 Good evening, everyone, I am going to call the Board of Finance to order at 5.35pm on October 30th, 2023. The agenda is the agenda. Welcome, motion to adopt this. I'm moving to adopt the agenda. I second. Any discussion? Seeing none, I'll go to vote. All those in favor of motion, please say aye. Opposed? Motion carries unanimously. We have an agenda. The next item is the public forum. And I will open the floor. Is there anyone in the room who would like to speak at the public forum? Seeing no takers on that, we will look online. I do see former City Councilor Sharon Buschers with us. Sharon, please raise your hand if you're hoping to be recognized for the public forum. It's not here. Sharon is raising her hand. I think that is the only non-celebrity attendee. So I am going to close the public forum and move to the consent agenda. I would welcome a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the action. Thank you, Councillor McKee. Do we have a second? Second. Councillor Jang, thank you. Any discussion of the consent agenda? Seeing none, we'll go to vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. The motion carries unanimously. And we have adopted the consent agenda, bringing us to our deliberative agenda, which has just two items. And then we will be hearing from, we'll be having a presentation as a third item. So the first of the action items for approval and recommendation of the City Council is a request for approval of a contract amendment for emergency Muskie River Siphon pair work. I do want to say that thanks to the fast-moving team here, we are pivoting as quickly as possible to get this repair done before winter. I have been fully engaged in this and believe that staff has put together a good recommendation. Megan, if you wouldn't mind just summarize the recommendation here and we'll have to answer any questions. Thanks, Tapan. Yes, you approve the initial contract at the last board of finance and then City Council and that initial scope of work was based on the inspections we had been able to do to date. The turbidity in the river, when we did our last inspection was still quite high. And so once we mobilized the ECI team with divers, they did additional inspections and found that in addition to the joint being broken on nearshore, there were some unstable joints that had leakages further out, up until where the pipe dives underneath the bottom of the sediments. And so it does make sense that there was the potential for this. We didn't have that information. I think our contractor quickly put together a change order that we are seeking your approval for $414,000 additional dollars. It's requiring a lot more equipment effort and labor effort in order to do this other work, but we believe that it needs to be done and is still female eligible. So if you have any questions, I'll entertain those. Thank you Megan. The floor is open for questions. For a motion. I would like to move the motion as indicated on Civic Clerk. Great. Thank you, Councillor Chen. Do we have a second for that motion? Second by Councillor Barlow. And can you just remind us what it means if it's female eligible? So it's where it will be at least 75% paid for by FEMA with then additional 12 and a half percent by the state with the city being responsible for 12 and a half percent. My understanding is that the state has reached the 90% threshold or the threshold that will potentially draw down a higher level of FEMA reimbursements. But that additional money does have to be authorized by the feds. And so there's always the possibility that they won't authorize it, given everything that's going on. And so we are fingers crossed that we will hopefully only be having to deal with like a 5% local match if in fact the feds authorized those findings. Thank you. Any further discussion? Okay, yes. I mean, I think, yes. I understand about the FEMA and we're still working around maybe, right? We're not still sure. But what I'm really interested about the insurance of the work being done, how do we ensure that it will be also quality knowing we cannot dive. So are there contingencies instead after it's fixed, if something else happened, are there some type of entrances that the city will not come back to it because the work was about that type of. Yeah, I believe and Martin, I think is on online. I believe that they are going to warranty the work for at least a one year time period. It is why we are in parallel moving on a design contract for the permanent permanent fix, which would be not to have a river on the bottom, or sorry, a pipe on the bottom of the river. So we hope once we will be bringing that to you probably in December for that scope of work and then beginning that design to then hopefully next year starting construction on this other this other alternative. Yeah, that and we will be leaving I went to the ward 47 in PA will be leaving the black pipe in place, even though we'll be decommissioning the pipes, so that if something were to happen to the pipe. And even if we couldn't get people into the river, right because of the cold or the ice, we would have this backup solution to kind of revert back to hi hi Martin, is it a one year warranty I know we talked about this. Yeah, it is a one year warranty. We've talked with the contractor about that so they, they're keenly aware that they're on the hook for the work that they do for one year. Yeah. Yeah, and thank you Megan and for attending the NPA. I think it was good. And was just wondering, you know, if you have a plan of sending like a communication because just today for my director of DPW is leaving me a message about this. So, maybe an update about where things are. I know you do a lot of this, but additional. No, that reminds me that we are. Whoops. We are overdue probably in doing a front porch forum or, or Facebook postings. I'll talk with Rob building about that. Thank you for the reminder. Thank you. Okay. We're ready for vote. I think we are. We'll go to the vote. All those are very emotional. Please say hi. Hi. Hi. Anybody opposed motion varies unanimously. Thank you, Megan Martin, a water resources team for the continue big push on this unexpected major issue out there. So, thank you so much. Okay. 4.2 creation of one position at the CJC. We have Brian Pine here, director of iron to speak to us so turn it over. So, the record is Brian Pine director of CETO. As you may recall about a month ago you all approved a increase in funding from the Vermont department for children and families for the youth component of what the community justice center does and their work is as Rachel described it, they've worked under subcontract through spectrum before now they have direct funding from department for children and families. They expect this funding to get awarded again, but don't have a guarantee beyond July by the end of June of 24. So, the request here is to create a new position, which is being funded entirely by this grant. And it would be a grade 16 union position so an ask me eligible position and it is intended to be limited service just for this portion of the rest of FY 24. The goal being that if if the state continues to fund it next June for that actually, we would be seeking to make it a regular position since we don't know if the funding will go beyond the June we thought it was most prudent to just plan this way for this time. Thanks for that brand. The floor is open for questions. Council McGee. I'm happy to make the motion is recommended on civic clerk. Second. Thank you. Second by President Paul discussion. Yes, Mr Mayor. Director pine. Thank you for that. And I do believe just wanted to say also for the record that Rachel has done an amazing job at a trauma informed leadership panel that took place last Wednesday. I mean, I feel like she did an amazing job highlighting this service for the city of Burlington and how it and how important it is for all the municipalities to consider having such a great thing. And she talked highly about about about the mayor and about about you. Yes, I was I was just very proud to be there. Just wanted to say here. Yeah. Thank you for the all the work you do and the team does about restorative justice. Thank you guys. Okay, I think we are ready for a vote. All those in favor of the motion please act. Okay. Ready post. Motion carries unanimously. That includes that item and that brings us to our final item 5.1 town meeting television is here welcome. And I think it's going to give us and update. There's the partner. So welcome there. Jordan Mitchell is now our town meeting TV co director with Stephen Herron from leadership transition over there and so she's going to kick us off and I'm here to support. He's been doing a great job with Stephen carrying forward. Great. Welcome Jordan. Thanks for having me. I'm Jordan Mitchell, operations director for town meeting TV. And this is Kevin who's our trustee for telling TV to represent Burlington. Thanks for having us tonight as Megan, going through some transitions in our organization with that comes. And with that, I have left a couple numbers out of your packet tonight and I will get that to you after this meeting. So I'll read some numbers that are updated, but it's nothing too unusual. Apologies for that. So anyway, I want to give you a little overview of what is our fiscal year 24 your fiscal year 25 budget and also talk about some things that happened last fiscal year. So last year we produced 1300 programs for the community with 362 of these programs being municipal coverage for Burlington we produced 202 meetings. This was 28 city council meetings 17 mayors press conferences and 55 and being meetings. So our non municipal coverage included the old Norfolk and Ramble city markets 50th anniversary celebration lecture free libraries 150th anniversary. And they discovered jazz festival Memorial Day and things like that. Our contract stipulates the production of six meetings a month or seven to two meetings a year, as well as some other production within that we covered about 107% of the budget and never programs and covering 20202 out of 189 expected meetings. So time meeting TV is funded in large part by cable subscribers of Comcast and for telecom municipal contributions help to cover other operating costs. So this year, we are requesting an FY 25 city of Burlington municipal commission of 27,783 for general operating funds and that that number is in your packet. This is a 5% increase for last year, and you can see past municipal funding support history on packet page 52. Part of that was left out. We are also requesting 16,695 to town meeting TV production support of ongoing hybrid meeting coverage of the six neighborhood planning assemblies per month. And this is also a 5% increase from last fiscal year. This represents less than half of the actual costs of services. Lastly, we're requesting the same as last year 40,000 to CCTV productions for additional burlington municipal meeting coverage. This was no increase from last year. And I have those numbers printed out I can pass it out to the folks in the room and I'll make sure that gets shared with the folks online. So secondly, we have an exciting update from the legislature that we're looking for your support to help get over the finish line. CCTV is part of a statewide organization, known as the Vermont Access Network. And we've been working for the past several years to find a stable and permanent funding source for community centers across the state. We've been successful in getting one time bridge funding for the last few years, but now we're ready to propose a permanent solution for the legislature to show support for our request for asking organizations to sign on to a letter of support. And I can share this letter with you all as well. And this would later be shared with legislators for their 2024 legislative session. I'd like to of course thank Kevin for being a town meeting to be trusted to represent Burlington. And also one of time meeting to be staff Miller staff members Bella who's online who you don't see but she's currently recording the meeting from our office. When you have your city council meeting she's the person in the room. So thank you to both of you for your support for community media. So thank you again for the continued partnership and the opportunity to present. Are there any questions. Thank you for that. So open to the board for questions. Yes, I mean, this is this is so great. And I think from the perspective Megan, this is for you that you are getting the next generation ready. This young person sitting down right here talking to this council about CCTV of the great work that they do. And you're knowing also that when CCTV created and the support it received from the city. I'm just happy today that young person like the future of CCTV it's a very good hand. I'm happy about that and happy to sign that letter to whenever you're ready to keep up doing the good work. It's important to mention that Jordan came to us originally as an intern. So we talk about the work that we do supporting interns during the graduated BBM and came to us through Richard. Lots of program there and worked as an intern did some production work and then we didn't wait long to hire her. Because as you see, she's an amazing asset to what we do. We'll say I'm just to underline the letter of supports for the legislature is both a general letter of support for a fourth year of rich funding out of the general fund. And that last year was a million dollars that went to the access network 23 access centers around the state. And then the second is a general support for legislation that we expect to see come through with the House and Senate. Starting in January to support some replacement of cable revenue as we see cable revenue decline. We're coming to the municipalities to ask for general support. We're also looking for other mechanisms to support what we think is a really important partnership that we have both with government entities but also with our community. So we will always have adverse revenue source. The CCTV production side is our fee for service that supports the work as well. And so that's what we're looking for in that letter of support sign up. Just add a little bit to the kudos of the trustee so I'm the Burlington trustee for those who don't know. If anyone at this meeting or anyone on the council has things you would like town meeting TV to do happy to go through me to do that. But I see my role as twofold. One, I make sure the town meeting TV is fulfilling its contractual responsibilities to this municipality. And that jobs really easy because they're hitting 107% of their targets. And there's really nothing that they won't do to support getting the community program to the community. Another role is advocating to this municipality and other stakeholders to support town meeting TV. That's why I'm here tonight and that's I want to underscore again the legislative support is important. They love bridge funding, harder to get ongoing support so fixing this cable revenue always falling year over year, asking municipalities for more more every year that's going to break at some point soon so the legislature really needs to step in. And bridge that gap, not with a one time funding request, but long term solution. So that's really where, where the future is. Great. President Paul, go ahead. Thank you. I just wanted everyone to know for the record that, you know, the past, the representative for the representative to town meeting TV has always been the city councilor and I became council president, no one was jumping up and down to be the counselor representing doing this work. And the resignation of two city counselors, there's too many, too many committees to, to keep track of, and we were lucky. We were very lucky. We were very lucky that Kevin moved. Kevin was inside Winooski and moved to Burlington, and I was like, Oh my God, you can be representative, and you've done an amazing job. You've made it so easy for all of us to be kept informed and I told we totally know that, you know, we totally know that our commission is in, is in the best of hands. So thank you again for, for stepping up and doing this it's been, it's been wonderful having you there and what can I say about town meeting TV Bella is at the council age does great job. And it's been great. So thank you. Thank you all. Scott Barker, your C. I was going to come in November, we have a alliance for community meeting in northeast or sector industry representative. You know, what do you call that. We're together under one roof in the same world and Scott Barker is going to come and speak. I think you're out of town that day. And so he's going to come and speak on behalf of the city. We are in communication with him and Catherine shed to some degree and also to with Scott Rogers around to our various different partnerships and so you know the door is open to keep having conversations about what we're covering how that coverage is working. And the setups and the different community rooms, the setup upstairs, etc. So this really is a partnership and we are happy to keep doing it and happy to keep communicating with you about how we can do better. Great. Well, good. Thank you very much. We will take all this information. Under, you know, we're very helpful to get these kind of communications and this request at this point in the process as we're early in the budget process and we, you know, as we have in the past, we're going to be a good partner and to have a financial commitment to tell me television going forward. So we do, we do have budget challenges on our end to and we do need to kind of weigh this request with everything else in the budget process but we appreciate getting at this time and taking the time to lay it out for us in person and good luck to you during its critical community role and welcome and we look forward to working with you. Thank you. Okay. And I'm going to close that item. And that concludes our board agenda. And no objection. I will adjourn the board of finance at 559 am. Thank you very much.