 Projected. You can work. Can people talk to you here? Can people hear me back there? I think so. Hello everybody! Hello, it's 6.30. There we go. Now we're working. Mike is working. Can people hear okay? Yes. Thank you all for coming out. We arranged the hottest night of the year for this. So we're sorry. We do apologize for the noise of the air conditioning. I know that it is difficult to hear. Sometimes I will do my best at the mic, but we do have computer servers in the room that need to stay cool. So we can't turn them off. We get severely reprimanded by our IT people when we turn them off. So we will try to work with the mic or whatever or people can certainly come closer. My name is Bill Fraser. I'm the city manager here. Our goal tonight is to go talk through. Here's our schedule for tonight. Some brief comments from Mayor Watson to kick the meeting off. And then I'm just going to walk through basics about this parking garage. When we're wide, it's sort of ABC's of the garage. And then go to some frequently asked questions. We've already started getting a lot of questions. Some of them are similar. I will do my best to answer them. Right from the get go, I'm not a designer. I'm not an engineer. I'm not an expert. If we can't answer your question, we're going to try to take note of it and get it out published to do the best. We've tried to put these together, but it's an overview. After we do that, we'll walk through what the next steps are in the process and then really what we hope to get is questions, comments and suggestions from all of you about what you like, what you don't like, etc. And then I would love to end by 8pm if possible into this size crowd. I think that's okay. I didn't know what to expect. There isn't. It's printed right up back there. I'm sorry. I don't remember it. It's right up against that door. The question for the record is, is there a Wi-Fi password? So with no further ado, I'm going to kick it off to Mayor Watson. Hey everybody. Thank you so much for coming out tonight. This is a really big project for us and it's a big deal and it's worth knowing what all the facts are and asking good questions about it. So I just want to give you a little context for this. I know since I became a counselor five or six years ago at this point, I've been fielding questions about parking in the city of Montpelier and so it's really exciting to me to have the possibility of a parking garage or a solution to this project, or to a solution to that problem. You know, one of the things I think that is worth noting about this project is that it is intended to leverage some private business here, which is not just any business. It's a hotel which exists to bring people in from out of town. One of the things that I am excited about for this project is that this is going to bring more people in from out of town to help support our downtown businesses. I think that's going to be really important for our community moving forward to have a thriving downtown. So that's another point I would make about this. And then the last is one of the things that came up over and over again in the council discussion was about just the nature that if we were to stack parking if we were to consolidate it that that gives us some options for what we might want to do with our street parking. You know, parking is not always everybody's favorite topic but putting it all together and then having some more options for what we want to do with street parking, whether that's parklets or bike lanes or whatever it is it at least gives us some choices there. So I hopefully, hopefully, I don't think this is going to be new for me, but I'm looking forward to talking more about this. So I'm going to turn it back over to Bill. Thank you, Mayor. Can we get lights? Oh yeah, lights will be good. I knew there was something wrong here. It worked on our staging. Ah, there we go. Now we can see better. Sorry you watched it later. So a lot of this many of you already know or read about but I'm just going to go through this as these are really the basics. What is this project? We're talking about a 348 space parking garage in addition 50 least surface spaces. We currently lease about 50 spaces from Capital Plaza. We will be continuing to do that in a different location. So while this garage is sitting on top of those we will continue to have those. That results in 116 net new parking spaces in downtown. I'll talk about that a little more in a minute. We can do this without increasing property taxes and I'll explain that. Next. Okay, so this I'm sorry, Phil. Here we go. This is just a basic overview image. I would be clear that the parking garage here you can see the white proposed Hampton Inn in the center. The Capital Plaza is in the foreground. Next to that is Christchurch and behind that box is a proposed new housing for Christchurch. Probably isn't going to happen for two or three years at least, but we've been, us and the Capital Plaza and Christchurch have been trying to plan for this so that we can accommodate everything. Behind those housing is the parking garage. Now that garage in that image is not the one we're proposing. That's the one that's been approved for the hotel only. That's only a 200 unit garage. I don't have this total image with the larger garage. I just wanted people to see the general layout. Behind the Hampton Inn is the one Taylor project, which is under construction now. So that is the transit center and 30 affordable housing units and the bike path you can see swinging by and go up and down. So where will this happen? I just showed you. So the garage will be behind Christchurch on property that is currently owned by Capital Plaza. The hotel will be behind Capital Plaza. This is just another site plan of it. Again there's a new garage on this site plan. But just so people can see how the traffic flows through, we will have deeded access from State Street and Taylor Street to the garage. They'll either be city streets or deeded rights of way. And in the center, that blue in the center is the new parking that's being constructed. The surface parking that will be leased for public short term parking in addition to the long term. So who's doing the project? We talk about a lot of things. The city would be owning, constructing and developing the garage, managing and running the garage. The property that it would be on is going to be donated by Capital Plaza to the city for this project. It's worth approximately $500,000 if you ever take $250,000 in the direction right now. And then the Capital Plaza will be on their own property developing their own Hampton Inn. One question that's come up and it's not my point to speak for Capital Plaza and they are here to speak for themselves, but I've heard from several people that why are we doing this? Because Hampton is just paying for all of this. And I want to be clear that the local family that owns this actually is purchasing a franchise agreement from Hampton and developing this with their own financing and own money. So the Hampton Corporation is not paying for this in any mission to perform. So I just want to make sure that is clear. So why are we doing this? That's what's the point and I'm sure a lot of people have opinions about that. Well we had a couple years ago we commissioned an economic development strategic plan had many community stakeholders involved, many residents many merchants and we tried to identify ways that we could help responsibly grow the community share the tax base and also make us more vibrant. The top two, top three things that came out of that were one, a transformation of downtown project hotel two, need to improve parking and three, housing. This project addresses all of that in some way. So this is really a continuation of a plan and identified set of needs. This isn't I don't think just a reaction. New public parking. I mentioned there are 160 parking spaces. I've heard some people say, what's that need? So I check. We have 610 parking spaces under city management right now. That includes all the meters on the streets, all the parking lots that we own, cell permits obviously there's plenty of under free parking around the city. We have 610 managed spaces so 160 net new is a 26% increase in managed parking in the core downtown. So it is a significant difference it's not a small thing. The new hotel is as we mentioned key economic sector. It will bring as the mayor said, new people to town. It's obviously a private business but there is a public benefit to that. Again, this could help accommodate affordable housing. I think you're talking about 20 or 25 units of affordable housing that's on top of the 30 units of affordable housing in the city's building at one tailor. And again, the 50 surface parking spots, those are included in the 160 net new. The bike path as we saw in the image there's a bike path going through there. Before this project came there wasn't really a good connection or a good ADA compliant connection. This is going to allow us to build a real very good small park like area with ramps and play section with bike repair tools. A couple of plaza kind of designed it. The city will take it over as part of our construction project but this is really I think important. People can park in this garage and use the bike path. Guests of the hotel can use this bike path as can of course all of us. And finally we have local options tax here. We have rooms, meals and alcohol tax. 80 more rooms is more tax revenue to the city. None of that has been factored into the calculations of this project. So any of that revenue is something above and beyond from the city that is not been factored in here but that is a benefit to the city again as those people are in town and they spend money on meals and alcohol that is also addition to revenue. When will this happen? Of course nothing ever seems to move as fast as we like sometimes and some people probably it's happening too fast but it will be triggered off of a bond vote tentatively scheduled for November 6th. Now the city council has given preliminary approval to go forward with this project but they will be taking a final vote whether or not to put this on the ballot on October 3rd after that. November 6th is the general election day when we are voting for governor and everything else so we will be coming in and we can vote on this project and probably a couple of other items. The permitting processes will be happening parallel to that so we expect again the hotel itself has already been permitted the smaller garage has already been permitted that happened this spring so the expansion from the smaller to the larger garage is what we will be going through in the process at this point and because that's an amendment we will still require all the same review but maybe not as many meetings. And then if everything passes the hotel as I understand it has a license agreement with the Helen Corporation which requires them to start work by November so they've been waiting to see whether or not the company and garage is going to happen and it looks like it's going to they will be doing some work on site in November it really makes the most sense for these two projects to be built together so the bulk of the work will probably start in December with the garage and hotels 40 footings and everything at the same time so it's much more efficient that way. So how are we going to pay for this? It's a $10 million project I'm going to go through a little bit of the details about this that cost includes costs of design, environmental construction permitting that kind of thing so we've factored all that in we have fairly good estimates but estimates are still estimates it also assumes the current bond interest rate where this will be funded on a 30 year bond with interest only for the first four years and people really want to get into the cash flow I'm happy to do that with them but I probably don't do much of that today we've assumed the annual CPI adjustments of 2.25% for the entire term that's on both the revenue coming in as well as the expenses going out so the idea is that they would be roughly comparable TIF I'm not going to go into a long thing about TIF but that is critical to this project the city recently was approved a tax income financing district that means within that district any new taxable revenue, grand list as we call it can be held in that district and used for public infrastructure that supports the private development so that the taxes from that are only used for this new project which means the regular taxes that everybody else is paying aren't being used so in this case the estimate is that the new hotel and improvements to value on the capital plaza project will result in about $150,000 a year in new taxes that money will be redirected to pay for this garage and that's all the tax money that's in this project so the rest of it is not going on to the tax rate increasing anybody else's taxes and we really want to use that for 20 years so that is in pro forma for 20 years the other thing that's conservative in this pro forma is that the state doesn't allow us to increase the amount of or to estimate the increase of the amount of property tax so this shows that the capital plaza tax rate tax bill is never going to change for 20 years now I'm sure they'd like that deal but it actually realistically is going to go up a little bit from time to time like all the rest of ours do so that means that $150 that we've estimated will actually get higher the state doesn't allow us to assume that so for our purposes of being conservative we've kept that flat the entire time we also have not factored in any additional TIF increment another new development in the TIF district could be used to help pay for this but even though we know a few that might happen we're not counting them so we're not speculating on something that might happen nor are we assigning them partly to be careful and partly so that we may be able to use that increment for other public infrastructure needed maybe to make other good projects happen finally we've included $50,000 and growing in capital reserve funds on an annual basis I met yesterday with St. Albans to go through the operation of their parking garage that's what they use, that was recommended to them by their parking garage expert we've confirmed with them that that is the recommended amount so in our annual budget it's $50,000 a year essentially building up to be used for maintenance in a period to properly keep track of that that's in addition to about $90,000 a year in annual maintenance and operating costs okay where's the money coming from permits as part of our deal of capital permits they're going to capital deposit excuse me they're going to purchase 200 permits per year those can be used by them they can also be used by someone else if they're not being used we'll talk a little bit about flex spending in a bit but they are committing to this for basically the life of the project so for 30 years and again those rates go up CPI as others we also are counting on 80 other permits to date none of those have been identified although certainly we are talking to the state we're talking to people like Vermont Mutual we are looking we have 60 parking lot permits now that we sell and we may consider just moving some of those into this garage and freeing up the surface parking spaces for a short term parking so we're fairly confident we'll be able to find 30 parkers that are wanting to buy annual permits at 125 a month we've also accounted for 30 spaces in the garage for the Christchurch affordable housing if it happens at a much lower amount $50 per month so that is to facilitate affordable housing and to ease the burden on that project and the people living there that really doesn't come into the third year but I put it first just so people could see it and then 38 spaces that are just not accounted for for anybody that anyone can park in and the $80 a month estimate is based on our actual experience with parking lots and those kind of things that wasn't made up and we do quite a bit of analysis of what we get for pay as you go right now and that was the number we came up with 104 threat spaces so this is really where the finances of the garage work well this is what's done with parking garage management around someone has a permit for the lot but if they're not there that day there's spots open so someone else parks there and pays so essentially you're charging twice or capital plots of guests primarily use their spaces overnight while they're in the hotel but they're gone during the day so somebody else comes in during the day parks in the spot to do whatever they're doing so you're not cheating anybody it's just maximizing the use of the spot so there will always be more spaces in the garage than when you add up all of these permits and that is actually when you think about it what we do right now with surface parking we have parking lots around we sell $100 a month permit for a sale bag but if Steven Mills here had one and he wasn't here this week because he took vacation and someone else is parking in that spot at a daily rate every day but he still has his permit for when he's here to use it so that is a system that we're already using now and it is the way to run parking largest so when you look at all that you add the TIF this is the total annual revenue for the garage so if you break it down and I wanted to do this because this really shows graphically where the money is coming from you've got the capital plots of permits in the TIF and the hourly flex permits and all the other permits and I mention this because I've heard several people say I'm going to talk about this more why is the city giving everything to capital plots 62% of the revenue for this project is coming directly or indirectly from capital plots so if it's a $10 million project I think it's fair to say about $6.2 million capitalized is coming from that group in addition to donating the land people understand that but as you can see other than TIF which is the hotel increment only there's no other property tax in that circle whoa done thank you skipped right by the question and answer section we're actually going to go back into there you've got to reopen the start from the beginning you've got one right out of the hole hold it alright now just keep going we need someone younger here for the two of us probably everyone's younger right someone bring a teenager okay perfect so the expenses we talked about are pretty straightforward with this project the bond is the biggest one so this is based on the first 10 year average and I can explain why I did that versus an annual but it had to do with the rest in the bond the first few years in full payment so I tried to get a spread but the bond is the high 500 thousands the capital reserve again the reason it's higher than 50 is it's after 10 years and the expenses themselves are about $90,000 so what are those expenses we're not going to add staff it will be a fully automated garage system with parking passes, cards those types of things as I was told by St. Albans make sure you have plenty of extra gates because people run into them so there are gate supplies there are cleaning, emptying trash there is plowing in the winter if needed there are elevator maintenance and those kinds of things, electrical costs utility costs various operating facilities so they spend less than this in a year so we estimate it high to be safe next please so just looking at the net this is what we're spending and this is what we're taking in if you look at it cumulatively over time you see the first five years we do really well this is our net income that's because we're only paying interest on the bond for the first four but then we actually go through a period of time where the garage costs a little bit more than it takes in not a lot but a little so we dip into that reserve we built up and then it swings back out and as you can see and then when you get to the 25 year average it dips again because the tip revenue goes off after year 20 so that is kind of the trajectory of the garage and how it would be expected to perform based on the assumptions that we have okay what are the concerns well first of all we're building a bigger garage in the center of town that's part of the and I'm going to talk a lot about the design but that is clearly a concern that I know is on a lot of people's mind reduce car use in the future we all are hoping for less cars in the future there are many reasons we don't know what that looks like we don't know if cars are going to change to different types of vehicles we don't know if they're going to be less cars what we do know is as the mayor said we have a lot of parking I said 610 managed parking spaces plus everything else around there's no reason why car use really drops that this can't be the last place that people park so the last 348 cars in Montpelier will be here and everything else will be open space new development, new whatever so we're thinking that in over the third years there will still be 348 cars in Montpelier we don't know but that seems to be what people are projecting can't secure permit holders I mean obviously if we don't have the finances if we don't have the 80 permit holders then we're in trouble and as I mentioned we currently have 60 permit holders without going to any of the big area employers so we are confident but that is a risk factor we can't find them and finally the flex spaces I explained how those work and you can see how important they are to the finances if people don't park there or if the permit holders are really successful and are using them all and we can't flex them as much those are all risks but those risks have not borne out in other places contingencies this is where I get my sneak out the back room and say no I didn't actually promise anymore it's based on the current financial assumptions we don't have bids so the construction numbers could change interest rates could change any number of circumstances could change so it's also contingent on the council actually saying we're going to put this on a ballot and then the bond vote actually passing so those are huge contingencies without those two things happening this project won't go anywhere and finally obtaining regulatory permits as we were talking earlier we still have to go through a permit process we still have to meet all the requirements we have to do all the necessary things that any other project would do so that is something that has to happen so our next steps are securing our contractors we've pretty much done that now taking the team that is the DEW construction people are building one tailor also building the hotel they were secured by us by a competitive bid process for one tailor and they agreed to hold that bid price toward the parking garage I don't know what deal they have but they will be coordinating all three projects at the same time which makes a lot of sense in efficiency the Desmond is a parking garage specialist people that really know what they're talking about with this and we're engaging with them to advise us on the automated parking system and other design elements of a parking structure and Rabidu architects out of Waterbury are the people that designed the hotel and the parking garage so it made sense to continue with them since they already have the knowledge and the work product so that's who we'll be working with securing parking commitments we will be talking to try to line up the other parking people completing with design and I don't just mean the external design but for this to go out and actually be constructed there's real engineering drawings and that takes time and of course public outreach and information much like what we're doing right now so frequently asked questions these are questions that we've heard just since this came up will traffic be reviewed? putting a big parking garage in the center of town and the answer is yes it has to be it's a permanent requirement the city did a traffic study for the One Tailor project with the buses that basis of that was used to then do a traffic study for the new hotel and the 200 unit garage information will be used to assess this certainly it's in the center of town we can have busy traffic it's a major concern for everybody we also know that parking garages especially with these uses not everyone leaves at the same time so hotel guests come and go at different times people visiting the city there certainly is a morning and afternoon rush I was at the St. Albans Hotel they have a very large number of permits that the state bought and a very large number of permits that they're handed in by and it was maybe half three quarters full and I was like what's that the state workers are here all day and then about five o'clock they leave and the hotel people come in so we're always half two thirds full even though our numbers show that we're selling out all our spots so I think those are all things that have to come into factor when we're looking at traffic what are the stormwater impacts we understandably and righteously concerned about our river and Lake Champlain stormwater is a heavily regulated issue we have to get all our stormwater permits we'll note though and our architect said is that this garage is going on top of paved surfaces so it is already impervious surface that has stormwater now that goes into the city's drain system it's not adding new impervious surface doesn't mean we're not going to try to do the best we can but we don't have drainage but the top of the garage is still just as impervious as the asphalt on the bottom but we will be looking at that why is the hotel project leading the schedule well I think the reason is we have an opportunity when you want to do exciting things with economic development sometimes you have to take these opportunities I've been sitting here for 23 years we've been talking about parking and parking garages for all of that time and long before I came this was an opportunity to work together with a private partner create a public good without a massive hit to the taxpayer and as I mentioned they are on a schedule with Hilton therefore for us to work this together they cannot proceed the next question is why don't they just build their own garage I think probably if they would if they could have they would have and not had to get into all this mess and come to meetings and all of this but the fact is the hotel itself is going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $17 million the garage as you saw is 10 for this size or maybe it was 8 the numbers just didn't work the project didn't make sense to carry that whole bit and so it is really a contingent this is truly about for if we can't build a garage they can't build a hotel so if this doesn't happen there will be no hotel or garage they shared all of their numbers with our consultant us city officials didn't see them but we have a private real estate consultant that's been working with us they evaluated the proformers and they said yes they're correct they can't support both and again this is that money is all being financed locally with people obviously putting up their own collateral it's not a Hilton corporation we're giving Tapper Plaza a deal well we have a deal we have an agreement but as I mentioned they're paying close to 62% of the costs of this project on an annual basis and they're donating the land so they're paying less than they would have paid for themselves but they couldn't afford to do themselves so we're getting a deal because now the city is gaining a parking structure and potentially a hotel and all the other vitality comes with people may have philosophical differences about that but I think in terms of the agreement that was reached is fair and equitable and certainly everyone is paying their fair share is the design final that's really the biggest thing I'm going to spend a whole lot theaters mostly know there are still chances for making some changes however those are bounded by cost and they're bounded by time and to some extent the mass needed to bring in without this number of cars spaces excuse me 350 spaces it really doesn't work so those are sort of the boundaries around the design but there are things we can talk about this is a this is a drawing an aerial view conceptual of the new garage you can see this one is larger it goes into the 60 state street lot creating still a roadway through and when we said the new parking spaces we were counting those that are lost on that parking lot so we're not double counting here and this is one version of this garage so some things can change I've got to talk about the design right now one is can we build it only on capital plus property and not have it go over to the next lot not only freeing up that lot for even more parking but also the farmers market the answer is yes but it's going to require two more stories on the garage so if we want to have a six story garage rather than a four story that's the tradeoff so it's something we can talk about but it is it does come with its pros and cons can we branch out flat floors to deal with future reuse the answer is yes that question was asked there's what they call the steep spiral on the end it would look slightly different it could have flat floors that will add another floor or floor and a half if we do that and we still need to go on to the neighboring lot but it can be done so again that's a tradeoff and financially for that it's about the same so when you're paying us it wouldn't be a change in finance it would be a change in design and it would be higher what does the green wall consist of it's the only cheap I have for the night it shows how much I know about plants it is going to be wisteria clematis trumpet vines Boston Ivy English Ivy and Virginia Creeper and these are apparently types of ivies that grow they are very sustainable in this climate they will be planted into the ground around it will require some watering and maintenance at the beginning the first year or two as they start to grow and then kind of manage on their own after that this was our architectural team recommended this for the garage that is taking the garage design that Capital Plaza had approved and extending it to look at other facades when you start talking about things like brick or granite or anything like that you start getting really expensive underneath that is basically concrete facing so I think the idea that a living green type of thing is preferable so I mentioned the maintenance cost it's built into our annual maintenance it really isn't substantial can a roof be added for public use a lot of people have asked about a roof is could we have another roof and maybe a green roof and have it be a public park an elevated public park these are fantastic ideas a roof that does not support those things adds another $1.2 to $1.5 million to the project just a roof to cover structural supports we added additional weight support and those kind of things for the activity would be more that kind of money is not supported now if we wanted to as a community make a collective decision that we were willing to spend tax money for those kind of amenities that adds a different discussion but in terms of the financial pro forma of this project that doesn't fly but it could be done how does this impact site lines at its current height it's actually at or below the Hampton Inn all of those site lines were reviewed by design review so there will not be any obstruction of the major view sheds and so another question we had is can parking be reduced at one tailor street people say well get her out of all parking at one tailor move them all into the garage and we get a bigger green space at one tailor and we maybe can't we can't reduce all of it I talked with housing Vermont today the city has already signed a lease for parking which we can't break unilaterally and which all their financing is based on so their project has been successfully financed with the premise that there is on-site parking for their residents we think though that even honoring that we may be able to reduce some and I don't have the number yet we're taking a look at that so we could possibly open up some additional green space but can't get rid of all of them so we can try to make one tailor a little bit more green and then finally can net zero principles be included we have set a goal for net zero and then we're building a big old parking garage how does that work, we get that first thing we've started looking at is putting solar panels on the top they would be above the top level parking our estimates tell us that they could power the entire garage except for the all-neighors so all the internal lighting the electric vehicle charging stations all those kinds of things can be powered from the solar panels so we are actively seeking to include that in the project obviously we will look at materials and other sustainable type things again within our budget so yes we are thinking about those ideas this is a ground level elevation of the same garage you saw the aerial view so obviously from the ground you don't see that open roof and this is again that right-hand side is into the heat parking let me see the new garage on the left-hand side so just another view are the things we can do with that green road of course we want to have more openings yes we want to put some art on the side all very possible structure and size unless as I mentioned we want to trade and go higher to get some other elements is basically where it is so opportunities for public participation obviously we have the council meeting on October 3rd when they decide whether to go ahead with this we've got a public information session tonight and if we need to have a follow-up we can certainly do that there will be a formal public information hearing sometime between October 27 and November 5 date has yet not yet been set that is required for the bond vote so we know the opportunity for people to at least hear about the final proposal and advocate for or against to their fellow voters in addition there will be permit hearings, our design review committee development review board meetings where this is considered these are all open to the public and there was active participation on the initial hotel and garage project and we don't expect there will be continued participation we will be putting regular information on the web, front porch forum in the bridge where the city gives information on what's happening and again the bond vote on November 6 the ultimate public participation for this project is when you get to vote up or down and any other suggestions that people have for what we can do for public discourse certainly open to there are lots of different things and we'd like to hear what people have to say so I'm done talking at you and we'd like to get your questions, comments and suggestions, I'll answer questions to the best that I'm able I'm certainly just welcome for comments and that's all I have to say we have 50 minutes one of your earlier slides showed the parking spaces lost and gained and it had 50 in there go back to that slide and show us where the parking spaces are coming from and going to the question was where are the 50 surface spaces coming from and where are they going to can you find this slide it's like a site plan it's a drawing, it's not a national conceptual drawing so the current spaces that exist now if you go behind Christchurch and the Capital Plaza parking lot at that corner the city of these systems those are public parking spaces four hour maximum parking so obviously there's new garages so those won't be available right but in this design open yet can't see it, can people want me to turn the light off again just turn the light off turn the light off as close as the council don't turn both of them so all the blue in the middle here so the white in the front is the current Capital Plaza in the back in the middle is the new hinted in to the right is the smaller parking garage not the one we're talking about the blue is basically pavement the road in, the road out it will be two-way but the accesses in and out of the hotel in and out of the parking garage etc in the middle it's just trees and all that it's hard to tell in this thing but there are about 60 parking spaces created on that site surface parking spaces the hotel needs about 10 or so for themselves for their uses, their tenants and so the city will lease the remaining 50 for public parking so essentially replacing what's under that garage now and moving over there I hope that answered the question any other questions? Barbara will the new enlarged parking structure open into the heating lot as well in other words can people go in and out that way? that is to be determined it possibly could it's a significant so there's pros and cons to that the question was can we propose new will we propose new larger garage have an exit and entrance off of the heating lot as well as the center by the Capitol Plaza and it could in fact the initial sketch by our architect included that and there are advantages to that I spent a long time talking to St. Albans about this yesterday if you have a gate go down goes out of function and people have another way to get out rather than just having to open it and let everybody up free so that's a good thing it's always good to have second egress the downside of it is that these automatic parking management systems are not inexpensive so you have to double them double gate system electronic pass systems current budget only includes one set but we're looking to see what that might mean so that could be can I have a follow up if that were to happen then would that allow the lowest level of parking to be replaced so the question was if that happened does that allow the lowest level of parking to be returned I guess because of floodplain I don't know the answer to that I don't understand all the floodplain things so we will get an answer to that I believe William Burke were your consultants for the Tim project were they also consultants for financing so the question was consultants for the financing could I have a follow up on that I know that on the Tim proposal there were some assumptions that were built into their model I was wondering if they had part numbers of something that we could shed a little bit more light on the actual financing so the question is do we have something that can shed more light on the financing what do you mean what are the assumptions I just wanted to see what their assumptions were what the average cost per day per space I'm just trying to figure out what the math was behind some of the stuff I think we can certainly provide that I mean basically the numbers that I've written for you right now were all those assumptions the cost and revenues and usage patterns we do have a spreadsheet does it make sense I mean they didn't approve whether we should do the project but the economic people at the Department of Commerce went through it and their report was yes these are reasonable assumptions yes this what they're saying is good the TIF application was broader based because it was done before there was a specific project we kind of had two parallel tracks we were doing a TIF district review negotiating a specific project and so they were actually under two different contracts with us one is a financial analyst Joe is there a way of understanding more what TIF is I know you've explained it, but telling is a TIF thing and as you go over these numbers it's scary for the TIF thing and for a boyfriend that's a PhD it doesn't work out it's I you are not alone the question was could I explain more about what TIF is and try to make it more understandable and it's one of those things that is once you get it it's kind of really simple but explaining it is very difficult so I you know so I'm going to try so it's called a tax increment financing district so any property in that district is sort of their property value you have to pretend this house is everyone here has a value so that's your tax value that just goes to the city and the school just like it always does but let's say you build a second house on your property and you're in this district and now that's going to be an extra $200,000 in value so your tax bill is going to be another $5,000 but in order to build that project which is going to be a great thing for the city because a whole bunch of great things are going to happen there so you need a new road you need another road coming around and lord behold if we just spent $6,000 a year for 20 years the city could build that road so taking that new tax increment from that new project to build this public infrastructure which helps that project happen but now it has also opened up a couple of other lots that could also maybe have new houses so when you touch the house chart that's just the same as it ever was so it's really trying to say what is the new increment that's what that means it's the tax increment and you only use that additional increment to finance public projects we can't take tax using this project we couldn't take the tax increment and just give it to them this is a subsidy for your project it has to be for a public infrastructure it's more than just the private that private so we also couldn't have used the tax increment financing and built the 200 unit garage basically it said yeah that's a unique 200 spaces so wink wink that's our public garage that wouldn't pass the test because there's no public benefit to that the larger garage creates the public benefit therefore we can use the $150,000 of new tax money from now to go into the cost of the garage because it's helping their project happen but it's also helping other projects if someone else could come in downtown and say yeah I never could have developed downtown but now there's a place I could park so it's helping to stimulate that I hope that happens I'll try again later some people will be doing it versus Steve Bill as a follow up to that can you explain the relationship of TIFT districts to the education fund? yes the advantage of using the TIFT district from the municipal perspective and I know there's differences also with that is that 70% of the education tax and most of us as homeowners we pay about 40% of our tax bill it comes to the city about 60% goes for school taxes some large portion of which goes to the state fund and then is refunded out under TIFT 70% of that education tax goes into the TIFT fund so for these types of projects municipalities get to access funds that they wouldn't otherwise yeah the theory behind it is that these tax that the Ed Fund would have got this money because the project wouldn't have been built so the Ed Fund is getting 30% that would have been zero so if this hotel doesn't get built right no one's getting 150,000 that's the city of the Ed Fund so by using that new increment that's actually the 70% so their taxes will be higher than that but the rest will go to the state so that's how that works which is why a TIFT district has to go through very robust review at the state level before they approve them because essentially the state is foregoing potential education there Dan alright this is a follow up on the financing I have other questions but for this specifically when you were looking at the contingencies before if because we live in interesting economic times what if the hotel doesn't make its numbers let's say and so the available leasing of those spots fails to materialize the yearly revenue who's on the hook for the cost well ultimately there's some questions what happens if the hotel doesn't make its numbers and who's on the hook basically so first of all the hotel has a right to and we can't steal customers that's way down the beat they have a right to sublates if they find they don't need as many they can at least you but ultimately it's called like it is this is a city bond it's backed by the full faith and credit of the city so if the whole thing should collapse yes the tax payers would have to make any way well they do have a contract they would be required to meet that and that would go with any they sold it to another hotel then they would have to it's like any long term financial agreement obviously we're hoping this will help to succeed so I had less in jail I can't believe we're seeing this we're up to first less I think yours was the city owns the city owns all the you mean the 50 spots now the 50 spots the blue the blue 50 spots are going to be owned by Tappler Plaza at least by the city just as they are now there's no change in the current status just different location I think we said 10 years or 30 right we talked about the length of the 10 with options to renew 10 with an option to renew spend 25 now currently lease has gone for 25 years and the option was 10 with renewal like I said if cars reduce and we don't need it then I don't know we haven't discussed longer is there you're looking like you have a follow up question so I don't want to rub you out of it okay I think this is the university I think we're just sort of falling apart getting press names and needs a lot of work and the gate fell down on someone I know very recently she's not the suing type so the LCT path might be on the road so we're very grateful for that we're we're at Tabitha Nugget 3000 and how does that go up the size of the parking garage and was another venue which is already ugly so there's two questions two part questions so let me deal with one and then the other because maybe its cost would have been the same no matter where the location was so there's a long list of things that are included but basically we talk to other municipal garage people as well as the people that like Desmond and there's another one called Simon basically the parking garage that's what they do so it includes your annual operating as I said we're not staffing when somebody puts a person there like an attendant that right there adds a huge cost my friend would have been hit on the head but okay so there are annual elevator and gate certifications maintenance I can't speak for circumstance how much maintenance have to keep this happened a private one but there's a very detailed schedule of what needs to be done when joints need to be fixed and repaired and when the floor needs to be resealed and those kinds of things and that is all included in the annual as well as the capital reserve on top of that as I mentioned St. Albans has about six gates in a storage site right there so they can replace them quickly and they check regular teammates it's not really a full-time position but the city person just goes through every day and picks up litter empties the trash and those kinds of things they have a contract for the top floor is open so it's snow season you got to clear that out and big city trucks do it so those are parts of the costs as I said elevator maintenance those are the elements of it so it's not staffed costs it's actual maintenance services and it's pretty detailed as I said St. Albans is in a relatively same market and I think we assumed it might be more costly here than there they're spending around 60 or 70 a year for all of those services as well as they're also setting the 50 aside you're right she had a second part to the question so locations we have spent a long time looking at all sorts of locations and there are pros and cons to really all of them we have looked at the pit and in fact continue to look at the pit as a source of development one a new development could use this or a smaller debt could still happen this isn't going to solve the entire parking problem so you know I feel you're in the short run anyway but there are problems one is as big as that pit is it's owned by three separate owners with no interest in wanting to do this they've been very clear on this the federal government on the other side behind the post office since 9-11 they've been talking about can't get anyone near us the state has been willing to talk to us as they have been also at the site across from one tailor but the state owns 106 parking spaces they're already free they've paid for it so if we can build a garage here we get 106 spaces free because we already own 106 spaces so we'll let you use our land, you can do what you want while you try running these numbers with a quarter of the garage not producing any revenue and it stops becoming feasible not saying it couldn't happen but that's it when we did a study the spaces that came out were erotically enough before this was ever proposed one of the top spaces was exactly where we're putting the garage a second was right behind Obersohn's and the last one back there getting in and out of those narrow alleys and traffic that was problematic we talked about putting it out back here but there's issues with ledge and again all the traffic going on into the state coming through where the emergency vehicles are mentioned the pit site two tailor street which is directly across the big huge state parking lot in fact before I started the state proposed to put a 600 unit garage there so that the locals here went apoplectic and it didn't happen so one of the arguments about that was that it's too far that doesn't serve the downtown shoppers that it would really just be a state employee parking and the other issues is it's right on the riverbank but financially it's the same problem they have 166 surface spaces and they said fine we can do it but 166 in fact they want more so we'll take 200 and build what you want and in fact we looked at that as part of this with capital plaza they wanted 200 capital plaza needs 200 so the city was going to do all this stuff and get 25 spaces or something that doesn't make any sense so we have certainly looked at it but also it's driven in some part by the fact that here was an opportunity there was a private development that was going to donate land and pay full freight they're not getting a break on their parking rates they're being the same as anybody else so that's how we know but it wasn't just careless we put a lot of money to it Joe so I know that one of the big pushers over the last couple of years was the redox of the that magical land new zoning and I know that one of the key things in the city council event we put a hilt or an empty bin on this property I mean your consultant should have put another site so we didn't necessarily look at other uses on this site understanding this site is presently owned by the capital plaza so you know this was their opportunity to say we have some land to bring to the table for this project city need and it also means private need that said we've spent a fair amount of time and they have to try to accommodate the housing project of Christchurch and the city of course is constructing now a housing project right behind it so certainly housing remains a top priority but so does commercial development in part so good question but wasn't our land just to use for other purposes good question Jack Bill I've heard questions about the provision for electric vehicle charging can you talk about that so we will be including electric vehicle charging I can't tell you off the hand how many spaces there are but there will be some I can't remember someone before or whatever St. Albans has that we've got to figure out whether it will be paid for the charging or whether it will be electric vehicles in the project and there will be a capacity load capacity built in assuming that there is growth in demand for that Steve I'd like to question you I looked at the 2015 traffic study that was done by Desbois and King and that's very different in scope and detail than the trip generation analysis at the Bishara Architect and I don't see how this timing is going to line up if you're going to do a complete traffic study of the generation of the combined three projects plus the construction of three simultaneous projects you need a traffic study yesterday you know because this could gridlock the town for the next year with all that construction of three different projects simultaneously plus the new added traffic of the garage you're describing a two-way street there's no way to put a street with right away through by the Northfield Savings Bank there's just insufficient right away to put a street there so you're talking about using a little driveway and a little driveway out the back of the Capitol Plaza for 348 cars and it just doesn't pass the straight face test so are you looking at the combined I don't have any detail answers to all your questions and appreciate but certainly that it's a two-way street now traffic comes in and out of it's a cluster wouldn't be a high-speed street that's for sure but yes all of those need to be considered you're right but to be putting a confluence park out behind a parking garage I showed you that but I'll pass that around nobody's going to want to go to our confluence park if it's tucked behind a parking garage it's the wrong place for a parking structure I believe we're barreling down this path and we've lost the objectivity of the city evaluation the city is now a promoter of this obviously and we need to back off or hire an independent advocate to take the place of the city as critical evaluator of such a project so I understand your concern as I said we still expect all of our people we did permit review meetings with the staff that's doing this I didn't attend and it was very clear I'm not going to be trying to lobby they have to do their jobs and we expect we are the regulator here but we're also putting together a deal we have recently formed a mobility development corporation because they would be doing the role that the city has been doing and quite frankly we welcome that independent voice makes a lot of sense because they can be the advocate and the city can do that obviously the act 250 review there is no act 250 review but the full design review development review board all that stuff is going to be completed in time for a November month so to be clear it's an amendment to an existing permit I believe the city is a different applicant I understand I'm not going to argue I believe it goes faster than the full process because it's working off an existing I wasn't at the meeting as I told you I don't actually know all of the why it's what's aware for us but technically the city projects don't have to comply with design review we will go through it anyway because we should have the same criteria that everybody else has traffic, impact on neighborhood all those things and we have to meet all those tests just like you would or anybody else they sit independently we don't have any conversation with them the council doesn't talk to them I don't talk to them as far as what they decide in your presentation you kind of gave short shrift to the view-shed analysis and said that's all been done and I just did this walked the circuit taking pictures and every church spire from that whole circuit around Memorial Drive back across Taylor every church spire is going to be instructed by this garage these are our landmarks this is our town what I said was that I actually didn't say it had already been done I said it was done for the capital Plaza project needs to be updated but the height of the garage was not above that of the afternoon but it does have to be done that is a criteria that needs to be looked at and I didn't say it had been done for the capital Plaza I said we should slow this down and let Hilton extend its window for the grandchild's debate thank you this I guess is a maintenance question for a lack of a better word looking at the designs it's your basic concrete box with a lipstick green lipstick on it the sorry the first thing is I've been following a lot of stuff in structural engineering you've just seen reports within other places that turns out steel reinforced concrete has some actual problems especially if road salt and moisture is hitting it regularly tends to not last that long one of the things I'm proud of of our town is that it surpasses 100 years old this is going to be somewhat of an ugly box with green lipstick on it that is going to be sitting there and I'm wondering if any thought has been given to other ways of making this so that it does not depend on the concrete box one of the ways I would like to suggest is that you look at or consider the design of it rather than the green ivy you consider something that looked more like State Street where it was brick and windows and stuff so that it echoed the town and looked like it was part of the place rather than sort of this set box over there I would like to ask if that could be done I know there will be a pause so two things on that one I don't know the particulars we speak quite a bit with the construction and the design people about the structural stability of this in this climate and apparently there are two ways to build these one is the steel reinforced and the other is something else and I don't know what it is so they were very clear they were doing the long lasting one not the one that had problems that is the extent of my knowledge on that we can get you more information about that the second the box of the efficiency staff the ramps and the abilities for cars whether they are flat floors with the spiral you have to get that many vehicles in so you can't really do alternate shapes as far as external view we could do anything people want if we are willing to spend the month I mean it really does come down to that we can't do so two things one in the current project budget we could make some improvements like I said we could open up more windows we could do some trims there's a lot of things that can be done but not substantial if we were to brick or do anything that's a very significant cost we could choose to do that as a community we could choose to do that I think that's going to be above and beyond for example I don't see why we would ask the permit holders for whom we have particularly capitalized for whom we've reached an agreement on permit price based on what it costs in the garage bump up your permit price because they're paying 60% of this just so we can all have but that feeds into the criticism I understand that but I also understand that there's one customer that you're building this for well there's paying we're not building it for one customer but they're paying a large share of what it costs I mean there's a given take here it's not all one way so I think if the city wants to spend what it costs we'll have an estimate on it but maybe we put a separate article on the ballot that says here's the garage and if yes would you be willing to spend the X more to have a different exterior I don't know I'm thinking out loud here the mayor's clearing at me but fair enough it's all on Steve to follow up on that question has the city considered commercial residential facilities on the garage so that our city in fact isn't just a parking garage but some commercial and residential mentality you're going to tell me it's going to cost more or you'll have to figure out the cost have you undertaken any sort of analysis like that or will you we can and no we haven't but what I'm told what I understand is that the site itself you know the size and dimensions of the site so if we were to put some basically every square foot that's a little bit of exaggeration but the garage it's built to maximize the parking spaces in the garage so to build an office or a retail space into the building is going to remove parking spaces so it becomes less less beneficial for its prime use so then you're going to go higher so it's not that it couldn't be done it's in that case it's not probably even a money issue it's a because presumably there will also be at least money coming in from those spaces I'm thinking it's going to be a trade-off at height the education we filled the last couple of days until the last hours and he's been very gracious in responding some of my questions have been around what with the design how would the design change if we had flat floors for the parking higher ramps going around the outside of the building with that change the size of the building and question wise what would we potentially do on the top of the building some ideas that have emerged in my conversations with people in my career have been a green space and swimming pool tennis courts all sorts of different ideas and I do think we might punch each other I've heard that was a great idea but there are some potential other uses that I think address a little bit of what we're talking about I don't like to otherwise fairly I don't mean to say sterile but you know not as vital it's a parking garage it's a concrete box of green lipstick and so some of those costs might be in the future and have potentially a two-step plan where we build the garage with enough capacity so I just might not be asking a question are we limited to five floors well our zoning allows six but you've also heard people talking about viewsheds and other values in the community and mass so if it's already too big and hideous and we add a couple more floors to it so I think there's a lot of trade-offs you may have come in later Elizabeth thanks to your prompting I tried to answer those questions we can do with the flat floor it's actually what they call the steep spirals on the ends of the building so it probably wouldn't look a little different there would probably be little spiral things on the end of it we could get I think a rendering for that it turned out the cost for that is about the same as what we're doing now but it required an additional floor so that was a trade-off but we'll get a sense of what that might look like as far as the upper floor two of the one that caused me to say it I'll say it again to just put us roof on the building would be about 1.2 to 1.5 million that doesn't include the load bearing for human use or anything additional on top of that now those were ballpark estimate numbers we could chase that out but again I think those are additional costs what I've asked for late this afternoon was I don't have an answer yet I have an extra load to potentially add a roof in the future so I can't answer that what we are thinking about and thank you for all your great suggestions so a lot of what I'm hearing is about concerns about the critical impact of the project so I'm originally from the UK and a lot of our marriages kind of go underground and I understand this problem because I've been so close to the river but has anything been done even if it's just one floor down so earlier a question that Bob asked about our preference would be to go down for the reasons that you met and we couldn't put the whole thing underground but to minimize the max but there are flood plain issues and there are issues with how you the person gets caught down below surface and water comes in it is in a federal flood plain so we have certain precautions and there are certain limits to how far we can go down it's the same question she has I don't have the details but it is a restricting factor we love that Bob? Oh sorry just insert a follow up of Dan's our new zoning has architectural standards for the urban work so has consideration been limited to this is all going through the planning office like I said we had a permit meeting yesterday with the whole team and I purposely didn't attend to kind of keep our rules separate so I don't know I will say that I believe and I can be wrong but this may be because it's an existing permit maybe coming into the 2011 prior zoning I have a couple questions in fact the original project for the hotel and the garage I believe is $17 million if I'm correct so if you take away the garage of course the city is going to pay for that what does that make the real term cost for the hotel I'm not qualified to answer that question you can talk to the owners and what are the answers? It's $15 $9 but just I'll tell you it was presumed I'm going to be 12 but I'll just do a person point out it's $15 million thank you the second question the original garage is going to be four storeys, is the large garage going to be five storeys I believe it's still four I reserve the right to be corrected but I believe it's still four but wider okay and if you push into the beginning though not like that would be effective discussions will affect them somehow we don't know how yet okay thank you we want to resolve that what's the actual I'm not sure for the same as right we will get those dimensions somebody asked me that before this meeting and I realized a piece of information I didn't have other than winging it so we'll add that to the public information that comes out the actual dimensions I just wanted to say that in the research that I've done since John Snell talked about flat floors at the council meeting it turns out that the height for a standard garage that is angled is typically different for a garage that is then going to be refurbished thermal gases around 11 or 12 feet and the preferred is 15 feet so a flat structures garage would potentially make the entire structure higher by that was the feedback we got it was a trade off of height last you had a question I just wanted to Steve Seats just asked I don't want to guess we'll put that out tomorrow I just don't have the exact dimensions and I'd rather have them be completely accurate so my understanding on the $10 million bond is that there's $6 million of interest over 30 years over 30 years is that going to be conveyed so they understand that is that 30 year commitment on that at least so first of all I appreciate the concern we look at that every bond we vote that is the exact same circumstance that when you borrow money you pay it back with interest so every school bond every city bond usually lists the term and the expected interest rate I don't know if we've actually calculated it might say actually about the payments it seems like a lot it is but that's you know but there's a couple factors number one most communities don't just have $10 million to pay cash for this or any other major project and the other is this is a little bit different because of the way it's being paid for with the users but even if it was just a general fund project we were going to build a new bridge essentially that is depreciation from the municipal government so the people that live here today don't get sucked with paying all $10 million and then the users in 20 years don't so by having you know someone who leaves town, moves in the people who move in 10 years from now are paying their share of the project and they're getting the benefit of it but you borrow money you pay for it and if the payments is such in 30 years people standing there is there going to have to be another bond to fix it up because it's not doing so well I don't know the exact answer to that but that's not that different from other infrastructure that we do the estimated life of this is about 40 years I'm sure we're told by then there won't be any cars because the animal got rid of them well I agree I agree and so we could end up just tearing it down at the end of its useful life because the need won't be there it's much but it will have served its purpose in the meantime and been paid for through the users or repurposed it yes indeed quick question the parking garage is only one part of what we're going to be voting on November 6th we're actually going to be voting on the whole district there's no vote on it the TIFT district is down and approved that's happened they approved the TIFT district last week that's we now have a TIFT district so what the voters vote on is any projects that are borrowing money that are using TIFT funds so like this one so in the future any other projects we did within the TIFT district the voters get to vote on those projects and the total proposed cost of the TIFT district was $1,730 million all the projects was that that was if we did everything but there's no guarantee that we'll do them all each individual project goes through a process just like this so there's no commitment to be done it's best in fact someone just turned their TIFT they got it never used it and turned it back so they passed it but never did any of the projects so no he wasn't talking about it he was talking about TIFT projects but there may be another item I do not want to derail this conversation in the last 6 minutes we are looking at a big upgrade of our wastewater treatment plan that would also be on that it's a whole different night of one of these but different funding and environmental benefits when will we actually have a slight plan an elevation plan of what is actually being proposed we're working on that now obviously something has to be submitted this is an application I can't give you the exact date but I'd say within a couple of weeks every time we have these conversations every time we get a suggestion I send it to our folks and say is this something we could do what does this mean what are the options taking these comments very seriously this is going to be the center of our community we want it to be the best it can be when those segments are available we have them digitally I think that's wonderful but it turns out that not everybody is a digital person and so if those can be available either through the library or through one of the options it's a great suggestion to be able to take them on if my players are so thoughtful and considerate and need some time and need a lighter to look at these things I think that's a great idea we would get those out every way possible I could foresee the city manager writing a bridge article with all this information and putting updated images in that I think he might have that on his mind Councilmember Glenn Hutchison actually gave me a good suggestion last week that we use our hall space to put up information about any of our city projects not just this one but anybody coming in can just see this is the parking garage this is the wastewater plant there's pictures out of it here's the general information so I think we'll be taking it again alternate scenarios too to the extent that we have them so we have five minutes till 8 o'clock not that that was a hard stop does anybody else have anything to add ask, say argue for extending longer time I want to briefly say that I've done the massing for limineerly of this garage you could do a two level garage spanning the pit from the pavilion all the way to the sheriff's office with a third floor the park-like scenario that you're talking about food, carts, etc housing I mean we need to think this carefully if we're making a 10 million, 16 million plus 40 year commitment to potentially trash our waterfront we really need to think carefully about our alternatives and whether or not the advent of light passenger rail coming to and from the junction in the 302 and on the ferry is going to alleviate a lot of the need for this I think a lot of the state commuters would rather leave their cars out there and take the train into town than to congest the cars with day long parking so I don't think we're rushing this to meet a Bishara-Hilton deadline and it could be a grave mistake and we could slow this down and do a thorough analysis I don't think you could speak on behalf of the current day Vermont Mutual I've heard conflicting information from one of our council members nor the federal government with Leahy's clout on the the state is open to this I think we need to revive as your TIF consultant said we were doing in their TIF plan to provide discussion about the potential to use the entire pit lot as an alternative to this I'm also told that could work in concert with the new hotel but it would also spread things out over time and not create this three projects simultaneously with a huge unending traffic problem Anyone else? Going once? Going twice? Thank you for spending a hot summer evening with us I appreciate all your questions and input that's been very helpful I hope you got something out of it as well and please stay in touch with the process Can I keep this and I'll put it on the homepage? Thank you Good day, it was a day game Yeah, that's right and cloudy