 I'm going to call this meeting to order. And so the first thing is to review and approve the agenda and I don't think we have any changes, any, any other thoughts on possible changes to the agenda. Okay. All right, so that will consider the agenda approved. So on to general business and appearances is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on any topic that is otherwise not on our agenda. But I don't see any members of the public. More meetings off schedule. Oh dear, not even the press. Everyone's too tired. Yeah, fair enough. Yeah, right. Yeah. Oh, that's right. That's just true. Jack was that you raising your hand for just being tired or did you want to say something. I was agreeing with Bill. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So I'm going to keep going. Unless anybody would like to say anything generally off topic. Yeah. Okay. Part of me wants to rename this time is off topic time. Okay. Consent agenda. Is there a motion regarding the consent agenda. Second. Okay. There's a motion and a second. For the discussion. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay. So send agenda passes. And then we'll move on to the strategic plan updates. Bill or Cameron. Well, it will be Cameron, but I will start briefly. By saying that obviously we, you all did a lot of work on the strategic plan, which we then put into. Our format, which you've seen and approved and our commitment to you is that we would review, review progress quarterly. And it was originally planned. For October and for. In the future. We'll have a couple of reasons, including the medical reason we postponed it till this meeting, but we will get back onto the more normal schedule. In the future. Right at the end of the quarter. So Cameron, who has been our fearless strategic plan leader and continues to be internally as well as externally, we'll walk us through the report. And then we're happy to talk about any questions people have about the report or any of the activities contained therein. So I'm going to go ahead and share my presentation with you. I'm going to share a presentation with you shortly, but I'd like to sort of just set it up for you. You know, again, we did try to create a new level of formality to our planning this year and our work expectations of our employees themselves to sort of build a level of accountability and transparency. So we've created a, what we're calling a work plan for each of our department directors for the city. All of these plans contain all the initiatives that they can focus on within the strategic plan period. And those initiatives in those work plans filter down to employees. The ones that you guys voted to be your priorities filter up into the strategic plan. This process really has allowed us hopefully to tap into your priorities to be included and folded into our department work plans, which also in turn will guide a lot of our budgeting priorities. So this we really see as an essential city operation and allows us to focus on key initiatives and define goals and the actions that it takes to get those goals done in the short and long term. So I included the long report, which goes into more detail about your strategic plan initiatives. You'll find that we have reached about 14% progress within our stated objectives for the year. Obviously we're aiming for 25% done this at this time. But I'm not sure if that's a good idea. I will say that COVID has put pretty strenuous. Pressure on our departments. And so I know a lot of them are a little behind in a lot of their work. Most of it is fiscal. Fiscal reasons. So some of that is explained in the long report, but I'm pleased with our progress. With our initiatives so far. And we've hit no real major disruptive disruptions on the strategic plan initiatives. So considering the overall impact again of COVID-19 and the budget. I'm not concerned about that process or the progress gap. And we're on an appropriate timeline to complete our strategic plan initiatives within a reason reasonable variance. So. I'll pause there and try to pull up this presentation. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Cameron, can I ask a question about your 84%. Yes. So we're talking about a June, a July to June. Budget. Is that also the work plan. July to June. Yes. The work plan will, is it, we're, I'm tracking that in the same timeline as the fiscal year. I'm tracking the work plan initiatives in the same timeline. I'm tracking that in the same timeline as the fiscal year. The work plan initiatives just your strategic plan initiatives. Well, it's just that we're less than half a year through. So I don't, 84. We're 14% done with progress. We're 84% of those initiatives are doing a real good job. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. The rest of them are slightly delayed. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Is that you real quick. So let's share my screen. There's a lot on my screen. Okay. Okay. Okay. So our strategic plan initiative presentation to you. All right. Yes, it does. So our strategic goals that are included in the strategic plan. That had the majority votes for council included. The community prosperity, COVID-19 response, environmental stewardship, more housing, responsive and responsible government and sustainable infrastructure. Okay. So under community prosperity, the main initiative is the budget process where we're trying to create a robust budget focused community engagement process, which includes surveys and also includes ensuring that there's more budget updates to y'all. So you know where we're at and what's going on. So we're going to be focusing on the budget. And then we're going to be focusing on the planning of the public health and the community health services. So these are really updates. And due to the COVID-19 and budget uncertainty. We're really focusing on funding projects that are essential to the city's core functions. So those are the updates for that initiative. Our COVID-19 response. We've had a lot. This, this is really a highlighted level. But both of them we feel are doing pretty well, partnerships with MDC and Montpelier alive. Now, I will say that counting them green is not a value statement. We do not think that this is like, because it's green, it doesn't mean we're like, we've done it, it's over. It just means we feel like we've made okay progress and we've reached certain milestones within this that we feel like we're on track. We have been creating internal policies for ourselves to protect our community and our staff. We have pursued pretty significant grant funding and reimbursement opportunities. Most of our applications are outstanding right now, so I can't give you exact numbers on how much we will pull in, but we have faith that those will come in soon. We have adopted and revised under your leadership, revised Parkland sidewalk use policies and we have been working really closely with community groups. We've also been working with Montpelier alive and MDC on both immediate and long-term business needs. We did get the downtown investment district budget to counsel, which you approved and the MDC did give a vision, like their visioning presentation to y'all as well. And then really just our pending item for that is that we need to look at continued funding for MDC. And what that looks like in the next year. So we are also green in environmental stewardship. We have our net zero goals, 20, 30 plans and updating the stormwater master plan. MIAC has continued to meet and work with DPW towards this goal. And they are right now and why this is green, even though we know this substantial work still needs to be done is that movement has been going forward and an RFP for a consultant is currently being drafted for the net zero goal. Staff also presented to counsel on the stormwater master plan in August. And our next steps is to form a committee to review the creation of a stormwater utility. So the goal that is yellow right now is our more housing initiative, where we're looking to implement the city housing initiative. The city, I'm sorry, the city plans housing initiatives. We did just have our community development specialist return from furlough. And so he's sort of behind on this work and we want to recognize that. He's meeting with the housing task force. He met with them last month and he has not created a work plan with the housing task force to roll these initiatives out. So, however, in the furlough period where he was out, the city did issue first time home buyer awards and has developed some primary information. So really the issue there and why it is yellow is that progress has been delayed due to lack of staff. And I'm just rolling through these. So if you have any questions or want to interrupt, just go for it. So for responsive and responsible government, the two initiatives there are the lobbying subcommittee and the childcare option study. The lobbying subcommittee has been created and has been meeting. You guys did see the lobbying priorities at your last meeting. So that's moving forward within its timeline. You'll be hearing about our childcare option study later in this meeting, but we have actually been moving forward with that pretty substantially and we have an opportunity and we've taken an opportunity to rent rooms in the former River Rock school space on Berry Street and have started providing childcare. And regarding sustainable infrastructure where the initiatives protect, maintain and improve the built infrastructure, that initiative is also green. We've gotten quite a few projects done. I don't want to go to them entirely, but we do have a couple of things that are coming up, including granite street sidewalk repairs, which has the design is in progress and construction will be happening in the spring of 21 and the Moat property project, which does have construction and progress and completion is scheduled for some time this month. So that was the end of the initiatives that are on your strategic plan and where we are now with those. Do you have any specific questions? Happy to answer them. I have a few questions, but I think I saw... Did I see a hand from Jay? Go ahead, Jay, if you want. Yeah, sorry, I just had a quick question. Just wanted to understand Kevin's timing and how much he's working. You said he was just back, but as far as I can tell, he's been back for two months. So just trying to understand like how he's prioritizing the community development and city development projects he's working on. I don't feel equipped to answer that specifically. So I mean, he's back, I think he's been working mostly 0.8, 80% time. So, and I mean, he's back to doing his job, I mean, his priorities are following our plan and the other activities, like grant monitoring, grant activities, those kinds of things. So Mike can answer it more specifically, but he's doing the work that we've laid out. We can get a more detailed answer to that question. Jack. Thank you. Thanks for this report. One thing that I was wondering and maybe it's not part of the strategic plan, but when you were talking about the public works, it might be worth pointing out that we're also moving along on the extension of the public water system up to Murray Hill, which is a big deal for it's gonna be beneficial. It's a big deal for the residents of Murray Hill, but it's also gonna be beneficial for the entire system. And I gather that that's on track for completion. I believe we'll get you a lot of work when I'm into putting that together and making it happen. I'm glad it's continuing to move forward. I am realizing that all of my questions are pretty small. So I'm just gonna email you all, like who actually is writing the RFP for the net zero 2030 plan and then... Donna's writing it. Oh, okay. The draft has gone to Miaq and Kate who said it was okay. And I think it's getting ready to go out like this week. Oh, great, okay. And then just a, we had in other conversations that I've had just thinking about trying to get away from like the former names of properties. Oh, like Moa? Yeah, okay. I don't know what else we would call it, but it's a small thing. What is it, 12 Main Street? 12 Main Street. 12 Main Street, okay. Anyway, just a note back. And then since I'll just finish my thoughts then, then I'll have to email you. Just a flag for the storm out of utility, still looking forward to that, or at least having that conversation. Case, Connor, I'm just gonna call you Casey. You're changeable. That's fine. Now, just a capacity question guys, like this is awesome and it's like really cool to see like everything we had in that meeting sort of come to life in progress reports, but just cognizant like you're dealing with like so much stuff right now with COVID. Is this a burden for you? Or does it like help you keep focused by tracking all of this stuff? Just honest question. I think that's fair. I know a lot of the conversation we've had with staff has been getting people on board and like the buy-in and building buy-in, but I will say that we've been working with the strategic plan model for a while now since I think last spring, we initiated sort of this conversation and our program for it that we use is actually really user friendly. So while there are some growing pains in getting these initiative updates, I think the utility and the helpfulness of them sort of outweighs the time that it takes to input the information. It's not very often that I'm asking them to, like asking staff to upload information. I think it's doable. And it's helpful for us as well as a team to know where people are and to be able to look at that as a team collectively and check in. So I would say that the usefulness of this really does outweigh any small capacity issues that it might have. But I haven't heard, people are pretty honest with me and I haven't heard any complaints so far. So. I'll jump on to that. And it looks really good. Thanks so much. I'll just follow up on that because it is an important question. And first of all, like Cameron's right, the Invisio program that we use is really easy to use. So I think now that people are used to it, it's not a big deal. And you see the work of all of it put together. But if you broke that down into who's responsible for each one, most of the staff have like two or three initiatives to track. So it's not like, Cameron and I are looking at all of them, but the rest of the people aren't. And then quarterly, we go through as a team, we go through the whole thing so that we can all be updated on what everyone's doing and if there's snags and how we could help and move those forward. And then I try to at least monthly look at each person's list and when I'm talking to them about Cameron's, we use it as a supervisory tool. And frankly, we have, one hand might be seen as a burden, but on the other hand, we have so much going on, so easy to get distracted that it's actually a good way to keep us on task on these things because you can just end up going off and another tangent in three months. I was like, oh my God, we never did anything on stormwater utility or whatever it is. So this at least keeps it in front of us and makes us own up that, okay, it's yellow, it's red, it's, you know, we haven't really done it, you know, we've got an area I didn't do much this month. So I think, I know Cameron and I like it. I think everyone else is okay. There's a couple of them on, maybe they'll offer up there. But I appreciate the question, honestly. Any other comments or questions? Okay, all right, well, thank you for that. It is good to have an update as to where we stand and I agree, you know, given everything that's been going on, this is impressive progress. So let's, so are we still aiming to do this quarterly? So the next one would be January, okay. This one should have been October, so. Okay, all right, fair enough then. All right, well, let's move on to the childcare update. Am I turning this over to Arnie? Did you just turn it off? I'll kick it off real quick. We just sort of talked about it briefly as an initiative. One of our initiative really was to focus on doing a childcare option study to see if we could even do it, do a feasibility study. And I sort of want to shout out and set Arnie up in this is that he's done a lot of work and he understands what it takes to open a childcare facility. And we had an opportunity for a location and we took that. And I think that this is almost a feasibility study to see if this is possible, how it's best run, how we can right size that, how we can move it on to whatever facilities we can find in the future. And Arnie has really been a one-man show on this one. Even with all of his staff furloughed, he really took the lead and stepped up and did all of the things required to get this off the ground. So I'm sure he's now uncomfortable that I have done, set him up that way. But thank you, Arnie, I'm gonna turn it over to you. Thank you, Cameron. I appreciate that. But the work that goes into it, I hope to see the benefits that come out of it for the community. But I wanna thank everybody for the opportunity to talk about our licensed after school childcare program. We're obviously in the beginning stages and sadly with COVID is not helping us right now. We saw a big drop in our summer camp program this last summer. We typically have 100 to 120 kids a day. And this last summer, we had like 30 to 35. And sadly it was COVID related. But we have a really great space in this old River Rock area. We have two large classrooms that are only committed for our after school licensed childcare program. So there's no other groups using them. We have a large playground outdoors outside of right outside on the site. And we also have our rec gym to use as well. It really allows us to the opportunity for the social distancing and to keep the children and staff safe. We're following all the COVID-19 rules. My staff is from my summer staff that's doing this program. And they got a lot of practice this summer with the COVID cleaning. And what we needed to do to keep everybody safe and knock on wood, we didn't have an issue all summer. Our goal is not only to be sustainable but I wanna see the program grow. Right now with the space we're in, we're currently renting two classrooms but there is an opportunity to expand to a third should things take off. We also are on the, we're also in the process of becoming a specialized childcare program which allows us to take kids that have certain challenges with families and stuff. But before we can do that, we have to reach three stars and right now we're on our way to working towards three stars to make that happen. Our goal is to be an affordable childcare offering for parents, guardians, grandparents and others that need a safe place for their child or children to be. In comparison, our summer camp program is one of the most affordable programs in the state. I compared a lot of other programs around the state where actually the most cost effective and for the number of hours we also provided. And we're looking for this program to kind of follow in those footsteps. We wanna make it affordable for families. And we look forward to the opportunity to serve families in the community and offer safe affordable childcare and recreational opportunities. So we are in the process of using the stars program. We are currently licensed and we started with one star but our goal is to get to three stars. And that's a progress that works on a point system. And for those of you who don't know what stars is, it's the step ahead recognition system that the state childcare program uses. So there's a lot involved with it. I mean, following all the licensing guidelines and stuff but thank goodness I have a licensed teacher who also has been involved with childcare for a lot of years and she's in the right up that Cameron had sent everybody. She's worked for us for summers for the better part of 15 or so years. Very knowledgeable and actually was the person who encouraged me to license our summer program originally. So, and we've really benefited from that. So I'm ready for questions if you have any questions. I also sent Cameron an update on the bottom line if we cut a lot of our expenses and really consolidated stuff to where we could actually be self-supporting of this program with 14 participants a week. So which is much less than the 26 I originally looked at because I was also included in other program expenses which I just made some adjustments on. So I have a bunch of questions but I'll let others go first if others have questions. Okay, I'm gonna jump in then. Oh, Lauren, go ahead. I mean, just first of all, this looks like an incredible amount of work and thank you for all that's going into it. I know childcare access is such an issue in our community and all over the state. So appreciate your efforts. I guess just two quick questions to jump to mind. One, just logistically like that age range is really big. I was curious kind of what you've seen for sign up and managing that seems potentially challenging having really little kids with up to through middle schoolers. So just curious to hear a tiny bit more about that. And then was just also curious knowing that the library has been such an after school default for a lot of families. What if there's conversations of like, you know, when we get back to, I guess maybe more normalish times of, you know, the library funneling people into the program or what the interaction they are knowing that they had set up space as well to try to help families who need it. So just curious what that interaction's been like. Right now our enrollment is small. I'm not gonna deny that. We are in the process of building it. We got a late start with getting our licensing. We got held up a little bit unfortunately with one of the permits that we needed and that slowed things down. As far as the age groupings, our summer program actually runs with that age group. So we do have kids that are in currently in kindergarten through age 12. Numbers on the age 12 range tends to be a little lighter. Your heavier groups tend to be your eight, nine and 10 year olds and a lot of seven year olds. So your older and real young kids tend to be your smaller groups typically, but overall kids really tend to blend well in the environment and usually in a situation like this the older kids will actually foster and help the younger kids quite often. So it's really a good blend of kids. Sometimes having too many kids at the same age level is actually more challenging. Ernie, what about your conversations with the library or relationship with the library? I actually haven't had too many conversations with the library. I tried to reach out I guess one time but I think it was during when things were starting to go south with COVID and everything was closing up. But I actually hadn't realized that they were starting to open yet either. So I hadn't heard about that. Lauren, if you have a follow up and then we'll go to Connor. Yeah, no, and the library piece, I mean right now their hours are so limited. It's more thinking in the future, if they're getting back to more extended hours maybe in the spring or this might be next year as the program builds, but it just seems like since they were kind of offering some version and they might be able to help suggest to parents that this program would be good or figuring out which kids might make sense for which space in town. Yeah, that's actually a good idea. And I think our program, because we actually picked the kids right up at the school and walk them over to the program that for parents that want more of that more supervised supervision, I think we'll look for programs like ours versus just sending them to the library. Connor. Yeah, just we didn't talk to VCFA at all that we aren't any about like maybe some of the space though. I just know they had like a ton of room there that they were looking to fill up and didn't know if that was a consideration. Who's that Connor? The College of Fine Arts just up on the hill there. Oh, I hadn't talked with them. I have in the past, because at one time when they actually had the gym there, we were looking at maybe trying to rent that space for the rec center because it was accessible and that the price that they gave us was at that time was pretty outrageous. But no, I wasn't aware that they had space for use, but also with this space being where it is right next to a playground and also we have the use of our gym. It really actually is a great setup. It's like a little triangle right there. We have the classroom spaces, we got the playground and then we got the gym. So any bad weather, we can get them inside. Donna, go ahead. Related to the great that you've got 14 kids, your budget shows 26 is what your goal is. You also have some ideas for more than 26? Right now our program is licensed for 44, but with COVID, that actually makes a space a little tighter because indoors you're supposed to have 35 square feet per child and outdoors 75 square feet per child. But because of COVID and stuff, we're trying to make sure we can keep people a little more distanced. And right now, like I said, I actually played more with the numbers and I had found out that my staff, that I did hire actually have insurance so we could take the insurance piece out of the salary line, which lowered things significantly in order to just to keep the budget down. Okay, so then you have your budget and then at the below what you have, what you've spent so far? That's not what we've spent. That's anticipated. Okay, so there wasn't anything in here about what you've spent so far this year. That's correct. Are you, would you give us that? Like you actually started last month? We started in October, yeah. Okay, so maybe. Most of what we've got spent right now is the staff salaries and we've got some purchases with some games and stuff, but a lot of the stuff we actually had from our summer camp program. So we're able to reuse materials in other spaces. So, so good. Sounds great. Thank you. You're welcome. So I'm thrilled that you all sort of took this charge and ran with it and sounds like you actually have, you know, made the, or expanded the program that you all had because this is like after school childcare is not really new for the city if I'm not mistaken. We've actually been licensed at Main Street School for probably the last seven or 10 years, but we've only done like the vacation break camps because at the time there was other stuff going on. So, and we didn't have space. Yeah. This space opened up and I felt it was an opportunity because I've been hearing from some of my rec board members and other people in the community that, you know, there was a huge need for childcare for after school. And also the last time I was on the website, I saw the local program is not is full and they're taking a waiting list. So, you know, it's an opportunity if we can get people understanding and knowing that we are licensed now, I think that'll steer people in our direction. I've also reached out to the family center to, cause they're always looking for places to place kids. So I'm hoping that they will add some kids to our list. So that is great. And I'm glad that we're taking this opportunity. I have a bunch of thoughts here. So when I had talked previously in terms of setting this goal, I guess I had been envisioning childcare that was from the zero to five year old age, which is sort of adjacent to the kindergarten through 12 year old age. And so have you looked at all into what would be involved into doing zero through five year old childcare? I actually did look into that a little bit because when the, and pardon me, I cannot think of the name, but it's the childcare program that's up by national life. Something would happen and they were closing down those programs and I cannot remember the name of them. And we investigated that to try to find out kind of what the costs were around taking care of zero to five year olds. And the cost just for staff was very prohibitive from what I could see and learning more about it. So at that time, it kind of hesitated us for us to do that. And then somebody actually bought that business. So we got bumped kind of away from it cause we were looking at the idea maybe taking that over. And then somebody I think from children's house, I believe purchased that. So fair enough. So my understanding too is that it's, well, you know, that it got purchased but that there is a substantial need beyond that, that there is a need for that, for zero to five year old childcare even beyond what is being offered currently in central Vermont. And so like let's grow kids and the regional planning commission are all interested in this topic particularly for the zero through five year old age group. And don't get me wrong, I'm glad that we are expanding the older age group kids that that's great, especially since it's building on what we know. And I understand that it's very expensive but this is so it's a real, it's a need in our community. And it's something that helps enable, you know, that basically people going back to work in times of COVID. So it feels COVID related to me as well. So I just wanted to flag that, that I feel like that is an opportunity for us to continue to investigate. And maybe as we're looking at maybe other space, if there are other spaces as well, then that might be a space that we could explore a zero through five year old care facility. And maybe that's VCFA, maybe that's elsewhere if it ever becomes feasible. The other thing too is that these organizations like let's grow kids or the RPC are there. My understanding is that they're interested in helping to develop the plans that could help make it feasible or to see the feasibility of it would be. So I think that is worth connecting with them about. So that's one thing. While I'm talking about spaces, I feel like we've talked about this before, but not that we're gonna be renovating the rec center anytime soon, but did we check the rec center renovations for compatibility with childcare? We did. We had been looking at that as part of the renovation process that the idea that we could run a childcare in there. That was part of our plan with some of the rooms, the way they were being set up so we could have like an after school program. Infant program I know is a lot more, the regulations around the infant from zero to five is a lot more stringent and your ratios from staff to kids is a lot smaller. So there are a lot more expense involved in that, but I don't disagree. There is a need. It's just having the right space for something like that. Sure. Well, and in making the numbers work, but if we can be thinking about that with the renovations of the rec center in the future, I think that would be excellent. Speaking of the physical needs for that, I mean, I've read through the requirements for physical spaces for childcare facilities and one of them is that you have to have completely closed in outside play space and I just wanted to flag the concern that, I mean, I don't know if the kindergarten through 12 year old requirements are different than the zero through five year old requirements, but last time I checked the playground behind the River Rock school space was not fully enclosed. There are big gaps there. I don't know if that's something you all, I mean, just put that on the radar of something that I was like, oh, this would need to change probably. Yeah, I don't believe that's the case because our playground down at the pool house is not enclosed and we've been licensed there since 2007 and we've actually had visits and nobody from licensure has ever flagged that and said, hey, you got to enclose this. I do believe that is for the zero to five. You have to have it fully enclosed. Okay, that would make sense. I also just wanted to note that just looking at your, like what we're paying people is like, we're paying somebody like $14 an hour. Just wanna flag that I think it'd be great if we could bump that up to at least 15, like having $15 an hour at the low end, I think would be preferable. And I mean, Connor may have some further thoughts on that as to what the bottom end should be. I'm good with that. I was, that end was more for like, if we had like a say, for example, a junior counselor where maybe it was a young person who was in high school or something that they're getting experience by working with us versus say somebody who's self-supporting their household or doing something. I'm all good with increase in salaries as we increase the size of the program. And when we can do that, but anybody we're paying that amount right now, our little person right now that's in that program is getting paid $16.50 an hour. Yeah, I also just don't wanna make assumptions that children who are working, I'm using children in a broad sense here. You know, if there's a junior counselor or that kind of thing, I don't wanna assume that they're not also contributing to their family's income and that that still also could be important to them. Okay. So yeah, I guess that is, that is it for me. Sorry, I had a bunch of questions. Anybody else? Dan, go ahead. Yeah. How does this program interplay with the part two program at the school? They're completely separate. The one thing though too, as we go through in the future, if the school does close down because of a situation, our facility doesn't have to. And I believe part two would actually close if the school closes. So that is one thing for working families that they can know that we can be open if the school does close. And I guess I'm just curious, you know, at least from a point of view of competitiveness. I mean, I know part two has sort of struggled as a, or its predecessor did. I mean, are you anticipating the numbers for this program coming out of potentially that same pool? Not necessarily. Cause right now the last time I was on part two's website, they actually are filled and are taking a waiting list. So right now from what I could see from their website, there are parents out there that may be a need that don't have a place to put their kids. Okay, so this is beyond, okay. Well, that's helpful to know. And in cases where the school is shut down, would you see your hours expanding? There is that possibility. And we're, I mean, part of that too is trying to plan ahead because we don't wanna set families up where we're charging them for half day and then something switches and all of a sudden we have to increase rates for days. But I think that's something we can certainly talk about with the families or their needs because I do have staff that are prepared to work more hours. Okay. It was the last year, the year before we started piloting these sort of snow day things at the rec center. Last year. Last year that we had to stop, of course, because of COVID. So, and then, right, they're not having snow days this year. Right. We are looking at having full days though, Dan, over the vacation breaks. So where we can slide in, although I didn't realize that Thanksgiving week was completely off until after we had set out our program. But around the holidays for Christmas and stuff, we are looking at having full days during then cause our license technically is allowed to be open from like seven in the morning till six at night, even though those won't be our hours, but we wanted to put the max range that we might have. So we had flexibility on what we were able to offer. If I can piggyback on that, do you anticipate that it could expand to something like those hours come next summer? We'll just have that be regular. I'm hoping in the summertime that we'll have people transfer into our summer camp program. So we'll all be outdoors down and hopefully enjoying the pool. But then in the fall, we would be back inside for after school. But we do have this space available to us. Should we be dealing with COVID again this summer, we'll be able to have at least four pods that this last summer, we could only have two because of the space we had, but now we're prepared to have four. If COVID should stick around, we can keep small groups. But the summer programs, it's not every day, right? It's like certain weeks or is it every week? Oh no, when summer camp starts, it's typically a nine week program, five days a week, rain or shine. And so does that run throughout the summer then? That runs, yeah, that runs pretty much as soon as school gets out, like usually around June 21st and usually runs until around the 17th of August or Battle of Bennington. Somewhere this year, we actually ran an extra week because the pool got delayed. So we had staff who could work another week and we added a week. Okay, and great. Okay, well, fair enough. Super, thank you. Jack. You might be planning for more weeks this summer if schools are actually closed as of June 11th. Okay, thanks. Yeah, we can certainly do it. We have college kids that are usually ready to start working and they get out in May typically and this year might be earlier. So yeah. Yeah, when my kids were younger, they had weeks where they'd spend at the camp program at the Hubbard Park and they really had a great time. It was a long time ago, way before the current configuration of the program. Yeah, well, my first two summers were actually in Hubbard Park and we went from being a half day program, my first year we turned it into a full day program. And I think we started with like 15 or 20 kids a week and now before COVID we're around 100 to 120 kids a day. That's impressive. Okay, any further questions on this? So I'm not necessarily super clear as to where we landed on the zero through five year old thing maybe because you all are pursuing a new endeavor right now that maybe that's sort of back burner. If you have other... Well, certainly something that we can like dive into and really reach out to let's grow kids and that's something that's no problem to look at that further. Okay, that would be great. And totally understanding that like that's gonna be a process because it's not expanding on something we... Well, it's not exactly something we already do in that sense. It's not as easy as going from summer camp to like after school care. Lauren. Oh, just on that point, I was just curious. I know that the state and obviously like the months are getting short where the coronavirus relief funds are still available, but there was a bunch of money they were putting into childcare hubs and other things. So, if they're just trying to get that in in the waning days of the calendar year in case like starting a process maybe there's application fees or something like there would actually be money if you did jumpstart it even if you weren't gonna actually start the program for a while, like see if there was funding to help get it started, that could be helpful. And I would let's grow kids would know how to like what that might look like if there's anything even available anymore. Yeah. Okay, thank you. I just wanted to make sure I circled back to that to that point, so thank you for that. Any further comments or questions? Okay, thank you so much, Arnie, for your work on this. Sure, thank you. Have a good night, everybody. Hey, you too. Okay. All right, so next on the list is the COVID updates. I assume this is Cameron. It's apparently the Cameron show tonight, so. Indeed. So I'll walk you through this pretty quickly. We did have a lot of state updates not a lot of them affected us specifically as municipality, but they are important in the grander scheme of things. So just jumping off the regional health update, there has been a continued increase in our positive COVID-19 cases in the state. Sort of the state has really asked Vermonters who did go to any sort of holiday party for Halloween or any sort of large event to self-isolate, to keep others safe. They also discussed winter holiday planning and advised everyone in Vermont to avoid travel and not leave the state. They also stated that people do have visitors coming in for the holidays, that those visitors have to quarantine once they get into the state and they can quarantine in your house. So if you do have holiday visitors, they can quarantine in your house. That also includes returning college-age folks, but that's pretty specific on what that means. Like people will have to wear a mask in the house, use a separate bathroom if that's available, eat separately and stay six feet apart for that 14 days or that seven days with a negative test. So it's a lot, but that's the guidance they shared. For cases and outbreak updates, we've gotten 112 cases tied to the, what they're calling now the ice sports outbreak. Six area schools have been impacted by positive cases, including Barry Elementary, Montpelier High School. I think those are the ones in our area. And then the St. Michael's College outbreak has 65 cases currently, but they wanted to make it very clear that those are asymptomatic, so I included that. Commissioner Pichak went in to discuss this week that there's a third peak that they're seeing around the country nationally. It's like a third wave of cases and that there's been over 8,000 cases per day on average throughout the country, but our growth is also up significantly and we're looking at around 40,000 cases in our region. They anticipate a rise of 40 cases a day in Vermont. So the state also put out some information about winter sports for the schools. So this is separate than the guidelines that govern our recreational sports leagues. So it's not the guidelines that the city needs to follow, but we are trying to stay as much in lockstep as possible. The schools will not be having wrestling or indoor track this year, and they do have some pretty significant changes, including that there will be no spectators for any indoor sports this winter. They also announced some ski area guidelines. There's a lot of new guidelines for our ski areas. They require some additional health and safety regulation. They have to have people attest that they've complied with travel requirements. They have to contract trace everyone who comes in. They're asking ski areas to reduce out of state workers. Lifts, we're gonna be operating at 50% and base lodges will be at 50%. So moving into the city updates, we don't have that many. We will be closed continuing through this week and into next week to the public so that we could clean after the influx of visitors from the election. We thought it would be out of abundance of caution to just keep it closed for this week. So we'll be resuming our normal hours on Tuesday. So we're open on Tuesdays and Thursdays, eight to 430 for the public. So our next council meeting that will be open to the public in our city hall will be November 18th. And then our regional aid group updates have stayed the same. Another way is still requesting donations. Do you have any questions for this week? Thank you. Well, at this point, any others? Okay. All right, well, thank you, Cameron. Oh, goodness. Wear your mask, wash your hands. So it's a good part. Okay. All right, so we are onto the council budget discussion. So for this part of the budget process, this is the part where if we as a council had some guidance or number particularly that we wanted to give staff about how to form the budget, this would be the time that we, you know, like some years ago, we would all go around and say like, well, you know, I can see a budget increase of this much. And maybe we wanna do that, that's fine. But in general now is the time to talk about what we hope for in the budget to get as by way of guidance to the staff as they put together their budget. So you've seen the budget survey and most of you got back to it, which is great. If not, that's okay, you can chime in now. But I did circulate a PDF a little earlier today, not very much earlier today, that had the collective responses of everyone. If anyone wants to see, like break that out in more detail, we certainly can. But hopefully that PDF is helpful just so you can see how people are thinking. Like your fellow councilors are thinking about the budget so far. Yeah, so to- Can I just- Quickly. Oh yeah, please go ahead. Yeah. We gave you a preliminary summary last month, sort of where we see our revenue problems and things for the coming year. We now have the budget submissions that are in. We're still at the early end. So this is really perfect timing for us to get any kind of policy guidance you wanna offer us. But the 1.7 million that we estimated is looking more like a real number, possibly even higher. So that's the range of gap, maybe 1.7 to $2 million gap between our growth and expenditures and our loss and revenues, if we wanted to stay safe, short of making that all up with property taxes, which of course I don't think is feasible. So when we talk, when you talk about increase in the budget, I think it's probably safe to say that there won't be an increase in the budget. There'll be a decrease. I think, Mayor, you probably mean the property tax rate, increase in the tax rate versus- Yes, thank you. That is what I mean. Some years we've had the budget go up but not taxes because of other revenues. And in this case, we're definitely gonna be looking at reductions and the question's gonna be, what are they and how do we reprioritize so that if revenues start to come back or if there's some new source of revenue that unanticipated that we can then restore projects or programs or equipment or whatever in some thoughtful order. So I'm done. Okay, so go ahead, Donna. Well, I'm willing to jump in following Bill. I really feel we should start with a greater budget that takes in that 2 million gap and hopefully that might be the worst. And then we can make priorities of what we would put back in. I do feel that it's important that we defer what we can but also reduce more across the board than to severely cut any one program. I feel like we have in place what we thought we needed. We're not wasting money. So I would rather look at a broader reduction everywhere than to cut certain programs. Dan, go ahead. I'd agree with Donna on that. I think it would be helpful as an exercise to begin by asking the departments to make sort of cut in their budget for this overall smaller. And then we can look at what that means but I think picking off just different either projects or various expenditures from this level above is the wrong approach because there's often ways to either save, well, first of all, the departments will know better what can and can't be cut in a lot of ways as well as trying to see where things can either overlap or the difference between not running a program or deferring a purchase. And I think giving the departments that independence or that direction to make that budget and then coming back to us and saying, we can cut this but here's the real pain involved in this. I think leads to a more fruitful conversation. Other thoughts? Connor? Yeah, I think like generally I'm kind of going in the same direction. I think what would be helpful for me is to just have a list like before you even get to December of all the expenditures we make to outside organizations. I think this is a time where, you know, it's not saying it's going away forever but you really got to be able to justify why we're appropriating money to your organization in this time rather than putting it to the core services of government. And to that I would say like rather than starve some of our departments in the city, I think it does make sense to maybe eliminate appropriations completely to outside entities there because it's, you know, it is a temporary crisis I think we're in. It might be a long-term crisis but making like long-term structural changes in our city departments, I think might be a little short-sighted. I don't think we need to be laying people off if we can help it. I think there might be times when we can like, you know, keep vacancies open and everything, but I don't want to do long-term structural damage to city government there if we can get out of this crisis in a couple of years there. But yeah, again, for me, the big thing is what are we given to outside organizations? And I think they need to make a case why they need it this year. Lauren, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, I think I'm in a similar place to what I'm hearing. I mean, my hope is that, you know, using this moment, I mean, if there are structural changes, you know, a crisis is a great time to look at if there, you know, is there some program and whether that's, you know, expenditures to outside organizations or something that we've been doing because we've been doing it for a while. So, you know, if there's opportunities like that where a strategic change that could reduce the budget that might be a longer-term thing, you know, obviously the city staff would be best positioned to consider that. But short of that, then, you know, I would much rather be trying to think about how we're maintaining through this difficult time. You know, I think, as Donna said, you know, we're providing good services and we don't want to shrink that. You know, we're in this moment of shortfall, but, you know, what are we doing to minimize the damage in the meantime? Like something that I would fear that maybe the, like, death by a thousand cuts to every department approach would just make every program worse. And, you know, if that's not doing long-term damage, if it's something that we can kind of muddle through for a couple of years, but I guess just that long view of trying to get back when we can to providing the services, you know, as long as, again, we think they're still critical to, you know, all of our strategic goals for the city is how I would want to think about it. I guess a couple other quick considerations, you know, if there's things that we're doing where we think we could be doing more to advocate for state dollars, we should, you know, if there's different ways we could try to fund some of the work that's happening or see if we could and put it on that wish list and pursue that. I mean, I know that you already look for as many grants and things as you can, but there might be some new opportunities right now with COVID funding. And then, you know, the other piece is if we're making kind of a wish list approach, if there are things that would be more easily lend themselves, if there were COVID relief dollars, like another boost from the government, if infrastructure or if there's things that would more easily be like shovel ready to use, maybe that's the way we could think about it too, to have a wish list structured in that way that would be responsive to possible more federal dollars. Thanks. So I'm gonna jump in here. So I guess I, the only thing that I'm, I guess I'm gonna disagree with about anything that's been said so far is, I mean, I think across the board cuts can mean a couple of different things, I suppose. And one of the things that I think it could mean is that every department needs a hard look at, you know, what they, if there's space for reduction. And that seems fair. And I, so I agree with that part of it. And I also agree with the idea that the departments know best as to how to do that. But having said that, I think there's also something to be said for looking to match the potential reductions in services or cuts that might need to be made with the crisis that we're in right now. So, you know, if, if we're not, like I hate to be singling anybody out, but I'm gonna do it. You know, if, for example, if the rec department is not offering as many programs, are there opportunities for savings then in the rec department? Or, you know, we've already had some conversations about parking, like these are sort of services that are in flux right now anyway, because of the times we live in. And so in part, well, it's, so I also think about, you know, the question or the point I guess that Dan brought up last time just thinking about like who turns the lights off last. And, you know, to Lauren's point that you just made, you know, thinking about like, you know, if we end up like reducing some of our core services in ways that turn out to be unhealthy, then that is, that's gonna perhaps make it so that our services is not high quality for what we are doing. And that is concerning. And, but I also agree with Connor too, about the like taking a hard look at funding to outside organizations. But I also think that, you know, in trying to find $2 million, it's almost like everything's on the table. Like it's gonna be funding to outside organizations and it's gonna be deferring and it's gonna be probably some positions. I think it's unfortunately inevitably gonna be all of the above. And so the only other thing I wanna add to that is, you know, when we're talking about $2 million potentially, that I mean, that's being such a significant amount of money it almost makes it easier to say for this year, it'd be great if we could have a 0% increase in the tax rate. If, I don't know if that is possible, but that would be where I would like to land because I think people in general are feeling strapped. You know, they're not in a position to absorb more. And I think we need to be considered of that. So anyway, I guess that's where I'll stop for now. Jack, go ahead. I think all of us are kind of in the same position that hasn't always been the case in the city council, but I think all of us are people who didn't get on a council to cut things and to say no to things that our residents wanna do. I think people, our residents value what the city provides and, you know, we work through the budget every year. I don't think, and we do this strategic planning that we just had the report from Cameron on, where the city isn't really doing a lot that aren't good things to do, things that we should do and aren't of value to our residents. And so we're not really at a point where we can just say, well, we're gonna cut some of the thrills and some of the fat out and we'll be okay. One of the things that I think about is that, you know, as I said in my survey responses we're talking about, there are things that are just the physical structure of the city and the health of the community that we need to maintain. There are things that we'll need to, I'm sure there are expenditures that we'll need to defer whether that's purchases or things like road construction or whatever that we recognize we need to do, but we maybe can't do it right now. But the other way that I, and so putting that to the departments to say, well, what can you do? And I would actually say to the departments now, well, why don't you think about, as you talk about this year's budget, why don't you think about a couple of years worth of operations and what you can plan for a couple of years and how we get through the crisis that very well might not be a one year crisis. But the other thing that I think about is that this might be a time where we actually go to the taxpayers and say, look, part of what we have to do to really maintain the core functions of the city is to raise taxes maybe even more than we have in the last couple of years. We can't get 20 cents additional taxes from the taxpayer payers. It would be unconscionable to even consider doing that. But we could consider going for a tax increase that is beyond what we've done in previous years. I know that's a challenge, especially as we consider the commercial sector. So I just don't want to foreclose that as a possibility. I know we'll hear from residents as we are discussing the budget. I think it was just Connor and I, oh, no, just Jay and I, who got an email from a constituent raising questions about the tax increase. The budget and she said that she was concerned to hear that the city would not consider any reduction in staff. And I don't know where that came from. It's, I heard, well, no decisions have been made at the council level. It's hard to see how we can go into this and with an a priori statement that we're going to maintain all city staff. But I certainly would not want to lose positions unless we absolutely have to. I think that's what I had for now. Go ahead, Connor. No, and I would just jump in, you know, in case I was unclear, I wouldn't take raising revenue off the table either I don't think in times of an economic downturn that you can simply cut your way out of it. I don't think that's good policy. So I understand the pressures that everybody's facing in town here, but the people who are dependent on some of these services are the ones who would be hit the most if we took them away. So I think we have to keep that in our toolbox. Go ahead, Dan. Yeah, I think that's fine. And I agree with Jack's first statement particularly is that I don't think any of us are here necessarily looking to get the scalpels out and cutting. I think these are hard decisions because in a lot of ways the city budget reflects things that we all our constituents and all of us have come to enjoy and expect. But I think we have to be very careful about revenue and raising any revenue just simply because I think this is, we're not halfway through, we're not, it's hard to say how far through this whole thing we are, but I've talked with people in other industries and they're talking about two years or more where we're going to see this type of downturn and I think we have to act, it would be wrong for us to think that and it put us or our successors in a worse position if we plan the budget thinking, oh, we're gonna be able to cut later and we can make the cuts easy now. I think we just have to be, I can understand not wanting to jump into cuts and I've certainly been part of budget processes where the first year you make a few cuts and you do raise a bit to strike that balance and I think that's what we're all sort of aiming for is how do we get that balance struck and then, but I think we have to set ourselves on a trajectory knowing that we may find ourselves 365 days from now not in a dissimilar position. I hope not, but I mean some of the information seems to be that things that we rely upon such as state workers spending their room and meals money here in Montpelier or tourists or visitors coming and parking in our city aren't going to be returning anytime soon and state budgets getting hit and reducing pilot payments. I think that's gonna be a hard reality and so I think we have to, whatever we do we have to aim towards that point where we're not setting ourselves up for a cliff where we have to all of a sudden make a bunch of cuts very hard and very drastic because I think that would be the worst possible outcome where everybody, we're faced with fewer choices. I think we have to aim our choices to maximize what we can do here. Lauren, go ahead. I guess just picking on, piggybacking on that and what Connor said. I mean, to me, it would be really helpful to, you know, as we get the budget, I mean, it seems hard at this moment to be like it's gonna be zero or it's gonna be set a specific number, especially because I am very sympathetic to, you know, like what do those cuts end up cutting and who are they serving and are, you know, what's the balance of that, you know, and I'm certainly open to raising revenue to make sure that we're providing critical services to the people who need it more than ever right now. I think we do have to balance that very carefully with, you know, who's paying and how and all of that. So, you know, be very cognizant and thoughtful and careful in that, but I would, for me, I'd rather see, you know, what, like what, once we have the real numbers in front of us, what are those trade-offs of, you know, raising a little revenue, but it means we can maintain this particular program, you know, or is there an option to, you know, postpone something or make a strategic cut somewhere that, you know, we can live without and we're not gonna be, you know, making a cut that really hurts people who need something from the city right now. You know, if I can jump in here, I appreciate this terrain of thinking and I guess I also would just say that, you know, if we ended up, if there was an increase in the tax rate, I would just want to be really clear about what that is for. I would just want to be able to point at really discreet things and be like, you know, without this extra percentage point, you wouldn't have, like, or it wouldn't be as good or, you know what I mean, like, let's be really specific. If there were a number of pretty big ticket items, you know, is it the elevator or is it the, I mean, maybe the elevator is not the thing, I don't know, but maybe it's even just like maintaining plowing, you know, like whatever it is to say that, like, yeah, this, you know, we felt it was worth an increase in the tax rate, you know, it's not going to be this specific thing, but then what is that, what is that thing? Because it can't, it's not going to be all the things. So yeah, go ahead, Connor. No, I think that's a great point there. It's, you know, a lot of like, you know, municipal bodies, I think are sort of reactive, right with the budget process. And if the increase doesn't pass, you know, they start from square one and come up with a new budget that's like clear from the get-go that, okay, this is our budget, you know, and if we are asking people to chip in a little more, this is specifically what we're asking them to do and what would go away if they did not pass that on a budget. So I think there's a lot of work we can do in the front end, just to make it a very transparent process when people go to the polls in March. You can also just not necessarily recommending this. It just happened to think of it as you're talking about it. You can also flip it the other way and we could prepare the budget and then have additional ballot items. You know, like a paving package or a, you know, maybe the funding outside agencies or whatever that, you know, it's all a cart so people can choose to tax themselves. Not totally all the company, you know, I mean a couple of options so that it's to the bear's point. It's very clear you vote for this is what you get. You know, we're providing a stripped down core services here. You can get this, you can get this and this is how much it's going to cost. I mean, maybe it's going to do it, maybe it's not. I don't know. It's an interesting idea. Jay, go ahead. Just a small thing. I just wanted to make sure like part of this conversation is in the, in the, the broader conversation that the budget is that we're not going to be able to, you know, disregarding, you know, in investment back into growth and sort of what we can look at very core services and look sort of like this. If you spend this, this is what you get. But at the same time, there's, there's a level of, hey, we have a lot of empty storefronts. We have to invest in development. But I absolutely hear the mayor and Connor. You know, there needs to be a very significant return on investment in this budget. And so looking at every dollar that's spent, particularly to outside organizations and having a specific plan and understanding, obviously there's a level of uncertainty there. But if, you know, we still have to be investing in ourselves in those pieces that, you know, this is aside from this core services. So I'm just again, a broader conversation here, but really making sure that we're, you know, looking for exactly what the potential return on investment for each of these dollars spent is. So having said that, I don't, when we haven't actually said like, oh yeah, I mean, again, in years past, we've been like, you know, we're aiming for 0% or Kola or, you know, you know, my upper limit is 3% or it's 5% or whatever. And maybe we're, I mean, I'm not really hearing any other numbers from folks. So I don't know if that is, if you all have any numbers in mind, particularly Dan, go ahead and then Donna. Sorry, I'm going to give maybe a non answer to it, but I mean, I think the unique challenges budget is that we're looking to make cuts and usually when you're making cuts, you're trying to keep revenue steady or at a very low growth level. But part of what we're facing is, is that we've lost or expecting to lose revenue, you know, this shortfall of 1.7. And so part of getting to the point of revenue and it may be at the point that I think that Connor was getting is in his, in his comments is I don't think we talk about increases until we start to see what these cuts look like because we're talking about such substantial cuts. And so, you know, I can say I'd love to have a flat budget or I'd love to have a Kola increase. But I don't know what that looks like because I don't know what the Kola or flat level budget looks like with these substantial cuts. And I think those almost have to come first. And we have to define knowing that we're aiming to get it close to, you know, we're not looking for any type of big increase, even on our happiest day. But, you know, we're, I think we have to see, you know, where these, how these cuts look like in this budget because there, it's unlike any, any budget process. This council has probably gone through in recent times. Sorry if I'm wrong, Bill. But I think it's, you know, in that way it's unique. And we almost have to focus on the cuts and get ourselves into, into a range. And then we can talk about what, what's our target area. Cause at that point we're saying, we're not talking about target area. We're talking about what are, what are the cuts we can live with? And still provide the services that the city expects. Yeah, that's, that all seems very fair. Donna. Well, I actually was pulling up the, one of the Todd's budget that he gave us and he gave us a list of things that we could cut and how we reduce different items. And I think we can talk about our ideas, but I think we need to get, you know, down into the nitty gritty with the numbers in front of us from the staff. Actually, this is my seventh budget and I've never given a percentage and I resisted giving that percentage back when the other mayor wanted a percentage because I think it's not the actual point. The point is to go after what we can either want and start to grow towards or what we can do without to cope with less. And so I like what everyone's saying. I just think we have to really look at specific items and get really real. And then I liked your idea of saying like a la carte. Okay. We've gotten really real. We've taken 2 million out. Now what will we put back? What is this represent? And then if that's 1%, 2%, then we can defend it or we can decide, oops, that's too much. But I think it's more about the actual items than it is about the percentage, at least for me. Okay. No, that's, that's totally fair. I, you know, part of my asking that question is, um, in hopes to, um, provide whatever is useful to staff. Um, but I, I actually suspect and both you can correct me, but maybe what's more helpful than a number necessarily is. Like where do those cuts come from? Um, and maybe that's, I don't know if you're, you're hearing enough about that particularly, or if a number is helpful. I figured it was at least something to check in on. If people have it. I mean, look, I, I. Kelly and I were just having this conversation the other day, you know, here we, we're. You know, sort of, I think that's what we're seeing. You know, we're just somewhat versed in this. Budget and these processes and these services. And, you know, we're. Scratching our heads on. How can we expect folks that. Come to meetings twice a month. And I mean that all due respect to have a sophisticated inside. Sense of how, how to do this. I think what we're looking for is, you know, some of just, just the. You know, see a budget with no tax increase and what you want, if you're going to, you know, we want you to take X first and then after that, you take it. That's hard to do without knowing all of it and I get that. So, you know, obviously we'll take whatever guidance and policy leadership you can provide, but we also totally get that that's, that's, you know, you're doing it a little bit in a vacuum and you're doing it, you know, this isn't your day job. So I get it. Okay. Thank you. I just, I appreciate Lauren and then Jack. Yeah, no, I was really on Donna's wavelength of what she, so I think she said it and I do think it'll be kind of looking at scenarios of, you know, what are our real options based on the expertise of the staff and then, you know, what does adding or cutting different things mean for the rate and you know, what can we justify and defend and feel like is a good proposal to put forward to the city. Fair enough. Thank you. Jane, go ahead. Well, I'll just, my two cents is I mean, I'll just add that there's a very big difference between cost and value. And so, you know, I hear Donna and Lauren like, hey, what's, you know, and Bill trying to manage the cost and then the council trying to understand the value and then trying to find the balance between those things. So I recognize that is such a balancing act through this whole process. So yeah, as much as we can, you know, support the staff, they can help us understand the cost. And then as a council, just like Bill said, given, you know, given our time engaged in this process that we can help, you know, try to make value decisions, you know, ultimately that's, you know, where we can hope to find a balance. Super, yeah, fair enough. Okay, any other thoughts that you would like to offer? I had lots more specific things to say in my budget survey. I'll just like ideas about particular things, but I will certainly defer to the wisdom of the staff there as well. So, anyone else? Okay, great. And so, Bill, just wanna check in on that. Do you feel like you have enough information from us? I mean, you all are, as you said, dealing with the reality of what this may look like anyway, do you have what you need from us, I guess, my question? Sure, I mean, like I said, this is helpful, it's hard. Making decisions in a vacuum. So, yeah, I mean, just hearing people's, where everybody's at individually, we can work with that. Okay, great. Thank you. Okay, thank you. All right, so that is the end of our regular business and it's only eight o'clock, this is awesome. Okay, phew. So, we are gonna go into council reports. Donna, are you prepared to go here? Shock, I'm in shock, it's just a little after eight. Okay, I wanted to report on the Microtransit Advisory Committee. The vendor was chosen by Green Mountain Transit and it's via capital V, capital I, capital V, capital A, who'll be the vendor for the Microtransit Service. They will be using GMT's regular vehicles for a while, but we're gonna try and be putting an emblem of the name logo on the vehicles that says this is now MyRide-GMT is the name of the service. We had a very quick last minute Zoom meeting because VIA realized they really needed a name for the app to move forward. The marketing group was really surprised and you can imagine a very intense Zoom with 20 people trying to choose a name for a service. So, but it's MyRide-GMT and hopefully you'll get a chance to use that app soon. It'll be starting in January. Also, Central Vermont Public Safety Authority has sent a revised scope of workout to the three previous bidders and that proposal is due December 4th and we wanna be in a position to be ready to take off, particularly as the state moves towards regional dispatching that this telecommunication need assessment will help us know throughout the region what really exists, what the need is and what configuration would work best to get rid of all the weaknesses in our particular geographic situation when it comes to communication, as well as outdated equipment. And I also, Bill, I would really like to have a discussion if not next week, at least soon, a next meeting. Capital, FAR and Mutual Aid distributed a memo saying that Montpeer has signed on to commit to $2,500 for 10 years to help pay for their sort of simocast system they're putting up. So I don't wanna get into any more detail than that but it is a memo and they say that the chiefs of Barrie and Montpeer, as well as their 21 members are signing on and going to their leadership. They want this to be starting this July, July, 20,000, 2021. I'm sorry, 2021. So I think- We're aware of their initiative. I'm not aware that we've signed on a meeting commitment yet. We knew that they were doing it and as a member, there could be a fee for us but we haven't taken any action other than knowing that they were off on their own doing this stuff. Okay, well, they presented that it was agreed upon by the members and Montpeer is listed to take this to the leadership. So I just would like to bring it in and look at the budget, look at the items and have a discussion and cancel. That would be great. For working in election, John Odom shared these Halloween bags. If you weren't there, it didn't take it. They had like seven varieties of little candies. I was thrilled. Somebody spent a lot of time on them. They used crayon and drew pictures on the outside of these bags. So John, I don't remember who you said did it but please thank them. It was really sweet. I know it was meant for kids. The kids didn't show up so they gave them to the adults working at election. Thank you very much, John, for sharing. I actually don't know who that was. They were given to Crystal. I would like to find out, but it was great. Maybe they'll hear about us talking about them. It wasn't. Thank you, that's all. Okay, great. Connor. All right, well, yeah, along the lines of Donna, big thanks to John and everybody who worked this week and everybody who voted. Hopefully your vote counts, but also thanks to Carolyn Wesley and Maggie Lenz who did this kind of joy to the pole sing. I saw a video, I think with the mayor getting jiggy with it there with just playing music as people were coming in. So big contrast to the voters suppression type of stuff you see in other states. It was great to see Montpel, you're very welcoming. Everybody in a bit of a festive mood coming out, even though it was a bit tense nationally. So that was great to see. Only other thing I got is we all got an email from Kevin Ellis this week about sort of opening up the downtown. I would just say like, you know, I'm speaking for myself but I bet you would all say the same thing. I'm like open to ideas that people like want to do a fire pit in this like spot in downtown. If this street could be closed for a certain event. I think we need like a lot of creativity in town to like get through this bloody winter. So ideas welcome, you know, like come to council and just share them. And yeah, might be good to have Kevin Ellis like come public comment at some point through there. So that's that's it for me. Thanks. Great, Jay. Connor, I was thinking in the same thing about Kevin's email. So absolutely, I think your creative ideas that work for businesses that can help them, you know, not only drive revenue but that we that can build community, I think is, you know, really important. So I think that's a point well taken and something that we could all be thinking about. Thanks to John, yeah, and everything and everybody who helped make Election Day so run so smooth swimmingly in town. And then just one other very small thing is a congratulations to the Montpelier High School boys soccer team who won their state semifinal game tonight and they're now playing it. Well, I'm not sure who they're gonna face but they have advanced to the state championship for division two and it's been a long time since they've made it to this point. So good for them and best of luck in the finals whenever that should be. Great, super. That's great news too, I hadn't heard that. All right, Dan. Sure, I'll share the thanks to everyone who voted to John Odom for running a highly technical and very efficient election. I actually stopped by at around six just to see if they needed extra hands and it was running so well. Crystal said, just go home, leave. So that was really nice to see and how well they had it set up. I wanna thank everyone who ran for office especially on the local level. Those are people put in a lot of time and it made me think, unfortunately it feels a lot like politics has become an ancillary activity akin to sports which is you can root for the Pittsburgh Steelers and if the Pittsburgh Steelers do bad, you blame the refs. You blame the call that the coach made. You talk about the dirty Cleveland Browns that are just playing dirty but you never stop enjoying the team and politics is different and governance is different. And I think this meeting is an exemplar of that and I certainly hope everybody is one office, whatever level they're at. Recognizes that governance that comes after politics is about trying to figure out how to provide services to the people that make their lives better to provide the laws and governance that make our cities, our states and our country stronger and better and better for everyone to live and grow up in. So and then I guess the last thing I will say is akin to what Jay said, the Montpelier girls field hockey team lost their playoff game. However, they recorded their best season since 2001. I think they went three and three. So they're on their way out. That's great. All right, Jack. Very little to say, a great turnout. Congratulations to the voters of Montpelier for coming out in great numbers. Congratulations to the city clerk and all the volunteers. It was a really well done election under very challenging circumstances. And it almost got scary at the very end and John may mention the crisis that we were able to avert in his report, but everything was done so well that I'm like Dan, I showed up after work around five o'clock. I was sent home until the polls closed and I was able to do a little bit of work when around the time the polls closed and get the results, it's hard to avoid thinking about what's happening without thinking about the counting that is going on still all across the country. We strongly believe every vote counts wherever it's cast. And certainly we take pride as election officials in making sure that every vote counts. And I am hoping that when the counting gets done possibly as early as tomorrow, the new math lesson will be 264 plus six equals 46. Yeah, yeah, fair enough, agreed. Right, Lauren. Yeah, not much tonight. Been all election all the time. So I just wanted to echo very briefly how appreciative I am for all the volunteers for John Odom's management and how grateful I am for the people who ran for office, everyone voting and the fact that as Connor said that Vermont really has strived to make it as easy and accessible and safe to vote in recent years, which is not a trend that is happening in too many other states. And so it was just great to see people rallying to make it work in tough situation to help everyone vote. And so it's great to see. So thank you to everyone who was part of that and look forward to John's report tonight. That's it for me, I believe, thanks. Thank you. So I have a few things. The capstone board is interested in having some representative from the city of Montpelier. And so we may just put out a call to see what applicants are out there who are interested in being a part of the capstone board. So just don't be surprised if you see that posted somewhere and we may make an appointment to that as soon as November 18th. Yes, Jack. Are there board meetings still on like the third Thursday of the month? I don't know that, but I could find that out. Maybe good to know because we're also busy that we hate to sign up for something and find out that we can't do it. Yeah, yeah, fair enough. Okay, so there's that. There's also, I just wanna put in a note that, I know you all know this, but just wanna make sure it's in the notes that the city is transitioning to alternate side parking. And that is regardless of the weather. And I feel like that needs to be said often. Cause it's gonna be a real transition for people, especially since it's every day. So wanted to get that in there. I also wanna thank and congratulate the city clerk on, I know there were some hiccups, but what turned out to be overall relatively smooth election day. So so grateful for all of your time and energy, John, to make that happen and all the staff and volunteers. I also wanna thank all the candidates who ran. Yeah, we need you all to make democracy work. And then I also just wanna recognize that I think a lot of folks are stressed out about the election right now. And just wanna remind folks that it is really important to breathe. And that self-care through this time is really important. So getting enough sleep, drinking water, exercising, all of that is really important for taking care of ourselves for not getting overly stressed out and for really completing our stress cycle. So that is it for me. And I'm gonna turn it over to John. He's all the nice comments. Wow, I'm not used to that. You all are gonna give me a big head. Thank you. That's great. It was a little crazy. We were in unknown territory and by a little crazy, I think I'm really referring to me because everything with the volunteers seemed to go incredibly smoothly. I was worried about all kinds of strange little things going on and I was terrified that our numbers wouldn't reconcile between the votes on the computer and the checklist and the numbers were right there. It was great. So and that's all that matters. So it went great. My volunteers were unbelievable. I mean, all for the last month, this couldn't have been done without them. And I'm a little terrified about town meeting day. I'm hoping they'll still be around because I mean, well, just so you all know, the Secretary of State is not in a position to help local communities financially the way they did, you know, sending out the ballots and everything and making it an all male in election for town meeting day because they can't spend that money on local elections. So I have been working to try to get a grant for some money so we can continue the male in election but because we got a grant for $5,000 where all that Plexiglas and stuff came from for the from the Center for Technology and Civic Life. They gave us $5,000 and I bought all kinds of crazy stuff but the grant I asked for for trying to continue the all male election I fell on my face. That was Arnold Schwarzenegger's foundation. He wasn't interested. But so I'm gonna keep looking. It may end up that we just, you know probably like all the other clerk's offices it'll be like the August election because obviously we're gonna still gonna be in a COVID situation but as far as last night goes I got some more gray hair in retrospect I really didn't need to although I was seriously freaking out. Oh my God, we had problems. We had the voting machine quitting on us and then it wouldn't give us a report. It's the first time I've ever had to ask for assistance from the police at the end of the night. We didn't have the internet connection. We thought we would. So we used my little phone hotspot all night. It was nuts. But yeah, it went really well for the most part people seemed happy. We blew away all our turnout records and life is good. I haven't quite got up on sleep but I ain't gonna complain. So anyways, thank you all for the help you all gave and the support and all the nice comments. And yeah. Great, thank you. Donna, something to add. Well, John, John, what's your final number? Oh God, I'm so afraid you couldn't ask me that. I'm so frustrated. And I'd love to hear around how many were mail-ins and how many showed up because I was amazed how many showed up. Well, let's see. I think it was about, kind of I wanna say 5,200-ish total. And we had about 41, 4,200, I guess probably more than that who voted early. Really it was extraordinary. It would have been literally impossible to, for us, even with some extra help I brought on to process all the votes that came in early without volunteers. And I will say every time we have an election, there's a whole bunch of folks on our checklists to have indicated that they're interested in helping out polls. And I always start pestering them along with you all in the BCA with guilt-inducing emails to try to get them out. And I tend to fill about around a third of my volunteer spaces. I did not have to do that this time. I had volunteers coming out of the woodwork. So many that I actually had to tell people, I'm sorry, I don't have anything to do with you. So yeah, I mean, the turnout was record-breaking. It was crazy. The volunteer turnout was record-breaking and crazy. And yeah, I mean, everybody else did it. I was just the guy pacing around tearing my hair out, freaking out about things I probably didn't need to. I don't know. Thank you. How about Bill? I don't have a lot. I also wanted to give a lot of credit to John. Not only did it run really smoothly in the building and all the feedback we got, but you know, we have seen him freaking out over the last few weeks and he was ready. He thought of everything and really, it's fun to watch somebody be that prepared and have it come off. And so that was great. Otherwise, I don't think I have anything else. I think I'll pass. Okay, phew. Not even 830. That is awesome. All right. Okay, so without objection, I am going to consider this meeting adjourned. Warren's at the police department, Dave. Yeah, don't forget to sign things. Have a good night, vote. Thank you. See you all. Good to see you.