 30 on March 7th this is the organizational meeting of the South Burlington City Council my name is Jesse Baker I'm the city manager and I will be presiding just until a chair is elected so the first order of business is the Pledge of Allegiance. Lori do you want to lead us off? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Thank you Lori. Second order of business is instructions on exiting the building so thank you for those who are joining us in the room you can go out to the left or right of the rear of the auditorium and then go left or right to go outside. For those joining us remotely thank you for attending as well. If you would like to talk during any item on the agenda please turn your camera on and the chair will call on you or you can indicate you would like to speak in the chat and I will have the chair call on you. Other than that we are not monitoring the chat for content. The next item on our agenda is our agenda review this is a time for any additions or deletions or changes to the order of the agenda this is also a time especially for new counselors that you can remove items from the consent agenda for discussion you can also do that during the consent agenda but if there's something you really want to talk about and debate about you can remove it at this time. I traditionally when there's a significant change I will be the one bring it to you but you can always ask for that change yourself as well. So with that are there any changes to the agenda so entertain a motion to approve the agenda as presented. So moved. Moved by Elizabeth second by Andrew. Second. Any other discussion all those in favor please say aye. Aye. And we are unanimous. Always fourth on our agenda will be public comments from our questions from the public on items not on our agenda. So with that I will open it up if you are in the room and would like to speak if you could come to the front of the room and identify yourself with your name and your where you live and if you are online please feel free to turn your camera on. We have come on down. Can you press the button in the middle of the microphone so it gets thank you. Hello everyone my name is Elizabeth told me Walker I live on Mosklin Lane in South Burlington. Thank you all for everything that you do. I am just contacting or I came here to speak for a request to change the chicken ordinance. I had sent an email earlier and I'm just here to bring it to your attention of possible consideration for the backyard chicken ordinances. I have handouts to give you and that's it. Thank you Elizabeth. Elizabeth if you have an extra one if you wouldn't mind leaving it for that gentleman there who's our city attorney that would be great. Thank you. Elizabeth I did read your letter would it be possible for you to send around to the council at some later time some pictures showing your side yard and the coop in the yard and just how it looks from the road and from the neighbors and that'd be great thank you. Any other comments from the public on items not on our agenda? All right the next item on the agenda is councilor announcements and the city manager's report so I would so this is a traditionally will be a time when you can report on activity that your committees that you are assigned to are working on or share anything else with the community that you would like and then I will always do a report as well so I will start with Andrew tonight. First there was an election so congratulations to the three new counselors really looking forward to working with all of you together to move forward on our shared goals I think we have a really strong council and I think this is going to be an exciting year so thank you all for running and congratulations. I attended an energy committee meeting at the energy committee meeting there were basically two agenda items one we heard a presentation on geothermal and thermal energy networks that was really interesting and piqued a lot of interest about how this city could employ some of those techniques and the economics of geothermal for large developments there was a gentleman from VGS and they're very interested in working with our development community to help them understand how geothermal could be more cost-effective than air source heat pumps so it was a really good discussion and I hope that continues to move forward there's some state legislation that would facilitate geothermal by allowing entities like Vermont Gas and the city and others to own geothermal networks which prior today they can't we can't the second thing we talked about what are the EV charging standards in the Vermont energy codes and what our EV charging standards might look like if different there was unanimity among the energy committee that the proposed standards in the state code are are good but for our city could usefully be strengthened and the energy committee is putting together a letter which should be sent shortly to the planet commission which will detail their thoughts around that and that's also I think very exciting and I hope that moves forward thank you Tim sure um of course I attended the meeting last Monday where the budgets were presented by the city and the school and then I worked the election at Chamberlain opening it and closing it and it was a good long day the safe flow and it was a I think it was it was a good election and I give credit to the new city clerk Holly Reese for excellent work on her first election and I appreciate all the hours that she put in so that's all I have until tonight and here we are great thank you Laurie anything you would like to share your first report no just uh thank you to all the voters all that voted and every member of our city whether they voted or not and I look forward to serving and looking out for your best interest as best I can and thank you to Elizabeth and Mike and our senior council members and and especially to Jesse as well for all you do for us so thank you and I'm honored thanks I did attend the school board meeting last night would it be appropriate to give an update on that um first off there was a resignation of a seven-year school board member Alex McHenry so there will be an opening on the school board that will be appointed um so any of you who are out there listening who had an interest at the uh and didn't make it to the election I'm sure the school board would like to hear from you um the school board considered three alternatives uh to take back per budget um to revise budget to the voters and by charter a budget has to be presented to the voters within 30 days so if you back into that it really leaves very little time to really do a deep dive on a revised budget so I think the finance director Tim Jarvis and the superintendent Violet Nichols did a good job presenting three options to the board and they settled on alternative one which is a new proposed budget of 69.5 million approximately that's down from the budget that was voted down on Tuesday of 71.2 million and largely they are taking reapplying the surplus that was from two years ago applying that to lower the tax rate for the most part it was a little confusing to me because they're keeping a million dollars in the capital reserve and I'm not sure that was coming from what was budgeted or from the reserve that the voters approved but um in the article um on the ballot um there was some feedback on uh if for those of you who are aware the budget was defeated but the article on um allocating the reserve from two years ago toward a capital reserve fund was approved so there was some discussion whether or not the board had to rescind that but the language that's on the ballot was authorizing the board to use that it wasn't a requirement to use it so they have some flexibility around that um so the current proposal that will go to voters on April 4th that's a Thursday yes on April 4th I believe correct yeah Thursday and literally kind of 30 days from yesterday I think is a decrease of one about 1.7 million from the March 5th proposed budget uh it's a spending change versus the f y 24 adopted budget of 11.2 percent versus the budget that failed of 13.9 approximately the annual increase in the average resident tax bill would be down to 857 dollars a year on uh home value of 438,000 and on an average condo it would be about 580 dollars so um largely they're keeping uh voted to keep a portion of reserves and I believe they're taking about one and a half million out of operating expenses and that translates on average um I kind of did back of the napkin math myself which valid validated um a fully burdened cost of a more junior level position and there's a mix of positions within the district that include educators and support staff and so forth is about 70,000 so that would be about 20 fte's that would be impacted so uh out of deference to those individuals who may be impacted those specific positions weren't discussed last evening and uh the superintendent's feedback was there would be cuts across the board so um more to come but um I know there's a very tight timeframe to communicate these changes to send out absentee ballots and to arrange for a special election on April 4th great thank you very much is there anything else you're aware that's great okay that's great Michael yes I would like to thank uh all the voters uh who participated and actually all the people that I got to talk to as I walked around uh South Burlington it's a we live in an amazing city it's a it's a big city a very diverse city and I'm very proud to be a part of the city council to serve with uh the former councilors uh to carry on the good work that has been done and I applaud and congratulated Lori and Elizabeth as I spoke to them earlier today on their victory and and look forward to working with Jesse and her amazing team for the good of the city I think one of the challenges we we definitely have that it came across and walking around is is is getting out there and being sure our very very busy residents uh can connect with us and share with us because we are here to listen and to serve and and that's going to be a very important dynamic that we continue to work on and and improve on but uh thank you for the the trust and put it and I really look forward to working with this incredible team thank you um so for my report I'm going to be very brief tonight I did want to introduce our team members who are here um these are kind of your core folks that you will most often hear from in addition to Paul Connor who you will hear from in detail on April 15th so we have Steven Locke who serves as our deputy city manager um also joint role as a fire chief but in this capacity here um always we're not always but in this capacity most of the time is here as your deputy city manager Colin McNeil is your city attorney um amazing labor negotiator and all around litigation uh mitigating liability for the city person so we're very thankful to have him he also has a unique role with the council whereas I am your only direct staff support person um if there is a question of legality that you want to bring forward um as individual counselors you can go directly to him with those questions you do not need to include me and that that includes obviously your employment contract with me as well go to him um and then of course we have Martha Machar our finance director um Martha is a south berlington resident um has been with the city much longer than the other three of us um and is a wealth of historic information and an exceptional uh financial mind so you will often hear from them and they will be with us tonight to um help me orient you um councillor Barrett also wanted me to share some details of the election results um so I will do that now hopefully this will come up easily um so what I tried to do here is look across um let me probably should have put this in a PDF so it would be a test slightly easier to read uh look across voting districts and at results so at the top here you have the city budget yes or no I can this is also on our city website if you go under the results tab on the home screen um where the budget the different questions uh passed at what rates so our city budget overall passed with a 52.09 percent um approval uh there are two districts where we the city budget went down but overall uh over 50 percent which is a win and I will take it um the water tower was passed with 75 percent approval and pretty pretty strongly across the different voting districts um the charter change was approved with 70 almost 80 percent approval um and again very strong support across the districts um and then the school budget as we know was defeated it was uh passed in one district this is the um the orchard district um and then other than that went down by 42 percent we received 5038 ballots that's that's 30 percent of the total current registered voters in the city and I I do want to commend those of you who worked the polls and Holly Reese for her leadership on election day it was an incredibly smooth election day really fun to see folks out and about in at the polls any questions about that yeah the 30 percent of voters how does that stack up against previous years so back of the envelope um it is higher than other town meeting years last year I believe it was about a 21 turnout however it was a prime presidential primary as we know so I think it's actually lower than past presidential primaries um not a necessarily ideal from a democracy to um sorry to interrupt um in the last couple of but city budgets that you remember that that margin of approval seems pretty low to me um about little over 200 votes difference did you have a chance or do you recall looking back what maybe the last couple of city budget approval rates were um so this is I will say the lowest approval rate of my career um much last year was 72 percent approval rate for the city budget um the year before that I believe it was actually I have this in a very accessible spreadsheet let me just pull that up so I because I'm not as can see in the inner workings of my tracking obsessions I think the margin was probably the smallest in 2017 uh after the rebel name change and the school budget went down twice and then passed but I think the city budget passed the first time but I think it was fairly close so my first year so it shouldn't be about me uh the FY 23 budget was approved with 68 percent uh the FY 24 budget was approved with 73 percent uh the FY 24 budget was also the year that we had the final tiff bond vote and Bartlett bay bond vote so it was a pretty lots of folks came out to support I think those two things as well thank you okay it's all I will share at this point so we can get on to my favorite agenda item tonight to get me out of this work uh so under our city charter um it is requirement that you all elect um uh council chair and a vice chair and a clerk so obviously the chair is responsible for chairing these meetings um is the my primary contact with the council I of course share information with all of you but in terms of agenda setting and things like that my primary contact uh the vice chair is steps in when the chair is unavailable but for both of those efforts the clerk works so Sue Allen who is on the go to meeting tonight is the minute taker for the council she takes all of the minutes of the council the clerk then works with those drafts to ensure accuracy collect feedback from the rest of the councillors on those minutes and then puts them forward for approval at the council level so I think I'm going to take these one at a time this year because we have majority or I'm going to just do the chair and then I'll let the chair do the other two appointments how about that so I would entertain a motion for a council chair I'll make a motion excellent so with enthusiasm I nominate council barrett to be chair of the south brook and city council council barrett has served the city for at least eight years in the council plus some more plus some more in other respects many of those years he served as as clerk which um is very commendable I know tim to be fair he says what he means with just the right amount of words he has a steady moral voice I know he would make an excellent chair and I would very much look forward to working with council barrett was my other excellent colleagues on this council to lead south brook and forward on our on our share goals there a second I'll second that thank you lorry with gusto second with gusto any other discussion on that motion would you accept I would I would accept excellent other discussion hearing none all in favor of the motion please say I hi hi and we are unanimous with that I am turning this meeting over to tim thank god how does this meeting stuff work how do you what is there an agenda for this tonight so the the second position that we need to elect is the vice chair tonight do we have any nominations for vice chair tonight could I just make a comment to I can we have a nomination first if we have one well I'll go ahead and nominate Andrew as vice chair Andrew is the second senior person on the council at this time and is there a second for that again I will enthusiastically second that thank you so is there any discussion well I did want to volunteer um in the position of vice chair as many of you know I've served as uh chair of the school board for over eight years so I did um I didn't know there might be some interest from the current council but um I uh feel like one of the assets in serving in that role again when you would be not available to him is really understanding um roberts rules of orders understanding the uh gaining public comment managing that process managing open meeting law and uh and things like that which I've had a great deal of experience so I I did want to offer to volunteer in that capacity but I'll certainly accept the will of the board and thank you for offering I appreciate that and I also appreciate all the time that you spent uh volunteering on the school board because that's a lot a lot of work and I think we all understand that the school board has a lot of challenges all the time so I appreciate that very much thank you thanks so we have a motion and we have a second for vice chair for Andrew is there is any other discussion all those in favor say aye please aye aye Andrew you're now the vice chair thank you thank you so that brings up another where we need a clerk and um uh I served as clerk uh for the the years I've been on the council and uh I just want to stress that um Sue Elnick takes uh excellent minutes and she types them up in a word document and forwards them to the city council administration and then they get forwarded out to all the counselors for review you have a chance to look at what you said what others said or what you whether you thought you were you know misquoted you have a chance to submit a correction to the clerk and the clerk then reconciles those those changes and sometimes the clerk has to go back and maybe listen to five minutes of the recording to make sure that what you said is what you really said and that happens a couple times and then if it's verified then the change is made so um it's not that much work I would say it's probably 15 minutes to a 30 minutes per set of of minutes they like you to keep up with them if you can I wasn't always the greatest person to keep you up but they they do have to be published right after a certain within a certain amount of time so do I have any nominations to be clerk of the city council and you get to have that on the web page it says you know so-and-so city council comma clerk of the city council it's an extra title that you get it's more words can there be volunteers as well as nomination or people can nominate themselves anybody can nominate anybody Mike you have your hand up hi I welcome the in the same spirit that Elizabeth talked about volunteering and bringing her expertise which I I think we definitely need to take advantage of at some point in time I think the skills that she brings are invaluable and I think it is also reflecting the sort of the mix of the old and the new which is always about the whole process of elections is refreshing views but in that same context I'm happy to put you know if so interested if can so nominate I'm happy to volunteer as well in that position if or deferred to anyone else who's interested to serve that as well Laurie did you want to make a nomination no but I'd be happy to make a second what there was what there wasn't a nomination there was oh yeah that wasn't I will nominate uh councilor Scanlon to be the city council clerk and I would be thrilled to second that that's I'm going to vote with gusto here as well is there any we have a motion we have a second for uh councilor Scanlon to be the clerk of the south brilliant city councilor is there any other discussion all those in favor say hi hi hi thank you very much so with that I have a 30 page speech uh I'd like to give I'm going to stand up here no um I just have a couple of comments if we if we have time is that okay so um as you know I I've served uh on the library board of trustees for six years the drb for four and a half years I was a chair for the last year um and I I want to congratulate the newest city councilors uh campaigns can be difficult uh they can be expensive uh there's a lot of time there's a lot of sign chasing when the high winds or digging out during the snow it's kind of like you know being a a sign farmer you're out there planting these seeds and then you harvest them you know about two weeks later right if if they haven't blown away um I just want to give some historical perspective for myself having been on the council um I've seen a lot and in the eight years um these are just some of the things that and they're in a rough chronological order and I hope you can appreciate it when I joined in 2016 the f35 discussion was very sharp at that time and there were some divisions on the council and there was some arguing there was some name calling and book pounding at times um but we got through that uh we also got through the issuing of new air airport noise maps through the f16 and the f35 and the continuing buyout process for homes by the f a a we actually voted to remove the covenants on the curbie cottages on curbie av because those people had to move out and they had to sell those homes uh so that they could move on with their lives by the f a a buyout program um kevin doran tried to go through uh you know creating union district which he did for a central dispatch that's still in limbo because of some problems but uh there was progress that was made and it's a great idea I still think it's it's a good idea that needs to be to be pursued um he also helped initiate the community collaborative which I think is a really great idea to have Howard uh mental health employees accompanying the police when there are calls and there are mental health emergencies because from that point on there was a really good interplay between the police department and this community collaborative to to kind of co-train each other on how to respond to these emergencies and with good outcomes right because they can be very delicate as we've seen in in in burlington and elsewhere there have been problems with that and I think that that it's gotten it's really improved a lot um we passed the first city center tiff bond vote and that's why I brought that yellow sign to Megan and Helen's uh celebration right because we you know pat noeck bought those we paid her back and we put them over the city and and the city approved it um we had reports from chief whipple about uh racial bias training within the police department in response to some incidents that happened across the country where we thought we needed to to have somebody come in and report to us and and find out what our police department is doing and and and I think they're doing good work on that and we we would probably should have another report from chief Burke um the city council got involved in the claire farm property conservation project right with dirt capital and we pledged uh some of our open space money for that and then that was just recently paid we built a new radio tower at the top of dorset street next to the um water tank where we're going to have another water tank and by the way they removed all the antennas off the old tank and they put it on that radio tower which is what they wanted um they did some easement conservation easement work at Wheeler for the planning uh then a new library city library and town and city hall was approved they also before that moved the community library from the high school over to the U mall if you remember that um there were grants that were submitted in for allard square for senior housing we had then went into interim zoning which lasted three years why because the pandemic hit and during that time we had some studies by uh earth uh earth economics and arrowhead right that gave us an important feedback about the importance of open space and preserved lands and through that process the planning commission um produced a set of uh ldr changes that uh you know pushed conservation puds and it was passed seven to zero and then we moved into the new library city hall and we hired a new city manager um and we had in that time one city council race in which a recount was required and it didn't change the outcome um we went through the process of helping the f a a and noticing that they were having a program to and they're still doing it to do noise insulation work on homes within certain noise uh you know areas of the uh of the airport and then beta came along right beta is a huge economic development project within the city incredible and number of jobs that we produced by that and the amount of work that went into creating their their facility a climate action plan was adopted huge amount of work we assisted with grants and donations to the summit properties for the two new buildings that are up on off of kennedy drive in which people are moving into the first building now from what i hear um we also worked on and adopted a city plan and we've worked to fill empty positions in public safety so that the fire department at least you know can can go home when they're supposed to and see their families we passed a rental registry and a new city ordinance package thank you um and um they if you just take a look down the road you'll see that other thing which the tiff bond started for the city center which is all those housings buildings that are being put in by uvm the medical center that are all along market street right and garden street so what's next and and i'm really glad to say that i'm i'm happy with the counselors that have been elected i i don't want to leave out a brian hillside east thank you very much because it's an all electric first time housing development so i'm really excited about the the counselors that the new counselors that we have um i want to work together collaboratively with you and and collect useful feedback from the public i just want to remind everybody that we have a wonderful city we have great leadership within the city itself we have excellent infrastructure and we want to continue our growth but balance it with the environment and the school and our tax capacity that our homeowners have so um that's all i have to say i'm really thrilled to be in this position i am as bad as nervous as i was in may of 1976 when i opened up on the stage as paul berthelay in the ross rogers and hammerstein musical carnaval right not carousel but carnaval and that was a really challenging role um and so um that's uh thank you very much for your support i appreciate it and i'm glad to be here thank you thank you oh so next it's me again right where is that so now we have a chair vice chair and a clerk and agenda item number seven which is council orientation council service roles and responsibilities by jesse baker city manager right thank you very much um so the in the last couple of weeks councillor um barrett and councillor chal nick and our some of my staff have uh had a conversation about how we onboard a majority new city council um and keep the um really important work that many of our committees and staff are working on going during that time so we have we'll talk about later in the night uh schedule of how we're going to do that um but it starts tonight with two different orientation kind of nuggets for you tonight one is this uh orientation to your council service and then later in the agenda is orientation to your general government team um so in this uh portion of the evening uh colin and i are going to tag team this presentation we're going to go over um primarily what's in the charter and what's in past policies the council will adopt has adopted that you will um consider adopting after this agenda item um so authorities conflict of interest um and different policies and emerging issues that are before us so to start um as you all know our city charter is kind of our city constitution and outlines how we govern ourselves um it is considered state law or it is a state law in the state of vermont um so your primary authority is to hire and manage the city manager uh you appoint residents to uh a variety of boards and committees and commissions uh you serve as the liquor control board which you will do later on tonight as well as the board of health and actually had put on a later side but the um water and sewer board as well you are responsible for adopting appealing considering ordinances have fiduciary oversight over the city you have unique authority around um acquiring and selling property i don't have that authority that authority sits with you um of course you convene public forums and with the school board serve as the steering committee of the city so the steering committee is a joint uh committee of the elected school board members and the city councilors feel free to stop me as i said in the agendas in the agenda slide if you have a question somebody in the community does too so feel free to stop me and ask me anything michael could you maybe expand a little bit on the school board city council i thought i'd heard at one city where then you and helen had met with the eleta violet and uh i guess k yes is that something separate or is that the subset of the last group that you mentioned yes uh so we have a monthly meeting between the school superintendent the chair of the school board myself and the chair of the city council that meeting is really meant that's not a public meeting that's an administrative meeting meant to make sure we're all aware of what each other's working on talk about big emerging issues and plan the agenda for the steering committees the steering committee meets four times a year per charter we just met on monday night to hear the public hearing for a town meeting day those meetings are scheduled kind of as needed not necessarily on a regular schedule but they do happen four times a year we talk much more often than that good question so in terms of your operations you've actually already done some of these things tonight you annually elect your leadership the chair runs the meetings just a reminder that of this body a quorum is three which means to make any vote you need three votes three people voting so if one of you is absent the quorum is still three people if two of you are absent the quorum is still three people if you have less than three people you cannot meet actions of the council are all done in the affirmative so you cannot move to not do something you have to move to do something every council agenda by state statue includes these items that we have walked through tonight an opportunity for public comment a consent agenda action items we also all do manager and council reports and then as needed we have executive sessions counselors can speak on behalf of the council only one authorized to do so traditionally the chair is your spokesperson he or she is the person that speaks on behalf of the council if except if in the cases where you all decide that somebody else is going to take the lead on publicly speaking about a policy issue the chair and I will set the agenda for each council meeting any two any counselor can request an item on the agenda at any time if if any two of you together request an agenda item we are obligated to put it on the agenda sometimes counselors will request agenda items that we will not put on for that meeting depending on what the other conversations are that are happening but if it's really an urgent issue you can get together with a colleague and ask for that item to be placed and then quick question do those requests go through you or through Tim traditionally counselors just will email both of us thanks and then I have I maintain what I call an agenda planner which is an excel document that plans out the agendas for the year I will distribute that's a live document that I am constantly updating I will distribute that to you each Friday as a snapshot so you can have a sense of what the future meetings might entail things do move around on that so it's not final but it is a planning tool that we use together and then you'll you've heard me say this before and I will continue to say it just a reminder to the council that council meetings are meetings of the council in public so it's really your opportunity to come together hear about the issues of the day make decisions and hear from the public on those decisions you are making public hearings are really the time that we actively invite folks to speak you by past practice we always provide opportunities for folks to speak on every agenda item but really it's meant to be a debate and discussion among you all not necessarily a debate and discussion with the community quick question on somebody speaking for the council as citizens we can express our opinions we need to make clear when we're doing that that we are not speaking as a council member is that correct correct and you can start yes you have all free free speech rights before sure and you can express your opinion if you are speaking you know if the for this often comes up and I'll talk about a little later a media member of the media will call you and ask you for comment on something you are certainly within your right to give comment on your perspective of whatever they're asking for you to for in the case where they're saying what's the council position on that traditionally that goes through the chair unless you know at times folks if a specific counselor is leading the charge on something that person will be kind of tasked with doing that communication but to speak on behalf of the council that traditionally goes through the chair I just wanted to clarify that because it's come up in the past and often I'm speaking as a resident not as a council member and then it keeps it clear I just wanted to put that out good point it's right here you got you jump you've got me right there so we've talked about the media I would absolutely and I'm not going to read all this but I would absolutely encourage you as your CEO I am in charge of allocating resources of managing staff of making day-to-day operations decisions those are often political losers when questions like that come from constituents of the media those are going to be political losers for you I would encourage you to send those folks directly to me and I will happily respond at your request so don't feel like you need to know why we haven't filled every pot bowl I am happy to answer those questions the rest of this we have talked about we are going to have a much longer conversation at our next meeting about committee liaisons and our committee organization so I really here wanted to point out one that primarily that you have four different types of appointments to commit policy committees and regulatory committees within the city this is a major way that you as a body can exert influence and policy influence on the work of hundreds of volunteers in our community who come together every day to do good work of our community so we have a series of regulatory board regulatory bodies these are bodies that are outlined either in our charter or in state statute that they that have independent authority to regulate things we you then also have a series of policy committees these are committees that the council has adopted has convened by resolution and given a specific charge to these policy committees are really meant to do dive into the policy weeds on the questions that you all want them to consider you will all have service liaisons to these committees you then make a series of other appointments to other local and regional authorities or organizations where you will sit or your appointees will sit in service to the community representing South Burlington other organizations and then from time to time you also can convene task forces task forces are really meant to be time delineated short-term projects a group of people convene to do work and report back to you or provide a product product to you for your consideration all of the all of the regulatory policy committees and task forces as appointed by you are required to follow open meeting law and the conflict of interest policy you left off the communication union district I did leave off the communication union district I'll do that Jesse I don't know if this is the time or when we go through this as you suggested that follow-up meeting the role the actual role I mean are the roles exactly the same whether on the regulatory commission or on the policy committee the council is one more sort of liaison to listen and bring information back another one as you said is to represent the interests of South Burlington the roles of counselors or the roles of counselors so different depending on the board so for liaison to a policy committee your role is and we will dive into this at the next meeting the counselors role really is to ensure that the policy work of the committees is it lining to the the charge that has been given to the committee by the council as a whole in other areas you are representing South Burlington and have a level of representation that's not necessarily dictated by the council from a policy perspective and on the regulatory bodies you don't have liaisons to those bodies they are independent of you yeah I had a quick question which of these require a staff person in support of the committee so the regulatory policy and task forces all have staff support and the policy committees yes so the other the ones under the other list are all outside organ like partner governmental organizations so other staff manage those but the regulatory committees the policy committees and the task forces all have staff support thank you part of the question that I just to preview for you part of the question that I will pose at our next meeting when we talk about this in detail is there is a huge amount of staff hours that go into this and we want to ask you the question of are these the right committees are these the right combination of committees and excuse me do you actively want to be spending both your time and staff time in these ways great questions thank you so I'm going to transfer over to Colin and just oops in just a minute but so what's been just minute on transparency this is incredibly important to us you hear me talk about we talk about as a staff a lot and you all talk about it holding the trust of the public by the council and the staff is the most important thing we do together if the community doesn't trust us to do the good work that they have charged us with and do it in a transparent and ethical way then we can't forward the policy and the services that we all want to forward so there are a couple of key ways we do that a reminder all but four things that happen in executive session or confidential documents that you will consider everything else you do is as city business is part of the public record please use your at South Burlington VT.gov email for all city business anytime you are speaking as a counselor please use that city email that really I will be honest allows us to respond to public records in a timely way and pull those out of the system and send them on if you are using your gmail a lot we will ask you to make your gmail a public record so we or any other any other domain please do use your city email as Tim alluded to earlier all public body agendas and minutes must all agendas must be warned and minutes taken for all of those meetings I encourage you to avoid instances when three or more of you are gathered together I will say because the I actually won't say I will let Colin potentially address this but if you all run into each other healthy living and are chit chatting about what chicken you're making that night that's fine if you are talking about the drinking water ordinance that you know is going to be before you on the next agenda and what you want to see in it that is a violation of open being law so debate about policy should take place in public with sunlight that is a big way we hold trust Jesse at some point it would be useful to me at least we had raised this a few months ago to understand that a little more detail the rules around something like you know I chat with Mike about something I may call Tim about something like when can we have conversations among the two of us that the conversations may overlap or may not like what are the rules around that I'd love to just understand that a little more detail well you know I'm here mostly tonight talked about the conflict of interest policy and you know we can go on and on and talk about public meetings and public records but for the most part the the rules are and are that as long as you don't have a quorum you can chat about public business as soon as you have the quorum that's when you are having a public meeting that needs to be warned just to put a fine point in it let's say there's a particular thing that I'm interested in I can chat with Mike about that thing hang up the phone and then call Tim about that thing and that's fine there's I mean yes and no I mean I think that so I would say in the same world that you can't have an email court chain so you can't have three of you on an email the fear of that is that you're having a contemporaneous conversation even though you email Mike and 24 hours later Mike emails Tim that could potentially be viewed as a contemporaneous conversation if you are playing phone tag and just saying hold on I'm going to put the phone down and you're constantly having that conversation there's a risk of that being interpreted as a contemporaneous conversation which could be interpreted as a meeting so there's a it's not you know we're Vermont so not every not every possible thing has been figured out I would advise I would advise against that it can't be contemporaneous it can't be contemporaneous the next day where you're not kind of back and forth or potentially I mean I would just my my recommendation would be very careful in that area you can have conversations about city business you can't do them contemporaneously with a quorum okay and we can talk more about that but just be very careful about where you tread the line of how soon are you having these conversations and we don't want to violate the we don't want to violate the the law explicitly or even the spirit of it we want to avoid that we want to conduct our business in public as much as we possibly can so if we're you know really pushing the line to say okay I'm you know I'm getting in there without um specifically violating the law we might want to question that that behavior and just do something that's more out in the open well we have um occasion to have further conversation about this at another time be happy to yeah okay because I I want to expand on what Andrew was asking and really understand how we can have debate and conversation and have it so that we can understand what's going on um and do it front facing so thank you I'd be happy to have that conversation further uh so just to underline some of the points um Colin just made so emails um you can always use your email I will share a lot of information with you via email information sharing in my opinion Colin correct me it's fine it's the debate that you want to avoid uh so be careful um replying all basically um if there is a question that I receive from one of you that's a general question I will do my best to always make sure you all have the answer to those questions just so you are all working with the same information as you may pause the decisions uh Jesse quick clarification there um because consistent with Colin with your comments about sort of the um the email chain kind of thing um if if a counselor wants to share information would it typically would the practice be to go through you to disseminate it out or has the practice been to uh create a distribution of counselors and say I'm sharing this information so for example you are sharing uh ordinance that you may want us to consider benchmarking another city you know ordinance for instance yeah so if if it's just so my response would be if it's you are sharing a piece of information with the council um feel free to email that out to your colleagues and me um if I think I think that's fine I think that's fine as well and I would just recommend that you be explicit that I'm sending this information out for discussion at our next meeting or discussing at a future meeting do not reply do not reply yes thank you do not replay all at all and of course there are some exceptions like you are able to talk as a quorum to discuss what is on the agenda but just not about the items on the agenda and you can disseminate information like Jesse said and one other quick piece around this um I got invited to the uh city council SBVT group yes in outlook and is that just a vehicle for disseminating information yes so that is where we uh that's your repository of all the council meeting agendas and attachments and also and documents that are not on the public facing agenda um so that's just your your ability to have access to any document that's come before and any document relevant for that meeting okay there's no discussion that happens that's solely information sharing I'll need to have a conversation with it to get it so it's really working for me excellent that's a great idea can I make one more comment about the email so just remember that if you're using the city email system and their servers that the content could be public at any time keep that in consideration for how you respond to people um always be polite and congenial and but if you have to make a point do it you know diplomatically if you have to but careful and don't be salty and thank you be respectful if I could just second that there are been a number of public records requests that we've had to respond to where you have to distribute emails and you read them and you can't believe what people have said over email and wish they hadn't said it over email so just be very cognizant when you're writing an email using the city account or performing city business that it is acting as though you are talking to the public when you are sending the email when the public are communicating with me as a counselor should I be trying to steer that through my city council email as opposed to my personal email if it's about council business absolutely yes thank you if it's about come over for dinner on Friday night no yeah and then the final point on trans the point the time when we are not transparent is executive session meetings and content so we will from time to time have executive sessions those are confidential conversations at times we will send you emails in advance of those conversations with with documents we'd like you to review and consider please do not forward those and please do not talk about what happens in executive session outside of executive session so with that I will turn it over to Collin to talk about your potential conflict of interest in code of ethics policy thank you so just briefly I want to walk through your conflict of interest in ethics policy for elected and appointed officials so you annually as a city council you adopt adopt this policy and it pertains to you and it pertains to the people you appoint there's a separate policy our personnel rules and regulations that apply to city staff so this is your policy that applies to you the why we do this is because it's well one it's good practice to have a conflict of interest in ethics policy and to abide by it and two because we're required by law the purpose of it is to ensure that city business is conducted in a way that no public officer will gain a financial or personal benefit from their work on the city council it also preserves the public trust and it ensures that all decisions made are in the best interest of the city so what is a conflict of interest I'm going to read the definition that's in our it's traditionally been in our policy this policy has been in effect for several years now it's we as a city we utilize the the model that was provided by the Montaliga cities and towns is our baseline to make our policy so this is a this is a policy that's similar to other municipalities throughout the state um and this definition is is similar to the ones that are used this this policy lives on our website so if you ever have a question or want to know what it what it says in addition to calling myself or Jesse you can always look on our on the city's web page to know what the policy is it's it's about a five page policy um so a conflict of interest is a real or seeming incompatibility between a public officer's private interests and their public or fiduciary interests to the city of south brunnington generally it is always my recommendation that if you feel you are unable to act in the best interest of the city of south brunnington because of some other interest that you have whether it be personal or financial you may have a conflict of interest and you should disclose that so what is not a conflict of interest is if you have if your interest is no greater than that of other persons generally affected by the action or decision or topic of discussion so for instance what our policy cites as an example is the tax rate so for instance you're debating what the tax rate is going to be that is even though you have obviously have an interest in that as a south brunnington resident your interest is the same as all the other people that it will be affecting so that is not a conflict of interest what to do if you have a conflict of interest best guidance is to disclose it sunshine policy if you're not sure disclose it and at that point pursuant to the policy there's a couple different steps that that can be taken you can recourse yourself or if you feel that you can act fairly objectively objectively and in the public's best interest you must state that and explain how you feel you can do that and if you're able to do that you can continue in in the discussion if you're unable to state that you can act fairly objectively or in the public's interest you must recuse yourself if you do recuse yourself you cannot sit with the public body you cannot deliberate with the public body you cannot participate in the discussion in your capacity as a public officer it doesn't preclude you from acting as a member of the public in that discussion so you would effectively if you have a conflict of interest you can step down from the table here join the the gallery and you could come up and speak to the issue as a member of the public in a nutshell that's it it's a five page it's a five page policy that has a lot more detailed than that but in in in an essence that is it as an elected official you can't be removed for for violating this policy because only the public can remove you appointed officials are a little bit different with the exception of the drb and some other statutory boards would have a statutory procedure for that but you can be admonished and you can either in public or private if you violate the policy say you have a conflict of interest and you do not disclose it or you could be asked by your fellow counselors to to resign but only you can decide whether you resign or not that's essentially the the policy and it's adopted every year annually and we would ask that you again adopt this policy this year I have a clarifying question having been involved in a couple of different situations with conflict of interest what is the remedy if there is a perceived conflict of interest because it's it's relatively unusual that an individual is the one to come forward with a perception of conflict it's often someone else who is aware of a potential conflict and then is does the council is the is the council that one the one that would interpret whether an individual is able to act fairly and objectively or is that up to the individual to make that determination well a couple different responses for that first is that if if a counselor believes that another counselor has a perceived or or actual conflict of interest that they're not disclosing themselves that counselor can ask or highlight the fact that I think you have a a conflict of interest here and should potentially recuse yourself that would trigger the steps that we talked about of whether the counselor believes that they can act fairly objectively or in the public's best interest and that is up to that counselor who's been accused for lack of a better word to make that determination themselves thank you con I do want to know I think we're really proud of this policy it's a pretty robust policy the league's done a great job to put it together there is a draft bill in front of house of ops right now that would expand the role of the state ethics commission into local government into specifically city government which would potentially significantly change this policy and how we have to adhere to it in the future primarily it would require annual training for everybody and it would require an ethics liaison and it would require that to be applied to all appointed and elected officials in the city including volunteers and staff so this is where we are today but there may be a change this legislative session at the state level all right so per the charter it outlines the authorities of as I said different roles so the city managers authority under the charters to serve as the CEO of the city it's my responsibility to prepare budgets I rely very heavily on Martha who is brilliant at it my responsibility to enforce all ordinances collect funds etc serve as the personnel director I have so hire hiring firing and managing authority over city staff um and then obviously I regular report to the council on several things and always attend council meetings if I am not here it means Steve is acting city manager and won't be here in my stead I serve as your primary support person and policy advisor it is my job I'm here for you let me know how I can make your job easier I would ask so because of that role as CEO to maintain kind of clear lines of distinction I would ask that you send questions and requests of our staff through me certainly if you are engaged in emailing with a specific staff person that is fine I will very often say you know Paul would be happy to answer that question Steve would be happy to answer that question please do just keep me CC'd on those emails that is primarily so I'm aware of what the experts are saying so I'm not saying something that contradicts my staff it's more for my education and awareness than anything else you are certainly encouraged to um do facility tours we can talk about that in a future meeting if you would like to do a group facility tour at some point or do individual facility tours we would be happy to do that we have um a lot of very expensive buildings throughout the city and we would love to show them off to you um airport wastewater is number one if you have not been to a wastewater treatment plant it is very impressive um we would also encourage you to our goal at council meetings is to be prepared and to provide you with the best information you that we can so you can make the policy decisions you need to make if you have questions coming into a council meeting please feel free to send those to us in advance you certainly can still ask them in public um and hold us accountable but the more prepared we are to provide information to you the better all of our conversations will be um as a and final thing on here um emergence just a quick statement on emergency situations so there will come a time when there is an emergency event in the city I do my best to keep you all informed uh chief lock and chief Burke do a really great job at this of things that you might hear in the news um I will send you an email to the full council about emergent issues if there is an emergent issue that's going to be a longer term issue the chiefs and the public safety officials really need to be focusing on addressing that emergency in the city so I will continue to be your point person on those things and we will let the professionals do their jobs um and of course if it becomes longer than that there may be staffing cycles of that is there any questions on my role or staff's role before I so this is an old org chart so don't pay attention to the numbers on here we are updating it but it gives you a sense of we are what I consider a full service municipality in Vermont primarily that means we have full time professional fire EMS police dispatch services we've been 193 regular employees in another uh 15 to 20 per DM subs and seasonal employees we have three unions in the city of the firefighter career firefighters association the south brilington police officers association and AFSCME that represents public works in city hall employees and recently library employees what I want to say about staffing a jar staffing is that the council serves as the final appeal board for employee grievances that's in our non-union policies and our union policies what that means specifically for you is if we have kind of an emergent HR issue it is the one time I will not be very communicative with you about decisions I am making because you are the appeal board of that employee so you need to not know about it going into employee potentially grieving or appealing a decision I have made certainly in those cases after they are resolved I am happy to come to an executive session and describe my decision-making if that is of use but it is the one point one time that I am purposely not communicative to maintain the employee's right to a fair trial we also have a number of staff on our teams who have independent state statutory authority so things that I can't they all have independent authority to take action outside of direction so for example I can't tell the police chief who to arrest he has independent authority making in that so it's just a good thing to keep in mind especially around public safety permitting and other kind of regulatory actions like that this is one of my favorite images that my staff hates when I bring up this is a very dorky city manager visual the point of this visual is that the work that we do together setting missions setting policy administering that policy and managing to that policy doesn't solely lie with staff or the elected officials in each of those spheres there are roles we all play so for example it is solely your authority to set mission but it is our professional obligation to give you guidance and give you advice on what we can do or what the implement the implement implications of a decision or a mission would be so we're in it together with that lot we will keep kind of crossing let that line throughout our relationship and our roles so I'm going to spend a few just a few quick minutes thank you for your patience talking about our key policy documents in the city so and I think many of you are very aware of these in addition to our code of ordinances and state statute we have two primary policy documents in addition we have our city plan 2024 that was recently adopted well done to our counselors and planning commissioners and committee members who spent just a huge amount of community time providing feedback you know that you all are very familiar with this document I believe we will spend a lot more time on this document in the months to come so and on your council agenda these are hyperlinks to two these documents if you'd like to look at them the city plan as adopted is our eight-year plan for where we want to go as a community there are infinite ways that staff could work on a day-to-day basis to further those policy visions so together historically the council and leadership team have gone through a policy priorities and strategies retreat process where we look at what are the policy goals of the city and what are we going to do this year to further those policy goals and try and come to agreement on that shared work plan so that's the document you see on the right staff then work through that document all year report to you on about a quarterly basis of basis of our progress and it drives our work together it is also a tool I use quite frankly if you have great new shiny ideas mid-year I might say to you that's a great idea let's put it on next year's work plan because often if new things are going on to the work plan means other things are coming off the work plan does that make sense and then the climate action plan is obviously our other very important policy document that we work on on a daily basis so the climate action plan was originally a task force was created and charged with drafting this climate action plan and then it came to the council and they adopted it in October 2022 the primary goal coming out of this plan is to reduce our emissions by 60 percent by 2030 and 95 percent by 2050 is based on a 2019 baseline that is not just for city operations that is for the city as a whole there are three main sectors that are driving our emissions rate at this point those are buildings how we heat and cool our buildings our transportation sector and then and then so we separate into those two sectors and then obviously our government operations as an organization how we are addressing hitting those goals so we have to date done two implementation plans so we have completed a transportation implementation plan again there's a hyperlink in your presentation that sets strategies of how we are going to achieve those goals so specifically that is replace 70 percent of gas vehicles with EVs by 2030 reducing vehicle miles travel by two and a half percent a year and increasing compact high density development there's a lot more detail on here I'd really encourage you to walk through the implementation plan at some point and then just a question I know there's some overlap now with the school system but we're in the 2019 baseline were the school facilities and transportation system incorporated into that baseline so the the and Andrew please jump in the baselines are are really based on city-wide data sources so not just the city or the school but all of our organizations so from that standpoint yes but do you want to say Andrew was on the task force that wrote this so it was very knowledgeable looked at electricity use city-wide city-wide natural gas use city-wide to the extent we get our hands on it we looked at oil propane those sources were a little harder to nail down and then for transportation we looked at as best we could you know all automobiles traveling through the city didn't differentiate between motorbikes going to school or to a grocery or whatnot so yeah so thank you we've written a government operations implementation plan so this is really how we as an organization are going to model and meet those goals you see here some of the different efforts we've already undertaken and as you all know we built in funding into this into the FY 25 budget to start that the implementation of achieving goals through this our city organization I just have a general question as we go through all these policy discussions or implementation at what point or is it simultaneously that we also work at the budget aspect because you know you have plans and then you have the ability to implement the plans or revenues or how will those revenues come or is it about generating new revenues or is it within the existing revenues is that a simultaneous process or what point does that into the discussion so I would say it's a simultaneous process specifically during budget season which for us is september to well to march there's policy discussion and then when there's the budget decision that's when you basically match it up or as you devise the policy approach the the budget is concurrently sort of flushed out as as it goes so I so the policy conversations are continual we can always be discussing different policy changes very often when you're discussing policy changes we will come to you with the financial implication of this policy change is what not the implementation plans are written in a way that between now and 2030 specifically to reach that goal we have a strategy of how we think we could achieve that goal within within that time point and dollars attached so as that changes you know as evs get less expensive as we complete different weatherization projects during the budget process we will bring to you to implement next year's segment of this strategy we this is what we need to build into the budget or fight other funds for in the government in the general government orientational provide later also uh martha and I will also outline um so the savings accounts we have so you also have the ability mid-year to direct money to different policy decisions or investments as you see fit okay thank you um and then building in thermal we have not done an implementation plan on yet that is uh in this as you all know in this current year in the FY 25 budget we've built in staff capacity to do this to date we've done all of this work through existing staff we have no staff that are actually dedicated to the climate action plan at this point but we have the council has made a number of very significant ordinance changes that impact city-wide development so we are tracking how new construction is complying with those ordinances which are the primary strategy we've employed thus far to address the building and thermal sector I also so those are our kind of main policy documents at this point however we have a lot of other planning efforts underway so the planning commission is hard at work on a number of zoning changes that you will see in the next couple of months we will bring to you an impact fee ordinance update we the council just um passed the rental housing ordinance we are also actively working on a city center traffic study that's actually I would argue complete and on our website we are exploring parking in the city center we're doing an equity and planning effort we're doing an active transportation plan we're doing a park and open space master plan and we're exploring options for a city green and city center all of those you will hear about in the next two or three months so I just want to call them out as things that staff are spending a lot of time working on at the moment we also anticipate interest in an economic development strategic plan a cultural plan and housing needs assessment in the coming years and of course we're very actively building out city center so these are our you'll hear have a whole briefing on our tax increment financing district on april 15th but we are actively forwarding all of these infrastructure projects to create the bike ability and walk ability of city center so resources for you in a missable charter our constitution is very much your primary document if you have a question about governance feel free to reach out to Steve or myself or Martha or Colin as well and there's a link there as well to the FY 24 policy priorities and strategies that we are continuing to work on and then don't forget about illuminate vermont which is the weekend before the eclipse that we are very excited about so with so I have a whole nother government general government orientation coming up but that is the end of my council service presentation how y'all do it great but wait there's more that's it that's the orientation okay so we're at uh red agenda item number eight which is the adoption of the city council rules of procedure is that what we're at yep okay um so uh do can I have a motion to adopt the city council rules of procedure so moved we have a second second we have oh I'm sorry I wasn't looking up Mr. Doyle would you like to address us and don't forget to push the button to make the light green good sorry don't forget to identify yourself hi I'm Ryan Doyle um I this has been one of the most fun city council meetings I've been to I'm really surprised there aren't more people here um I think the government operations is really interesting it's a good presentation um to hear how the rubber meets the road I know it's still quite shallow compared to everything that our staff do but um even in the short amount of time I've been following things in the city it's been really exciting to see um the addition of staff people and the extra things that they're taking on to do and we have a lot of very young professional well-trained staff who are helping to modernize things and I think even just seeing this recent election and how the council has turned over um its majority I feel like there's a lot of that sentiment of modernizing um and advancing new things um regarding this specific rules of procedure I had a couple questions and a couple things I wanted to point out um one of them was uh sorry that's article four B um it says um it talks about how far in advance you have to post things and share things um it mentions the three places this municipality will post them publicly which is the city hall or library building the south brolington school district building and healthy living um in vermont 80 percent of municipalities 80 percent um four out of five have three thousand people or less in them um 90 percent have five thousand people or less we are the second most populated city in the state maybe third but I think second um and so these three posting locations um that's almost directly taken out of the state's rules for the minimum amount of public posting um and so when we start looking at such a large municipality especially one with different areas of dense development and growth three no longer looks like an adequate number especially given the close proximity um I live close by to here so healthy living is the closest store to my front door um but I can walk to all three of these locations whereas most people in the city can't and in fact a lot of people in the city don't even drive past a lot of these locations on a regular basis um and the other thing is healthy living if you don't know is nicknamed wealthy living uh for a reason I would never walk in there to shop if it weren't the closest store to my house um most things are pretty expensive it is a fairly bougie store and so as far as having publicly accessible postings this doesn't really capture I think the intent of what the state is looking for with having easy access to seeing these things um I do go actually check these a lot um last month I walked into healthy living on a Monday afternoon and there was no city warning hanging up so I went to the office there and asked and he's like yeah the city dropped it off already and he found it in a stack of papers beside him that night there was a meeting the next night there was a planning commission meeting and so for both of those meetings there was not a third public posting location I know that this would create more work for staff to have to post in more places but I would challenge you to think about ways again that we can modernize that if it's the issue of getting screens in windows of certain buildings or inside of more stores that are more commonly attended by members of the public um again healthy living small upscale grocery store but you know there's a Hannah Ferds and a Shaw's and a Market 44 um down along the Shelburne Road corridor for example um or if we had further east into the city there might be another location that people frequent more often um it might be worth looking into having five or six places um in the future and possibly having a digital screen that presents automatically so staff don't have to physically go out to places to post those um and also including QR codes now in those postings so it would be easy for somebody to scan it and pull it up on their phone because if you see it posted and then try to read it I mean obviously the your 200 pages of your city council right yeah you can't you can't possibly um read that in the posting and if you go to the website to track them down it's a number of steps most people won't get through that um the first time they try it so please be aware or if you do pass this tonight to consider including um an amendment to address this particular area um some point this year or to pass this with the expectation that it will be on your council priorities um at some point um one of the questions I had for you sorry just give me a second to reread the paragraph um article 6h and I this might have to be something that staff clarifies for me but it talks about um order and decorum shall be observed by all persons and this includes members of the body and members of the public are prohibited from making personal impertinent or threatening remarks and I was just looking for clarification about what personal meant in this context well I I think if if you were making a remark about somebody's appearance or the way they talked or who they were you know I mean you know some sort of a insult right that kind of a personal thing so like a more like a negative attack rather than yeah yeah of a something pertinent impertinent is the keyword there I think so not like or but and so to speak it's it's or or or any of those any of those or okay uh thank you um and and then the other thing that relates and maybe this goes more into your next follow-up at the next meeting Jesse um but sort of related to like the posting in the public location this document says like things will be posted on the website um the city has tried to provide the information in a couple of places on the website like if you go to the calendar for example you can go through and click on items there there's another place you can go to the weekly warning list and go there um and so some people might have their preferred way that they go to to find the information it still includes additional steps usually to get to the agenda right and click on it you get the laser fish it's then in chronological order so that you have to go to the bottom etc and you can't always move the margin to actually see the pertinent dates but what I've seen happen besides the November thing that was laser fish's fault but like seven or eight times that I've noticed something might not be posted in all of those places so you might go to the calendar and the meeting might not be there or the agenda isn't linked to it or you then have to go look for in the other place if you knew to do so um I think it's great that we're trying to have multiple places on the website depending on how people like to take in their content um but that also creates the added burden of staff making sure that everything is on point in all of those locations so as you think about sort of the vagueness in this language of posted on the website maybe also be thinking about how to um create a stronger efficiency so that it is much easier for staff to both update everywhere it's relevant and that it's fewer steps for the public to actually get to the agenda um more quickly um it's just I think better for everyone on both sides of the coin and I know you haven't quite gotten to the website update yet from last year's priorities but it just felt very relevant and I wanted to present that for you guys to think about thank you thank you I appreciate that feedback I myself sometimes have trouble navigating the website trying to find specific things but eventually I get there so I there's always room for improvement of everything so I think that city manager heard your feedback thank you very much so we have a motion in a second uh on the table about adopting the uh city council rules of procedure are you ready for the vote all those in favor say aye aye any opposed thank you very much motion carries we've adopted the rules procedure item nine adopt the conflict of interest in ethical contact for council and appointed members did you have something to present here is it we've already seen it we saw it okay so this is again we're going to adopt the conflict of interest in ethical conduct for council do we have a motion to adopt so so second so Mike moved in Andrew seconded okay any discussion members of the public all those in favor say aye aye aye any opposed no motion carries we've adopted the conflict of interest in ethical conduct for council and appointed members uh next item is the consent agenda now for new members do you did you understand what the consent agenda is yes it hurts to explain it again would you like to explain sure uh so the consent agenda uh is the where we put items that are administrative in nature or that you have heard before and we're bringing them back for approval so for example um we will bring you monthly financial statements those are always part of the consent agenda uh we have you see for example tonight we have the request to apply for a grant so in our financial policies your approval is required for us to go after grant funding the purpose of that is really to ensure that we're not kind of creating new systems or new employment structures for folks with grant money without your awareness of it those tend to be very non-controversial so we bundle those things together on a consent agenda we invite you to approve them as a whole you can always remove an item from a consent agenda you can always ask a question about an item on the consent agenda i would say probably every third meeting something comes off the consent agenda and we talk about it and then it's either approved or amended your minutes will also go on the consent agenda so i'm going to read off the items the consent agenda and then ask for a motion to approve them and i have might have a comment about each one that would might be educational for you all right the first one is considering signed disbursements now if you noticed in your share point folder that there were a couple of excel spreadsheets uh that if merged together um contain all of the same items that were in the pdf of the agenda that had all the disbursements the nice thing about that is you can highlight the entire page and sort by column d or e depending upon which sheet you're in and you can sort them from least expensive to most expensive and you can work your way from bottom to top to figure out if you have any items on the disbursements disbursement list that you see you can either contact martha in advance of the meeting to ask a question about a particular dollar amount and where it went or you can also ask in this meeting as well um i find it very useful to do that and then i save that document and i will highlight a whole line in yellow because i just don't know what that means you know for example you know business credit card what is that or you know a payment was made to somebody for tire parts you know or with something like that so um but it's i think it's good for the council to pay attention to those expenditures because they're financial warrants and we will be signing them every time we meet if there are some and that means that we've at least taken a look at them to make sure we believe that they're they're correct um that we also have uh to approve the grant application for the national council on aging bone health and osteoporosis community pilot project uh item c approve the 2024 certificate of highway mileage and item d award the contract for the ash tree injection project to teachers tree service it's what i call tree triage so do we have a uh motion to approve these so moved second we have a motion a second is there any discussion i do have two questions um tim one is on disbursements just because i i'm familiar with this from my past service but um are these being approved by the council in advance of those payments being made or is it yeah i should be directing this to you martha um or is it a foregone conclusion they will be paid but questions can be asked kind of after the fact you approve them before they are paid so you can decide not to approve any payment and occasionally after an election you may see your own name on there am i you must judge whether the value is correct or not and my second question first of all i i'm unaccustomed to seeing four responses on bids for the ash tree injection project um because my past experiences it's been hard to get services to bid on those but i did notice a fair um variation between those bids and then there was some it sounds like there was a minor correction on one that was sounded like it was mathematical um my understanding of the bidding process is from a public standpoint as those go out and the bids come back but there historically i'm not aware that there's been any kind of um interaction with the bidders it's almost more of a sealed envelope process but can can you just explain um why there why there was a an adjustment allowed and then any feedback on why there was such variation in those bids probably should have done this earlier Dave Wheeler our water engineer is on go to meeting to he managed this bid so i will pass that question to him Dave do you want counselor if it's jailed to repeat that no um yeah so they put in a bid of $8.25 per inch like they measure the trees um inches in diameter at breast height so dbh so their unit price was just fixed $8.25 and there are some like 13 rows in the bid form for all the different streets with all the different trees and so they did the math wrong on a couple of those items um so i just went through an excel and i recalculated the actual values per street and summed it and it was like a $200 difference out of it was like $17,200 versus $17,400 so it ended up being slightly slightly off so i called them just to confirm they were comfortable with what the real numbers should have been in the bid and they were so that's something we have done in the past with other projects as well when they're spending discrepancy between the written price and um you know in words versus written numbers and then as far as the discrepancy in price goes i would say i mean that probably comes down to maybe some folks are just putting in a high number that happens on a lot of construction projects they don't necessarily want the work but hey for this price we'll absolutely do it for you while some of the other pricing is more competitive appreciate that thank you does that answer your question about the the unsealing process of the bids the i'm sorry the unsealing process of the bids um it it does um i mean i assume it's similar and it sounds like that dave caught it caught a clerical issue and just corrected and validated it with with teachers so okay um that's that's very clear to me and then it does kind of validate some of the past experience with very high bids as well but at least there was four bidders so that's right thank thank you dave and yeah just real quick um slightly off topic but in relation to the trees a couple of meetings ago we um approved on the consent agenda replacing trees between the ash there was a question that i had whether because similar bids were quite different whether they were apples to apples have we confirmed that they were we have so when you pass that you said it was okay pending that they were dave dave and i had a conversation the next day and they they were apples apples comparisons okay thank you but they weren't apple trees all right so we do have a motion and a second for approving the consent agenda are you ready for the vote all those in favor say aye please aye aye any opposed they've all been approved brings us to item 11 which is a point charter and ordinance required positions for a period of one year as outlined in the attached memorandum of city manager jesse baker sure um so there are a whole slew i'll put it up on the screen um i won't always bore you with my screen sharing but since we are all orienting tonight there are a number of positions either in ordinance or city charter that require you to appoint staff into roles um the they are still considered city employees reporting to me but the role the regulatory roles are your appointment so this is the list of our current incumbents and jared pellerin who will start as our deputy city attorney in the middle of march um for your approval tonight what is the responsibility of what are the responses of the first and second constable so the first and second constables can arrest the police chief and can take other kind of public can do warrants can deliver other things other other things other legal public safety related documents uh detective uh dan boyer is an active detective with the city of south burlington and kevin greilis is no longer an employee of the city of south burlington he recently um went to work for the state but has was for 20 years of public south burlington police officer and lives here in the city the constables have to live in the city so it's a replacement for first constable for the appointment or does he uh no uh kevin greilis has served as first constable for many years he can continue to serve even though he's left the oh you don't have to be okay and it's okay and and you are the being proposed as per the grand juror and what would that what would be your responsibility for that so to hear appeals of fees municipal ordinance fees or fines but things like that okay and the ones below as well code enforcement officer communications yeah are there any questions on these appointments just a quick clarification question are these assignments part of these individuals um job descriptions yes to the extent that their employees yes thank you so can i have a motion to accept or approve these charter and ordinance required position appointments so moved second we have a motion to second is there any other discussion all those in favor say aye aye that's unanimous all right thank you and next we have item 12 which is discuss and possibly approve the 2024 2025 city council meeting schedule pursuant to the city charter chapter 13 section 305 a again city manager thank you so i included two documents um in your agenda uh for this item one is as as the chair mentioned the charter requires you to set the meeting dates of your body um as soon as possible after town meeting day so and it requires us to meet twice a month we have historically met on the first and third mondays of the month so what the staff did was just go through the calendar assign those dates i did include a few notes and questions about key things that would happen um and how things might be amended throughout the year you can always amend you can always set special meetings or change meeting dates but this is to give the community some certainty about when they can expect to hear from you or talk to you this does not include steering committee meetings so i would recommend that you consider adopting the above schedule as presented knowing that you can always add or change meetings as needed the first and third um mondays i've always worked for me so unless anybody has any other opinion about that i would turn to any motion to uh approve this schedule so moved second that motion second any other discussion all those in favor say aye aye it's unanimous we have approved the meeting schedule so before if you don't mind before we move on from this agenda item i did want to just quickly draw your attention to the second document i attached to this which is the for the tentative this can change and actually it has changed since i pdf this to you um first three months um plan for your meeting so this i mentioned this earlier this is where we've tried to make kind of bite size orientations for you um across the first couple of meetings and then other significant agenda items that we do anticipate coming to you um staff and the committees are working on a lot furthering a lot of priorities at the moment and we want you to be aware of um how packed some of these tenders make it throughout the spring um this was also all in the with the intent of trying to as fully as possible orient you so in late may early june we can have our policies and strategies retreat and allow you all to put your fingerprints on our shared work plan for the staff for the next year so one just want to call your attention to this we also um when councillors chalmik and bear and i talked about this wanted to provide you all with an opportunity either tonight or over the next couple of weeks to think about are there topics that you would like to learn more about that aren't listed here um and given what you heard on the campaign trail um are are there other things you would like to us to consider building out into future agendas or orientations so if you have ideas on that tonight happy to take them or feel free to email the chair and I with those ideas or bring up a future meeting yeah the the one um that jumps to mind for me and and I heard it a lot um uh in my conversations at the polls was really community engagement opportunities with the council so um I would like to be able to have that conversation to consider uh not only uh things ryan brought up relative to sort of how we communicate meetings and and potential venues but also um maybe engagement opportunities that don't violate quorum rules um that might uh they could be neighborhood focused I don't want to go to a solution but just to talk about opportunities particularly since three of us are newer to really um can uh kind of continue the engagement we've had with neighborhoods um as as with campaign and if I may I think it's an excellent idea I would also like to second that I was really struck over the last five weeks uh and walking around the city and really going you know places where perhaps I my habits of lived life here didn't take me and there's very different perspectives on what are priorities what are needs whether there are those needs are being listened to or addressed and I think uh you know I think we all feel that we're up here not just representing the voters that perhaps voted for us but we're here to represent the broader interests of the city community and and and thus you know take the onus as I think uh Elizabeth was suggesting of constantly and I know this your team has been trying to do this is how do we communicate how do we connect and how do we be sure that we are hearing the voices because I think we know one of the realities of of the way we're sort of structured to work is is that people have the luxury of the time in the evenings to come and participate and and and that is a not necessarily broad group by definition and I think it's you know I think what she's suggesting is definitely something I think as a policy we as the city council and as the city should continue to constantly look for improvements of communicating and connecting and getting the different inputs one piece I'd like to add to that um in going around a meeting residence I I met with one couple who moved up from the Massachusetts area and one thing that was suggested to me that I would like to consider doing I want to make sure that it's appropriate and we're also like to suggest to other councilors um it was suggested that I put together an advisory team which would be individuals from all parts of the city or different parts of the city who can meet with me on a regular basis in a informal way so that I can be getting feedback from people who are living throughout the city and stay more informed with the issues that are important to our constituents and um that's something I would like to do I want to make sure that it's a legitimate thing to do and I think anything we can do that helps us get a better conversation going back and forth with with the residents will be powerful so I just want to throw that out there. I think those are all tremendous ideas um at your next meeting we had planned to bring you an update to our equity and planning effort which is uh primarily about planning and better engagement with the community but I think would be a natural progression to also have an expanded version of this conversation to make sure it's not just um through planning efforts but actually how we're there we're having better two-way conversations so I'll add that to the agenda. And I got one other thing I wanted to add on the April 15th it's talking about the parks master plan and the open space master plan briefing um and we'll talk about this more at that time also but I would really like to see that plan coordinated with the active transportation plan and have those two plans working together because active transportation and parks go hand in hand and I want to see those two develop in such a way that they really open accessibility across the board but I just wanted to put that out there great thank you that's a great idea any other feedback at all all right let's move on to item 13 I got one last I'm just sorry just May 20th which is the priorities and strategy retreat proposal I will actually be out of country May 6th and May 20th I will probably be able to attend remotely but I wouldn't be able to do the the priorities and strategies on that day so okay so that was solely a placeholder for that meeting we will not have that retreat without all five of you so at the next meeting I will bring forward more detail on that effort and we'll set well let's try and figure out a day at the next meeting to hold that because it does get very complicated to hold time for leadership team and the council we'll do that at our next meeting thank you otherwise you have to take us with you so the next time is item 13 designate the other papers our official paper of record city manager so we are required by statute to have an official paper of record so folks have certainty about where they will receive our public hearing notices our ordinance change notices things like that text notices the other paper has been our designated paper for many years it goes into all mailboxes in the city and has anybody had complaints that that they they've they've they don't receive the paper in the mail I had somebody tell me once off hand that they don't get it I'm like how do you know it's mailed to everybody I just want to make sure a little later than it used to well yeah I mean that could be due to the USPS yeah you're not so much them I just want to make sure that we think that every address every USPS address in the city receives a copy are we assured of that or are they under they're not under any contractual obligation to to assure that they just that's their business model that we have no contract you have no okay but but for our purposes they are the paper that serves that purpose the best because it's it's somehow conveyed to every address we hope so kind of a motion to designate the other paper is our official paper of record so moved second that so I motion second any discussion all in favor say aye aye it's unanimous I'm going to item 14 council orientation again general government again Jesse Baker these okay so this I'm going to spend through much faster than the last one but I do think it's really so in the upcoming meetings you'll hear from our key our departments our department heads about orientation to their service area but general government is our collect all for the what I think of as the backbone organization the backbone of our organization those of us who provide service to all of our staff and all of our department heads you will hear specifically from Paul Connor and Alana Blanchard at your April 15th meeting so I have not included a lot of their information here but included in this team are myself every the folks in the room right now so the city manager's office our communications and outreach coordinator our energy project part-time energy project manager our GIS and data manager position that we are interviewing for next week is so exciting for FY 25 our climate policy manager I consider Holly Reese as part of this Holly Reese does not report to me she's an elected official but certainly part of our core government team and sits on my leadership team and then of course we have Martha in finance Colin in the attorney's office Daisy Ray in as our HR director Martha Lyons is our director of tax collection and assessment Nick Gingro is our director by T who you saw in the back very quickly tonight Paul and Alana you'll hear from on the 15th they are director of planning and zoning and community development and Greg Yando is our director of physical plant so all of our buildings you've heard this information many times so I will skim over it but this is our FY 25 budget just a reminder 21 million of these dollars are what is raised by property taxes this is where those those general fund dollars those core government dollars are spent across service area I do want to note there is the in the public works pie piece there are the enterprise funds also fall into that pie piece so if you looked at the citywide budget it would be bigger I do want to take a few minutes to talk about overall budget grand list and tax rate so I and I don't need to apologies if I'm speaking down to you but these are kind of key points that I want to make sure I've said out loud to you so as you all likely know the grand list is the total assessed value of all of our parcels across the city currently our grand list is 4.1 billion the grade list is set as of April 1st every year or assessed as of April 1st every year and it lodged by the end of June the grand list is critical because it's what actually determines the formula that sets our tax rate so the voters have approved an expenditure budget the grand list is then set divide those two numbers you get the tax rate so right now our tax rate is 49 cents assuming the grand the grand list gross that we participate for the FY 25 budget that will be 52 cents so folks often talk councils often talk about a penny on the tax rate or a percent on the tax rate so I think it's important for you all to think about what that raises as we think about future investments you'd like to make so in this fiscal year in FY 24 one penny on the tax rate raises $411 so across all of those assessed properties if we up that tax rate once one penny we raise another $411,000 of taxes for the 11,000 if we increase the tax rate or grand list because we're so close to 50 cents one percent we raise $202,000 so for example if we think about um I'm trying to think of a good example that would be close to this if we think about hiring two new staff to do two totally new things that are about an average compensation level so salary plus benefits it's about $100,000 per staff person we would have to increase the tax rate a percent to do that does that make sense for us to grow the grand list a percent we would need 94 new homes or 139 new condos so it is a fair amount of development needed to increase the grand list by that percent and then the final point on this I'll say is at your first meeting in July maybe at your last meeting in June but likely at your first meeting in July you will set the FY25 tax rate and again that is the calculation it is not it is a critically important role you do so we can send out tax bills but it doesn't actually you can't change it that you can't change Martha did I capture that all okay just to clarify how the TIF and the grand list intersects right because if it's new homes in the TIF district that's not that increase to the grand list is not something that we could use right that goes to TIF is it just remind me that intersection sure so Alana's going to do a whole TIF briefing for you but I'm happy to answer that question so in the TIF district when the TIF district was established the total and Martha correct me here the total grand list of the TIF district at that moment in time was set so that's the original taxable value you'll hear us talking about any growth in the assessed value of properties that happens above that those properties all of the properties are assessed at the regular tax regular tax rate everybody else is paying and the difference between the original taxable value and the new taxable value is the increment that we can use for debt service in the TIF district 75 percent of the education property tax of that increment and 75 percent of the municipal portion of that tax rate as well so it's not a new house it's the increase in that value right but that's that's to pay the TIF debt but in other words for the grand list for general fund revenue the homes and the condos need to be outside of the TIF district added 25 rate reduction yeah I think if I understand what you're asking because I have a similar question in fact is that the benefits from the new construction in the TIF to the general fund will only happen once the the 10 years 10 years from now the the bump up or the benefits will come once the TIF period is completed is that correct so the the new value in the TIF district from that original taxable up is 25 percent of that new value comes to the general fund 75 percent of that value goes to the TIF increment payments but the the full bump up at the end it all comes back so the real impact to the revenue in terms of expansion yes is 10 years off yes I do also want to know because school is also obviously incredibly important so we are retaining 75 percent of the education tax rate as well which is the real power of the TIF district is that is much more property tax money that we get to pay off that debt than we would otherwise without a TIF district the education fund is made whole so it's not that our school district is getting 75 percent less it's that this the education fund makes up that difference for the the state education fund makes up that difference for our state starts itself for a number of years while we pay down the the debt service right but then they get it at the end and then we also get the start getting paid again at the end and I mean it's the but for argument right it's that you have to invest in the infrastructure for the development to happen so in the end the ed fund is in my opinion the end the ed fund is much more grown not starved can I clarify a question there so but the ed fund has to make up what the sum of the districts around the state have requested through local budget votes yeah there are there are multiple yes yeah so any any TIF districts sort of has a moratorium that has to be made up by the general fund until it comes to maturation is that accurate yeah thanks and one other point is that the the pennies type things like pennies for paths or pennies for open space right just to reiterate that when there is a reappraisal done in the city the amount raised by those increases dramatically if the appraisal goes up quite a bit and we're at you know the clas 82 and a half so we're going to do one now and then be assessed the whole city the most penny values would go up quite a bit as well that that caused caught me by surprise back in 2021 and the the penny the profit on a penny that's a weird sentence goes up every time the grand list increases so what a penny raises assuming our grand list continues to grow what a penny raises year to year will always always incrementally increase so that means pennies for paths and pennies for open space is a growing fund municipal finance is fantastic so you also I mentioned this earlier serve as the board of water commissioners you have the responsibility authority to maintain healthy utility water and wastewater and storm water utilities you will see that before you in the form of ordinance adoptions and updates and of course you approve those budgets annually as well and these are the FY 24 and FY 25 rates um Martha and I wanted to spend a few minutes talking about um the one time money I previously mentioned so you have kind of two pots of that at the moment um and Martha is definitely the keeper of this knowledge but so the American Rescue Plan Act was the money the federal government provided to municipalities coming out of COVID to recover from COVID the key points here are these funds have to be allocated by December 2024 so this year and then spent by December 2026 because we took the funds as revenue loss funds we can use these dollars for any purpose that is a general government purpose so we can't necessarily go out and buy ice cream for everybody but other than that if it's within our core government operations we can do that and probably we can make an argument that that's within rec if we really wanted to buy ice cream for everybody so we received 5.6 million of ARPA funds uh Martha has done an amazing job um earning interest on these funds so that pot is actually continuing to grow and she's tracking that earned interest within that fund so it stays with that intent um we have uh councils have approved 4.5 million of that today and you have 3.4 million or 1.4 million left to um allocate so we need to move on this with more vigor than in the past yes because we are in that year where it has to be allocated by the end of the year yes so i just want to make that statement it's a tough place to be it is if there's ice cream it'll be okay and then we wanted to provide a little information on fund balance fund so specifically portrayed here is our general fund fund balance our general government fund balance this is um for lack of a better word your savings account per our current financial policies we are required to maintain a minimum balance in this account of 8.33 percent of our operating costs with a targeted balance of 16.6 percent that's one in two months of our operating costs combined we are not allowed to go below 8.3 percent and if we go above 25 percent you need to make different decisions so all of this math that Martha can walk you through if you would like is to say right now sitting in your savings account you have 1.2 million dollars up to spend down to that 8.3 um 8.3 minimum balance does that make sense so so there's our remaining 1.2 that it needs to be allocated it doesn't need to be allocated no there's need to be but it could be it could be it's available we're still below our 16 target okay um but you could allocate it to the 8.3 percent or you can just let it sit there it can sit there until 25 percent at which point you have to make other decisions it is the fund we go to when we have you know a generator breaks or a fire a police car gets rear-ended or something like that um and for example and you have to allocate out of this I can't spend this money without your permission I I do want to pause here and um um foreshadow to you all for is that the right word foreshadow to you all um we Martha has done on a really excellent work with our department heads projecting out our FY 24 um budget where we may end FY 24 at one of our revenue lines that is incredibly overperforming even though it we upped it last budget um with interest being rates being so high and the agreement that Martha has negotiated with our bank um we are getting much higher interest return than we anticipated so we are likely to exceed that budgeted line by 700,000 to 900,000 so that is new money into the system so I I think that that is something we should consider is that an appropriate statement I think this is something we could should consider um how the council wants to how the council wants to handle that because that's a little different than just we have a fund balance surplus because we have salary vacancies or we've over budgeted you know a permitting fee line you know those kind of fluctuations happen all the time this to me this seems to be a larger really one time thing we don't we will not see this interest rate return over time this is not capacity revenue capacity we can account on um but because interest rates are performing so well under what Martha negotiated with our banks it is money in our bank at the moment I think the IRS is going to find that out too when they start receiving money from people but they didn't realize they were receiving that your five percent is much better than point one percent so as you can attest to right all right uh so I'm almost done uh hyperlink on this slide goes to all of our audited financials we have had uh clean audits thanks to Martha and her team for several years we also had a clean TIF audit which is a enormous success in the state thanks again to Martha and the team what you will see at on council agendas from finance are your bi-weekly bi-weekly warrants that um councillor barrett referred to earlier monthly financials quarterly financial summaries that are a little more narrative a little more meatier about how our financials are performing obviously you receive the annual audit grant approval forms you will approve contracts over a certain amount um and one time funding needs those allocations from fund balance uh we wanted to call your attention to our active lawsuits and uh Colin will have an executive session at our next meeting where we'll walk through our exposure on lawsuits but they are listed here so you are aware of them and then again I referred earlier to Colin's kind of independent authority to manage liability for the city and do a whole host of other things out of his office um that makes any questions on that I'm named in that first lawsuit just so you know I had a quick question um I know I sat through a meeting a little while back out um uh the um noise associated with construction on long drive I think and there was something filed by the city I can't remember what it was but what has that been resolved or is that something active still that has been resolved as of now I'm sorry it's been resolved okay thanks um so as actually Ryan pointed out earlier our team has been really focused on modernizing our systems over the last couple of years um and you see some of those listed here um thank you for calling those out Ryan appreciate it um and we will continue to do that with a real focus on you know sometimes we as a staff team talk about moving from a big town government to a city government and needing to modernize some of our systems to get there so um the emerging issues that we in kind of the core government team are working on and foresee coming to you or you all needing to be involved in in the future are the creation of a parking fund for city center right now we have no paid parking in the city and likely we will need to start enforcing parking at some point uh we are working on the launch of the rental registry program building out our how we're going to um kind of up our data game and bring you better data to make policy decisions with our new data and GIS capacity um implementing a new climate staff uh Steve is running an effort with a cross department effort to bring in uh online permit um permitting systems so folks can apply for permits online and then track them through the process and we can do much better data aggregation and analysis um with a with an online system as opposed to a paper-based system we're going to do a similar effort for finance systems next and of course um the city plan we also have we are actively in process of recognizing the library employees into our ASME union you will hear about that shortly um and then both of our ASME and police agreements collective bargaining agreements expire at the end of FY 25 so next June um renegotiating those contracts will take a significant amount of time um in on the city side staff does that negotiation we will come to you in executive session and ask for your guidance and your what you would like to achieve during negotiations and you ultimately will have to approve contracts um but but Colin leads that effort with Steve and Martha and the relevant department head and HR so those are the things we are anticipating coming to you in the next couple of months AFSME is American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees is that right I got it right well done thank you very much for putting up with that I appreciate it thank you so moving on to item seven 15 which is uh designate TD bank as our official depository is that we just need a motion for that just need you to take is that where we are earning our high interest rate thank you TD bank very very much so um I would entertain a motion to it to to designate TD bank as our official depository so moved give a second a second a motion second any discussion those in favor say aye aye it's unanimous thank you uh moving on so here is where we like to convene as the liquor control commission where we have to make a motion to to convene as the commission and we have to pass that motion and then we review all the names of the restaurants and and establishments that need to renew or get their initial life you know liquor licenses and when we're done approving that we then make a motion to come out of the liquor commission so I would entertain a motion to convene as the South Brennan liquor control commission so moved second we have motion second all those in favor all right it's unanimous so we're looking we're looking at approving a request from the double tree hotel first-class hotel license third-class hotel license second-class interstate interstate shell second-class and tobacco jiffy mart tobacco substitute endorsement olive garden italian restaurant for first-class restaurant bar license and third-class restaurant a skinny pancake airport LLC at the airport for first-class restaurant bar license and third-class restaurant bar and license did you want to comment so I just for the new counselors want to be aware any liquor license that comes to the city we do a public safety and compliance review on them so they don't come to you unless the professionals on our team have approved those to come to you since also for the new people at least for me you have a difference between you know first-class and third-class if I'm voting on something I would like to have an understanding you know I know the licenses but what is there first and third so one of them is beer and wine and one of them is beer and wine and liquor and I'm pretty sure do you know the answer to this I would have to read it again I I can't say right now without that's the difference between the two of them so I'll ask for a motion to approve all of these license requests that I just read so move move a second second a motion second any discussion all those in favor say aye aye unanimous I was right first class is beer and wine only so now we need a motion to come out of liquor commission so moved second any discussion all those in favor say aye aye that's unanimous thank you for approving all those license requests we're now on item 17 which is other business I have two items but I'll wait to hear if anybody else has some items and I just clarify Tim when um counselor committee assignments might be discussed at our next meeting thank you so I just wanted to uh talk quickly about the the other papers city council or corner articles that are written by the city uh what we try to do is establish a schedule a monthly schedule so there are five of us so we would rotate uh and rearrange as necessary if you can't do it but you get to write um anywhere between 600 and I mean a thousand words there used to be a 600 limit but uh that it's not the rule anymore you could write on any subject concerning the city that you you like um so I think we'll maybe at the next meeting if we need a agenda item for that we could we could but to start thinking about that if you're ready to write something and usually newly elected ones like I mean you might want to write your own letter to the editor saying thank you to the voters but if you have initiatives that you want to propose or whatever that's a good time to write that article for in the future uh the other issue was um you've all heard of front porch forum you probably use it or receive you know messages for your particular neighborhood is everybody on front porch forum yeah okay so as a counselor you get an extra power right so you're going to gain extra powers through winning your election right one of those extra powers that you have the ability um once it's and I don't know how it's given to but I mean they have to give it to front porch forums that when you go to the webpage and you go to compose a new you'll have a drop down are you composing as yourself in your own neighborhood or are you composing as a city counselor in which case then it publishes to all 11 neighborhoods right so that's that's it's a really it's a very powerful thing so um use that with some caution right you should use it only for city business if I'm if I'm correct uh for example I mean I've used it in the past to advertise for committee positions that were open and we needed somebody badly like a DRB had a resignation and I would put out to all the fora that you know uh here the description here's a job description you know do you think it's something you might like please respond to Paul Connor and the city will also use that same mechanism but it's it's good for city counselors to use it if they have the information that they want to disperse widely across the whole city and at the same time you will also receive um all of the fora from front porch forum as well so instead of just getting your own you'll see all 11 and um I find it really useful I love front porch forum Michael Wood Lewis has put a lot of his heart into that that resource and so I go through every single one of them whenever they come out religiously and I at least I scan the top and see if there's something I need to read and I go down because you'll find posts from people that are important for for discussions about city items so so I urge you to take advantage of that that's all I had to say quick question on that one yeah um I got I got the invitation to do that today um after I was sworn in so I can do that now um but if I'm considering doing a posting would it be appropriate to run it by Hugh Jesse or somebody else before doing it to make sure that it's appropriate city business as opposed to where that line is or how do I how do I understand how to use that and not have it just be a personal opinion or can I use it for personal opinion etc when I'm speaking to to uh all of our residents um that would be a very respectful thing to do to run it by me I would certainly appreciate that and I'm happy to have engaged in a conversation on that I do I think I think this is the conversation we should have as part of our engagement conversation um I think it may we if all of you are interested in kind of having those newsletters to community we may want to talk about you know the strategy of that and how we're going to use it um but I'm happy to talk to you about where that line is absolutely thank you a good question thank you any other comments so this is not really other business but I do need you to sign some things as a result of your actions tonight so we don't need to do that in the meeting but stick around for a few minutes so we can do that and by the way uh Councillor Scanlon I will be doing the the draft minutes from previous meetings not including tonight you're on I'm going to do it as fast as I can because Andrea needs them and I'd like to personally thank you Mike for stepping up to do that because that kind of clerical thing I am abysmal at and I was fearing that there was going to be a finger pointed towards me so thank you somehow and so no but you're willing thank you so you do you want us to wait until they're all signed before we adjourn so can we have a motion is there anything else that tell me what to talk about it's uh I I moved to adjourn and I do want to note that it's quarter of nine and our other business was supposed to happen between 9 15 and 9 25 so Tim for your first uh chairing of a meeting I got to say kudos thank you very much it is my first as a chair I served as a vice vice chair uh like a back last september I think and we were done by 8 15 but the agenda was very short so I don't want to take too much credit for that well you did a good job but I will strive to drive these meetings as as fast as possible but as respectful as possible all right and and that that's an improvement I think that we can make going forward thank you thank you city manager very much thank all you city counselors for being here tonight I look forward to our next meeting and all of our future meetings and working with you my pleasure all right second there's a second all those in favor of jury hi hi all right thank you