 Let's call this meeting to order. So the first thing is to, will you approve the agenda? I think we had one agenda to approve. Right, I just wanted to add that at the end, a very short discussion about our summer schedule. Great, any other changes? So without objection, we'll consider the agenda approved. So general business and appearances. So this is time for any member of the public to address the council on a topic that is otherwise not on our agenda and if you would keep your comments relatively brief, that would be helpful. So if you come and say your name and where are you at? Back again, Marie Smartnose, 6 Scrivener Street. We'll see you up on Scrivener Street next month on that affair. Two things I just wanted to ask if there was any more conversation about the crosswalk on River Street and then the second thing I wanted to let people know that I have contacted Colin O'Neill over at the Wrightsville Reservoir where they have the disc golf course. We've nailed down a date where we're going to have a tournament there and the third week of October. I've contacted hotels to find out if that's a slow weekend for them so that we can fill those. I've contacted a marketing company in Montreal and I've contacted a marketing company in Boston. Our goal is to have this start out here and my player alive is on board and I've got a meeting with them next week. If you don't know already, Vermont has the highest ratio of disc golf courses in the nation. If we want young people to come here and see this nation, this country, this state, we've got to get young people here. Colin is also building one in Norwich University and he's got two more, one for Berry City and one for Berry Town. 31 years of marketing and sales. I picture in five years that we have a four day tournament similar to a professional but we don't want professionals here. They don't spend money. You've got to pay them to come. We want young people and we want novices and it's best held in the fall after the leaves are down so that they can see the course and then I'm also going to be talking to the local bars and breweries because I picture having a different brewery sponsor each whole and see if we can have them a tasting site and then when you expect to have fans I have a five year goal that we're going to be bringing about 30,000 people into this city for this in five years and I hope they're all under the age of 30. But over 21. But over 21 for that. Picky, picky. But then the other thing is I want food trucks there and eventually camping and maybe we can have it in all four of those locations and Central Vermont will be known as a drawing card for young people and suddenly they see wow wouldn't it be great to be able to live here? Maybe it'd be great to invest here so I have a reason to come back every year for this. I'm passionate about this. We need to get young people here and both my sons are 28 and they're down flatlanders and they said to be the first ones to sign up and they'll both bring a foursome so I've already got eight people coming. Thank you. So just on your first point about the question about the crosswalk so just so you know how I'm thinking about that there have been a number of requests that we've gotten for speed bumps in different places and other crosswalks in other places even other than that and so one of the things that the Montpeau Transportation Infrastructure Committee is taking on right now is if we want to add traffic calming or those kinds of changes what's the process to go through and so my hope is that we can get a process from them in the near future and then run all these kinds of requests through that process and so we haven't forgotten there just may be a process to it and then the second thing about the disc golf tournament as a fellow lover of disc sports I'm very psyched to participate in your next foursome and I did speak to our manager about the pilot program so I was really pleased to get that information from you. Thank you. And we did look at you did defer your specific request to you I'm sorry I haven't followed up to see what it's like. Oh okay. Moving on to the consent agenda we have a motion to approve. So moved. Second. And no one wants to pull anything. Okay any further discussion? All in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? We're on the tax increment financing public hearing so I guess we should yeah we're going to open the hearing I guess we'll start with Stephanie if you have any things you want to add or kick us off here with and then afterwards if there are further comments from the public then we'll open that. As someone once said sorry I didn't have time to write a short letter I wrote a long one instead I think but lucky for you I have made this presentation very concise at the urging of your management so I'm just going to dive right in you know me Stephanie Hainley with Whitenberg real estate investment advisors we've been counseling the city since last July on the viability of a tax increment financing district and then preparing the application that will go to the state. Just a quick refresher because it never hurts to hear what TIF is one more time and also because the public is listening and this is a public hearing for of education continual education and tax increment financing is a funding mechanism intended to catalyze private sector development and to do that it is the city's investment into the public infrastructure that is acting as a barrier to that private development and the way that the city pays for the infrastructure is not through the use of taxes on the on the base but rather using the new taxes that are generated by the new development projects that come about as a result of you taking away the barriers so it is this cyclical cycle that happens with a cyclical cycle alright alright we're starting strong it is a nice cyclical tool that ends up using a portion of the state education fund taxes that would not have otherwise occurred if the city did not make the investments for the infrastructure so but for the city making the investments that the public can use and that will catalyze the private development these things would not otherwise occur with that in mind what we did as a team was to work with city management some of the city council local stakeholders property owners and Montpelier Development Corporation and Montpelier Alive to pull together a list of all of the infrastructure barriers that are causing a problem for private developers who wanted to make their projects happen but have been stalled for years we all know that the cost of development in downtown is really high and the additional infrastructure barriers based on aging infrastructure or problems that have pre-existed maybe even that property owners ownership can add to that cost and make it unfeasible it does not pencil out so as we worked together as a group there is a boundary for the TIF district in the orange that is our proposed TIF district it connects the east and the west sides of the downtown core to incorporate the housing parcels out at Saban's Pasture and Vermont College of Fine Arts and also the downtown core the green line that you can see there is the designated downtown so the TIF district is almost entirely within that and the purple line is actually linear on the northeast corner there hard to see but that purple line is the growth center boundary and we are entirely within the growth center which was an important distinction when we were trying to bring this application to the state and as you know the process is to get this approved and bring this through the city council but also then it needs state approval from the Vermont Economic Progress Council from VEPC and within that district we have identified eight different infrastructure projects that would catalyze nine we have nine technically within different phases private development projects so starting from east and moving west there are two housing projects that have long been talked about along Barry Street at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and Saban's Pasture are in desperate need of the infrastructure along the Barry Street corridor both the utility work and road transportation improvements including the roundabout or the intersection I should say of Barry Street and Main Street the Granite Sheds which are number four on this list are along Barry Street underdeveloped underutilized parcels that could be redeveloped into commercial and indoor housing projects but they also have brownfield issues with some assistance from the state assistance through TIF those could be mitigated and those parcels could be developed into more robust and higher value private development parcels moving downtown there's the pit which would then if there was infrastructure assistance with the sewer and water lines there as well as the intersection traffic signal the Vermont Mutual Site might get redeveloped and the state and Governor Davis lot would also could also see some or further development if there was improvements to the infrastructure and then finally at the core of the downtown is the Capital Plaza Project Capital Plaza Project is has been worked on concurrently alongside this TIF district development since the TIF was reauthorized by the state and that project has been developed with a partnership in mind with the city to help with the parking problem parking shortage and the cost of structured parking being quite a burden on on the cost of the project there's also Christchurch housing at this site that also needs affordable housing and needs parking and there are other uses in the area that public parking would help to incentivize other development so a parking garage that would serve lots of uses downtown is one of the possible options again I use the word possible and could because this is simply a menu of options it doesn't commit the city to anything at this stage but gives them gives you the option to use this if the tool is approved bullet point numbers we are projecting if everything was done in this district which we don't expect would happen over the course of ten years a lot of things can change and evolve but if it did happen $7.8 million of infrastructure investment just using TIF but that also leverages additional funds through state match and federal match with some of the projects through that infrastructure investment we could see a $66.5 million increase of the grand list in incremental new property value over the course of the next ten years that's the investment period that you have to do the infrastructure and then the incremental taxes gained over the next 20 years will be used to pay down the debt service for that $7.8 million infrastructure that's the high points you have in the materials in front of you within this TIF district plan we have to put together the TIF district plan because it is a comprehensive document that really explains more than I was able to do in the last five minutes but puts together all of the background data for how we came to these assumptions they really are assumptions in our model that it's not perfect and we know that those are likely to change as these projects become more granular and crystallized the city council will have in front of them before any project goes forward where you would look at the numbers in more detail but we've put together those projections we've also then packaged this up into the TIF district plan for you to approve all of that gets wrapped in another blanket that gets sent to the state for the application that application includes more data so that the state can get more familiar with your specific community why do you need this I should mention that the TIF district and the state they are authorized to be used in St. Albans, Barrie, Burlington Hartford, Bennington so Montpelier is not unique in using this tool but there are a limited number of spots authorized by the state for this particular use of this tool and this would be used in conjunction with lots of other tools to make these private infrastructure private development projects catalyzed through public infrastructure we plan on applying to the state within the next week in which case we'll make a decision on this TIF district plan tonight and hopefully be heard by the Vermont Economic Progress Council Board this summer so that if the city council chose to go forward with a bond vote you'd be prepared to do so with TIF in your pocket for the November vote that was what we were working toward we're on track for that timing but again right now this is just an authorization of the tool how long seven minutes something okay good any questions I just want to I've received a lot of questions about this and I had an opportunity to ask my questions but I'm just going to ask them so everyone who's here and everyone who's watching can hear so just to be clear though so if we approve TIF right now we are not wed to any of these potential projects so we're not wedded to the parking garage or the housing projects that are proposed in there at all those are all separate things that would need to come before the city council for absolutely okay you guys always ask lots of good questions along the way so this is this is good this is good and you improve the maps right I got the mapping the mapping line thanks to Glen yeah this is good and I've documented all this process in our package to the state so they know and they've got video and minutes and they get to see that the municipality has been brought along throughout this entire process but knowing that you get to have further conversations at further meetings further questions so I will just say that the piece we need tonight is a resolution that there is statutory requirement for specific action to be taken which is why the resolution is so specifically worded we are also asking that the I get a little bit technical here the original taxable value that is the existing tax base within that district that you saw that let those lines every parcel has been identified in a table called table 5H that gets certified today by the mayor and by the assessor to say this is our baseline now going forward everything is built off of that baseline so between that and the resolution that's all we need to make so this is also time for the public to ask questions so if you would like to I wonder what time is the public vote are we looking at we have no idea at this point that this vote just authorizes a TIF district tool to potentially be used if there were a public private bond vote obviously we would know the numbers and release them but we're not even close to guessing so we don't know that there's going to be a bond the goal was in order if the city chooses to work with capital plausible parking garage which we publicly owned would have to be used TIF they want to get started by fall so we need to be on board with that so that one of the reasons for the timing of this application was to allow that opportunity if we chose to do it but there's been no commitments yet to do it when do you think you might have those numbers I mean obviously I'm not trying to play cool I mean obviously well in advance of a warned bond vote and they would be vetted publicly and discussed here we just we're not there yet so Sam working on Cherry Avenue my couple questions one was there was an early slide that had a couple different numbers on it but they seemed very different it looked like it was talking about bonding for about $8 million worth of infrastructure then it talked about an increase of $66 million a new property value but that's not value to the city that's value to individual owners that could be taxed on but my question is city bonds for millions of dollars the comment I believe was that incremental change increase taxes on the new development or increased value would that make the bond payments but wouldn't that be extremely back loaded because you can't tax it until it's making money it's already been built so how are the bond payments made for the first 10 years or whatever the process is sure it's a great question there's a table that has this kind of mapped out really specifically but it has to do with cash flow so you're right that the cash flow of that 66 million that property value doesn't all hit in those first few years so there are first few years but ultimately the tax is paid on the 66.5 over 20 years pays off the debt service of the 7.8 million initially there will be initial years of cash flow where there's not you don't have a perfect match but over time that's the whole point of a district is that the money continues to go into the pot over the course of 20 years to pay down that debt service who'd explained before that how you back loaded in your initial money so you can make the payments which I think is Sam's point can you explain that to him because I can't localize it yeah so there's 20 to 30 years of bond debt service payments based on that investment and you start retaining cash flow it depends on what bond you use a 20 year or 30 year and you start using that retained incremental tax revenue to pay down those debt service payments every year but those debt service payments aren't 7.8 million every year they're maybe 300,000 a year at certain times depending on what you've bonded for so I don't know if you're getting at the initial gap is that your main question or is it just about gross because in gross the initial gap in how the debt is serviced before any of this so the city would have to do cash flow management I think that's the short answer we'll borrow from one of our other funds and do a better transfer is the tip a thing that makes that different than any other bond because now you get to retain also a portion of the state incremental taxes I think that's the key factor is that anything finance of that new revenue school tax also goes into the tip fund which wouldn't happen for normal grand list growth and my second question was about the certification from the mayor as to the section of the grand list within the borders is the assumption that any increase in the list value of those properties would be due to the tip as opposed to what happened anyway separated from growth that is believed to be tip related a really good question so it isn't separated if anything new from this point forward goes into the tip fund and the point the reason for that is the assumption that a lot of this catalyzed this is a lot of infrastructure catalyzing a lot of different development maybe there's stuff that would have happened otherwise there is that statement that somebody was already planning on redeveloping their property in a year but as you do this as a district you do that in order to make sure you have enough money to pay your debt service over the course of the 20 years and ultimately all of that money if there's a surplus goes back to where it was both the general fund and the state but that's used to pay down that debt service just within that portion too it's not the whole city it's a very small portion of the whole city what percentage of the value of the grand list is within that? I have that somewhere it's really small in terms of do you mean in terms of grand list or in terms of acreage? grand list value it would be the original taxable baseline value is that right? it would be $9,276,900 is that right? sounds about right about 10% probably 10 or 11% in terms of value acre twice as tiny so if 70% of the taxes that would be paid on that new development goes to the city to pay off its debt how does the state make up that 70% of the money that would normally be in the education fund do they have to raise the property tax on everybody or however they're doing taxes now what you're getting at is a great question that is the the heart of TIF which is that these would not otherwise happen if it weren't for this investment so the state education fund is not giving anything up because it wasn't going to happen anyway or wouldn't happen to as desirable a manner I would add that all the taxes that the state is collecting right now they will continue to collect because this is the portion that we are using to pay down debt service for public infrastructure is just the improvement on the property so they're not getting any less money arguably they are going to get more money just over time getting 30% of the new so it's basically the rate would be paid at the same value as it is right now and then anything above that we would retain the 70% and the state would get the remaining 30% currently getting 30% of the new revenue so the assumption is that taking this parking garage as an example that would not go forward without TIF financing great question any other questions and we will put these on the website as well these are good FAQs so they will be on the website alright I guess with that then we will close the public hearing so at the end of the attachment to this item there is a resolution that I believe we need to pass motion about that the agenda format is very blurry it's first sheet if you go to it from the agenda it's the very last few pages and it's kind of strange on everything because it's hard to it is the last two pages of the attachment online if you go to the agenda and you click on this item and it says download item again it's like yes maybe somebody else know tricky so far that it's tricky you got it do we have to read now can we just pass the resolution I don't know your rules perhaps we should just because dotting I see as people had a chance to see it do you mind it says resolution tax increment financing district whereas tax increment financing is a critical tool for the city to have in its economic toolbox to provide revenues beyond normal municipal revenue sources for those infrastructure improvements that serve the proposed TIF district and are essential to enable and stimulate development or redevelopment within the district provide for employment opportunities improve and broaden the tax base and enhance the general economic vitality of the municipality the region and the state see 24 of the SA 1893 and whereas for the city of Montpelier to remain a healthy and economically vibrant regional center it must continue to make substantial public investments that encourage private investment and development in the Montpelier community and whereas a tax increment financing district will provide the city with the supplemental funds necessary to make public investments that enable beneficial plan development and redevelopment provide for employment opportunities improve and broaden the tax base for the general economy of the city and whereas the city of Montpelier is responsible for developing and maintaining all public infrastructure and facilities necessary for the continued success and development of its downtown area and whereas Montpelier will be economically strengthened through continued improvements to public infrastructure and facilities and private investment in property development and redevelopment and whereas new real property development and redevelopment would not likely occur or would occur in a significantly different and less desirable manner without the use of tax increment financing and now therefore be it resolved that pursuant to 24 VSA section 1892 a the city of Montpelier city council hereby finds expressly that the creation of the city of Montpelier tiff district as shown on the map attached here to as exhibit a in which proposed public improvements as described in the city of Montpelier tiff district plan represent improvements which could not occur without the availability of tiff district financing as a tool but for the availability of tiff district financing the city would not be able to make these improvements that serve the district and related costs which in keeping with the purpose of tax increment financing as described at 24 VSA section 1893 will stimulate development or redevelopment within the district provide for employment opportunities improve and broaden the tax base and or enhance the general economic vitality of the municipality the region and the state and be it further resolved that the city council establishes the city of Montpelier tax increment financing district with boundary as shown on the map attached here to as exhibit a which map shall be recorded with the office of the city assessor along with this resolution and be it further resolved that the city council pursuant to 24 VSA 1892 hereby approves and adopts the city of Montpelier tiff district plan concurrent with the tiff district financing plan attached here to as exhibit B which plan shall be recorded with the office of the city assessor along with this resolution and be it further resolved that the city council authorizes the city manager or his designee to submit the full application for the city of Montpelier tax increment financing district to the state of Vermont economic progress council with this resolution representing the city's positive vote to establish the city of Montpelier tiff district as delineated on exhibit A and its pledge to reserve 100% of the incremental city property tax revenues received from properties within the Montpelier tiff district towards the retirement of the tiff debt incurred and be it further resolved that the city council pledges that a minimum of 100% of the incremental city property tax revenues received from properties within the city of Montpelier tiff district shall during the legal life of the district be allotted allocated solely towards the retirement of the debt incurred pursuant to the approved tiff district plan stated today in Montpelier. Well done. Thank you for indulging me for making that. I would move that we adopt the resolution that Glenn just read for all of us. He said 100% a couple of times. The I can explain. Oh, you made a motion. I made a motion. Is there a second? Yes. Jack is seconded. Further discussion and we have a question about whether it's 100%. I can answer that. 70% of the school revenues the city can pledge up to up to 100% of the new city. So that's what we're doing here. And that's cited specifically anytime then it's of the incremental city property tax. Yeah, sure. Or no, do we close the public hearing? I would reopen it and certainly answer the question. Sure it does matter. Yeah. Same concept that we were talking about. Let's make sure people understand. Is the statutory requirement 100% or is it authorized up to 100% of the incremental property tax increase and if it's not a statutory requirement how does the city arrive at deciding to use that as the amount as I understand it's between 70 and 100 85% and 100 of the city when we ran all our numbers for all of these projects none of them worked unless we put 100% in so that was how I based on that additional commission my concern is that tied to my different question about locking in the baseline at this minute and guaranteeing 100% is the increase in incremental property taxes to retiring a bond which is taking money that unless you assume that there be zero growth whatsoever in property taxes you're guaranteeing money that otherwise wouldn't exist to repay a bond that may not happen. That is a correct assumption that this tool does. That's one of the tradeoffs that you make to be able to use it. I would assume though that we would get that information about what the debt repayment structure would look like well before we made any decision about approving any particular project. I was unable to view that I thought that the resolution contained a whole lot of speculative and potentially unsubstantiated conclusions that y'all are about to vote on and I'm concerned that that wasn't read before the public hearing and I find the web site hosted somewhere else to be very consumer friendly but unless you absolutely must vote on this tonight I think that circulating that resolution widely or comment I'm not sure if it's just a performative thing or not but I heard a lot of stuff in that resolution that I could take issue with but I'm not prepared nor do I think it affected to try to do so tonight. So just to respond as far as I read I mean these are things that we I feel comfortable voting on this because these are things that we've been talking about for months now and there were no surprises in there for me anyway so I feel good about it but I'll just leave that there any further comments? Okay for further discussion all in favor please say aye Aye Opposed? Okay great Central Vermont thank you Stephanie excited to move forward with these projects I just wanted to make sure we get the resolution signed Hey Stephanie Yes He's taking them remotely John is taking them remotely and I'm also taking them Thank you It's coming Thank you How are you doing today? Hi Anne Good to see you So thank you for being here and just to say a little bit about this before we get started I just want to recognize that the last time you the last time you were here I think we gave you all some directive to have a proposal by November of this year and so this is just intended to be an update particularly because we have new council members just want to get everybody up to speed Okay well thank you for having us I'll give this quicker if you want it off So you have a presentation We don't have a presentation You don't need to move First of all I want to thank everyone for having us tonight That has happened since the last time we're here Obviously there's a bunch of new faces since we were here in January You know I brought some information I don't know if Paco's handed it out but I think he will What I plan on really going I'll start the conversation and talk about some of the general overview of what we've done since the January vote here at this body and then fill you in in regards to what we've done since then If you have any questions particularly the new council members before that we had about seven years other history we have hundreds of pages of reports or projects or whatever we've worked on through the years that's gotten us to this point and I'd be happy to sit down with anyone and answer any questions leading us up to this proposal in the vote that occurred in March So if I can interrupt you if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself Tom Galanca chair of the central public safety authority My last city role but I've been on for a number of years and so Paco Allmont he's our executive director that's been helping lead this effort with our board Donna's the other rep who's the current board member with the Montpelier Kim Cheney who's an at-large board member that's devoted between the member towns Sam Dorkin who's another board member and he's another at-large board member voted collectively from the member towns which currently are Berry City and Montpelier As many of you recall we were here in January 10th to be exact and I brought the minutes just to refresh my memory what we talked about and at that point we presented two documents one which was a 20 page document what we proposed for this current fiscal year which was called the central public safety authority public hearing document and it goes into a lot of budget line item detail that we presented to the voters in March and the second was our strategic plan for 2015 to 2019 and they really formed the basis of what we were attempting to do or trying to do over the next couple months to get to a decision point to make a recommendation of what the central public safety authority recommends as for both Montpelier as well as the central Mont community what we think would be the best next step for public safety in central Mont. We're starting with dispatch so obviously our focus this year is dispatch as we've discussed and so most of our discussion this year involves around that and some strategy points in regards to how we think we can get there the objective in January was to go to the voters and ask for one more year of funding we ended up having surplus funds from prior years of about $47,000 $48,000 so we put that into the pot and although we're level funded money we're proposing to spend $100,000 from last year and $100,000 this year $40,000 of it is accumulated savings from prior years so we asked 30-some percent less from each city in this current fiscal year to get us to this point what we had proposed and I'll have Paco go into it when we get to that point we're basically six different performance expectations for 2018 and he can fill us in a little bit in regards to where we are at that and help you understand what we anticipate over the next couple months how we'll get to a conclusion in the October-November time frame so we're in time for the budget and voting for next year whether or not we decide to go further we presented these documents for the public vote in March and I'm pleased to report that Montpelier passed this by an 85% margin I think it was one of our better voter turnouts collectively, Berry City passed this by about 64% so collectively amongst the two towns it was over 77% voter support in the region for at least continued discussion it's not really a mandate to do anything just yet but at least it's a mandate to continue looking at whether or not we as a group can collectively come up with a better solution so we're not all trying to work in our own individual silos in public safety we view dispatch as one of those silos that I think if we work collectively we can help expand the pool possibly offer greater service to residents but then offer our services to more towns because I think technology constraints limit our ability to expand the five deliverables that I think that PAKA will go into we're exploring the affiliation with the CBPSA of the capital fire mutual aid system as all of you are aware they're currently a contracted entity with a city of Montpelier that provides 300 and some $1,000 per year in contract in two years so I imagine there's going to be some negotiations in the next couple of years of how to renew that, how much to charge for that and what that entails and that represents 18 to, I don't know how many member towns there are in capital west that contract with Montpelier but it's a significant number that represents a large population based in central Vermont you know upwards of 60,000 people in the surrounding communities the one deliverable is getting them on board and integrating them in the process we've had numerous meetings where their executive team as well as their communications committee and the plan is that the capital fire mutual aid system has put on their ballot to vote for two seats on our board and that will come in July so we anticipate we'll have more information on that the PAKA can fill you in on some of that detail second thing is the expansion or looking into the simulcast radio system project and that would be a way delivering to this council an idea of how we think it should be funded how a funding sharing arrangement should be made amongst these member towns and how Montpelier can help lead this process to better integrate or offset some of the problems with the current dispatch model, you know fighting Canadian traffic taxi traffic when we're having emergency service out in Worcester or not being able to hear because of the connection and make it more of a digital seamless operation second, the third deliverable is the investigation and discussion of a single site dispatching center where that is is to determine but we anticipate that a plan will come up with those options and give you a funding formula of how to do that, that could range anywhere from keeping it here in Montpelier adding on where you are or moving up to the hill in Berlin or adding somewhere in between PAKA has been intimately involved in tracking some legislation that is in the state senate in regards to dispatch operations, you can get into that another deliverable is public outreach expanding what we are trying to accomplish and get that incorporated in our report come October and November and then the last piece and I think it's an important piece because I think it can help lead the decision in November is an exit strategy, what happens if what we propose is too expensive we are not willing to give up any control if we can't coordinate any type of payment stream to pay for these infrastructure expenditures, we want to propose as well as part of our plan some type of exit strategy from Montpelier to gracefully exit, we will in November time frame still have half of our fiscal budget obviously that's funds that have been allocated by the two cities, we have a sharing arrangement with Barry of a 53-47 split, I imagine that would be on the table in regards to what do we do with that do we reallocate it in some way that we haven't considered or do we just give it back to the cities and that's if at the end of the day you don't like it, you don't want to go forward Barry doesn't like it, Barry doesn't want to go forward or something in between so with that said, I'll throw it over to Paco he can expand more on the specifics of what he's been working on and a timeline over the next couple months as we get ready to give you a report come the October-November time frame, which I think will answer all the questions that were raised in the January time frame, I think so with that Hello everybody for the record, my name is Francis Allmond everybody calls me Paco I am the I've been serving as the executive director of the Central Vermont Public Safety Authority since so I have 2015 I believe it was and again I want to echo there are new members here on the council the chair Tom said that we'd be more than open to talking about some of the specifics relative to how the authority has evolved over time I guess having that said I will presume anyway that there's a fundamental knowledge of some of our work such that I can move forward we developed several performance expectations for 2018 that had defined deliverables that would ultimately lead by November to a go or no go relative to at least the dispatching and we committed to formulating an exit strategy if the both city councils chose not to move forward that's the heart of our work this year the first one is developing another municipality member of CVPSA and we we have had over the course of the last two years two and a half years certainly I have talks with both Berrytown and Berlin they are not interested in joining CVPSA they weren't when CVPSA was created and they are not currently but we took a look at the 18 communities that are being dispatched currently by the Montpelier police department called Capital West we then realized we peeled back the onion if you will to try to define what capital fire is and how capital fire interacts the short of it is capital fire is a mutual aid district that is by statute a municipal corporation and capital west responsible for the 18 communities that are dispatched out of Montpelier is a communications committee of capital fire so the board of directors felt I think fairly strongly that there was a natural linkage between the 31 member municipal corporation called Capital Fire and Central Vermont Public Safety Authority so we have worked to try and develop a memorandum of agreement that would meet both CVPSA's needs and also capital fire's needs we formed a negotiating committee spent a considerable I think a considerable amount of time over several drafts trying to address and negotiate some of their concerns and we got to a document where the committee and the board was very satisfied with we had hoped that the vote to join CVPSA would occur on May 16th at their annual meeting that did not happen for a variety of reasons they had many more questions and we used that date as a way of answering those questions spent about an hour and a half talking about a variety of issues and as a result of that the organization voted to take the question to a vote at their next quarterly meeting which is July 18th we also agreed to reconvene the negotiating committee to talk about addressing some of the issues they raised but also to have another informational meeting with them in June we continue certainly I continue to believe very strongly that there is there is a nexus between the two organizations that would be very helpful in trying to coordinate fire and EMS services throughout Central Vermont the next issue that we tried to address is the simulcast radio system project this is a project of Capital West primarily but it's significant because the dispatchers in Montpelier dispatch for Capital West under a contract and so the radio problems that exist within those 18 different communities have a significant impact on at least the dispatchers it also has an impact there are many what we call dead zones and there are also talk over problems that a simulcast system would we believe would solve as I mentioned it's a Capital West issue the contract that the city of Montpelier has with Capital West says that it's Capital West Capital West must provide the radio infrastructure but even Capital West will tell you that it needs improvement from our perspective certainly if we were to assume responsibility for the dispatching function we are very concerned about how that continues to impact on the dispatchers we can make their lives more efficient their work lives more efficient all better off not to mention that it would provide a better service in central Vermont we have met to begin talks about this system this new system the communications improvement working group which was formed to help guide the single site dispatching and the simulcast radio project met their first meeting was targeted at trying to address that issue it is while it's a $1.3 million projected project it can be done in phases and the existing radio infrastructure is a Motorola product and it is a strong consensus of the group that it should be a sole source consideration relative to any purchasing should be a lot of thought to moving forward so we are working on that project although I must admit it's been stalled somewhat given the uncertainty with the capitol fire single site dispatching center you know we've formed a communications improvement working group that's made up a variety of employees twice I've met separately with a couple people to talk about a subcommittee to talk about radio issues to talk about facility issues I've met with the chiefs of police to talk about business requirements so we're moving forward in that area there is and I'm not going to sugar coat it there is a lot of concerns that I have specifically one of the biggest ones is around a facility what are we going to do we talk about single site I am now on my fifth plan version and I know you haven't seen all but one but I've written plans for five different I'm on my fifth scenario and the issue that we keep hearing is that if they should take over the dispatching function it should be out of the existing departments in a standalone single site so we're working on that the next thing we identified the need to track senate bill 273 which has passed has not been signed by the governor as yet it's in a much different form than when it started our original interest CBPSA and my original interest was because while that bill was huge had a variety of sections in it pertaining to law enforcement there was one section that was extremely important important to me and it was the creation of a public safety planning grant process we finally got the legislator's attention at least the senate government operations committee to recognize that coordinating consolidating integrating regionalization of public safety services was an important item to the state of Vermont and that needed legislative leadership leadership in the terms of authorizing funding for two or more local communities to want to get together to study consolidation in other words to put money into what both Barry and Montpelier have already done that got a lot of attention a lot of support at the committee level but at the end of the day money being it got eliminated from the bill but they we also spent a lot of time testifying myself Chief Fakos Chief Taylor from St. Albans we spent a considerable amount of time talking about dispatching talking about the inequalities of dispatching services statewide specifically as it relates to the lack of uniform funding for dispatching centers specifically the fact that the state police provides free dispatching to 105 different agencies and we all basically agreed that it was time for that to change and I actually testified that my recommendation would be that if there is not a movement towards creating a fair and equitable formula system then why should Montpelier and Barry fund their dispatch centers it's not a new argument Chief Hoyt presented that argument to the Department of Public Safety many years ago but it has been an issue that's been around for quite a while so I'm going to interrupt you I just want to be conscious of the time if you have more things that you definitely want to hit I'll summarize so real quickly the legislature passed a study bill that is part of the past S273 that calls for the review of a variety of issues of standardization around dispatch but it's important to know that language was put in this bill that says in proposing a plan consideration shall be given to existing and planned regional dispatch centers public outreach we fully intend to move forward with public outreach which is what we said we'd like to move forward with I'm calling educational and listening sessions we were starting with one we had one scheduled was to address the chamber of commerce breakfast that cancelled due to lack of interest and then there's the exit strategy so thank you very much so I'm sure there's probably questions so I have a bunch of questions so feel free to cut me off so my first question I know when you guys were here last there were there were some staff members that were present I think I see at least one person here but I was curious I know that there were some issues that were raised by the staff and I'm curious to see how the CVPSA has responded to the staff concerns and to the union concerns about sort of how the new entity would function working with the union going forward well this year isn't a focus on employees we're not asking for taking over assuming management control that remains with Montpelier so that issue hasn't been addressed as of yet we understand it we do have union representatives that attend all of our meetings and so we have we are conscious of that as a concern and so we are committed to reviewing that as it comes up but with the plan this year we don't intend asking for operational control of the management of employees so we figured it's not a priority in this presentation for October and November but it is a concern that if we get to the next step will be vitally important in order to integrate with a different governance model it seems like something that the conversation should be started now if we're going to move into phase two we don't want to be sort of caught completely off guard by these issues going forward that we're going to need to address too additionally in terms of public outreach this is one of the things I think I had raised when I had met with you and then additionally when you folks were here one of the things that I am really interested in hearing from are the professionals and the volunteer forces that we work with that get dispatched out I want to make sure that their concerns and their thoughts and their recommendations are being listened to as part of this plan as well and I think the community piece is also significant I mean I know there are some feelings about the thought of like picking up a phone in a lobby as opposed to like having an individual there and I want to make sure that we get all of the stakeholders I totally agree and I sat in with a dispatch center in Berry City and I realized they had one person on and I think it fundamentally highlights a problem when we each tried to do it alone in Silo so I totally agree with you and one of the other things and I had mentioned this earlier but I'm going to bring it up for everyone because we're planning on going forward I know that this has been a sort of work in progress for years at this point and I'm sort of at a point and I think it sounds like we're in agreement that come November we either have an up vote or a down vote and we move forward either one of two ways and it seems to me that the best way to do that is to do all of the listening to hear from all of the stakeholders about what their positions are but ultimately I think that the councils need to meet together with the CVPSA in India for where we're coming at this from and I don't think that meeting in this way, just meeting with Montpelier in our Silo and meeting with Berry in its Silo is really the most conducive way to figure out where the meeting of the minds is and where it isn't and what areas we can sort of find common ground and how to work those pieces to see if there even is a workable solution and so I feel very strongly and I don't know how my fellow council members that it would make sense towards the end of the summer well it sounds like there's a vote in July so you'll know then whether we'll have new members in Capital West but I think at that point the councils just need to get together because if there's no way for us to agree on this there's no point in going further and putting together a plan that's just going to get voted down if there's no clear path forward I think as as the president of this council I'd be remiss in my duty if I said I want to spend any more time and taxpayer dollars on something that there's no possible way for any of us to move forward and I think the council probably shares that view and I'm sure Berry feels similarly so I would encourage you and I'm not comfortable doing anything until both councils meet together with the CVPSA to figure out agreement, disagreement and if there is a way to address those in a plan moving forward you know we met with Berry City last night we had a very positive conversation about the same exact presentation model so we have a good working relationship with Mayor Herring and Mayor Watson so I think we will explore how we get together but there will be unique differences that may make a path successful for Montpelier but not successful for Berry so there may be a path that we may want to consider as Montpelier that Montpelier takes the lead and we use Montpelier's model as an entity already because of your capital west exposure so I wouldn't preclude the idea that yes you may meet but there may be differences of opinion that would make the progress work faster and that's I just as a council member I think I need to know what that is so that I have an understanding of what all of the risks benefits costs non-costs are to our city and sort of where Berry is at in that regard and obviously we have options but if the CVPSA is going to be the option I want to hear from both councils what that option looks like and in the meantime I'd encourage you to attend our board meetings I feel that to disconnect a little bit with CVPSA and the Montpelier council is when we went down from only one council rep from two to one and so I feel that with Thon and I both as the council reps we would bring it back in our internal council discussion so other council members would feel a little bit more comfortable I really believe that having another council rep to help us get to the next step would be extremely helpful now that means I can step aside and offer it to one of you I'd be happy to do so I would be happy to continue on in an ancillary role with a no voting right I don't care I'm really committed to regionalization and I think Montpelier is better served by having council reps during our discussions I don't believe you want to meet I heard your schedule this week and I know you met Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and you want to meet Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday Thursday because we meet on Thursday it's actually more power to you but I think I would give some benefit to the fact that you have a really good cohesive board that's professional that will come back with a representative that may not be exactly what Montpelier wants but we'll try to blend everything we hear from all of our discussions every one of our discussions but I have also no problem adding that joint meeting with Barry I think that's something we can discuss if at the soonest you're thinking in the summer there's going to be this vote in July we should just touch base after that and that's what they did Lucas asked me yesterday what would be a good next step for Barry City and I said we'll probably wait till after the capital west vote and see what that looks like and then go from there and again I'll put this out there I had put my name in and then when Tom you indicated that you still wanted to continue serving I withdrew my own name because I think you have institutional knowledge that is incredibly valuable I am happy to be the person from the council that goes this week probably not, this is my third night and maybe it's intermittent I just think it's good to have extra council eyes on where we're leading in a direction that you don't feel Montpelier would support or encourage we do hear good feedback from Tony and Bill but it's also good to have council feedback at different stages of this I'd like to make it through at least in November just to see where this thing goes because I spent so many years on it but I do think having that extra Montpelier focus whether it's an existing member or I don't know I throw it off Any other questions? I do have a question and I know I'm exposing my ignorance here but this state police thing really has me wondering, you said there are 105 towns that are being dispatched by the state police is that just sort of a historical accident and two could Montpelier both say to the state police we're just not going to do dispatch anymore so it's in your lap because someone has to do it not saying that would necessarily former deputy commissioner forward I think that I have the institutional knowledge that this has sufficiently answered that question regarding the latter about really pressuring the state police to take over the dispatching services for for a ferry in Montpelier that really wouldn't happen the services are beyond their capacity to be able to provide a dispatching service the issue of charging departments dates back to or lack of charging dates back to the early 70s when the department of public safety received a significant federal grant to first establish an analog microwave network throughout the state and then in a follow up grant they came up with an idea of providing regional dispatching services to all police departments and so that gave birth to the state police providing they got the grant and they got the money for their additional staff and that gave birth to the idea that they would provide dispatching services to then it was just law enforcement over the years with the advent of 9-1-1 fire departments in the need to get away from red phones went looking for dispatching services and settled on the state police in the 80s the state police started to realize that they cannot from a budgeting perspective keep up with the demand for dispatching service departments that started in the 70s were growing significantly in the 80s and the staff just did not keep up so there was a move by the state police to try to encourage some law enforcement agencies to create their own dispatching some did but most a lot stayed with the state police and some as some new members or new departments came on the state police started charging them I think there was at least a maybe a handful 10, 12 that were being charged the former commissioner of public safety realizing that it was an inequitable funding solution said I'm no longer going to charge anymore the agencies that we started charging are going to get it free until somebody like the legislature resolves the question of funding I can weigh in on that too Jack some time ago fact that may have been you that I sent the letter to I can't remember Chief Hoy actually I'm sorry a number of years ago and I don't know I couldn't tell you when it was 15 years ago something like that we sent the letter to the state basically saying we were exploring the option of discontinuing our dispatch service and we were giving them nine months notice or something that as of coming July one we were going to take advantage of the same services that everybody else in the state got and essentially got the answer that you know we just can't do it and you're putting your citizens at risk and so we then raise or I raise the issue well then perhaps we should get our residents should get some sort of income tax credit and anybody else who provides a dispatch since you're giving it free and that you know didn't get very far this isn't a this isn't a new issue and I think it is one that that causes a problem and it's one of the actual you know it's one of the obstacles between even with our regional system because some of our neighboring towns that aren't joining are getting free dispatch and you can't blame them so just seems like a crazy non-system that's exactly what it is well if you if I may take a couple more minutes I'll give you another crazy example where dispatching needs to be there needs to be some effort to try to standardize dispatching so there's a severe motor vehicle accident at Berlin Four Corners as an example so the poor person who's injured picks the phone calls 911 that 911 calls answered in Williston the Berlin Police Department is dispatched by the state police out of Williston the very town ambulance service is dispatched by LaMoyle County dispatch and Berlin Fire Department which is part of Capital West is dispatched out of Montpelier so that 911 call taker who gets that call has to figure out well let's see here to state police the dispatch and then LaMoyle County and Montpelier and so it is it's a system that that example highlights a system that is that needs improvement everybody has grown up if you will receiving services and we get by but if you look at dispatching from a systemic perspective it needs to be fixed and I'm not saying what we're doing is necessarily going to fix it but we would hope that we by trying to create a system a unified system in Central Vermont that we might be able to lead the way to allow other customers to come into it one of our operating principles is to expand and develop our services so I want to check check in with you all any other questions also I mean the teacher in me really wants to do like a checking for understanding do you know what I mean was this helpful did you find this useful I'm hoping the answer is yes okay excellent very good I'm sure there are some comments from the public so if any questions from the public now is the time I don't have questions I got some comments that's fair just try to keep it to two minutes or less so that's actually a standard that we're trying to set for all of our meetings if you have more things to say beyond that that's fine just give it to us okay at this point I like the idea that we need to see a clear pass forward it's not sufficient to have an exit strategy and then be back to where we were three years ago I commend that there's been some good work done but we're on the wrong path we're really in a governance mind field with this idea that the two cities are going to be joined by the duly appointed representatives to a 31 town district capital capital fire special aid of which their bylaws allow 10 percent of them to constitute a quorum so four people could show up to a meeting three of them vote to join and then you got 31 towns represented by two seats on this board and this board cannot succeed unless it is has the membership in the buy-in from Berlin very town possibly Northfield possibly Waterbury so this idea that they're shooting for might be attainable 10 years from now but in the meantime we need to set our sights realistic we need to focus on the priorities of communications planning public safety is based on communications and this idea of a sole source million-dollar radio system you know without integration with where our cellular dead zones are where we want to put Microsoft is absolutely absurd that should be blazing red flag for y'all so we need to inventory that's why I mentioned earlier and I'll share these pretty close to accurate map of the both member towns in the communication district and the member towns in the capital west the subset in the dispatch they are so similar that again I'm going to propose you consider investigating not waiting till November to investigate whether the communication district model one town one vote in governance might be a better place to explore public safety communications originally this was sold to the towns as the cities as two sites with failover redundancy somehow it evolved into one site which lacks both failover and redundancy that's another red flag you had the 1.3 million dollar simulcast system to a building to a dispatch outfit console and you're into the over 10 million at least the governance minefield I I believe this will be voted down I'd rather us not lose another six months that I don't believe capital fire mutual aid is going to vote to join I don't think very cities to see their authority if we could early sooner than later set aside the whole concept of seeding and get focused on the communications build the trust build the cooperation solve the dead zones you then might have a foundation to build on for sharing fire trucks and satellite etc I'm concerned that we will end up with exit strategy and be further behind than we need to be unless you get engaged now and start thinking about what can run in parallel with this professional development I got a call I spoke to the city council last night I got a call from a former very town select board member and this idea that Berlin is currently dispatched for free on a 20 year elusive agreement in exchange for having hosted the mental hospital and very town went to Levoil because they're unhappy the quality of the dispatching that they're getting the professionalism of very city that tells me that we should be focused on professional development we will reach the level of cooperation and trust to form a unified district by focusing on training in professional development we're not doing that right now so how much more do you have there I think I've covered enough thank you those are great points to consider and when we have something concrete to look at we'll keep those things in mind thank you can I ask one question Steve about these maps what are these little dots on the maps is there a legend those are the microcells that are currently on or off that's a new crisis coverage code we should be aware coverage code paid 8000 to get consolidated to restore to consolidate communication turned them all off today we got a new public safety emergency to fight thank you for your attention assuming there's no other questions all right thank you all for being here thank you for your time if anyone has any questions feel free to reach out super thank you okay and Ashley tell your husband to start cutting the area okay all right so on to the downsizers group would it be possible to just take like a couple minutes Carrie and Jay do you mind if we take a couple minute break okay take a five minute break thank you break over now that everybody's back welcome Carrie and Jay thanks for being here so how about the this is something I think a lot of the council knows about just to kind of give a really quick update the impiliar downsizing group was founded about three and a half years ago by Phil Dodd and about six months after I had heard about it through Fraun his wife I got involved just from the standpoint of becoming part of and it's kind of grown and we have email update will go out and we have meetings used to do them every six months but we're now doing them about once a year and then sending out an update this is for people who have larger homes whether in or out of Montpelier who want to downsize most of us are seniors we don't need to live on our have our bedrooms on the second floor and I love our living on the main floor etc so we put together this group and there's now about 200 on the database and that's not everybody that's only a local so we decided we were going to try to drive this a little bit harder and we created a smaller but I call a core group of interested downsizers who want to downsize within say two years and so we have about now 10 or 11 households who are kind of ready to commit we've actually given ourselves a name we're called the silver maple group and we are now looking to form an LLC and they're looking into what is the legal entity the condominium association etc we've been looking at properties whenever anything comes off and I usually high tail it up and we'll have a look at it and we're looking at three to four within the city limits everybody wants to be within Montpelier of course everybody wants to be within walking distance but when you have a topography the way Montpelier has walking to town is sometimes optional or not possible so we were looking at how the downsizers can positively require you have a little extra time and you even though you've gotten rid of a lot of stuff I mean you have to go buy a lot of stuff so you know you are very we're very active in the community there have been a number of people I've talked to who are from outside the city and who said oh we want to be in Montpelier because for such a small city there's so much going on we can always be involved so besides bringing people in from outside so faith about a quarter of the group aren't currently living in Montpelier so you are bringing in additional revenue because we're looking at affordable market rate there's plenty of affordable housing being developed now and coming onto the market as far as availability is concerned but that doesn't give us so we say we have a 2,500 whatever it is square foot house is a bit of a challenge so having our own home but a much smaller within the city limits is ideal and if you have a look at pocket neighborhoods you can just google pocket neighborhoods and a lot of information comes up so that's the idea 800, 1200 square foot homes and these would be within the Chiff district so that we would be able to be close to town and be involved in the community so we're asking basically for the support of the council in helping us move this forward when the opportunity arises and I don't mean to be vague because Jay is the one that has all the more specifics and we want to stay part of the city and stay very involved in the city and I'm not even from Vermont so I'm relatively new to so I'm happy to be here and get involved I'll try to be professionally vague I compliment your efforts on sustainable Montpelier with all your laptops instead of printed material although I see Bill has the printed copy Jay, I'm sorry could you move that over there we go, better I couldn't hear you I assume you've availed yourself of digital tab instead of sheet music your guitar so anyway I've been working with the group for perhaps a year and a half or so there are a lot of varied interests the smaller group that Kerry mentioned is mostly interested in that cottage or a duplex cottage as opposed to apartment and there's many who are interested in a more of an apartment type of arrangement some of them are interested in ownership and others rental so there's kind of a mix there's probably a little bit more ownership it might be condominium but then the rental option and again some wanting apartment and some cottage this concept of pocket neighborhood is quite exciting where there's sort of a gathering of homes and a close proximity less infrastructure costs they have a shared community spaces they can look out for one another shared maintenance etc so that has some benefits it creates an exciting neighborhood some of them want to maintain one automobile and have parking within their structure others a pair and there are some who will be happy with no car and then want to be sort of in a walkable environment which I think is a goal that we're looking for more toward from Montpelier as she mentioned we'll certainly do want to maintain and remain in Montpelier and some of the old zoos who had that sort of territorial imperative that moved out to Calis and Midisex want to come back in and that will certainly be a benefit to our community it will also then free up their homes for families and others we've looked at a number of sites as she mentioned and a lot of them have some aspect of law that is an issue whether it be location or utility availability or access or topography or costs so we're trying to come up with a couple where they can be more viable and not have some of those issues as mentioned there are many programs that benefit low income housing the French block which we're doing across the street it's been picking for 75 years programs that have enabled that to take place for those that are going to be a tailor or potentially Christ church but there's very little that can assist with affordability for market rate and then this group the TIF district is certainly one that can be of some assistance and we've had some communication with Sue and Fraser and looks as though some of those potential areas would be included within the district and we would certainly encourage that obviously they have to pass muster before any bond vote to prove that they are viable and will help contribute there are still some other hurdles and one of those that has is still there and I think we're hoping to see some adjustments on has to do with zoning there are always as you know Montpelier passed it to new after a lot of study new zoning ordinance and as one starts to apply new ordinances there are discoveries and things that perhaps were not necessarily intended but need to be adjusted there were changes to density many areas within the city will allow somewhat higher density and there were also areas that were in effect down size relative to the number of units that could be built within them about a third of the city now is going to be rural which would need two acre minimums per house and that was probably of a lesser density than had been another area one that we had been looking at was the residential 24,000 where you would need 24,000 square feet per home there also that go with that are some requirements for open space that then cuts down the availability of area or some requirements on what that open space can be in one area that I was looking at in theory by the R24,000 we could have had 11 homes but after I apply all of these lesser fine print aspects I can put five can you build roads and infrastructure for five homes probably not so those are some things that maybe need some adjustment and we've had discussions with Mike who recognizes some of these things and some of them were simply oversights and I think he's coming to planning commission and then probably to you on some of those there are also some tools within the zoning that can help with higher densities or neighborhoods there's one called new neighborhood and plan unit development however these are not applicable in a number of the areas of the R24,000 the rural the eastern and western gateways there are some nice and potential new neighborhoods and some of the eastern and western gateways which would not be seen they might be seen as a gateway but they're not going to see them because they just aren't visible so I think for instance that's an area where if those were allowed could provide for some nice neighborhoods that should be done so what can the city council do again we met with Mike and he's going to make some of these changes in zoning and I would encourage you to approve those when they come to you the tip district glad to hear that tonight that was approved and would potentially be available the permanent process is one that has been sort of long and lengthy and not pillar and sometimes is scared people but I think there have been improvements toward making that a little more streamlined and I'm feeling pretty good about that that will be seen as an option one of the other restrictions that we are running into on one of these properties for some multi-unit is a slope restriction where you can't disturb any slope greater than 30 percent or greater and the same relates to some of our road requirements if we looked at those requirements much of Montpelier wouldn't exist because of its slopes I think one thing that's often good in looking at some requirements that are about to be applied within the city municipalities to look at the existing city and the portions that you know and love and if you apply these new rules could they form if they couldn't then maybe they should be rethought of it we've talked like that with Tom McCartle on looking at how we were going to use some creative aspects of one of the slope sites working into the hillside and he felt that would be fine conceptually and what was in portion of the ordinance and I would think would be fine here would be that for anything within those slopes you would require that they be engineered and that you have approval by public works and or whatever body so they could certainly go through and make sure they're meeting all requirements I think part of the reasoning there have been developments in Montpelier that were of slopes and without proper erosion control and there definitely were problems so I don't disagree that it should be looked at but I wouldn't just say that they can't happen otherwise we'd be eliminating some of the options some of which such as along Barry Street that have been thought about by many people and be an area that is quite viable and acceptable there are a number of groups that are looking at options for transportation whether it be shuttles, bike paths other kinds of combinations of transportation much of in when we participated in the team bridges concept much of that was sort of transportation development and some of these transportation aspects can happen and a lot of that development could occur the portion of it also being the concept of some remote parking where we'd have lots where people could come park and then hopefully if we get the butt cars running they could come into town and not need to park in town nor would you need that level of additional traffic and service parking can probably develop that perhaps about $2,000 a space rather than the $8,000 for a first space for a parking structure so it's fairly economical there are some continued interest in having the added transportation such as the butt cars but concerned for the track conditions and such which would need some improvements I recently noticed that some granite filled cars and engines running through town a couple weeks ago at about 800,000 pounds of butt cars so is that really a problem? so I think we don't have any specific asks of you tonight but I think if there's sort of general support I get a sense that this council would like to see more housing and there will certainly be wherever one proposes a project there will be those who don't want it and I think one thing that will happen here that will be a little different that much of this group will be coming to for approval will be the neighbors and hopefully that will have some positive impact and see the benefits to the city so if there are any other thoughts that you guys might have of ways to help or certainly open to those we probably will be soon looking particularly if the zoning some of the things we're looking at will need to have the zoning changes and once we know they're in place and we're viable we'd be pursuing specific designs and then coming through the design and permitting process with the city and we'd like to mention that our whole goal is to be able to age in place there's nobody who wants to go into a nursing home and everyone wants to be able to so we're talking about very senior friendly you know everybody help everybody else out and that's not really co-housing but you know thinking along those lines where you're part of a community so you have an immediate community and then you have the Montpelier greater Montpelier community and then you have the actual community so you actually have three integrated communities and something that we're talking about one reason for getting the poor group going is that we could be a model for other types of neighborhoods like this once they're constructed and people are moving in and they're happy there are other locations within Montpelier city limits where that actually could work it could be multi-generational it could be senior it could be whatever but a lot of millennials really want big houses you know there'll be quite a few of them who at least will be able to sell ours houses but when it comes to the next generation you know not everybody can afford a big house so it would be nice to be able to have smaller communities that are multi-generational too great comments yes Donna I didn't see it on the attachment did you send us any of those points about zoning Jay but I can send you the more specifically I think they will still be coming to you but sure we did meet with Jay and Kerry and they largely agree with their analysis and I believe they're being brought forward to the planning commission we've got a whole list of zoning fixes I think we're targeting sometime in summer of July or so the three big ones to me was a square footage of the units or the building itself and then the lot size and slopes square footages of the lot size so how many can you put on say an acre right so just in terms of you know taking the temperature of the council at this point I just want to offer that you know the couple of the crimes that you mentioned about open space given that I think it's related to 40% of the land had to be kept open that's something that I'm sympathetic to if you want to adjust that up or down mostly down and I think you mentioned that the new neighborhood PUD is not available in 24,000 or Eastern Gateway or Western Gateway or rural that seems something that I'm certainly open to talking about the slope restriction gives me more pause to think about changing that and the reason is because I have made some to be fair I have made some assumptions that the 30% grade is based on some science and I appreciate you know you're thinking there about there's a difference between saying nothing can happen there nothing is ever good you know on a 30% grade versus if you want to build a 30% grade so that you don't destroy the bank and that's what we read asked right and that's fair I guess I would just ask that that be robustly supported in science and then it will be very happy I think you'd need a stamped engineer approval that you're not going to have issues I mean that seems like a subtle nuance that would have been easy to overlook in the first time around you're just saying now we're not going to we actually just in one iteration and I don't remember if it was the final I guess it wasn't but we considered it I thought I don't remember but that's entirely possible I would say one of the areas that have been identified as prime housing by many groups would not be possible if that stays in place I'm sorry what one of the areas along Berry Street that has been identified as a prime area for some multi housing would not be possible right yeah exactly okay other comments or questions I guess I would just say that you were you know wondering about support from the city in general and the tax stabilization policy is also an avenue for developments to request assistance so that's available for housing as well as other areas all right yes it is residential housing well depending on the depending on the structure of it no I was just I wasn't all right any other comments from the public on this okay great thank you so much all right so the community services presentation senior activity center yeah yeah anyone interested in a hard coffee we may be flipping the order here for the sake of the I love our volunteers who are here so let's come back to that sorry Jeff and Artie we're going to flip the order here a little bit so let's go to the conservation commission presentation and then the tree board great what's on our team a lot going on a lot going on it's true do you have a power plant? no you don't conservation commission commission they don't want to use the BTUs paper and pencil that's right okay so yeah thanks if you'd introduce yourselves yeah of course I'm James Brady the chair of the conservation commission I took over from Roy Schiff at the beginning in 2017 and we have a kind of a new renaissance going with a nice big full group right now page garden thank you for appointing me to the conservation commission so I just kind of wanted to give a background on the last few years under my leadership and I took over the group right at kind of like a prime time for a shift and we had worked with Vermont Fish and Wildlife and their community programs to help come up with a strategic planning matrix for our commission to kind of like look out roughly the next five years or so and so we kind of met as a group and we threw everything against the wall to see what would stick and we came up with our list and with our priorities it was a long list and it was some really great things that people were getting really excited about and so basically that's when I took over so I kind of like handed the keys to this kingdom here you go here's your marching orders see if you can make anything happen so it was a it was a big group, very excited group so I kind of felt like very personally responsible to not let everybody down because we had some serious momentum going and some really great ideas some great energy so thanks Paige so we hit the ground running with this momentum but then we kind of decided that we should probably be doing some housekeeping because it had been a while since we had gone over the actually the full membership of the commission and whether the alternates were ever officially adopted by the city council all this stuff kind of like paperwork and stuff that had been kind of lost over time or a little bit so we we worked hard over that kind of the first couple of months there to to officially bring our group to full capacity and we learned during this process that we had two seats that were vacant that we didn't even know we had so we have a little bit of an unusual circumstance where we're kind of under state statute so state statute says nine members and we had been operating with seven so we're like okay great so not only do we have that we started getting a lot of interest from folks in the community about joining and what was going on so we wanted to make sure that our alternate positions were officially by the book and everything because we're starting to get this groundswell momentum we want to make sure we're doing everything right so normally commissions don't have alternates but since we were limited to that nine members we decided to pursue it because of all of this momentum energy and ideas that we had going and we needed people so adding those alternates kind of give us more of that people power that we needed to kind of implement our strategic planning matrix and thank you for kind of officially adopting that and when that was adopted you may recall we had a large group of applicants for the commission and I kind of saw that as a mandate to like okay you got everything kind of your ducks in a row let's let's actually get stuff on the ground so we met late last year we went at Hubbard Park conservation commission we hadn't met outside this room for who knows how long and so I was like we should meet in Hubbard Park and we're going to clear the agenda we're going to pick kind of like our top priorities from this huge list that we came up with and Montpelier is an interesting area so we're geographically small we're a population center in a larger context it's often hard to think outside political boundaries you have to do that for ecology natural resources and we have this responsibility to to work on that growth here and kind of we're not going to be preserving thousands of acres of land we don't have that so what rose to the list pretty quickly was our stormwater master plant and kind of the low hanging fruit there and stuff the projects that are in that master plan that we could handle as a commission to help out public works to help water quality to get things moving to increase public outreach and I'm going to actually switch the page and so we have our first project kind of officially started here and if you want to give some details on that we are there are several of us we decided to do since we only meet once a month we have some sort of ad hoc groups that work on particular projects so we have a group that's doing that's working on stormwater projects and there are the city is doing all the that's working on stormwater projects that are in the master plan that are on public land and so we are kind of looking at taking on as many of the projects that are look like their priority projects that are on private land and so the first place we're starting with is a very visible location at the Bermuda State employees credit in the intersection of the bike path Bailey Avenue entrance to the credit union and entrance to the high school there's a catch base in there that drains a fairly large portion of their parking lot so there's a group of us that are trying to are working on designing and implementing a rain garden that will manage some of the water from that point and it will be a really visible location if we can pull it off and make it as beautiful as I hope we can that we'll be able to use this kind of an educational site for helping people understand what you can do with rain gardens and whatever and the credit unions excited about that because they want benches and they want to make a little park and you know whatever so it's actually working out really well so far turns out to be a bit of a challenging site but we're working on design right now who's funding that good question we have a certain amount of money in the conservation commission's budget set aside for matching for grants and once we get our design set up and we will have some budgetary things put together then we'll start applying for grants Sean White's been helping me with that friends are living those so she's amazing and so yeah we'll apply for grants and see how that goes so yeah we're hoping to get that done sometime this summer if we can do it and it's like I said it's a bit of a challenging site and we're trying to figure out how to do how big you know whatever what will happen with overflows and so it's great it's a fun project and that's where we're starting something like 21 identified stormwater projects potential projects on private lands in the stormwater master plan so that's kind of my focus anyway for this this go around yeah thanks Paige has been doing a ton of work on implementing that and kind of jumping off of that so the it's next to the public publicly used bike path the education and outreach component is something that we also kind of think that we can really move forward on once again kind of we're not looking to do why let corridor type of work we public outreach we have a very well attended farmers market that we hope to start attending and kind of just we have a million ideas of like you know species of the month or something like that just to kind of get out there get our face out there doing more public outreach and education so that's that's one of our other top priorities that kind of rose to that level so that's what we're working on for this summer and then I just also want to mention that prior to basically in 2017 we we're able to to implement our natural resources priority inventory mapping into the the zoning that was adopted earlier this year and so one of the first things that we worked on was making sure that we're prepared for when a plan use development or subdivision comes through and could possibly impact resources that we have mapped so we're ready to go because we don't want to slow the process down or not do a good job obviously right so and we kind of had a dry run of that and this is kind of one of our victories from this year was Mamba's been working on upgrading mountain biking trails near the North Branch Nature Center and working with the Parks Commission they had asked for this trail network to be reviewed through the natural resources inventory mapping same one that's in the zoning so they came Mamba folks came to our meeting and it turns out that the trail was it's going to be within not only the buffer that we had suggested for protecting vernal pools but the state regulated buffer so not only did are we going to help them with the design to make this possible even better for the vernal pool around it but also avoiding potential concerns for a state regulatory issue so win win win so very cool we're really really excited about that and that kind of just kind of fell on the plate and this is mapping the work that we've been working on for years to help us get to that point so obviously public outreach we another thing that's been dormant has been the conservation fund and that is a pot of money separate from conservation commission allotted budgeting annually that can go towards preserving everything from natural areas to parkland even to agricultural it's very broad but that group hasn't been active for quite some time so it's hard to find some of the official information on that so we staffed that as a commission there's three conservation commission members and two at large members of the public and so we have a lead Brenna who will be working with the council soon to kind of get that going and that's another thing so if a project comes up we're ready to go it's a really interesting unique tool to the conservation commission that we don't want to not use or not be prepared to use so I have a couple questions about that do we know how much is in there? it's 40,000 and can we use it to potentially take down ash trees? I don't see why not I think it was intended for easements and our feasible purchases just checking I'd be happy to talk to you about we can talk about it I think we're going to talk about that I don't even need to talk to me about that I'll try to move through we have so many things going on so the other thing we've been working on is creating an official map during the zoning process priority conservation areas was kind of hit a dead end during the zoning process it wasn't appropriate for that to be implemented in the zoning so the other option is something called an official map which I'm not sure if everyone is familiar with not all communities might have it there are several that we're kind of basing our model off of and we've been working with parks commission and other partners to find these priority areas to hopefully come up with a map that will essentially give the city right a first refusal for areas that our citizens feel are the highest priority for conservation areas that's it's probably worth noting that in our goals setting time the idea of having more park space and particularly park space south of the river was a priority is that a fair thing for me to say it was raised the official map was raised as a vehicle as a separate thing we're looking forward to that we're working with Mike Miller and getting that going so that's another chunk of our momentum right now we have another recent victory we officially partnered with the central Vermont career center's natural resources course and we're going to donate some money towards a tree planting that is going on the region but we're our money went towards trees that are being planted in the city limits and we are actually going to start integrating them into the students and then fall into an education aspect of our partnership where they're going to help with their storm water project that Paige just mentioned as well as maybe some of the students from the high school correct so this is a new partnership that we're and they're actually volunteer to help do maintenance which is usually a big issue with storm water type infrastructure they usually are really nice to begin with and then have issues later on but that partnership should help really with that and in terms of education and outreach I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with the upcoming bio blitz that is happening inside the city limits on July 21st and 22nd the conservation commission is an official partner in that event with the north branch nature center and we have been working with that group to get that program going and we're focusing on the ecology portion of the weekend the events that are going on at the nature center and so we'll have volunteers there we've been helping with fundraising and we will another big part of it is we've been asking for commissions and finding priority areas within the city limits that we hope to inventory for natural communities and we'll use this data to help update our information throughout so this is definitely an awesome symbiotic relationship that's going to be a pretty big deal it's been 10 years and the last one was I think the biggest one in the area there's been a lot since but so we're really really excited about that and we've been heavily involved that's kind of what's been going on this year and then we've been mapping out our plans for the following years just we have a couple more stormwater projects that are on the horizon we want to really boost our public outreach and so we're looking into kind of getting materials we came up with one of our commissioners signed a logo for us which we're really excited about and we share with you a little bit of Facebook page yes Facebook page and then we're going to continue on we want to update our vernal pool mapping and then we also have monies that were set aside several years ago from excess funds from the commission's budget to update our wetlands map and this has been something that's been a priority for a couple years and we hope to do it this season we do have an RFP going out and with that money that's been kind of sitting aside for that we hope to use that very soon and then we have a couple bright pairing buffer planning throw in the mix but yeah we have a lot going on so great I also want to mention our next meeting in June is also going to be at Hover Park at the new shelter we work with Jeff Baer to help complete the fencing around the vernal pool near the shelter to keep the dogs out of there and so we're going to go and kind of check it out hang out yeah so everyone's welcome 6 o'clock at 2nd Thursday in June questions questions for the conservation commission so just as a heads up I think it's very likely that we may be talking about a plastic bag ban in the city sometime in the near future we don't even know if we really can yet but we'll probably talk about it it seems like an issue that I would at least want you to weigh in on to say I assume I would guess what I know would think about it but but anyway I just want to put that on your radar the other thing that's on my radar as well is B City USA are you familiar with B City it's like being a B friendly city oh yeah yeah pollinator friendly city this is something that's on my radar priorities low level priorities which is things that I think about and may be of interest to your group as well absolutely yeah and it's on our scale once again pollinators are another very appropriate for our scales cool thinking about the idea of trying to institute some sort of a city city I don't think this has come to you but it's something that we've discussed some sort of a ban on poor city usage and I don't know how that would work I think we can limit ourselves as to what I would love to talk more about that that's the kind of thing I think it's worth it's within our jurisdiction of course and sometimes it's symbolic but at the same time educational as well and I'd be interested in what requirements what it takes to become qualified as B City USA other comments or questions two quick ones, one I had heard about your work on the Mamba trails and I just wanted to say that I appreciated the trying to make it better and figuring out how to work with people proactively and the other thing I just wanted to note was that any materials that you create educational stuff and trying to be really proactive about putting really good helpful stuff on the city website I would encourage you to take advantage of that and share all that with the city manager's office great she's been so wonderful helping us sort through a lot of stuff yeah it's been great I need to dig out all the historical stuff that's been on the conservation commission to make sure that it's on the length of the start that's another project great, alright well thank you very much thank you everybody please do pass on our gratitude to the rest of the commission alright so we're going to jump to the tree board and then after that we'll come back to the community services do you have something to project? I do keep you awake putting up the audience well it was I'm up back oh really can you do it? let me get up here you're not trying to rename it let's see here we go and then all you have to do is just go through these just the arrow down you want me to do it? if you go to that little projector screen on the bottom let's see I'm PC illiterate where are we now? you're super close over here that one where it ends finger oh no you're right that this is the big thing you want to have I'm sorry miss Kat if you look up there we go that's it there you go so thanks for taking time to hear us tonight I realize how busy a night it's been we really appreciate a chance to update you on what we've been doing for the last six months to a year there we are appearing in front of City Hall with the new Tree City USA flag which we were grateful to be able to hang for the month of May the tree board has been around since 1992 we are now a full nine member board and we have about two dozen volunteers who are available to us on a pretty regular basis we meet monthly you're always welcome to those meetings they are one hour in length period and then even more exciting we have work days usually two to three work days a month where you can get your hands dirty you don't have to know a lot about trees to come on a work day there's always something to do we do operate with about a two thousand dollar annual budget from the City and we've learned to stretch that pretty far I must say this is a group of kids over on St. Paul Street that were involved in a project that one of our board members set up to plant more trees on St. Paul Street and then enrolled worked with the Union Elementary School kids to have them become Tree Stewards for those trees and other trees around town it's a brilliant project we had a big spring just wrapped up planning over 60 trees in the city we buy our trees they're rooted from a specialty nursery out in the state of Oregon and so they look like this that's the pile of trees in the back of a pickup truck it makes it really easy to transport them they're less expensive they're much healthier than typical ball and burlap trees that you'd see at a nursery so we really have planned to go this way in the future and our basic goal is pretty simple we want to be able to quickly influence the city streetscape by planning the right tree in the right place and do that properly so we don't hand out free trees we're happy to plan a tree in somebody's yard but we're going to talk about where it needs to be which species it should be and then talk to them about how to maintain that tree over time what we found years ago by handing out free trees was that you end up with the wrong tree in the wrong place and they're poorly maintained so this year our focus was the Clarendon Terrace neighborhood free barren of trees large trees, there's a couple old remaining ones and the other problem with Terrace Street in particular is that it's a high speed road and what research shows is that if you plant trees cars slow down don't try and figure out why it's simply statistically proven last year we really focused on St. Paul street that was kind of our initial kickoff project and over the last two years Berry Street and I'm excited to say that on Berry Street you can really see those trees growing now after one to three years there popping up there's 35 trees on that street that weren't there three years ago and we planted a few more this spring and there's one more going in soon but these are some of the photos from this spring earlier that's the corner of Derry Lane and Terrace on the left a barren, absolutely barren corner and there's now seven trees on that and then on Clarendon Street these neighbors were so excited to have us plant a couple of trees in their front yard there are little leaf lindons which are also a great pollinator tree we have a small nursery out at North Branch Nature Center they've been gracious enough to house us out there we do make a small donation to them most years we're able to plant these trees in the nursery for one to two years the ones that we don't plant directly into neighborhoods and then we can easily plant those out after one or two years pretty much anytime throughout the summer there are some big cloth bags that are easy to lift out and you can protect the roots in doing that I will say that the nursery would be impossible for us to do just our own board without the help of the parks department they've been so generous with their time and their equipment and expertise and it's a real partnership they do plant trees there that they're utilizing in the parks but we're all the time trading labor back and forth one of the things we will need to consider at the nursery this summer and we don't have a solution for it yet is how to provide water to the trees we're past hauling buckets of water out of the river and dumping them on trees but we'll figure that out so the downtown trees are special and that's really what enrolled me in the tree board 25 years ago now and downtown trees are it's a tough challenge the average life of a tree downtown is about seven years lots of different reasons the main one being we never know what's under the ground and we're planting them in these very small areas it's an impossible thing really we finally are being honest about how impossible it is we do come across some like Fred Bashara's Green Ash there next to the theater is a beautiful tree in large part because of the species we're not planting green ash anymore and it's too bad nor norway maples both of which grow fabulously downtown but we just have to figure out something else type us a little tree type us a little tree it's a dead one one species I'll tell you that we've never placed that tree probably five times in the last 20 years it's on the shady side of the street for one thing I don't I don't pretend to understand what goes on in all of these we do have to water the trees downtown you may see people out watering six o'clock in the morning there's two or three of the volunteers and members that do that on a regular basis we do have a number in fall we also apply gypsum which is a really simple compound chemical and compost to all of the trees in the early spring to counteract the salt which is deadly to many trees and we're continuing to look for species that do work we're having good results with ginko and we planted some but we don't want to get over committed to the last big elm tree in Montpelier on Court Street if you haven't been over and hugged it lately I would ask you to do that it's a beautiful tree and I don't know that we'll ever get to a place where we can grow trees like that downtown but we're going to give it our best I'm excited to report that last year DPW was well they were rebuilding sidewalks you'll remember that I'm sure but I approached them as to whether they would help us renovate the planting wells what I found was that they were tearing out sidewalks right around trees and there's a simple procedure relatively simple procedure to excavate further out and down and put in what's called structural soil it's a material that was developed at Cornell that allows the roots to grow out in under the sidewalk but the sidewalk was safely supported DPW is fabulous to do this it was not inexpensive but it was a pretty cheap fix given the results that were I think we're going to get out of it we left the trees in place in six wells and yet created this whole area and filled it with structural soil now the sidewalks are back in there basically we quadrupled the size of the root zone for those trees so we should see them make a good hit of growth this summer the guards and grates have been quite a problem for us for a number of reasons the main one is that even though they're made out of cast iron and well made they don't last forever and this sort of hit us blindside a couple years ago when we realized there were a lot of them that had these holes broken into them the grates and guards were broken we experimented with some wooden wooden guards that turned out to not work very well the bottom line is we're going to need $10,000 worth of grates and guards DPW knows this I've talked to Bill about it as well and I'm confident that we can come up with money both from city and elsewhere over the next couple years to completely bring everything up to where it needs to be so that there aren't trip hazards like this and so that the trees are protected I am really excited about this project Tree City USA is something that we've worked on every year for almost 20 years we are now 16 years in a row being honored by the Arbor Day Foundation it's one of 3400 cities in the country that is designated Tree City we have a board, an ordinance spend on at least $2 per person on trees and celebrate Arbor Day so here we are John sitting with me and Abby Callahan and a couple of the parks folks planning an elm tree on Elm Street the only one that I know of that's been planted there and one of the few that's growing did that Abby read the proclamation for Arbor Day so we are now officially Tree City USA for the 16th year in a row and one of our board members and a committee of board members took poem city and was inspired to create Tree City so for the month of May we've declared ourselves Tree City and it wasn't, we didn't do a lot this year but one of the things you may have seen around town are these fabulous posters and one of the board members created these, there's four different ones for Ash Elm and the Emerald Ash borer and Ginkgo, thank you and these are printed on heavy card stock, we'll reuse these next year and I'm going to guess we'll have another dozen next year as well as a lot more educational events and hoopla for next year so I'm pretty excited about this, it's a great initiative Education is an important part of what we do, I know that we can do even more but if we can talk to people about why it's not appropriate to hang Christmas tree lights in a tree it's no more appropriate to do that than you'd hang them on your kid, honestly or volcano mulch and you're still fighting some city entities around this but that's a good way to kill a tree there's a lot of things that we can do to educate people for the proper way to do things and then we avoid problems in the future one of the tasks that we've taken on is to review anything that's related for DRB and we've been able to catch stuff that was so simple to erase on paper or change on paper before it got planted that I think this is probably one of our most valuable things that we've done so the Emerald Ashmore, should we talk about that? It was first found in the United States in the late 1990s nobody's exactly sure but what we do know is it's spread like crazy it's now east and west of the Mississippi River and it's deadly. I'm from Michigan the area where it was first discovered and when I go back there every year I just see the devastation that's been caused by this little tiny beetle that's it sitting on a penny it's not even the size of a penny that little green thing above the word Emerald unfortunately this last spring it was found 15 miles from here it could well be in Montpiler already and we just don't know it John has headed up creating an Emerald Ashmore plan so that we know how to deal with things when it does hit us hard and part of that was an inventory and so we inventoryed the city and found 200 ash trees on city streets 600 in Hubbard Park along the trails and roads and those are significant numbers because when an ash tree dies it becomes very brittle and quickly becomes a hazard from falling branches so both of those 800 trees potentially are widow makers as we call them are going to hit somebody on the head the other 2600 on private property there's some beautiful trees around the city on private property in fact who's that guy up front in the blue shirt you got some huge trees on your property bill right next to your driveway yes some of the biggest ones around some of the biggest we were impressed how did you identify the location of the trees on private property we did a statistical survey basically took 99 properties at random from a list of all the properties in the city and visited those and surveyed them and then we determined from there that 46% of the properties had at least one ash tree extrapolated out and then we were able to extrapolate the numbers of trees it's an estimate but it's a good one John did a lot of work on this thing and it really I think we got a good handle on what's there the one that really hits hard although all of it's going to be a big problem but the one that hits hard of the 10 downtown green ash trees because when they're gone it's going to be a big hole and they will be gone 99% of untreated ash will be dead in the next 10 years there will be a wave that comes through that takes most of those trees out and many will become hazardous because it gets so brittle we spoke with the council I think it was six years ago now and suggested that we start saving money because we're going to need to spend about $150,000 just on city trees that will need to be removed and on private property it's going to be three quarters to a million dollars and the benefit of removing them is we eliminate safety hazards and we slow the spread of the ash borer 99% of untreated yes what does that mean I know it means not treated exactly is there treatment we can use? can we come back to that in just a moment? okay so what is next well they're not all going to look like again this is the elm tree but when I think back to my childhood and elm trees everywhere here we are with one in the city so we need to plant more trees on the bottom line and at the same time diversify so that's part of what we're doing right now we need to care for the trees that we have we work closely with homeowners to advise them on how to maintain trees especially big trees and we work closely with the parks department which has the capability of working on pruning large street trees and we need to upgrade the gracing guards next year we're going to have an even bigger tree city festivity and we'll continue to educate the main thing that we're working on right now and it's I can't believe how fast it's hit us but it's to upgrade our preparedness plan to implement our preparedness plan for EAB and what will come back to you with this summer right now we're researching what can be done and we'll come back to you with our research and suggestions for the downtown trees I believe it'll be a combination of we will cut some of the smaller trees that are not doing so well we will make a suggestion, a recommendation that we add additional planting wells in the sidewalks downtown that's going to cost money but it's going to buffer us from the catastrophe that's coming and we're considering what the possibilities are for using a pesticide there are certain pesticides that seem to be if not be friendly at least not be enemies there certainly are be horrible pesticides we could apply but there seem to be some that are being used in other cities very successfully as part of a much larger approach to preserving specific trees and so we're just at the initial stages of developing this plan but we will be back mid-summer to talk to you at much greater lengths specifically about that so hopefully we'll have some good answers questions let's get the lights did you pick their shot yeah it is a shock I thought that this was going to be years off and it wouldn't come and all of a sudden wait a minute this was a preparedness plan we're not supposed to be implementing this here we are thank you very much fellas how do you learn what work days you do every month do you have a facebook page I can put you on an email list you'll be notified there's one rule I don't know how I feel about that you'll love it no whining allowed yes if you don't want to be there don't come if it's too hard go home if you can't have fun and have fun with trees I'll try and that happens to all of us some days you know all of us say I can't do it today so we don't show up and somebody else does but it's a lot of fun we schedule them ahead but then sometimes cancel them at the end and you would be notified could you put the council on the list there's no whiners here it's good to know do you want to be on the list I would love to anybody not want to be on the list speak now that's like pre whining isn't it and as a matter of fact we will be mulching trees on berry street and the far east end of stonecutters way tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock if anyone wants to come anybody want to come just like a month I've got two thoughts one is same as was for the conservation commission anything any public documents you're creating and stuff I wanted to mention that exactly we posted this onto our website it's called the homeowners guide to emerald ash borer it's an excellent little two page fact sheet basically as to what homeowners can do or be aware of regarding ash on their property so that's already been posted to our website along with our preparedness plan that's been there for several years now we'll put the posters up and that's one of our goals we have a series of how do I plan a tree how do I care for a tree those sorts of things awesome and then nope I lost it I will email you if I think of it you are welcome to do that just a small question I'm curious to hear what the most successful species are in sidewalk plantings so far I know you said that it's difficult and there aren't any I mean there's a lot of variability sun and shade is a big one we have a lot of problems along east state street by city center because that wall faces southwest and it just bakes summer and winter so one side of the tree and the winter will be cold the other side will be hot it's a challenge can you rotate them you can rotate them no whining allowed though we're doing honey locus lindens the two if you haven't noticed the two trees out in front of city hall they are spectacular trees I worked on them yesterday the little leaf lindens beautiful shape they've got nice space to grow in two weeks you will hear those bees when you walk by those trees when you walk by because they'll be full of honey bees full of honey bees do you work with DPW at all in terms of figuring out tree trimming so you know they have to trim trees for science and that kind of thing are you engaged with that they regularly ask us to do that kind of clearance work and we solicit from the public are there any areas where there's problems we work very closely and they're great because we can oftentimes do the pruning work but we may not have the capacity to take away the brush so I just call them up and boom it's gone same way with the parks folks they've been fabulous sorry this is kind of going back to my data on the biologists that we trans so the liaison you've got the data but one of the things that came up was where to bring ash trees inside the quarantine zone I was wondering if the city would be able to accept ash that was chipped nearby I mean this is something I don't start in conversation that's on our summer list too we'll come back with a plan for basically an area where we could stockpile I know that V-trans has areas to stockpile as well but it would be great to partner to have the ability to bring we are in the buffer of the quarantine zone so it's one of the few places that you can move ash right now we're in the infestation area so how many ash can move throughout this area and we're in that area this is the we're already vulnerable to ash they can bring us more because it's quite likely that the emerald ash board is already here you're just not noticing its damaging effects yet we're in a very large quarantine area they're still trying to ask people to not transport firewood outside of if you drive north or south of here you'll run into V-trans signs that say no ash leaving this area basically and the zone is already infested unfortunately for us it's interesting that you know you see this little critter and you think oh this is a biological problem no 98% of the infestations in the last 20 years have been due to humans transporting these little bugs it's not the bugs they can only go about 3 miles a year and they can survive in firewood for a couple of years so you get firewood from an infested area they put it on your property before you burn it if they're escaping during the summer they're infesting your trees and if you drive it to Maine hey they got a free ride so it's really a people problem I noticed after hearing yeah thank you very much thanks guys thank you okay and last but certainly not least the community services presentation thank you for your flexibility on that okay I'm not sure if you want to stand a minute or if we should use our sleep sleep learning tone would you guys like the hard part I don't know soon but I do sit around we should probably put a link on the main part of the situation even that it's not up yet so is there a trick to read it yet sometimes it which one move the bottom is the projector not you you can do that that doesn't work here it's dead no it just doesn't want to get rid of the nice picture do you need to I don't know modify the projector reading on here this week but can I get away can you try this it's always worth a try I'm keeping it here I'm I'm I'm sorry I only I only know lights are coming on yet slow sorry everybody sleep that should work yeah should we take a couple minutes we might as well take a oh we have some chocolate Arnie's eggs go everywhere not those eggs no we got fresh you try this there we go my husband is helping out alright well now that everybody's gone right don't touch nothing we're gonna leave this here we're training earlier today we're gonna work we're gonna change our now I know they're just gonna fall down they're in good health can we just do it with that I was planning to try it does it how do you usually do it I have a power point on perseverance as well community services the three divisions now of parks and trees, recreation and the senior center represent community services the long-term vision developed in 2016 that there'd be eventually community services would be led by a single department head while maintaining publicly recognizable divisions and part of that is that each of our divisions have recognized that we have a number of supporters and volunteers who really have bonded with the idea of parks and senior center and rec and community services is a great name but it is also has suffers abuse of many definitions including people high school students including how do the community service which sometimes willingly and sometimes not so willingly but it's so as we develop a relationship with community services create more possibilities so we also envisioned improved programs synergies and facilities for residents while maintaining physical health and integration process that's adaptive flexible and based on regular evaluation of what's working well and prioritization of strengths of the current staff and the high value residents put on these programs and the vital role volunteers play in a community services department can't see or a chart but I guess you'll get a copy of this and if you have any questions about that happy to answer it yeah do you want us to say anything about the work chart or do you have questions about how our staff are supervising et cetera we're also in transition we've got a vacancy in our communications and development going to Montpelier alive we're soon to hire that but we've restructured that job a little bit and changed some supervisory roles so continuing to make changes yeah okay in the last year we've returned 0.2 of a 0.5 position administrative support the cut of the half time position was in 2017 another change is the recreation maintenance expanded at the 58 Berry Street facility and we have increased fundraising targets to meet our budget and 58 is the senior center 55 is the red building if I recall Dan Groberg was maybe it wasn't just Dan but remember he was going to be one of the people in charge of helping to meet the targets for increased fundraising so that's part of the role that we're looking to hire yes it's a communications and development coordinator role well Dan was in the new VISTA position was also going to help fill that as well so what are we doing in the parks and trees with the parks we're in charge of 16 miles of trails 7 acres of lawns 2 miles of hilly gravel roads which makes it extra challenging we've groomed trails in the winter we have a number of facilities including the tower and picnic shelters we have in diverse volunteer management and training responsibilities and trees we have tree hazard removal we have street trees which is close to 3,000 trees around the city we work with a tree board and do substantial amount of tree planting ourselves when possible we do preventative pruning and then care of the trees that have been transplanted including helping work with the downtown trees we work with the tree inventory and tree nursery and you sell firewood to help meet budget we have seasonal events ice on fire in the winter and chanted forest in the fall and the park of Belouza and the bioblitz is a new thing in this summer parks include Hubbard Park, North Branch River Park, Milton Park, Blanchard Summer Street, Turntable, Gateway Peace Park, Stonewall Meadows Park Elm Court, Irton Park and Harrison Field what's Harrison Field what's Harrison Field that's a space over on Harrison Avenue that if you once you turn on Harrison Avenue you go down maybe a hundred feet or so and on the right there's a space that I believe is kind of been there's an agreement with the city that we can manage it and we take care of the place and there's some planter boxes there but a lot of the elementary school age and also the middle school kids won't use that space for Pizzette classes and that's the school program can we add to the list of parks on this bigger site please okay let's see trees trees the importance of tree pruning we're convincing a lot of information quickly here trees that aren't pruned early can cost very expensive problems later and it shortens the life of a tree because of the problems these are a couple examples of large trees that we had to remove and you can see where the two if you don't have a dominant stem then you have two leaders that have the same hormones and they both reach to be high and straight up if you have one leader the branches kind of are naturally submissive and they branch down and you don't get this problem where you get what's called included bark with two stems reaching up at the same time this is a common problem on the pruned trees and why this happens in nature nature doesn't mind if a branch breaks off and then there's a hole in the tree owls and all kinds of birds we love these cavities the damaged trees create all kinds of possibilities in the downtown area it's a hazard to humans so that's why we care about the trees having good health and then living to a beautiful old age so these are two examples where a tree was dying and they often break because the included bark reduces the strength by anywhere from 40 to 80 percent and then a wind comes and then it ends up falling down and you may or may not see this unless you are trained to look for a week what's called a week union so yeah so pruning early pruning early fills the classic thing of an ounce of a prevention is worth a pound of cure these are a couple of examples that's a bad union on the left it's very obvious you can see all these stems growing up because in nature trees are used to growing in a forest and they have to be competitive they have to get up and get the light because of all those seeds that a tree puts out very few ever survive and the only way you survive is if you grow a lot of branches fast shade everybody else out so when you do that you have a lot of bad unions often but at least you survive which a bad union is better than surviving so we've got to prune if we don't want to have early problems to the left is co-dominant stems that someone has done quite a creative job of cabling it's a lot more expensive and dangerous when a tree is cable to remove it safely much more expensive and again you get the shorter much shorter life of the tree TreeBoard is an enormous partner in the health of our street trees and I like Thomas Fuller's quote, he who plants trees loves others besides himself and this is certainly true of TreeBoard members and the new Bioblitz this summer is in combination with the music festival we did last year and it's a great collaboration with the Nature Center where it's a really exciting thing I can't tell you how amazing it is to see these scientists who volunteer and they come from all over and you see a bunch of scientists going out and they're collecting microinvertebrates in the river and you see others that go off collecting butterflies and others birds and others reptiles and herbatologists and they come back and then they help us know what we have that is special and where special in my career families and kids and budding scientists come and see this incredible knowledge and excitement and learn stuff it's really an amazing community building opportunity and we're going to sprinkle that with music and camping in the park celebrating outside with musically and with what we have here Has everyone seen the new tuning yet that went up last summer I encourage you to check it out it's really awesome down in the field down below the old shelter create some fun new possibilities and a new rentable pavilion things that we're doing in recreation youth sports youth and adult programs we're also for those of you who may not know we're a licensed child care for both our summer and vacation camps our summer camp is much larger than our vacation camps last year we averaged almost 108 kids a day it was a big jump from the previous year because we're at 72 a day so it was it was quite a jump so we had to make some quick adjustments to accommodate the increase in enrollment events that we do the parent child dance the egg hunt for those of you who've been up in Hubbard Park 200 people up there it's quite an event touch a truck we just did last week which was a nice successful event special we also do many school special events throughout the summer and then of course for those of you who've been around for a while our ski and skate sale that we do every fall which draws probably close to a thousand people are better facility maintenance we continue to have multiple facilities with 55 Berry Street dog river fields recreation fields skateboard park basketball courts pavilion I don't know how many people have been to the pavilion down by the pool that's one of my first big projects I got to work on when I took over as director and it's where we host our licensed summer child daycare so it's really a great addition to being in dirt and mud to keep the kids out of that the pool house course ball fields tennis courts mountaineers field and grandstand and many of you know that they completed the accessible piece right in front I was down looking at that the other day and it came out pretty nice and of course now we've taken over the 58 Berry Street facility for from November to mid April basically with our maintenance staff with doing the snow bowing salted building maintenance so that's been an adjustment but once we get to April it's everything takes off so much outside we had to make some adjustments for the indoor cleaning and this is some of our facilities unfortunately some of the pictures didn't I would have liked them a lot better but I was using a phone and not a camera but that's the mountaineers with mountaineers play on the big diamond to the left this is a project that we've been working with the last few years with the ice rink on the state capital which has been going pretty well but we're definitely going to make some adjustments on how we set it up next year because this year we had a couple issues with it losing some water and this is our freshly painted pool that we just painted about a week ago a week and a half ago so we're getting ready to fill it here in the very near future and I'll say a few words about the senior activity center so we've got lots of programs and many of our programs happen on a weekly basis they promote healthy aging and that happens through life-long learning we have lots of fitness classes about 40 week different fitness classes as well as art and technology and writing and so forth there are many drop-in groups that are free and don't require advanced registration lots of cultural events including concerts, film events etc our feast senior meal program is really vital to at-risk for nutrition issues older adults and we serve about 18,000 senior meals a year with about two thirds of those going out as meals on wheels to residents of Montpelier and Berlin the senior center programming also provides really vital socialization lots of volunteerism and we host many partner services including health clinics like foot care blood pressure clinics and so forth then we host blood drives and other things weekly events include many educational lectures and like tomorrow we have a real estate agent who's going to talk about the basics of if you want to sell your house what should you know we've got someone coming in a couple weeks it's going to be a United States Air Force clarinet quartet to perform so it's really ranges very wide that we present and we do special events throughout the year like our other divisions so they include an April rummage sale which brings in about $5,000 and helps everybody with their spring cleaning we do the senior prom this year it's on June 29 save the date Friday night it's 7 o'clock at the Capitol Plaza this year's disco fever yes as for what you want to wear you know best in your 70s best that's great but anything goes and it's for all ages plenty had enough for everybody to wear plenty you want to help with decorating oh my gosh yes Fred Wilbur once again is going to be the DJ he knows how to help everyone have a good time and other music requests can be made as well there's always some Michael Jackson so then we do a volunteer recognition luncheon in December and many more events we were pleased this year to finally host one of the Green Mountain Film Festival events we've hosted many city events and look forward to doing more and I'll just mention I didn't put anything out here but another thing that we do is we have a membership and we're close to 1,200 members now they are 50 and up from all towns about 2 thirds from Montpelier on the other side and membership has some benefits it allows them to sign up for all of our classes some are open to the public but some are for members only they also get some free photocopying access to our computer lab some discounts at area fitness gyms so there are several great benefits and the membership has just about doubled in the last 5 to 6 years and the trend that we're also seeing with our membership is that some people from our supporting towns are joining as members so they make up a quarter of our members now or from our 6 supporting towns which are the U32 school district and more town so we do put energy into petitioning and going to town meetings making those requests this year so our main facility, our headquarters is at 58 Berry Street and most of you had a tour if you missed the tour I'd be happy to do it again we also do programming and there's a couple different reasons we do that one, we're already busting out of the seams of our facility we moved in 6 years ago after the renovation post fire and there's such high programming demand that there are things that people would like to have more of and we simply don't have space so that has led us to go off site but we found that the extra benefit of that is being a center without walls attracts some people who would not otherwise go to a senior center you know there are many many people and they're 50, 60, 70 even 80s who just say I don't want to go to a senior center I'm not a senior other people turn 50 and they're racing in to join but there's still some stigma about becoming older and so therefore we find it really effective to do some of our programs off site and we're also trying to meet the needs of some of our supporting town members that contribute classes at the town hall in Middlesex and Worcester we're doing a class at the hospital in Berlin again this summer and we do some programming at First & Fitness including lap swimming and water robics and we do some programs at the Montpelier Public Schools including a really exciting intergenerational technology training project where 7th and 8th graders train older adults one on one and they've been focusing mostly on Google services so Don Taylor, a teacher there has helped organize that and we do classes in some downtown businesses we did a down home kitchen last fall we've done North Branch Cafe and others and we do have some benefits in Barry at Rehab Gym so our facility is home to a lot of our programming as well as the community services main office so my office manager Norma and administrative assistant Harry we are all in the front of the building the back of the building is another office for our Feast Program staff and we have lots of interaction with our other community services staff with meetings that happen in our facility as well as across the street and as most of you saw there's also Montpelier Housing Authority apartments upstairs so we share the building in a condominium association so just a few photos of some typical senior activity center activities the one on the left is actually from last week Nancy Schultz and others went biking to look at the flowers blooming up on the Burlington Bike Path the one on the right is Ellie Hayes leading a Tai Chi demonstration for some elementary students who came around Chinese New Year and the middle one is some women doing building and clay class so about half of our programs are in movement and we have a separate room for our art classes we've got about 30 different trips planned for this summer about half of those use our 12 passenger van that we lease from GMTA it's wheelchair equipped and the trips are very popular in the summer and we also share our van with some other senior centers as well as Heaton Woods a little testimonial from one of our longtime members Amalia I said a few things about feast just wanted to give you a couple images you can see there's about 60 folks who come on a typical Tuesday to have lunch together so it's not only the nutritious meal that always has lots of fresh produce but it's the socialization that people get a lot of older adults are at risk for depression and isolation and so the ability to come in together is really important for many, many people on the right is a volunteer who's getting ready to deliver a meal to someone upstairs most of our meal delivery happens through volunteer drivers that use their own cars alright how do community services contribute to achieving council's strategic outcomes public health and safety wellness programs and well maintained facilities encourage mental physical and emotional health as well as do community building for the goal of responsible and responsive government we provide affordable programs and free programs and facilities diverse funding to reduce tax burden diverse funding to reduce tax burden strategic engagement of volunteers that allows for opportunities for them not only them but allows us to provide quality programming at an affordable rate inclusive equitable and welcoming community goal again we provide affordable and free programs financial aid high customer satisfaction professional staff dedicated to community services many community partnerships and important relationships with local public and private schools and environmental stewardship we provide a pesticide pesticide free facilities 58 Berry street platinum certified renewable energy for heating facility reusable meals on meals containers trash tramps volunteer group headquarters parks and green space that are kept available for public access including 400 acres of parks and 30 acres of athletic fields I realize I left out the word leads that platinum certified for the community I want to say this is cool this is amazing this is my favorite party I'm like you're just really showing off it's the benefit of being with you guys last night you're a little tweaked some of the challenges we face some key ones increased demand and need for services puts a strain on current staffing level the emerald ash bore will cause substantially more tree removal work older adult programming demand grows with population expansion customer service needs growing across all divisions recreation maintenance staff juggling indoor space fields and more regarding facilities rec facility issues senior center programs outgrowing available space substantial number of neighborhoods not yet in walkable distance to a park emerging issues recreation community feasibility study continued integration of community services staff and potential partnership with jump and splash creating additional park options potential vista with positive youth development to help prevent substance and opioid abuse discussion this year I want to study the potential impact on community health and economic development walkable affordable community recreation center for all ages I want to explore the regionalism and diverse funding for community services and recreation facilities we want to face the emerald ash bore challenge ahead of us we want to be an aging friendly community and continue to strengthen volunteer management systems across the city service delivery areas we want to continue build on our fundraising success our priorities are to continue to integrate community services department functions staff meet demands for affordable health enhancing meaningful programming throughout the community provide diverse facilities that meet community recreational health and lifelong learning needs we want to improve our substance use prevention efforts which really is tied closely to improving community health and collaborate with council residents and partners to gather community input and formulate a plan to meet present and future community recreational needs so this is not quite in order but every park as a piece place a piece and I also want to add a last thing about the summary we talk about programming today the importance of the diverse programming we want to talk about the facilities and then we've talked about volunteers but volunteers really are not just saving taxpayers money but it really is a program in and of itself as a volunteer myself I know the amount of pride I feel knowing that I make a difference to community and I see that in the number of volunteers that come and in fact even farther than that number of wounded individuals come and it's really transformative I don't think you can measure the impact it has to see a kid who feels like they are a drain on the community and a drain on their parents and then they find out that they can help build a community and help take care of a place that they love and the pride that grows in their face I literally had just come angry about doing community service and then asking to come back after they're done to do more and it's just it's a really win-win situation I'm just going to offer one more anecdote along those lines that I've heard from a number of people that coming together to volunteer in the kitchen to prepare meals five days a week and many people come several days a week some come just once for a couple hours and I've heard them talk about kitchen therapy just that act of chopping vegetables and adding garlic together they're meeting people, they're engaging they're doing something that really makes a difference nurturing others nurturing others and it's just it is transformative for a lot of people we've been really fortunate to have a fabulous VISTA member with us this year Becky Johnston if you haven't met her yet I encourage you to reach out she's been developing some new volunteer management and recruitment and recognition systems for us as well as helping with some of our fundraising efforts bless you for your communities yes and the one thing we have an opportunity to do yet which I would invite you all to do is to do an exploration of our outdoor facilities and we can do a tour sometime when it works out JB can help us set up a time we can take there out and see all the other stuff because you saw just our two buildings and let me know that she hasn't been in the pool house I haven't either she's got to do a tour of the pool house it's a cultural experience it's purple I love the purple paint I do have one issue I want to flag and I have to say I'm a little bit frustrated about this I had contacted city staff last July asking that the listing of parks on the city website get updated and I continued to ask about it and I understand that after the mayor asked about it recently Jamie got frustrated and just went ahead and found the information herself and started updating it so the website is much better than it was in terms of listing the parks but on your list of parks here I noticed three more that are not on there one of which I didn't even know about and these parks don't necessarily exist to a lot of our community if they can't find out about them online and that became very clear when we were asked to find a letter of support for another parks grant and I was surprised to see it citing a trust for public land map saying that many people in Montpelier were not within a 10 minute walk of the park and I know there are certainly portions of Montpelier where that's true and I want to fix that but I looked at the map and it became clear that they were saying we're next to a park we're next to existing city parks that just were not mapped and we spend all our money to create these wonderful community resources and it's unfair to the residents who don't know about them if we don't advertise them and it's just a waste of our money if we don't make it apparent to people so the council has now made a priority that we want to have our website updated to reflect the resources that we have and that's really, really important and I'm pretty disappointed that it hasn't happened frankly given it's been almost a year I'm sorry it hasn't had it completely I'm not aware of Jamie doing any but I did update a number of the parks on the website and I am going to do more there's some that I don't have access to like the turntable park I provided access to that was totally done by the planning commission I will do what I can I promise you it isn't because I haven't worked extra hours and there's a lot of priorities and a lot of trees and I am doing the best I can but I do agree that it's an important goal and that I will continue to work towards that thanks and I've just taken notes so that we as a team can figure out maybe there's someone to help update that we'll figure that out we're happy to do it if we just have we could send more I think she asked for a list from parks folks I never was asked for a list but I was asked to update it and I started on that if she just wants a list I would get her that list I can just give the list I gave you with us hiring a new communications person soon I'm sure we'll be having lots of other website updates and certainly if there's other things missing or that you notice you'd like to have in greater detail or anything we welcome your input continuous revolution I've got a couple of questions one is sort of thinking about the parks especially going into the future and you know that we talked about there is support for expanding parks in Montpelier and the question that I think about is do you have the staffing and other if we were to expand the footprint of the park put in more parks or whatever would you have the staffing and resources at your current staffing levels to manage it or should we be planning for expansions in that area to support it so it depends it depends on the interest and goals of the council and the residents for example we have done a substantial amount to do the parks and in fact having a great need actually I think inspires more volunteers but it also requires patience on when you do that it requires patience on some folks when you don't mow milk on park because it rained and you're short of volunteers and your staff is out sick and you can't update a web page and if things need to be done in a certain timeline then we're going to need more staff there's patience on folks about what's done and when then we can do more so it depends on the quality and the quickness of service that's needed it's how much more we can handle or not yes I just wanted to let you all know I really appreciate that you sort of looked at what we had identified as goals and fit in what you're currently doing and kind of gave us some areas that you've already flagged as areas where you need some guidance or some assistance and that's incredibly helpful to me when things are like structured and organized and I can see where we can kind of help fill gaps or where you all are looking for support from us maybe your guidance so I really appreciated that oh yes just an observation when one of my sons was in school here he did a day I don't know if you remember planting trees on the Riverbank he had doing community-based learning with you one day and he came back and he had to write a report for school and I think the first line of his report was Jeff Byer should be worshiped as a god no there's no praise he made quite a day Jeff he was a big help he was a big help he's still working in trees and he's sweet probably moving back to Montpelier this summer he won a volunteer my best wishes so I have unless you have okay I have somewhat of a not fully formed thought that so bear with me here so this is mostly for Arnie and Janna I'm thinking about the community services in terms of like what the program is that we're offering to people so especially coming from where you both started right in separate departments there's a focus on seniors and I think mostly there's a focus on kids in the rec department with some exceptions you know there's basketball and there's dodgeball it's played dodgeball it's good times you know there's a variety of things there and in fact I am a subcontractor with the rec department in that I offer Ultimate Frisbee as a camp when I think about the types of offerings that that come through the community services department some of the things feel really important in that they are providing a public I mean everything is a public good to a degree but some of the things I think are addressing public health issues perhaps more directly people are probably going to be fine if they don't play Ultimate but people really should probably know how to swim or doing the bone builders activity for the seniors right there maybe I'm drawing a false line here in terms of what's public health and what's not necessarily but I guess where I'm going with this thought is that I wonder about the kinds of public good that can be offered through a community services department that maybe we're not offering right now so and by virtue of that we're coming from two different perspectives what do seniors need and then what do kids need and then adults in terms of recreation but I feel like there may be some gaps and I guess what I'm thinking of is like you know what do what do new mothers need or like maybe we offer babysitting, training or something but we do offer that okay great I'm thinking about how about the services that adults need that are maybe not seniors that are that would constitute a public good so just to finish this thought you know there's a reason why we in the end we do ask for some taxpayer subsidy for these programs right like it's not all toll booths on roads right like if you use it you will pay I mean we do ask for some contribution but you know subsidized by taxpayers am I correct on that or some what to a certain extent I will say that for the senior center budget less than a quarter comes from the tax appropriation and that doesn't cover just staff wages and benefits I know this is contrary to perhaps previous councils but you know I think about a class like learning to swim or bone builders and I mean maybe there's a sliding scale of you know what people can pay but I really want those kinds of activities to be accessible to all people anyway that's something that I'm thinking about and obviously I'm just one voice in that and I do appreciate that we ask people to pay for for things at least somewhat but just I guess I want to spend some time thinking about what are the needs in our community and so Bill and I had talked a little bit a while ago about you know the needs of parents in terms of you know is there affordable child care that's available up till 5 o'clock and I think you know from our conversation it sounded like there was and I'm very grateful for that but those are the kinds of questions that I want this group to be asking and and I guess I even want to picture the work that you do on this continuum of age like what what are the yeah we offer all these great programs that are open to any age awesome but we know we're going to target the needs of specific age groups or types of folks you know people who are new parents or whatever that you know that kind of thing see if there's gaps we do offer just so you know and it's free to the to the public for pre-school play program every Wednesday morning for a couple hours and we have anywhere from 40 to 60 folks that come through and a lot of them find it very valuable because it gets their kids out of the house and intermingle with other kids and so we do do some things like that but there's many play groups in the city so we try to fill a spot where there wasn't sure well that's good to know I mean my immediate question was why is it just Wednesday I mean clearly there's probably details and reasons why it's just Wednesday what's that exactly there's several play groups around the area and what we did was found a day that they didn't have one so we plugged in and assured sure this answer to could be a long long thing I mean part of they do do scholarships but another thing that we just talked about today that fits I think beautifully into your question is we want to work with the council and the community to identify gaps as part of this feasibility study because even if we don't do the recreation center we want we think by just adding a few key questions we can find out where some of those gaps are and where some of those needs that might not be a community center might be other ways that we can fill these recreation needs in the city so we'd like to have that plug that in I guess I almost want to yeah I agree I I almost want like recreation is a need you know I want to acknowledge that but I think there are some public health issues that can be addressed by the community services you know department that are not recreation and you know I mean I guess we might think of where else would you address public health I mean if it's opioids it'll probably be through you know the police but there's plenty of public health that is not you know drug related so how can we be preemptively you know equipping people or addressing those health needs I would love to see and we talked about this a little bit when we were in the senior center tour but I would love to see us develop additional nutrition programming we did just finish a three workshop series about nutrition from different parts of the world so Lisa Mazze let that and we've done some other cooking classes but I think that is one slightly untapped possibility there's been some special health needs that we've been trying to develop programming for we've done we do a couple classes for people with Parkinson's disease we do the memory cafe people with memory disorders this summer one of our yoga instructors is going to be offering a class specifically for people with osteoporosis and osteopenia which is a really high incidence for adults of all ages with lower back issues and we're scheduling that in the lunch hour so that people might have a fighting chance of coming and taking that really inexpensive class do you do any financial literacy we do we've got a ten week class in that going on right now we're actually it's in the evening at high school but it's registered through us good suggestion we'll talk about it tomorrow too but you talked to Yvonne because I know there are parenting classes Justice Center they have a lot of that stuff too and they deal with a lot of families in crisis and so they develop a lot of services to try to preventive services Yvonne's also done some really great insights into conflict classes to help people have those difficult conversations more effectively cool I just wanted you to know I really welcome further thinking about that I wanted to sort of sit with that idea for a little while and along those lines I think we've been creating many more intergenerational programs and there's a lot more potential for that as we go forward and I'll just mention that I've been really enjoying a unicycle class with my son and there are also 70 plus year olds in the class so we've got 11, 40 something and 70 something taking a class together it's been really fun yeah, in the gym sounds great awesome well thank you all for your work time at the Tristan staying up late talk with us again I didn't see anybody with their eyes closed so just one last reminder June 29 is the senior prom disco fever 7 to 1030 have we created a Facebook event I think it's imminent we're finalizing the flyer we're a little behind a ball about Dan Gerber we're going to catch up we haven't mentioned in the newsletter we just don't have our snazzy marketing stuff quite out there yet so oh right summer schedule we have often reduced our work during the summer it's been a good time to ask you guys for three straight nights our normal meetings would be July 11, July 25 August 8 and August 22 so we have sometimes just dropped one sometimes we've moved them to try to have them more spaced out or other times we've just said let's just leave that with me sometimes we haven't we haven't been able to sometimes we say let's drop it unless we have to do something urgent or we've actually had someone we've just done a quick phone-in meaning to approve a consent agenda or business but we haven't actually had to do it so it's entirely up to you but I thought I'd raise it since it's May and we plan our agendas out now that we've I would love to drop August 8 I'm going to be gone July 9 through the 27 so I will not be here for the 11th or the 25th I'm gone the 25th I'm gone the 11th we should get my one of those sorry to Jack so that's three of us Mayor Jack and I will all be gone on July 11 actually you're gone at all okay so so no July 11th meeting then July 11th is dropped okay which might mean in my absence Ashley might get to leave like that okay 25th I'm gone and gets appointed to all the committees oh yeah but when she comes back watch out you taking no prisoners oh dear, yeah you know me I know the class you're going to oh yeah alright so are we doing just the others? we're just doing one sure let's drop to no I probably will not be here on August 8 but we all have soon unless you you can try to drop to just do one a month in July and August if you can get away with it as long as people don't mind the occasional call in meeting arranged hastily I'm wondering though I know we tried this experiment with starting at 7 o'clock but this we haven't gotten out before 10 o'clock I actually think it's an idea I mean but I feel like Ashley you're the one with the tightest schedule well I'm working much closer now 7 is nice but the 10.30 is rough 6.30 starting next time starting next time okay I know because next time we've already one is 6.30 oh yeah so that would be June 27 June 27 6.30 so I know haha now do we keep the 8th or let it go August 8 how many of you said it was an issue I'll be here but it don't must be a thing would have been my grandfather's idea day after so I'd like to spend some time with me um well why don't we drop it July 25 we're going to be so efficient starting at 6.30 haha yeah why don't we cancel it and then if we need it then let's put that one on a well I think what's often important when we do these in the summer is actually because we all step stuff and we shouldn't get a lot of things going sometimes helpful for us not meeting and adding um but there are often like contracts and bids those types of things that do need to move and I think that's usually for DPW and the departments that just wanted a window to plan to have them and as long as they know that if they still have one we could have a consent agenda only meeting which you are allowed to legally call in that you can get 5 o'clock 5.30 or something like that just to get business done and that's the big deal presentations and all that stuff and just so you know my list of mayoral things to do hopefully hitting pretty hard in the summer I mean despite the fact that I'm going to be gogged with anyways but outside of that I mean that is my time to and frisbee camp that's fine that's amazing I have a couple of things that I want to bring up I don't know if we're at the other business yet but that was just one item so right now we're definitely having meetings on July 25 and August 22 we're definitely dropping July 11 and August 8 is on the hit list so tentatively now it's not being scheduled what did you say thumbs up thumb scale of agreement vote okay good okay super so where are we at now other business I think yeah so I just wanted to let everybody know we talked about the feasibility study for the rec center I received a whole bunch of emails about this and I had indicated to everyone that I was really interested in pursuing it but I wanted to for everyone who's watching just let everybody know that that is something that the city has decided to pursue and so we'll have more details in a couple weeks also and I had an opportunity to talk to you about this I missed the meeting when we were talking about committee formation but the social and economic justice committee I really want to get that up and going I don't I'm happy to do whatever that takes but I don't know quite what that takes I think we probably need to come up with a committee structure and figure out I had spoken a couple months ago at this point but yeah so if we could reset that on an agenda and the other thing and I had mentioned this several weeks ago but it's come up again in a few different contexts both in my in my day life and in the council context I think that there's a real need in communities everywhere but I think you know we're really lucky to live in Montpelier where we can have really hard conversations in really meaningful ways and I really want to work with the city to plan a civic discord forum it's something I think the mayor has expressed some interest in that just having a space where we can learn about how to have difficult conversations about topics that people really care about but doing so in a way that is productive and inclusive so I would like to explore that and I don't know I think we need to partner with city staff on that because there are groups that do this but there we might have resources here in the city that I'm not aware of but it's something that I'd like to do at some point this summer as Gianna just mentioned having difficult conversations serious and I'm happy to put in whatever work we need to to get that up and running but I think it's I think now is the time it is ripe yeah okay great so council reports I forget where we started the last time that was hers yeah anything else to add to your work here is done let's go out people watching from home know or can know that we had our council priority setting retreat over the last two nights we had a lot of great ideas were presented and a good number of them made it onto our agenda to pursue over the coming years I found it to be inspiring and energizing and and there were some items that made it on the agenda that already seemed to have very strong support and we may be able to go forward on those pretty strongly but I think I see real opportunities on the on a lot of the items because not all the things that are going to be on the agenda already have majority support so there are opportunities to build connections and build agreement among the council to see what we can get across the line as well as I'll leave it at that so I just want to mention that we had discussed having an open meeting law presentation and I would love to do that and I would also like to either invite or possibly mandate that our committee chairs attend that as well maybe invite would be a better thing to do but I have a feeling that a lot of them are not in spite of the fact that we send out emails each year reminding them of the rules I have a feeling a lot of them don't quite comprehend the full extent of the law Glen would you I mistook the order as usual I will be ready to have breakfast with anyone who wants to show up tomorrow morning Thursday 8 30 to 9 30 every Thursday right now I'm doing it I'm going to get some baguitos outside whenever weather allows which means that I'm maybe going to get a little tanner that I have in decades we'll see yeah I have been really enjoying it Bill showed up a couple of weeks ago we had a brief conversation it was great I would love to see any staff and speaking of neighbors this is something that I've been meaning to look up for weeks if not months but there is a Vermont Neighbor Day June 2nd I just now remember to look it up on Google I don't know anything about it beyond that it exists Neighbor Day June 2nd Saturday and I would like to encourage everyone to have a party invite your neighbors meet them get their names and start to build some connections that's something that I look forward to in my neighborhood in Ellsberg thank you you know it's been three late nights I want to extend a thank you to all the city staff for sticking with us between tours and everything else that we've been doing lately I really appreciated the work then all the staff does from the front line up to the top there so thanks very much and people against plastic pollution happy meet in Sunday 6 o'clock North Street just give a shout for the address there so thanks a lot I had a question a couple items I'd like to see if there's any support for among the council one is the complete streets committee would like to have a contest of naming the bike paths the share paths because we had a notice about the west section being completed but no one on the complete streets knew what the wet section was I could explain because I knew but the name didn't tell you so it sounded like a really good idea and they would like to get some signs put up on the shared paths that there is this contest going on and put it out there for a month or two and would like to know if the city council needs to weigh in on those signs if we need your support to do it or if we can get sort of a nod and work with DPW and see what can happen sounds like a great idea I support you also I was very low in catching up with the reuse of the playground equipment I know that there have been some emails from certain citizens got involved but I don't know if you can update me on that bill but I really would like to see a way for us not to lose that old equipment so we could put it in a park somewhere school says it's terrible should go to dump, it's not safe that's why they're changing it they don't recommend it go anywhere we've talked to them extensively and some of it is not easily moved it's embedded I'm just going by what school says what we have said to all who have asked first the request was to move the request from a citizen was to move it from the playground to Harrison Field so that the kids could use it if the school the school is going to be without a playground thing while they're building their new one if they want to do that we'll assist whatever we can but really that's going to come from the school we're not going to move their equipment for them nor are we going to tell them that's where they have to put their playground equipment so we did have a meeting with school officials about other issues relating to the playground including possible street closures and so I started off and said what's the story with the playground to Harrison Field or to anywhere I said the only place it should be moved is the dump we want to get rid of it, we don't think it should be there's any beneficial reuse so from the citizen that was they approached Alex at Parks it came up in the Parks Commission supposedly the school called Alex and asked him okay well he said he asked for one piece that was a big slide but okay again if the school thinks the big slide is fine and the Parks are wanted we'd be happy to assist in any way shape or form I'm not doubting Alex there is a person who presents as though they are speaking for the school and has been badgering me and I did speak with the school and was told no they don't agree with this person and no he's not speaking for them and no they don't think any of this group is worth saving I trust their judgment but if the Parks want a piece of equipment and the school feels it's safe enough to give it to them there's no objection to mine well Arnie had some interest too for the department but I think until he talked to them yeah okay well again when I talked to him that's what I wanted to know thank you and the other piece was we had this letter from the Parks Commission about dogs and I really found this unsatisfactory but maybe the rest of you don't I mean we at one point they were asked to come back with a strategy on this this is what they've been doing and so I just feel dissatisfied with this I would prefer to try to work with them and hence I had asked for some liaison position with the Parks Commission but I do feel we shouldn't wait for the next crisis that happens and then get upset I'd like to work on something now that's more substantive and one of the issues is there has been no increase in signage anywhere and we passed these ordinance for sidewalks shared paths, roadways and there's no posting anywhere there's not even a posting of no dogs around the pool area and Arnie had stories about people's picnic lunches being snapped by dogs anyway so I would like to somehow take this up I don't know if it's a subcommittee but I have an interest as anyone else I agree with you that it's especially on the signage it's not been a satisfactory response I don't know that I have the capacity to contribute more but I support working on it more I know there's a contentious history I'd be fine with asking them to come to a council meeting to have more of a discussion I don't know if that is the most constructive way to do it it sounds like there are a few different issues there though and one is there are ordinances now so the signage is really just letting everyone know what our ordinances are then there's a bigger a different piece but a different piece so I think part of that is something that the city can handle in terms of signage but then the other piece needs to be figured out the approach there needs to be figured out so I guess what thoughts over there I guess my suggestion would be because no one else seems to have the capacity right now but if you are interested in talking with that commission to see if they're willing to I mean they do mention in that letter the possibility of adding dog parks or something else that we could flesh that out let's give people another option for dogs so that we're taking some pressure off Hubbard Park I appreciated that I thought that was nice and especially since Hubbard Park has an established culture with dogs creating other spaces I think maybe useful it's one of the things we asked them to do so I mean is that the kind of thing that you're hoping that they would do more of propose a real dog park or that kind of thing this all started two years ago in a major format so there hasn't been an increase in education with the K9 K9 code of conduct it just hasn't been any movement if you read their emotions I mean their minutes meeting after meeting and so I feel they need some help and support maybe they don't have the staffing to make it happen I don't know but I'd like to see some clear movement they also may not have the kind of vision or direction that you have for it I guess I'm wondering if you're willing to like even though so I think the issue here is the council asked them to look at an issue and to report back and they reported back late so as the council as a group is that report except you know does that meet your needs is that a recommendation that you wish to accept or not and if not how do you want to appreciate as a group want to meet with them either invite them to a meeting or create a subcommittee that wants to talk to a subcommittee of them or just send someone to attend the meeting the council will have to be speaking with a singular voice on this issue as opposed to you know Donna's or anybody else's opinion that goes to the meeting then they're going to respond to that and you know the parks commission as a group apparently took some sort of vote because they sent a letter as a group so this was their this is their response to the request that was made to them so maybe we should put on a future agenda and I mean I'm not trying to stop the progress when else is happy with it then so be it we'll wait until the signage piece I'm talking specifically they were asked to sort of come back with what to do about dogs in the park and what to do about dog parks and that's a victory the signage I agree and I think particularly since the rules haven't really changed for the dogs in other than having more signage about their canine rule of contact but they have changed for the rules in the city so I think we on the city have to be on top of that so that's a good catch we just hadn't thought about it you know when we put all new spring signs we had signs to say dogs must be on the city so we'll bring that up tomorrow morning but I think in terms of policy that's really where you guys have to be can we add it to our list for an agenda item in a future point I'm too fried to talk about it but I think it deserves a little more conversation okay so I just want to thank all of the volunteers and organizers who made the corporate cup happen great event again this year and still I guess beyond that I'm looking forward to talking further about the plastic bag band and looking into whether or not that is within our jurisdiction oh great instant respond well I didn't want to forget so I just had a couple things one first I have city clerk's report hold on from the clerk says and he has been watching the stream and taking the minutes yes he has been sending me texts for clarification so he's not slacking off even though he's out of town trying to back it up with notes so he says full services in the clerk treasurer's office will resume this Friday apologize again for the inconvenience in my capacity as representative district clerk I want to remind everyone that next Thursday the 31st at 5pm is the filing deadline to run for the state representative on the August primary ballot forms are available on the secretary of state's website and unlike municipal elections there are three forms you need to turn in rather than two check with me on Friday or next week if you need any help or have questions you can always drop me an email if you need me to get back to you sooner he also just texted me and said tell them the camera adds 40 pounds thanks thanks I'm just reading what he told me to say so for me we received a letter from Dean Bookchin representing Jesse Jacobs about Park I think I said you want my suggestion and I just wanted to look around the room and see if there's a head nod to put that on the next agenda and make Mr. Jacobs in to have a discussion about that is everyone okay with that? I'll send a letter tomorrow to him for that invitation I also want to thank again all of you for the time you put in the last couple of nights it was really helpful and the staff really appreciated it the consultant really enjoyed her time here with us she did say she has some time in July and August if we wanted to finish success factors, vision and directional statements and do some stuff with the staff pushing it but people want to do additional work she did actually have some time we're going to get a report from her in a couple of weeks we're actually having staff meeting next week so we can get as much of it done to you because then we're going to start doing it she was great everybody was from my perspective it also helped it's nice to have someone not connected to us who could just tell us we're all being knuckleheads it's one of those words and someone who's been in the business there's lots of good facilities but someone who actually gets the lingo of local government so without objection we're going to adjourn sorry we haven't went along and I'm looking at you