 Okay good evening folks I'll call the meeting to order the mayor is out sick tonight and so I will be chairing tonight's meeting we we have a brief note about the logistics for the for the meeting if anyone has is participating remotely please set your first and last name on your on your screen so you can do it anyone who seeks to address the council please start by stating your name and where you live if you have a comment about a specific agenda item please limit your comments to two minutes and keep them germane if you wish to speak you must be called on by the chair and for all comments counselor bait will be helping us by keeping track of the time first item on the agenda is to approve the agenda there is the agenda acceptable to everybody yes Donna you had an item you wanted to add I would like to add a discussion around the public safety authority and it's a proposed budget this just go into the ballot in March so should that go like under exec under other business or just before other business yep they'd be fine it'd be part of other business or right before they'd be fine okay sounds good oh yeah that makes sense that way whatever happens yep okay any other comments yes Lauren I request that we take items be the response to allegation of open meeting and ADA violation and item D school street closure from the consent agenda into the regular agenda to allow for comment okay sounds good hearing all that any if there's no other you're still approving the agenda we're still approving the agenda yes hearing no other comments the agenda is approved next item on the agenda is general business and appearances this is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council on any item that is not on tonight's agenda as always we ask that you keep your comments to minutes minutes in length and I will start with the people who are in the room who want to be heard and then we'll go from there to the anyone who's appearing remotely John first Avenue first off I want to thank all of you for running a safe election it was great I'm here just to briefly talk about the farmers market since we just had the last of the summer markets we ran 26 weekly markets this summer with a pool of over 80 vendors there were over a million dollars worth of sales in those markets and I'm really proud to say there were also 600 plus snap and crop crop cash transactions that totaled over $23,000 that's a lot of food for people in need this one amazed me we count everybody who comes into the market and we had over 52,000 people in that summer session was up 10% from last year we prior to that had had nine biweekly winter markets who went to a winter market right I think I think I did we had quite a few people that we had 42 vendors in the pool and did over a hundred thousand dollars worth of sales we only canceled one winter market and the wind that day was just brutal we couldn't do it so that's pretty amazing that we actually had nine of them I want to thank the state in particular and also DPW and the Montpelier Police Department for really supporting us being at 133 state there were times when we needed that active support and we had no trouble getting it from all three of them I am pleased to say that this winter we will be back at Caledonia spirits this time around we were there two years ago and it was pretty crowded and tight and COVID weary this time we're going to be both inside and outside in the new heated patio we already have over 50 vendors who want to be there will be there the first and third Saturdays of the month starting in December running through the end of April from 10 o'clock in the morning to one o'clock so it'll be really a great offering and I also just wanted to say that one of the polls we took at the summer market tried to query when you're at the market do you shop anywhere else in town 93% of the people who come to our market regularly shop elsewhere in town when they come in for so I'm thrilled that's great news because when I when when you moved all the way down to the other end of state street that was my concerns that's interesting we didn't query I don't have the numbers but we queried how did you get there and a lot of people are walking so when you see cars all along state street it's just amazing it's a much better location can we send us that I'd love to have that data in electronic document for reference I'd be happy to thank you very much for your support thanks John Richard share from Loomis Street and I'm going to maximize my two minutes by asking you to help me with my address I want to talk about guns and last time I was here addressing you was right after the red flag incident actually um Bill could you give us a little history on our charter change boat I can but this is your two minutes so I don't want to take up your time okay I was asking if I could pause and you could at least inform the people that we did it one time we did it one time have a charter change that would have been the possession of loaded or the carry of loaded firearms I think it said and it did pass the voters here and did not get it well got a couple legit hearings and committee but never passed out a committee and never was there was never a vote taken on it so it was essentially tabled yes by the legislative now Connor Burlington I believe has passed a resolution asking that they're similar ban that was also tabled I think those bans in the plural be reconsidered by the legislature in the next legislature second am I correct in that yeah it's past the Board of Health that's been referred to the Public Safety Committee and the Burlington City Council I think we'll take it off up in that the next couple weeks or Mike request is because it was tabled and never really a judge you know on the state level would it be possible for council before the budget hearings begin to at least hold put put it on the agenda and let's see how the public feels about approaching the state on something that passed albeit years ago but or perhaps putting it on the ballot for town meeting day that's all I'm asking tonight is that council consider reopening this discussion for the public okay Steve even I know better than that Steve Whitaker Montpelier the definite America America's most mismanaged small-town capital definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result after repeated warnings that you've got a homelessness task force packed with people who have a conflict of interest the director of Good Samaritan the director of another way staff per paid staff for those organizations and that same task force has not completed the work that they were assigned to do in the first six months three and a half years ago and you just reappointed the same characters for two-year terms instead of putting some new blood on there that's insanity I believe you got a consent agenda item to give $40,000 to Good Samaritan for the street outreach they got five four five million dollars from the housing and conservation trust fund they can afford their own outreach staff to to fill out their effluent park we got toilet paper hanging in the trees that public restroom that open nature public restroom over there that nobody wants to do anything about the public restroom committee hasn't met in over a year since they were created and yet this transit center bathrooms are still closed an hour and a half or two and a half hours during the middle of the day in violation of the lease of our building so that's been brought to your attention repeatedly and Frazier has done nothing to enforce the lease with Green Mountain Transit they fix the curbs on Rialto Bridge they curbs are even worse on Langdon Street garbage overflowing on the holiday weekends stacked up two feet above the garbage cans the garbage contractor selectively choosing which cans to empty or overlooking cans and leaving them you know to overflow if you want photos of the human waste piling up in the toilet paper hanging in the trees if that'll help you you know it's $2 a photo and $2 a minute for my time to get it to you just like the game you're playing with public records later topic on the discussion enforcement quality of life enforcement the trucks that come through the diesel trucks especially but the little hot rods straight piped that should be an enforcement priority with the police department you know to run around intentionally backfire on your engine or blowing out clouds of black smoke out of your diesel is just it's toxic it's it's a public disturbance are you talking about commercial vehicles or just people's personal vehicles people vehicles designed to make a nuisance that's my two minutes I guess thank you just to address the restroom committee I know city staff put on Facebook and front porch forum calls for more applications as we discussed the restroom committee a couple meetings ago the thought was you know it goes beyond the issue of just the unhoused here so looking for members from the business community other folks in the community and hopefully get hopefully get that meeting going either late next week or the week after okay thanks anyone else in person who wants to speak okay online I see Peter Kellman with his hand up thanks Jack Peter Kellman on earlier Mountain New Street I just wanted to congratulate Mayor Watson who is unfortunately L and Connor Casey a council member on their election to the state senate and the state house respectively and I would like to urge them individually to very soon announce that they will be leaving their posts and when then I hope that this council or perhaps just the pleasure as a city manager will use whatever communications vehicles are available to explain to the public what the procedures are to fill those positions on an interim basis if any until our time meeting day when we can elect replacements thank you thanks Peter is it possible to do that also help if you put one of the microphones near one of the speakers that is serving the laptop did people in the audience not hear what I said no we heard you everyone heard you just fine except mr. Whitaker not sorry his everything he says is unintelligible to myself I will just remind everyone in attendance that the rules of procedure require a person to be recognized by the chair before addressing the council okay why don't we why don't you keep trying to get get that to work and I'll move on with the agenda while we do that we are on the consent agenda with the exception of items B and D is there a motion I'll move to accept the consent agenda with those changes I'll second any discussion all those in favor signify by saying I any opposed okay we've adopted the consent agenda now that gets us to item B on the consent agenda response to or item B which was on the consent agenda response to allegation of open meeting law violation and ADA violation uh do you want to start us off sure uh we received an allegation for mr. Whitaker violation of open meeting law and ADA violation um it was referred to our attorneys michael tarant who drafted a response and advised that um I should issue it in order to be timely and I requested that it be placed on the agenda for council ratification or overruling if you so choose the decision was drafted by mr. tarant and uh it speaks for itself it's written it was sent to the applicant uh the the person who complained I'll note that uh we'll hear more later but uh the individual has asked that we send things to attorneys and we did and now apparently we have to um get his approval for which attorney we send them to because the one we sent him to wasn't sufficient so I would just mention that before he's about to weigh in with that opinion and could you know for the benefit of the people who are here or are watching could you hit the high points of what the uh sure uh so essentially and it had to do some of it with the closed captioning that you just heard which is I'm certain the reason why it was just raised um that he alleged that we were well I'm sure he'll speak for himself and it's written in the in the decision that we had violated the open meeting law and uh by not providing closed captioning because the open meeting law was connected to ADA and the ADA required us to have closed captioning as per an FCC ruling and the opinion of the attorney was number one mr. Whitaker had no standing to bring this issue because he had not issued any personal complaint or claim to be uh harmed or in any way which of course now he's going to allege that he was uh and then secondly um that the FCC regulations do not apply to the city anyway uh and that because we have closed captioning uh for anybody watching on youtube uh that even if we went to the merits that we were providing that for a person um so presumably we can get uh hopefully we can get the closed captioning here but that's that's the crux of the issue and uh as I said uh those that opinion was drafted for me by the attorney and using his words um and I just mentioned that because of the um pretty personal and untenable email which is now a public record that mr. Whitaker sent claiming that I was being criminal and manipulative and that Jerry's kid had gone to the dark side referring to attorney Tarrant so okay thank you any comments or questions by any member of the council okay I'll recognize you to make a comment well first of all open meeting violations need to come to the body not to the city manager so your city manager is confusing a public records request on which he is the head of the agency in as if he is entitled to privately consult with the lawyer and resolve this a public open meeting law violation requires the body to meet within 10 days and address the issue and either make a finding that there is or isn't an issue but the sloppy logic and the sloppy lawyering that is evidenced in that memo and the issue related to public records related to being able to come into the place of business and view the videos of the meetings with closed captions and take a copy away that was ignored entirely so this is an example of the mismanagement of the city and the city's public records and in this case an open meeting law violation which should have brought the whole council together to address not a fate a complete attempted almost criminally to be passed through on the consent agenda so I can't make excuses for him but you can hear why this this is probably a more complex matter for another day I would suggest that you probably need to well I mean we can take it up again or some of the related surrounding issues at the public records discussion later in the agenda but I believe I spoke to Kim Cheney about it he says I think that the council is going to need to appoint a committee to do their own fact finding of issues but the way this was handled and to try to slip it through on a consent agenda without ever meeting to address the issue is was illegal and absurd if I may thank you yeah just to that point on the the open meeting the the allegation of open meeting law actually requires no response in fact it says if there is no response given within 10 days it's deemed to be denied so we could have simply not responded at all and been denied the our city attorney suggested instead so respond his advice that I issued a decision and without the council so that we gave the court a severe response and reasoning and I insisted that it be brought to the council for final ratification so that the council could approve it and it wasn't just the manager making a final decision so I appreciate there's a difference of opinion but again the law requires no response to deny a request thanks bill any any I don't see anyone else in the room who is seeking to make a comment is there anyone participating remotely who is would like to make a comment before we proceed okay is there a motion from anyone on the council Donna I'll make a motion that we deny the valet shouldn't open meeting law and that's and ratify the manager's decision yes all right is there a second second okay any discussion by members of the council hearing none all those in favor signify by saying aye aye all opposed and motions passed moving on to item d school streets closure Kurt do you want to give an overview I'm Kurt Modica public works director congratulations by the way excellent excellent choice yeah so I'm yeah just briefly just very excited for the opportunity to take the reins here with a lot of challenges for the city and the department but the excitement will wear off yeah but I'm up for it so school street school street has had multiple water leaks over the past few months we've had about five I believe five repairs on that street in the last two months so my staff has come to me and expressed concern about being able to maintain that water line throughout the winter when the frost goes in the ground it tends to further disrupt fragile piping and so we are essentially moving this forward as an emergency water main replacement we're looking at about 475 feet of pipe that will address the worst sections of the main where we've made all these repairs have had say which section that is sure yeah this is between main street and st paul street we are not going to be in the intersection of either of those streets so there's a fire hydrant that we're going to use for temporary connection points from you know between those intersections that we'll be tying into so traffic will be able to flow around cedar street to st paul have reached out to the schools they're aware and supportive of the work and provided a newsletter to the schools and they've distributed that out to the parents the drop off for for kids will be the same just a different route won't be able to turn off from main street to get to the school to the union elementary school but you will still be able to access from st paul and from cedar down school so this project we will because it kind of came on because it did come on very quickly we don't have time to do a formal bid and get this constructed before winter really sets in so we have a contractor on town hill that's doing a similar project the water main with the same diameter pipe and material so we're proposing a change order to that project in order to expedite the work school street will be closed for a month we did get a slight delay from the notice I put out we're planning to now start on Wednesday November 16th and it will go the road closure will go through you know mid to end of December depending on how everything goes we do local traffic be able to get in people that have to get in yes local traffic for residents and businesses will be maintained with some delays the sidewalks will be open for kids and pedestrians walking to school and we do plan to open the road up to traffic at night after the work day ends so obviously this work needs to be done I'm glad you're doing it as a resident of st paul street this is going to have a huge impact on our neighborhood and especially if the plan for the school pick up and drop off is st paul street is is that correct so there's three alternate routes when well what do you know what the school is going to tell people to do we provided the detour map to the school and it provided all three routes as options we didn't dedicate one street pick up and drop off is supposed to be in the same locations right right right and so if people are accessing it by coming down st paul street then instead of school street they're going to be lining up on st paul street and as it is getting in and out of school street during that pick up and drop off time is sometimes completely impossible when especially when there's snow and there's cars parked and everything so i'm not complaining um it'll be okay but i did see the letter that of notification that i assume went to people on school street um i didn't see it in my mailbox am i correct that didn't go to people on st paul street now we only did direct mail notices to school street so i would i would request that this kind of one on one notification go to school street also luma street because that's going to be highly impacted by the pickup and drop off um and you know at the at the minimum i think to let people know because it's going to have a huge impact yeah sure we can do that yeah okay thanks um any other questions or comments from members of the council was this gentleman here if there's one person here in the room why don't you come out to the microphone hello uh steve stoffer i'm uh representing uh school street 28 school street the mangy's bread thank you very much and congratulations we're happy to have you aboard and i know it's been a bear on that street for the last couple of months and let's hope this fixes it uh my main concern and concerns of some of the other businesses on school street is is not necessarily the access because i think we can work around that and that seems to be already in the plan it's more related to the uh what it says that will be notified with a notice of 24 hours for planned water shutdowns is that a complete shutdown of access to water for anything on school street for a period of time or that's you'll forgive me but my my uh i i thought that this was going to be a discussion of the of the council so i was going to listen and then chime in so thank you very much for for what you've done but uh our concern is that if we're you know it just happens to fall into our absolute busiest month of the year uh and uh our concern is that if we have water shutdowns during the day then we can't operate um and people need roles that's everybody needs roles for Thanksgiving and we're hoping to make them again this year uh so as far as the the the water shutdowns are concerned uh does that mean complete shutdown to to those buildings and those those residences and businesses on school street they should be sorry just so to be heard so we are really minimizing shutdowns by using the fire hydrants as connection points but there will be at least one time where we have to turn off each building to switch the water service over i think we can work with you um if it's not freezing we might be able to provide you temporary water um and i'm happy to talk with you offline about how we can do that yeah i i realize that it would be uh an opportunity to chat with you and add to your many other things but yeah that's something that we can we can discuss because there are other businesses that are concerned about that because they simply can't operate if they're they have no water the worst case it would be one day yeah but i think you know as long as it's not you know 20 below or something crazy like that i never know so for then we can keep water above ground we could probably uh make accommodations okay so we'll talk at at some other point then about about that if that's okay yeah absolutely thank you so much thank you for your time Kurt while you're up there um another question you're mentioning schools just happened to think of this um do you know how school buses will be coming in can they make those turns from cedar uh or how because normally they come down school too yeah they're probably coming down um from loomis we did plan to uh to block off um some of the parking along near the intersections to improve the turning radiuses for the buses so we're making accommodations so you know the school have worked out a bus plan yeah i don't know all the details but we did bring that up in our discussions um with the school and they're comfortable that they could manage with that with those alternate routes thank you so well then the school notify you and you notify residents of where the school buses are if there's a change yeah i did confirm with the school today that there is no change for the actual drop off pick up location for the buses themselves as far as the routes i don't know all the details about which way they're coming in but for the parents that won't really change um unless maybe that yeah i don't i don't have the details on the schools i just trust them to make those accommodations there was another time when the school buses had to line up way over on loomis uh and liberty actually liberty got got marked off to help the school bus flow and it was part of the construction with the playground and everything and so i just thought there was a lot of public notice that the school bus routes were changing as well as other things and so i just think it'd be helpful for them to know if that's true so maybe we can ask the school to let you let people know because it's not really yours but theirs right yeah i can speak a little about that thanks i think there's so uh my question is could you identify yourself please i'm sorry could you identify yourself yes my name is uh john bushe and i own the business at 30 school street and my question you you mentioned my access to the residents businesses and so forth what about service access such as uh fuel deliveries garbage that kind of stuff my intention is to actually use the back of our parking lot goes to the church for the every day um in and out sort of quick things but i'm a little concerned about the larger deliveries and so forth yes we can make the contributions okay again i think that's the best if i coordinate that with you directly you bet you bet okay it's not going to be terrible and just thank you for take tack on the project it's it's hopefully have that great thanks thanks Steve would it very good uh just that first block is probably 20 or 30 of the unmetered spots where people working in town park their cars all the time so i would ask that you make some other provision for unmetered some spots in one of the lots somewhere for folks to use for that month uh that's that's a key piece for people who can't go feet a meter every couple hours you're not supposed to do that anyway um but also that is this only going to be paving one stretch underneath the pipe of you know two or three feet wide or is this basically ripping up the whole street because that section that first on both sides of school street that first block the sidewalks are some of the most unsafe in the city two and a half inch trip hazards uh gaps etc and if we're contracting out and getting i'm also concerned with the timing that the asphalt plant is going to be closed by the time this construction is finished so we're going to have dirt and potholes like we've had for the last month uh till spring these are issues that weren't addressed at anything that i've read so parking sidewalks paving should be fleshed out here thank you i'm happy to address those items even um so for parking there there will not be parking on the street we did make accommodations in our plan for teachers that park there as far as the general public parking in those spots and there's a lot of other unmetered areas throughout the city but we do not plan to make designated spaces available for those uh displaced other than the teachers i did i should have mentioned that this is really um phase one of the water replacement on school street we don't it's we're going to be into the cold weather um within a month and we don't have time to do uh school street has two water mains to start with and we're replacing just the worst one so we're going to have to come back finish the work in the intersections switch all the remaining services from the second water main um and then abandon that one so a lot more work we don't have enough time to do the full scope we're really just addressing where the pipe is really failing so we're not going to pave the whole street because we have going to have more work to do next summer um the asphalt plant i've heard initially is going to close this friday and burl in but you can get um mix out of uh asphalt mix out of burlington later and then worst cases you can get it from you know other states uh you know almost through most of the winter so we will just be patching the trench for the water main we're not going to pave the whole street at this time because there's a lot more work to do and as i understand that you're not disturbing the sidewalks at all no there's no impact to the sidewalks okay thanks um peter kellman uh peter kellman my failure um i it sounds like there's a lot of information to be shared with the public because it's not just the immediate neighborhood but also all the parents of the children who go to uh the elementary school this would be a great opportunity to use this new fantastic uh newspaper a weekly newspaper that's coming out from dpw it'd be a terrific uh opportunity to explain this to the public on a weekly basis to explain first what's what you guys have all talked about here and there's almost nobody here from the public not not just to send out notices but sending out notices is important too so i just wanted to you know say that the new weekly dpw newsletter is fantastic and i hope that other committees will uh work work with eveline prim to do similar kinds of things this is a great way to let the public know what's going on thank you thanks peter um any other comments or discussion before we move to a vote okay is there a motion anybody donna certainly i'll make the motion that we approve the closure of uh school street uh any discussion all those in favor please signify by saying i i all those opposed and the motion is passed now we move to item six on our agenda um outdoor recreation and economic development um here we are yeah i think if you have a thumb drive it's probably easiest thing everyone thanks for having me um my name is alex ellsworth and i'm the marx the trees director for the city of montpellier and the reason that i'm here is because we have an item on our strategic plan that relates to growing montpellier's outdoor recreation economy and uh we're a year into that plan and this is um a status update uh to talk about what what is the outdoor recreation economy in montpellier what have we been doing over the past year and what uh lies ahead so it's a quick presentation we'll probably know more than 15 minutes and uh happy to answer questions at the end um alex just noticing the zoom is not showing yes you need to share the screen so i share here we go oh man you're all our pros at this beautiful thank you for walking me through that um so because we have a not very but slightly different council from um when i gave a presentation a little more than a year ago i'm just going to do like a lightning background on what is the outdoor recreation economy in montpellier so that we're all on the same page um there's a slide a graphic about some of the ways that outdoor recreation benefits communities um in general outdoor recreation um can be differentiated from what people think of as recreation in the sense that um it's uh recreation is like organized sports indoor indoor facilities and outdoor recreation is hiking biking skiing um things that are outside uh it's not that complicated it's as you would expect um so we um when we think about montpellier um and look at this graphic um you think about what kind of what kind of city we are we're not a resort town uh a place like stowe or killington um we're also not a place that has huge access to public lands like some places in the country or in the state do um but we are uh we do have a very vibrant downtown um we are a desirable place to work we're a desirable place to live so the ways that outdoor rec benefits montpellier um fall a lot into um really helping the main street businesses um tourism attracting businesses attracting quality employees who want to live in a place like montpellier um and then attracting you know new residents of all types young families people who want to retire here um and keeping people healthy um what is the the impact of outdoor recreation this is just a quick slide that shows a few different communities around vermont that have been studied and the benefits that they're seeing um the if you look at the column on the right kingdom trails in east berg is sort of the flagship mountain bike destination for new england um and this was from 2016 so these numbers i'm sure are quite quite different now and vastly expanded i'm sure they're well over a hundred thousand visitors at this point um seeing significant uh economic gains to that small small area uh taken a closer look at at them um you know a hundred thousand people visiting east berg and this is the kind of money that they're spending it's um you can you can imagine some of the benefits thinking back on that last slide that are being distributed pretty widely throughout the community um this is a snapshot of uh the matter of a valley economic impact study about where people spend their money when they're visiting these trail communities um so it's pretty spread between shopping uh you know eating out bars lodging that kind of thing uh and if you think about montpellier we're really well positioned to capture um the you know these these dollars that people are spending um we have a lot of things in place because of our vibrant downtown that allow us to capitalize on on people visiting our city for recreation this is a slide about sort of how we stack up against other communities um i uh if you look at the right column uh put number one i put one in the number of years we've been working on this certainly doesn't capture all the hard work that's gone in decades of developing recreation in montpellier but um we're really just one year into having a sort of focused effort on growing our outdoor recreation economy and creating the the connections and i'll talk in just a second about what our strategy is but um yeah having a focused strategy is a new a new thing for us as part of the strategic plan and um want to credit a lot of people who've helped us put that put put that plan in motion montpellier alive being a really key player um and other partners trust republic land and the state's um outdoor recreation economic collaborative um program has been great as well um i would say we're a few decades behind the communities that we're really on the cutting edge of this the matter of a valley being um you know the the marquee place and then you know five to ten years behind the people who are kind of riding the wave of outdoor recreation that has been happening not just in vermont but across the country i put tbd uh in number of users because one of the things we've done in the last year is install trail counters throughout our trail system um but that we're we're still coalescing that data into something meaningful and useful to present so next year's status update will hopefully have better numbers there um this is our trail system um this is uh i was hoping to have this map for tonight to hand out but this is just the latest mock-up of our outdoor recreation brochure that's going to be around town and in the parks we have about 20 miles of trails about half of that is multi-use um and then we have our four and a half mile recreation path that's accessible as well as the new accessible trail in montpellier in hubbard park and a new one coming out at u32 in the winter we have more we have about 25 to 30 miles of trails stretching all the way out to east montpellier that are available for nordic skiing snowshoeing and hiking um so that was the review section of the presentation this is the what have we been doing section uh these are the three strategies that we are using to try to capture um the gains of economic development through outdoor recreation um strategy number one is telling the right story um that story is that there are a lot of towns in vermont with great outdoor recreation there are a lot of towns in vermont with great downtowns there's very few towns that have great downtowns that are seamlessly connected to great outdoor recreation and that's really the place where montpellier wants to be um number two is um thinking strategically about how we invest in our trail system um going back to thinking about the strengths and weaknesses of montpellier we we are not nor will we ever be nor probably do people want to be a place like kingdom trails and that has sort of gone all in on mountain biking we are um a very family friendly destination we have great potential access to rivers and water trails um and really want to think about that connection to downtown so when we talk about how we expand our trail system those are the ways that we're trying to evaluate how we spend our resources and then number three thinking regionally uh we're a small city um like i said we don't have some of some of the same access to public lands as other places so we have to think about okay how can we connect to um places outside of montpellier we think about how do we connect to rights full reservoir how do we work together with berry or the other towns in central vermont the cross vermont trail goes right through montpellier working together with them we have other big sort of bike trails that go through town so thinking regionally is number three this is uh chart on the the next three slides will be the same format we have our recent projects on the left and projects on deck on the right um strategy number one telling the right story we've been really busy on this in the last year um trust republic land and montpellier live have been instrumental in doing things like this uh this brochure we have a new brand um up in the right uh which is called all-around adventure for downtown montpellier basically trying to capitalize on the fact that we have great recreation here but we're also within 30 minutes of multiple ski destinations and world-class mountain biking and great hiking and swimming um there's a whole new section of their website that's all dedicated to that message um and i have a 90 second teaser that's done i feel humor me will this go through to people if i click on the video should it's on the screen should maybe i could share my whole screen instead of just the video i find myself saying almost every day that i feel so lucky to live here i love having all of the amenities of a small city there's kind of everything you could possibly want and why i'm moved here because there's so much great space just love being able to walk out my front door and walk for five minutes and be in a park or to be on the path we're really really fortunate in montpellier to have accessibility at so many different points to the trails oh yes there's a huge variety of trails there's something for everybody i just love how easy it is to get here to this beautiful place there's unlimited terrain so there's plenty of places that you can go and explore on your bike there's a lot of fun adventures in montpellier anybody can do it whether you're one year old or 90 years old all of these trails are publicly available and free to anyone who wants to get out and ski there's really something for everyone look at this this is like not even five minutes from downtown you can imagine like you're completely in the wild every time i come here i'm like pinch me i can't believe this is right outside of town yeah no but i was like wait i remember this happening sorry that's really cool when i talk about outdoor exercise yeah it's really weird to watch a video like that get filmed because it looks great now but it's a lot of repetition when you're doing it so that's that's the 90 second teaser of all the videos that we made there are eight that are each a few minutes long about different modes of recreation marna valeria was our host of all the videos are all but one and they would meet at a downtown business they would talk about what they were going to do marna would meet sort of an expert in like let's say mountain biking they would meet and then they would talk about where they were going to go and then they would go do the thing and then come back and so it was great marna is a really nice person and a wonderful obviously for publicity has a huge reach of people it's great that she was willing to do that so yeah this is some of the some of the stuff we've been up to we have other projects on deck we have an adventure guide that we'll be doing next year to go along with this brochure and we have additional videos on tap and further promotion through the website so big credit to Montpelier alive for taking the taking the horns on that one here we go so number two strategic investments we had some great success in the past I expanded the timeline a little bit here to more than just the past year the past I would say three four years well the hubbard park expansion the north branch trails initiative that added three and a half miles of bike trail we've been installing trail counters we're just getting close to finishing the accessible trail in hubbard park and then I think for me what I think is one of the most valuable and meaningful programs that we've developed is our Montpelier youth conservation core which is engaging young people to actually do this work people students from mhs and from u32 who are working for us for nine weeks in the summer and and not just hiring a contractor to do this stuff but actually getting local kids involved and creating that connection to land that will hopefully you know keep them sticking around and and living here and building skills and as you can see we've been able to do it with a lot of external funding we've been successful on that front getting this stuff done without much cost to the taxpayers at least on that side projects on deck we have confluence park we have the river conservancy vermont river conservancy was able to get a three hundred thousand dollar grant to study the removal of four dams in Montpelier we talk about the future of recreation in Montpelier we really want to be looking toward the water as a as an untapped resource so the dams I think anyone who wants to recreate on the river would agree that the dams are preventing that unfortunately you know there's we need to put a lot of work into studying what's behind the dams and what would be the consequences of dismantling them partially or fully so that's where that money will go we have some money to put in a design for a whitewater park as part of confluence park in water features a number of big projects trail projects that are in design phase right now and then obviously the big one at the bottom which is the country club road site which is you know to be to be determined what happens there balance of recreation and housing we also have a number of exciting projects you know happening in town in different neighborhoods that could open up housing and conservation recreation opportunities number three thinking regionally the cross from Montrail has been busy in town building this beautiful bridge that you see in the picture they are expanding all the way out to east Montpelier and they're getting close to their goal of hooking up to the rail trail in plain field that would take you all the way to grottin state for us so when you can get from Montpelier to grottin state for us that will be a stunning adventure that i think people will want to stay in town and do that and and make that journey and we can have a whole effort around promoting that adventure we also have had a great program the last few years with onion river nordic that's sort of the theme it's very partner heavy here a lot of partners on this strategic item but onion river nordic has worked together with our department to expand the nordic ski trails throughout Montpelier east Montpelier on the country club road site former morse farm trails and and that's been a huge asset to the community this is the last slide just looking forward the you know some of the budget implications of this strategic plan item programs on the left the Montpelier youth conservation core has been really effective at getting some of this work done as as i showed on the slide before we've been really successful at funding it externally and right below that we we're putting forward a proposal to have a more of a maintenance type position to take care of some of our primary assets you know if we're building confluence park taking care of the recreation path some of the downtown areas Montpelier live wants to chip in some money to help water flowers and kind of consolidate some things that a lot of people are maybe doing on the margins of their job but try to do it a little bit better and showcase some of the key assets that we have and then looking at projects trail building is really you know where the rubber meets the road as far as bringing people to Montpelier and expanding these opportunities so we're putting some last year we put some capital plan money toward that and and yeah that's a that's a potential item on the list facing the river i would just package those together as a confluence park dam removal on water recreation i'm looking at taking opportunities there and then the country club road site so all these things are going into the sausage grinder of the budget you know as far as what what comes out and the staff recommendation is still tbd and as you all heard it's a challenging budget year but this is you know basically laying it out as far as advancing this strategic goal some of the some of the ways we would put money in and as you saw before we've we've been we've been successful at leveraging the funding that we put in with external sources too so that's the end of the presentation um and there any questions Jennifer that's great alec thank you are there any questions for members of the council yeah um that was awesome thank you um i'm a big outdoor person love to camp in the winter kind of person and i am wondering if that map is gonna differentiate which trails are good for summer which ones are good for mud season which ones are good for winter so this is a non-winter map non-winter map is there a winter there's a winter map in maybe development down the road got it okay it would be like the adventure guide is next okay in the queue behind it would be this is a snowshoe right yeah only know of a couple places so i was like ooh yeah yeah i just want to really appreciate just you've taken on the the parks and you've just grown from where jeffrey was so i really appreciate that you've been very successful keep it up thanks kerry yeah thank you for this really thorough presentation as one of the people who was not on city council before i really appreciate being you know get a little catch up that you provided so that's good um so i um i this is this may not be for you to answer i think this is probably a bigger strategic question but as we're thinking about uh the the outdoor recreation economy and we're thinking about it in financial terms we're thinking about the financial gains that montpelier can see from outdoor recreation um i'm i'm interested in more detailed concrete information about how that actually happens and um because i can imagine when i look at the at the videos which are amazing by the way incredible beautiful videos um but if we have wealthy people from out of state coming and riding their bikes and going home and maybe they spend their money on um hotels and restaurants um is that i want i want to understand better how that is an economic benefit to the entire community so the people who are not the business owners the people who don't own the restaurant and don't own the hotel um and the people whose property taxes may be going up because their property values are going up because maybe more people are coming in and so um so i'm maybe being a little i'm sounding cynical i'm not trying to be cynical but i'm trying to um to understand a little bit better how this can actually benefit um or you know how it will benefit the kind of regular everyday people who are living in montpelier you know not the ones who own the restaurants and um and we have to be careful about becoming an attraction for people to move here who bring lots of money from out of state and can pay lots of money for their housing which drives the prices up and obviously that's already happening we're seeing that happen and that's not um that's making it harder for some people to live in montpelier easier for other people to live in montpelier so so it's not really a question for you i know because you're not the economist behind this i just wanted to voice that i can say a little bit about it because i think it's a really good point um and um glad you brought it up i think that when we look about talk about our next steps especially that item number one you know telling the right story um i think we need more community input around that story um we need a lot more more public process around it i think we have developed the story with you know our staff in montpelier alive and input from nonprofits and um taking examples of other communities but i think that the the residents of montpelier really should weigh in there um and we we're hoping to be part of a federal program called recreation economy for rural communities um that does exactly that they basically give you money to engage in a planning process with the community to talk about what outdoor recreation looks like um what kind of economic development people want to see um they have paused the program so um we're you know keeping keeping an eye on it but i think the point you make speaks exactly to that which is that yeah more public input and keep pulling the thread on the sweater to talk about you know what what is this for and why yeah thank you it's a great question and some of it you answered before and one thing you didn't talk about at least i missed it were the fat bikes um and that all the new trails for the fat bikes there was a lot of data about people coming into a community and doing the trails and that they tend to stay two or three days unlike the leaf peepers that come in on buses and just leave and so i thought some of that data came from you but maybe i'm wrong yeah yeah i mean there's great data from other communities about how people spend their money when they come to a town to do outdoor recreation um and i think probably a lot of it i presented that some of that in the longer in the longer me in the longer presentation last year um and some of it would probably hold true for Montpelier but i think ultimately unless we do our own economic impact study we won't know what what the impact is on town until we do that the group that the regional planning commission was sponsoring and meeting i know i attended a couple of the remote meetings yeah with the statewide uh recreational trails and how to promote them is that still going on is an ongoing yeah yeah so there's two there's there's two programs there's a statewide program called vorac which stands for vermont outdoor recreation economic collaborative vorac is a lot easier to say than the full name um and they are focusing on helping communities capitalize on economic development through outdoor recreation and one of one of our new programs that we got with vorac funding was a regional quarterly regional meetings in central vermont so outdoor recreation stakeholders not just people like me but people like you know main street businesses and people who have more of a traditional economic development role getting together and talking about what's our strategy for central vermont you know how we work together yeah anybody else okay and i don't see any hands raised online so alec thanks a lot i think this is great this the vision is really uh you can see how this can build into the years into the future yeah thanks for having me i think he's going very far no get a different presentation uh next item on the agenda item seven emerald ash borer update john is that you all right i was i was predicting the other john uh tonight but he couldn't make it he would okay ready when you are is there a presentation for this oh you do in my capacity in this presentation is as chairman of the tree board we work very closely with parks and trees yep i'm still alec ellsworth um for those of you who have no idea which i'm sure is everybody what the parks and trees department is we are about 65 35 parks and trees so the park side i think is pretty obvious the tree side is the simplest way to explain it is if you go about 25 feet in either direction from the center line of most roads in town all the trees within that corridor are maintained by the city so our our small staff does the maintenance pruning removals planting within that area and the tree board is a instrumental community uh board that that basically assists with that work um so yeah getting back to the to the why we are here um we adopted an emerald ash borer management plan in 2018 um and this is an update on where we're at with that plan and what the next few years hold um and where the needs are so uh we'll talk a little bit about you know the past few years of of eab and and the status and what we've been doing as part of the plan and then what we plan to do moving forward um so emerald ash borer small insect that infects all ash trees um it was first found in vermont in orange in 2018 um it was estimated at that time by people who are experts in the field that it had been there for six to nine years um it was found shortly thereafter at national life in Montpelier um and because it wasn't found in a forest setting um it was just found in a tree in the parking lot um it was not clear at that time what what state you know if if it'd been been the only one or if it'd been three years or five years nine years um so um at this point because we have a few years you know it's been five years since 2018 and we've been monitoring it closely we're guessing that we're in year six to seven of the infestation um and that's great news you know it doesn't seem like it if we had been in year six to seven in 2018 I think would be in a much worse um state right now and that I guess the teaser for for this whole presentation is like um we we had a plan we've been following the plan and I think we're in pretty good shape with that plan so we should celebrate that we did that the council the staff um I feel like too often we sort of gloss over when we actually do that type of thing so appreciations all around for that um but yeah at this point we're we're likely in year six to seven of that infestation and if you look at the graph on the right it's a little blurry apologize for that um but the line shows the percentage of asteries that are dead and um the the numbers on the bottom are the years from the beginning of the infestation so we're at about the red arrow there so you can see things are start starting to get quite bad or will be quite bad here in the next couple years we might not be seeing widespread ash death in the next summer or two but yeah by uh by 25, 26, 27 people will look around at the ashtrees all over town and they will all be all be dying or dead this is not new news either we we were first appeared here in 2016 with a preparedness plan and john ecclesiac did a great job of of doing that and that plan was utilized throughout the state by other communities uh but it showed exactly this curve where once you hit you know about year eight uh it takes off like a rocket ship and they're these trees will die period they will die unless they're treated which alec will talk about in a moment um so this is the status of the ashtrees in Montpelier um we have 743 um i'm sure it's not perfect but it's probably pretty close number um thanks to the good work of the tree board and staff who do a survey of the ashtrees every year um either in the right of way or close to it um you know it could could impact the public they're widely distributed you see they're the gray dots all all on the map there um they're roughly eight percent of the street trees that we have so it's a good really significant chunk of the urban forest um most significantly uh if you look downtown every single large tree downtown is a green ash tree um literally every single one uh there's not a tree over 20 feet that is a different type of tree so and those green ash were all planted about 50 years ago so they've been there a long time and we hope to keep them long enough so that we can replace them um yeah so they're they're a really important part of our downtown streetscape underappreciated but important um john has taken some amazing photos with the heat gun that show like on what the with the temperature of the sidewalk is on a 90 degree day and what the temperature is in a bench under an ashtree on the corner of east state street and main street it's pretty amazing um so um this is what we have done um oh sorry going back to this the red dots are we had a major windfall in our plan which it wasn't in the plan but it was uh wonderful that it happened which is green mountain power Montpelier was at the top of their list of places that they were removing ash trees so they came in a few years ago and removed 200 ash trees about all over town those are the red dots um anything that would impact the lines they didn't we paid for it you know penny by penny but uh it was a huge boom to us yeah yeah I really I I shuddered to think where we would be without that work because they they did take a lot of um high profile trees yeah um so all of these items track back to the emerald ash board management plan we're treating prominent street trees that keeps them alive as long as we treat them every two to three years uh with the trunk injection um we're removing 10% of the ash in the right of way every year we've removed 77 up to this point um and plan to continue that work or accelerate it um we are planting new trees downtown to replace the large green ash and we're using a new um well it's not new but a new to Montpelier innovative technique to try to have the trees grow bigger and last longer mostly to do with replacing a bigger root area underneath the sidewalk that mostly goes unseen to everyone but the tree so the tree has a much bigger area to grow I'm getting it more water we uh have invested in staff capacity through our parks and trees program specifically in the city arborist position that really spearheads a lot of this work and we have an annual monitoring program we have a number of slow the spread techniques including a marshaling area for firewood uh for ash firewood and uh the way of something we call trap trees where we we treat we actually girdle trees that are infested and then treat them with the insecticide so that bugs are attracted to them and then get killed by the insecticide um and then we uh have created or we create added value products there's a obviously a sort of a windfall of ash which is a very valuable wood for a variety of things it's great firewood it's a beautiful wood for hardwood boards so we got a grant to purchase a mill with some matching funds from the city that will be will be using to mill some of the urban ash and so and then yeah the green mountain power program as well these are the people that are doing the work um Adam McCullough some of you may know him uh is our city arborist um there's me uh John and John Akawashik who uh gets a lot of credit for all this um I yeah seeing his praises he actually won an award on a state level for his work in Montpelier on ash uh on eab he won an award from the Vermont urban and community forestry program for I don't know what the name of it was but it was like awesome community member and he deserved it he is amazing um Joanne Garten who lives in town and works for the Vermont urban and community forestry program has been instrumental in advising us and then our parks and tree staff who do the work of actually removing these trees and treating them and many many tree board volunteers anyone you want to add there's more people but that's uh yeah um so this is uh where things stand we if you look at the plan we've basically accomplished everything except for two things one is upgrading our bucket truck to one that's more suited for urban forestry and um the other one is discussing and that would be a council discussion about a revolving loan fund to help um private resident residents with trees on private land um so you know let's say somebody has a tree on private land that could fall into the public right away um but they don't have the resources to deal with that you know what what do we do there so that's that's a conversation for further down the road after we've dealt with our own problem of the trees in the right of way and we really want to be dealing with those as soon as we possibly can and one of the things that's important to know is that though the longer you wait during the infestation the more dangerous these trees are to deal with they become very brittle and unpredictable um there's been a lot of injuries and fatalities in the arborist in the arborist industry related to eab because um you might you might do something that um you've done a thousand times on another tree and when a tree is infested with emerald ash borer just doesn't behave in the same way so much bigger branches are failing trees going in unexpected ways so once a tree is fully infested and dead your options for removal are are incredibly limited you know crane removal um dropping it from the ground if you if you have clearance which we often don't so it gets expensive quickly um that's why we're trying to accelerate our program as quickly as possible now um so those items again just like the last presentation you know we're it's all seeing the light of day and the budget process and um see see how it comes through um that's all to be determined and then um well except we've got the audio that needs to be addressed okay it's a little it's a little early why don't we take our 10 minute break and hopefully by the let's start up again um Donna I did give Alex and John a chance to think about this since we had a break but I was curious as to how long we can treat the trees and whether we have enough in the budget to maintain those trees that we've decided to treat and what they need for us to keep up with the trees as they talked about the increase volume uh yeah we can treat the trees in perpetuity in theory uh every three years uh we don't really know what's going to happen but the what it's going to do besides the bias time to plant more trees is a chance to perhaps come up with some resistant trees to have insects that are predators to the emerald aspor brought in a little wasp those are already being released in some areas we don't know whether they're sustainable or not but if we can keep them going the main benefit is that um we can we can grow the other trees around them on the street and we've seen we've seen the trees that we planted they're really taken off so that's that's good yeah and just to answer your question about resources it was uh there was an expense to tooling up to getting the right equipment to treat those trees and the right training um but at this point you know like a very modest increase to our operating budget would cover the the new program of treating these trees so it's basically a matter of buying the product and we have most of the expensive items now and the people to do it so yeah I feel I feel good about maintaining the treatment program at a very modest cost thank you yeah Connor yeah thanks so much guys you know it feels good to like uh you came in here years ago like just with this proactive approach and no it's not great but it's under control anyways what are what are other communities doing um are they in a similar spot are they taking the same steps is it is it going to be a wasteland like if you go out of town here um there's a there's a pretty wide range of response throughout Vermont um but I think it's consistent in the communities like Montpelier like if you look at Rutland or Brattleboro South Burlington they're taking a similar approach of you know a little bit of this a little bit of that using the resources they have being creative not trying to go too crazy like you know not cut all the ash trees down at one time or treat all of them I think people add credit to the state urban and community forestry program you know they've they've advised all the cities and towns on what to do and I think they have been very skilled at doing that so people are taking this very balanced approach I think Montpelier we were ahead of the curve in the sense that we had John and John to develop this plan and come to you people who had the foresight to do it um so I think we're in better shape than some communities and then there's all the rural communities that are kind of just letting their trees die and fall where they may which is not great but they're not left with a lot of options if you're East Montpelier and you have 20,000 ash trees along your road and a couple you know a couple people who do all all the road work not to say nothing of the tree work it's an insurmountable problem we had a lot of good examples from the Midwest where all this started in Michigan in 2002 uh and I grew up in Michigan and get back there once or twice a year so I got to see this happen and you'd see communities where they did nothing because they didn't know what what it was all about and literally five to ten years later every single ash tree was dead and they were falling on houses in the street in the woods there was jack straw pile um other than at some point people thought well let's cut them all down preemptively and it turned out that was a mistake because the the emerald ash bore would then jump further to the next available ash tree you cut down all of the easy ones they only travel about two to three miles a year on their own it was of course we found out moving firewood that was the big transporter they caused them in 20 years to reach all the way to here to Vermont and across the Mississippi River and um so we learned a lot from other communities early on and John uh John A just managed to grab all that and put it in a a doable format thanks so much guys yeah I just want to remember remind the council and the community when you came to us it was not a unanimous vote to put money aside because it wasn't visible it was it was gambling on a future that we were committed in a preventative mode and so I just really appreciate that happened but it also it's a challenge for the council that we do have to think ahead and and whether it's saving land or it's proactive on a disease that's coming in on our trees so I mean I remember that fight this first $10,000 was hard yeah Lauren yeah I remember having the conversation during the pandemic and the budget was so hard and we're like oh do we keep putting the money in and I think just like the the foresight and planning and the consistent modest investment to keep us where we are and like really appreciate we're on top of it and I'm sure we'll have similar discussions with the broader budget and just you know having to look ahead and make strategic investments now that might still be hard but are going to save us money in the long run and save huge problems from coming down the road so thank you for the foresight and um really keeping us on top of this I I want to observe you know like like everyone else it's it's great that we did this and got ahead of it and I think that this is really a testament testimony to the quality and the qualifications of the volunteers around the city who have volunteered to be on the tree board and many of the other volunteer boards and commissions that we have and not every city it has that resource that they can do I think this is just great um I have uh before the leaves started falling I I went around and looked at at least one or two of the trees new trees on main street and they looked like they're really quite healthy and thriving is that what you found yeah I mean it's a little early to tell in my opinion you know it's like what the saying is like the first year they sleep the second year they creep and the third year they leap so we're in the first year uh but they're alive I'll say that much you know uh and yeah if they're leaping in three years and I'll be really happy but I'm cautiously optimistic well and that's the four that we planted last year in this this new new way prior to that we we worked really closely with DPW to you may have remembered we tore up a bunch of sidewalks and uh through all this gravelly looking stuff in the holes and then poured new sidewalks and everybody's saying what'd you do that for well they gave a bigger root zone to we left the existing trees there and those trees have taken off we were losing trees after about five or six years these trees now are continuing to grow in a way that I I'm just thrilled about okay anybody else anyone online have any questions you'd like to raise okay thanks for coming in thank you all right we are up to item eight the tax and instrument financing and tax stabilization um yes that's correct mr council president and Stephanie Clark from Whitenberg our TIF consultant will be joining us he's joining us remotely while while she's setting up I did want to just report out that we did we have looked at the closed captioning and it does appear that it's possible we believe it would require a full shutdown and restart of the whole meeting to do it so we're suggesting we will do it for start it for next meeting after we can test to make sure it's working but we can try tonight if you would like us to we can't guarantee it'll work we think it will I would prefer to keep going forward tonight and I just want to let you know that we are on it okay with that uh with that I will say just by way of introduction we had listed in our strategic plan to look at our TIF and tax stabilization program and been wanting to get to this uh with the TIF program we're running up onto some deadlines with the state so it was very timely that we be taking a review at kind of what we wanted to do with it because we have to make some decisions and so I think I'm going to leave it to Stephanie to kind of lay out where we're at with the rules and regulations of TIF and the decision points we're at and what we're recommending and why and then once we finish the TIF conversation and there's really we don't really have anything specific on tax stabilization but I can explain why that's how they really so with that I'll turn it over to Stephanie I think most of you seen her also in her roles with the uh CCR project country club road project yes yes thank you well um hello counselors um and good to see you again in this capacity again I'm Stephanie Clark with Whitenberg real estate advisors and we helped put together the original TIF district in 2018 and so you've seen the memo but I'm going to do a quick recap just for anyone who is listening that didn't get or didn't see the memo but the original district was established in 2018 it identified 11 private development projects that could be stimulated by the investment of the city into seven public infrastructure projects that was a grand plan which is what that exercise is and sets out as a goal and then there was a pandemic so things changed a lot of things changed some of the projects were abandoned some of the projects changed course some of the projects ended up getting done but on a different path and we're finding ourselves in a totally new era um even just five years later not even and part of that is the construction cost environment part of that are the market conditions uh part of that is population change and population demand and the city has been exploring as you well know different economic development options and different economic development opportunities not not least of which is the country club road site and so the question uh came back to to us as the fees looking at feasibility is is the district as you have it set up today serving the purposes that the current city of hillier has for its economic development goals and the answer was no and the point of the tool is to set it up and use it prudently if you don't use it there's no penalty there's no damage done in fact it's a really good sign when a district can um acknowledge and own that it's not the right tool to be using for these projects it's not irresponsibly spending or investing poorly it's making the choice not to use the tool and in this case dissolving the district as it stands today so there's no penalty to dissolve it there has been no debt incurred there's been no infrastructure projects done to date so the district will um we spoke with epsi with the Vermont economic progress council which is the state entity that oversees the tiff district they understood our position they've approved of this process which would be that we dissolve the district you dissolve the district um with authorizing a letter to the state and then you no longer have a tiff district but it doesn't preclude you from applying in the future should there be a need for a district in another iteration you know it could be a different location it could be a different um organization of it and it will undoubtedly have different priorities and different projects in its uh sites so you can apply again in the future there is a limit to two districts per county um and so this would this would not count against that limit the one you had already it would go away so there would still be opportunities for two very hesitant district but that came before the rule um so two districts left could happen in washington in washington county and if the city wanted to reapply it would be one of those two if that makes sense just that the district you have goes away it doesn't take up a slot unnecessarily um yeah as bill mentioned we had one of the reasons this is coming up right now is that there is a there was a rule and part of the existing tiff district is that you had to incur debt before five years um before the end of five within your first first five years and that date is march 2023 and you're not going to incur debt on any project before march 2023 and again it doesn't isn't consistent with the goals so this is a good time to dissolve the district and reassess the economic development options so my recommendation is um if you take a vote tonight to sign the letter i will then submit that to bepsi with the minutes of the meeting and uh that will officially dissolve this district in its current form if i may just add a couple things to that um so in addition to the the debt deadline um there's also a total lifespan of the the tiff district of the 20 years so even if we were to incur debt in march we'd only have sort of 15 years to do that so if we were to basically if we start up a new district we start at the beginning and we have the full 20 years to to work with and the debt period and as Stephanie said you know we could conceivably um reconfigure the district so for example it does not include the country club road site currently and goes all the way down you know through downtown it's this big long district so we might want to think about that the other thing i would urge um particularly the two members of the council who are going to be working down the road next year is there's actually a proposal for what's called project-based tiff which rather than having large tiff districts um you actually have you set up a tiff specifically for a project and ideally those would not be limited to the number per town so it would be a self-sustaining kite type project and uh we're really actually we in the city are really in favor of those and there's been some pushback from the legislature i know the the community development folks at the state are also going to try to push it again this year so we're counting on at least two votes donna i like the attitude i i mean i don't think there's any question about this so i'm going to make a motion uh that we formally dissolve the city's tiff district uh with the option of reapplying in the future and then we authorize the mayor and the city manager to send the letter to the romant economic program council formally dissolving all right i i do want to have some discussion because i have a few questions but i i think you're right it's a pretty easy call to make uh stephanie i have a couple of questions um it's it's hard to see what uh the downside might be before for taking this action but i can imagine that uh one potential risk is that uh we might miss the queue because there could be two other municipalities within the county who are who want to jump in front of us and get tiff districts approved and you know i don't want to get you to do anything that would that you would feel is unethical but but you could conceivably be be developing a a plan for another town just the way you worked on it for us um is there any way of knowing if other municipalities in the county are you're very wise counselor yeah about that that that is a that is a risk so that is a risk you're right to put that um forward is a risk um as those slots could get eaten up before before you come back that being said i know of no other district in no other community in washington county that is seeking a tiff district at least not through my firm um and we do the majority of the tiff work in the state vermont um and you know i think that would be vexie is very open about districts that are pursuing tiff so it's a matter of staying in close contact too i think is a good idea um to just stay in touch and talk about economic development initiatives with them frequently anyway and therefore you know staying on top of the idea that you know if there's other communities that are looking to do tiff and maybe in that case too it's just understanding what other tools like bill had said you know project-based tiff might be the better fit anyway um so just something to keep in mind thanks i remember when you came to us a few years ago and made the presentation about doing the tiff district you were very clear that we shouldn't just go and figure out what the hell we'll do this and then hopefully something will happen it it's only makes sense to do it if we have projects that uh that we already think might might benefit the city absolutely and and to that end you know i'll just give you an example real quick which is that uh mop hillier and bennington were both approved at the same in the same time frame bennington also did not incur debt within its first five-year window and they recently went back to get approval to get an extension for another five years to be able to do the incurring of debt for the next five years and that was a strategic choice because they had they have projects that are at the ready right now that are trying to use the tool and they they were so close and they said we just need to be able to keep our district and it's exactly still the projects that we had on that list are still moving forward so for them it made sense and i think this is a wonderful example of the tool being able to be um customized to each in each municipality using it prudently for your community one other i see that there's a hand i just to add to the question of risk i guess in a in addition to the two per county there's a statewide limit and i think there's four or five i think if we if we were to give this up i think it becomes five open tiff slot statewide so it's also possible that five other communities elsewhere in the state not in washington county could take those but again we have talked to vepsey and they're not aware of any that are inactive discussion anywhere um so you know we even if one were to come in there would still be four but just so you're aware thanks were you raising your hand lauren i just want to say i mean part of the reason i guess i felt so firm about going ahead and dissolving it was we only have three months until it'll be officially dissolved anyways so i just try to do it now and be clean about it because we want to have projects in the pipeline and right now none of them are in the district that we had proposed so i think we need to do a major restructuring of any future one uh linda berger thank you i just had a question i i thought i understood stuff and you to say that um this didn't match the current economic development goals of the city so does that just mean the goals that were in the specific tiff district yes our tiff district plan at the time you know was prioritizing the downtown parking garage for example and and those priorities which um just aren't consistent at the time now thanks okay any other discussion all right it's been moved and seconded all those in favor signify by saying i i opposed the motion carries thanks stephanie welcome take good care thanks stephanie okay we're up to item nine uh discussion or presentation of uh our history of public record requests assume that's to you bill yeah i'll start to me this was requested uh under our charter which allows any resident or person actually to request an item be placed on the agenda and mr. Whitaker did so so i'll turn that over to the agenda requester okay you're up can you hear me not quite get get closer to the mic i think is uh is this one not turned on it's better so there's four categories four uh categories or issues that need to be discussed here there's timeliness of records there's fees there's access to inspection and copies and then there's transitional systems um timeliness i saw a list here at the table for the first time tonight print so small it can barely be read but it's a list of a bunch a couple of years worth of public records requests not just from me but from many people in the community and it doesn't include some of the longest outstanding requests that have still not been completed the permit conditions on city center numerous a number uh a small number of people that i've spoken to recall when city center was permitted that those restrooms would remain available to the public this this is on uh same with the parking garage would be publicly accessible uh at city center uh apparently those permit conditions uh have disappeared from the file misplaced intentionally misfiled whatever but uh numerous requests appeal to the head of the agency etc the city manager has yet to certify that the records don't exist which tells me that there's somebody's doing a favor of doing developer or suggest that somebody's doing a favor by disappearing a permit condition that that has people shitting on the streets okay it's unhealthy it's it's unethical there's a whole lot of things wrong with it but the failure to certify the non-existence of the records should be a telltale sign uh the the spreadsheets the Motorola spreadsheets i asked recently for records that were used in the application for public safety grants uh i asked for the spreadsheets that became the basis for the quoted prices that went into the grant application i was given one spreadsheet but when you hover over many of the numbers on one of the four tabs it references another spreadsheet and management basically said that's all we got tough it's like yeah but they had the numbers either on another spreadsheet in the same folder or through a web access to a vendor spreadsheet they had the numbers in order to put them into the proposal but they did not comply with the records request for the spreadsheets that are the basis for that application uh and they didn't really give a shit uh a dam about following through and complying with the law on that the body cams proposal i was told by one of the regional lead regional salespeople from axon which is the market leader which Berlin has a purpose built body cam that they had provided a proposal to Montpelier this is not the only records that are disappearing you know so the body cam proposal they claim isn't here the reason it might not be here somebody threw it away because it also included a proposal for tasers and this town has council has voted not to have tasers but the fact that that record and other records are disappearing from the public archive those are not your records to throw away you know you are obligated to maintain and preserve those records and the only way to records are allowed to be destroyed is through a approved public records retention schedule by the state archivist that hasn't happened so uh correspondence with the 911 board related to Montpelier ceasing to be a public safety answering point when we used to answer 911 calls here directly which is a revenue implication in the crisis that we're in right now subject of meetings today etc so how the correspondence related to Montpelier ceasing to be a PSAP disappears is troubling you know what whose job is it to make sure that these records are found preserved located and produced upon request i would say it's the city manager's job it is the city council's job to find out what get to the bottom of this why are we losing public records that's not allowed it's illegal um a request for records related to the veracity complaints related to the veracity or professionalism of of the police chief uh that was characterized by i basically it's attempt to cover it up you know they don't want a particular record or several records exposing police chiefs behavior to be made public so they basically say oh there's too many i'm like oh really that's a whole nother problem if there's so many records related to the veracity or the professionalism of police chief you know maybe that's news but to have the city manager you know tell the reporter linda berger that a massive public records request that shouldn't be a massive public records request that should just be what do you got on chief p whether he's been unprofessional or not you know so that would be these have not been honored the memo frazier frazier cannot be the head of the agency addressing his own appeal so i asked for the memo that he provided to the council as support for him being allowed to modify his own contract without a lawyer representing the city without a lawyer representing him that is grossly unethical from everyone i've talked to and and jack you should know that of of all things and then to act as an appeal to the head of the agency for that memo and he doesn't see a conflict and have to hand that off to somebody else is absurd so that memo i don't believe is exempt after the contract is signed you know so i mean this stuff is piling up and the fact that i'm bringing it to your attention y'all need to probably it's more complex than you're going to solve tonight but you need to take it seriously you might need to appoint i might suggest uh soliciting some interested honest public members to put work on a committee to catalog and address these issues you know kelman kim cheney somebody who's basically not afraid of y'all you know or not beholden to you you know don't stack it like you did the you know homelessness task force with people who will maintain the status quo cruiser video there's an incident where an officer gave false information related to a state law related to sleep you know laying in a car and the incident report says the video is there but then the video is missing so we have people in positions of power in the law enforcement community with access and motive to destroy public records that would implicate them and potentially get a brady letter and we're allowing this to happen uh i asked for there should have been cruiser video of incident related to my put in the toilet signs in because the chief and another officer arrived just as i went to the police station to complain um there's no video of that either i asked for the video of another person that i witnessed being harassed down in the haney lot and speaking of veracity i i was here the night that the vendor the police chief couldn't adequately describe the body camera solution he wanted so he very unusually brought a vendor in here to sit here and try to sell you his solution of the smartphone body cameras and they then issued an rfp and as that rfp was being mentioned i spoke and the council was reassured by the city manager oh well this is just in the rfp there will be for future opportunity to discuss the shortcomings of this solution after the rfp responses come in and and sure enough to deform it goes on the consent agenda to buy that solution no discussion and no none of y'all had the guts to remove it from the consent agenda and discuss it and those body cam and their shortcomings those smartphone and their shortcomings are right in the center of this issue of me being assaulted by your police chief here in the hallway after being you know illegally arrested by your colleague so access and access to an inspection of records especially the videos everyone seems to be being weasely about who owns the videos that we come from these cameras that that uh it's true an orchestra person sometimes most of the time operates the camera but those videos are relied upon by our city clerk to complete the minutes that they are a public record they're created in the course of agency business and those belong to the city and they should remain in the city's custody and control and they're not and I asked for the videos of all those zoom meetings that we've held since the pandemic and when I get a $3,800 estimate from Cameron some outrageous estimate of records that should be on a hard drive here that I could inspect them with or without closed captioning and take a copy with me on a thumb drive this is not rocket science this is sloppy management and and I'm calling it to your attention because you need to do something about it before it has to go to court so I asked for records most recently about a person a neckie employee who was reported to be he was a resident assistant in the dorms and he was reported to be discovered in people's rooms when they woke up and it raised alarms and subsequent to that time we learned that person was convicted in jail for molesting a young a daughter of uh well engaging in I'm not I won't I don't have enough of the facts but I've asked for the facts of what our police department knew and what interactions they had and I'm told that $480 so what you've done by adopting that policy remember I told you you shouldn't adopt this thing tonight on no public notice you should handle it like an ordinance hold public hearings inform the public that their rights to get public records are going to be impinged by this and you all just slammed it on through just to you know try to call it the you know Whitaker suppression uh policy uh so apparently from what I'm learning from Nordenson is that we changed from crime track software management system about 2013 to Valcor Valcor is the current records management system and he quoted $480 to do a search of one person's name in crime track they still maintain the other system because they need it there's no they didn't migrate the records so they're basically either again trying to cover up the fact that they failed to pursue this guy oh this guy since went to prison and from something I read on the web I haven't verified committed suicide after he was being investigated for the disappearance of the mother of the child that he molested so this guy may have been a murderer may have been molester and he's walking into people's rooms while they sleep here in Montpelier and it's getting reported but not hitting the press there's a problem with that and it's I've reported I told you at another meeting I reported theft of property that was mine given to me by M&M by officer long and then I went to the internal affairs officer and then I later asked him what was going on he said well I wasn't going to rock the boat I'm about to retire so this is the kind of corruption that I raised with your police review committee and they told because of the narrow mission that you gave them for the police review committee we're not going to look backwards we're only going to dream about what would be nice in the future but until you get accountability until you acknowledge the mistakes that have been made and the injustices you don't move on you've got a corrupt department the corrupt department harassing this guy sleeping in his car down in the Haney lot and you're throwing a paywall obstacle to getting the records of what was said he at least knew his rights well enough to not you know be pushed around and not volunteer information that they would distort and use against him so the only way that the city can rely on orca for maintaining maintenance and distribution and honoring public records requests for the videos of these meetings is if the city were under contract with orca paying for the service and having orca agree to maintain the storage maintain a safety storage possibly in the cloud and produce the records at the cost of duplication upon request and in accordance with public records law we don't have that and i asked for those contracts we don't have that contract so we cannot be relying on the fact that in cvpsa does the same thing you know donna refuses to record cvpsa meetings because his orca is doing it for us and i don't want to she even says on the record i don't want to have those records because then i'm responsible for maintaining them and distributing them well that's we're not cvpsa but we are a member of cvpsa so you have an obligation through your assigned representatives to that council to hold that council accountable with all due respect so i asked for body cam footage uh and this relates to the same with the cat system before we should have switched cat systems an analysis should have been done of what impact is this going to have on public records access is this going to create a financial burden for requesters if we move into a new system without migrating the records that should have been asked with the cat system it should have been asked with the body cams i asked for body cam footage and they say we don't weren't they're telling me they're not obliged to give me a copy and i'm saying you're damn right you're obliged to give me a copy that's what the state law says the requester can request to inspect or receive a copy a copy is not a link when i tried to download this thing from whatever site some third party site out there which is a risk to even click on links at third party sites it crashed the tablet i was using and frazier says oh it works on my tablet that's all we don't we don't have the records here so we're not obliged to produce them oh because we've stored the records at the vendor's site we're claiming we're not risk those aren't public records anymore we're not bound by the requirement to produce a copy of a record that's fricking twisted logic so this is the kind of flying in the face of law that happens at the discretion of the manager and i didn't suggest contract out for an attorney because an attorney a contracted attorney has an incentive to lead you into litigation which then he gets quite profit from so i said the city should have an attorney that reviews many of bill frazier's actions and stops him before he crosses over the line which he does all too frequently so a city of this size a capital city should have a city attorney so i don't know what you want to do with all that uh okay i'm gonna ask you ask you to wrap up yeah it seems like you're getting close to the end and i'd like to oh and i didn't even take half the time that the tree board took so so we can have uh some opportunity for so the person's name is fernando asturizaga and and you should be concerned with that i mean there could be other victims in our community who have learned and i've talked to people on the street both housed and unhoused and they refuse to report they are disinclined to report when somebody steals their phone or assaults them because they don't trust our police department and and i can see why if our police department steals from me assaults me you know disappears records and is learned from this council and prior that it they do that with impunity you know what kind of example are you setting that this is a town that we want to that we live in or that we don't need a police oversight body with subpoena authority to investigate that because that body that body would have the guts to do what y'all don't do which is your obligation so that's most of my notes that came to mind there are other examples but that's enough for you to get started on and realize the magnitude of this issue okay thank you any questions from memory any members of the council okay i i will just make an observation or i take it that although i know you've litigated some issues about public records or open meetings in court before i take it that you've not sued the city for any of the violations that you claim uh we've we're responsible for on these cases correct okay and i hope that y'all will do your job and my my observation is that uh there's a tremendous amount of what i would characterize as begging the question by you here and and by that i mean that you've referred on a number of occasions in your testimony to records that were not given to you that you believe because of some rumor that you've heard from somebody that those records exist but you do not actually have any evidence that those records ever existed for instance the correct for instance the permit conditions at the city center building they were reported in the press and that you apparently have heard rumors a couple you said that a couple of people have told you that those conditions existed i know that you've been offered the opportunity to go through whatever records exist in the uh in storage to see if you can find what uh what you have my obligation to find records it's the city's obligation to produce them that's a very important point only if they exist only if they yes but if they exist it is the city's obligation to be able to locate them in a time efficient manner of a sloppy file a system is not supported by case law to be grounds for charging fees well you're assuming that they exist um they why wouldn't the city manager certify they don't exist because he knew he destroyed them now is there uh and you're undoubtedly aware that the uh city center building was was not done during the tenure of the current city manager yes um does anyone else have any uh comments or questions to the witness or any uh action they want to propose the city take in response to what we've been presented tonight okay we'll move on to the next agenda item thank you classic next i hope the voters hold y'all accountable next item on the agenda is uh the request from uh councillor bait about the cvpsa thank you central mont public safety authority is holding its public hearing on a proposed three-year budget tomorrow night uh november 10th and the initial draft can change radically we they're going to be making a decision right prior to the public hearing they're having a regular board meeting to discuss the budget when we left october meeting they were talking about putting enough money in the budget to hire an executive director and even if we did it as a contract and not an employee as an employee it was costing us part time over a hundred thousand dollars and we that also included a very small single room we rented with a phone so but with a subcontractor instead of an employee we got the cost down to around seventy thousand dollars but then they also talked about a cad which also um stevens mentioned a couple times and a cat stand for a cat is a computer aided dispatch system and it means you not only in one communication channel you have your staff you have pictures of where your vehicles are it's very holistic comprehensive for the dispatcher to have a handle on everybody through one channel as well as everybody else knows where things are going on instead of right now people are on or have to come in at different times information is not readily available and it's very expensive uh tell of eight when they did our need assessment report that came out in august in 2021 estimated the cost for barry and mont have a cad system was around seven hundred fifty thousand dollars now uh joe's ellsworth at barry said there's some other ways of getting the cad system that's less costly but it's a major capital venture and so for this year the proposal is to put a consultant fee in to work on the cad system to work on what would work and and how uh do like an rfp for equipment just just we call brush out that approach and so with that we would be putting into the ballot for march uh somewhere between a hundred thousand one hundred fifty thousand dollar request now it's just for mont pilier and then no for both cities okay for both cities so if it was a hundred a hundred thousand dollars then it would be fifty three thousand dollars on from barry and forty seven thousand dollars from mont pilier and so the board has requested that and so the draft budget includes that option and i think during the discussion whether or not they stay on wanting to have an executive director uh i think with the price of the cad it's likely that you put off but i think they would want to have some consultant on board because the one thing the public safety authority has done well is both training for dispatchers and equipment and so i think that they would want to be putting that out there whether it's the next year like right now would be at f y twenty five twenty six but anyway that's what they were looking at down the road and so my request is i want to pause from the council and i also think perhaps that at some point the council needs to talk to your own representatives on the public safety authority about what you want them to do and what you see the role public safety authority in the near this is a three year budget so just in the next three years what you see that role to be i just didn't want to keep the public safety authority board in a vacuum we just haven't heard from the councils and what do you think we should do i don't want to spend money on an executive director uh we had one and paco was wonderful very experienced but the councils proved to us again and again they really weren't ready to succeed any kind of authority and so i think that we could possibly do some sort of an administrative staff would be nice but not an executive director quality of public safety expert and that we would work on training and hopefully develop the board to be stronger and that the commitment of barry montpellier is either stronger or we don't keep the public safety authority i think it is again it's at the point we have to make those decisions but right now i'm just dealing with the budget primarily there there was a definite crisis i would say with the public safety authority in that today i attended a hearing at the joint financial committee at the state house and within that was the response is what was going to happen with this application that montpellier did the one that we finally put in for 3.5 million dollars for all this equipment that came out of the needs assessment for the towers for all the upgrade of 1990s equipment that's sitting out there in the field that all of our far and all of our ems depend on desperately needs to be replaced and we reduced that request to 2.444 and we thought that the public safety authority department of the state was in agreement with that 2.44 request in this application but in the hearing today very clearly heard the commissioner not yet ready yes they are accepting the application it has been approved but it's been put off at least for next year and they were the department was awarded money to bring in their own expert to help them evaluate applications like came from montpellier because they feel their own staff doesn't understand the equipment and so they're going to try to better assess all the applications they're right now and we're authorized today through the joint committee to give money out to five different citizens five different um see i probably have that copy of that five different agencies and those five agencies a montpellier is like number six so we're in the phase one that would be next year not this year in that initial phase it's a much smaller request from each place a chitinna county that originally asked for a lot more is getting a smaller amount to help to help their process heartford st j much most of them are like 200,000 300,000 500,000 and they're doing that because they're p-saps which is the statewide 911 number and all the free dispatching those p-saps do for those 81 communities that get free public safety dispatching they're wanting to take them out of the state dispatchers and put them into these regional systems so if you were in a regional system that would help reduce the p-saps volume of calls because the state can't handle them they don't have enough coverage of their dispatch jobs in williston and in west minister to cover all the calls that are coming in from the towns they're doing free dispatching for so their priority this year is to fund those dispatch centers who put an application in that will serve their overload so literally they're shifting their dispatch calls onto these regional systems and are only funding the regional systems that are helping them out and i thought i think i recall that there was there's been this discussion that this free dispatch system is essentially going to go away yes and that's part of having the regional statewide regional dispatch centers is that they're finally seeing that but it's also because they're seeing a need that they can no longer do it they literally don't have the staffing it's just been overwhelmed in the volume and no town would pay if they you get it for free so right and so but so everybody is now going to be have to be paid and that's a shock to everybody's system but the legislators as well as the department of public safety are admitting that they themselves need a lot of education and we start talking equipment and towers and communication and and the expense of that they're overwhelmed and so they feel they do need to educate themselves they do need to bring in consultants to help them assess all the applications and it's interesting because they had a scope of work criteria on the applications that went into the department of which montpellier was one that put it in and they were all graded and montpellier was graded 75 which came out fifth place but because montpellier was a much higher need and doesn't displace as much volume in their p-sap it was moved to a phase one yeah that's a lot of information no this is this is helpful okay it's making sense to you I don't want to put anybody else but you can ask me well other other people will have a chance to ask questions too it's it sounds our so if the other agencies are all looking for on the level of a couple of hundred thousand we're asking for two and a half million that's because we're we're way ahead of them in the process they're still looking to study and we're ready to buy and install is that right and I believe I don't know where the chitinon county but I believe we're the only one that has done a full need assessment of our region uh chitinon county might be closer to 700 000 I I can pull up the numbers of anybody wants them uh there's a link through the state house I realized I didn't have a printed of that okay uh yeah some good information that was given to the joint committee today that was helpful anyone else have questions I want to raise this isn't really a question it's just as you're as you're thinking about this budget development um you mentioned the possibility of bringing in a contractor to work as a staff member to work as an executive director or an possibly the administrative person I would just caution the the authority against that um because there are pretty pretty restrictive laws about when you can hire a contractor and when it needs to be an employee and I don't think an executive director could ever not be an employee so that might not be a cost saving measure that's available that's what I'm just that's a great point I haven't researched I was again I'm not in favor of putting money into staff that's a great point I will definitely tell the board in between now and tomorrow I will investigate that thank you but it it seems like year after year we're in the same position of deciding are we gonna stay in the authority or completely pull the plug I know you keep hovering on the pond you know get your toes wet but you haven't jumped in but you haven't jumped out so what do you want folks I'm sorry you know go ahead please Bill do you have any expertise that you can shed on this or or now do you have knowledge whether it's done is analysis of the description of the situation is correct um I was just looking at the uh the words one of them was to Colchester which is the Chittenden County um regional and their original request was for 2.865 and it got reduced down to 757 so it wasn't that everyone was asking for smaller amounts uh we our original was 3.5 which got reduced to 2.4 also concerning that you know in the conversation um members of the joint fiscal did suggest said that they had been hearing from people about popular application and that raised concerns so that that bothered me um but you know certainly we have a public document uh that their experts are welcome to go over if they want to go over what our experts went over that's fine with regard to CVPSA budget I mean that's I think the question maybe that's on the table is I mean obviously this council can't direct anybody to do anything they're a separate agency as we've stated many times but whether we wanted to give any direction to our our two appointed reps you know my question when I saw it was what's an executive director going to do I don't know not against an executive director but there there's no agency to run there's no employees there's no anything I mean is so I think it'd be good to know what what was what both communities are paying for and so my suggestion is that we invite CVPSA in um to our December 14 meeting which is when we'll be talking about our budget anyway and have them explain what they're proposing and why and what we're getting from it and that way we can hear from everybody and have a conversation where everyone can hear the information at the same time I think City of Barrie is considering doing the same thing and inviting them in at their meeting on the 13th of December so they'd be back to back nights sound like a plan yes and in fact the public safety authorities annual meeting which is required by its charter to follow so long after its public hearing on the budget is December 19th so the 14th and 13th would work very well into that you'd have a lot of interaction between the two three groups that would be great okay anyone have any other thoughts about this and okay you heard about records requests relating that implicate this those spreadsheets that Motorola provided even without the missing numbers that appear on tab one there's over a million dollars of unfunded in that in that proposal from Motorola in the way of support network network management engineering this system has never been engineered in fact experts have told me that we should scrap the simulcast design that we applied for due to lack of scarcity of frequencies and difficulty in getting new frequencies and design a trunk radio system which allows multiple incidents to operate in different talk groups so they're not hearing each other's traffic you can have a structure fire in berry and a car roll over in northfield and all of the dispatch messages to each of those goes to them alone on a trunk system and because it's so difficult we're above the a line meaning getting new frequencies to expand a regional dispatch capacity uh requires sometimes years of work back and forth with canada uh because of the radio interference problems so um so to have the oh the other reason that Montpelier was not awarded in this is the is the governance the governance requirements of the rfp were representative governance by the served agents by the served municipalities and there's no way that even even brian pete has mentioned in several meetings that cvpsa may be the solution to that in that it is structured by charter oh by the way the charter requires an executive director it requires an annual audit this chair of has decided to ignore the charter uh and we're so glad that she'll be uh term limited out next march so we may actually get uh with dug hoit and donna off the board we may actually start to see a footing and new towns joining and quit dragging anchor there's a conflict of interest here i've raised it before montpelier generates four hundred thousand dollars plus in revenue by having a monopoly dispatch center a regional authority might choose to contract with montpelier for another couple of years while they get set up but might logically choose to create a regional dispatch center up in berlin for instance okay let me ask you a question uh was the information uh i assume that you've reviewed the uh report of the televate study i did was the information about this trunk radio system that uh that you talked about was that available to televate when they did their study and report they know about trunk radio but what they did is they basically adopted work that some of the departments had already invested in there had already been a proposal for motorola years ago for a million and a half or two million million three quarters and that was later underbid by half by uh vendor for different equipment i don't think that applies here um so they basically took a pre sketched design and decided to run with it they never did any engineering they didn't analyze i bet they'll tell you that trunk radio has its advantages but they didn't they didn't uh do the work they didn't do a lot of the work they didn't assess the structural capacity of the towers the electrical grounding of the towers you know they short changed us a lot and that's under Donna's watch uh she loves televate and i pointed out and y'all have seen my analysis of their the shortcomings of their report okay so the uh 2.4 million cut grant because engineering is not allowed from the 3.6 that we asked for plus the other million and a half that is in the motorola proposal that isn't funded anywhere starts to make this look like a very precarious and even deceptive also the Montpelier application represents that northfield is joining in and northfield's not joining in as a police department so you know there's a there's almost fraud going on once you're made aware of that you don't correct your proposal and say we no longer have northfield on board that's looking like fraud okay thank you uh chief pete thank you sir good evening members of the uh city council city manager assistant city manager brian p with the montpelier police department i'll just make it brief uh there are a host of reasons and the context to which my recommendation of a governance model um that cbpsa is that governance model uh there's a context there and and my and and so since he brought it up i said yeah cbpsa could be a governance model but in the current form it's dysfunctional it doesn't work it would have to be changed to be a a governance model um and and and long story short the biggest risk to the money that we're getting that we're looking for right now is in fact attributed to certain members within this organization because they're bringing they're muttering the waters the same folks who are avid who are as who advocated for us to to get this this uh this communications infrastructure done are now actively pushing members of the legislature to deny the this the very grant that we need so so so there's there's a lot of moving parts and mightiness and in the context it's being twisted and consorted to to meet a certain agenda depending on who he asked um the the governance model that that is not why we are not are looking at it the governance model for any of them none of that's been decided i'm on the working group for the communications uh plan as appointed by the uh the uh the governor and legislation that's not true so so all i'll just we will caution as next month there that there can be some serious questions asked but if there's any jeopardy to funding we're shooting ourselves in the foot because we have individuals who are going to members of the legislation saying that Montpelier is not ready to have this grant thank you any any questions for the chief okay well um we're we're to council discussion now can i can i clarify i i don't want to counter most of the things that steven has said about public safety authority but i i would like to make the statement clear that kim cheney was chair for two years the first two years that we lost our executive director and live without our executive director and kim cheney was chair during the year of which we initiated the need assessment and its scope of work and i became chair the last two years to try to implement it and get money for it so i just wanted to clarify that thanks and so so to clarify where we are right now well i have another question that you may know or bill you may know and that is do we have the authority as a council do we have the authority to direct uh our representatives how to vote on stuff like we've done it in the past when i was a city appointed one tom and i both were directed by council okay so we think we do and so what we have a probe the plan that you're proposing is one we should invite the authority to our meeting on the uh 14 on the 14th is there anything else you'd like from us tonight just really think about what you feel its role can be and if it can be useful but it's not something something we have to do and decide tonight no okay anything else we should talk about uh you don't need a vote to ask them to come in okay thanks donna i i rely on your expertise and your years of uh devotion to this issue uh as i think about these things thank you all right i think we're up to uh item number 10 uh proposal for do you want to go to all the others and then just end with the executive session oh yeah we should do that that's typically yep we have other business is there any other business that we haven't taken up um we're at a council reports start at this end you got her unprepared not much tonight um the only things i wanted to say were working at the polls it was great to see such great turnout thank you to the city clerk and team for a really impressive operation with as we still are um with mail-in ballots and all that working out new system so it was great to see and hopefully we can get john home soon but that is great and i know we'll have lots more time to celebrate chief peat but also just wanted to um haven't had a chance yet to express my gratitude we'll uh miss you it's really been privileged to work with you and as someone who served on the police review committee i was so grateful for the just the um proactive positive approach you took to um you know looking at our community and really looking at how we can have the best possible police department and what uh you know i was just really impressed over and over again with how we were able to have productive conversations and build on a lot of you know amazing strengths of the department and look for how we can continue to make it better and a lot of the work to kind institutionalize a lot of the practices that the department had and leaving it in even better shape than you found it and we'll miss you and wish you a lot of luck in your next but just wanted to thank you because it's really been a pleasure to work with you that's it i don't have anything other than also for chief peat um i actually have a gift here for you tonight i was hoping you would be here in person i've been to the station looking for you too so i have to see you soon um before you leave but i i wanted to publicly thank you for um taking a los angeles girl who has a very difficult and challenging relationship with the police department and um making that not a thing anymore and um i really appreciate you and i appreciate your presence in the community and i'm going to miss you um so thank you for that gift and just for welcoming me on to city council in such a good way so i have something for you but i'll give it to you at another time so that's all thank you okay i'll i'll go now i'll i'll pile on chief and say how much i appreciate the everything you've done and it's uh you you came in at a difficult time and uh you you were immediately confronted with having to have deal with this police review committee and it's uh that had the potential for being a very uh challenging activity in many many ways it was a challenging activity but the fact that you were very open and welcoming of uh of this community effort to scrutinize and question and examine what the police department does in a goal in an effort to make sure it was better and and serves a community as well as possibly could was i would say exactly what we needed in a chief and i'm i'll be very sorry to see you go um i would also want to say that again it was great working out at the polls uh yesterday i i had one one of the things that i always enjoy is at the polls and i'm check checking in voters is uh when i get to meet voters who are coming to vote for the first time and either young people who've just turned 18 had a couple of them people who are adults who've been living here all their life and for some reason they decide well finally i'm gonna get out and vote for the first time and we even i even met one person who was a brand new citizen who was voting for the first time and so it it's inspiring every time i do it um thank you to every every one of the candidates who uh who ran uh successfully or unsuccessfully it takes something to put yourself out there and you don't know if you're gonna win or not and so that but that's what what keeps our uh democracy going that's all i've got keep on the uh chief piece uh here and uh you know just just just say chief i think you came in at a time when you know it was a difficult time for law enforcement in america and it still is in many ways but the the way you put yourself out there i remember like the first time meeting you and just sort of a crowd gathering around you and uh just just having the difficult conversations when it was needed and bringing a level of like innovation and community mindedness to this job um and really leaving the place you know better than how you found it and uh i i don't think we could ask anything more we probably terrorized you quite a bit on council here uh but your professionalism was like without a doubt there and i i think what really spoke to me was talking to uh different officers on the force here and just the way they spoke about your chief and um i think that's a real testament to yourself and i said it to a reporter but the fact that you were willing to just pick up a patrol shift you know um that there was never any like you know i management you know your staff or anything you rolled up your sleeves and you did a job so i think the department you're going to is very uh lucky to have you and it's certainly our loss it's going to be big shoes to fill so thanks so much chief um as far as the election i you know i'm very tired i only had one red bull it's a bit of use a couple uh obviously want to thank other voters who came out um you know it's been a long haul run since may here and uh you know i knocked 3,500 doors and i think i really gained a different perspective in many areas of this community here and learned a lot and um you know hope to take that with me um i really want to you know call out donna um who's been a mentor since i've gone on council five years ago and uh you've taught me a tremendous amount i remember donna was like uh you know about labor you don't talk about anything else and uh that was kind of true but like i learned a lot you know and a lot of that was just sitting next to you and uh you know it was such a uh i never considered an opponent it was a an incredibly respectful you know um a competitive race and uh you know i think we were all better for for it at the end of the day but i think the world of you donna uh as well as uh the other folks who were in the race there uh gene leon uh glennie sue will and kade mccann who will be serving uh with me uh but i do want to say uh peter kelvin mentioned at the beginning of it i uh i think if my term had gone until maybe this march i may have stuck it out but i will be stepping down from council and i i think i want to take you know it's just been 24 hours i'd like to take the week to talk to my colleague city staff here and try to figure out a time to do it with the least disruption there i know we have budget coming up and everything so i just want to do it's best for the town here um but obviously i'll be serving the town in a different capacity um city government issues are very close to my heart after going through everything we've gone through together uh i'd love to stay on a lobbying committee on some capacity i'd love to stay uh i'm an unvoting member anyways on that hopelessness task force and see what trees we could shake to get the resources we need to do some of these jobs at the state level but um i really want to say all of you like you know again you're uh an inspiration to me and uh all i've learned you know on the campaign trail and with you uh hope to take that wisdom uh up to the state house as they probably throw me on fish and wildlife and i can't do anything but congratulations to the mayor as well and onward thanks so much uh well i i'm gonna um join in on the the congratulations and thanks to chief pete um i have you know i'm the newest member of city council and i have just been consistently impressed with your dedication to the town and and with your dedication to service and also with your willingness to use words like love when you're talking about police work and law enforcement and um i just don't know that we're ever gonna we're never gonna find quite the the combination of of strengths that we have in you so i will greatly miss you i appreciate your work so much um i know it's been really challenging all the way around and i appreciate you kind of hanging in there with us and um wish you all the best and in your next your next steps and i also want to congratulate everyone who who won their elections and also to those who ran in elections as jack had said it's something to put yourself out there it really is um so i was actually reelected just as the piece so thanks to people who voted for me for that um i you filed your campaign finance forms for that yeah it so this is the job i've been doing for i think about 20 years now and i have loved loved loved loved it and it's it was a big part of kind of prepping me to want to serve on the city council and to understand a little bit about how all that worked and um we did not have 15 people running on the ballot this year for justice of the peace however we had a very strong showing of write-in candidates and we had people who were running writing campaigns so i particularly want to congratulate morgan brown and rosie kruger and mark leopold who won write-in campaigns will now be joining us as uh justices of the peace and i i'm hoping that this means two years from now there will be a little bit more kind of excitement generated around running for justice of the peace and we'll have lots and lots of people who want to do it and we'll um uh talk to the the party the party committees of um of our town the progressive committee and the republican committee and the democratic committee it's not the the only way to get elected obviously but it's a good way to get on the ballot um so that's all i have thanks and jack jack thought it was going to be a short meeting uh so uh pete chief uh see i do connor and casey the same way i'm calling casey the first name part of the time um but anyway chief pete uh you're much appreciated and i'll did tell whatever's everyone else has said but also to add my experience with you dealing with the public safety authority and particularly this last application to the department of public safety uh you've really been pivotal you've really jumped in and something that's got a lot of history and you've just joined at a higher level and helped everybody so i do appreciate that and i appreciate your family going through another move uh whatever the the positives are it's still stressful so give yourself more time as you go and settle out and likewise uh just wish you well wish you well and like and i want to mention john and all the other people who helped volunteer for the election it's always a lot of work and a lot of worry and he hasn't fallen asleep here but i know he wants to but but thank you and really appreciate all the voters coming out uh it wasn't as large a turnout as we expected but it was a good turnout and as far as being a candidate in a general election i do feel like we're too partisan i really feel the two parties have a strong hold because there was very little activity there were no paper interviews paper articles once the primaries were over and i think that's a weakness uh but then that's my bias but i know that connor and kate will do a good job they definitely ran an excellent campaign uh after all he used to be managing everybody else's campaign you learn something uh and and so it means the council have a has a lot of big things happening in the future and so people out there should be thinking about do you want to run for council and really think about the issues and start showing up whether it's and it's not just the council meetings you should go to a committee meeting i went to so many committee meetings before i went to council and it really helps you and grounds you and what are your priorities so the challenge is out there for all the voters and i'm still challenging voters to call the state about housing that we really need the state to be the leaders they have the authority i call it one senator an article said the state has the money and the muscle to do housing municipals can help they've got to have leadership and they won't until voters put the pressure on so use your voices and call the state they need to deal with homeless as if it was a big flood and make people get housed thank you all right thanks uh city clerks report thank all the volunteers some boomer right here uh for all the help the other day um and thanks to everyone who came out to vote thanks to all the candidates for running we had almost exactly the same number of voters it was like 30 some i think from the last midterm election four years ago which is um almost spookily consistent but um yeah anyways thanks thanks for all the kind words and city managers report just a couple things um also thank everyone involved with the election candidates and poll workers and the clerk and everybody um we are fortunate here in vermont and mobiliar to have these things run smoothly and civilly um and it's it's it is really a nice thing i certainly would add my praise to chief peep but we'll probably be doing more of that later but i appreciate i know he appreciates the kind words that you all said uh we mentioned it earlier i was going to uh mention it tonight but we did formally promote curt modica to public works director we're very excited about that and zack blodgett to deputy public works director so that their um they as a team will be of excellent leadership at dbw we're excited about that um of course we've already promoted kelly to assistant manager we are interviewing candidates for her well still trying to present job and former job she is doing double duty i'm surprised she's still awake but for finance director next monday we hope that there's a top candidate in that group and then i am meeting with the police department members tomorrow to get their take on where what they'd like to see for the future of the department to get that piece of input before make a conclusion on how to move forward on uh filling those big shoes at the police department so that's what we're happening with our our big positions i've got some great news during this meeting actually that i found out that another way group has voted to operate an overflow shelter at christ church this winter so that's wonderful obviously we will provide them and hats off to the homelessist task force who helped push to make that happen and those members so that's great that's that's we got a long way to go but that's something that's desperately needed and let's see uh oh this is a really minor thing but in our budget schedule we had left either january 25 which is a wednesday or january 26 is a thursday as our last day as you know we've often done thursday because that's a deadline for petitions but we didn't actually make a final decision so any any preference just because we got to start posting the schedule at all i'd probably go with thursday because because then it's all right yeah okay fine then that's what we will do 26 that is and um okay um i don't forget we have one more topic right we have one more topic um item 10 a proposal for housing and conservation project and this is a motion that we'd probably go into executive session do we have a motion i'll make a motion we go in executive session to discuss the potential development of purchasing the property pursuant to one vsa section 3 17 subjects in 13 absolutely right that's what i thought and we're having the manager and and alex and alex and kelly if she'd like to join us okay and is there a second second and we're not expecting to take action afterward are we i don't think no okay we don't need to come back out and vote so that'll be the end of the meeting okay all those in favor signify by saying aye opposed okay we'll go into executive session