 to order this meeting of the Wyniewski City Council. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance led by Councillor Bryn Oakley. Pleasure to be by joining us to talk about the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Okay, agenda review is next. Any concerns, questions about the border? All right. Moving on to public comment. I don't believe we have any in the room this evening. Let's check the Zoom real quick. Okay, we do have some attendees virtually. So if you are attending via Zoom, public comment is a chance to speak to a topic that is not included on tonight's agenda. If you're here for something on the agenda, please wait until we get to that item. If you are here to speak to something that is not included in tonight's agenda, please use the raise hand feature or the chat and let us know. Seeing no comment, we'll move to the consent agenda. We have our liquor control and council minutes from July 18th, payroll warrant and accounts payable warrants, a block party event permit application, the appointment of Bruce Wilson as an alternate to the Inclusion and Belonging Commission and our, what is it, state revolving room fund? I can't remember what SRF is, John. State revolving one. Yes, yes, representative. Are there any questions, concerns about any items on the consent agenda? No. Any questions from the public? Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries, thank you. So we are moving on to council reports. Aurora, let's start with you. All right, so we had a shift in our first Inclusion and Belonging Commission meeting. It is now going to be this Thursday. It should be at 6 p.m. So hopefully then we'll establish whether that's gonna be our regular time or if there's gonna be something different. We just wanna make sure it's really important meeting to make sure people are assigned to the commissions that they want to as well as kind of thinking about how the commission wants to function. So we wanna make sure everyone's there for that. So we shifted the time. We didn't end up, we're not having a safe, healthy, connected people meeting at on our usual Tuesday. That would be tomorrow, but we are going to have it instead on the 23rd. And that will be revealing something that's on our agenda for tonight, the COVID nonprofit recovery grants. Can I ask a question about that? Sure. So for the Inclusion and Belonging Commission, will this be the first meeting this week? Yes. Are you anticipating selecting a chair? Yes. And it will. If we decide, yes. It's on the agenda. Yes, it is definitely on the agenda. And is there, do you know if members of the group have been invited to the meeting on Monday, the 15th? We discussed that and wanted to leave it to the commission itself to decide how they wanna engage. Yeah, but I'll definitely make sure that's also on the agenda. Just to get like at least a week's notice that it's happening. This is what I want to thank you for. And you're? I do not have any updates at this point in time. The Infrastructure Commission is not meeting this month because we are having a larger commission, cross commission meeting on Monday the 15th. So we are postponing our meeting. Well, we're canceling our August meeting, but we will be meeting on the third Thursday of the month in September. Great. I mentioned at a previous meeting that I had been invited to participate in the search committee for the airport director for refilling that role in Burlington. Those interviews have begun and they're continuing this week. The goal of the search committee that I'm participating in is to advance some number of finalists to the Burlington mayor. Elaine and I also had a meeting with the superintendent and the president of the school board. We discussed shared work from the recommendations in the equity audit, you know, one of those being how our organizations can better collaborate, as well as the engagement strategy that we talked about here and trying to align that with what the school is doing. More to come on that October 17th, sometime in October, we decided we're gonna try to do a joint meeting. Also, there'll be more information about that. To help with that connection building. And I'll pass it to you, tennis. Thank you. My update from the downtown Winooski board is actually an agenda item tonight, the Winooski Pride event. So I'll just wait for that. You just reminded me. So Councillor Duncan is not here this evening, but he did send to me his update. He said the housing trust fund has been open for applications. The housing commission met on July 25th to review the evaluation criteria and discuss options for promotion review. They subsequently met on August one to further discuss plans for rolling out the fund. In addition to general outreach to the community, each program will be promoted in specific ways. Down payment assistance will primarily be promoted through lenders. Housing improvement will be communicated through the rental registry program and with partners, as well as more general outreach. The more substantial construction rehabilitation program will be promoted in the coming months to our larger housing partners. All right, I will turn it over to Alina for our city updates. Thank you. So the statewide primary election is tomorrow. Voting is 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the Winooski Senior Center which is at 123 Barla Street. You can go to winooskivt.gov slash vote for details. We'll call 802-655-6410. The airport commission met on August 3rd. At this meeting, they made recommendations to the Burlington Board of Finance and City Council to accept the Federal Aviation Administration grant funding and award contracts related to an environmental assessment, passenger jet bridge for gate 12 at the new terminal integration project, phase one of the residential sound insulation program and noise exposure map update. The airport commission also received a brief update on the director of aviation search which of course the mayor's reported out on. And the next meeting is on September 12th. That's all for city updates. That is all. All right. So we are on to a public hearing for the unified land use and development regulation amendments which Eric will introduce. Yes, thank you very much. We are here tonight to open a public hearing on the proposed amendments to the unified land use and development regulations that apply to priority housing that was reviewed at your last meeting on July 18th. At that meeting, there were several comments from Deputy Mayor Duncan about adding some language to clarify how affordability would be calculated. Based on those comments, the section E was added back into the draft to specifically clarify that the number of bedrooms will establish the household, sorry, the affordability rather than the size of the household. This was reviewed by the planning commission. The report was reviewed by the planning commission at a special meeting that they held on the 28th of July. They did reapprove the report as is included in your agenda packet tonight. So the purpose of this agenda item anyway is to open the hearing, take public comments. There is another item on the agenda later if you so choose to approve these amendments. You can also choose to hold additional hearings or make any changes that you see fit. Any public attendees who have comment or question about these draft amendments for priority housing incentives? Did you already open the hearing? No. Thank you, Lane. A public hearing has been noticed for the consideration of our unified land use and development regulation amendments, draft amendments related to priority housing. At this time, I'd like to open the public hearing. If there's anyone here in attendance from the public who has questions or comments about our draft amendments, please use the raise hand feature or the chat to let me know. I do believe that several of these attendees are here as guests for other items. All right, I see one hand raised. Paul, please bring our guest over and if you could please introduce yourself before speaking. Oh, can you hear us? Sir, did you raise your hand for public, for comment on the hearing? Can you hear us? Padamangar, are you here with us? Can you hear us? Paul, do you, are you, it looks like he's unmuted. Do you know if he is? Yeah, there's a, there's a chance that Padam's mic might not be working. Padam, can you hear us okay? His volume might be down too. We can come back to Padam if there's other, other comments at this time. Anyone else have a question or comment about the priority housing incentive draft amendments? No. Padam, please use the raise hand or chat feature again if you still wish to speak. Given we have other items with guests coming, I think we'll hold our, I need to make that we have until the approval item comes up. So at this time, I would like to close the public hearing, seeing no additional comment. We'll move on to the agenda. Great, thank you all very much. Thank you. So we are onto our regular items. Item A, this is up for discussion or approval. It's a traffic calming manual and policy update. Welcome. So I'm going to give an intro on this item. And then I also have Greg Goya from StandTech who's a consultant. The RPC may also be joining us, joining us. I don't see him in the chat or the panel right now, but Si might also join us here. So this one's been a long time coming, the traffic calming manual. It was a policies priorities item last year. So if you remember, sort of in the deep throws of COVID, we received a lot of community feedback about vehicles traveling down their roads with excessive speeds and concerns. And we realized quickly, we really don't have a formal process for dealing with those situations besides giving everyone a speed bump, which is not great for us operation-wise. So we received a grant from the Chinon County Regional Planning Commission to do this traffic calming manual. They selected StandTech, so Greg has joined us for that. And what this traffic calming manual does is it creates sort of a framework for how we evaluate these requests. And it also lets us be proactive to look at some streets that we think may have some excessive speeds, safety concerns. So in your packet, there are three items. So there's the manual itself, which is it gives an overview of how we evaluate and your requests or how we evaluate streets for traffic calming. And then it covers some of the potential treatments for that. There's also a policy in there, which is basically it's a way to execute this as a formal document. So it points back to the traffic calming manual. And then there's also a sort of a rough draft of a community input form. So that needs some support from Paul to look at how do we make that more accessible to our entire community? But that's just sort of a rough framework for how we're gonna be soliciting some of these requests. But yeah, with that, I'll kick it over to Greg Goyat who can go more in depth with the manual. Great, thanks, John. Can everyone hear me? Sure, yes. All right, great. Great technical difficulty disaster avoided. Thank you. So I just, I'm gonna take the time to spin through the traffic calming manual with those in attendance today. My name is Greg Goyat, I'm with Stantec. Our office is located in South Burlington. And we are a consulting firm specializing in transportation and water resources here locally. And we had the opportunity to work closely with the city on this traffic calming manual. One important thing to note is that this isn't just a cookie cutter manual that was developed. It was developed specifically for the city of Winooski and included a collaboration with both John and Eric on the development of this manual, as well as the Chittin County Regional Planning Commission. And you'll see that as we kind of spin through this manual. So I'll share my screen now. It looks like I have a note that says host disabled participant screen sharing. Greg, I'm gonna upgrade you here, just a sec. Okay, thanks. So I'll spin through the manual briefly and then I guess we'll open it up to any questions that anybody in attendance has. And then we'll be all set. So I think I can share now. I can't, perfect. Okay, can you all see that? Yep. All right, great. So the manual, what does it contain? It contains an introduction section. And this section is for the community to understand what the goals and objectives of the program are and also defines what is and what is not traffic calming. I think many people in their minds have an idea of what traffic calming is. And some people think of stop signs as traffic calming or enforcement as a measure of traffic calming. The important thing to think about with traffic calming is that there are four essential elements. And those are described in the manual right here on the right. And those key elements are the reduction of automobile speeds and or volume through the use of physical measures which is an important consideration as we move forward here to improve quality of life in residential and commercial areas and increase the safety of pedestrians and bicyclists as well as motorists as well. I think that goes without saying. And then it goes on to describe what is not traffic calming. So that when the city does receive a concern from the community, they can pretty easily put it in a bucket of, is this a traffic calming concern or is this a different concern? And if it is a traffic calming concern then this process is something that the city will use to evaluate that. Why is traffic calming important? The graphic here on the left page, page one kind of shows why it's important. As vehicle speeds increase, the potential for injury or fatality of peds and bicyclists increase as well. This is why I've preached to my children over the years. Never assume a vehicle is going to stop for you if you're in a crosswalk or if you're in a bike or even if you're driving because the consequence is vehicle versus pedestrian bicyclist, the vehicle always is going to win. And so reducing vehicle speeds is important in terms of safety and making the community more walkable and bikeable. And you can see this graphic on the top right here. As vehicles are driving faster, that motorist that's behind the wheel, they have a fairly narrow cone of vision as well. The faster they travel the less they can see on the periphery. And when you travel slower, you can see more in the periphery, which kind of highlights the importance of that in an urban area where there's a lot of activity happening. And then chapter two describes what is the traffic calming evaluation process? And the process basically is this and it's summarized in a flow chart here on page two in this section, or section two on page 13. And the first thing that happens is a problem is reported by the community. And then it's a very subjective process in terms of how that problem is evaluated. If that problem is due to speed crashes or volume of heavy trucks as determined by the Department of Public Works, then it is eligible for a traffic calming assessment where field review is completed. And that field review can consist of reviewing available data on speed crashes or truck volumes. And if that data isn't available, then collecting that data through speed study or taking volume measurements of the number of trucks on those streets. So, and there are thresholds that need to be met in order for a street to be eligible for traffic calming. And those thresholds are clearly described on page 14 of the manual. So if the issue meets one of those thresholds, then it moves into the next phase of selection where traffic calming options for that street are evaluated and selected by DPW. And then those will be presented at a traffic calming, those traffic calming measures would be presented at a regularly scheduled public meeting. And assuming that traffic calming gets funding as prioritized and gets funding, then it would be implemented through construction of those measures. So there's also, you know, if those thresholds aren't met, then traffic calming isn't warranted for that particular street. And then there's a three year grace period where, you know, if that concern is noted again, it won't be considered for three years. And unless there is a noticeable development of traffic patterns that emerge. So that, you know, it provides the city with, you know, they don't get inundated of requests for the same street over and over again because this is a very data driven and subjective process. I'm sorry, objective process. So on to the rest of the manual, why this is, you know, catered towards the city of Inuski, the Inuski's transportation master plan defines four street types. And those are collector streets, neighborhood streets, gateway streets and truck routes. And a mapping of those streets is noted in the manual and a description of what those types of streets are is also included. And if traffic calming is warranted, then we get to chapter three where DPW can select a toolbox of, from a toolbox of traffic calming treatments that can be implemented on any particular street that warrants traffic calming. And, you know, multiple of these measures could be installed on one street. It's not a one size fits all approach. So it provides that toolbox where DPW staff can take a look and see what's most appropriate for the type of street. And then the remainder of the manual describes what these types of treatments are and where they're most appropriate, given speed, traffic and volume, the street type. And it provides an estimate range of costs for these measures. So that can be evaluated in selection as well, depending on what the city's budget is. And it talks about some of the advantages and disadvantages of these treatments. So city DPW staff can use some judgment in terms of what's most appropriate for the street. Without diving too deep into the weeds on the details of these, you can, if you spin through the manual, you can see the various measures that are in the toolkit. And then it talks about other forms of traffic calming that are not true traffic calming measures, but could be used by the community to attempt to slow down speeds, including increased law enforcement, parking conversion and or street events. And those are described in the manual. And then there are a couple of pilot projects to help people that may be using this manual, just to understand how these measures could be used on a street if it warranted traffic calming and two streets within the city were selected. And these were not evaluated in terms of the thresholds, but say for instance, they did meet one of these thresholds, this is what could be possible on those streets just to give people an idea of how this manual could be applied. And lastly, there's a section on resources and contacts and standards and references pertaining to traffic calming that informed the manual. And that summarizes it. So at this point in time, unless John has anything else to add, I think we can open up the questions. Yeah, just one quick note. So I should point out that so the manual, the intent of the manual is city-wide streets and this manual does exclude the gateways because we've done specific scoping studies for each of the gateways with the exception of Mallets Bay which is scheduled for next season. We're gonna put a grant in for that. So Main Street, obviously that has the Main Street project. So there's a lot of traffic calming within that project, same with East Island, that whole gateway corridor. And then Mallets Bay would be a similar scenario where we look at traffic calming throughout that quarter. So this is for all streets with the exception of gateways. So the collectors and local streets. The other note in here, as I mentioned to Greg and I thank you Mayor for pointing out the one truck route is incorrect on the map. It shows it going down, I believe Elm. It should go down Northwest and then down to Elm. So there's one typo on that map. So that's it. Yeah, so open up to any questions. Good luck to be in. All right, a few things. So maybe somebody else wants to go first. This might be jumping ahead a little bit, but I'm interested in the citizen input form. I have already had a number of residents reach out about traffic calming issues. And I've been waiting for this. Elaine had told me it was coming. So I'm excited for that. So I was just wondering what you think the approach would be for getting that out to citizens and if there's gonna be like public comments or a period or anything like that. Yeah, we'll work with Paul to see what is sort of the appropriate roll up or something like this. We've already started having that discussion. So I'm sure it'll be somewhere, you know, social media output and website and potentially from which forum. So whatever he feels is appropriate, we'll start from that message out. But after we get all the feedback and get it finalized and make sure it's ready for press. Also, we'll be updating the language from citizen to community or just input form. Perfect, thank you. When you can get started. All right. I'm curious about some of the logistics. So it says that there's three years between review. How will the community know when submittals been made and when they were denied? So it'll live on our parking slash traffic webpage. Burlington sort of has a similar webpage that lists like when the street was evaluated, what the termination was. We do, similar to what we do with other streets where there's a change in like on street parking or something like that, we'll have a public meeting on site and advertise it. And usually there's that one neighbor that knows everyone. And so that's who we typically try to use to round up the rest of neighbors and then put outdoor hangers and just let them know, hey, we want to have a public meeting on the street, walk the street, talk with neighbors, get feedback, and then hopefully get an email distribution list that we can submit back what our findings are. So I think those are probably the two primary ways to keep in touch and let folks know what's happening. So when I'm on my street, I'd say almost all of my adjacent property owners have turned over within the last five to seven years and a couple of homes more than once. So how will they know whether or not a complaint or a request has been made already? We would probably, door hangers work best usually, so we would put flyers in the doors with information on what's happening on the street and who the contact is if we don't have a contact for that household. So there won't be a repository or any type of, I haven't been to the Burlington webpage to know what that looks like, but does it have something where folks can see? I can look up your string and see if it works. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is there a request that have come in? In theory, all the streets that have been evaluated are gonna be on that list. So you'll see Franklin Street and it'll say, it'll give when it was reviewed what the termination was and it'll just live on that webpage if someone wants to look it up online. Because it seems like if the clock is three years, it's pretty important to know when an assessment was last made. Yep, yeah. And to mitigate demand on the staff, it would help probably if that lives somewhere online. Yeah, at least. Yeah, no, and it's easy, because you're two, I might forget when we did that street or whatever, what the details were. The idea would be to have that repository on the webpage with any of the reference documents, like a PDF to show what was looked at, what the data was. Kind of building on that, say a decision was made that it doesn't warrant traffic calming, is there, there's no mention in here of whether or not there's like an appeal process? I don't believe so. Greg, I don't know if you can help with that. I don't believe there's an appeal process. There is no appeal process built in currently. And those thresholds were carefully evaluated with the city team. And I can talk a little bit more about what those thresholds are. And perhaps over time, as this process sinks in, the city can reevaluate those thresholds and still determine if they're appropriate or if they need to adjust them. But the thresholds are based on data and it's meant to be objective, right? So if the thresholds aren't met, then traffic calming isn't warranted. It takes a little of the subjectivity out of it. So there's the speed warrant. So if a speech study is conducted and the 85th percentile speed is determined to be either 10 miles per hour above the speed limit for collector streets or five miles an hour over for neighborhood streets, then traffic calming is warranted. For the safety warrant, it's all about recorded crashes, looking at police records, the Vermont Strait Crash Database as well. And if there are 10 or more property damage only crashes or two or more crashes that involve injury or one crash that involves a fatality, the threshold is met. That's for motor vehicle crashes, crashes between motor vehicles. For bicycles and pedestrian crashes, that threshold is much lower. If there's one or more injury or fatality involved with a bicycle, pedestrian crash, then that threshold is met. And then the heavy truck warrant is based on heavy truck volume. If it does exceed 4% heavy trucks or more, then that could potentially warrant traffic calming as well. So the thresholds were meant to be fairly objective. We didn't consider an appeal process in this manual just because we thought the thresholds were reasonable and very objective. And it would be clear on whether or not it would be warranted or not. Yeah, and I would add, I mean, it would put you all sort of in an awkward position too. If these are, for the most part, it's pretty raw data. It's not an evaluation of data. It's crashes, traffic counts, speed, evaluations, not like we're interpreting. It's just raw data. So if you could have someone, if there was that process, you could have someone come here and say, I know it doesn't meet this, but I still want it. I believe everyone would get appealed. Yeah, right? It's very emotional when it comes to traffic calming. So I think some of that is designed to try to take, as Greg mentioned, make it more objective versus emotional. It might help to mention that there's no appeal process. Decisions are final. Good point. Some other things that I was thinking about. So there are some cost estimates with types of traffic calming. From when an assessment is made to when what's reasonable timeframe for it to go in, how is that factored into the budget process, the budget cycle? Yeah, it's tricky, because each street is going to be unique because it's going to depend on when we think we're going to resurface that street or do any major construction. So I, you know, if we would also be looking at low-cost temporary options too. So for example, you've probably seen some of this around even in Burlington where instead of building out new curb, you put in some planter ballards or things like that. What that allows is neighbors in there to see what it looks like without spending the money first and then go back and hey, is everyone happy with this? Make sure that there's no issues. I mean, there's been a few instances where not in Manuski, but I've heard in other communities where speed humps are installed and people want them. And then when they get installed, they hate them, they want them removed. So that's probably where we would start with so many streets if we're not looking to resurface or do any major curb work is in the interim do a low-cost option. And then once we get into that year where we're surfacing or reconstructing, build that into the capital budget to do some of that additional curb work or speed humps are relatively inexpensive when you do them in-house. That's a pretty cheap one. When we get into realigning curves, that's where it gets more expensive. Let me see if I had anything else. I guess I don't have anything else to moment. Similar to Consular NRI having to have some recommendations for the feedback form or the request form. But the three-year timeline this makes me a little uneasy outside of that. I don't have anything to say. I have some questions. Looking at these intervention, the treatment options, it looks like the raised intersection is high-cost but has limited impact beyond the actual intersection. Why even keep this as an option? Like what is the value it's adding? Good question. Greg, do you wanna chime in on any raised intersections you've done? Yeah, raised intersections are, they're not for every intersection. Of course, it's just one of the tools in the toolkit. Why should they be done? If you have a- Why limit our options if they're not, they don't sound high-value for the cost. They're high-value where you have a lot of pedestrian activity. So again, if you really wanna prioritize pedestrian movement and put them front-center, then it's a good option. Okay. And then the cycling installation in here is surprisingly expensive. Like it's more expensive than roundabout and curbing and stuff. This is clearly not just a lane diet and roadstriping, right? Like what exactly is being offered in that option? My sense is that the picture doesn't represent the actual treatment, which we maybe should adjust. I think, Greg, correct me if I'm wrong, that's probably the expense of 89 to 133,000 per mile could be separated bike lane with some sort of barrier curbing or something like that is what I think. Yeah, that's more appropriate for the cost range there. And you're right, the graphic probably does not. If you're just re-striping a bike lane, it's certainly not that cost. But if you're widening the road to add in additional space for bicyclists or adding some vertical element like a curb or a barrier like John mentioned, that's where you get the cost. So that's something I think could probably use a little clarification in the manual. Yeah, because then it's not clear to me if this is suggesting that just striping in a bike lane that didn't exist before is a useful treatment or only like adding a separate one in. Yeah, both can be useful treatments. It's just, I think we need a little more clarity in terms of just re-striping for a bike lane is certainly a very low cost option. And I think we need to differentiate between the two. Okay, then the last thing I wanna ask about is how you come to the number of 48 hours of data collection when you're investigating one request? I think in the evaluation part, it says if like the data isn't already existing, you would monitor volume or speed or what it would have you for 48 hours. So I wonder what that timeline is based on. Oh, for conducting the speech study? Yeah. Yeah, so that's just my understanding is that's a typical duration of how long you would wanna collect speeds on a street just so you can capture enough data to understand, get a full range of vehicles using that street all hours a day, different times a day over enough period of time so you can collect enough data. So that data can be collected by stationary means, two counts, so it's a fairly low lift to do that. And there are some resources that may be available to the city to collect that data if it's not already available. Okay, I mean like my initial reaction was that seems too short, but if that's your standard practice, that's fine with me. Yeah, if we saw, you know, if there was an anomaly between the two, like within that period we would extend the collection time. If we saw pretty extreme results over that 48 hours, we would do a little bit more. I mean the streets, the local streets that we'd be looking at, I mean we would accept, we would expect to see sort of a uniform traffic count speeds for that area, so. And is this data collected during the work week? I believe it will depend on the street, but yeah, typically we'd be looking at during the work week. Because that's not articulated in the draft. Yeah, and obviously the school traffic is also a consideration, so we have to take that into account like school season versus non-school season. So yeah, there's a few things that we have to look at when we're doing these studies to make sure we're capturing sort of the worst case scenarios. Are there any questions from members of the public? You can use the chat or raise hand feature. If you have questions about the traffic calming policy. Oh, I saw a few. There's a chat going on about a different topic. Okay. Is there any? I have one more question. Sure. About, so obviously we're gonna have quite a few capital projects that get underway between Main Street, La Fountain, among others. How does the traffic calming draft, I didn't really see where it takes into account some of those multi-year but temporary projects or what will be pretty significant influencers and how traffic moves through the city. Yeah, so we'll have to start. Oh, you're saying like the Main Street, how Main Street and like some of these other projects impact. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a fair point. That is something that when we're looking at that three-year window, it was originally five and then we truncate to three because we knew that Main Street could impact some of these side streets once that started going. So that is one way it sort of impacted how we looked at it in this manual. Are there things that are, and then I guess that's a separate thing, like so within the capital project, you are managing redirection of traffic and traffic calming so that it doesn't need to be captured in here, is that? Yeah, so sort of for example, like Main Street project once that gets moving, there will be temporary traffic detours, things like that. We obviously wouldn't be doing any sort of traffic calming collection on those streets during those detours because that would skew results pretty heavily. So yeah, yeah, it'll be, we'll obviously be reviewing that during that construction. So that's, I mean, Main Street's the only one that really is gonna be coming for. LaFount is, that's years and years off. We have to budget for that, but Main Street's the big one. So that'll definitely impact Weaver and on the side some of those shortcut routes that people take. I only wonder if it's worth mentioning in the draft, like capital, large capital projects will have their own traffic pattern, traffic calming efforts that are defined within that separate effort, just so you don't feel like it needs to be captured here but it at least addresses that. Yeah, that's a good point. Well, I think there's a bigger question of like, this doesn't address implementation and I don't think it's meant to. But like, should there be a statement of some of what you've shared tonight of like, we probably will start with shorter term. We have to work this into a longer term planning and then what you were just raising up, like some sort of paragraph about it. I wonder if that might be some things that rather going into the manual, especially because it might shift through the years might be part of the form. I agree, yeah. So people see like, this is not a demanded receive. Yeah, it may be best and maybe it lives in the policy that actually gets approved by you all, which we can take back and modify that versus trying to fit it into the manual. The policy we control, you know, we don't have to have stand tech to revise that wordcraft that we can do that in the policy itself and make that, make those decisions. So maybe what I do then is revise the policy for you all with some of these items and see how that looks. Yeah, and I think for the manual, we just need the truck route corrected and then some clarity in the bike lane section. Is that some right guys? In a lane shared, there was like one other small typo in there too that we'll clean up. Okay. All right. Thank you, Greg, for coming in. Thank you for the work on this. And John here. Great, thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Greg. All right, we will see this. Have a good night. Good night. Thank you. So let's move on to item B. This is on for discussion, ALV and net zero Vermont request. And we have some guests. Oh yeah, you can pull a chair up. Okay. Sorry about that. Hello, and then please introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Deb Sacks and I'm the executive director of net zero Vermont. All right, thank you. It used to be your turn. Welcome. Thank you. I'm also ready to go on, it's a perfect one. I don't like to go on. Again, I'll do myself. My name is Laila I work with the association of Africans living in Vermont. And I'm here together with my colleague, Deb. And she will present and I will be paying us a project role and it's a project that she's unfolding and we are partnering with the dissemination of part of the future project. Okay. Last year we kicked off a project with state funding from MTI, which is mobility and transportation from the state. And we kicked off a project called Walk to Shop. There we launched and we linked up with Irene from ALB because the grant really was focused on engaging diverse populations. We have a PowerPoint presentation, but I'm not sure how to link that and it might be there just for your information. If you email it to me, I can project it. I did email to you the link to it. And I know that you're very busy so we can leave it with you for your information. We also brought a couple of the trolley or the two trolleys for you to actually look at, touch, see and enjoy. We are here to request ARPA funding and we wrote you a memo, which I think was in your panel kit. Yeah. So, just so that you have a little bit of background, NetZero Vermont is a statewide nonprofit and we're committed to sustaining economically vibrant downtowns, people-centered downtowns. Your presentation just beforehand is just very appropriate and this is very complimentary to this as we're looking to encourage and support the walking community, those that don't have a car or have access to a car and those that may not have access to transit in the times that they need, often evenings, weekends or just, oh, you are so good. Sorry, not that good. So if you wanna just put this on to slide, Jill. Up in the corner there, right corner, next to share. I don't know if it'll work that way. There you go. Good, perfect. I'm advanced to the next one. So we're about low-carbon solutions, low-cost and practical solutions and this project is exciting in that it is helping with mobility. It's helping with encouraging people to not take a short car trip and actually engage in more active transportation and more independence. And next slide, please. So if we look at this, the green triangle, this is exactly what we're talking about. It's walking and supporting walking is the biggest energy-saving way you can offset your carbon and your energy use. And we're here because when you see is exactly the kind of community that could benefit. You're dense, you're walkable and you're working hard to support walking and biking. And so this project is a step in that direction and it is improving mobility independence and access to food, which is often a really big problem for people who want to carry things and it's too much to carry to support their family. If you think about getting food and having a backpack or whatever way you're... Yeah, they sometimes have to go to food pantries and you've seen some of the mamas at times and they have stuff on their head and they're carrying it. I don't know how to do that. I've never tried it, but for some strange reason they're able to balance. This is precarious because sometimes maybe I'm jacking ahead but we'll be talking about the sidewalks that has created a conversation about the state of sidewalks and the safety of the person that's walking. So it's a wonderful thing to have this because it carries a lot. I also, I don't want to jump ahead. Oh, you're coming right in there. I feel like one of those informatios that I'm having later in the night, but I'll just bring it over just so you can see how light it is and how practical it is for the communities who are now starting to enjoy it. It's very light. So it is, until you touch it, until you lift it up you don't see how it's sort of a modern style granny cart stylish and why is it that color? So we can see it. So we can see people in the intersection. We could get any color but this color is the safest for people crossing an intersection. Next slide. We're not only engaging, we're not only engaging the diverse communities we're engaging seniors as well. And we're educating about how close you live. And when we look at the map, this is unfortunately of Burlington, if we had Winooski, that circle really engulfs the entire city of Winooski and that is a 15 minute walk. So it might be there are, the diverse community has truly a need because they don't have access to a car often. And when they do, they need to go for large shops and they may not be able to shop where they'd like to go shop which is their community, their neighborhood market. So this project is a nifty way, a practical way to provide. And we do this through pop-up demonstrations at farmers markets. We're invited to AALB to meet with the community and you can see the women here. Last year we placed, I think, 30 to 50 trolleys with the community. And we're prepared to engage further and that's why we're coming to partner with the city if we can. Thanks. So the building where I work is like a one-stop shop for communities that come for various reasons. Thank you so much. And we are kind of well placed because the community families come to us and we are able to talk to them about the benefit of having this and it has spread to the other communities, we don't know about it. It's everything that we provide, yes. And so of course we don't. So we are thinking of knocking on the right doors and see if we can reach more home families or if we can reach out to them. When Irene and I engaged the equity office last year, we were told that about 400 families, 450 families could benefit from a shopping trolley. Next slide. So this brings us to here. And as I noted, there are several residents that don't have access to a car. Many of them only have the option to walk. What we're doing is we're actually improving the efficiency of your existing transportation system. And that means more people walking is utilizing that system more efficiently. As Irene's pointed out to me, which really was striking, the trolley is one piece of this. The trolley actually has helped us engage in a way that is more than just the trolley. It's lifting the voices of the community. It's actually raising them and giving them a voice to come and speak to the city council and others about their transportation needs. We don't only talk about trolleys, we talk about access to the bus. We talk to the bus drivers. We're delighted that GMT has found no problems riding the bus. And in fact, from clients of AALV they've spoke about, we fill our trolley up, we go to Shaw's, we fill our trolley up and we can go home on the bus. So we're offering this practical and affordable tool for basic needs. Our ask, the need being 450 families, our ask is 12,500. I have to say that we're pleased to have a grant from the CCR, a two year grant from the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission who has noted and seen this project of value in engaging Chittenden County and the communities and villages around. It's an urban solution for the villages and towns in Burlington, Richmond, and elsewhere. So how do we plan to distribute these? That's got to come to fruition here. We're starting discussions with Veggie and Go. We're already engaged with the AALV community. We're thinking maybe schools, senior centers and the housing projects, Shamblin Housing, Runuski Housing Authority. We already have engaged Cathedral Square and we're at several of their facilities and the seniors just love these trolleys. We're discounting those to the seniors as well. So that's really, there's more slides that give you more background but that's really in the nutshell. Thank you. I was just hearing about not this specifically but we were doing our ballasting sessions recently and that came up as like, we have some folks accessing the food shelf but they're not actually able to collect everything they need to get home without transportation. I do have a question though. The memo says you're requesting these funds to leverage and match existing walk to shop project funds but then later the math looks like we are just paying outright for these in our community. Like what is the match situation? The match actually does provide, does offer full subsidy for the 277 families. We are getting a subsidy ourselves from the company. They retail for $130 and $90. So we're offering them to the regular public for 40 and 50. The RPC funds do cover the cost of some of the trolleys and what we're trying to do is be able to buy more trolleys. So this funding will leverage the RPC funding. We have to provide a 20% match to them and a cash match. We do have a corporate sponsor from Winooski that is going to provide a full sponsorship for 100 families and that'll span over two years, the two years. And so we just want to reach all of the families. So the 12,500 would buy 277 and then this other money is coming into play to get you to the 450 that you are targeting. And then the 277 or whatever, but I see you outlined a couple of options here. Those would be then like explicitly for Winooski residents. That specific Winooski residents, yes. Specific engagement and it would be amazing to actually see this community benefit from this in a much bigger way. And I think the need is demonstrated there. And we just heard that many families could use for them. Because... Yeah, they're large numbers, and to me, when a religious... Caruba? Yeah, they're coming. Yeah. They're coming from somebody in the public that they can't hear you. So I don't know if you can maybe move the microphone. Okay, thank you. So you might know this that when refugee families are resettled here, they are coming from the camp and they come in groups. And it doesn't mean that those families are coming from the same families. Just kids may be adopted because they lost their parents in the war or they're misplaced. And so there's a large number in one household. And we know most of the houses don't have washing machines and dryers. And so this is not enough for one family. They have to walk to the laundromat and they have to carry a lot of clothes for them. So one family would probably need... Just do the math, right? They'll be more involved. So yeah. And as a result of our work with the community last year, when you ski families specifically, they asked for a larger trolley. So we only had one size. This is a 40 liter, 40 pound bag. This one is the larger bag. We went to the company and asked them to supply a larger bag. This holds five to six bags of groceries. That one's three to four bags of groceries. And this holds 50 pounds. And so it's a larger capacity bag. And it has larger wheels. And what we liked about it was the addition of amenities like pockets on the outside and on the inside, as well as the larger wheel for winter travel. We're trying to see if we can break these things. They're not made in the US, unfortunately. We looked high and low for equality. Also, at the grocery stores, they don't want to use plastic bags anymore. So you have brown paper bags and those are not conducive for carrying much amounts of groceries. And so these bags are really, really good for carrying things at a long distance. And sometimes we know also that the bus stops are not quite situated near their houses. They have to walk quite a bit. And if they don't have the right ways or incentives to walk, then that might not be an option for them. We also know that the weather changes in my hand. I don't do jinks on my summer time and it's hot, but I've been thinking about the cold lately. So this is an all round season bag. It's, I like that they're this color because it's quite a dignified bag to have. It's showing that we care about them. We are aware of the changing needs. And it's just something that says we see you, we hear you, we feel you, and we're trying to take care of you as well. So I think we're in the right building and we're talking about it, that's a good thing. Yeah, thank you. So just to be clear though, we have this on just for discussion tonight. So we can't take a vote yet. And then we're talking about grant guidelines, but since we have you tonight, just if there's any other details that you all wanna know. So just to clarify for the, for Winooski families, would you be providing these for free with this funding? Okay. I wasn't sure because you were also saying that for other folks who've been providing a discounting, but this would be free. Something I was thinking as a potential partner if this moves forward is, I don't know about the Winooski food shelf, if that would be a good place to just have them there and distribute them. Right as folks need them. I had a question about the winter. And if they work in the snow, sounds like some testing to come on that, but they should be waterproof and stuff like that. They are waterproof bags. And they have the rain flap on the top, if you wanna show them how they cinch clothes and how they open. So you put your reusable bags inside and that drawstring closes tight. And they really are, the bag comes right off the chassis. We have a Burlington resident which has used it all winter. And he has told us how he keeps his clean. He actually takes the bag off the chassis and he takes the chassis into the shower and sprays it down because he doesn't want it to get too much salt on it. But it looks, I inspected the bag, it looks brand new a year later after using it. And you didn't catch in your memo anything about your timeline? We would wanna distribute these this year, this next few months, if it's possible. We are going into next year, but we could have, I don't know, and would like to talk with staff about appropriate venues, AALD is one, and this would be a lift, but I believe that even with school coming into session, that there's a possibility there as well. Is there a timeline that you're working around with CCRPC other than the two years? So it sounds like they needed 20% match. 20% match. What's the timeline? The timeline is July 1 of this year through June 30 of next year is year one. Okay. And you're two following? Yes. So by the end of your grant period with them, that 20% match needs to have been met. Right. Okay, gotcha. That's helpful. And we have 800 trolleys total to distribute. So that was gonna be a question that I had. Hypothetically, when would you be able to start distributing them? Before October? We're already distributing or selling them. We'll be at the Wenuski Farmers Market next Sunday, and we're frequently at the Burlington Farmers Market, but we would look for setting up times right away, or we're underway right now with this. Because all Vermonters, we want all Vermonters to have access. We're finding a lot of Vermonters are wanting to make a transition to leave their car at home and looking for a way and excuse a tool so that they can carry heavy rhinos. Carrying 20 pounds in your hand too far a distance just is not accessible for people. So we've distributed already in the last month about 75 trolleys. Well, it sounds like if we were to approve some portion of funding at our next meeting, which would be early September, then you all could hit the ground running. Yes. And you're working on partnerships already, which is good, yes. And it sounds like you have the bags you don't need to order the bags. The bags are here in the warehouse, yes. No risk for supply chain challenges. No, I mean, we would love to be able to order another container of trolleys, which is 856 trolleys in the spring of next year. Because of the demand, we're community health centers and social grocery stores are catching on, Richford and other parts of the state. So we are seeking additional grant funds to go beyond Chippenden County. Okay. I would invite public comment if there are any questions or comments from folks attending via Zoom. You could use the chat or raise hand feature. I'm not seeing any public comment. Any last questions? One final thought, I'm sorry if this is off topic, but I'm wondering if stores like Shaw's or Hannaford or even City Market might provide like within the bag some additional reusable bags. Because I mean, having to pay 10 cents for every paper bag is a poor tax. We are partnering up with AARP Vermont and they've given us a bunch of freezer bags and the reusable bags. And we're looking for sponsorships from others like banks and whatnot who have those nice freezer bags that they just fit right down in the bottom of the bag and you can put your heavy items down below and your freezer's in your ice cream. Because that is, how do you get cold frozen things home and not have them all melted? So that is an additional sponsorship opportunity we could put when you ski right on a reusable bag which is our hope to get that underway. Wonderful, thank you. You are thinking about all those things. That's good. Yeah, next time when we're talking about the sidewalks we're talking about the sidewalks. Well, thank you very much for coming in to present to us tonight and when we revisit this at our likely next meeting at a future meeting we will reach out to you. So thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, next up for discussion is non-profit grant guidelines. Yep, so council had directed staff to create a non-profit grant program to address immediate and urgent pandemic related needs in our community, the draft was in your packet. It shows your proposed fund allocation as you proposed last week of $50,000. The COVID business grant program allocation was actually for 100,000, not 50 as I mentioned in the packet. If demand is higher you can always increase the allocation at a future meeting. I have asked for some third party review. Common Good is the association for Vermont non-profits and someone from the, and that they may review it and someone from the development team at the Vermont Food Bank which is headed by a former colleague of mine, I mean in the development team is reviewing. So I proposed in your packet that the Safe Healthy Connected People Commission as Rora alluded to serve as the grant evaluation committee for the program that that meeting is on August 23rd again. So because of the timing though we wanted to get this draft to you earlier for input though I would expect you'd want the commission and external input before approving the program. What input do you have or questions? One quick thing I noticed in the intro that I think it still has the previous 100,000. Oh yeah, thanks. That was a very, very small thing. Um, anyone else, please jump in. I think you did a good job of taking the discussion and realigning or like redrafting what we have for businesses. I don't have any specific points of concern and look forward to seeing what the external review provides. Yeah, it looks like you took what we talked about last time and put it into this, so no comments. Okay, just waiting on Brynn. I know she's got something. I know. I mean, I'm trying to think about it. It seems like there's already a pretty solid demand and so that's kind of in the front of my mind right now is we haven't really had a thorough conversation about what our first survey, I don't know, wait when that's going to happen. I would like to have it happen before we allocate additional funds. And it's kind of the cardinoborse component of knowing that there's strong demand, strong interests, especially on the nonprofit side of things, and wanting to ensure that we are impacting that into a conversation that we haven't had time for. Agreed, I think that's why we stick with the $50,000 we agreed to allocate last time. It will be into September before we can actually launch this and then see what additional need is. And I think that should align with the aggregate feedback, ARPA feedback. Yes, I think before you awarded anything, you actually would have the opportunity to hear that consolidated. You probably won't have time to make any decisions, but at least you'll have that context. Okay, for that reason, just thinking about timing and the need demand, I was wondering if we should lower the maximum so that more organizations can at least have a greater opportunity, but I'm not advocating for that right now. Yeah, I think the commission review of applicants could decide to reduce the amounts that were applied for to spread it out further, which is something we could provide supportive guidance on for long term. And I also think, same as the other counselors already mentioned, I think you incorporated our comments from the last meeting thoroughly. Did I just see a hand in the chat? Oh, Paul, you have your hand raised? Hi, everybody. Mary Hospin is here. She is the chair of the Safe Healthy Connected People Commission. Mary has a question. Hi, Derek, can you hear me? Yeah, we can. I also wrote in the chat. I have a question about the criteria, evaluation criteria, and it looks like that we are only looking at proposals that, okay, the last two services are provided to low income limited English proficiency, New American, BIPOC, et cetera, et cetera. Or those who frequent when you see and are unhoused and that the leadership of the nonprofit are from historically marginalized communities. That really makes the field. That's not what it's saying. You get essentially bonus points if you meet those criteria. Oh, okay, okay. So, depending to those. Okay, point of clarification. And my other question is, this is a pretty short timeline. We are meeting on the 23rd, so are proposals going to be done in in by then for us to read and evaluate? No, they actually would be a valve, I'm sorry, providing input on the guidelines. Oh, the guidelines. The guidelines at the 23rd. And that's why it's gonna take a long time to actually award as the mayor was loading to earlier. Then they would finalize, and then we would be advertising and then you get the applications in and then you review at a regular meeting and then we're comfortable. Well, thank you, raise on vacation and I haven't had a chance to pick his brain on this. So, I was a little confused about the timing of it all. So, I'm glad you were able to join today to hear some of the discussion in there. Yes, and I'm assuming like the proposal that we just heard of about the shopping carts would be the kinds of things that we look at. Well, it's not a very big budget. Yeah. Agreed. So, okay, okay. Just wanted to understand how this is gonna work. You've answered my question, so thank you. Sure, thanks, Mary. If there's anyone else with questions or comments, as usual, raise hand feature or use the chat, let us know. Only is there anything else specific that would be useful for you to hear? I don't believe so. Thank you for your thoughts. Glad it was responsive. All right, seeing no more comments, we will move on to item D. This is on for discussion, approval of Winooski Pride event. And we have Meredith joining us. Welcome, Meredith. Great, how are you? Good, man. Do you wanna give a, should we give a little overview or? Yeah, you are Thomas. You just wanna give a quick overview of this upcoming Pride event. Yeah, so Aurora and I met with Meredith and some other folks from downtown Winooski about the desire that we have been talking about, Bren included, to have a Pride event in Winooski this September during the Pride season. We found a weekend, well, Representative Taylor Small actually identified a weekend for us where there wasn't anything going on in Burlington or elsewhere. So what we're hoping to do is bring music, performers, vendors into the Rotary to have a Pride celebration. Forget the timing that we had proposed. So we're talking about September 17th, 5 to 8 p.m. And to clarify too, the Burlington Pride Parade event is on the 18th and there's some other events throughout the week including on Friday, there is something at higher ground. So we are in a way filling a gap between some of the other events which we hope will engage the community. And as I said, we're thinking, we're still kind of finalizing some ideas but it would be inviting local performers, both music and drag as well as potentially having some drag queen story hours so have things for the whole family there as well. Especially with the timeframe between 5 and 8. And one addition to the request, so I did not attend the meeting because there wasn't a quorum who provided support to our other counselors that are heading the church. I believe we haven't hosted any formal Pride weekend events and part of the reason why it's in September is there are more students around higher attendance. So that was moved probably within the last 10 years or so from June when it's the traditional Pride month worldwide to September locally just to account for school breaks, summer vacations, et cetera. So it would be a pretty significant opportunity for Winooski to host an event on a Saturday, no less for Pride weekend. And just to give a little bit of context to this presentation tonight, we have not gotten this approved by the event committee which is typically the order in which we would move through the process with the city. We would go fill out an event application which we have. You would get it approved by the event committee which is city staff and then we would come to council for approval. So tonight we do not have the event approved by the event committee of city staff because the meeting is on August 17th. So this is a conditional sort of discussion. So it would be conditional approval based assuming or hoping that the event is approved by city staff on that August 17th meeting. All right. Would someone like to make a motion to approve this event permit conditional on the approval of staff event committee committee? So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Aurora. All those in favor please say aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Thanks, Meredith. Thank you guys. Good night. Thank you. Okay, we are onto item E, the police department strategic plan update. Not Chief Hebert presented. No. Welcome. Thank you. So am I good to start? Yes. Awesome. So for those not familiar with the strategic plan about four years ago, Chief Hebert saw the need to kind of give our department more of a vision and a blueprint moving forward that we haven't had in the past. So at that time he collaborated with interested parties within the PD, community stakeholders and other community members to kind of get input from outside sources along with internal sources to see kind of where we need to maybe be headed to serve kind of best practices for the community that we serve. So it was a big heavy lift back in like 2018, 2019. And one of the thoughts at the time and one of the things that he really wanted to kind of stress was to have a review of this strategic plan every three years. So it's been over three years now. And so the last, like I would say, eight, nine months ago we started reviewing it and again put together other interested parties and community members that wanted to be part of the process along with Lieutenant Heizenga, Sergeant Fay at the time and some other officers to kind of just say, hey, what's working? What's not working? What needs to maybe be altered a little bit to kind of again, figure out what's best practices for our agency and the community we're serving. So I don't know if it's online, but I don't know if anyone has it in front of them, but in short, we went through the kind of goals and objectives and systematically went through each one and said, okay, and we did a simple color coding. So green essentially meant that we are already implementing that, so it's an ongoing thing that the PD is already implementing. Red is something that we still see value in, but we just haven't had the ability to carry out those goals or objectives at this time. And then blue was just a completely new goal or objective. I'd like to say that we were kind of hitting our stride and then unfortunately COVID-19 happened. So a lot of our community oriented policing outreach kind of was put on hold. So if you go through it, you'll see a lot of red in those areas where we just weren't able to maybe completely fulfill our obligations with the outreach events, but we still see obviously extreme value in that and it's a community policing strategic plan. So that's kind of the bedrock of what we're trying to focus on. So yeah, that's kind of it in a nutshell. We want to be practical and obviously we want to make it attainable that a smaller agency, we're not 100 man department. We are a 16 on our best day person department and the men and women of the agency work really hard to try and balance the work and outreach effort. So we kind of like curtailed some things that we thought maybe weren't as attainable like the Citizens Police Academy. We've now made it more of a public safety camp for juveniles and we've already actually done that and saw it worked and we thought as a committee that it maybe wasn't as attainable for our small agency to have like a week long academy. So like I said, there was like certain things we, in a perfect world, we would do everything that we could do that would make everything great but it is also just about being practical. So that's kind of it in a nutshell if you have any questions or if Lieutenant Heisingen wants to jump in or, but yeah. And I'll just call out for anyone that's viewing from home that there's an explicit focus in this update on youth and new American outreach and strategy to work with chronic offenders for crime reduction and quality of life improvements to things that we have heard you all speaking about and it seems to be so. Yeah. Anyone want to dive deeper into any of the specific strategies, any questions? I'd like to add to, I think we've, despite the obstacles and unforeseen issues with COVID, when we're going through the SWOT analysis which is that strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, I am proud to say that we have really made some opportunities, strengths like diversifying our workforce and things that we were able to control within our own ranks without all the outside distractions of COVID and those limitations. So it's, I'm proud of what we've put together over the last three years. I would agree and I feel like I just say this once that you're doing budgeting but that I just like to continue to hear from community members who say they have positive experiences with RPD. So. We appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it's definitely a very comprehensive document. So I appreciate the time that was put into it. I'd also like to know that the first bullet here on the first page is building trust and legitimacy. So I appreciate that that's kind of right up top. With the changing nationwide perspective on COVID, have you been able to re-engage some of those outreach efforts? Yes, and thanks for bringing it up. And Chief Heber and Lieutenant Heizenga, we've started already to already, we have some during this month, like a call for the cop again, we're going to be supporting some of the block parties, the street block parties that we've traditionally done in the past. So it's already starting to amp up again and we'll be hopefully being able to, you know, make that part of our daily routine again. So yes, it's already in the works. Do you have a business engagement plan or? Yeah, are you talking about the putting together like seminars with businesses in the downtown area? Yes, between nothing super contrary yet, but that's one of the ones that we want to start focusing on getting with everything opening up again. That's something between Lieutenant Heizenga and either we're going to start delegating and try to make that available. You'll start seeing stuff on, you know, Facebook, maybe trying to organize some groups and get that going. Yes. Has the decision to meet with downtown Manuski for any of their meetings? Not to my left, no, not yet. That's a good starting point, I agree. I, again, to echo some of the comments, I think the layout and the SWAT analysis especially is extremely helpful just to see progress on that and clear defined objectives and timelines, especially potential associated costs. So again, much appreciation and thanks for that. Thank you. I'm assuming this is accessible on the website for the public to see. Yeah, and yeah, so it's on the website and it also has a link to the previous plan as well so you can kind of compare it contrasted to. Is this something that you've discussed with the SAFE healthy? Yes, for the SWAT analysis, I had a meeting and it must have been four months ago or so and kind of just went through, if we all agree like, is this to like a strength that we think and opportunities and the threats and so they have reviewed it and we discussed it. You know, I know that you identify the things that are kind of lagging. Are there any additional changes? You know, you mentioned some like pivot with the youth programs or the other program at the pivots. No, there was nothing extreme. I think, you know, we consolidate some of the old ones. Like we thought like the bike rodeo program could probably be consolidating to like the school programs and then there's been updates with like how we interface obviously with COVID, it brought about the video chat. So we're gonna try and incorporate more of that maybe into for people who maybe aren't able to, you know, meet us or go to these events, maybe incorporate that too with, you know, with Paul and other people who would not likely be able to do in-person stuff. But yeah, a lot of it was very minor. I do think that, you know, Chief Huber and that initial team put together many, many hours to try and make it a good foundation. So it wasn't a heavy, heavy lift, the update, which is nice because I felt like we're already kind of doing a lot of things. But like I said, it was more just saying, okay, is this still realistic? The landscape is always changing. It is a fluid document. We will not do everything in the plan in three years. It's just impossible, but it's a good reminder and hopefully we can get most of it. There's a mention of limited technology and I feel like I recall conversation about Friar House and some of that software either needing to be upgraded or if you could just jog my time. Yeah, I don't actually, that's not my wheelhouse. Chief here would be more able to explain that more clearly. So I'll default to him. Because I would be curious if with regional, any of the, if that would help alleviate some of that or provide some opportunities there for technology support. Is there anything particularly that you would highlight for community members? Like if we say, hey, the PD updated strategic plan, here's something you should be excited about. I mean, I guess if they haven't looked at it before, like I'm, I think one of the cool things that, other than like you said, meeting with the businesses, you know, some neighborhood watch type stuff, but like the camera program, I think it's a real easy one to kind of start with. Because a lot of people are always trying to say if a car gets broken into, you know, the so-and-so have a camera. I really think it's gonna help us from having to be like, oh, I don't know, let's try and knock on some doors to see when they're home. If we can have that registry, it would be voluntary, obviously. I'm not trying to be a big brother, but a voluntary registry, which I think would help engage the community to try and feel like they're helping, you know, their neighbors and us to, you know, at least get like a timeframe of maybe like if a car gets broken into, we can say, okay, it was that, you know, two in the morning and, you know, it may be a clothing description. And so we can kind of start focusing our patrol to say, hey, let's be on Leclerc Street at two in the morning, because we've had three car breaks there. Let's focus on that. And if you see a guy or a female in a white t-shirt, you know, that kind of stuff. So I do think, you know, look at, look it over. There is stuff for ways for the people interface with us to kind of work as partners. And, but that's one of the ones, I think it's an easier lift for us, starting off. To the chief or any of the lieutenants or anyone on the force really engage on front porch forum at all. I see neighbors all the time talking about cars that were broken into. Yeah, I know, I know the chief does. I don't personally, but we are small and we're always talking, but I know the chief does. I just asked a couple of questions about some of the objectives. Yes. Go ahead. The first one was actually about the community camera initiative. Those would still obviously require a warrant for you to access, correct? It would be a voluntary. So if it's like a doorbell, like a nest doorbell, and they say, you won't be part of this registry. And you want, because community matters can provide their own property to the department if it aids in the investigation so that there wouldn't be a warrant request for that. Gotcha, but you wouldn't be receiving their video just all the time, right? No, no, no, no, only if, and they, like I said, it's voluntary. Yes. If they say, hey, I'd like to help out. If you guys need access to a video of if a crime happens in this area, here's my contact information. You can reach out to me so I can say, oh yeah, I know Joe Smith has a camera in this area. We had a car break. I can call Joe and see if he has, and he could review the video himself. So yeah, I see someone, if you like it, it could help out your neighbor. Great, that's all it would be. Awesome. Yep. Clarify that. Actually, there's a couple of these I noted and thinking with the regional dispatch, the hello, how are you program as well as the social media. And this might be more general city thinking about the upcoming loss of administrative support, especially with some of these programs too. Yep. And that's why it's a fluid document. And we're trying to do the best project where we're going to be. And the hello, how are you program was something that we thought maybe was going to be a definite scrap. And then I think we talked to enough people, they thought there was a lot of value in that outside the PD. That makes sense. And we don't know for sure the complete, what that's going to look like if we keep dispatch, it goes regionalized. But yes, that's certainly a good example of one of the things that you can't always be 100% sure what the future is going to bring. But it was enough to keep in there because community members thought there was value in that. And that's why it stayed. Well, and that's the type of feedback that you would want to consider during budgeting. If you were losing admin, maybe you want to be budgeting for some admin. If there's enough community demand for things that would need support from admin. Right. Yeah, and I think that was part of my thought too with the both thinking about Paul's time and if there is a new administrative support, maybe looking for someone who has social media skills, specifically part of the job description or stuff like that. Going way into the weeds. Those are things that, let me see. I have one more note here. Let's see if I covered it. Oh, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the, I think it was the emerging issues, municipality team. Is it the multi-disciplinary team? Yes. Yeah. So I was at, not to go too far back. This is nothing novel, but I used to work at Coosie, which is the chain for special investigations and every month we get together with, so it'd be like detectives, police officers, then it'd be like DCF, and it would be a lot of other entities that had a common goal or stake in the people we were dealing with. And I've always kind of wanted to bring that to Winooski. And we've already started a partner, obviously with like community outreach, which deals with like a lot of mental health issues, homelessness, and I thought, or we thought as a group that maybe this could be something that we could bring to Winooski to kind of deal with our, thinking outside the box kind of stuff that's a lot gray area and stuff that bleeds into not only police work, but a lot of social services, outreach and stuff like that. So I do think there's value in that. Again, this is, it's time everyone has meetings and there's multiple MDTs throughout the county that take place monthly, but if we could figure out a way to coordinate with our partners and stakeholders to bring that here, that I think it's a win for us. Definitely. Yeah, I like the idea. I think we've already seen the results of engaging with those other members. I'm wondering if people might like if stuff does move forward that this isn't causing people to go into the system if they are interacting with these outside folks. Correct. And it's the goal. Yeah. Awesome. Given that you're, you've already anticipated there's more on your blank here than you'll be able to accomplish. Are you looking to counsel for any recommendations on things that? I mean, we're, like I said, this document is about how to serve when you ski the best. So we're always open for suggestions. And if counsel has suggestions moving forward, even like I said, within this document or this, you know, these three years, you know, we're certainly trying just to be the best weekend. Thank you. I saw Lieutenant Hazinga's hand raised earlier. There you go. Yeah. Please. Hi, everybody. Can you hear me? Yeah, we can. Good to see you all. I just wanted to circle back on a couple of things that were brought up earlier. I think it was the mayor that brought up, you know, something that we could, you know, potentially point out to people inside the plan. And then somebody else brought up something about, you know, what are we pivoting to? I think a couple of things that should be noted is our recruitment and retention. Our recruitment has been phenomenal. I think we're in a great place as far as recruitment and we've hired some really, really, really good officers in the last 24 months. I feel really good about where we are in the recruitment. And I think that's a testament to the city and to our department. People really want to come work here and I think that's great. So circling back to the pivot point, I think as an agency, we're gonna have to figure out, you know, pivot to from the recruitment side to the retention side. And I think that's gonna be a big focus in the next three years. So again, as far as, you know, input from the council or from community, you know, what are some of the ways maybe outside the box thinking of how we retain, you know, these good officers that we've hired? Thank you. Any more questions or comments? Was there any public comment? I only have, in recent events, there have been quite a number of bike thefts happening in the area. So I would highly suggest we're doing a bike registration program off the ground to assist efforts. Yes. All right, well, thank you to both of our attendants for joining this evening and sharing this update. Thank you. Thank you very much. So let's move on to item F. This is, we're going back to our draft party housing amendments update for the unified land use and development regulations. So we didn't have anyone turn out for public comment. There was a lot of public comment while these were being developed through the planning commission. We all had some questions at our last meeting, but here's another chance to see if there are any outstanding questions. Then either somebody could make a motion to approve them or to warn a second in public hearing. I already have one question. So there was a special meeting between council and our last council meeting tonight. And you said that the planning commission viewed and basically approved of reintegrating that. Was that a unanimous approval for this to come back to council? So the way that the process is set up via statute is that once the planning commission forwards it to you all, any changes that are substantive go back to the planning commission just to update the report. They don't have discussion of the amendments to make changes again. It's really primarily just to update that report. The members of the commission that were at that meeting, I believe the vote was three in favor, zero opposed and one abstaining. The original vote when they voted to forward this on to you was I believe three in favor, one opposed. The chair does not vote unless he needs to break a tie. So the member that voted against sending this forward to you abstained from voting at the last meeting. More just for, I think continuity in their vote so that it wasn't a vote against first and then a vote for after. So. Yeah, I think my main concern was the public comment and the fact that we didn't really have any today. But it sounds like there was a decent amount of that last meeting. There was at least two hearings of planning commission that had numerous first turnout. That makes me feel a lot better. Yeah, the planning commission had three public hearings on this and probably I would say there was at least 10 people at each hearing. And not necessarily the same 10 people. So some were the same, but there was different, there was new people at each hearing. Perfect, yeah, for something like this, I just, public input is definitely important to all of us. So I'm glad that it happened. I move to adopt the amendment. Second. Motion by Bryn, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. I should have purchased confetti. That one. No, it's milestone. Thank you all very much. Thank you. You know what that I'm gonna call a five minute break. Reconvene at 7.55. I'll call this meeting with city council back to order. We are on item G. This is on for discussion or approval. It is the new treasurer appointment. Is Angela with us? Welcome. So the mayor is well aware of all of this because she was involved in the interview process of the new treasurer. We had heard from Alex a couple of months ago that he no longer wished to serve. And in addition, the job description requires that the council seek new applicants every three years. We publicly advertised. We received a few applications from qualified applicants. We interviewed John Fennie a couple of weeks ago. He's very qualified, currently works in the accounting department at a local college. And he's very interested in doing this work. He's done side work as a bookkeeper for other institutions previously. But happy to get him on board. Yeah, and he was very qualified financially or expertise wise. And I also felt through the interviews that he could do a good job of translating complex financial information to us and to the public. Perfect. He's not, he wasn't able to join us, right? He's not here. All right, so the ask is tonight. If you have any questions or concerns or if someone wants to make a motion to approve the appointment. Have confidence in your recommendation. I move to approve. Second. Motion by Bryn, second by Thomas. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. So moving on to item H, which Angela will stay with us for. This is on for discussion approval, COVID business recovery award recommendations. So second round of the COVID business recovery grants ended in late July. We received a total of five applications, although we did receive some interest from other businesses that were not eligible to apply because they did not exist in 2019 and could therefore not show revenue loss. The finance commission met last week to review the applications and score them. There wasn't really any prioritization that had to happen because we had fewer applicants than we had total monies available. We did during review determine that we believe applicant B is not an eligible applicant as they did not have any revenues during 2019. So therefore could not have experienced revenue loss. All other applicants were eligible applicants and scored enough to be recommended for approval. We did make one condition for I believe applicant D that we were going to make sure that they understood the uses of the funds based on some of the comments that were made in their application. In addition, the finance commission wanted to make a recommendation to counsel that some sort of consideration of a program be made for applicants that started their businesses in 2020 or after not anticipating that the pandemic would last as long as it did. Thank you, Angela. Regarding that end recommendation, we had explicit discussion about whether or not to make this program allowable to folks that did not exist pre-pandemic. At that time, we decided that that wasn't what this was meant for, that folks who opened a business during pandemic went in creating their business model in that scenario. I think if we wanted to revisit that, we should do that during the next round. Yeah, yeah, like bigger discussion about if we'd be similar to if we need to allocate more funding with no problems. Yeah, agreed. I will note that we had, I think at least four applicants that would fall into that category, people who had reached out and trying to determine if they would be eligible for funding. It looks like each of all but one of the applicants requesting the maximum amount. That is correct and I believe that the applicant who is not requesting the maximum amount is the one that was not recommended for award. Okay. Yeah, so from the commission, they are recommending the award for four of these. Angela, I was a little confused with applicant A. I believe it was, so they, I don't know, on the form, I think it listed that they didn't have revenue loss, but they definitely existed in 2019. So applicant A did have revenue loss. They all have revenue. It's negative 100% revenue loss. They enclosed for the entirety of 2020. Okay, okay. I think they all have revenue loss, but A and C did not have profit 2019 year end. That was it, yeah, okay. Yeah, so they did not get the extra points, but because we didn't have a really competitive process where people were vying for top slots that kind of became a moot point. Yeah, it might be a little confused with the attachment. So applicant D, what was the revenue loss for 2020? Revenue loss for 2020, or did they only represent 2021? They only provided tax records for 2021. So if it's a great area, they provided no information and it wasn't required. Okay. But for applicant B, they did not have any revenue in 2019 and so did not have a revenue loss. Okay, okay. I think with applicant D, though I understand the concerns it also feels like one that's meaning some of our master plan goals around having more arts in the community. So I think as long as they're able, they understand the clarification, that's certainly a business we wanna support. And the commission didn't have any problem with recommending applicant D, correct? Nope. The only one not being recommended for approval was applicant B. All others were recommended for approval. So this, depending on what the request is tonight, how we move forward, where does that put us with the budget that we allocated? So if you approve the recommendations, that would be $40,000 of the remaining, I believe 80. So there would still be $40,000 for business grant. And that, I guess, leads into the question of previous council meeting. Did we decide to cut the allocated 100,000 and split that between nonprofits and for-profits? We didn't. Okay. We didn't actually say that. So we have enough money allocated to accept this recommendation. I think the question would be, do we want to do that or is there something here in the criteria that would make you not approve one of these? I would say we move forward with the recommended. I would make a motion to move forward with the recommended. I would second that motion. So motion to approve by Thomas, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. You said aye. I did. I thought I heard that. Okay, the motion carries. Try again. Yeah. Thank you, Angela. So let's move on to item E. This is on for discussion, a memo about eviction protection from Councilor Renner. So would you like to? Yeah. So this is something that Councilor Duncan and I had discussed. He obviously isn't here, but was happy for us to move forward with the discussion. As we all know, the events that happened at 300 Main have kind of spurred a lot of staff, ourselves, the community to wonder what Council would be able to do to protect renters in, hopefully never again, but a situation like that or even smaller eviction situations, given the fact that the city is mostly renter occupied and not owner occupied. Our friends across the river in Burlington passed a just cause eviction framework. And Councilor Duncan and myself's suggestion would be to possibly mirror the same framework seeing as it was approved by the legislature, the legislature modified what Burlington had originally submitted. It again was approved overwhelmingly. It seems through discussions with our local representatives that it would be approved by the next legislature as well and likely be able to pass the governor's desk. So really what we would like to discuss tonight is one, if that's something that the rest of the Councilors would like to engage in. And then the approach that we would take would it be something that we would have housing commission look at, charter commission look at, and kind of the type of public engagement that we would need for something like this. Ideally, we would like to put this to the voters for the November 8th voting season. So that implies us kind of moving at a speed that would make that possible, especially if we're gonna put it to a commission to work on that as well. And we attached some articles as well as the bill that was passed by the legislature for you all to look at as well. So happy to answer any questions and get discussion started. So two quick follow-ups. I had asked Elaine to look at the timeline because of the process of public hearings and formulating language. November 8th is out of the question. Town meeting day would be tight. I think at best we would have three months of outreach available. It is something we could consider. I know there's gonna, staff would like some more time to think about this as well for recommendations. I did run this by the housing partners that we initially engaged through the 300 Main Street. They are happy to continue engaging this on us, engaging us on this. So when we think about outreach for an issue like this, we've talked about this before. We want to include tenants, landlords, service providers. One thing that that group flagged was that eviction with costs disqualifies you from obtaining a housing voucher in the future. So sometimes when they have safety issues with a tenant, they would do a no cause eviction so the person could get back into the program eventually. They didn't feel that should preclude us from exploring it further, but we should be aware of that. And that we might also, several things. You know that our housing commission and Safe Healthy Connected people had some preliminary conversations about something in the housing summit. I'm wondering if we wanna talk to them about that next Monday as like an opportunity for outreach on this topic. And then the last thing I'll say is I've also been in touch with the, where are my notes? Some folks at the Vermont Department of Housing and Community Development. So they are working on a federally mandated analysis of impediments to fair housing, which is a process they have to complete every several years where they are looking to deep dive into barriers to access and housing discrimination issues. So they're doing outreach September through March for that. I think there's some overlap here where we could potentially collaborate with them on outreach because some of the issues we wanna learn about are similar. I'll stop there for now. Do we know of any, has BLCT provided any resources or supported direction for what Burlington has done? Or I know you've included a number of news articles here and some, at least, you know, the revised legislation. Is there, do you mayor or I'll just know of anything from all the cities and towns? So there isn't anything that I know of specifically. Would be happy if we want to look into that. I'd be happy to reach out to them now. And I don't know what process that follows with requests and whatnot, but. And then another question, has the, have you or Elaine, have you talked with our council? Not city council, but like higher. So you're an SDL? So yes, Elaine, please share with us the things that you would want to, you know, you said staff would definitely wanna do some more background work before we. Yeah, I haven't consulted with the attorney because in this is, there's just a lot of work that would need to be done before we would want to pay the attorney to start looking into things. So I have not consulted. It was mostly about the timeline. That was just the big independent. But the, as I mentioned in my memo, it's the timing, the content, all timing already addressed, the content priority and process. There are unintended consequences. That was one of them that the mayor just pointed out to understand to take into account. So if my main, our main thought was if the goal is to make sure that multiple people are not unjustly unhoused evictions protection is one tool among several. And we don't have enough data on, on evictions even to indicate whether it's one of the right tools for the city. So, you know, it's that input process. I think there's some things that we don't know if we know it or not. So we wanted time to look into that. And we do think that there could be something, if you go through that console process during this year, then you might have a policy that you wanna do next fiscal year pursue, whether it was a ordinance or if it was an actual charter change. Yeah, and that was, so another thing that came up at the housing partners group was like, there was interest in this, but also similar, like, is this even the high priority thing to push on right now, you know, something that. Instead of. So alternatively, other things we could advocate for, there's like legislation that essentially provides rent control in bubble home parks, but not in other types of housing. So like, is that a better lever thing to be pressing the legislature for? And so I think if we did go through a commission process of listening, perhaps, like that would set us up better to know what is the thing we should be most focused on. In addition to if we pursued one strategy or another, what are those consequences we haven't thought about yet? I also have to just thinking about your comment there. Do we anticipate filling Heather's role? Yeah, I was gonna give it an update on that a little bit later, but I'm happy to do it now. So since it's related. So I had a scope, I was all ready to go. And I was like, oh, actually Eric recommended that I talk to Seth Leonard and took a little while to get that meeting nailed down, not his fault. And then he gave me some really important feedback that we need to incorporate. So it's a little bit delayed. So we're not filling Heather's position per se, but the goal is still a housing position. And as an aside, part of what Seth was telling me, his point was, if you focus on policy, policy is good for two things. Housing policy is good for two things. Tweaking and limiting, not creating. We're after quality and creation. So his point was, you want a certain type of housing which is going to cut into profits. You want affordable housing, you want more bedrooms, that comes to profits. How are you gonna incentivize that? You give them money. So we need to raise more money, which is part of what your feedback was. That was your big concern about losing Heather and not backfilling a grant funding. And staff also had that concern, of course. But having a position that was focused just on policy forever was not gonna work for that. So that's some of the cleanup that I want to incorporate. Thank you. So one thing might be consulting the housing commission on what they've looked at in the past as they've looked at various options. One thing that Burlington has thinking about creation is ways for disputes between landlords and tenants to be settled outside of court. That is only in Burlington. The problem, of course, is if it's settled in court, the landlords who presumably have the more money are able to not be held accountable because tenants aren't usually able. And that can be withholding deposits. That can be unjust evictions. So there are additional ways. There would be a lot of pushback, of course, on that. But that is something, and a lot of work would need to be done to provide those resources. But that's another alternative. I'm thinking too, not just rent control, but control over deposits because people will charge even this ridiculous amount you need to put down before you're able to even get an apartment. And that's not just a specialty way. Rents are also just thinking about rent control. So recently ended, my lease, that our property manager put it on for $600 more a month. And it was rented within under a week. So that's both showing the desperation that people have but also the fact that landlords and property managers are cranking, they weren't gonna raise our rent. So they're cranking it up when they don't need that money. So it really is thinking how can we, I think that's a lot of things that seem to be coming up at the ARPA sessions too, are people asking us, why aren't we doing anything? So we need to hold the both, I think that we need tools to be able to do something. Currently we don't have many of those. So just cause eviction would be a tool that the city could have. But there are definitely other tools we could think about and of course ideally combining them together would provide the most just outcome. So I do think thinking about what is the priority and plus do we even wanna look at short-term solutions too? Are there any of those? Well, we try and figure out changing the systems that are currently in place that are causing us inequity. And I don't think that Council Duncan on my approach was that this is the end all of be all of housing is just an approach that we know has support of our legislature and we know many of our residents saw that it happened in Burlington and wanted to happen here as well. I think you echoed it that people don't think we're doing anything on this. So I don't think where the housing commission would even come up with everything that they could recommend and we would pass and we would put to voters. I think that this would probably something that we would pass one thing and maybe in our next session we would pass something else as we learn more about housing. Ultimately what fixes housing is building more housing. We know that's something that we have an issue with for multiple reasons being a small city with no land, the prices of building but I think we should try to access as many tools as we possibly can however long that takes. And I would be in support of pursuing Just Cause because I do think it is probably one of the tools that we could get access to most quickly and provide to our residents most quickly. So I think it's a good place to start and think of it exactly as that. So well, is there any public comment? I see someone joining us. No. Any public comment on Zoom? Eric, do you want to say anything? I hear some interest in this. I would recommend that we start by bringing this to our commission planning discussion because even if the council is interested in pursuing Burlington's language for Just Cause eviction to send to the legislature, I think we have to do a significant amount of due diligence here in Meduski with renters, landlords, property managers to understand what that is before we would put anything forward. And I think that's something to really consider and that might have lacked in the past is actually engaging the people this affects most in the conversation from the start will be really good. Elaine, could we ask for a timeline if we wanted something on the town meeting day ballot? Yes. The tricky bit is the input, right? So you could have technically, if you had language that you had warned today, you could have gotten on the ballot, but that implies that you didn't listen to any input between now and then. So it depends on what comes up, right? The timing is like you need 30 days between the two hearings and you need a couple of days to warn that in time. So in theory, you could do it in 60 days, but then you need, you want the attorney to be writing or if it's really a charter change, you need the attorney to write the charter change language to make sure it's all consistent internally, consistent and consistent across your regulations. And I don't know how long they would need for that. And you want time to consult the public. So the 60 days is like the bare bones. And then you wanna just think about how much input you would want and how long that would take. Yeah, because if we warned it, got significant input, wanted to change the language, we have to go through the process again. Exactly, right. So I guess maybe we don't require that right now. Maybe talking to our chairs about what a process could look like. Aren't there several options we could as a council put forward that it is on the ballot, but as you said, that doesn't get a lot of input. We could look into our hat, see if there might be interest in gathering enough signatures to put it on the ballot. So that might provide- We wouldn't do that. We residents would do that. Residents would need to take that initiative to gather enough signatures to put it on the ballot. So that might be one where you get at least a little bit more input, but still there are lots of questions around that or we go through the Charter Change Committee, but. Yes, those are all options. Staff is extremely concerned about unintended consequences without property vetted language and idea generation. Yeah, and one thing to be mindful of is, I don't know the specific differences, but what Burlington voters approved and what the legislature actually approved were different. And there were differences there and I haven't looked into why or what they were. And I think that's why I was, we reference looking at the language that was actually approved as opposed to what Burlington submitted first so that we can, we don't have to use that exact language, but I think it's a good place to start to understand what the legislature accepted. And then if we find that our commissions and the public disagree with that language completely, well then of course we would write something else and submit it and see if the legislature approves it. The reason, again, we reference that language as we know it's approved and we know the legislature was fine with it. Well, to be clear, the legislature did approve it. The governor vetoed it, the legislature did not overturn that veto. There is a big turnover happening in the legislature this year, it's not the same people. We can't guarantee the same governor. So yeah, I don't think that should necessarily be taken into account just due to that turnover. It could definitely go through, but I do think probably engaging with the legislature and why they made the change that they did, thinking about those unintended consequences too. Did they take that into account when they changed that language and was the unintended consequences for it? Tenants or unintended consequences for the landlords? Because we do have a lot of landlords on both the House and the Senate. Could, do you mind if I interrupt for a minute? There is a distinction in it as a spectrum, but there is a distinction to be made between irresponsible landlords and responsible landlords and I'd be more concerned about the unintended consequences on the responsible landlords. Yeah, and I mean, this is why I think we need to start with outreach to hear issues, like there's gotta be thresholds of small owner-occupied landlords versus very large multi-unit owner, like, and there are various scenarios to think about and very different experiences in like the landlord-tenant relationship. Which we've talked about before. Yeah, no, I'm just gonna press it up. And I, so to go back around that, ideally we would have dated to reflect on for Winooski and non-proxy data. Yeah, that's true. Obviously I don't want to diminish the true lived experiences of our residents. It just helps build the context and the framework for what that lived experience is, the need, and it also helps inform the way we may want to draft our policy differently to protect our community than the way Burlington does. Because we are a different community in Burlington. And we do have unique resource demands and unique resources of our community. So I think aiming for town meeting today feels more reasonable to gather input. I would want to look at some other alternatives that can provide some shorter term opportunities and protections. I do think it would be good to, hopefully we can get the housing summit on the schedule and move forward so that we can have that as a space where we can gather additional ideas for what's shorter term, what's something that we wanna work towards for the next fiscal year and beyond because it is going to be, it's an ongoing conversation. It's not like a one and done type of thing. We solved all the housing problems. Yeah, not that easy. So I would say I would like to revisit this with put it on the agenda, hopefully for our meeting on Monday. I don't know what that looks like yet. And prioritize the housing summit conversation for this fall with an eye towards like, hopefully we can have something as we look towards town meeting today. Obviously we have a new city manager that's going to be going through budget process for the first time. We do have some stat constraints. So I would imagine that if we focus on this, there are other priorities that will have to come off the list. Correct. So to be clear on Monday, we are not having a city council meeting on Monday, specifically. It's not a regular city council meeting. We are meeting with the chairs of each of our commissions to talk about priorities and their work plans and where they wanna collaborate. I think we should have a conversation with them about how to do outreach around housing issues to the different stakeholders we've discussed. I don't know if we want to, I would recommend that not being specifically focused on no cause eviction and instead be general listening around broader issues and ask for their input. Housing Commission has done a lot of policy study in the past. They might have thoughts about where to focus that. I would ask them to come up with questions. I think we can also weigh in, but what are the questions you wanna ask for the data you wanna see moving towards this? And if we do decide at a future meeting, so this is a discussion item tonight, this is an after vote. If we decided at a future meeting that we wanted to pursue something on a ballot on town meeting thing, then we have to revisit strategies and priorities and take something off. And I think even without that, we've been trying to do listening for ARPA. We haven't done any for TIF or for budget season. There's that, that feels very not likely to happen at this point. If we are gonna pivot to housing, then that takes a lot of bandwidth from us and commissions too. And we need to be mindful of the community's ability to engage on initiatives. We really can't be focusing on more than one high priority issue at a time. And so I just wanna put that out there before we start. I do think personally that housing is where we should be focusing right now on outreach and trying to make impact, but we can't do it. And the strategies and priorities document. So that's what we're gonna be referencing on Monday with the commission chairs. I think also in that discussion, like let's be mindful through there when we hear from our chairs where they want to focus, that like we're reasonable about the amount of what we're tasking them with or taking on. So the actual decision about if we're doing something for town media and ballot would be in a, we'd have to have a followup discussion about that. But obviously we wanna revisit this. Yeah. And Alain, it sounded like staff wants to present some items to us as well. Do you know if that would be possible to happen on our next city council meeting? Sorry, items about this topic? Yeah. They were concerned that needed to be here tonight. It's about the, so I think it's, we haven't put forward anything tangible, but if we did, we need to give staff time to research and respond to that. Right, I mean, even like say, reviewing the Burlington language, that would mean we are deprioritizing something you've already prioritized on from the strategies. So ahead of the Monday meeting, we are just gonna be sharing out the strategy and priority document for make sure everyone has it fresh on their mind. Yep. And so I would keep this conversation in mind when they're preparing for that. Get details about everything else pretty soon, I imagine. And yeah, I guess that's enough this week. Two notes too though, is that we have several housing items that are priority and that might tie into this, especially a sustained housing commission with policy work. So. Right. Yes, that one I'm showing in today's update is being behind because you would need a housing person to support that. There are other items that were more general, which we felt like, if you're getting that broader input, like the mayor was talking about, it could certainly feed into this. And I understand that the policy work is a very umbrella and you could certainly fit this, it obviously fits in there, but it's a variation on it that we were thinking of as being possible. And so, again, it would take quite a pivot of staff time in order to support. The charter changes to the charter language and ballot item would be a big lift and a brand new thing that we would be adding to the list. Any final thoughts? I think it's a no, so just put some here. Yeah, it sounds like there's still a conversation. I guess I just wonder, when we have our meeting on Monday, if the housing commission says, yeah, we like this idea, I mean, not specifically, and then we have all of these other ideas, something's gonna have to come off of the priorities anyway. So I just, it's sounding very much like this is gonna be a lot of work and it's gonna knock something else off. But if on one of our meeting, we deem that it's something that's necessary, are we okay putting efforts towards it or is it still sounding like efforts are not going to be moved? Well, if this is what we, and our commissions choose to move forward, that's all they're gonna be focused on, right? They won't be able to do another thing that's done. But I do, I mean, like based on previous conversations, I think this is what they're interested in doing and what we have talked about. But okay, then also as a flag about not having support staff for our housing commission specifically, you know, when we think about the level of outreach that we should be doing, we need to think about the burden on our commissioners and also ourselves what we are willing to put forward because we don't have much staff capacity to be organizing events for us and things like that. And I think we're, I just want to be able to have some space to what are some additional options, what are some additional supports rather than kind of having tunnel vision on like, this is the only support that we can offer. But we need to move this as quickly as we can. I don't know what our other avenues are, what our other feasible options, I think it's worth pursuing. And I think given the resources and timeline, maybe there's some additional things we can start this conversation. And in the meantime, we can take advantage of those other short-term things that you were mentioning, just to see like, okay, we know this is going to be a pretty big lift giving all that's involved. So what else can we do? And I think it doesn't mean we can't move forward with urgency. I would counter that a town meeting day vote for a new local ordinance or charter change is an urgent and short-term item. I don't think there's anything we can act more quickly than that, right? Like thinking about housing challenges. I think if that's what we are focused on, doing some listening to understand more and then potentially a charter change for a new ordinance in March, that's all we can do. There's not going to be something smaller that we can do in the interim. Maybe something got missed in what I was saying. So what I was suggesting is having a longer timeline than a town meeting. And then as we have the housing summit, as we talk with the chairs, as we build our resources with staff, then we can like look at our short-term things that would be like between now and the spring and then work towards a charter change. I mean, how long did it take for some of our other. Charter here. Yeah, it's the government process and public input also just because of like the public comment periods of public engagement, that alone has some fixed dates that we have to work towards and work like build into it. So yeah, what I meant was, okay, saying like town meeting would be dropping a lot of other things to make that happen. What are some other options that we can take advantage of so that we are showing our community good faith that we are moving forward on items of their concern that we can have more media influence on. That's, sorry. Yes, yeah, this is going to come back to another meeting and we have to revisit the idea of whether or not we are trying to pursue something for town meeting day. Like that's a conversation we need to have again. I do want to say that we did just tonight approve really important regulatory changes that can help incentivize creation of additional housing to meet some of our needs. Obviously not going to be an immediate or huge impact, but it is something within local control. And I think that's something that we need to communicate and do throughout listening and outreach as well is like how little our local control over the housing landscape is limited, right? That's why Burlington is going to watch the picture for certain things. And one thing I wonder too is can we leverage work that is already being done by non-profit flick? I know rights and democracy did a lot of work in Burlington and that might have been more like outreach, but do they potentially have resources that we could use? I feel like, I feel like those are just coming back to like we need to talk to our commission chairs and hear from them how they might want to engage or approach a listening and learning. Anything else? I'm good. It was up for discussion. We've discussed, I'd like to, I guess my fear, I just don't want this discussion to end here. It does not end here. Yeah. This will come back for sure. And thank you for raising it up. Well, can I ask for guidance? I don't think there's any staff guidance at the moment. I don't think there's any next steps for you right now. Okay. We want to have this conversation at the commission, with the commission chairs about what listening outreach would look like. I think that informs or they subsequently in their own discussion inform. What are the questions we're trying to ask or data we're trying to look at? How do we, if we want to look at this ballot language, how do we approach it? I don't think we have any decisions on that today or should make those yet. Okay. But keep working towards your, the new position, the new hire. Indeed. Okay. We will return to this at a future meeting. Item J, Green Mountain Transit appointments. Oh, there's nothing linked in the middle of here. So we appoint a member to the board of trustees or board of commissioners for Green Mountain Transit to represent Lewski. We also provide an alternate to three year terms. Our current serving member is Austin Davis. He has been in the role for the past three years. I think he's served us well and is actually moving into the board chair or president. Not sure what term they use. Role, which I think is good for Lewski. I am recommending his reappointment. And then we have Thomas, who helped me interview a candidate for the alternate position. So the alternate is non-voting, but is participatory in the board. And our recommending Eric Covey. He formerly served on this council. He was a part of our charter commission and is actually a daily writer on public transportation. We don't have the packets here for your applications or whatever, but if there's any questions. How long, sorry, how long has the appointment? Two years? Three years. Three years, yeah. Did you ask him how much he uses GMT? He said he's a daily writer. Daily, yeah. He was actually late to our interview because the bus was late. So, he has experience with the issues of the bus encounters. And he also, something that you'll probably find interesting, he acknowledged the privileges that he has in running the bus as well. But he takes his car to the bus stop that he goes to. But something that he has very focused on his mind is that there is a range of people who utilize GMT and not everybody approaches it in the same way. So, I really liked his approach in equity and diversity that used the bus. Yeah, they have a committee too on that. Just this equity, diversity, and inclusion that he was interested in participating in as part of the board. I have no concerns. Would someone like to make a motion to approve the GMT appointments? Second. Motion by Bryn, second by Thomas. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. We are on to item K. Housing update. Yep, so from the council policy priorities and strategies of the retreat, you settled on nine housing related strategies. Four were must-dos, two were recommended, and three were new ideas pending additional resources. Of the four must-dos, three are proceeding as planned. The one must-do item that is behind is the one I alluded to earlier, that policy work because of the housing position. So, there is progress. It's not just completely in a black hole, but it is, I acknowledge, slower than any of us would like. The recommended items are on hold because of being short staffed. The housing position would help with those two items. For the new ideas, the two low-lift items have seen progress. And for the housing summit, I am hoping for some clarity and ideas out of next week's city commission work planning session. Comments or questions? Yeah, to be clear, I know there's been these conversations about a housing summit, but it has never been articulated exactly what that is and what the goals and outcomes should be. So, that's what we need to figure out. I think the initial idea rose out of something Burlington did. So, it would be possible using that as a template. But of course, as we just discussed, Underskis is very different from Burlington. And that conversation came up in a joint meeting in May or was it June? I think May, it was a while ago. Yeah, I think it was May. Any questions about anything on here? I think surprising to me. Yeah, I don't want to get annoyed. We'll save it. We'll save it. Any public comment? Okay, so we have an executive session more this evening. Pursuant to Vermont State statute section 3136, records exempt from access to public records provisions, information in any files relating to personal finances as listed in one VSA section 317C7. I am looking for a motion finding that we should have this discussion in an executive session is related to housing trust fund application. Who are we inviting? Inviting, Angela Aldiari and Elaine Wong. So moved. Second. Do you want to? Wait. Sorry. Oh, no, what were you saying? You want to motion both? Yeah, so I was saying, first, I need a motion to find that we should have this in executive session. So motion and second. Motion by Aurora, second by Bryn. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And then motion to enter into executive session with Elaine and Angela. Motion by Bryn, second by Thomas. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Is there more? Did you want to go into executive for both topics? Can we do that? Yes, you can say you're entering for both reasons. Okay. So let me back up a minute. We have two executive sessions one actually. So the first one I already said was about financial records. The second one is related to state statute section 3133, appointment or employment or evaluation of a public officer or employee. So I'm seeking a motion to discuss these two items alone in executive session. I'm seeking a motion to find that we are allowed to have these two discussions in the executive session. So moved. Second. Motion by Bryn, second by Thomas. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. And so now I'm seeking a motion to enter into executive session to discuss these two items alone. We will invite Elaine Wong and Angela Aldieri. Angela will depart before the second discussion begins. So moved. Second. Motion by Thomas, second by Bryn. All those in favor, please say aye. Motion carries. We are going to enter into executive session to discuss these two topics only. No other business will be discussed. We'll return from executive session to take any action voting or approval. Do you want to relocate or clear out in here? Were you joining for a specific reason? I think I missed the agenda item, but if you had a minute after I had a question. Okay. Well, if you want to go in the offices and then we could invite the CVTV to wait in the lobby. That's all right. Thank you. Down payment assistance. So we reviewed an application for Housing Trust Fund, down payment assistance funding during our exit to approve this application from the city. So moved. It brings us to the end of this evening's agenda. Do I have a motion to adjourn? Motion by Bryn, second by Aurora. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. The meeting is adjourned.