 All right, it is 6.30, so we are going to get started. So I'm going to call the meeting's order. So the first thing is to review and approve the agenda. I don't think there's too much to be changed here. We had the possibility of moving the homelessness task force update a little higher in the order of things. But there is a meeting pertaining to homelessness that's going on that ends at 7, so we certainly won't do it before then. We want anybody who is interested in homelessness to be able to get from that meeting to hear. So that one might move, but we'll see. And I think all the other changes to the agenda are reflected in the online version of the agenda. Any other thoughts or comments on the agenda? Okay, so that objection will consider the agenda approved. So the next thing is general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on any issue that is otherwise not on our agenda. And if you would say your name, where you're from, and try to keep your comments to about two minutes, that would be great. That applies throughout the agenda as well if you have comments about other topics. So if there's any comments, yes. My name is Dan Richardson. I'm a resident of Montpelier, but I just wanted to simply note that I am a Maripatch counselor for citizenship in the community, and there are members of Montpelier's own troop 709 that are here in the audience, and they are attending to observe a city council meeting as part of their requirements, which is one of the Maripatches required for EGLE. So if they come in and out of the meeting, it's only because we don't make them stay for the entire duration. But they are very interested. Come on, why do they need an EGLE scout to get them done? Well, and I also want to acknowledge Bill Frazier has generously volunteered to come to, we have a follow-up meeting on Saturday, and he'll be presenting and talking about some of the issues that the city is facing and give the scouts an opportunity to truly grill him for that. So we really appreciate that. Thank you. Any other comments? OK, so we're going to move on to the Consent Agenda. There's only a few items there. Any motion regarding the Consent Agenda? Move the Consent Agenda. Second. OK, further discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. So we have appointed the Housing Authority, and I believe we had one vacant seat and one applicant. And Ed, I see you're here. Do you want to address the council at all? Tell us about how things are going or anything about the Housing Authority? Thank you for that. Good evening. I'm Ed Larson. I have no opening remarks, but I'm willing to answer any questions you may have. I've been doing this for 25 years. So why am I doing it for another five years? Well, only because Joanne won't retire. And I want to be there when we hire the new person, because it's a very important job, and I felt that my experience and longevity would be an asset to that search team. Great. Any questions? OK, thank you. I move that we appoint Ed Larson to another five-year term on the Montpelier Housing Authority Board. I'll second it. Further discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. Thank you so much, Ed. May I add? Yes. That was my good friend, Mr. McCullough, who I served as a vice chair when he was the chair for many, many years. I am now the longest serving commissioner on the Montpelier Housing Authority in your history. Oh, my goodness. Well, thank you for your work. Badge for that, ma'am. All right, so on to the Conservation Commission question about funding. Yes, welcome. Hi, so my name is Brenna Toman. I'm a member of the Montpelier Conservation Commission. We want to revive applications processing for the conservation fund. This is a fund that was appropriated in 2002, I think. It was voted in by Montpelier residents. It's about at 39,000 to 40,000, somewhere in between there. And this fund is appropriated for purchase of lands and waters within Montpelier that support recreation, wildlife, habitat, conservation, land of water, anything like that. And it's pretty broad. But as it stands, we don't have a committee to review applications. All of the members that were on the Conservation Commission in 2002 are not on the Conservation Commission anymore. So we have elected three members of the Conservation Commission to serve on this subcommittee to review the fund and requesting that City Council advise or advertise to two members of the public to serve on this committee. That's written in all the stuff from 2002. And it sounds like a great idea. So we're just hoping we can get two members. And then our next steps will be to review the application. There is one already written from back then. So we'll review, update anything that needs to be updated, bring it to you again, and then we'll be open for business. Questions? Jack. So did you say that we have an application now that was received sometime around 2002? Oh, no, no. That's when the fund was created. And there was a lot of paperwork from back then. There's an application process documented, a form, yes, for it. So we just have to update it so that people can apply if they'd like. And then publicize the availability of funds. Yes. OK, thanks. Is the intent with this fund to go out and ask for donations from the community? Or is it that you're asking for the city for money? Or what's the intent there? Well, the money already exists somewhere in cities coffers. OK. It's already been appropriated. But we do intend to use it sort of as leverage, as a match potentially for grants or for private donors. We don't intend to just use that as a standalone. It's not going to get you very far, I think. Just by way of background, in 2002, there was a ballot vote to establish a conservation fund just for that one year. It was an annual thing. I think it was one cent on the tax rate or half a cent or something like that. It raised $40,000 or $50,000. It was put into a reserve. I think a small amount of it was spent at the time. And it created a committee much like the Housing Trust Fund to receive applications. And this council approved this process. And they didn't do much with it. But it's still sitting as reserved and designated for the conservation fund. So it's still available. Any other questions? Thanks. Donna. This is for you and Bill. The process then would be you would appoint your three members from the Conservation Commission, and then at large, your two members. We come from the council. Yes. And so today, we would confirm that and start advertising. Yes. And then the other part, I guess, when you come back with this form, do we get a chance to look at the form? Yes. Yeah. I'll bring you the form. And then also, you all get the final say in awarding the fund. We are just going to make a recommendation with the committee. It's much like the Housing Trust Fund and the other community fund and those kind of things. It works very similarly. So we're just appointing people to screen the applications. They'll manage that and then come in and say, here's what we recommend. Thank you. So I think we could potentially use a motion to post two at-large positions to serve on the Conservation Fund subcommittee. Is that sufficient? I think that's all you need from us, right? Yes. So moved. Oh, second. OK, further discussion? OK, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Thank you. And so I assume that if we post it roughly tomorrow, then, I mean, we've got Thanksgiving coming up, so we probably wouldn't have applications done until probably the first week of December. One of the December meetings, yeah. We have two meetings in December back to back. So it would be one of those meetings, probably the 11th and 18th, I think, the two dates. Stepping Christmas. Yeah, we could do it on the 25th. You all chose not to when we set the schedule, but you call the meeting, we'll be here. OK. Well, thank you very much for all your energy and putting that together. OK, so we're going to go to the Social and Economic Justice Advisory Committee update. Oh, she's here. Oh, great. Pick a time. We can also switch things around if you need to. Do I have five minutes to catch your breath? And just as you're all coming up here, I had thought about moving the Homelessness Task Force update sooner, but it's still only 6.40. It's been 10 minutes since we started. My goodness. Rock it, Doc. Yeah, OK, I'm going to keep my mouth shut about that. In any case, so we might just leave it where it is and just go from there. So hopefully everyone can be here who wants to be here for that. All right, well, welcome. If you want to introduce yourselves and tell us about what's going on. Great. So hi, everyone. I'm Shayna Casper. I live on Kent Street. And I'm here with the Social and Economic Justice Advisory Council. I'm Jamie Carroll, I'm a staff representative. Michael Sherman, Montpelier resident. Julia Sheffitz, Montpelier resident. So we're, before you're today, to request funding for Social and Economic Justice Assessment Project. So the Montpelier City Council created the Social and Economic Justice Advisory Committee, which we call CJAQ, with an important, ambitious, and far-reaching charge of tackling systemic oppression and working toward greater equity and justice for all residents. And we have this charge that we can share, but it's also available on our website, where it's been shared. Great. So the committee has been really diligently meeting on this charge for a little over a year. And for much of this time, we've struggled with the question of what is expected from us, from the council, and how to successfully achieve this far-reaching goals that are laid out in this charge. And so in order to accomplish the charge, we must take a really proactive role in gathering and assessing information concerning perceptions, experiences, and recommendations of a wide range of Montpelier residents in regard to the impact of the city government's policies and practices on economic, social, and racial justice, and specifically the perspectives of those who are most impacted by inequity. So while we have a dedicated group of volunteers serving on the committee, not all of whom could be here tonight, we do not have in-house expertise on how to effectively facilitate the challenging and important community discussions. And further, the volunteers do not currently represent the broad swath of the demographics of our community. As we have heard from experts in the field and from folks in our community with lived experience, this work can cause harm, if not done skillfully by experienced facilitators. And we've heard feedback that leads us to believe that we are on the path of causing harm from individuals and to the relationship between city government and its residents, regardless of our positive intentions. So to this end, the committee recently contacted several individuals and organizations who have expertise in conducting or guiding programs that address economic, social, and racial justice. And we have learned from these discussions that to be successful, this must be a shared responsibility guided by experienced facilitators, but include a core group of diverse Montpelier city residents and implemented over the course of two to three years. Other Vermont communities, including Brattleboro, Hardwick, Winooski, have undertaken similar processes with consultants. So we hope that by undertaking this important project, we will, one, be able to recruit more volunteers and a more diverse group of individuals to set direction for this committee. Two, facilitate discussions that will yield useful information and recommendations concerning economic and social justice for our community. And three, establish a precedent and structure for ongoing communication about equity among residents and between residents and city government officials and staff. Our proposed plan for implementing this project includes issuing an RFP for three main reasons. So one, to help the committee plan and implement processes and structures for engagement that have proven effective, at least at respectfully including people who are most affected by inequity. Two, provide some level of training for local leadership. And three, provide ongoing oversight, participation, and guidance in gathering, summarizing, and assessing the information we might acquire in order to provide effective and useful advice to the city council, as stated in our committee's name and charge. We have been advised that the cost for these services would be at least $10,000 a year for potentially two to three years. We therefore come to you to request approval to issue a request for proposal with the understanding that we will be seeking from council an appropriation of at least $10,000 for the fiscal year of 2021 to contract with local, organizational, or individual experts to provide the training, planning support, analysis, and guidance as described above. So we anticipate that we will have to return to city council for similar funding in FY22 and perhaps FY23. And if we seek to undertake additional work beyond this initial contracted amount, we would be communicating to assist the city's community development specialist to work to raise additional funds as necessary. We recognize that this request presents the city council with a significant challenge in a year when other obligations are ready putting pressure on the city's budget. We do believe, however, that this project is critically important for accomplishing the goals of planning for and implementing the policies and practices that will provide economic, social, and racial justice for all of those who live, work, and visit our city. As the city council prioritized in establishing this committee and we believe that this appropriation will be an investment in the future of our city that will benefit us all, we also believe that without this funding, our committee will not be able to continue as currently designed and charged. So we want to open it up and to see what questions folks have. But before that, anything else? OK. Thank you, Sheena. I just, I think this is a uniquely challenging committee or charge. And I just want to recognize that we have been doing this for over a year and the three people sitting here have stuck through it. And it's been challenging. It's been uncomfortable. And the work they have done has just blown me away. And their dedication, despite all of the challenges we've had. So thank you so much. Thank you for your work in all of this. Comments or questions? Ashley? So I apologize that I came in after you had started presenting. Right when we were starting. Yeah. Oh, great. All right. Wasn't late for everything. So this is something I'm super glad to see this request before us. This is something that I have felt pretty strongly about through my entire time on the council here and just paying attention to even language is so critical as we figure out how we are going to identify as a community and how we're going to move forward. And to me, this is absolutely where city money must be invested. I know that there are other budget constraints, but I'm not super interested in Blue Cross Blue Shield getting their 25% before we make sure that our people are cared for in our community and that our people are welcome in our own community where we all live. And so this to me is a really, really good start. Just even to bring somebody in to help us as a community figure out how we talk about diversity and how we really make sure that we don't drown out all of the other really important things that are happening because we get so focused on our own perceptions and perspectives. So thank you. Thanks. Other thoughts? Donna? I was glad that you read a lot more than we had received in our packet because I was wondering what the scope of the RFP. I just didn't get it from the little summary because I also wanted us to do some community awareness workshops. And you're right, there are experts out there that can come in. Do you have any kind of an outline for your RFP? We don't yet. We've talked to about three potential consultants who have slightly different processes around what their scope would be, so of what would be covered in the RFP we haven't written out yet. But yeah, do you want to? I think we were directed to ask first just to find out what before we spend resources. One of the tilts is an RFI, which we did for the microtransit. And vendors actually came and presented how they would deal with it. So we gave them the end product we wanted, and they each made their own proposal and scope of cost. So you might want to also look at it from that point of view if the council decides to go forward. We did talk about that. And one of the things that we learned is that consultants in this field are really protective of their intellectual property. And so we sort of did our request for information. And if this is something that council is committed to, then I guess we would ask for their proposal. Am I explaining it right in terms of how they felt about this? Other questions? Glenn? Well, again, thank you. I think it makes a lot of sense to me that a topic like this, if we form a committee to work out all the problems, and they work at it for a year, and then they come back and say, these problems will actually take some money to work on. That is not unexpected. It's too bad, but I get it. I guess I'm curious if you have any information now about, you said that there were other communities in Vermont who have done similar things, hired consultants for this sort of purpose. Do you have any narratives about outcomes from those places, or any further details about that you could share at this point? Yeah, I can share about the Winnowski one. I've heard a lot about that because they just wrapped up in April or May. But it was a very intensive six-week process bringing together a lot of the different communities in the city that had been raising some of these concerns to the city, so largely including a large amount of parents and school officials with city officials. And their biggest outcome coming out of that was basically forming a committee like we already have, but that it is better set up and has better representation and better commitment and buy-in from city staff and from the community at large by having these months of discussions, of community-wide discussions, that they were able to. So they just started this a couple of months ago now. But we heard just glowing reviews about what the process was like for them just to be able to come together and have these really open and honest and frank conversations about these really tough issues under kind of a third-party facilitation. Jack? Do we, is it reasonable to think that we can put together and put out RFP and then get responses and time to get it into the appropriation process for discussion? I don't know how long something like that takes. Really is is, we want to know if you're willing to do this. And at that point, then we can really hit the ground running and see what we can do. We're at this point where it's this or nothing, frankly. And so do we keep going and doing this work and asking other people to tell us what they're doing without paying them for nothing? So to answer your question, I think the estimate they received was about $10,000 to the various people that they need for this year and possibly subsequent years. And so the question, so I guess the direction to provide them is either go ahead and we'll commit to putting the money in the budget now or we're in favor of this, but don't go do any RFPs until after we've completed the budget to see if it makes it through, because we haven't weighed that all in yet. And I'll just weigh into the earlier question as well. I spoke to people in Winooski and Hartford and Brattleboro, and they all had similar processes. And I think both Brattleboro and Hartford are also very eager to share their experiences with us as well and learn from all three of them what went well and what didn't and how we can improve. But they all generally felt very positive about the work. I guess can I ask a procedural question? Sure. So if one were to make a motion and we were to vote on that to include it in the budget, is that the sort of kind of commitment that the committee would need or is that? So I think that, so this is where I'm coming from. Probably a vote to include it in the budget right now would probably be premature. We probably need to have that as a part of the discussion together with the budget. My sense is that we should, well, I guess I see three possible ways to move forward. And you sort of just outlined them, Bill. One is to say, we don't want to do this. This is not worth pursuing. Option two is this is worth pursuing. We'd like to talk about it with the budget, but don't do anything until we've officially included it in the budget, which would be some time in January. And the third option would be, yes, it's worth pursuing. We'll discuss it as a part of the budget, but go ahead and seek more information or start moving forward with your process. And I'm open to either of the second two. I prefer it because this is really valuable and I think much needed work in our community. And I think this would be a great way to move forward, speaking for myself, but other thoughts on how to move. Or if there's other options that I haven't really thought of, that's fine too. I'm going to go to Donna, then Lauren, and Les. Is that OK? But we could make a motion now. And we could commit ourselves outside of the whole process because I felt this is where it should started with some level of community workshop. I just didn't know how you could sit down and do it without it. Kudos that you tried. So I think we have, instead of jump-starting, we sort of said, OK, go do it. And I think we need this. It's not going to happen. And we need to start it sooner than later. So I'll make a motion that we commit $10,000 for this project to move forward. Second. OK, fair enough then. Lauren, did you have something to add? Yeah, so I have been serving on the committee for the past since March. Since you started, yeah. I started here. And first, just wanted to express my really, really deep gratitude to the people sitting here and the other people who have been participating. I mean, trying to figure out where to begin with racial justice, social and economic justice, with an extremely expansive charge, and basically a bunch of volunteers coming out to try to figure out where to even begin with these humongous societal, structural, systemic issues. And the amount of dedication, heart, emotion, and hard work that these volunteers have brought to it is just so laudable and so appreciated. And so I'm just so grateful for that. And I think the work to figure out, OK, how do we go forward? And I'm so glad that the council seems to agree that moving forward with bringing in experts who can really help us and so that we can do this right and do it well for our community and make sure that we're hearing from the people who don't tend to show up at council meetings and aren't part of the process unless we figure out a really deliberate way to engage them. And I hope that that will really inform, as we look at our priorities for the coming years, that we're able to hear from people who are not engaged right now and really look at how we're improving equity. So I'm really glad and heartened to hear a strong commitment. And I think that this group really needs that if we were to, even today, say go forth. I would hate to say go forth and do more work without a commitment because I think they're kind of at a point of either tell us to do it and let's do it or let's go home and save ourselves the kind of challenging work that we've been doing. So I'm eagerly going to vote for this motion. And again, thank you to the folks who've been participating. Any other comments? I guess I'm nervous about having a budget decision outside of the budget process, but I get it. This is very important. So fair enough. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? OK. Thank you. And thank you for your work. And that'll be in the budget. Can I say one more thing? Oh, for sure. I just, I'm like close to tears because that's not how I thought this was going to go. And this has been a really hard year and change. I was the reluctant chair of this committee. And I'm really grateful. I kind of wish I had known we could have come to you earlier perhaps. Oh, don't push it. We needed to go through this in order to get here. But I do want to say that we started last August with no charge and no clear role for members. And that was not a good way to start this work. And I just, I think it's really important that you all consider that as you move forward with other committees and other decisions that you make. I commend you all for being like, it's nice to know that you're all kind of in our corner because I don't know that we knew. And I just want you to think carefully as you move forward with other processes. Hearing you say that you kind of saw the need for the community conversations first, that would have been a really great way to start this work. And I just want to put a pin in that for you as you think about other things. Because this process has been, I think, personally stressful. But also, I think the whole group has gone through a lot. And we've lost a couple members who, I mean, frankly, felt like it was for lack of a better term violent to be in the meetings because of the lack of clarity around things like racial justice. And that's sort of what we refer to in the statement when we said that harm can be done when this work is not done well. It can be done well intended. But when it's not done well and expertly, it causes harm. And we have harmed individuals in the process. And I just think that's really, it's important to keep in mind moving forward. So thank you. Thank you. From the deeply. Thank you for being unanimous on that. Thank you. OK, again, thank you all for your work. OK, I'm going to just check in with Ken. It's after 7 o'clock. OK, all right, so we're going to jump to the homelessness task force update. And we'll do the natural resources ordinance public hearing after that. So we're just going to flip-flop those two agenda items. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. So we'll introduce ourselves, but we appreciate the opportunity to be here in front of you as representatives of the homelessness task force. I'm Cameron Niedermeyer. I'm the staff support for this committee. I'm Don Little. Ken Russell. So we're here today to sort of present to you sort of an overview of what we've done so far. What our immediate recommendations would be and are asked from you tonight. And then we'll talk a little bit about our long-term goals. So Ken's going to kick us off. We've been working really well together. It really is heartening work. I go into these meetings feeling a little anxious at the beginning. And I'm just truly amazed at the talent and the expertise and the care around the table and the commitment to addressing some really thorny issues. And you'll see in the report there's a scope of things from big to small. But we definitely try to focus on what's achievable with limited resources, but also with an eye towards everyone understanding the depth of the problem and what longer-term solutions might look like. So to that end, we're starting off with some practical achievements and asks. Thank you so much for opening that shelter earlier. I think you probably all noticed how cold it was in those first two weeks of November. And I drive around the streets at night, and I'm driving in my comfortable car. And it's always like there are people out there right now. And how would our thinking change if somebody didn't make it through the night, one of these nights? So we try to bring that sense of urgency to the problem. I'm Donna. And being realistic. And it's sort of like we want to be able to solve all these problems right away, snap our fingers. An example of one of these problems, which is John can speak to in a minute. But it's an example of it's in our mid-range objectives, but we're thinking about it immediately, which is connecting somebody. They might find out at 6 o'clock at night. They can't be in the shelter at 8 o'clock at night. And then there may be motel subsidies available, but they had to have been at the office by the close of business day at 4.30 at Berry. They have to get back to Berry. So we're looking at how can we facilitate transportation? How can we work with people administering these programs to have them be more efficient and streamlined? There's a restructuring of the emergency housing program at statewide level, so very well next year might be capstone administering the local aspect of that. We were looking at lockers, placing the lockers. And it's a simple, concrete solution for those not aware. It's sort of like people have sleeping bags taken. There are donations coming in. All the donations are appreciated by the community. But then they get stolen. So I'm really glad Don is here to speak to what it's like out there. But it's good work. We have a mission of reaching everybody. In everybody's housing, everybody deserves to be in good housing. We have some numbers here in Washington in Vermont as of January 2018. Of course, all these numbers are best guesses, 1,291 residents on any given day. Don at one point had a number of 42. For the city of Montilier, it was around 45 people. And the individuals change a bit here and there. But the number remains about the same. Just not include couch surfers to people who manage to get inside, whether it's from one night to the next on somebody's couch or in someone's garage or people who are doubled up in apartments. So that doesn't take that part of the population into consideration at all. So I just want to make sure I heard the right. So Montilier has homeless folks who are struggling with homelessness, about 45, generally pretty constantly. It's fairly constant. It's perhaps higher than that in the spring and summer. But as of late fall, we compared notes with agencies, with outreach people, and with actual homeless people. And that's basically the number we came up with. Thank you. So we are requesting, asking, most graciously, to consider extending the shelter hours in the spring. When we had initially brought that up, I remember Bill saying, I assume we're going to want the spring to. And yes, we do. I'm sorry. We would like the shelter. I'll use that one. Testing, 1, 2, 3. So we would like the shelter. We're asking humbly if you could extend the shelter hours in the spring, similar to what you had done in the fall, recognizing your budget constraints. And we're, frankly, think it's a good idea every year. But we will come back with more details on that before your December budget conversations begin. So just to clarify, we're asking to take the $10,000 that were already identified for the homelessness task force for this year, for this fiscal year, and just extend their use for extending the opening of Good Sam Shelter in the Bethany Church. So this funding would go to Good Sam and not any of the homelessness task force initiatives of this type other than that. So we're just asking it for it to be extended at least two weeks in the spring. So it would be the same cost from this side in the winter, which I think was $5,000 for two weeks into the spring. Jack and Ashley. And so I think you may have just answered my question. Do we know how much of the city funds that we allocated has been drawn down for the early start? They opened a little later than they anticipated. So it was a little less than that $5,000 asked in the beginning. I don't have an exact number at this time. Thanks. Ashley, anything further? So my understanding of the council left it was that this was money for the shelter. And so at least from my perspective about how we left it, that money was for the shelter. And I absolutely support using whatever is left of that money to keep it open longer in the spring. But again, I think that the bigger piece here is what are we going to do more long term, which I know is always the big question. But I love to see that we are identifying finally those gaps between if you qualify here and you can't get to where you need to be to get that piece of paper that you need. And I work in the court system, so I see this every single day. And I just want to put on the radar. So on the news a few weeks ago, the Kahootz program that started out of Eugene, Oregon. And I had sent the email around. I think, can I may have sent it to you? I know I sent it to the council. I also sent it to the city of Berry. And what Kahootz does, it's basically a mobile social worker unit that can work with communities to identify unmet needs. They also partner with law enforcement, local law enforcement, to sort of see if this is a situation that warrants a law enforcement response. And they also help to, or at least the program model, is predicated on sort of filling that gap between the, oh my gosh, I know I can't. Now I know that I can't get a bed here tonight, but I have to get to the emergency housing office in downtown Berry. There's not a bus that I can get. So it's really sort of that community-driven hub and spoke model that sounds like it would address some of those sort of questions of, what are we going to do about logistics? Because we're Vermont and everything is spread out, and you have to be able to get from Montpelier to Berry or to Burlington or wherever. So that aligns with some of our long-term goals. So I'm going to let Dawn sort of go into our short-term successes and what we've done so far. And then we'll talk a little bit about how we've approached that mid-range and long-term program and how that might fit into that work that we're already doing. So I appreciate that. Thank you. So I would also like to ask that you sort of continue our charge. We'd like to continue to meet. We think we're doing really good work. And the sort of makeup of this group is very unique. We have a lot of really interested and committed and uniquely qualified members of our community to speak to these issues in a lot of different ways that we don't often get to hear the voices of. So we are asking also that you very officially let us continue our work. So you would like a motion about that? Or just to continue our charge. We will come back with further recommendations. I know we would like to be involved in the budget process for next year as well. We will have some more of those long-term costs that don't include opening the shelter. So we will be back in December to talk about some of our long-term budget asks. So I think this actually might be a really salient point because I don't know that we ever made a formal motion to form a standing committee. We formed a committee, but we did ask them to come back to us. Right. And so I suppose if we just formalized it as a standing, as sort of an ongoing thing as opposed to something that sprung up out of. So I at this point then would move that we transition or maintain the homelessness task force as a standing city committee. I think it's a really, really important voice in government that we desperately need. We desperately need to hear from people who are living the situations that our system is supposed to meet that clearly isn't. Second. Done? Do we have for sure that we didn't set up this committee? I mean, I just don't want to make a motion now. Are we going to change their mission? Or are we? I think they're just asking to continue the same. But as a committee we're just going to ask. I didn't see a finite date in the first one. So I'm just trying to understand why we're doing that. I think it was the first one was sort of, this idea came to the city and there was an ask, like, we want to do this. So we said, sure, we'll form a task force. But I sort of want the message to be clear that this is actually like a long term part of the government. I don't think it hurts. Okay, but I just want you to know from my viewpoint, we made a committee long term. But anyway, fine. We like the afterwards. Okay, okay. Well, there's been a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. Thank you. I want to make sure that John's perspective, I mean, if you could describe what you do and what you see the gaps. I think that I'd like to say first that I think the task force, as Cameron said, does present a unique opportunity because we have people coming from different segments of the service and other populations of the area. We have, we're bringing together a number of different perspectives. My perspective on this is that I've been doing street outreach in the Montpelio and basically in Washington County for several years now and one of my focuses has been on the gaps in the existing system and on the barriers that people face in using existing services. And that's one of the main things that the task force needs to deal with. What are the barriers? How do we reach the people who aren't reached by the system? And that's another reason that we'd like to continue because it's fairly complex. We also hope to bring together a really diverse group of service providers, work with them in order to make sure that the resources are as effective as possible, that they reach as many people as efficiently as possible. And I think they continue and will allow us to do that. So yeah, my perspective again has been to look at the gaps and to deal pretty much with everyone out there but particularly concentrating on the people with the greatest number of, or the most challenging barriers to accessing service and often those are the people who are at greatest risk of death or bodily injury for being outside. And there are often people who are banned from existing services or people who are unable to tolerate being around other people and thus are unlikely to use the existing services. Some people have medical issues. Some people have substance abuse issues. Some people have trauma or psychological issues. Some people have been in prison or have anxiety and cannot tolerate being around other people. Others have disabilities that make it virtually impossible for them to meet behavioral standards that are necessary for the safety of the people who run the services and the other people who use them. So part of the complexity of this sort of ongoing charge is to look at these things and try to find solutions that are gonna work for everyone without endangering other parts. And the other way to address this and this is mid to long-term issues is to look at ways of supporting these people so that they may fit into this and that's a real challenge. And that's not a short-term thing. But one of the, I guess if we look at the short-term project updates which we seem to be doing, one of the things that we're doing is sort of a resource survey and looking at gaps in the system. One of them was warming shelters and I think the task force has been helpful in clarifying that because initially there was confusion about whether they were only four guests of the Bethany overflow. It turns out that other people are able to utilize them. Now there are still people who cannot or will not but that has increased the number of people utilizing the warming spaces. So I think we've facilitated communication among the different entities that are trying to work together on this resulting in sort of a clear message about who can do this and who can and that has brought more people into the shelters. If I can interpret you, I think there were a couple of comments or questions. Can we go Lauren then Jack? Yeah, I just had one question. So it's great to see all this work and it does sound like really impressive expertise and important perspective. So I'm so glad we're continuing it indefinitely. I guess I'm trying to wrap my head around for how much do you see of the role of the city government? How much do you see recommendations that are us advocating to the state for certain services? Like is this something that you're looking at recommendations that will span both and maybe we try to find other communities to partner with an advocacy also to state resources and services so it's both. This is again part of the reason that some of these are medium term and long term is that we need to, we really need to get a clear picture from all of the people involved and this is not just the city, it's not even just the providing agencies, it's community members who knows and it also involves looking at existing strategies in other areas and seeing what has worked for them, running that by existing providers and seeing who might want to pick up on some of those ideas. So yes, absolutely any potential source, we want to look at that and see how it might fit together in the best way. And let me tag on there. I mean it's great to have Will Aberly on our committee. He can just, he can lay out this alphabet soup of all the agencies that are out there. So there's a role of navigating what's out there. There's a role of just getting people in their silos and where are the gaps in the people between those things. And then there's a whole dynamic with different entities protecting their mission and their budgets. And so I think we had a conversation today a little bit about private fundraising. We're like, okay, maybe if someone needs a taxi ride down to Barrage or the motel, we could raise some money around that, but there's competition for funding for these different agencies. So I think the good news in all that is, just as Don was saying, because we're working together, there feels to be some real synergy in all of this. Just by communicating with the people who are out there and understanding them, we're just going through the warming shelter calendar and where are the gaps in that. I was just, well, some of our us were at the, you too, at the VIA, Vermont Interfaith Action, and you can see those people coordinating and there was something like the amount of warming shelter beds have tripled in the last three years in Washington County. So, but as they rightly point out, the goal is to end homelessness. And so there's still, and more homeless people have come to, apparently come to Washington County than other places in Vermont. So our proportion of the total statewide population of unhoused individuals has gone from something like 8% to 13% over so many years. So maybe it's because we're providing services. So the things are growing. I think that's partly very true, but to be honest, I think one other factor is that over the past couple of years, there's been a great effort in Washington County to increase the accuracy of the surveys. In the past, the pit count was necessarily limited because it is a point in time count. This is, and there are variables, if it's exceptionally bad weather, people may crawl into garages. They may not come out in time to be counted. And I think a lot of the agencies and the street outreach people have made a huge effort to go out and find people so that we can be more accurate in the numbers. And I believe that has increased the numbers, but I also believe that the numbers are increasing and there may be more people coming here. So I'm gonna transition us into, because I think there's a couple questions about our mid-range and long-term goals and how we are moving forward with this work. Before we do that, Jack, did you have any particular questions? Yeah, the other day, Ken and I were talking about the coordination and rationalization of some of the services. And one of the things I didn't, it has never occurred to me that someone who's banned from the shelter in Barry would also be banned from getting services over here. And neither one of us knew how many people that actually might be. And I wonder if you've had the ability to find that out. Do you have actually scheduled the meeting among providers to, using unique identifiers to compare all of our lists of both the people that are being served, the people who are out there, and the people who are banned from specific resources. So we should, in another week or so, have a really good number, you know, the best one we can come up with on that. Great, thanks. So that's one of our exciting short-term goals that we really have, is not violating anybody's privacy rights, not violating any HIPAA agreements with any organization, but coming together and really coordinating the efforts between other organizations to make sure we have an accurate count of folks who are experiencing homelessness and have really intense barriers to getting housing in our community. So we're not gonna be able to move forward if we don't have an accurate census of who is in our community, because then we won't know what resources we'll need to address it. So some of our longer mid-range goals is really working on those acute needs and working with the continuum of care and other agencies, and really working with the integration and interoperability of other agencies that are out there. There are a lot, as Ken already mentioned, a lot of groups who are doing this work, and we think it's very important to work with them and not against them or compete with them in any way. We also want to make sure that we identify the most acute needs and the gaps. We've already been working on that. I think Donna has a really good handle on what those gaps are. I'll let her talk about those in just a second. I'm gonna monopolize the mic for just a second. And then really making sure that those needs, when we've identified them, could be something that an organization might be able to take on. We might be able to help them with that. We might be able to raise funding externally to the city to get them to do that service. So we also want to look at expanding the shelter services and doing a really good evaluation of our winter shelter system and how that works. We're gonna make it through this season, see how that works and see what gaps we have there as well and what recommendations we can make to the community at large and the providers at large to address those gaps. We also want to make sure that we do a housing availability survey, working with the continuum of care, what's available in our community, what is affordable and inaccessible in our community, and what that looks like for the folks who are experiencing homelessness. Before I get into our sort of more lofty long-term goals, I do want Donna to talk about some of the gaps that she's identified and that we've worked on. Yeah, there are a couple of other short-term accomplishments, I think, in addition to facilitating the communication between the agencies and getting that word out and get opening the Good Sam has been wonderful. It has been utilized. I've seen people there that I didn't think I would ever see inside, frankly, and that's been wonderful, I think, due to the extreme weather that we had for a couple of days, more people have come in. Opening Good Sam shelter, because for capacity, reasons of capacity, they have, I guess it's roughly a 20-person capacity, and it's been well utilized. We've had good reports from the Bethany Church about their feelings about how it's being run, which is wonderful. There are still people who are out there who are not compatible with that, and that's one of the things we're working on is looking into what the reasons are and what possible solutions might be. The other thing we are looking at for people who are outside is storage availability, not for all of their possessions, but for really vital supplies, like sleeping bags, tents, pads, just the things they need to survive overnight, and there has been a problem with things being stolen. We have identified, we've got some lockers and we've identified another source for lockers. We would like to set up something so that there's no redundancy and people aren't stuck in the middle of the night when it's zero degrees out without anything. So that's something that we are working on. We're halfway to that one. The other thing is, as a result of the existence of the task force, there's been sort of increased awareness of some of the issues that has resulted in donations from people. We have, before the shelter opened, homeless people in Montpellier received 10 tents, 14 sleeping bags, five camping pads, half a dozen hoodies, contractor bags to keep the sleeping bags dry, which is an issue given all the precipitation we've had and given it, you know. And also we received containers for distributing food donations in the evening in Montpellier before the warming shelters opened. And that's still an ongoing. It's not a constant thing, but there are still food donations for people who are outside, who are in the area. As Ken mentioned, there is a gap with the transportation, which is partly an immediate issue as it relates to the adverse weather conditions. We did get the news today. It's my impression that the 211 people got increased funding, which is wonderful because they were shutting down at eight and the shelters were opening at eight. So by the time you knew whether there was a vacancy, it was too late to call them. And apparently that issue has resolved itself, which is wonderful. We still have the transportation issue, which pops up again in the medium and long-term gap. So we've gotten supplies out. We're trying to identify the gaps. We're trying to find solutions for these small, sometimes very inexpensive things that make a huge difference to people. So some of our long-term recommendations, as Dawn was referring to, really are gonna be looking at more systemic approaches and how the city can really interact with those systemic approaches. We've already mentioned looking at affordable and accessible housing, coordination of area programming, but also looking for innovative and increased support from the city. We've identified already, including ourselves in the city plan and what that looks like and what our perspective can be in that process. And then also looking at our interactions with the Housing Trust Fund and how we can best use that, our best recommend uses for that. We also are planning on using a national resource that I've included in the report that you all have received that from the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, they have a really great guide that has a lot of questions that will guide our thinking on these long-term systemic issues. And really we're looking forward to bringing those to you and to your attention. Just as a matter of logistics, in the city plan, are you picturing perhaps homelessness being its own chapter or is it a sub-chapter of housing or how do you envision that? I couldn't answer that question. I think accurately right now, I think that was honestly, it's one of those things that we put out as a discussion and we're really looking forward to seeing how we feel like we could fit into that. Okay, great. I was just, I was also sort of reflecting as we sit here in the state capital and I love that tonight, this is the second committee that we've heard from and that is really focused on doing the hard work. And I have spent the bulk of my career working with folks who are in various stages of transition in their life, whether it's into the criminal legal system or out of, hopefully, whether it's into housing with their families or unfortunately, whether it's sort of losing a little bit of footing. And I would just highlight too that as the capital city, we have a wealth of resources and not just cash resources. Cash is super helpful, but I would really encourage all of us to sort of think about this as the legislative session starts gearing up too because there are gonna be a lot of questions and really tough decisions that they're gonna be thinking about and these to me are the most important questions. What does the health of our population look like? And when we see an increase in homelessness and we see increases in other indicators that tell us that things are not going in the direction that we want them to, it becomes really important to grab attention and I think we have a really unique position as the capital to really do this. So I love, I'm so grateful to hear that we're really talking about the things that everybody knows are problems but we're actually working on solving them not just talking about them some more. Conor. Yeah, I think sort of piggyback enough, Ashley and Lauren, you know, the state has failed in their obligation to like properly fund community mental health. I think they've failed in their obligation to fund substance abuse services. I'm just thinking as we look at short-term goals here, is there some thought to maybe having an activism component to this committee where you could set a legislative agenda, track the bills in progress? We're playing with like hay pennies and shillings and city government here but to get like a mental health worker that we share between Barry and Montpelier would have such a real and immediate impact and to be able to activate a network like you already have there to go to these hearings, testify, make phone calls to legislators. I think it could be a really powerful thing that you're doing a month's time here. So I'm happy to help on any of that. Thank you, we appreciate that and we will look at adding that to our proposals. Donna, did you have something? I just wonder if there were any restrictions of city committees when it comes to lobbying legislatures? I think as long as it's consistent with the policy vision of the city, certainly staff can and city people can and as individuals, of course, they're more than welcome to do so but I think if the committee's established a plan and the council's on board with that plan and they're seeking resources to support that plan, there's no reason why they can't. Okay, so we would ultimately, though, see what they were planning to do as far as lobbying. You said they have a plan. Well, I meant the plan that they provided. They've given us an outline of their goals and presumably if they're seeking resources to accomplish those goals, then, you know, we would be in contact. I mean, we have a staff person who works closely with me, so we would be, you know, if we felt there was anything that wasn't aligned with the city's general interests, then we would either address it with the committee or bring it to the council, but there's nothing to prohibit that. Good, good, thank you. To hopefully ease your fears, we won't make any leaps or make any presentations without letting y'all know what the choices are. No, I've just run into a lot of lobbying issues for other nonprofits and I just wasn't sure when it came outside of the staff, but city-appointed committees what there were any other restrictions. That's all. On this topic, Chief Figes, do you have anything you wanna add? Yes, another way that we're working to help support all of what exactly kind of what you were just talking about, Chief Bombardier and myself, Barry Moulton had a meeting with a representative and working with also both representatives from both Barry and Mark Tillier on, for example, one of our mutual priorities is the embedded mental health clinician and also we have, and we are trying to partner with the UVM Medical Center as well, so we are looking at a variety of how do we fund this, but certainly that is, I only share that now because that is one aspect of how do we have legislative attention to exactly mental health support and an effective substance abuse disorder support as well, so it's kind of, it's just another way without being direct lobbying and have the bills hopefully introduced that way as well. I'd like to just make an interesting potential source of resources are the hospitals. In Burlington there's the Harbor House, the converted hotel, it was the Champlain Housing Trust that did most of it, but it was also the Medical Center seeing that if you took their frequent fliers of people who keep coming back to the emergency room and you gave them housing, a lot of, they will save some money and I mean, according to Will Eberle, this has worked in other jurisdictions, but I love hearing that these conversations have happened and I love, I mean, it's just another example of how all these different, there's so many people working in so many quarters on this, so it does, again, back to that synergy. So if there aren't any final questions, I did want to ask a clarifying point, so I just understand that you all are comfortable with us letting good Sam know that they have funding available to them if they have the ability and staffing to stay open in the spring. Up to the $10,000 limit. That is my understanding, but I mean, one, we could vote on it again just to clarify. It doesn't hurt, but yeah. I mean, one other possibility there is that we should just check the language of what we approved to see if this fits under that previous motion and if we need to make another motion we can or we can just preemptively just do it, we can just have another motion to authorize up to the remaining $10,000 to open the shelter later in the spring, but that's up to you all. Or something. I think the previous motion was very definitely related around November. Yes. Up to a certain amount, and so I can make a motion that we allow the remainder of that $10,000 to apply to the spring of 2020. Second. Further discussion? All in favor, can you say aye? Aye. Opposed? Great, thank you. Thank you, I do appreciate it. Yep, motions are good clarity. And so I guess I have one other question about the plan here. So this is, first of all, this is just really wonderful work. This is amazing, this feels really, there's clearly been a lot of time that has gone into this. And just as it comes to trying to implement some of these pieces, I sort of assume this is, you all may be coming back to us on a sort of a rolling basis because some things may be ready at different times. As you sort of focus on one thing, if it's the lockers first, or if it's something else. Yeah, so anyway, I guess that's all to say, I'm looking forward to hearing whatever proposals you all have moving forward, knowing that we have some limitations on our budget, but even so, I think we can do a lot, so. Thank you, and we will be back, don't worry. Okay. I would just like to insert that, I'm hoping that indeed you're not seeing the city as the only funding source here. And that again, we're really good about matching money. And so anytime you can match money and come with us with grants or other stakeholders that we can support, but that it really has to be a bigger whole support than just the city. Yes, thank you. And I just, one more thing. So I lived in California for a number of years and I know this guy who's actually the mayor of Sacramento, he's the head of their task force for California. And Daryl Steinberg is his name, and he was on NPR, he was talking about because of that ruling in Boise, Idaho, where they can't ban camping unless they have shelter space. A lot of Western cities are mustering, he's going for subsidized housing, it's like nobody should be living outside. And in the NPR interviewers, it's like, well, geez, what do you say to people? It's like, that's not the business of the city to be doing that. He's like, well, these are deep problems and we really have to stretch. But also other sources, yes. But I think in terms of what, really look at the problem, bigger picture, it's just worth seeing what other people are doing. And I'm not recommending anything specific, but it's just, there is a lot of action on this. And so there are a lot of people out there like really looking. And so balance between prudent stewardship of resources with vision. So thank you. And Glenn, yeah. I just wanted to bring my perspective as the council's representative to the homelessness task force and use it to underline something that Ken started out with. He said that he was talking about how valuable and enjoyable he finds the task force meetings. I have to say, Ken says he starts out anxious. I am anxious through the entire meeting every time. And not to say that it's all bad. They're really extremely valuable. And I also, I just want to emphasize that these are, this is an emergency and it's issues that people on the committee are dealing with day to day. People come to the committee having slept outside the night before in the freezing cold. And we do not agree in the committee on everything and we step on each other's toes and we argue and we fight. I think that one of the things that I have really appreciated about it is that because we meet weekly and because we've had some time with the same cast of characters fighting and coming back, we have really been able to build some amount of trust and I think that we're succeeding for those reasons in making those quick connections for the little things that individual people can jump on day to day. And hopefully, yes, in the future come up with something more systemic. But I think that this meeting is so wonderfully calm and warm and kind of easy that I want to emphasize for the council that it is as the social and economic justice advisory committee was talking about before, these are things that are hard to get into. So thanks for your support in all of it and thanks for you to doing the work. I'm just so impressed with you all and your work and then, yeah, just digging into hard things. Thank you. All right, so we're gonna come back from our break. I did already technically open the public hearing, which is kind of funny, to open the public hearing and take a break. Well, if I didn't before, I'm opening the public hearing. Okay, so this is chapter 13, Natural Resources. Comments, questions, thoughts. Go ahead, Jack. I did have a number of things that I noted and I wonder if you wanna just go through the whole thing in order and just grab them as they come up. Sure. So if we just walk through this sort of sequentially, anything on this first page, let's see if we can do it by page potentially, 13-1, 13-2, thoughts on that? I do have a question about this actually and I'm disappointed in myself for not already having the answer, but I did look and I don't know. On page one, the section where it talks about Berlin Pond, it goes on to say that subsection B, violation of this ordinance shall be deemed a misdemeanor, a person violating this ordinance shall be subject to a fine to exceed $500 and subject to imprisonment for a term not to exceed one year. Do we have a city attorney that would prosecute that? I don't know if we do and I think some of this may have changed with the result of the court case as well and some of the state actions. I almost wonder if, well, at one pass on this might be, well, we don't really have the jurisdiction so we should take this out. Another possibility is that we don't think that the state really, well, we don't wanna give up our authority here so we leave it. And so that's kind of where I am. If we wanna change some of the fines or the language or whatever, I'm done. We certainly have authority on the property we own. Yes. It's that little segment we don't and how people get access. I was really worried about any change because that's how we got shafted in 1976 was a nice little tweaking and it destroyed our authority. Glenn. Only because I heard it when Ashley read it out loud. Should it be subject to a fine not to exceed $500? No, they want it more than $500. It should be more than $500. That's intentional. To exceed $500. It's a straight way to write it but basically it's a mandatory minimum of $500 and skies the limit. Okay, cool. Which is probably a problem. I've just never seen that formulation before so I don't know. I think that's a typo. I think there's a not that should be in there because you can't say something, well, $500 or whatever, any amount beyond $500 including $50 million or more. It's a tricky one. So I moved the week, I insert not there. Cause I think it was a square meter. I mean, we could put in not and then raise the number. That's the last time the city prosecuted. I mean. The last time we prosecuted we ended up in the state supreme court challenging her authority to prosecute. Yeah. This might be something to get an opinion from the city attorney on. Donna, what are you thinking? I don't know. Okay, fair enough. I just, the only reason I say this is because I'm not actually sure that I don't know that the city could impose a jail sentence. Why don't we just take that out? Say, how about we just say subject to a fine of $500, period. Period. Sound okay? Thoughts on, any other thoughts on that? Lawyer's tweaking, there you go. It's all lost. Fair enough. Any other further thoughts on page one? Yes, Jack. Actually, I said yes, that's fine with me, but I, this is the first public hearing before I really say yes to that. I wanna think about that a little bit. I don't know that a city acting within its authority under its charter can't create a penalty that includes imprisonment. I don't know one way or the other. Obviously, it would be the court that actually imposes a sentence of imprisonment, and that's certainly within the jurisdiction of the court to do, so I just wanna say, I'm not ready to say yes, definitely. Fair enough. Okay, any other comments on this first page? Okay, moving on to the second page, encroachment on the river, and I think Glenn, you had some comments about the phrasing of that, am I correct? Yeah, I don't know where I put my notes on that, but basically, I think I was uncertain of the proper term to use encroaching. I think that what's meant here is building something or extending some mud or land or something into the river and changing its course, but to me, an individual person could encroach on the river by waiting in it or walking into it or something, and just to avoid that, because I like waiting in the river and I don't want us to prevent that, I would like to suggest that we change that language. I'm sorry, Bill, do you remember what word I used instead of encroach? I just used the course, alter the course one way or another. I can find it. But it's more than just the course, it has to do with also the vegetation or moving dirt. I mean, this is a term that comes up a lot in the river conservatory element, so I don't know the proper definition. I just know it's here at common when dealing with riverways, waterways. You could probably ask them. And I think I can find my email, so let me, I'm sorry, I wasn't totally on top of that. Well, maybe, since this is just the first public hearing, maybe just flag it as finding either clear language or maybe we define it, maybe we spell it out a little more, perhaps. I did appreciate the staff saying any river, all rivers, because who knows? I liked it. We could have more rivers. Yeah, that's right. We'll talk about that in the future. Lauren. I was just looking up, and it does look like the Department of Environmental Conservation has, they've got a whole fact sheet on what is encroachment that is a term of art, it looks like, describing advancement of structures, roads, railroads, improved paths, utilities and other development, natural areas, including floodplains, river corridors, et cetera. So we could copy and paste that if we wanna define it or just assume that it's a term of art that means something to people who work in the river world. I would accept that, I'll read it, but it sounds like it probably. I'll send the link. Yeah, thank you. Great. Other thoughts on page two here? Or article two, really. Oh, yeah, Jack. On 13-201, where it says all rivers, I think it should be any river, because if it's all rivers, then you only violate it if you put garbage into every river you see. That is a good point. I wondered with this one, and I think it might, trying to remember if it comes up later, I had wondered about is there any, actually I guess this is maybe true for other aspects of this. The violations of this, I guess are, well, it's not clear to me what the consequences are. For something that doesn't specify what the consequences are, does the police force just potentially write a ticket and they just get to decide how much that ticket is for? I think. How does that work? Don, and I would just talk about this about a different thing, but the idea is that there are general penalty provisions in the ordinance for all sections of the ordinance, and it does kind of refer to this under 13-2, but it seems to narrow it to only section 13-1. I mean, I think we could just say anyone found to be in violation of this chapter will be subject unless otherwise noticed, unless otherwise determined, like in the next one where we have a specific penalty. I guess I would just make a note that I think it would be useful to have some notation as to the consequences of violation of this or perhaps on the encroachment, et cetera. Well, yeah, I mean, again, I think the idea is that there's a general provision of penalties of ordinance violations, and any of these fall into that unless there is something in particular we want to either make higher or lower or like in the case of the dogs, you can put the restorative justice process in and that kind of thing. So, but because there is a specific code referenced for in 13-2. Yeah, I suggest, and this is without any forethought, instead of saying to be in violation of 13-1, I just say to be in violation of this chapter or chapter 13 or something like that. And then maybe add unless otherwise noted, which is then 13-3, we're gonna lock them up. Okay. Jack's gonna lock them up anyway. I'll look at that stuff for the next time. Cool, thank you. All right, any further comments about article two? Okay, so moving on to article three, trees. These suggestions all came from the tree board. Just so you know. I do have a couple of comments on this. That's where most of my comments are. One is in 13-306, which is a list of street tree species to be planted. And I just wonder does this need to be in the ordinances? So I had that same thought and I emailed John Snell and Lynn Wilde and said, well, first of all, I was like, there's no fruit or nut trees in here. And that's kind of sad, but they said, well, they're not always appropriate, but my other suggestion was like, could we just not leave that up to the discretion of the tree board? Why do we have to spell it out? And he thought that would be fine to have it just be at the discretion of the tree board. You don't think so? Okay, fair enough. Donna? That's what I was wondering, why have a list? I mean, we've learned the hard way and next month we may learn another tree is not infallible. So I would prefer not to list it and put it under the tree board. So I'd work to delete 13306. Yeah. Was that, yeah, a second? Yes, a second, sorry. I would actually say something along the lines of street tree species to be planted are determined by the tree board. As opposed to taking it out completely, I would just say that that's the group of people that are responsible for doing it and then take out the list, not the whole section. The tree board and concurrence of the city tree board? Yeah, sure. That's okay. When you're done, how do you feel about that, Chey? Yeah. Okay, well, yeah. So we need actual language for the clerk and so I will come up with language for that next time, before next time. Okay. That's gonna impact 307 and 308 there because there was a small, medium and large trees. Yep. I'll have more thoughts about those sections too. I'm sure probably Jack does as well. But there isn't Lauren and then maybe we'll vote. Just wondering, and it looks like it's not necessarily in here. Like do we have any preference for native trees or can Ginkgo doesn't seem like it's a Vermont native? But so maybe it's just hard. I don't know. I don't have a lot of expertise on this but I believe that the list of trees are those that survive the best on. Native trees don't survive the best. Yeah. In urban conditions. Well, in paved roads and those kinds of things and with cars and salt and those kind of things. So I think the idea was to A, be consistent throughout the city and B, have those have a chance of surviving versus. They did take out the Norway maple, like up above because it worked differently and actually opposing to the local sugar maple. And it has its own negative characteristics. So I think when it was possible they went there but when it wasn't they found other trees. Okay, so there's a motion and a second. Clerk crisis. Yes. I had thought that I'd assumed that the motion had been withdrawn because it was gonna be changed to include wording that I would not receive until the next meeting. Correct. I can't really vote on it because there's no wording. Okay, so. It's a drop hole. There's 306 we're gonna do. Okay, so you withdrawing your motion. We'll vote on it next time. Okay. Just want to be clear. That was gonna be a good one for me to fake. I'm sorry. You're gonna see more interest in stuff than the minutes. Oh dear. Okay, so given that we are probably gonna be. Well, you know, you don't necessarily have to change through seven and three away because they still could be in small, medium, and large characteristics. You're just not listing them. Yeah. Yeah, fair. Thoughts on the rest of this. Let's just deal with this page for now. I suppose with spacing distance, curve, corners, et cetera. I prefer to keep those. Okay, I'm, Lauren. I mean, it just seems like we'll need to clean up in accordance with the three species size class list it, or we just have to put the words. These shall include small, medium, and large trees or something in the re-wording of 13-3-O-Z. Yeah. Mm-hmm. We have to fix that. My initial reaction reading through this, I was like, why are we getting this specific here? Should this not be in something like, does it make sense to have this in the zoning or whatnot? But I'm convinced now that it's fine. Unless other people have suggestions, yeah. I think it's because it hasn't always been obvious, and so they run into problems and trying to keep it here so we won't run into problems. Okay, that's fair. And zoning wouldn't necessarily, these are dealing with public street trees that the city themselves are gonna put in by large, and so that wouldn't necessarily come up through a zoning application for a private land use. That makes sense. Okay, so moving on to the next page of this article, Jack. Section 13-315, I noticed that it talks about trees overhanging streets or rights of way, but it doesn't talk about other plants, and there are certainly other plants that could, by their growth, create a visual screen. And so I propose we amend the first sentence by inserting after the word tree, comma, shrub, comma, or other plant. I live by one. I'd like to have that there. That seems fine, though. I'm trying to find it. We had, oh, it's in the definitions of street trees that a street tree is defined as trees, shrubs, bushes, and all the woody vegetation on either side, ball streets, blah, blah, blah, blah. So one possibility is that that's, I mean, so trees here includes shrubs and bushes. Other woody vegetation. I mean, that does not necessarily include all plants, which could obstruct one's view, I suppose, but. I think that the 315 isn't limited to street trees. I think it's limited to any tree that's even privately owned. Yeah, it doesn't use street tree in it. Okay, that's fair. Any vegetative growth? That's fair, so let's, how do people feel about including the other types of planty words? I love aesthetic growth. Okay, we'll try to include that, I suppose, for next time. Moving on, any other thoughts on this page of article three? Well, there's one on 13, 318, and for some reason, you make trees possessive, and in another place that's same phraseology, it's just parks and tree staff, not trees, staff. Staff of the trees. I know. The one you serve us, humans. Yeah, I think we could take that out. These are not the trees you were looking for. Okay, the other one's gonna move on. Any other thoughts on this? Oh, yeah, Lauren. 13, 319, there's a license fee, should that just be part of the license fee? Oh yeah. Did you say that again? I couldn't hear you. No, I'm sorry. There's a specific license fee, and sometimes we put those all in the license chapter. The license fee chapter sometimes they seem to stay, so I was just flagging it if I wanted to. I would appreciate those things being all in the license chapter. I never would have noticed that. I thought you don't have my attention to it. Jack. And consistent with that, and consistent with my role as licensing guy. My suggestion would be, this is another one of these things where we have the city and the business of issuing a license. We're not giving the city or the city clerk any standards for how to decide whether to issue the license or not. My proposal is to get rid of the city license, and instead of doing that, say, after the word city in the second line, delete without first applying for and procuring a license, the license fee shall be $15 annually in advance, and in starting instead, unless that person is an arborist certified by the International Society of Arborists. Vermont doesn't license arborists. So, but the ISA is the recognized authority that tests people and certifies them, and this is only for people who are doing street and park trees. It doesn't say that people- But nobody should do street or park trees without permission. Right, but this is saying, well, who's the city gonna contract with to do it? Can you, you said a whole bunch of things. Can you just say it one more time? Sure. Clarify, sorry. I could use it one more time. Yeah, and John, I actually have this in writing. Oh, you want us as a motion? Well, for now, we're just talking. Okay. But this is what I'm- Okay, yeah. Actually, I'll pass this around to everybody. Oh, you've got it. All right, now. So you're saying this doesn't go by like the tree board or whatever to make a decision about who they're gonna hire to take off the trees, street trees or park trees? What I think this says is that, this says two things. One, if city employees are pruning, treating or removing street trees or park trees, then they don't have to have a license from the city. If the city is hiring somebody to do pruning, trimming or whatever, then whoever they hire has to have a license issued by the city. And what I'm suggesting is that instead of having a license issued by the city, we establish a standard that the city only hire people who are certified arborists from the ISA. We actually do. It sounds fine to me, but- In fact, we have two certified arborists working for the city. Donna? I would just want to have input from the parks and the tree board on it. Parks and trees. Okay, yep. Okay. I may be able to speak to the city arborist about that. Maybe. Okay, anything else? Glenn? The next section, 13-3-20, review by city council, that title is duplicated. So I think the section following that 13-3-21 should be instead penalties. And in section 3-3-21, I had a kind of similar question to an earlier question about that language about conviction and plea of guilty. Maybe especially because it's under what used to be review by city council for a bit. I was like, wait, are we accepting guilty pleas in review? And I don't think that that's what's meant, but I guess it seems to me that maybe we could just delete that clause. Any person violating any provision of this ordinance shall be subject to a fine not to exceed $500 once we've changed it to penalties. I think it maybe just needs to say a penalty. That might be adequate. I know that there are certain kinds of things that the city council convenes to hear. I just don't think that it would be the imposition of any sort of conviction because that would be a misdemeanor offense which means due process attaches. It could just be that the heading is wrong because the one above it is basically saying if someone doesn't like the decision of the tree board they can appeal it to the council. That's review by city council. The second one probably might just should be maybe saying penalty. Yeah, that's what Glenn is suggesting. That's the clause you were looking for earlier was. Yeah. Bill, you're saying that section 13, 321 is like penalties for the whole chapter. That's the penalty clause, it's not. I think that's just. Interesting. It just lands right there. It's not the. The council gets to do it twice. That sounds for me. It's not interesting. Yeah, the council would be involved in that. Okay. Well, right. Are we clear on 321 then? Are we feeling okay about that? Okay. Donna. I just had a question about the curfew. And I'm sorry to say that the parks commission was really busy last night with the mamba and I forgot to bring this up to them but has that been reviewed by the parks staff changing the curfew, 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. This came from them. This went through park staff. Okay, okay, okay, okay. Okay, so we're on to section, or article five, 13, 500. Any other comments on this, something on this first page? I go ahead, Jack. This is a general question about article five, not necessarily on the first page but we have some ordinances on Hubbard Park and Summer Street Park. Is there a reason not to apply, some or all of them to the city's other parks or have some standards for the other parks? I think it would be really helpful to have a curfew for, let's say, Blanchard Park. I think that probably needs a curfew. It's derbing the peace, fires, firearms, there's a lot of stuff that seems like we could comprehensively, I don't know which of these should be applicable to all parks but it seems like we should come up with something for that. Right, so maybe there's a general thing for all parks and then some parks have more specific things in particular for them. That makes sense to me. Yeah, go ahead. I'm just a little curious. So with the firearms prohibition makes sense, the destruction and littering, I mean, certainly there are criminal offenses that cover this. I'm just, subsection E, disturbing the peace, that's literally the text of a state statute that's just copied and inserted here and it doesn't, disorderly conduct is a disorderly conduct whether it's on State Street, or in the park. So I just don't, I don't think that we need it in there. It just, it's redundant. It says what state law says. And it's something that anyone could be cited for or cited into court or any reprimanded by law enforcement or whatever it might be for. I just don't know that we need it as an enforcement thing here, especially since we don't have like a city prosecutor who would be using our ordinances to prosecute. So do we have, in our policing section, do we have a reference to disturbing the peace? It is. It's 13 VSA, or, oh, okay. It's a state statute. It's a state statute. But there's probably a similar case ordinances as well. So we could take this out and disturbing the peace would still be a problem. But I still sort of, I like something stated here, I guess, about a standard of behavior for parks because people gather together and we sort of forget they're still in a public space. So maybe it's redundant, but sometimes I think redundancy is good. Because they do post some of these things at the park in their case. 13 VSA section 1026. A person who's guilty of disorderly conduct, if he or she would attend to cause public inconvenience or annoyance or recklessly create a risk thereof. A, B, while one, two, three, four. Glenn. Only because it's come up in discussion a couple of times recently at the homelessness task force that, and we heard a little bit from Ken earlier about this recent ruling in the Western states that, makes what they did to me. Hi, Casey. That says, basically, I'm fumbling here, but that police cannot prevent people from sleeping in a public place if there are not shelters available provided by the, Ashley, maybe you can clarify for me. Yeah, so I actually read the case that you're talking about, Glenn, and what the city there did was they actually convicted people of misdemeanors, so people would be sleeping in parks or wherever they were sleeping, and then law enforcement would rouse them, cite them into court, they would go to court, and then they would end up with a conviction for sleeping there, and those were the grounds upon which it was challenged. So I think there could be a literal reading that says you can't prohibit people from sleeping anywhere, but really the crux of it was, you can't convict someone, you can't saddle someone with a criminal history for sleeping in a public park. So you can sleep in a public park, the police just can't cite you for it if that distinction makes sense. So the issue was not the sleeping in the park, it was the ultimate issue was law enforcement issuing them a citation to appear in court. So. How about targeting by mental health organizations? Crickets. Have a good night, everybody. You too, Casey. Thank you, Casey. By the way, I'd love to know how much your business Washington County actually does for you. That's a good question. Washington County Mental Health. To be continued, I'm sure. Probably. All right, but yes. Oh, you'll hear from me again. I think ultimately the court said you can't, you can't turn people into misdemeanants for sleeping in a public place. So the communities were prohibited from having ordinances and convicts. And enforcing the ordinances, exactly. That was the issue. The conviction was the issue. But they could say. Move along. Park closed. Right, they could say park is closed, they can rouse you and say move along, but they cannot convict you and label you a misdemeanant based on that. Yeah, I guess I'm also curious, I think, to hear from parks and maybe from the police how park curfews are currently enforced or how they could practically be enforced. I think that there's a lot, you know, I agree in principle that it makes sense to have general standards for public parks. I hesitate to expand regulation into public parks that aren't currently under curfews without checking in and seeing if we can practically enforce that and what the consequences would be. I also think that some of these particular items, especially under Summer Street Park, feel kind of like you said, Ashley, redundant to state law, or just I'm not quite sure they're necessary. Why do we call out littering specifically in Summer Street Park littering is a problem everywhere. And I don't think we need that, for example. Done. Well, Summer Street Park has more restrictions on games than you've seen the park. And it was also, a land was given by the neighborhood owners. So I think there seemed to be restriction of what the neighborhood wanted that park to be. I don't know if that was before your time, Bill. Yeah, it's been there as long as I've been here. Yeah, so that park is right there among the houses. And so it does have some heavier restrictions than others, Summer. But I also want to bring up last evening at the Parks Commission, two women talked about the problem of abusive language of people sleeping in the park. And when they go for their morning run, they have to go buy these three or four males, it happens to be in this case, and how uncomfortable it is for them. And they have complained and they complained again. And unfortunately, they're standing with their cell phone to call the police, but my understanding is they would come and if indeed she got them when the park was closed, she's coming by where they're just waking up in the morning run. So I know there has been some conflicts with people and people sleeping in the parks. It's not resolved. Any follow-up thoughts on that? Okay, so other thoughts on this section? I mean, so one possibility right is that we're gonna have one section for all parks and then some subsections for specific parks. Not sure, yeah. I'll take on doing that and circulating it. Should we ask the Parks Commission and the park staff and the tree staff to take a little look at the issues we've raised? They may want to even attend the next meeting. I think that'd be good. Yeah, definitely. It would be good to ask them about what they thought about grouping them all. Right. To. Yeah. The only other thing that I would add to that section, I know that it's a neighborhood park, but team sports by children over the age of 10 are prohibited. Like, I have worked with a lot of kids. Touch for the ball. I've worked with a lot of kids in my career and I feel like if kids are outside doing this kind of stuff, that's great. And I want to encourage that and I don't want to label an 11-year-old who dare engage in a group sport in Summer Street Park to like, Yeah. It just feels like a very arbitrary distinction. The difference between 10 and 11, to me the difference between 10 and 12, the difference between eight and 11. I mean, it just, I understand that it's a community park, but I just feel like telling kids who are over 10, like, sorry, you got to go to another park to play is not really. I also don't really know what hardball is. It sounds like, So it's baseball with a hardball as opposed to wiffleball or something. But wait, doesn't it have a wide-angle baseball? I don't know. Well, because you can, remember they used to have a softer baseball, I don't know. Yes, but if you're 11 and playing with that. Jack, did you have something? It's possible, you know, this is the little park that Ben Scuch donated in their front yard. It's very possible that there were some kids with conditions attached to the donation of land to the city that are incorporated in this. And I don't know that, but it seems like we should find that out. I wondered that as well. And it's really pretty small area. It's purposely, they planted trees, so you can't do some of the heavier things. You can climb the trees, but you can't do the kind of sports. The idea is actually preschools, young kids, park for young kids. So I just, I want to, I'm looking at the, I don't know, I'm just looking at the city website right now about Summer Street Park. And it says no smoking in any Montpellier Park. Yes. It then says no fires, comma team sports for people over 11 years old. Oh, that's a mistake. Oh, so there's that gray area of future. 10 and 11. And, but the way it reads like no fires for people over 11 years old, that also probably is not the intended. What's the straight thing? Sure, trust me, you're old for the fire. What could go wrong? When they're young, how big a fire could they make? I mean, that's right there. I mean, we didn't start the fire. I mean, so my head goes towards just what was the intent and like, do they really mean no team sports? And I mean, maybe it's in the language of the provision of the donation and we should find that out. And if it is, then fine. But I mean, my head obviously goes to ultimate, probably not okay. Soccer, team sport, probably not okay, but like teams, and I get that because there are things that might be flying and are risked to yelling. Yeah, that's fair, risk to windows. Part of it was the neighborhood accepting putting this park there. Oh, okay. I think there was some compromise. It doesn't mean that it's right or legal or whatever, but it really took some convincing. I mean, go and see this park. I mean, I used it a lot with my granddaughter when she was younger. It's a sweet little space. It's not so much a park as a space with a couple of benches. But once you got over 10, you couldn't play your team sports there anymore. No. Yeah. I feel like if there's a team of 11-year-olds playing chess in the park, I want to support that endeavor however I can. Chess is an individual. I've never seen anyone removed. You're on the chess team? Yeah, but you're still playing an individual game. And it's arguably not a sport. My suggestion is that if we ask parks and trees to comment and come to our next meeting, ask them to think about this too. Right. Okay. That would be great. Okay, anything else in this section? Again, we have this potentially redundant section about disturbing the peace, but that might be something that, if we want to have language there, maybe it's in the all parks section. I do wonder if Blanchard Park needs any more specific. Probably not. It's probably fine with whatever provisions are applicable to all parks, but something to think about as well. Okay, anything else? Okay, so I'm going to officially close the public hearing. And on to the winter ban amendment for Sibley Ave and Prospect Street. So I think you've got the information about this. We talked about it last week. Just a couple of sections we want to add that have been problems in the past. So we really should have caught this a little bit earlier, but Sibley Ave from mean street, excuse me, Berry Street to college, that steep section that's narrow. And when you get snow banks, it gets crowded. So it's difficult to get vehicles through. And then there's one section, and I believe it was sent out to you, an additional section of Prospect Street. I don't have it right in front of me. I'm looking for it. 35 Prospect to 51. Thank you. That section. So we're recommending that we amend the order. We can call special bans at times, but our ordinance actually does list all the places where they're spanned all the time. Spanned all the time during the winter. And so the proposal is to add these sections of the street to the, it's all the time. All winter, yeah. Not all the time, but all winter. Sorry, all winter, yes, thank you. Ashley, go ahead. Do we know if the properties that these, that this would impact the most, have they received notice? And do we know how many of those are apartments and how many, like, I'm assuming that's not on Sibley, it's like two or three spots that it would take up. And it is really rough to have parking there. I appreciate that. But I also know that those are apartments that are right there. And I used to live on that on a very street and I know that a lot of folks rely on street parking. And so I just, I wanna be mindful that, at least those buildings on Sibley are apartment buildings and they're multi-unit apartment buildings and I don't know if they have parking. Did we notice, folks? I'm not sure, I thought we were going to, but we'll have to confirm that. I'll have to confirm, but I'm pretty sure they handed out flyers letting folks know. Right, but we'll get back to you. That was the plan, but I can't tell you. And the types of housing we can check in on. You're right though, I mean, certainly on Sibley, I counted in the next four buildings and they are at least three of them are multi-unit. Since this is an amendment to an ordinance, and this is the first public hearing on this, so it's not gonna change overnight anyway, right? So I'm gonna officially open the public hearing on this and it's not listed. And it wasn't listed as, it wasn't listed as a public hearing, so can we actually call it that? It's an ordinance amendment. I'm just saying, can we say it's a first public hearing when we didn't have a public hearing? So we can do that. We can, we can warn it for this meeting first public hearing and then we can be certain that notice was provided, yeah. Okay. I think every film are comfortable with that. And we'll have the first public, technically the first public hearing in the next meeting. Okay. I mean, these are very narrow sections of road, so I mean, I get it, but I think it's good to have all that information. You can also make sure that the flyers say at this time so those folks who will be impacted will know. Great. Oh, Glenn. I can say that I live on Prospect Street, so I know a little bit about the situation there. And I've been talking with some of my neighbors about this proposed change and I think they're likely to come to public hearing or at least to share some opinions. Most of the buildings on Prospect Street are single family and or have off street parking, but there are a couple in this section that are multi-family and parking is always tight. I think that one of the questions that my neighbors asked me to bring was whether we might be able to have one more small open parking zone through the winter down at the base of Prospect Street, kind of between numbers one and two, because there the road is relatively wide. Also, there are a couple of bulb outs further up the road that are often used for snow storage. And I am sure that the Plough teams appreciate them being there for snow storage, but if they could be used for parking, I think that because I mean, absolutely, Prospect Street gets very narrow and I know that emergency vehicles might have trouble getting through if we don't do something like this in some stretches. And as you say, Ashley, apartments don't always have enough parking and we wanna try not to impact that. Especially if you're already locked into a lease with the understanding that on street parking was what there was and there's only a ban certain times. Okay, so if there's nothing else on this item for now, so we'll take that up again next time. Do you need a motion to set the first public hearing? Oh, okay, but we should just do it too, in a way. Okay, if you don't need a motion, fine, but if you do it. Okay, we'll do it. Great, all right, so that'll be coming up then. All right, so on to council reports. I've just gotten in this habit of calling on Donna first, but if you don't wanna go first, that's fine. Go for it. Unless you wanna go, Lauren. All right, so Park Commission met last evening and had a very long meeting about Mamba, Mamba to your area mountain bike association. They approved some additional bike paths. Unfortunately, I only have one map here, but these are gonna be online soon. See all that yellow, orange. So there're gonna be some additional bike paths for winter bikes on the North Branch. They did not approve the extension into Hovert yet. That's gonna be a discussion for the next meeting, but they are looking at and considering doing the letting bikes be on the roadways in Hovert. And these are the fat wheeled bikes particularly for winter. So, and the other thing, they also made a proposal to have some pump stations. They haven't decided locations, but they're gonna be coming back to the Parks Commission for that also. Lots of activity with winter bikes. All right, you don't have too much. Unfortunately, on Saturday, I was telling Glenn, who's just myself in a very poor company, so I'm gonna give it another round at Rabble Rouser, one o'clock this Saturday. Other thing I'd say is I think other people have had a chance to sit down with Lisa Maxwell. I think she's excellent at bringing a lot of good ideas to town, so make sure you get a couple of coffeeers up on her over at MDC. Thanks. I have had the pleasure of walking the Sibui Nebi path, am I pronouncing that right this time? Sort of? Yeah, yeah. A couple of times. And I wanna report, if anyone hasn't been through there yet, it is being heavily used and it's great. Kate and I took a walk on the later end of a not great weather day and we saw probably 30 people and 15 dogs. And really fantastic. I've also walked through the middle of town stretch of path over the new pedestrian bridge over the North Branch and down past the new transit center. That stretch is also being heavily used and really cheerful and beautiful. I think that we should make sure that it's on the list of pedestrian paths to be plowed and salted because it's getting pretty treacherous and it feels like it is right in the middle of the city. I know that every stretch of more sidewalk to be plowed and salted is more work and I appreciate that. But I think that people are gonna be using this stretch on foot in street shoes all the time regardless and we might as well clear it for them, I think. And I'll be at baguitos tomorrow morning, 8.30 and 9.30. Thanks. Ashley. I was at an event Saturday night for the Democratic Party and there was a good representation of organized labor there and many people, including many of the people who came and testified here but also other labor representatives came up to me and they were very excited and appreciative about our passage of the responsible employer ordinance and they're planning on using it to go out to other cities and say, my pillar did it, you guys should be able to do it too. So we got a lot of appreciation and I wanna share that with you all and that's all I've got. Okay. I just wanted to one more time thank everyone for the Social and Economic Justice Advisory Committee really excited to come back to you all with some good work and as we're able to hire a consultant and start a really robust and professional kind of engagement with the community. So look forward to that and just thank you again. Super. So I announced today that I am gonna be running for mayor again for a second term so that is out there now, which is great, sort of an official capacity. Just so you're aware what I said were my priorities were environmental stewardship, sustainable infrastructure and I mentioned specifically the possibility of reviving the capital area neighborhoods. And so I'm hoping that we can have some conversations about that potentially upcoming, perhaps in this upcoming budget, but we'll see. So just wanted to one you all just at least be aware of that and in addition to those things again, just so you know where my head is at, I've been thinking a lot lately about issue of food security and the idea that I don't know that there's any, well I don't know. I know there is and maybe there maybe was a group called the Central Vermont Food Systems Council and I don't know what they're up to and if they're still around so I'm hoping to check into that but just in the face of climate change in terms of being prepared, just having somebody who's thinking about food systems for Central Vermont I think would be a wise thing and I don't necessarily wanna wait for the state to be thinking about it. Not that we have a lot of resources necessarily to run it ourselves, but just where are we at? What are the assets? What are the gaps? I think there's some interesting questions there. So there's that and then I'm finally getting myself organized to have office hours and finally having a more regular schedule which is great. So I'm gonna be aiming to have office hours basically Tuesdays and Fridays, 3.30 to 5.00 p.m. starting December 6th. So I'll be here in my office city hall during those times happy to chat with anybody about anything that's on their minds. So just wanna make people aware of that and that is it for me. Thank you, John. Okay. So if I talk for more than 10 minutes. What's writing on this? Nothing, nothing. Actually, I don't actually have that much as reminder that city hall will be closed on Thursday and Friday next week for the holiday. Wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving. We are continuing to spend all our time interviewing it seems like. And talk to some excellent candidates. So I don't know if we can think of anything else specific to I mean we've touched on most of the things. So I'll leave it at that so we can hit our deadline. Fair enough. Okay, well I think that is all of our business. So without objection we'll consider the meeting adjourned at 8.51.