposed to ads for these substances as often. And you can also condition local licenses, I think, similar to what you can do for alcohol. So just transitioning to the data that we have that's very specific to Winooski that I thought would be helpful for you. And I can also send the presentation afterward if that's of interest. So in terms of thinking of density and proximity, you can see on this map, the blue squares are tobacco retailers and the purple circles are the childcare centers or schools. And this is a thousand feet, the lighter colored circles and then the bigger circles are half a mile buffers. So you can see near our schools, there are, you know, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight tobacco retailers within half a mile of most schools. And that's the typical walking distance for somebody. And we know that Winooski students walk to school so that can be significant. And then these other two are pretty close. So the other map that we have is related to incidents that are related to alcohol. And you can see that the first class licenses are the martini glasses and then the second class are the little blue squares. And the red and yellow are the, you know, where the incident rates are more dense. In addition to that, we are looking at signage and documenting changes and how things may or may not be doing what they're supposed to be doing to hopefully provide some data to you as well. And upcoming, we're hoping to do a cord, we call it the cord data surveys, but it's about use and perceptions of harm. So that's one of the best indicators of future intentions. If someone thinks something is not harmful, they're more likely to do it versus if they think it's harmful, they're less likely. So it's one of the main measures that we use for prevention. And also access to where our youth accessing these substances. And I think again, we're in a new era right now. There is, we found there's definitely a perception among youth that there's no consequences for using alcohol when they're not 21 yet. One idea we had at one point was to just have somebody sort of walk through and notice where this is happening, which I think would be potentially a helpful and effective way to do it and, you know, instead of sending them to like a criminal justice route, it might be a way to get them, you know, more awareness or education or therapy, whatever they're, whatever they need. Another thing we're really focused on right now is parental perception and attitudes because most youth to get substances from their homes. There are very good compliance rates as far as providing to minors in Vermont now. So, and we also are aware of that some parents are even giving their youth substances, because they may think that it calms them down or does something beneficial. So trying to make sure that parents have the, the facts that they need and also, you know, practice and skills, speaking with their kids. And to think about as intoxicated driving. The last few years, drugged driving has actually surpassed drunk driving. As far as fatalities, and it's definitely something that, you know, I think the state is thinking about and also might want to think about the impact right around the rotary and, you know, it's a very dense area with a lot of that. So lastly, I just wanted to point out these resources, which are really interesting, I think the CDC has a website called places, and you can get really granular and local data related to different health outcomes and you can use it with GIS so it's kind of cool. And the community guide is has a lot of policy solutions that are specific to outcomes so if you did have a, you know, if your retailers were furnishing alcohol to minors a lot you could go there and say like what's a policy that would reduce that. And then finally, you may have seen this already, because it was going around the municipal circles and, but the coalitions in Chittenden County and then the CCRPC and Health Department and I think United Way, I'll work on this. It's really comprehensive guide called prioritizing health in the built environment. And it has, you know, like an overview of what prevention is data about why we, you know, why this matters and then also ways that municipalities can take action to, you know, create the community that they're envisioning. And it's really big and but you can go to the parts that you need at the moment. So, and then I just thought I'd share these because they were really fantastic. There is a recent webinar that are new house speaker Jill Kroinski, along with some national African American tobacco council leaders and local lawmakers carried out with the American Heart Association recently. And it was just really, really good and some new information that I'd never heard before. And then the US alcohol policy alliance, which is also phenomenal, just like incredible researchers is putting on a webinar soon about alcohol outlet density through a racial or race equity lens. So if you're available and interested, I highly recommend those. And that is the end of my. Please do pass that along. I can distribute it to the rest of the council, maybe like after the fact we can add it to the agenda to on the public website. I think there's some really interesting resources in there that could be useful as we are engaging in not just the cannabis discussion but, you know, other other safety and prevention issues here. Do you folks have questions for Kate. Thank you, Mayor. So Kate. If we were to stand up a cannabis market in when you ski. What would you think would be sufficient for a budget for the for the goal of prevention and education of our youth. Any, any thoughts about what that number might look like. Are you asking from a statewide perspective or you're thinking, yeah, yeah, because they act 164 will will generate a fund for for that purpose. But I'm just thinking about our community. What from your perspective, what would be sufficient to be effective at prevention and education for our youth. I know that we've done some work trying to get to a number on that as the prevention community goes and I don't want to give you a number that I feel like I know but I, but I can definitely find out. I do know there's a lot of gaps, you know, in terms of like where you start getting information so that's how I kind of think of it like where would we sell that in. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. So one of our attendees left a question in the chat. So have you seen research, or do you know what research is available on how states have changed before and after legalization. There, I think there's a ton of that actually the monitoring the future survey is tracks that I think it's every year every other year. And they've seen an increase in youth use in states that have, you know, allowed retail. There's also the National Highway Safety Traffic Administration, if I'm getting all the words right, but they do traffic fatalities and that kind of analysis so that has a comprehensive data available there. I think CDC has some to make sense. Are there other questions from attendees. Again, you can use the chat or raise hands. Jim I saw you raise your hand. Yes, thank you. Thanks Kate for preparing both the fact sheet and the presentation I do look forward to having some of those links to go over more detail. I'm curious you mentioned that you're doing signage compliance monitoring and as we kind of look at that as being one potential piece that needs to be figured out by the control board and for cannabis by the control board eventually control commissions. Are we already meeting the challenge currently when is here do we have lessons that we need to learn now from alcohol and tobacco in the next year to be addressing cannabis in the near future. I think that the current signage code is really, really good. I think it's going to, for my understanding it would be about like bringing those into compliance and unfortunately like all the stores that are in the Gateway District are, I think kind of grandfathered in. I'm sure Eric could speak to that more but I think that is that limit the amount of signage that you can have in a window and I'm sure that you're aware because of the rules around advertising and free speech and are in the Constitution or a recent Supreme Court decisions. It can't be like targeted at a specific product. The only way to get at it is just to reduce the amount of signage that can be there so and most of the stores, they get that those things from the distributors it's not like they, a lot of them don't even like having them. We've talked to store owners to find out like how they feel about it and they feel sometimes it like gets in the way of the name of the store and it like is hard to see what they actually sell or see inside. So that would be, I think, really effective way to limit what youth are exposed to and, you know, I think like adults we all know where we, where to get stuff so it's, I think it doesn't hurt the stores, either. Eric did you want to add anything to that about our current signage regulations. Yeah, I guess I would say, in general, as Kate mentioned a lot of the uses are along our gateways. Typically, our sign regulations do not limit the, they only apply to the exterior of the building. So any type of any monument signs or freestanding signs or building signs is where our regulations apply. There are some carve outs that talk about any signage that's behind the glass is not is exempt from the regulations or is not covered by the regulations and that's a lot of times where we see the the advertising occurring so we're we have limited opportunities to impact or to regulate that type of signage in our current regulations. Thank you. And that is something just for everyone else's background. We've been to a planning planning commission meetings in the past to share information about that with the planning commission, should there be an opportunity for future changes. Are there other questions. Well thank you again for coming in to present Kate and please do share that deck I'll share out so we can spend a little more time with the data and the resources that you put together. Thank you so much. Thanks for all you guys are doing keeping people healthy and safe right now. Before we move to item D. I'm going to call a five minute recess and we will reconvene at 755 p.m. Wait, I'll wait another moment. Oh great. Excellent. All right, we are all back is 756 p.m. Let's reconvene this meeting with item D are f y 22 budget public safety presentation. Have you seen my screen. Yes. Turn it over to the chiefs. Yeah, Paul if you can bring Liam over please. In mayor council. Good evening. You know on behalf of myself and Chief Hebert. Thanks for the opportunity to present you with our budget again this year and we'll get started. Yeah, the present budget presentation outline, you know, kind of a template of what what you're going to see from both of us tonight. We are continue focuses. Some stats, the proposed budgets and some lookaheads. Yeah, I know I'm supposed to be advancing I can't figure out where my mouse is. How do I do it? Keep talking John and I'll figure it out. The third slide in is our fire department or chart and you know again we just continue to to his departments you know show you our organization charts and you know for me. I have a couple key folks that left this year everyone is key, but Lieutenant Jonathan deliberate moved out of the city. Firefighter Stafford, a local. She is a resident and has moved on to some other priorities and, but it was also an opportunity for us to promote a couple folks internally. Lieutenant Palmer and deer and Chesboro. As hard as it is to see people leave it's an opportunity to have new people kind of step up. So, you know, we continue to build upon our community risk reduction model. This allows us to get ahead of the call. This is the first time I think I've been able to really bring the five ease to the council. You hear me talk a lot about community risk reduction. This is a national effort. And you know it's really focused around education engineering enforcement emergency response and economic incentives. And on the next page will define those just a little bit and apply it locally. You know any education from you know we education for us is with our landlords or tenants, the developers and their own staff and city departments. So it's huge we spend a lot of time in that. And the engineering is how we review plans, whether it's city, city ordinances or city regulations, national standards. You know, and again we do a lot of site visits around that with the big projects, but I'd also like to draw attention, you know, we see the big projects but there's a lot of reinvestment here in Winooski, which you all encourage and I think we all know the importance of that, whether older housing stock. And that takes as much of our time, really as the big projects and a lot of, a lot of ways the big projects are easier than the smaller projects, because we're dealing with people that do it every day. But it's certainly worth the time to to work with the, with the owners that are trying to improve their properties and although it's a little bit more work. You know, we get a lot of reward out of seeing those projects go to enforcement, you know, I've, you know, we've always seen this as a tool, not on who we are. You know, Councilor Colson said earlier, you know the word empathy, and we, we really push that when we're, you know, when we're in an enforcement situation. And we really try to figure out where people are at, and you'll hear me talk a little bit more about that with some outcomes, a little bit later in the slides. The emergency response is pretty obvious, you know, a lot of departments are focused on just emergency response. And the data is clearly proving to us through education and engineering in your economic incentives. That is continues to keep a lid on the emergency response needs or demands here in the city, even with the growth. Our fire calls continue to drop, which is a good thing. And again, that's that, let's get ahead of the call instead of chase the call and we can't ever get rid of all that, but we certainly it's you're getting a lot of value for the work we're doing in regards to limiting our emergency response. You know, the economic incentives, you know, Heather's efforts in the housing commission, you know, they've started started a lot of those different programs. And I believe as those continue, we'll, it will again feed into, you know, less, less emergency response, less property loss, less disruption to our, to our residents. You know the stats, then there's a lot here in the stats because we cover so many different things. You know, again, a lot of time this year and we'll lead into this a little bit more as emergency management activities. You know with COVID obviously has taken a lot of time this year, a response to fire calls remains level if not down a little bit. We're tracking same time period of this year, July one to current against last year, we're down about 25 calls, you know, a lot of services saw drop due to COVID, and that's a, at first it was on the MS side it was pretty significant with COVID, I think that's starting to pick up as COVID is gone, you know, gone on and everyone's the mental health issues and that sort of thing. So, you know, and also a big change for us was how the town of Colchester is doing business auto aid, we used to go automatic aid a lot to Colchester. You know, we would go there they came here, they've hired some full time staff, so that really changed a lot of how we, how we work together. The permits currently are tracking about the same currently where July one to current we're about 113 you can see we did about 189 last year. So I believe that's going to end up being about the same which is, again, it's not just the big projects but it's, we continue to see reinvestment in Windows key. And, you know, that's a good thing. We have inspections, you know, we're on par with inspections, we did close inspections shut them down a little bit well employees were furloughed and well the first outbreak here in Windows key. We continue to do residential inspections, and it's being pretty well received. We're not demanding to go in. But once we explain the importance of going in and maintaining a baseline life safety health, you know, baseline here in the city. People are generally letting us in. So, again, I see that as good news I think people see understand the importance and see the value from a landlord's perspective of what the program is doing. So how often do so I I'm assuming we inspect units that are registered that the landlords have registered and then how frequently do we inspect a unit. Yep. But can I, I will answer that. No, I will answer that in just a second and then we interrupt commercial inspections, you know, are way down. I dropped last year. You know, we're currently at about six this year again we haven't pushed that you know we charge for that service. And it isn't that we haven't wanted to but staff is pivoted to a lot of different things and you know the residential inspections are priority. Not that the businesses are any, any less important. The site visits again I think is relative to our building permits, we, you know, we continue to do a lot of those were 85 currently again from July 1 to current against the 89 from last year. And again that's a lot of the bigger projects on East Allen, East Allen and Manso the V sac the vpr building four quarters, but just a ton of smaller projects. Again, as people reinvest we are actively, you know, part of their projects which is good. To answer the mayor's question, you know, the public building registry is broken in the four quadrants around the city and we inspect one quadrant each year. And this is how the program was set up. And so that means people are on a four year cycle of inspection we issue a certificate of fitness is good for four years. That fourth year you are inspected. And it's really done on the demands of the staff, we can't do all the units every year. So we've, we've had really good luck success with really being able to do really good follow ups in each quadrant, how it's lined out. And part of our future part of my future want is to be able to start to grade some of these properties some do really really well. Some don't. Some we only see once and they've, you know, they really figure it out and again through the education understand what our program is. And some are just each year we're dealing with the same people. So I don't want to penalize those who are doing a really good job. I want to reward them. So maybe they stay on a four year cycle and the ones we see repetitively or a property that we're having major issues with we can put on a two year cycle. But again, that will, that's part of the growth of the program in the future. Currently our inspections, you know, there was a question of what type of issues are we seeing. Right now, COVID is not having a huge impact on changing the information the data that we're getting the types of inspections or violent violations that we're seeing. The top ones on the life safety side or maintaining heating appliances, you know, through the annual inspection program. Electrical issues smoke and CO and handrails. Just to name a couple I mean there's there's literally a couple hundred in there that that we could run in but those are the big ones and on the health side is lead mold on sanity on sanitary conditions and weather type buildings when when I say weather type buildings that means the exterior in the interior. So an example on the interior would be, you know, is the bathroom floor watertight so it doesn't leak into the bottom below or cause mold. And again with the older housing stock it doesn't, you know, no one should be surprised that that is a struggle for some. One of the most frequent pieces that we're seeing and I think if you were to look at pieces of that you would see community risk reduction could have a big impact on, you know, through education about heating maintenance heating appliance maintenance. I'd rather educate than write violations. And again assistant education. Same with handrails, you know, a lot of that's education people don't need, you know, people don't understand that that needs to be different. The same thing lead, I think there's a lack of understanding of the lead laws here in Vermont we, we are not more restrictive than the state. We rely on the Burlington lead program to help us with that. And there's certainly, you know, some barriers there for access to those resources, and we have met with Burlington lead. Through COVID, it's kind of, you know, gone down the ladder a little bit to be honest with you just due to the response to COVID both on the Burlington on the Burlington side and our side. But we are considered part of the Burlington lead program. I believe it's upward of $3 million so to get that program it's a couple year project I don't have the exact amount but questions so far. Another question that was raised was on complaints. Again, I mentioned, you know, COVID is it's starting to creep into some of the complaints, but our complaints generally remain the same we don't have a ton of them. It's becoming much more complex, meaning, you know, we used to be able to just kind of point people a direction. And now there's multiple issues. You know, could be someone that doesn't have heat. So I don't have access to, to money to pay for heat. And when we're doing that we find unsanitary conditions we just, they're becoming very complicated. And it takes a lot of staff hours to sort that out to, again, approach that with empathy and really figure out where someone is at. You know, we could, we could stay in our offices and write tickets. No, you don't have heat we write a ticket to the landlord or it's on sanitary conditions is write a ticket and fix it. We really try to kind of peel, peel those pieces back and figure out what's what's going on and surround them we are very, very fortunate to have many many partners across the board that we can usually point people surround them with. And, you know, and a lot of cases we staff kudos to the staff. You know when people are in a hard spot staff figures it out how to, how to surround them with the resources or in some cases take it upon themselves and, you know, if there's a food insecurity. So, you know, we have to tell a story of staff shopping. So, again, truly the staff approaches this as they are neighbors they're important to know every resident is important to us as staff and they live that every day. Another question and again this is all over the board depending on how complex, you know, anyone complaint. The question was, what are the outcomes of the complaints. And again these, they're so complex, you know, in some instances we're dealing with DCF and there's, you know, there's that type of involvement. Other times we're able to connect people with rental assistance. You know, other times we're able to just educate the landlord and he or she makes immediate corrections. You know, there's some enforcement that goes on for several months. So it's just all over the board that, you know, the outcomes are just all over the place. So for instance this year on sanitary conditions. And again, this is one that I could say COVID did have an effect on. It led to the two families being removed from the property, not allowed to live there. And there's so much damage done to the property that the landlord couldn't overcome that and actually had to sell the property. So we were dealing with two families, approximately 16 to 18 people making sure their house making sure they're fed making sure they're safe. And we're also dealing with a landlord who had a property that just had fallen completely off, you know, wasn't really, you know, saveable from his standpoint financially and you know, resources. So it led to the property being sold it will, you know, someone will reinvest in that property and our goal is to educate that new landlord surround him or her with the resources that we know are available and, you know, educate them on the laws and the standards and do our part to prevent that from happening again. So that's just one one story and, you know, Jim you specifically had that question on, you know, the outcomes and, you know, if you have more specific questions I'm willing to try to answer those on the next slide, you know, kind of continuation of kind of how we've approached this year kind of dealt with this year if you will. You know if we start at March, you know it all started kind of in March for us and we're going to go to the right, you know emergency management heavily involved with the leadership team. You know dealing with the city's emergency management and the city staff kind of city plans if you will community plans. Certainly the state huddles on what you heard Jess talk about many times in the updates. Now the second bullet is PPE. You know we we quickly realize that many departments here in the city weren't prepared who was right for COVID and we understood what PPE we needed to keep our employees their staff safe. And so we were part of making sure that we had vendors that could supply the city. We had access to kind of emergency PPE on the state side. And certainly on the fire department side you know emergency response side it really and I know it did on the PD side also really changed how we respond daily. You know, on calls. You know, staff, the staff bullet, you're maintaining a minimal staff hasn't been easy in our model. You know we adjusted how again how we respond out the door. Any call we're on we're either on our SCBA or ourselves contain breathing air, or we're wearing special respirators. Just again to protect whoever we're in contact with and protect ourselves. We've got with currently about eight or nine COVID related issues with our part time staff and it's just no one has has tested positive that I know of, but certainly people have traveled. People have come in contact possibly outside of here. So it's it's meant quarantine time and just shuffling the staff and and following the state executive orders. And then with St. Mike's, you know, we rely heavily on St. Mike's rescue. And as you know, there were some cases on the different campuses, St. Mike's, your administration did a tremendous job at keeping the students that safe. And, you know, really, who goes to that to the students for understanding, you know, the value of the work they do and they take it super serious and really stepped up in, and in many cases, as rescue and fire at St. Mike's they remove themselves from the rest of the student body, so that they are available to respond to calls so that's huge and not. You know, I think we should all recognize that those are college kids that are making those decisions on behalf of the residents here so you know, super, super job by them on the housing side, you know, again, we, we have many, many instances where through our regular inspection piece, you know, the housing, you know, we're dealing with the what appears to be the normal kind of unsanitary conditions on the normal violations. Yes, we are starting to, I think we're just starting to see, you know, I'm hearing you guys all talk about food insecurities. You know, we know that exists. People unable to pay their rent, you know, we're hearing that on the huddles. You know, and I can only assume that if they're struggling, the landlords are likely struggling. So I think we're, we're just starting to possibly see, you know, some trends that we want to keep an eye on, as far as the housing is concerned. So cloth mask, you know, we, we were provided by the state with, I think over 1200 cloth mask could could have been more seems like so long ago now that we've dealt with so many things, but we were able to distribute 150 of those by visiting different properties. We visited 12 to 13 properties. So we worked with Windows key housing to go for an hour at 83 Barlow go for an hour at 65 Barlow. You know, and so it was, it was just really good and at first the staff was like, you know, what are we doing why don't we just drop off the box. And I really felt it was important that we get your message, get the city message and get the state message out. And so the feedback was just tremendous back from from the staff that did that. Boy, people really wanted to talk about COVID. So, you know, these folks have been kind of hunkered down in their, in their rooms and their, their houses and the, you know, we were able to go in their lobby, keep six foot distance keep safe, but have a very simple conversation and just reiterate to them the need to mask up and do their part and it was very much appreciated on their part so time well spent. So we're just going to touch base on 16 abanaki 65 when you ski falls way and then ask Liam to give a brief on those. You know, we had some pretty significant issues on these properties. It, you know, both connected via the same type of pipe that ruptured. So we have, you know, we still continue to be working with those folks on kind of bringing those all the entire units back online. So, you can imagine at five in the morning or three in the morning one was that three in the morning one was at five in the morning of running 20,000 gallons of water through a six story building and being woken up to that I just I can't put myself there. You know, outside of getting there later and seeing kind of the wake of destruction that it left. And I just can't imagine those folks just waking up to that right I mean it's just, and, but for us, you know the challenge was we're emptying the building with 100 plus people. You know immediately not knowing how many people can return. But we're worried about their we're in a pandemic right we're worried about just shipping them off. We're worried, you know, about their, their medications they're just their belongings just getting them to where they need to go safely there. You know we know there's going to be food insecurities, just the whole gamut of all that and I just can't say enough about the city departments. Just the administration, you know the PD community services across the board of just how everyone kind of wrapped ourselves around that the situation initially to get those people to safe places and kind of know yes they're, they're kind of taken out of their homes but we know they're safe they're out of hotel we know they're safe, you know, Ray immediately started to get them food and just, I mean it's pretty incredible to see so. And then I'll let Liam kind of take it from here of how we pivoted internally to kind of make up and get people returned to their homes as quickly as we could. Yeah, thanks chief. Just kind of stepping in took the lead on this on this project. Like she said it was a 3am sprinkler pipe break that put about 20,000 gallons of water through the building is on the fifth floor and worked its way down. It ended up damaging about 26 units and put out just as many residents, if not more. And so we could quickly pivoted to get the state and municipal partners on board to get on site to assess the damage as quick as we could quickly learn that it was through the sheer most of the building, including the utilities, the elevator being offline, the fire alarm offline and did some significant damage. So we quickly pulled our resources with the state in the city, and we understanding that there was a certain dynamic that had to take place with the pandemic. So we quickly set up a series of zoom meetings with both the property management company and the heads of their departments as well as the state, our state partners, the state fire marshals office, all of the vendors so that we could adequately explain the situation and get as much information as we can. We could for the city and for the residents there to get them back in their units as quick as possible. So we ended up setting up over seven zoom meetings over courses seven weeks so that we could get a plan in place to get the residents back as soon as possible through those zoom meetings we were able to kind of stream the municipal and the state process, get them their permits as soon as possible understand the scope of work that was going to go into it. So we were able to set up our onsite meetings, almost the same day to streamline the process to get in there as quick as possible and flip those units over and make sure that they were safe and inspected as soon as possible. We ended up doing over, I believe it ended up being about 15 site visits over the course of four or five months to get them back up and running. We were able to do a lot of work in there with. We were able to kind of steer the management company, cheer event like this sometimes pulls people in a bunch of different directions and we were able to kind of home the and focus their abilities to getting certain things back up and running. We were able to secure part of the building to get as many residents back in as possible as soon as we could to make sure that they were walking into a construction zone, we were able to get the means of egress sorted out as quick as possible so that we can get as many residents back into their rooms as quick as possible without putting them in a dangerous position. The fire alarm was our biggest, our biggest lift getting that back up and running so that there was some sort of alarm system in place was one of the biggest things that we got going and unfortunately the elevator took a lot of damage so it was a difficult situation to get that kind of in the end. But we were able to kind of hone their abilities and like chief said, that kind of story about our staff shopping for food. We were very much invested in getting these residents their medication, checking on pets, making sure that all their belongings were kept in there we were there for several hours getting at least as many belongings as these people needed. And then we're working as hard as we could to get them back in there so we just recently it was just before December that we were able to finally secure the last unit there. So that was well into November before all the units are back up and running, but I can safely say it's 16 abinac is has finally been reoccupied, or at least been least been cleared for reoccupation and I guess the final number we had was about $750,000 worth of damage through that building so that's where 16 abinac you wanted to see if you want me to hit 65 If council wants the specifics we can give them it's it's kind of the same thread, if you will, you know our efforts didn't change a lot property property. So now we can throw a spinner, you know the sprinkler break at spinner, although less a lot less damage, still, you know, damage to that property. And again, 16 and 65 are connected the same type of pipe, and we, we have working very closely with the division of fire safety and the national sprinkler association. And I have some serious concerns over the integrity of the systems and, you know, it's, we need to sort that out and again we get into mitigation versus litigation and so it's, it's, it's again a lot of work but I feel we really need to do it to answer the questions. See if we can avoid more of these kind of moving up unless people have questions on those properties. Thanks. Again, I think you hear a here through the updates, we are spending a tremendous amount of time on that work, whether it's locally or, you know, with certain businesses our lady of province or whatever it may be I think citywide we're spending a majority of our time dealing with us. And then obviously the ongoing planning, go ahead. Sorry, Mike's got his hand raised. Hey chief, how you doing tonight. Thank you. A question for you these sprinkler systems are these sprinkler has been broken or this defective material that's just breaking on its own. So 16 and 65 are pipe breaks. So when these buildings were so that's a product. We're trying to figure out. We know there's a larger issue across the country with this type of piping and I don't want to go too far because we can get in the weeds but certainly that's where my energy lays right now of how can we identify the integrity of these systems. And I know the buildings are at the same age but are we looking into ways for future buildings not to put the same product in. We can, we could, but not seeing the research I've done Mike, you know from 2005 to current. There's, there's a lot of documentation around this product and known issues. And I think the industry in the codes, the state level and on the national level have addressed those still doesn't help us for the buildings that were built in that timeframe or in that manner. But certainly, I don't have the concern with the new construction you see, versus the ones that are already built. Okay, that's why I was my question for future building. And I know that I appreciate what you guys do when there's emergencies like this and what the city has done. These are not municipal owned buildings correct. That's correct they're privately owned. So, do we get reimbursed for the effort that we put in through the insurance companies or through the management companies for the hours of helping people get relocated in purchasing food and all that stuff. So, the hours, we don't bill for hours, you know, as a municipality I think, you know, if it was a repeat thing, you know, or known neglect, I would feel differently but truly this is an emergency when this type of thing happens. As far as the food reimbursement I think what you're hearing us say in some instances staff is taking on themselves. But on a larger scale, it is again, our ability to wrap these people with resources that we know, and partners that work with the city when is he day in and day out. So yes it is staff time coordinating that, but it's truly other resources that are funding that effort. Is that explain it. Yeah it does. Yeah. Thank you. So if there's no other questions there you know kind of the general fund. You know what's the, I provided both the general fund proposed in the rental registry, you know what's in the FY 22 proposal on the on the general fund. There's an increase of $2,100 sets for vehicle repairs. Again, I'm seeing a rise in vehicle repairs contribute that again to age of a couple pieces that I mentioned further further in the presentation. And then $5,000 to give us the ability to buy a couple sets of gear each year moving forward. So our gear that we wear is very specialized it has a shelf life of 10 years. So, since I became chief we have gone through a huge surplus. My goal is to use up the gear that we had, you know, meaning put it on somebody's back and use it through a shelf life, and we've, we've kind of hit that end of the shelf life. So I started to put a couple sets in every year in hopes that I can, I can keep up with, with how much this year is how much of its kind of hit and it's end of life. You know there's lots of federal NFPA and there's OSHA guidelines of which we as an employer need to follow so we need to do our part there. So that's just starting that questions on that. Any issues you staffing to interrupt again. There's a question in the chat about the benefits increase wire benefits estimated to increase $25,000. That one I would rely on Angela. There was a staffing change that resulted in going from a single person health insurance plan to a family plan that is a pretty significant difference. Thank you. Good question. Please continue. No good question. Any issues on the staffing, you know, we, our model is, you know, having a lot of, I mean, any agencies got to recruit, you know, whether you're PD or fire any city department. And for us, it's, you know, our model we rely on on part time on call folks that have full time jobs and want to do this. Part time right now it's about a 5050 split meaning, you know, our daytime covers about 50% of the calls and then 50% of the time we're relying on on part time on call folks. It's challenging. It's challenging to recruit here in Winooski, because of the transient population, meaning the rental base. There's a high turnover. And then if we start to go outside of Winooski, you can imagine time counts right I mean if they have to live within a certain distance of the station. So it's kind of an ongoing effort we have hired six since COVID hit so again kudos to the staff of, you know, this is usually in person training type thing so we really relied on zoom and moved as much as we could to zoom in and with a balance of FaceTime to again bring hires on. But again we've seen a turnover. So it's, you know, again, it's time right I mean we require 72 hours minimum a year so that's the first. There's, excuse me, second, third and fourth Wednesdays of every month, plus calls. So in a weekend a month. So it's, there's a lot of demands. You know the retention part we're, you know, there's been a tremendous amount of support in addressing the compensation. And we have incentivized pay plan in place which I think is very rewarding for folks. So they start at minimum wage and then it's incentivized from there. You know we continue to bring things on like the EAP and really just the engagement and the overall experience of being here and being part of this team. So at this time, you know, we've leveraged the three full time folks as much as we can, you know, one of us is here seven days a week, essentially, you know, we, we really have leveraged most of that time. We've transitioned on the part time staff, you know, they do one weekend a month. Right now due to staffing we can staff three companies. So the fourth company's on a voluntary basis, kind of a rotation. We are getting by with that. But certainly, again it goes back to recruiting and available resources to be able to do that apparatus. So I think that's one of the reasons on this. You know, I just want to start to kind of throw the flag if you will a little bit that there'll be, you know, some upgrades that need to happen specifically around the tower and engine two in the future engine right at 30 years. 30 years is the expected lifespan of a truck. You know our tower still has a lot of life in it. However, the community is outpaced it as far as its reach in a lot of instances. But what I would the caveat I would say with this is this at the apparatus needs here and our future purchases all wrap back around their staffing their ability to have staffing. And more to come on this but I just really want to start to get some placeholders in place with this. And there was a specific question about going to a two truck set from three, meaning going to one engine and in the ladder engine combination which is referred to as a quint. So with the staffing models that we have, which is three or four person kind of response. I don't have enough staff to get two trucks out. So a lot of departments, you look at how can I put them on one truck that can do a lot act as an engine move water and have a ladder to effect rescue or move high volume the water. That's called a quint. So, again, a lot more research to do but they're, they're possibly could be, you know, a change in our fleet that allows us just to have one engine and some sort of multi use piece of apparatus. You know, that doesn't, there's a lot of savings and doing that. So if you can imagine right now you're talking 700,000 the replace and 1.2 million for an aerial. So if you can imagine being able to do one piece of apparatus that can do both. There possibly could be some savings. And then the annual savings of just the insurance and the maintenance and all the ongoing stuff there. Our equipment, again, like our apparatus I spoke briefly about our gear staff does a tremendous job of upkeep with our with our equipment we have really good equipment here we have some older equipment but it's in really good in really good shape. The SCBA is kind of again as the gear is hitting its shelf life. We have been able to continue to buy one or two SCBAs for over a long period of time, and have them integrate with what we have. And we've, they, they're no longer supporting the type of air pack that we have so I can't buy new packs and have it work with the other 28 that I have. And that doesn't work when you have this equipment commingled. So we plan and I will be coming in the next few meetings to get approval to do a federal grant assistance a firefighting grant. They're very competitive grants. Our air packs about $295,000 project. And if we're successful in doing that, we could get out of it for 5% or about $15,000, which we have some money tucked away in our CIP to cover it in hopes that, you know, knowing that we want to apply for this federal grant coming up. More to come on that, but that's kind of our approach with some of this bigger ticket stuff is to see what federal grants are out there. And I feel we've, we're in a good place of the data to be competitive. You know, with our counterparts are essentially across the nation with these types of grants. So I'm going to stop there and see if there's any questions that's what I had to present. Any hands raised from council. Do attendees have any questions. Jim. I just, I feel like you've explained the recruitment challenges fairly well. I'm just curious if this is something you're hearing from other municipalities facing at the same time. Are we other analogs in our neighbor neighboring communities that have this similar combination department and recruiting challenges for on call. And so there's three that come to mind, you know, the town of Williston of and again, be very clear they run an ambulance. But they have a call force, essentially part time force that's augments their full timers, and they are, they are down to like two people. So they've, they've hit a true recruitment kind of barrier. They're dealing with for them, you know, because of their ambulance, they don't have a choice to really having to act pretty quickly and add full time staff closer to home Colchester fire, as we all know merged. Colchester fire used to be Colchester Center and Mallets Bay fire they've merged in the last eight months to full time staff, due to the lack of availability of part time staff during the daytime hours. And even more so now, you know, we're all seeing the trends overnight. So we all struggle with the 6pm the 6am time frames with part time folks again people just don't have the time. You know that there just isn't the same commitment levels of, you know, our regular jobs are much more demanding. And so, and yes, if I can jump in. John, the chief gave you two great local examples. This is something managers talk about across the country this is a challenge with recruiting nationwide both for I would argue both for our time officers and for full time officers. It's a trend with younger generations of what kind of jobs they want to do. So, actually, I was going to bring this up earlier but one of the things going back to the town meeting date, our town meeting TV presentation. The chiefs tried to do some really innovative things to recruit like with town meeting TV producing a recruitment video explaining what the job was and trying to make it more accessible to folks. So we will continue to do that but this is a national trend. This is not a one new ski specific challenge. Like I said, it is very. This part about tower for in our development is outpacing and outreach and the capabilities of tower for was that kind of a misstep in our master plan with all the new development coming up and what is the overall goal or plan to replace that tower to make it usable to the new development that's been going on. I don't, I don't want people to feel like it's in it's, it's not usable, you know, when, when development happens like it did here in Winooski, you know, and so many things have changed Mike, you know, we used to run auto aid with Colchester day in day out. So we would get the Colchester 100 foot tower. And every call, and that's not possible now, you know, they're seeing the same recruitment issues. They see the same financial impacts on Winooski can't rely on that truck. Day in and day out. So, and through your insurance ratings and through different standards, it, you know, it dictates what types of trucks we need here in the city. And, you know, that's that's what's becoming clear as far as when I say it's outpacing, you know, it's, it's kind of ramping up. You know, there's a lot of life in that truck I don't want anyone to leave here tonight to think they're not safe. I am a firm believer that, you know, the fire prevention will will far there's tons more value and making sure a fire alarm and sprinklers and that sort of thing work versus having a huge tower truck here. But the data is, is starting to point to to Winooski having to deal with on its own, you know, the requirement or to have a taller truck. And that is not easy for me because I, you know, when we have staffing at three or four people, you could put a 300 foot towering here, they don't make them just to be clear I'm just trying to drive it home. And if I don't have the staffing or have the ability, you know, the model to run three or four people on a truck that will reach and also pump water. It just, it just doesn't work. And you're not going to have, you're not going to have six or eight people here. We need to be honest with ourselves of the staffing and roll out of here in the best fashion that we can. And I think the chief has led some conversations regionally you've heard him talk about Williston and V tag and Colchester, you know, I think the question is going to become, what do we need as a one square mile city and what does the region need. We look to the county, the county's population to back each other up, you know, we do that now with technical rescue with emergency vehicle deployment. Our is do we start thinking about that for other vehicles as well and think about the system of equipment and apparatus not so much individually individual communities. Yeah, I know it's not this year's budget but I'm just worried about a price tag of a $2 million truck in the next 10 years. And I'm wondering if it's worth any thought, since there's a lot of life left in that engine to start thinking about getting a bigger bang for the buck now, and thinking about start thinking about those goals now, instead of what they got 10 years left john. Yeah, yeah so I'm wondering if it's worth more now and start thinking about this now instead of having a huge huge bill to pay 10 years. I'm confident that we will balance Mike the value of the current truck with, you know, possibly leasing options as a whole host of things for us to look at. And there's, there's, you know, different opportunities for the city to make decisions on. And, you know, I, you know, so I'm, I'm just trying to get a placeholder in so that we can have future conversations and I am certain that the team and the council will, will figure out the right option for Winooski. Thanks to you. Thanks, Mayor I think there's a question of can the cost of a tower be a burden of the developers and that I think I think I got the question right. Yeah I see that in the chat, I think that. So what Brent is saying they're kind of aligns to the decision we had about transportation impact fee. I don't know. And if you can create that for a resource like this. It's a more complicated discussion to have. It is really on the policy level. Yeah. Yeah. So, I think that's, it's not super easy to answer. I'll take note of that. I was going to bring that up but I figured that would be, I was just wondering what surrounding communities do for situations like this, but we can talk about that later. Well thank you chief. Thanks for the opportunity. Shall we move to Chief Hebert now. Thanks to the council thanks for your time tonight. Go over a quick outline of what we're going to talk about, you know, obviously this year has been a challenge for so many people in so many different ways I changed up my presentation for you tonight a little bit to kind of talk about our organizational chart, our continued focus I thought it'd be important to kind of remind people what we've done over the past five years and what we're looking to do. As we come out of coven. A little bit about statistics and you know the Winnowsky police department of today. That was important to call out some there was so many examples I just picked a few but COVID-19 caretaking stories, how the PD fit into the city's overall vision of you know taking care of our residents during coven 19. The community outreach efforts that we plan on continuing once we come out of coven 19. That's going to be the general fund budget slide, and then looking towards the future just a quick rundown on where we stand on FY 21 and what we hope to accomplish in FY 22 and then a few emerging issues. At any point during the presentation if you have a question by all means just unmute yourself and ask a I don't mind at all, we don't have to wait till the end. We'll go to the next slide. The organizational chart remains fairly unchanged since I've taken over as chief the only real difference is if you look directly under me in the middle, I have changed that particular box used to say the Winnowsky Community Justice Center which obviously doesn't exist anymore, starting in FY 21. But we do still have restorative justice partnerships and I'll go into that a little bit further. There are people that we are still providing the same exact services it's just not from employees that are housed here in the police department anymore. So we still have the basic organizational chart of two lieutenants a dispatch supervisor under the lieutenants, we have three sergeant spots to detectives. We're working in the DEA task force one being local eight officer positions and then we have three part time officers currently. And if you look over to the right under the dispatch supervisor we have three other full time dispatchers and we're working our way back up to three part time dispatchers. As I said I wanted to call out I did this a similar presentation for the safe healthy connected commission earlier in the year and I thought it was, I wanted to pull a couple slides out just to remind viewers and for the council members that weren't here when we first started doing this work. We created a task force in May of 2015 and it really just drill down into how can you strengthen community policing and trust between the departments and the communities they serve. The task force was identified was asked to identify best policing practices and that resulted in six particular pillars that are listed below. So here at when you ski, the leadership team reviewed that report and began the process of identifying ways that we can really incorporate this not only into our daily routines but for it to become culture here in the police department. The need for that strategic plan was identified and it began, we began work on that in FY 16. And it was completed in actually FY 18. Next slide please. I'm not going to read all this to you I just want I thought it was important to call out that we continue to use that community that 21st century policing Task Force report for everything that we do. We have continued to invest in a training curriculum that really focuses on community policing unconscious bias cultural diversity officer development. And we've really stuck to that plan and you know that's the basis of that 21st century policing Task Force report and I think it's really transformed the police department that we were compared to what we are today. Also something I thought that was really important as many, you know, many high profile police encounters nationwide that we all see and suffer through. I really thought it was important to incorporate what is it we're really trying to do in our actual officer job descriptions because they hadn't been updated in a long time and they were very outdated. Not even really focusing on community policing so we added that, but we also included highlighting decision making and calling out a guardian caretaker mentality along with problem solving, providing resources and most of all the responsibility of all human life as an essential performance expectation. So I'm very proud of that one little if you look through the list of trainings that every officer hasn't attended every training but some have attended. Each of them and then the majority of those trainings that the majority or all the police department has actually attended so as you can see it's a it's a pretty nice. It's a good list of different things that focuses on both leadership cultural diversity unconscious bias de escalation I think we're hitting all the points that you know are called out as really serious issues and policing today and going forward. I could get the next slide please. Here's the statistics that I wanted to call out. The very top graph that you see is the top 10 incident types for the year. And I like to call out, you know as far as the care taking part if you look at the number one starting on the left with 600 public assists and that that falls into a whole variety of different things where people call and we assist them with different things. We try to catch all four. We try to help people but there's no real great call type to actually put it under so it covers a variety of things and then if you continue to work towards your right. Starting with the purple you'll see we did 335 foot patrols 272 welfare checks. We responded to 257 mental health issues so four of our top 10 really did focus on care taking for the community. The bottom graph is just calls by month. So, as you can see as COVID progressed. April was kind of our slowest month and then we started to come out of it and I think part of it wasn't because of the restriction obviously we all know the restrictions didn't change right but I think people being vaccinated to their apartments was starting to wear on people's mental health and a lot of those calls. I found that through the summer started to rise because the longer people weren't at work and they weren't having their normal routines or being able to have any type of entertainment you know outside their home. Anxiety and mental health calls just started to pick up a little bit so that's why I think you see the increased call volume through the summer. So please. This is a slide I just generally put up here just it's kind of a general information slides the top 10. Well, obviously days of the week there's only seven but it shows that the call volume is pretty consistent all seven days of the week. If you go over to the right, that's the top 10 by our. This is mainly on the early afternoon to late evening hours. And then again calls by month it's it's all within a one to one and a half percentage of each other so it's it's spaced out pretty well throughout the year and throughout the days of the week. I wanted to highlight quickly our community outreach team I can't. I can't tell you, you know I could talk about this this could be a 30 minute presentation alone with the work that they've done. This is the best money we've ever spent as a community on taking care of the residents that need to be connected with services but also. You know, given some health some help when they when they're having some mental health crisis is if you look at the arrow on the left. That specifically calls out when you ski they had 322 contacts here in the city, which is 25% of the contacts for the entire team. And if you look over to the bottom right hand graph, we contribute 8% of the cost of that team and we're we're using it we're utilizing it at 25 to 26% rate so we're getting a amazing return for our residents here that are in need of being connected with services or just you know having a really bad day where we can have the community outreach team go and spend some time with them more time than an officer who has to go to another call would be able to spend. So I don't have stats as far as anecdotally I can tell you, I'm here during the day and I can tell you by far. The police officers are spending a lot less time on mental health calls will will initially respond with the community outreach team if they need us to. If they're familiar with and they've been working with. They're doing their work behind the scenes coming in and letting us know what's going on so it's been a. It's been one of the best things that we've added to the police department in my entire career here. I just like to call that out and the good work that they're doing. Chief Amy has her hand. Okay. Hi, Chief. Just looking at your graph here and seeing that we account for about a quarter of all these contacts. And we're only paying it looks like 8% of the funding. I'm just curious if we've received any pressure from the entity. Is it the Howard Center that we pay for this service. Yeah, just curious if there's been any conversations or if we need to think about a potential future ask to increase the funding that we're putting forward. Jesse, do you mind handling that one year. No. So this, the funding formula again going back to the time being TV conversation and funding formulas. So the funding formula used for this. De-aggregation across communities is by calls police calls for service. So what this tells you is that of these communities are police are only called 8% of the total calls for service of all of those communities. So what's the funding formula used. This is a fairly unique partnership between our communities and the Howard Center in that it was originally proposed by the police chiefs and the managers to Howard Center and we have a manager and police chief steering committee that administers it. So we are not getting a lot of pressure to up this contribution I think that there's a lot of belief that by population and by calls for service we need to equitably distribute those costs going back to Mike's point earlier about the grant list and population size. So we're not getting a lot of pressure right now having said that this year there is a lot of pressure from other communities not listed here to expand the community outreach team. In January one, Heinsberg and Milton also joined on to the team, they are playing at a different rate than these communities are currently paying. But as we think about as we as a region again think about how to provide these mental health services embedded in police departments, they're likely will be some shifting around. We're very secure going it through FY 22 that this will be the funding right, but certainly in the future or if the state contribution is lowered or if UVMC also contributes funding to this program because we are keeping this program is keeping folks out of the emergency room. So as those funding streams all kind of sugar off we may need to think about in the future, but for the next 18 months we're good. Thank you so much for the long run to dancer. No, that was helpful. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. This is great chief and I'm not sure what your reporting processes but however this information can get to Commissioner Sherling I think would be great because the legislature has really taken a serious focus on this and I just think we need to expand this. Thank you. This is I took this in part from Brandy Littlefield who is manages this program for Howard so I have a lot of information that I could provide pretty easily to Commissioner Shirley. Great. I'm ready for the next slide. So, again, I really struggled I didn't want to like talk years off tonight but I just wanted to like call out some some pretty special things that your officers are out doing in the community. And a tremendous amount of time connecting with our residents with services during times of need anxiety and isolation. One of the biggest and ongoing ones I'm going to try not to give too many details just for to protect the privacy of the people that are involved in the officers. We have a vulnerable resident here in Winooski and adult resident that has tested at the IQ of a average 12 year old, and this person has been exploited in a number of ways, and was really struggling, and we helped one of the people in particular has been working with adult protective services. Power mental health. Anybody that you could possibly think of that would be involved in any of these issues and this has been ongoing for four to six months now and this this particular officer will be in contact with this person two to four times every single shift that the person works. So let's do actually secure housing. Get this person on SSI so that they have an income. We've gotten them to in touch with counseling so that they can deal with some of this exploitation that they've dealt with. In the meantime, this person had also committed some crimes in Winooski so we called the state's attorney's office and explained the entire picture to Sarah George and she was wonderful. And we've actually helped this person navigate court. It's going to sound kind of strange hearing as the police department say this but we actually put this person in touch and advocated to have this person tested to see if they were even able to stand trial and it was determined that they're not able to stand trial. And that alternative outcomes are going to happen so it's ongoing work that we're doing it takes a tremendous amount of time but you know like I say you know Winooski is a small, close community and every single person we can pull out of the system with you know some supports and some nice stories. It's worth mentioning. It's been an extra time taking care of all of our most vulnerable residents in a variety of ways, and I'm not calling this out for any, you know, special recognition and I know the officers probably would be mad if I if they knew I was even, you know, talking about this but I know of a story where one officer purchased gas for a single mom who was trying to get home to her relatives and was found crying at a gas station because she had $1 in her pocket, and he filled her tank. It was a room for a family that had been denied or a protection order and the abuser wasn't living with the person anymore so that's why the order was vacated. And unfortunately they were staying with a friend in the apartment directly next door, and this family was scared to death. It was not only one night but it was you know as they put it it was one night of feeling safe and secure where they were able to put their heads down and get a good night of sleep and try and come up with a plan for how to move forward. Handed out several gift cards that we had left over from the CJC to people that needed food and were in need. We paid for a hotel room for another person on a cold night that we found sleeping on a lawn that was covered with a tarp. We made donations, collected food and made donations to the Winooski food shelf. We did weekly check in meetings with a particular resident that has several hundred interactions with the police department that ends is really trying their best suffers from alcohol and drug addiction and felt that she would relapse without having this constant. Reassurance that she was doing the right thing and that she could get through this with the lockdowns in the isolation. And then RSRO Jason Zeider assisted with meal distribution and COVID-19 testing sites, while the school was closed during those closures. Next slide please. And then next I wanted to take a slide just say thank you for Winooski for taking care of us. I think I would have to probably fill six slides if I was to take a picture of all the kind notes and give certificates and food that people would drop off and just the reassurance and I really, you know, I can't say enough about that with everything nationally that's going on. You know, with police and for our and even, you know, next door, you know, in Burlington and to have our, our residents embrace us and thank us on a daily during all this is just, I can't even tell you how much it's meant to not only me but the rest of the members of the police department so I just want to really say thank you to all of the residents that with whether it's kind words or donations of any kind we really appreciated each and everyone. And then going forward I just want to remind people you know we took great pride in all these community outreach events that we were doing COVID put a huge stock to all of that because we just couldn't get together in groups. But the minute that we pull out of this we're going to start right back up with all the things that you see listed on this on this slide and remind people that were committed to doing these community outreach events and getting out and you know my goal. And really since I've been chief is to have as many residents as possible know every officer by first name I know that's a big goal but that's what I would really like to see happen before. In the next few years. We can get to the next slide. And then some FY like I said you know FY 21 is mostly been quoted so it's it's hard to really gauge what our goals were compared to the work that we did so I'll call out some things that were expected of us and then where we stand, you know, we'll talk a little bit more about community regional dispatch later tonight. And I'll look at the funding financial outlook of that to partner with the CC PSA on implementation. That's moved along it's it's it's slow dramatically since COVID-19 but with they are starting to meet through through zoom meetings and it is moving along actually pretty well considering everything that's going on. I'm not going to take a whole lot of credit in this you know community services and Margaret Bass really helped to develop this program before she moved along. We assisted in the development of that youth interventionist position with reprogram funds from the police department that's really the input that we had was transferring the money over and some occasional input on the job description. And we really want to ensure that young people are best served by the city and by our community partners. We've prioritized community policing I called this out earlier in the presentation that four of the top 10 categories were really caretaking tasks within our community. Also talked briefly about community outreach team and how they continue to serve our community throughout the pandemic and ensuring that residents were connected to the services at the most appropriate level. School resource officer again has continued to focus on young people despite school being closed including the meal distribution sites the testing sites graduation. Jason produced a couple of videos for online learning for the younger residents at the school which was really nice and also we participated he and I participated in two different community discussions. On policing and racial injustice shortly after the murder of George Floyd. There was a experience that I won't forget it was it was a really it was a learning moment I think for for us to hear it broke my heart honestly to hear our young people and the issues that they deal with on a daily basis and being marginalized and how that makes them feel so I look forward to future conversations on how we can obviously strengthen those relationships and change those experiences into positive ones in the future. We reviewed our use of force policy the state. There was an eight can't wait we were in compliance with the majority of those I can say we were in compliance with all of them there was one sticking point was the use of neck restraints being completely prohibited. At the state level. They actually made that decision in October. I had already changed our policy in July. Waiting for the state model policy which we still are but all neck restraints have been prohibited by the Winnieski police department since July we were proactive about taking that out of our policy. Again get regional dispatch is going to lead the discussions this has been a project 20 to 30 years in the making and I think it's actually going to happen this time. The city and town managers have been fabulous about really just laser focus on pushing through any and all obstacles so look forward to as this continues to you know develop into a working center. I called out that we're going to adopt the anticipated statewide use of force policy I need to call out a couple more that are in the legislature that are being worked on body worn camera policy and internal affairs policy and the use of force so there's there's three major policies that are going to be coming that are statewide policies that I'll give you more information as I get that later in the year. But just to be clear we've had body worn cameras for a decade chief. Yes, we've had body worn cameras this going there's going to be some I didn't want to get into all the details but one of the major discussions and changes that's going back and forth in the legislature. Is a standardized policy throughout the state on retention how they're used. One of the big, the huge talking points that I've heard is whether officers can or can't review body worn camera footage before before writing reports so there's going to be a lot to talk about with that particular policy. I wanted to talk with the Woodusky School District and work on really just, you know we're showing up at any and all things that they were invited to to listen and to be part of that conversation. It's a great opportunity for us to talk about what I feel is a really good program. We're going to continue to continue to be you know a partner at the school with that school resource officer going into the future. If it doesn't work out that way we will continue we're not just going to forget the schools up there we will continue to come up with innovative ways to plug ourselves into the school and continue to support young people. Diverse thing of diversifying our workforce. We're continuing those efforts within the police department we've hired our first BIPOC police officer. I'm going to introduce to you in a Council meeting coming up shortly I just didn't have the time or the ability to organize that for tonight. And we have actually some more BIPOC. People that have applied that I'm actually pretty excited about so I think that we're going to finally start to make some progress in that area of work as far as recruiting and hiring people. We're looking forward to collaborating with the youth interventionist position you know COVID has limited that programs being rolled out and and us being really great partners but I think as we come out of COVID. We're going to embrace that position and really use it as we used to use restorative justice as you know a step one I can see the youth interventionist being a step one and then possibly counseling or trauma counseling being step two and then we're going to have justice landing somewhere in the middle now so it's nice to see us progressing and offering more services to people that you know that obviously need that and families that are at risk. Community outreach team we're going to continue to use them as much as possible to offer services resources and support. We've already entered the third year of the PD strategic plan which seems just unbelievable to me it feels like we just finished it but we're going to do a review of that and just make sure that the mission vision and values continue embrace both the community policing philosophy but also the city of when you see master plans goals for public safety and that we're providing essential services for residents that they expect from their police department. As I alluded to earlier, although we don't have the Winnieski Community Justice Center anymore we actually are continuing our partnerships with the Burlington Community Justice Center. And the Essex Community Justice Center Burlington has taken over our restorative justice panels and Essex has taken over our COSA program for high risk offenders that are re entering the community. And as we come out of COVID we are hoping that we will be able to host all of those meetings here in Winnieski so that people will still have a local feel even though it's being run by other cities and towns. Next up is the general fund slide and you'll see in this presentation, the only things that were added to this particular budget or their contractually required increases with the FOP in salaries and benefit line items. Everything else remains unchanged from FY 21. So, if we could just go back for one second. The only other thing under the miscellaneous if you see that that is no longer in the FY 22 that's 13,722 is what we transferred over to community services to help support that youth interventionist position. Next slide please. Merging issues. This is not specific to Winnieski. It's not specific to Vermont. This is something that we're looking at in terms of the determination of a whole bunch of things but we currently have one open police officer position that we've we've been actively hiring for throughout FY 21. We just haven't been able to bring anybody across the finish line for that. There's also potentially I say potentially there's two additional officer openings tentatively planned in FY 21 and early FY 22. We're looking to relocate out of state and the other is eligible for retirement but has less than 20 years so it's not a guarantee that that person will be leaving but we at least have to start preparing for that. The process just takes a long time it's 12 to 15 months from the time you interview somebody. You can do the testing. When the next Academy happens there's only two a year so you might you could get all your of your hiring practices done and then you've got six months before the next Academy and then you're not even guaranteed a spot so it just takes time. And the Academy itself is 19 weeks and then after that the officer comes back and there's a 10 week field training program before they're actually out on their own so that's what takes the 12 to 15 months. And we still have an FY 21 retirement that created a vacant sergeant position that we haven't been able to fill within the apartment yet. I'll stop because I think I saw a question from somebody pop up on my screen. I answered it was if we employed the outreach team. Okay, active career development. This is this is really important to me. You know, one of the things that I feel makes you know when you see such a great place to work is the environment that we create. The respect both towards officers and our residents, but also that we try to really develop a career path for officers so that they just don't feel like they're limited to just being a patrol officer for their entire careers. So preparing our next generation leaders is really important and you know carrying one of the things about carrying open positions. It really limits our opportunity to descend command staff mid level and even you know younger officers to training opportunities because we need to fill shifts and we still need to do the basic chore policing and that's answering calls for service and it's hard to do when when you have openings so it's something that we're going to have to balance and and manage as we go forward. The other thing is down in the added stress, you know, caused by minimum coverage where officers are getting ordered in early and ordered over and on their days off really does have a negative impact on the entire patrol division so we really try to do our, our best to spread out our patrol coverage as much as we can and you know we all pitch in and work shifts to try and make you know the impact of that the least amount possible. And I touched on earlier the school district is really undecided, if they will continue to fund their portion of the SRO position in FY 22. We've had a lot of meetings I feel like we've kind of gone back to we're at we're at the community outreach process. So I don't know when we'll have an answer for that. I think Jesse said a timeline of March 30 where we would like to have an answer. It's a potential 55 K budget cut shortfall for the city and FY 22 and beyond. I think this is an FY 22 conversation but I'll tell you financially I don't think between openings that we have military leaves. I think that financially we can continue to go. If without that 55,000 I don't think it pushes us into an area where it'll be a financial concern for you and FY 22. I think it'll be more FY 23 but the discussion about whether we keep that position or what that looks like will be an FY 22 decision. Next slide please. And then the last I say it's an emerging issue it's just because it's a huge change to how we do business regional dispatch is is going to affect you know all of these communities in a positive way. And I've said all along, I absolutely am in favor of this because it gives our dispatchers a huge team of dispatchers in one place at one time when you're handling, you know, bigger events, where you know it's really challenging for one person. I've dispatched for a while and I'll tell you that job is is hard it's when you and it doesn't take a lot you can have a three car accident on Main Street where you're dispatching police fire and rescue and answering all of them taking phone calls and all the radio traffic. It's a lot for one person so I think regional dispatch is going to open up a world of opportunities for our employees and I think once the newness of it wears off I think they'll realize the project itself is was a really good plan and it'll offer a better service. To the residents of when you ski the one, the one thing that's going to change that I struggle with a little bit is we are very much an on foot community and people are very used to walking in and speaking to somebody in person and that will change at least in off hours we don't know 100% what it's going to look like yet, but guaranteed you know non day shift hours. They're going to be picking up a video phone and talking to somebody over on Gregory drive at the center so that's going to be a little bit of a change for our community and it's going to take some, some education I think about making sure people are dialing 911 rather than the police department number and getting people used to not having somebody face to face when they walk in the building so that's all I really have for you tonight. Any questions. Thank you chief Mike. Yes, hey chief I'd like to. I'd like to thank you for the culture you have at the station. I want to thank your officers on on the behalf of my family and people I know. First and have seen your officers I've seen people residents of our community, whether they're adult or or children walk to your patrol cars and engage with your officers. And I think that speaks volumes of our community and the culture you have put into the station. Thank you for your response time. I personally have seen it, and I just think what you're doing down there for all our residents is a big plus and we're lucky to have you, the officers and the culture that you have put in forth. I really appreciate that. I can't say enough about the work, you know, it's easy for me to sit here and talk about the work that we do because we hire good you know I tell Jesse and anybody who's willing to listen to me talk for minutes and hours on end that you know I think it's it's not a big secret like you hire good human beings and then you teach them how to be police officers and that's always going to put you in a pretty good spot so it's worked pretty well for us so far and we're going to continue to do that. I just think it's great when you see kids talking to your officers when you know the national narrative you see usually kids running away from you guys and I just think it speaks. It's just the community when is he's great, and I think it starts with the safety that you put into our community. Thank you. Are there other questions from Council. Jim. This is just kind of a I'm just curious how this is tracking with COVID with training budgets and ability like I know the part of the challenge for training time is the lack of coverage. But I also know the training budgets has been a challenge for the police department in the past is that gone worse with COVID and changes and forfeitures are you still are you still able to at least provide the financial piece of training is mostly just a coverage or are we still are we going to end up with a training deficit as well if we don't have the funding for training. That's the exact opposite actually Jim so part of the COVID. Jag Grant that we got, if you remember was for a police one online Academy subscription for a year. So that cost $1,600 that was paid for completely by the grant. We were able to, you know, officers have to do 30 hours I'm not going to get into all the specifics but we have to do 30 hours a year and hit specific annual trainings in that part part of its firearms part of its CPR and first aid. So to do, we average 60 hours per officer of training, and it was on the online portable while they were working so it didn't cost overtime, and it didn't come out of our training budget well you think we spent. I don't want to throw a number up there but I think we spent a few hundred dollars of the training budget last year and I think we've spent less than 500 this year for some. I don't realize online trainings that people put in for that was maybe $95 for a one day class that we've spent some money but I think we're going to have the majority of that training budget left over at the end of this fiscal year. Are there any questions from our meeting attendees. Again, you can use chat or raise hands with some kudos in there in the chat chief. Thank you Bryn. I'll also share anecdotally, I have spoken with residents. And X residents as well, who have explicitly stated to me that they find. They just feel more respect respected when interacting with our police force compared to maybe some of our neighboring communities, which makes me very proud for when you see. Are there any questions for chief Hebert. All right. Well thank you to both of our chiefs for your presentation this evening. I'm going to bring some, maybe some more color in and what it looks like to do public safety here. Thank you. Thank you. So we will move to item e regional dispatch update and fund balance request for fit up with Jesse introducing this is on for approval. All right, thank you. So the chiefs Angela and I presented a memo for you tonight, but a page and a half with updates of where we are with regional dispatch you heard that chief Hebert speak about a little bit. Our request tonight is for $100,000 of fund balance to be allocated to startup costs for Jenning County public safety authority these are really the building fit up costs they are not the fit up costs of humans that we will need as we get further into this process. So right now high level as you know in 2018 the community voted to join CC PSA we've been working on it diligently although definitely got delayed with COVID. So the commute the, as you I think know the town and city managers make up the board of the CC PSA. And currently our hope is to do the building foot fit up over this summer and fall, in order to start the training in the fall or winter and either in January 2022 or July 2022 so we'll have likely a whole nother budget cycle to talk about those other costs. The reason we want to bring this fund balance request to you now is why don't we just talked about with the budget. But to knowing all of the communities knowing that they have dedicated funds to do that fit up will will move that process farther along more quickly. So the building fit up 19 Gregory Drive in South Burlington is where the South Burlington Police Department is currently located in their dispatch. They just last month took ownership of that building so it's space that's now much more financially accessible for the new community. So these dollars will be do the in building fit up with then in the fall and winter, the technology fit up the radios the consoles things like that. And then we also need to do the building fit up here in this building, which is putting bathroom facilities in the holding cell which provides for the safety of the folks being held and the officers. There are also changes that the chief mentioned, given that we will not have necessarily dispatch, you know, a front face 2407. So we are requesting $100,000 to do that work and it's, you can see how it's broken out in the memo. And with that allocation, the council will still have access to 469,000 of unreserved fund balance is available to you. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Jesse. Questions from Council. Mike. Jesse I have a question so with us voting on this. And this is a prior non council question but more of a contractor question. If, well, because I do work at the South Burlington Police Department electrically. So, should I abstain myself from this vote. What does this affect me on. I don't know. I don't know the dynamics of this, and I don't want to miss a chance to bid on it, because I do a lot of work over there. Oh, you're talking about the South Burlington connection. Well, yeah, one are conflict of interest policy. What it requires you to do is disclose a potential financial conflict of interest. So you have now done that to the council. I would give you some guidance on if they felt that you were conflicted out. My view of that immediately is that there is no contract in place to do this work. Right, there's, we are, we are proactively allocating dollars for a contract that will happen in the future that will have to follow the authorities purchasing policies. So by voting on this item tonight isn't an automatic financial benefit to you. Okay. That would be my recommendation to the council but I think you've unto unto just disclosing it have met the letter of the conflict of interest policy. Okay. Thanks for for that disclosure Mike and Jesse for that suggestion or advice. I do have concerns with Mike voting on this this evening. Okay, great. I also do not given the framing that Jesse shared about what it is we're voting on. You know this is an ask that we knew was coming eventually. I don't have a lot of questions myself beyond what was in the memo. Anyone else have anything. Attendees. All right, would anyone like to move to approve this fund balance request. Second. Motion by house second by Jim all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Motion carries thank you. And that is the end of our agenda who would like to move to adjourn. I have one question quick question for Rick for chief Ebert chief you said that are we not going to be able to call the police station anymore. When are we are all calls 911 now. So what I anticipate happening is we'll probably have a phone tree when you call the zero two to one and it'd be similar to what Burlington has in place where if this is an emergency, you know press one to speak with this and it'll bounce immediately to consolidated so it's not going to be a huge lag if people still dial that zero two to one. But 911, if when if and when it becomes a piece that will be immediate so we're just going to have to retrain our community to use 911 first. Okay, thank you. Welcome. Sorry about that. Motion to adjourn. Motion by Mike second by Jim all those in favor please say aye. Hi. Hi. Motion carries thank you everyone for your attention. Night.