 All right, good evening everyone. I think I will call this special budget meeting to order the fourth of our four dates of budget presentations. And we have counselors, partner Hightower in the room. And we have Professor G. and Bertman and Jay. And we may be joined by others. We are expecting others to receive it. We have on the agenda to start with, here's the public, if there's a public that looks like this. Counselors are online, are you able to hear us okay? Yes. Not see either number of anybody raising their hand to be recognized. Okay. Okay, can I ask Counselor McGee or Bertman or Jay? So I just confirm you're hearing us okay. I can hear you. If you can hear me, then you got a problem. Yeah, I can hear you. Okay, we got a thumbs up from Counselor. Okay, we couldn't hear them. Can you? So can you hear me? Now we can. I can hear you. I can hear you. I'm here. All right, there is no public comment at this time. So we will go to the first presentation on the first presentation is Mayor's Office budget and my teacher is here, Mayor's Office. Okay, great. So it's getting the slides up. Our first slide is our Mayor's Office organizational chart. The Mayor's Office has four people in it, including the Mayor. Most of our budget is staff costs. Happy to report that. Counselor may not be aware of this yet as a first time and too long. We have all four positions filled now. I have all of this week. If we're going to start the third day today, we'll get to our third, she's great. So that's our organizational chart. And then again, so our Mayor's Office budget is mostly staff costs. And we have level funded our operating budget for accounting purposes. We've slightly shifted around some of the items within our general operating budget. We had more broad categories previously and the third time Mayor's Office has wanted us to be more specific about how we're filling things for our operating lines that there are some slight adjustments within that level type of budget. I'm happy to take questions. That's the slides presentation. Wow. Yeah, I wanted the shortest presentation prize. Yes. Florence open for questions if there. The only question is looking at the budget. This is the highest budget that it has in several years. I see that's referring to that not being fully staffed. That's right. Well, it's that and also it's that our budget is similar to FY 22. So I'm seeing our staff costs went down by $80 in from 2022. And our general operating budget is the same. Oh, sorry. And there was some increase in the operating budget from 2021 to 2022. And in 2021, no recall, we cut a lot of our operating expenses across the city. And we cut a lot of our Mayor's Office general operating budget in reflection of the COVID further comments or questions at this point, close out the Mayor's Office budget. And next up, maybe, or interesting one is the electronic department. That was a reflection of where all the action happens are the changes efforts. Welcome to the TV, happy turn over to, you know, welcome to everyone TV. Take it away. Thank you very much. Good evening, joined by my colleagues, only burn finance director, your casty Emily Stevens will I follow the interview off. No, I believe my camera, I think is on zoom as well. And please be here to present our FY 23 budget. And we will also discuss our FY 23 rate proposal. The rate proposal is scheduled to come to the board on June 6 and the city council. So just want to walk through that as well. So folks have questions on the context for this budget. We as everybody is are experiencing high inflation in terms of our supply chain. It's definitely affecting us. In addition, energy prices are quite volatile. And fuel prices are quite volatile. So that obviously has ripple effects throughout rolling from electric. As everyone knows, we had a first rate change in 12 years in FY 22, seven and a half percent, our actual demonstrated need at the public utility commission was 11.8%. So there was a gap in terms of what we asked for last year relative to what our business need actually was. We have a couple other factors here. The net zero revenue bond is a key source of capital for us. It was a great development for that past. And we are utilizing it as a part of this budget. And I will say that the on the positive side for us, we've had incredibly strong performance from the general generating station and our other renewable plants. And a very high price environment where if we did not have renewable energy, we would be facing significant market impacts from the increased price of natural gas. We are insulating our customers from those impacts because of our renewable portfolio. So we're pleased that that happened during FY 22. And we have projections to be able to do that again in a point 23. Excellent. I'm going to turn it over to Emily for a few slides and then I'll go back. Great. So the operating revenue for the department this year is going to be 63.6 million. It's about 5% higher than our budget. So it does include a rate increase in effective August 1st of 3.95%. Really, as Darren alluded to in response to a violation of some of the control costs that are coming our way. It does include increased kilowatt sales to customers as a result of sort of the COVID-19 pandemic effects lessening over time. So shifting in the use of electricity in the city and increased renewable energy credit sales. Our operating expenses are $64.5 million, about 1% higher than in FY 2022. This is sort of upward pressures that we're facing. Results and increased wood fuel costs at McNeil of about a million dollars. Primarily driven by the increased cost of diesel, which the folks that bring the wood chips into the plant are having to pay the pump right now. Additionally, our state and regional transmission costs are up by $869,000. Our purchase power budget is reduced by $2.6 million. That's due to the anticipated higher energy forwards that are they are unprecedented and higher than we've ever seen in the past. So that is some good news on the budget front for BPD. There is an increase in the city indirect allocation of $134,000. And our budget does include an additional FTE reallocated from contractual services to provide project management and business analyst support as we upgrade some of our IT systems department. Our interest expense is 30% higher than our FY 22 budget driven primarily by the net zero energy revenue bond. And our net income is at $1.23 million, about $242,000 higher than it was in FY 22. We are including the energy assistance pilot rate. We're seeking approval from the public utility commission for approval of that rate. So let's discuss last month's meeting. It will be a 12.5 discount for customers and for customers to qualify in FY 23. And it will be funded in the FY 23 budget through the RFI carry forward funds that were approved last month. This puts our debt service cover ratio at 3.91 for the year and adjusted debt service coverage ratio to 6 and will have 104 days cash on hand. I just want to mention the adjusted debt service coverage ratio being projected that that number is significant for us. It had been lower during the pandemic time frame significantly lower. We've been committed to bringing that back up that this number is as much more as the frame of reference we would want for our area. So we are going to, this is a slide that BEG has presented a few times over the last couple of years sort of demonstrating the savings that were implemented back in 2016 through 2019, sort of the trajectory as a result of those being lower than we participated had they been on the same track based on 2016 projections. And finally, we do have 9.1 million dollars of capital investment in this budget, about 11% net of the utility plan service. So it assumes that $3 million is the general obligation bond. The city has historically done four BED capital improvements and we're anticipating spending about $5.7 million dollars from the 2020 net zero revenue bond. We include TV chargers, fleet vehicles, purchase of Velco equity distribution and IT system. And then obviously as part of our efforts we're continuing to focus on net zero energy will continue to be 100% renewable. We will continue to offer all of the strong incentive programs that we have. We have in the budget double funding for electrification incentives as was part of our revenue bond plan so that more customers can take advantage of those. We are, I think we mentioned one position that we're looking at, we are also repurposing two vacant positions in energy services and sustainability to have an increased focus on that zero capacity for our staff. We're investing in chargers, as Emily mentioned, we're planning to replace two of our fleet gas powered trucks with EVs. We have an initiative to convert our line crews, pulsars and chainsaws to electric, which actually came from our line crews. We're very appreciative of their leadership on that. We're converting the gas turbine biodiesel, which was a revenue bond project and all the other initiatives here continue our progress on net zero relative for the FY23 budget. Those are our budget slides. I'm going to walk through the rate slides as well just because they're so intertwined with what we're trying to do with the budget. FY23, as Emily mentioned, we're proposing a 3.95% rate change. I think we communicated to the council that we were anticipating a 4.9% rate change. We were able to lower that a bit. Again, thanks to the strong energy prices and the expected strong performance of McNeil and our renewable energy plants, we always want to hold a rate change as low as possible for our customers. Go to the next slide. We have this period of 12 years. We're very proud not to have a rate change at all. Our trajectory now is such that I think we need more regular rate changes probably annual, but our commitment is to try to hold them much more moderate than 7.5% we had last year. We're proposing the 3.95%. This year, we're hoping to get to a point where we'll be more moderate than that. In the current inflation environment, I think the 3.95% is more reasonable and also it kind of makes up for the gap we had last year in terms of what our need was relative to what we had asked for at the PUC. Next slide is just going to show our rate change. We're the bottom line in dark green there. Relative to some other different rising costs and inflation is in red. This is only through February of 2022, so it doesn't include March, April, but even with the proposed 3.95 rate change, we're still well below the rate of inflation over the period of time between 2010 and today. And I think if we had gasoline or natural gas or any other fuel on this chart, you would see it jumping significantly as well. So, just to give a sense of context there. In terms of residential rates, even with the proposed increase, we will still be significantly lower than both the Vermont utility average and the New England utility average. And for our low income customers who are on the energy assistance program rate, there's a line in blue at the bottom there. They're actually going to be better off all things equal prior to the two rate cases. If you look at the 7.5 and the 3.95 and you add the bill impacts of those and you add the discount that we're providing, they're going to be better off than they would have been back in 2020. And I'll go into that in more detail in a moment. In terms of commercial industrial, we're a little higher after the rate proposal that the Vermont average lower than the New England average. I should say that the projections here in dotted lines on the Vermont and New England average are just projections. They may actually be higher given some of the cost pressures we're seeing. So it may well be that we're closer to even with the Vermont utility average once we see actual proposals from the other utilities. But for the moment, this is the best data that we have. In terms of total rates, we remain again below Vermont, below New England average, even after the proposed 3.95. And the next slide just shows all of those different pieces. BED current rates in blue, BED proposed rates in green, as you can see, we're still lower residential than any other state and the Vermont utility average. We're a little closer to interior on commercial industrial and still on the bottom third in terms of cost overall. In terms of bill impacts, which is what customers actually experience for a residential customer, average customer bill, this would be about $3.10 increase once completed for our small general commercial customers, which make up the bulk of our commercial customers about two thirds or more, it'd be a $3.50 bill increase. And then our last slide is, again, focused on the energy assistance pilot program. This shows the cumulative impact for customers participating in that program from the two rate changes would be $8.95. However, the discount we're providing of 12.5% starting in July is $10.65. So they're actually going to see a net benefit as a result of that program. We are hoping and anticipating have at least 800 to 1500 customers sign up for the program. We base that on the participation rates that Vermont Gas and GMP experience in their programs. And we are continuing with the 185% of the federal poverty level for participation. And we are glad to answer any questions that the board may have. Any questions? On the rates, large multi-family buildings typically include electricity. And there was a discussion on some differentiated rates from that. Yes. I think if you are, it depends. So multi-family of a certain size would potentially be on the residential rate if it was smaller. If it's a larger building, it would potentially be considered a commercial customer. You know, in terms of how they, you know, how they meter, they meter differently in some cases. Some cases, there's a house meter that covers the electric use for the building. And in a number of cases, they're separately meters for the different units. So it varies based on the setup. A large multi-family unit seems separate. I think in a lot of rental, yeah, you have separate meters in order to send, I think the traditional reason was to send an energy conservation signal and be able to track data for each unit. So we will accept that on the building basis. Yes. Yes. And in that case, the customers that be on the right one to us. Yeah, in terms of, go ahead. I'm generally speaking. My understanding is that an apartment, house, apartment building will have a house, a meter for each apartment that's usually on the RS rate, residential rate. And then sometimes there can be what is called a house meter for like the outside light, the hallway light, the laundry basement, you know, the common spaces. And then depending on how much goes to that house meter back, the usage there could bump up to be hiding that into a small commercial rate, not residential. But again, that's, and that's between the landlords and the tenant on how that expense is covered. I don't know if you can answer this question, but is that separate meters per apartment, is that being encouraged in terms of the building? My understanding is, is yes. Okay. The general trend has been largely towards individually metered units. Yes. More so, yes. Industry shift over to the split systems. Yeah, yeah. Our rates were reviewed by two. The review was recommended by our commission. And the commission actually met yesterday very unanimously to recommend the budget. Are there questions from the counselors? It's not yourself, so. I have a question. Sorry. Okay. Thank you, Darren, and team for being here. It seems that I missed the organizational chart of the staffing at BED. Have you provided that here? We have that. We can provide it. It wasn't part of our slides, but we're happy. I'm happy to send it by separate email if you're interested. Yeah, I think it will be always valuable to also understand that dynamic. Also, maybe next time to include it in the. I also wanted to ask you a question specific to varying utilities underground. How many lines have we buried last the past two years? And what is the plan as part of your budget? I will see if Maria wants to comment on that, under Browning. The last two years, we've been working on much from the ground. And then in the next five years, most of the underground that we're doing is replacing the underground system with College Street. We're doing some there, part of the Shetland Parkway, some undergrounding. But we don't have any specific project on underground lines. In the downtown area, I think the project's going to have where we're undergrounding, I believe, part of Bank Street. Yeah, as part of the Shetland Parkway, I understood, I was told that there are opportunities there. And I'm hearing that there is, is it? Yes, we're undergrounding some of our lines as part of the Shetland Parkway. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. I'm not seeing any further hands on the line or in the room. So, PT Team Go, thank you. Thank you very much. And next presentation is Rachel, I think we've been boring. Go for it. I was getting a little eager. I thought one was fine. We're really excited. So I think there's a lot of budget. I wonder if that's enough. Chatham's already got to put out, so I'm just going to go for it. Hi, everybody. I am the acting director of the RIV since and yeah, I'm really happy to be here and it's been a great ride and looking forward to being able to continue this budget going forward. So basically, RIV has been around for 15 years. And it is a department that is focused on engagement, facilitation, education, policy, and through training. And it's really at systemic racism and equity, and how we can be able to promote more opportunities for like that. So the next slide shows that this is a strategic roadmap, which shows some area of focus that the department is focused on. And this strategic roadmap was created by a comprehensive engagement process where we had BIPOC listening sessions and we also had focus groups. And so these are the domains that they are looking at when it comes to the work that RIV is focused on. Some of the functional areas, the work that we've done has, our key areas really has been culture events, public policy, public health, and also training and education. And that has been in the form of training city staff and commissioners and counselors in anti-racism practices and also being able to learn about history of systemic racism. We also, as a city, declared racism as a public health, as you all know, so that's a key area that we're investing on and continuing to look at public policy and also the ways that we are really providing equitable support around public health. And as far as culture and events, it's a key area because that's a part of the long part of the inclusion of being able to be represented and the department does events and also gatherings where we are constantly being able to expose other cultures and other BIPOC experiences. And the big one, of course, is to the team that's coming up. This is our organizational chart that was approved last September and there are some vacancies. And I wanted to point out too that the trainers last year were in service and this year was going forward. We really want to invest, like I said, in training. So those are going to continue, which last year went short. So we're really excited about that in developing a more robust training for the city and also being able to sustain it long-term. And I think if you do go back, since I had mentioned the public health equity work, we will continue to really focus on having that position built and the rest of the positions that are not filled that we will wait for the new director to be able to add their discretion to the positions. So this is our budget from last year. A big area was, of course, growing the department and staffing. We also had done a lot of work around consulting services to see it, for example, to see an end report and also the strategic plan. And there was also a lot of money that went into buying computers for the staff and also in addition, for machines, since it isn't in department. Those are our departments. And I think that there was an added, but there, I wanted to point out the public art there that was a one-time beaver. I just pulled it apart so that we can see it as a separate thing because that's not a continued project. There is Dewey Park. Because Dewey Park is... Right in front of IAA. Oh, it's a new name. Yes. Hopefully, John Dewey, what did it come from? I believe it is after the Dewey to enter care. And the public art piece has not been installed yet, although the process for selecting the artist is something I think announced Monday. Yeah, you'll get to see the design. That's exactly where that was the process. So it's a lot harder to see the design. I will find out more about Dewey before Monday. It's a good homework assignment. Yeah, it's a really great culture. So this is the proposed budget for FY23. There have been some shifts in it. Of course, the focus, too, is still on staffing and retaining our staff that we have currently and also retaining the work that RIA is looking forward to doing. We did shift some of... In order to have the trainers be another year to go on another year, we did shift some of our funding from professional consultants and also the operating budget. Again, it was taken because they were out of the one-time fees of the furniture and also some of the work that we did at consultants are not going to happen. And yeah, I love this quote, without the interchange in yourself, it can't be any outer change. We all have to do this together. Thank you, Ben. Sorry to make you go back to the presentation, but could you talk through the part chart and which those positions are full-time? Yeah, we could say all the manager positions are full-time and we did hire a digital and also Ben Planner, full-time also. And of course, public health positions are in the directors. Thank you. My position before I became the intern was a supply diversity analyst. That's a good time position. And all the racial equity trainers are limited service. We never hired the data analysts for that. And so that's the school. So basically everybody at the top under the director and the director start full-time. Sorry, I don't know if the trainers are full-time also. Yes, they're limited. Everybody on the board turns full-time. On the training, which was great. How was your target next year? I mean, you did a big batch of staff, and you thought that was a big batch of staff, but will it be going beyond city employees or city affiliates? What's your next target range? Well, we still are currently training city staff. We did do a invite to some more specifically the BIPOC membership of Cogor. As we are working on doing a module with HR for seasonals, so they don't have to go through the whole eight weeks, but they still could benefit from the racial equity training. And in the fall, it's the police fire cohort. And then we're always hiring, so we'll probably choose all around, like staff again, like white cohorts, the BIPOC. There are also some, maybe, department heads who were busy with other things, since their employees signed up as quickly as they should. Like, I still have some white staff who were not able to, they were in the first cohort, and now there isn't a space in the second cohort. I think Chapin and some of the other department heads are still in that as well. So I think it's because we wanted to keep the cohorts at reasonable sizes that we did not make it through as we might have originally thought, all of the white employees in this first cohort or even this second cohort. So just getting through all of the staff we have now is taking considerably longer, and that is that, like, obviously, we are continuing to bring in new staff. Yeah, as a trainer, it's also going to have to have some downplanted, so that's a factor. Also, in addition, the in-person is very valuable, but we're finding, looking at different people to continue the work too, one of the things that's looking at our facial I believe tool kit for the city departments also. It'd be great if we could figure out a way to even get a little more of it into the community. I understand staffs are very, you know, it's really well done. Just thinking out a little bit for the community to understand that would be good for them to participate, even if they were modified or, you know, small groups or some such thing. I just encourage us to think of it, because I think it would be great for the department if they could see the downplant training. And we're really pleased with it, and that's one of the reasons why it was a push to keep them on, and not just one year, because there was a lot of support from the city staff and people back from it. So I just wanted to give a shout out that he was a huge advocate for keeping the trainers on, and I think as a vision of what you're talking about, Councilor Carpenter at, I think, together very well with you and the REI commission, others to help realize that. I think as a community's season, they will appreciate it, and that sometimes it's hard to articulate it. I'm just saying that. Councilor Jenkins, this is Cameron, and would you like to be your representative? Please, yes. Thank you. Thank you, Pat, for the presentation, and I was wondering if you can go back to the strategic planning roadmap slide, please. You're welcome. Let's find the first one. Thank you. Thank you for finding it. You know, I feel like it was a comprehensive document, and these are the one, two, three, four, five, six elements, and I just was, and I'm interested in learning about, you know, what is next from here, since it was commissioned, created, what has been done in terms of action about this? Maybe, I don't know if you can answer it, but who can answer that, please? Well, the work has been done around these domains, like education, of course, we're talking about the training, a piece of training our staff, and also that is something that we are looking into metrics, so that it's not something that is a one-time thing, and there's outcomes that we can measure. And other areas around health, of course, for the public health, racism as a public health is a big area. We are going into the other domains, but to say that the department is, I mean, department two, and to be the interim director also, I'm hoping that the new director can help really continue to expand these other areas of focus, and I'm sure we will, like, because they all cross each other anyway, too. So, I'll answer it in one more detail. Councillor Jang, you're muted. If there are additional, you know, because I understand that you are new to this, and it doesn't seem also that, you know, racism as a public health emergency is, you know, was done before even this strategic planning was commissioned, you know, and also I think if you look at the strategic planning, the roadmap, basically, it has tangible and also, most of the time, it also requires, you know, some funding for each end, those recommendation, it has some type of funding associated with it. But as part of your budget, I don't know, because I just haven't heard what will be done. What part of the budget will be actually to implement those recommendations? There is, there was $50,000, I believe, that was put into the public health work, as far as operating, and the empowerment fund also is a fund that is community support and has been, in the past year, been used to help with some of the public health work in recovery, racial equity recovery, through grants of giving to food and security and also to support housing and other programming. I think that it is really up to the new director, like I understand what you're saying, but for me, I would be hesitant to say, this is what we should be doing going forward, because I am the interim, and I believe that the new director coming in would have to reassess what's been done and also I would recommend that to do a somewhat with a retreat to with like the staff to really assess what the work is being done and what around the roadmap can be done, given the budget and the area of focus. But currently, we are trying to keep up with our partners in the work we've done with Ariel and Isla, with the public and looking at racism as a public health. We don't have that position yet, so that's why that's a critical position to deal with the public relationships. I appreciate you and the work that you do. Thank you, and I feel like I'll follow Mr. Jordan and the mayor about next steps. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Jang. I'll just add, we did provide a written update to Councilor Jang's committee this week that has some additional detail in it. Certainly, the major focus of the department, as it currently stands, is on the DTU training effort, as described on the 2018 celebration, which is just over a month away, which has expanded from last year into a weekend long. And there's great deal activity happening that currently. In terms of those other strategic initiatives, there certainly will be progress over the year ahead of the housing and the economic sectors listed there. And the roadmap kit has a lot of personal involvement in each of those initiatives. She has taken over. Frankly, the housing initiative, we certainly were hopeful, would be farther. A lot of might not have mentioned it first in the state of the city a year ago, and there was some momentum building towards the announcement of new programs there, certainly the transition of the recent months we lost a bit of momentum on the other hand. There's some very exciting news last week, which is that in the final fully activity, there was a significant money's program for a first generation home worship program from the state. The first generation home worship is really aligned very closely with how we have been thinking of the clear legal route to pursue a home worship initiative that would benefit BIPOC households. And it's quite exciting to think that between city funds and these state funds that we will be able to go out for something different we haven't seen before. Over the next year, Pitt has taken over that project. Obviously she's pulling a lot of directions down. She's got a good director, but the mission is that she will, some she had personalized a lot of content to it that she'll stick with once a new director has been named. We are moving towards naming a new director at this point. The Karen Durfee is leading that search process and it's something that was just recently 3-2 and she's just getting that work now with the more announcements for the weeks ahead. It will be posted in the next couple of weeks here. And then Pitt was initially hired before it was known that she would be in this role for procurement at work with the CAO's office to look at whether there's more we can do in the city's contracting to create economic opportunity for BIPOC businesses and that too that work. It was only the dumb down matter of weeks before being pulled into this new role, but as she's able to transition back out of this management role and that's a clear commitment and it's not a responsibility point. I support that Pitt articulated there that certainly we need, I think it's critical to give some space and authority to the new director coming into to assess the ownership of the department and help set this surely bill off the work that's been done also set strategic direction going forward and there's a limit to how far we go until that happens. The print report spoke to all the things that the city initiatives since the declaration of the public health emergency and how to speak to them more if they're interested in that. But it's an it's a appreciated counselor, Jack's question, if it's good summary very substantial amount of activity that has happened and financial investment that has happened since that declaration in July of 2020. Councilor Haydard. You answered my first question, which is if we put some decision yet, but then I guess the follow-up that's like why haven't, why haven't we waited so long to make this decision? It's been just two months now, there was a lot of, of course, it wasn't just the departure of the director, there was the departure of some managers as well, several work to do to kind of work with the remaining staff to stabilize the department and assess the direction forward and how a search would be led. And all that, it's months from now, right? Councilor Carpenter. I know that in the short run, we're using exact money and looking at ways to get towards a structural budget, but I don't see any state funding. And I'm just wondering, seems to me that the region in particular will benefit from all of these activities. So I just hope we can, I know like specifically like problems in housing, there is state money, but I'm more thinking about the build out and education and empowerment and culture, which will benefit more than justice to the city of New Orleans. And a point of comment that we really need to work on, I think in the state, contribute to some fashion, the suburban towns can and will take and deliver this debt and they will benefit. Thank you. You're right. Councilor Carpenter, I appreciate your frequent focus on the regional opportunities that I agree and we have taken some steps to the way. One of the reasons that I had confidence and still have confidence that we have a model for the kind of progress that cross sex to multi agency cross sectoral progress that we need to make to truly address recent public health emergency. What I was hopeful about when at that proud moment for the city when we made that declaration in July 2020 is that we have this over the last decade, this model of collaboration among many different agencies and the community staff with this, which has been this really chidney county wide effort to address the opioid crisis while dozens of organizations. This effort should be even bigger and we did get more than 30 organizations to sign onto that and commit to that. And you're quite right if we, there has been follow-up through to the commitments that were made in July of 2020. We, before the leadership transition an application was made to start to realize some of the regional funding the application was made to the chief program that the hospital funds, the community health impact community impact program. It's a $100,000 application to get the multi-year commitment that that decision on that is still pending and has been impacted by the leadership transition but that is one example of how we're going to pursue have already started to pursue and I think can ultimately be successful getting other funding. Similarly with the passage of this year's budget just last week by state legislature there are many new programs that are going to be coming down from out here that we have new grant writing and pursuing capacity as we've talked about recently this is one of the areas that has been communicated to the new grants team that we want to focus on on public health. There's a significant amount of federal and state money that has become available and we should be able to get some assistance. Okay, so I'm looking online and not seeing further hands at this point I'm seeing further in the room so I'm going to close this section. Thank you Biff and thank you for stepping up and serving this year. Okay. Now we'll let Chappan come to the desk here. Welcome Chappan. Great. Water, wastewater, stonewater and then we'll go straight into the traffic presentation which I would also like to thank you. Yes we have Dr. Megan Moyer here who's going to lead the presentation for you this evening. So I'd be with you tonight. Megan. Hi all. Thanks for allowing me to come in remotely. Catherine if you want to start the presentation that would be great. I can see it not quite starting on my side. There we go. Okay, so just from a big high level overview the sort of principles that I have been trying to employ since I took over leadership of the Water Resources Division in 2016. I think we do a little bit better every single year those principles I sort of think of it as a three-legged stool right and sometimes if we focus too much on any one of these we end up with a two-legged stool so it's really critical that we do all three of these things. On the financial side we're consistently focused on fully recovering the costs of providing the 365 day a year 24-7 service for wastewater cleaning production of drinking water and then managing of the city's stormwater and that is constantly in tension but we've been doing a good job with your support of balancing what we need to recover and what our revenue requirements are with making sure that we have rates as well as rate structures that enhance rate payer affordability. Our water, there are people out there who can afford some of the rate increases that we need but there are a lot of people that as we need to generate the type of revenue in order to support our system we want to make sure that there are ways in which we can reduce their overall burden. On the infrastructure side there's a number of different things we have to fundamentally take care of operate and maintain the stuff we already have we have to and we're in this a pretty big bubble right now of needing to either renew and or replace some of our older infrastructure when it reaches the individual's useful life and then of course there are new regulations phosphorus requirements you know continuing to deal with the combined sewer overflows building new streetscapes and so there's a whole new portion of infrastructure that we have to also be having enough money to build and then the last leg of the three-legged stool is really making sure that we are supporting our staff the financial piece and the infrastructure piece cannot happen unless we have sufficient staff and not just sufficient staff for now but also sufficient staff for where we're going as well as one of our big shifts and emphasis is on improving our training you know making sure there's actual formal instruction making sure our SOPs are up to date and even starting to get into sort of more proficiency evaluations not just performance evaluations but can the people who are supposed to be doing certain jobs do all of the things in their job and that if they can't we need to make sure that they get proper instruction and training in order to do so next slide a couple of highlights from FY 22 you know we were able to provide the services that we do provide for the whole portion of the year in our wastewater plants since we did the disinfection and PLC upgrades have been performing exceedingly well as has the water we upgraded the Flynn and actually also the Fletcher pump station so we did two pump station upgrades these are the pumping systems that in the lower lying areas of the city wastewater flows via gravity to these lower lying areas and then these large pumps pump it back up to the major trunk lines that get it to the wastewater treatment plants we installed 15 green stormwater infrastructure rain gardens up in the south prospect area in order to reduce the flows going to the pine street CSO I'm happy to report that even in these last two significant rain events we have not had any combined sewers activate which is always a happy day in my book we have and I think some of you have attended our presentations we've submitted a draft integrated plan to the state which is our approach really for how we're going to address those newer regulatory obligations particularly it's very much emphasized on what Burlington is going to do in order to reduce the amount of phosphorus that we discharged to Lake Champlain which is one of the drivers of cyanobacteria or blue-green algae blooms and the current plan that we have and that we're crunching numbers on you know gets us to that goal and beyond which will allow us to address some of the seasonal variability that we see because of rainfall and how it influences our system with your help and the adoption of the FY22 rates we implemented Burlington waters first water resources assistance program that included the restructuring the rates and most significantly included the the waiver of the fixed fee the sort of base charge that we added to the water bill that is waived for people low-income people folks who are able to demonstrate that they benefit from some other state or federal program seniors as well as senior housing and low-income housing nonprofits the other piece which isn't necessarily as flashy but there's been a ton ton of work I think in the coming months we're going to be talking to you all a lot more about this report and about what the findings and what it's going to mean as far as the work that we need to do but we've had we've done a pretty like very comprehensive assessment of our three wastewater treatment plants and of the amount of work that needs to be done to bring them fully up to speed and code and standard and ensure that we are able to continue to produce very clean safe water before discharging it to Lake Champlain next slide this is a quick slide I think we did a version of this slide in FY22 as we were looking at the impact of the COVID shutdown on our water usage so the line in green is the three-year average flows from 2017 to 2019 and then the blue line is what our actual flows were starting back in the 2020 period when COVID hit up until today and you can see that our biggest hit was in fact the initial shutdown the March 2020 shutdown where that blue line dipped well below the green line we were saved if you will by the hot summer of 2020 in which the flows exceeded what they had been traditionally and then you can see as we've gotten into 2021 and certainly into 2022 that things are tracking much more similarly to the pre-COVID period and you can also see additionally that we had a hot summer hot drier summer in 2021 and anytime we have that it certainly does help our bottom line because of the revenue that it generates we are going we've had a we have extended our disconnection moratorium long past when the state required us to do so and like BED who I believe maybe have as already or will be lifting their disconnection moratorium for non-payment we're going to be lifting ours in August 2022 that's only going to happen after we do significant outreach to customers particularly directly to customers who may have past due balances to make sure that they're aware of the state programs that exist as well as to let them know that if they're able to enroll in payment plans with our division and they're able to keep up with those payment plans then we're certainly not going we're not interested in shutting anybody off ever we want to give lots of people lots of opportunity come up with other ways to draw that balance down next slide so on the expense side of the budget I think as you've probably heard there are some significant sort of base operational increases that are driven by salary benefits utilities we use a lot of electricity to pump water and wastewater and so when BED has a rate increase that does affect us because of the age of our wastewater facilities there is some increase and their repair and maintenance lines to make sure that we're able to deal with things when they break a lot of the equipment is the inflationary costs as well as the lead times are significant and so we want to make sure that we're well funded on that we're also seeing significant increases in fuel and in our equipment maintenance charges from DPW general fund and on the water side the some of the chemical cost increases are eye-popping even just one particular chemical a polymer that we use for wastewater I believe increased 70% so those are things that we're keeping an eye on certainly fingers crossed hoping that things come down there's a little bit of new debt service in wastewater to start paying for some of these projects that we've been completing and are funding through the state revolving fund loan program there's also an increase in funding if you remember one of those pieces about the infrastructure part of the the stool is operation and maintenance and working with Chapin and with Lee Perry in the street maintenance division we've identified that we need additional operation and maintenance staff and so that I believe street maintenance is adding two additional staff positions and those are largely are wholly funded by water resources to work on things like fixing storm drains and manholes and doing more cleaning of our sewers and so on and so forth on the sort of technical administrative side we are looking to add three new positions one which for right now I'm calling the risk and resiliency engineer this is this is largely succession planning and we don't always have the opportunity to do succession planning in the city but we do know Steve Roy who's been with the city for I think over 30 years very significant contributor is the the still my go to when I've got questions transitioning him into a position that is wholly and completely focused on making sure in particular that a drinking water plant but also wastewater plants have have good plans for addressing all of the new and future risks that are approaching and really his that this role would be largely focused on that training and proficiency piece and making sure that we have robust almost like the fire department right we have many days where things go very very well and then we have emergencies that happen and we need to be training on those emergencies very frequently to make sure that our staff are nimble and can can can react in the ways that they need to the other piece is increasing our accounting or financial piece I I still largely do a large percentage of the accounting and financial management and dealing with these loans and and whatnot and I think we've been able to work with Catherine to sort of make a compelling case that it's going to be beneficial to the city as a whole as well as to water resources if we're able to add some actual accounting specific expertise in water resources this is something that used to exist a long time ago it's also going to be share a shared cost with the parking and traffic division which also needs some additional assistance next slide the good news is you know fiscally I think we're pretty healthy we actually the water fund actually was upgraded from a one to double a three by Moody's in the last couple of months based on how things are looking for us financially the FY 23 budget is including some contribution in all three funds to a capital reserve which is something we hadn't been able to do previously but is extremely important given the additional capital needs that we're going to have in the future all three funds do have sufficient days of cash on hand but as I said all three funds really do have significant capital improvement needs in their immediate future and so we have to be having well funded balanced budgets and healthy cash reserves to support loan underwriting and cash flow needs in the future as we look forward next slide on the revenue side you know we constantly keep an eye on this and should the city get into a period of growth this will certainly help but generally speaking even with growth on the water side which is how we do our bills because any new when people do redevelopment or renovate their buildings they're often putting in lower flow fixtures which is great for the environment but it does mean less money for us to support the water system and so generally in our models we assume a conservative flat or even slight decrease in our overall water usage and if we end up having more water usage it certainly helps that bottom line we're continuing to keep pretty conservative assumptions regarding the uptake of our affordability customers even though we've been doing extensive outreach you know at this point we only have about 36 customers 15 low-income customers and 21 senior customers who have signed up for our bill discount program I suspect as time goes on as we have additional rate increases that number may go up but certainly you know counselors if you know of anybody who is struggling or concerned about their bill or concerned about the proposed rate increase to please contact us and have us help them fill out that form and then this year's budget we are continuing to phase in the full cost of private fire protection fees if you may recall from last year you know we had the option of sort of for our commercial customers immediately charging them the full cost of what it is what it costs us to service their private fire lines and their private hydrants but in order to mitigate their cost increases or their rate increases we've decided we had decided to phase that in over five years and so this is the second year of those five years next slide this is the projected cash flow certainly you guys can take a more detailed look at it kind of breaks it all down but you can see that we essentially have balanced budgets with maybe slight surpluses and then again healthy pay go capital which is the annual capital and then contributions to the capital reserve fund most significantly in wastewater you do see a large contribution of the capital reserve fund and that is because of some of the needs that we're seeing from that report that I mentioned and that we're going to be talking with you more about in very short order next slide so overall what does this mean so last year even though we did generate we were able to generate more revenues for our rate restructuring program and if folks recall there was effectively no rate increase if if not actually a decrease for your typical single family duplex and triplex customer as well as some other customers this year we are proposing a 5.42 essentially a bill increase for that typical customer which is about $2.66 $2.66 a month for people who are eligible for that wrap affordability program and have the fixed fee the base charge waived they would be seeing about a 5.1% increase in that bill those customers in particular actually saw a large decrease last year we sort of reset the clock for them I believe the typical customer last year would have seen an actual 16% decrease in their bill from FY21 to FY22 so hopefully that action that we took last year is going to help them be able to swallow this needed increase as far as getting into other customers it's very hard to generalize because it's all based on how much impervious surface they have which drives the amount of stormwater charge how many if they have a fire protection line and so on and so forth if anybody has a particular customer commercial customer that they're concerned about can certainly contact them and we can generate a a estimated bill for them based on their water usage and next slide which I think is just the questions nope the looking ahead I've alluded to it throughout the presentation but continued and significant reinvestment is going to be needed across the wastewater drinking water as well as the stormwater funds in particular our wastewater treatment plans have systems that are older than 25 years old and we are working to finalize a report that we'll be sharing with the city council in the coming months on the drinking water side the reservoir pump house which is up on main street was built in 1867 and essentially we the time has come for a new pump house to mothball the old and certainly keep it there as a backup but to put in a new water pump house to make sure that pump house is responsible for pumping water up to the elevated tanks which is responsible for making sure that the hospital has sufficient water pressure up to the top floor we still have water main replacement to do and we still have old collection system storm sewers and wastewater sewer so we got to tackle that we're also going to be bringing forward a proposed plan for the tertiary filtration system that we would be installing at main plant which would meet and exceed our phosphorus obligation for the lake burlington will be perhaps before many other communities doing its part to make sure that we have turned off the phosphorus faucet to our precious jewel of a lake I've got relatively big hopes for the infrastructure investment and job a jobs act funding the eja funding we're still working with the state to really understand exactly what that means and how eligible we will be but this next five years is you know the single biggest bump of at least financing because it's not necessarily all grant funding but it's financing that is available to water systems to try to tackle the work that has sort of built up over the past few years and I think that's it now there we go thank you thank you Megan I hadn't quite caught that until now that eja funding is that where we're going you've gotten used to ARPA funding and eja funding is that's what I've heard it so IIJ yes eja funding very good all right thank you for for the comprehensive review and the floor is open now for council questions council member this is more of a comment but Megan I have discussed this the need for continued education the taxpayers around what causes the water to be corrupt build conflation around algae blooms and development and their I understand it's sort of two different you know there's a lot of runoff stuff runs downhill from other communities that we have algae blooms the new building down the street is not causing the algae and so it continues it actually helps but it really helps because you require them to put in sort of a runoff and all this good stuff and so it just pops up a lot living in a world that is entirely bordered by delay and sort of a lot of finger pointing so I just encourage us to do more education about that and then and then the value of some of the things we can do like the rain gardens and some of those so some people seem useless but one thing I didn't specifically mention that is a great comment we and I believe it came to you all I just can't remember when is the launching sort of formal formalization of the blue BTV the residential storm water program where we will we have a consultant who can do a sort of lake friendly assessment on people's homes and then the storm water budget actually has 20 20 grand in it that will go specifically to if if somebody goes it goes to a property and says hey what you need is a rain garden then we actually have money that can go to fund that rain garden on a private property because indeed every little bit helps of every single person in the city just held on to a little bit more storm water on their property it would help reduce the flooding it would help reduce what happens at the wastewater plants it would help help the lake and we do need to continue to to drive home that message that's a part of the head yes I I follow the question on the on what we can do to decrease the amount of storm water around is there you said there's 20,000 available for to help private homeowners I guess address runoff concerns but we have like a condo association in New York that we think could benefit from storm or rain gardens is there money available if we can find someone to partner with the city that's a private landowner to to install rain gardens we thought it would help the storm water runoff problems yeah I'll have to talk with Jenna Wilson our policy and programs manager I think our plan was certainly to start out with the sort of residential side and then ideally see how that goes it gets a little harder sometimes with the volumes that you might see for some of the larger developments right it involves engineers it's not just putting in a small garden you actually need to design a practice it's not to say that it isn't it isn't in our horizon and we could talk offline to make sure because some condo associations and some private properties are actually triggering some state regulations that are requiring them to do larger larger type things for instance and it hasn't come to Board of Finance and City Council but we're actually going to be participating in a P3 a public-private partnership with Palmerlow and Kimmerford CHT CHT yeah to CHT to be a pass-through agent for some state funding and only the municipality can receive but then we can be a pass-through agent so that they can I am I'm not I'm not wait I want to turn off your video to see if that helps okay answer to that which is the P3 that's coming to the council is that kind of public-private partnership for improving stormwater so we'll have Jenna get in touch with you about the condo proposal in particular the opportunities there but yes we know we need not just the individual property owner but larger properties as well and I did have one other question around all the infrastructure needs I appreciated the presentation you and Megan brought to the Duke in March yeah and I remember the price tag and I just rechecked this being like projected costs $175 million to address all all these concerns especially around wastewater and stormwater and I guess I'm wondering the part that we can't get through federal infrastructure funding or other non-tax payer means would they be funded through revenue bonding general obligation bonding or some combination of that yes we'd be using the state revolving fund for most of the reinvestment to see that there are a number of benefits of using it while it's administratively complex it makes Megan pull her hair out the administrative fee is much less we don't start paying until the year after we've finished construction there are many benefits to this no non-term bonding all of the Egypt funding will be flowing through those state SRF programs so unfortunately there's not like a separate pathway like so basically we would put everything through the state revolving fund program likely if they have enough money that's one of the things we need to figure out is make sure that they actually have enough financing funds available and if not there could be other resources such as there's a state federal loan program called WIFIA would you anticipate a bond? yeah it wouldn't be general obligation possibly be revenue promise I think it makes a significant difference absolutely it changes the base of the responsibility for it if I go ahead with it would it be on our balance sheet or is it running through the state it would be the city's city debt would be debt to this you know entity of the cities that has its own independent credit rating I think right the water or is that just the water uh water has its own independent credit rating but the I mean the way that we have our own resolution bond bond resolution so it is typically funded fully by the wastewater fund the water fund or the storm water fund this is a significant issue council barlow it's here you're noting then we're working hard to develop as much detail as we can about where this is headed what the federal opportunity to meet for local repairs what the what the timeline is for for the investment we are working to have those answers as quickly as we can that's as was mentioned in the presentation that's this major engineer report of the commission that is being finalized and so we will be back to talk about this again in the next couple months and the frank things that we'll have for discussion about before something big decisions that are coming other financial issues that are coming really to school school that we want if you want to have all this out there or which is no surprise later okay thanks so to be continued any any other counselors I'm not seeing any other hands on the zoom or in the room so we will move to close the water resources section of the discussion thank you Megan and we will welcome Jeff as it's the table and to your traffic Jeff as it's directed from parking and traffic you get eight slides behind this lots of detail I'll try to get the latex but I do want to spend a moment on this slide because it's slide actually contains a lot of philosophy around doing we have a lot going on we have three different funds 264 to 65 53 that are all different different rules 264 to 65 for special revenues funds but they have different rules between them and 53 is a general fund and it's actually contributing to so in managing all of these we actually have three new managers spreading these groups we're talking about management sort of structure around systems financial controls of folks through folks public safety customer-centered approach as part parking stop sign sort of services to a that's the complexity of the two things I have a long-stakehold internet connection I don't know I'll set that one it's stable over here so then the other person is Matt Patrick who we just brought on that summer as facilities manager for the garages and blocks he's doing a great job turning around and you start to attack how would it feel it's a major progress going on there just going out to this week on a major improvement to the marketplace production so anyway so we've got new people we've got new attitudes so we're improving performance relative to customer service focusing on customers we're actually putting the power employees in the way it's actually getting so it's we have happy it's someone working my office just today saying so happy to have your support it's a project but we do have ongoing economic challenges we are heavily dependent on the copy we are directly we're retail so we'll talk about that in the next few slides so we're recovering but it's it's slow and it's still a little bit but one of the things that we really try to do is really focus on safety now in all parts whether it's parking enforcement parking you know to the food find some food which I have to you guys go to home where I've to reform the scoff to to minimize risks of all of the formal communities we've got a wolf's program going now where you can actually get anybody in the city anybody who parks anywhere in the city wherever you're from you can get out of one parking ticket if you're so on this amount of safety issue resident parking over state we have another contractor parking program now so the contractor's working in the residential only area part of town they can actually buy an annual permit they can just go there and work in a neighborhood all summer long and and we're working close with PSD and the residents so anyway so that's why I want to spend a minute on this because this really next eight slides which I'm going to do once all right so let's go on and thank you thank you we have some technical issues here so anyway so so we're we've set revenues for next year at at pre pre-pandemic levels at the same time we have reallocated costs from the 53 budget for personalities and reality is parking enforcement parking service agents actually support the traffic group by enforcing the meters so they're servicing the special revenue funds the special revenue funds should be paying for that service so we've done a cost shift and shifted money out of parking services into traffic so all the way up and Megan already alluded to the new financial person that will be sharing to help us one important thing is school crossing we're having a very hard time budgeting or hiring for it to the budget usually to the entire everybody be like $230,000 but we're not we're not hiring even 50% so I can't carry that kind of a ghost number $70,000 so we budget it down 70% we're still hiring we get up to hiring everybody we'll be right back looking for these good care of that so all right so and then on to 265 parking facilities that's a 3.4 million dollar budget again this is completely non-tax revenue we run the marketplace garage and the College Street Lake view and Westlake complex are in the process being granded this summer as the downtown garage so you're the first to hear this concept because the College Street Lake and Westlake complex is just a lot to say and we run the meter plots the monthly lots and the meter plots highlights there's no gains in a number for us this is transformational so how we operate our operations it's all park mobile it's all park mobile and kiosk so to lay fears we state we still take coin in the garage you can pay without a credit card you can't pay without a cell phone that coin so comment on that because some work allow a lot of people that a little more public education I've got because it's so easy what you figured out and these days also we could do actually have cell phones so I don't know how we do this but we have we have folks we have staff in the garage it's yeah around the center but I'm like well if I get night and they're they're very helpful yeah they know how to do it there's a big sign law says if you need help call this number and that's phone or ring they don't pick it up don't because I'm not older but honestly I needed help first time as they were really like not great you just do this this as a I think letting people feel a bit better here so the other big thing is Elmwood has been decommissioned to make way for the pods all those parkers in the process and ship to the revenues a lot in the way which will attain the parkers and we've actually opened up Perl Street a lot 15 parkers this is very underutilized a lot and a lot of just activity in there and also it's an alternative for people with Elmwood that may want to open up closer spaces so we're going to pull that out along the faces and again focusing on safety in the garages we've got a lot of structural work going on we've got new lights going in new bulbs going in we're doing a lot more patrols we actually have almost come in about eight percent of budget this year in the garages fund balance was completed so we're working closely with CT office you know these things are in more control so we're going to be back backstop by ARPA and a lot of participation in them so again like I said we are tied directly to the economy so when the economy went down cash stopped flowing it stopped looking at us too but revenues are recovering again see this chart it's very similar to the previous chart you know our peak season we were up and in our off season we were up so we're excited about where we're heading to this summit so these are the projections again this fantasy chart on the left looks very fantasy-like but I don't think that it's unrealistic and we were hitting monthly budget last fall and really in the fall falls our peak we really need to be exceeding our you know annual budget by the fall so I just projected out through through the end of the through the year end of the year I think we can do that and we grow with the same rating for last year and get back to normal I think that's fine um again the major structural repairs are coming again we shifted money over to this to the parking services group and we've increased our security budget by 33 percent increasing it from 120 to 160 thousand dollars we have ongoing during the day we have two guards on from 11 o'clock at night to three o'clock from the morning at 1 3 to 7 that's not when that's that's that's exactly four o'clock it's really this so we were looking to increase daytime controls and we're working closely with that that's also so parking services all right so parking services they are generate their revenues all from tickets it forced safety regulations they control retail parking on and off street so meters and the garage is that's where we're going to crush shift and they force residents to park big news is they are physically moved into dpw now they are in the house then we are on a constant from the focus on customer service community service I actually have sort of soft model of the program that's a couple of weeks of safety and that's what parking service should be to their cars parked in front of a hydrant that's a safety issue or they park in a handicap spot that's that's a issue and almost every violation of ordinance when you've started to categorize those two spaces so try to put a human face so it's not just getting out to the teachers so not just raking in money we've created digital permits for the resident only and the multi-programming talked about contractor permits we're hoping we think the revenues are going to return and and food for fines again we made a $4,000 donation so all right going forward this is the last slide so going forward we're expecting to get back on budget we're going to think we're going to hit budget this year at 25% normal levels COVID-19 really had a major impact on our students so we had during the parking during the clean sweep this year we had two parking certifications for two or three events it was ma'am they were out screaming I mean people don't understand in the middle there's so many people parking in the middle and supporting the public school that's they got it done so with this cost shift we have reduced we think a sustainable way to reduce the costs 253 which is general fund so we reduce the costs of that that ostensibly raises our contribution to the general fund but we kind of like to keep the general fund not the same by reducing tickets so we don't want to print the general fund but we want to reduce tickets at the same time so this is a strategy we're going to work and we're going we're coming with a reorg fairly soon that should help with our staff you can choose this board to come on that but to recognize that having five parking certifications isn't enough to make those obligations so many get so many that's you know to get a 20 30 percent reduction in workforce it's definitely it's not that but you'll hear more about that much like that that's fine these groups just added that is it's actually proposal to reduce total number of FT is by combining two workers and making more efficiency so we're excited to bring that forward yeah questions thank you Jeff floor is open for our council questions that's a couple these are more comments and maybe you can't answer this I'm just curious how the lack of city place may have been happened to be simultaneously COVID but that must have been a big dent in the revenue and then this is sort of going forward observation that the different set of retail stores might have different traffic patterns to it I mean I just see people coming down to different things than they used to come down to and one of the biggest challenges we're facing post COVID is the office workers from not downtown to the same level almost Friday so a lot of what used to the weekends have always been popular marketplace downtown but really it's that middle of the week traffic and that's probably going to stay me even like my former employer that had 40 people the buildings only going to be full was half of the map I mean they were going to be hybrids forever and we do have customers we have customers we have monthly in now so they're actually coming off with a month for Parker Park program yeah but going on to a validation program so we're not losing them as customers we just have to change our crowd so this is it's a different game that's why I didn't project too far 365 stuff like this it is it's changing almost you know months for the okay yeah this is very interesting well I just and Kevin I discuss this the other I think the significant issue is at least the perception that it's very hard to park out here so and I hear that very long whether how true or not that is is question of the day but I'd rather go university well it's quicker easier to look at that's that's alive and well the our revenues are still down in the streets the revenues are just to teach your park and uh that's our problem is that this information is this way which is we've always said not a good problem you want to if you're driving downtown you want to have a park problem I mean there's there's a parallel I mean there's no ways to say we're either so that's driving some of it but so just a couple of quick things we do have on the shelf a complete way finding interior way by before we go there I just want to address Councillor Carper address a couple of times something that I think is important I think it's not it's not consistent my understanding about the last four years I'll say had unfolded but the city place garage long garage went away well before COVID it was taken out at the end of 2017 okay so so almost more than two years before before COVID again and we did not experience substantial fiscal problems in our garages or on the streets as a result of that or frankly in any of the city running stuff somewhat to the surprise of many you know even our sales tax revenues really are not impacted to the degree you might have thought from presenting all of those all of those retailers our first sheets continued to go off and so I I just I just want to say that that you think there's this sense out there that the city lost a ton of revenues and when the mall went under and you know because the mall had been dying for for some time because the vacancies had been building up because it was becoming a smaller smaller part of what the downtown economy was about you know which is what led us if you actually did it's really been quite modest that economic actually very different story when we get to COVID the the the current budget concerns we have in parking really start with just the shutdown of the economy of the economy absolutely absolutely absolutely if we had to go into COVID we had to fund balance of a couple of of a couple of dollars you know to go into but zero revenue for three months to 30% revenue from eight months to you know we can't okay okay okay okay fun fact the a that that's Patrick facility's manager just to run that project okay so exactly where are you talking to the the growth in online sales is you know the complex but it actually doesn't penalize the city because we get a don't want to get said that's right and that's been And that's been part of the reason why I think we've seen the sales tax remain healthy even with the loss of some retailers. It's hard to tease it out, but we do get the online revenues have been growing. We've had a lot of changes. And more information we had to work. Seizure's office was quite active in getting to where we are today where automatically we're selling like each other's collapse and so on that stuff. Any other questions? Yes, I have two questions. One is about the graffiti from you mentioned earlier in the presentation. Is it on signs garage in garages on meters or all the above. The entire meters. Just general analysis. Yeah, and budget I think last year I think I put a budget. There's only so many times you can wipe graffiti off of a reflective sign before it's not like you got to go. You have to identify the perpetrators and for that to be camera. We do now have you works, which is a program which will allow us over time to start mapping where the hotspots are. It's pervasive. Covering. My other question was around crossing guards. And I guess, first off, they're there for the safety of school children and if you're operating at less than 50% of the optimal staffing level. How does that work, how do you prioritize where the guards are. So that's part one of my question and then part two is, could we use temporary services or something to fill that way. And it's really, it's really challenging to get downhill managers that group, and she strategically places them in the schools at the critical sections of the schools. And we've tried a number of, that's a number of ways of reaching out different groups to try to get more cross guards in. But it's, it's been a real challenge. And the part of the limitation is in order to do it, you have to go through the background check. So you can, and you have to, so it's not, it's not like we can just get a bunch of volunteers today when crossing cars. Actually, you have to sign up. It takes three or four weeks to get through that process. So we have a lot of people who come sign up to do it in the interim between the design of it. Check. It's really challenging. We have a number of strategies that we're working to try to get that. We split the shifts. The shift week. Yeah, so right now. So this is what sort of one of the things we did was, typically, everyone said if you do it, you have to do it. It's just a really long. So we said, well, we'll take you any time. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. So my neighbors have signed up and they're doing it. So yeah, anybody has to work. We are very flexible. Just it's a public service job. And with maybe a bigger push on almost not having them be volunteers, but we really need you. Just three mornings a week. I like the service. We've increased the bay twice by 10%. Yeah, for sure. You know, I forgot, this 170 a week or so. Right. We've worked with the schools and the schools have actually helped because their folks are So school my daughter goes to many days the school administration is helping at the crossing. So it's good. We're struggling with it. There's we've been struggling for four or five years. We're going to continue to work our best any suggestions you have for a while. Hey, what's up? Okay. I'm not seeing any hands. I'm going to say more questions in the room. So we will close the traffic section. Thank you both. And now we have a series of city wide. So we're going to start with environmental important items to review. We're seeing this discussion about the process. So I don't have a PowerPoint for welcome to pull it up. Yeah, so the program's budget for counselors, not familiar with it is an annual budgeted allocation to fund various nonprofit organizations that think Burlington rate. It also is where we find our sister cities. And maybe what I will do. So in this year, the budget for the regional program is consistent with past years with some slots like modifications. The reason that I'm sitting here is because the regional programs budget is administered through the mayor's office the organization. Reach out to us with their invoices annually to request their allocated amount and we send them a check. So I'm glad to answer questions. I would just two things from a budgeting perspective. We added the accessibility committee $15,000 here last year we have the same amount of money but it was housed in the HR budget that was confusing. Because it was not an HR led initiative so we decided to move it into regional programs because it wasn't there before it looks like it's not. And the community bystander and indigenous people study money was one time money you'll see it's not funded again in 2023. But after discussions with President Paul. That money. I know for community bystander it's all of it. I'm not sure if it's all of it or just most of it for the indigenous people study, whatever hasn't been spent will be rolled over so it can be spent in 2023. So, maybe we're increasing our allocations. And also by $5,000 to champagne. Yes, and thank you. You will notice we also moved the $400,000 for the crisis damage crisis response RFP that was in regional programs last year. That is also continuing but you will see it on Monday in the project. So, there really aren't a lot of changes here just some of them have either into this budget or out of this budget and they're in other places. Okay. Any questions about seeing the environment. Thank you to the discussion of the sign from balance. Short presentation. Share this discussion that since we, you know, for many years, the conversation about aside some balance is pretty straightforward. The goal was to increase it in 2012. The site fund balance was 1.6 million dollars and it was a multi year project to get out of the red essentially and build that all the way back set a policy on where we want to get to and how we can go to a website that shows some of them. He let me go through this. Yeah, you know, I love the outside from my department of budget if you're personally responsible for it, but I'll like. I feel super grateful that of all the people have said wow you came into this job at a bad time, but I came in a great time because I did not have a negative $16 million, rainy day fund. As you will see, there is a rainy day fund and we still have it in the midst of COVID. So this just is a definition and it says yes, we call it the rainy day fund. Here is a link to our fund balance policy and there's lots of details in here. The most important things are it establishes a minimum that we need to keep 5% of the previous year's general fund operating expenditures in that rainy day fund. Our target is 10% and we don't want to keep more than 15%. Any amount in excess of 15 needs to be assigned to something or used to reduce taxes. The excess should not be used from recurring or routine operating expenses and should be used either for emergencies or for planned projects. Here is the slide you wanted. This is the slide that the auditors put together for us last year and this is the five-year look back in terms of dollar amounts and you can see we've been pretty stable between about eight and a half and nine and a half million dollars and then on this next slide it shows where we are in that percentage and remember 10% is our target. We don't want to go over 15%. We don't want to go below 5%. So you'll see after our most recent audit which was FY21, which is you know we just approved a couple of months ago, we're sitting at 13.8% so we are above 10%. So it looks like we could spend some money. We could spend 2.5% and that would lead us at 10%. But that's not all because we also have confusingly the assigned fund balance and that is money that previous city counselors obligated or assigned that we have that is not showing up in that nine million dollars and it's planned to be used for a specific project. There are many examples but some of the that I listed here every year we put the money we get from the state into the reappraisal fund. We have a so removal reserve in case we spend all of the money in DPW and more snow comes or the warmic shelter pilot from last year. We can unassign money from that if we think we are not going to complete a project or it's already done and it didn't cost as much money as we thought and then we return that money to the unassigned fund balance. So I think there was this slide about what we wanted to take out of the assigned fund balance. But what we would like to do is there are two items in the assigned fund balance that could be freed up and those items are in other notes that I have here and it is we currently have a million dollars in health insurance reserves and we are proposing that we de-obligate $250,000 of that leaving $750,000 in that reserve which we have not had to use. We currently have $1.75 million in our workers comp and liability insurance reserve and after discussing that with our insurance agent they feel we will be okay with the one to one and a half million dollar reserve. So if we de-obligated $750,000 from that that would free up another million and still leave us with healthy reserves for both health insurance as well as workers comp and let's remember those are additional reserves we have the rainy day fund which god forbid we needed we had a problem with health insurance we could go to the rainy day fund but what we've done is say we have this other special reserve and we would use that first. All of that being said if we did all of that we would have about three and a half million dollars that we could spend in a one-time money and here are ideas for how to spend it. $800,000 for a bike path reimbursement that's going to sound new and unfamiliar to you and is something that we can discuss further in an executive session. $500,000 for recycling totars which we've talked about in Chapin's presentation. $500,000 I am not sure if you or Dorian have talked about the investment at 405 Pine or if you'd like to do that now. I think this would be a good opportunity to talk about it. Again many counselors have heard about this and had direct discussions towards with Dorian Craft over several months or years of the C.R.I.D. Foundation purchased 405 Pine Street a couple years ago which we have no city money, no city commitment to least the space there. They have continued to make progress with the capital campaign since then and are close to being able to enforce a variety of improvements of that project again. That building again largely funded by private fundraising and other driving that have been participated for some kind of approach to the point that I think if that broader project is going to succeed before it gets developed. Ensuring the long-term success of that building and the programs in it and importantly to be able to expand those cities can make some kind of commitment that they're likely to do so with themselves. Right. And that is essentially a match to a recent steep UCS success plan. Thank you. The next $500,000 is this issue you talked about yesterday with Scott and that is moving the city IT equipment out of memorial. Next up is a $500,000 and that is VPRW investment in a variety of areas and we didn't go into all the details here. We have Cindy and we have them planned out. That is everything from seating and fertilizing athletic fields, new gates at Oak Ledge at North Beach, some cemetery work, stormwater improvements, rebuilding tennis courts. A lot of important work there. $250,000 which would be to hire some consultants to work with the CT office to help identify ongoing new revenue opportunities. Something you pointed out, Councilor Carpenter, so a lot of these one-time monies, there's grant money that we'll be going after but it is also a good opportunity post COVID after the reappraisal to look at where are we getting our revenues, where are new opportunities to get revenues, how are those affecting the various members of our community. So putting some money aside to do that. And then yesterday we also, Brian Pine spoke about the jobs and people study. We have $25,000 already reserved for that and he had asked for $100,000 so $75,000 to top that up. And questions on discussion? Can we go back to the others? Yes. And out of the memorial piece, I guess, obviously there's a lot of difficulty in the memorial but I don't know what your current plan is. Like how much we have to invest in and stabilize the building versus? Yes, there's a work session on Monday that is going to be a significant update on that discussion at PAC. So you're a lot more about that than people you're asking about. So that's part of the work session on Monday. So that's part of it. Since poor director White is here and I saw her working hard as I drove into the meeting, will some of this money go to fix some of the cemetery issues that we put in there about $75,000 to look at? But we don't look at storm water across the whole cemetery because as I asked our planning team for an idea for numbers for this and John Adams' call, it's like, well, let's not just look at there. Let's look at storm water across that whole cemetery because it all flows down to the lake. So use that opportunity to get a broader look at that but then also very specifically look at that one section. So he was standing out in the rain in the entire cemetery mission. I think we've actually got a huge wind off of a Campery and Rye's work into work that we need to get there. It's kind of exciting. So I think it was getting a little damp though. We got Councillor Barlow going. I had a question just so I understand the assigned fund balance that is available. That's just over accruals for certain funds that we're going to now use for. You're going to say we're not going to spend them so that we can use them on other projects? Yes. So there are several different things in assigned fund balance and what might be helpful is to send around this list of everything that's in here because a lot of things will stay. Like there's an ongoing balance for ELI and Cara pulls that down as she needs it in addition to ongoing money that she gets. We thankfully have not needed the snow removal reserve. So that just stays near the year. It's only when we see something in the current balance and we say hey we're never going to do that project or that balance looks too high and we should free that money up for something. And so that's what we're suggesting in these two cases is that looking at the health insurance and the workers comp reserves they seem to be a bit high. And so an option is for us to unassign that money to use for other purposes. And then in terms of the proposals for spending the unassigned fund balances we've heard about some of these items in the departmental presentations. Are those items already built into the departmental budgets or are they dependent on the use of unassigned fund balances? Like in the case of the toters that we heard about from DPW? So this is a great question. It is currently built into DPW's budget but if we get directly you know part of this process is to get direction and feedback. And for example if we hear absolutely no on the toters the next version of the budget would back out that money from the toters that we would do something else. You know for each one of these items we wouldn't have to do it there is another way. Okay I guess the point of my question is is I we know we had a shortfall this year that's not going to be quite as short as we wanted to we thought it might be because revenues have been stronger. And I'm thinking next year we could have structural budget issues so that make two because we may not have one time or put monies or whatever toward it. So if it wouldn't be prudent you know to keep as the fund unassigned fund balance higher so that we could use it for another rainy day should we have one next year it's more of a retort. Yes right and I think these are the conversations we'll want to have. So this is this is the decision and if you think we're being not conservative enough you know somewhere should we have to get through mutually. I think our preliminary sense pending these conversations you back leading up to a month now is and just to remind make sure we're remembering you got we're proposing staying at more than the 10 percent target and having this additional two million dollar reserve revenue replacement reserve in case some of the ARPA sorry in case some of the revenue assumptions for the year are not met since we are essentially projecting return to normal. So you've got the 10 percent plus that two million in addition we have these specific reserves for these areas of significant budget volatility that are funded continue to be funded in that in that assigned fund balance reserve. So when you add all of these things up it is considerably you know it's it's 10 plus and that's why we're comfortable having this discussion but it's certainly you know it's why we didn't a year ago have this conversation proposed coming down some more uncertainty a year ago now we're feeling some confidence about we'll be back towards that that target and I appreciate that and I guess I would you know with this year the uncertainties around inflation around colas for next year around you know other unanticipated needs I would just you know if we could hold on to as much of it as possible to prevent the need for a tax increase and if we think we can do that and and use part of the unassigned fund balance for these items then I could be supportive. Okay we'll process that and I'll come back to you with a further question. Councillor Jay go ahead. Thank you yes I mean I I definitely do feel like we need to also think about the tax payers and knowing that the budget the tax increase did not pass and knowing also that we have conditions of some of the sidewalks in the city that are in a very deplorable condition I would rather make sure that we invest in those instead of a five hundred thousand dollars for a private business owner or you know all the other all the other items and from my perspective that's something that we need to prioritize because now it's all this DPW is telling us they have to prioritize even some works that were submitted a couple years ago. I feel like you know it would benefit everyone and also it will minimize the liabilities some of them are liabilities to the city I would rather have at least you know a couple of miles of sidewalks being fixed with unassigned fund balance. So thank you Councillor Jang and I would we'll have follow-up conversations and if there are specific think I think I just want to follow up to clarify if there are specific items that are being suggested that are that kind of feedback I mean if your messages don't do any of this that's one thing if you have specific things that you think should come off the list of all of that. Councillor Brunner. Thank you I want to sort of echo some of what Councillor Barlow said regarding its relationship to the presented budgets and now I'm talking about the proposed spending and let me just say I am not inclined to be more austere I really believe austerity is killing far too many people so that is not my inclination on the other hand I want to be prudent and that means one if DPW's budget that was presented included a proposal that we're now seeing here but other budgets didn't and we're we're not getting full information so I would you know Catherine mentioned about the full list of the assigned fund balance I would like to see that that would be it would be great to to have and I you know where these fit within all of the department's challenges and their priorities is something like what Councillor Jang said that would be helpful because otherwise we are not operating with a full picture and let me just sort of end by I do think that the questions related to the contract negotiations are something that while we probably will want to have that in executive session that that is a consideration for us and the allocation of X amount of dollars so I cannot without more context tell you that I like this project more than I like that project so I need I need more time to do that I would you know sort of say let me we want to make transformation on North Winooski Avenue and that quarter and I can tell you that the that the sidewalk between Fohang and Archibald Street on the west side of the street is terrible you know should that be part of this because the the people of the old North end had is their highest transportation priority improved sidewalks perhaps so I would love to have more context to be able to to make those decisions there's nothing on the list strikes me as outrageously wrong but the information is insufficient at this point all right well well uh we'll take it as a minor victory this evening that nothing appears outrageously wrong we should do that and work to get you some I think it's I think I understand the request for more context we certainly do have that we have a document that is an update of document shared just a what a couple months ago about the assigned fund balance so there should be I think even with the new council where we had some discussion that there are some changes to that and we should get you in full and we'll be part of the materialism and I think we're ready to send that out immediately so you can you can see you can see that piece of it um you know sidewalk we worked hard to make sure we were continuing um our historic club you know historic much higher level than our historic level investment in sidewalks again this year three miles of sidewalks are in the budget that we presented to you if certainly it's a discussion that could be had about about putting even even more capital dollars into there certainly I hope it's clear in that we're trying to make good on the policy of any unassigned fund balance spending is going into essentially one time cost is not going on into ongoing funding so there will be a limited relationship between by kind of design between unassigned fund balance spending and and future tax rates with the exception of efforts that we're trying to make investments to create more non-propery tax revenue or savings so um so that that's part of the thinking here it isn't I don't see a good way to translate you know this one time savings that has been built up into sort of durable tax relief for folks you can get people some momentary relief that then results in some cliff at some point so that's why we haven't not you know that's why we're proposing we think the way to get to some long term uh tax relief and benefit is through uh is revenue generating efficiency uh creating investments um okay I uh show um you know one benefit of the budget schedule the way it is is to sort of get all this out there on the table about a month before a vote is needed and I will be meeting with the caucuses in the weeks ahead and certainly for for counselors who aren't members of caucuses want to further discussion about this as we move towards a final recommended budget that's uh you know there's time time to do that big alteration system any further um do you have any questions Catherine or I think further clarification you want to fix some of those no okay okay well we will not see any further hands so I'm going to close the close the our perception of the budget we have two more um we're going to go to the ARPA section I'm sorry we'll close the outside fund balance section we have ARPA tax rate and health retirement um still left um we also have worn uh an executive session to start um shortly so um uh I believe do we have President Paul and then we do have President Paul there President Paul um thank you for uh people don't know President Paul uh as a very happy family milestone that is happening right now the graduation of her her youngest child um and she has generously um interrupted uh those festivities to be with us for the executive session uh President Paul how would you like to proceed would you like to go at this point to the executive session and come back to the remaining budget items after the executive session or should we proceed with the uh the budget at this point um well thanks mayor and thanks very much I mean we all have we all have many things going on in our lives and uh many celebrations and uh I appreciate your mentioning mine but just want to acknowledge that this is a special meetings are always difficult for um for everyone and I'm so appreciated everybody making the time for this um you know I don't know how much I just got on so I'm not really sure where exactly you are on the agenda we have three items left they um hopefully I think we can have a preliminary discussion about them fairly quickly some of it is repetition largely repetition of stuff we have talked about before the ARPA budget certainly is and there are people here specifically for the ARPA budget and it might be helpful if we can at least get through that and frankly maybe we just do that get through the ARPA budget and then we could in the bottom board of finance meeting on Monday we could add to the agenda we could the tax rate and the health retirement which is sort of uh not this you know which I think are things the board of finance will have particular interest in and um we could how about we do that we we have a quick presentation on the ARPA budget and then we will move the tax rate and the health retirement workers comp sections to Monday sure okay great go ahead so great car I've come on up um uh as I'm remembering to share our car I was right ways as multiple hats uh leading our our recovery effort and it's been put in charge of the uh city's efforts to invest in American recovery acts uh farm as well and we have talked about this previously and I'll turn it over to to Kara there is an intersection between our previous discussions um and the budget theory we asked to approve in a month and hopefully this presentation will kind of make that uh make that clear we also will be asking for some new approvals uh in in the upcoming budget so go ahead Kara thank you Kevin thank you start if you want great I will just very quickly get us to good funding yes that's my car um so I'm not going to spend a lot of time here but I just want to set the stage we all know we had we're fortunate enough to get a 27 million dollar allocation um of ARPA funds this time last year city council obligated 7.3 million dollars of that for lost revenue you can see that here then during um FY 22 these are the obligations um that were made um that was another 7.5 million dollars um so that brings us to 14.8 um and I think we all know all the various things that covered so I won't go into them they're here if you have questions Kara and I can answer them um once we get through all of that that brings us um to today where we have about 12.2 million dollars left to obligate take it away Kara um actually you can do the first one okay great also you know um the things that we have already talked about through these other presentations the two million dollar revenue replacement reserve um that would only be used if needed um and that is because we brought revenues back up to their normal level the FY 19 level also the equity investments at the 1.2 million dollar level you'll see on the next slide it's FY 24 and we're phasing those out um and it's 800,000 dollars in FY 24 then also the 350,000 dollars we spoke about um last night in CEDO's budget for constituent services and the 250,000 dollars that we spoke of last night when Kara was wearing her other hat um with her new budget from the new department sorry and then that brings us um to some of the newer items yeah so some of the newer items um community infrastructure was uh very highly rated in the survey that we put out for ARPA um we have sort of held off on that until we could see what the revenue replacement piece was needed um we would like to move forward with in this fiscal year setting aside two million and um how much robust are the process where we are encouraging um community partners but also departments of the city to apply to um either upgrade or create um community infrastructure which would be space for food, music, gathering, things of that sort um and so that process would be very transparent and um we would move forward with that um the other one you see here is the targeted high impact grants so many of our community partners have reached out to us needing amounts ranging from 5,250,000 um some of these that I can think of right now are this community partner who would like to open a new mental health facility for teenagers um there is someone who provides pro bono legal work for women um who have found themselves in dire straits um and there's also some people who are working towards um helping with substance use disorder uh some of these community partners I'm not going to list them publicly right now but you know who they are and we would encourage them to apply through uh an application process that we would have um we would uh have community partners sitting on a committee to review and most likely also uh counselors to review these applications to decide the best way to grant this money out and there's actually interestingly um a webinar that's being held by a national organization next week about how municipalities can best work through processes to grant ARPA funds to community partners so we do have some people in the city who will be attending that webinar so that we can accurately structure that process. The last one I believe on here is the 500,000 small business revolving loan fund with a focus on women and BIPOC owned businesses. We have found that um these small businesses specifically women and BIPOC owned businesses have still not fully recovered um and need a lot more support um we are looking to structure a revolving loan fund that is um close to zero if not zero percent interest uh and as a way to help these businesses either expand or stabilize or in some cases start if we see we have a need for that um there is a national partner called Kiva which has been well renowned for helping municipalities structure these programs and they help them um process the loans and um and ensure that it's a zero percent financing structure for the borrower that's just to let you know where we're headed when we're thinking about structuring that project. Excellent um if we move forward with all of that that would leave us about 3.8 million for FY24 and the proposed uses are um as you know the mayor had committed to five million dollars for housing and houselessness so um that two million dollars is the money um that wasn't obligated in FY23. We are planning and hoping that things will continue to improve revenue wise but we have included a one million dollar as opposed to two million dollar revenue replacement reserve again you told me you paid it and as mentioned the eight hundred thousand dollar inequity investment as we're phasing those into structural budgets. Important point maybe maybe already we're going to purchase but I think as soon as the chance that the fund is still available that's like my fault we'll we'll grow um if you don't need to spend down on the revenue replacements or for example or if their number of other areas where we may not spend the full amount they could have allocated so far so that's just a minimum of what remains being allocated for FY24. And as a refresher we're not obligated to encumber uh these funds until the end of calendar year 2024 so we still have time to assess and we'll see uh you know the revenue replacement piece we had time to see if we'll need to set it up which I think does sort of tie back a little bit to uh discussion we're just having about why we're a little bit bullish on spending down to 10 percent. Okay um can you expand oh sorry Mr. Mayor can I ask a question. Yes please. Can you go ahead um can you go back to the slides about the 23 yeah there is one slide please. Okay yeah yeah this one um now the community infrastructure through RFP process and the targeted high impact grant can you develop more on each and what are the differences. Yes so if this were to be approved through the through this through our budget process right now um we would still need to come to board of finance and city council with more details around this. Our thinking around the community infrastructure piece is that um those who responded to the survey particularly the those who identified as BIPOC felt that it would be beneficial for the city to invest funds in community infrastructure so we are talking about a place where one can gather listen to music maybe have pop-up dinners um and and and be able to perhaps take classes things of that sort um now we don't have enough of this ARPA funds to renovate or build that sort of community infrastructure on our own so a lot of what municipalities are doing with these ARPA funds are leveraging them either through grants that maybe they already have in other departments or leveraging them through public private partnerships and this is what the city would do would be to bring up to two million dollars to the table um four projects that could either be um on public lands or on private lands um and that's how we envision structuring that process. The targeted high impact grants I currently have an ongoing list of at least I would say 15 to 20 community partners who are looking for smaller amounts of funds to stabilize or expand some of the work that they're already doing in the community um and we would open this to a widely advertised application process and we would convene a committee of um residents stakeholders counselors to review these applications and discuss how best to award the grants. Okay and what about constituent services what is it? So constituent services is actually um an expansion and also a solidification of our um RRC our recovery resource center that we launched during the pandemic. We found that and not just us many municipalities found that their ability to communicate with their constituents on a wide variety of things obviously during the pandemic that was focused on health and vaccine related issues and now there has been a real push to um solidify a structure within municipalities so that there could be a flow of information from constituents to the city and it could be for anything any of needs you have maybe you're worried you're going to be affected maybe there's another wave of the pandemic that we need to get information out to you maybe we need information in multiple languages it's a way to facilitate the interaction and the flow of information between our residents and ourselves. Yep and also i'm assuming that this is not for individuals all of them community infrastructure or the impact grant you know but it's two organizations that are already wonderful all right thank you thank you so yes of course and i think it's been stated in a pretty clear way but just in case it's worth restating it's i think important to remember all these proposals are grounded in the work that i did with the public and the public engagement between surveys and public meetings um uh in throughout uh much of 2020 calendar year 2021 in the uh the discussion so we had to be already a part of this year with the prior council on the um the prior council i think this is really the first time we've done that with the councils to the table yeah thanks for that so um hopefully it didn't the connection back to the work viewers was clear thank you um i am looking online and not seeing any further hands at this point um or in the room so we are going to close this presentation thank you very much car we will now at 737 ensure the budget meeting and so if i had the forethought i would have just used this same zoom for the next meeting but i was not properly thinking ahead so um everyone should have a zoom um invite in your or a zoom uh link in your inboxes from me from around 330 i think is when i sent it so you'll have to don't do that yet because we should have a open session for the open session yeah so there's this zoom there's another zoom for an open session and then and then i'll turn it over to you all right so did everyone sorry i wasn't following that did everyone else understand that you say again in order to make sure okay so if you're on this zoom and you're planning to join the executive session please click out of this zoom and look at the most recent email from me with an update in zoom um for the uh public part of the meeting uh before we go into executive session whenever it wants