 call to order the regular meeting of the Manuski City Council. Please join us in the Pledge of Allegiance led by Deputy Mayor Hal Holston. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Sure. Next up we have a gender review. Are there any concerns or questions about the order of items today? Any from audience? From the public. Alright, we'll move on to public comment. This is a chance for somebody who, members of the public, who want to make a statement about an item that is not on today's agenda to come forward. I would also encourage everyone to sign in. There's a sign-in sheet in the back of the room on the podium if you have not, so that we know who is attending. Public comment? Please introduce yourself. My name is Adam Dubroff. I'm the managing partner of the Manuski Hotel Group, owner of Lot 9 at the bottom of the traffic circle. We've been working closely with the city to develop a hotel in downtown Manuski since 2014. As a matter of background, as to the purpose of me being here today, we received city council approval to develop a Lot 9 hotel in 2016, based on adherence to the master plan and the development agreement that goes with the property. The development agreement and the city support of a hotel project prior to the purchase was central, was a central part of the Lot 9 acquisition in 2014. It includes provisions for Lot 9 expansion if a hotel were developed on the site and the city agreed also to pay for transport and disposal costs of any contaminated soils from the site if needed, as well as other mutually beneficial terms. I'm here today because we are close to negotiating the land swap, exchanging Lot 9 for Lot 8 with the city. Don't know how much of this you guys know. This is the result of our joint efforts to make the land swap, which was an agreed upon change in the strategy between the Manuski Hotel Group, the city of Manuski, and the downtown redevelopment association to identify a site to build a hotel in downtown other than on Lot 9 since September 2017. This was due to a lawsuit against the Manuski Hotel Group in the city on stopping the Lot 9 expansion. Currently, we're at an impasse in our negotiation and need your guidance and support to expedite and finalize the land swap, including the development agreement, which provides consistency in the land swap transaction, which is crucial for the existing and future project debt and equity financing. A Lot 8 hotel project, half a block away from Lot 9, would deliver very similar or the same benefits of the Lot 9 hotel project. It will help stimulate the downtown economy, create approximately 20 to 25 jobs, 100 construction jobs, and increase the Manuski tax base. The Manuski Hotel Group only has requested the same terms that were part of the Lot 9 development agreement to be part of the land swap online, no more, no less. The Manuski Hotel Group has financing for the Lot 8 hotel project with Vita, the state of Vermont, Chittendon County Regional Planning Commission, and Opportunity Zone Funding for the project financing and can transfer our true-byte hilton franchise from Lot 9 to Lot 8 based on completion of the land swap and development agreement transferred to Lot 8. We can be available for a council work session, prepare a more formal presentation for the next council meeting, discussion, etc. Whatever you suggest. We'd like to complete this transaction before year-end, again, and believe all the benefits of the hotel and Lot 9 will transfer to Lot 8. And we are prepared to do whatever it takes to make this happen before Christmas, hopefully. Manuski needs a hotel consistent with the downtown culture. We need your help and support to make this happen. I'm hoping for some suggestions. Well, thank you for coming in. We have all been briefed on this process throughout the negotiations. Our city manager is responsible for negotiations. We know you've been working together. And I would urge you to continue to negotiate with her on this land swap. She will keep us surprised and give us opportunities to weigh in. We are unable to discuss this at this time, though, as it's not an agenda item. But we did add an impasse, and I have some additional materials to give you some more background on this and would like you to consider some options on how we could go forward on this visit. There are the same benefits to doing the land swap on 8 as the hotel will deliver on 9. If you would please leave those she can share with us afterwards. Thank you. Are there any other public comments? Thank you, Adam. All right. We will move on then to our consent agenda. We have for approval our city council minutes from September 16th. Payroll warrant for period 9, 8, 19 to 9, 21, 19 and warrant ending 10, 2, 19 and subsequent to pay out warrant July and August. We have an adjustment to the city engineer job description and the UPWP PCP agreement process control plan agreement. Any questions about the consent agenda? Any questions from the public hearing none? I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda. Second. Motion by Jim second by Hal. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. City update is next. Great. Thank you. So a couple of things tonight. One just a reminder that the mayor and I are hosting a commission orientation tomorrow night here in this room at 6pm. All are welcome and as council liaisons we hope you will consider joining us as well. While this orientation is specifically targeted for commissioners who have recently been appointed. It is a general overview on serving on a border commission. So encourage anyone who's interested in serving to come and participate in our orientation. Want to give you a few airport updates. So since our last meeting, the noise exposure map that the airport has drafted has been published on the BTV sound.com website. And just as a reminder that website BTVsound.com is the website that the airport maintains for all airport noise documentation, history, schedules, plans, etc. So the noise exposure map is there as is the latest draft of the noise compatibility program. Councilor Duncan and I participated in a meeting on September 19th at the airport on that NCP proposal. I think it was a very good meeting. I may share more about it. But just as an update to the public, the next hearing on that final grant proposal will be October 24th at the airport. Many of the comments that we heard from our community have been integrated into that document. So I think it's a pretty good reflection of what we've been asking for. And then the noise mitigation committee will reconvene in December to start working on the actual implementation of that grant. So growing to me in advance of actually the award of that funds, those funds with the airport to start planning our implementation plan with them. So there's a couple of updates there. I wanted to share that the pool committee is scheduled to meet on Thursday, October 17th at 6. The purpose of that meeting is the community services commission is going to or the community services department is going to be giving an update just on regular pool construction. But also as we approach building the FY 21 budget with an operations plan, we want there in there them to weigh in on hours of operation fees, programming, etc. Just want to make sure we're getting as much feedback as that on that as possible as we build that budget. So again, October 17, 6 o'clock, where is that here at the OCC. So next Thursday, October 17, 6 o'clock at the OCC for people to weigh in on pool operations for next summer. I want to give you a quick update on development review board. So the environmental court has sent back one of the permit appeals from the environmental court back to the DRB. The DRB will be holding an appeal hearing on November 5th on that main and mansion project. We, as you know, since the last council meeting, the RFP for the redevelopment of Blot 7D closed. We've received four responses to that RFP and had per the RFP timeline had interviews scheduled today with all of the respondents. I want to sincerely thank the mayor and Amy for participating in those interviews as the mayor and administrative liaison and liaison to downtown Tuske. We thought their voices at the table would be very useful. We heard some great proposals and we think there is a path forward for 470 in that group, which more to come on that, but want to give you that quick update. And then fun things going on in the city. First, thank you to everyone who came out this weekend to paint the mural under the bridge, especially Mayor La. I know you were there. It was a great event. There's great coverage on CAX and really beautifying an interesting place of our city. So thank you all who came out for that. And just a reminder that there is another day on October 12th for mural painting if folks want to participate in that. And again, that's under the Wynuski Bridge right at the bottom of the rotary. On October 16th, Wednesday, we will be going to pick the pumpkins for the pumpkin festival. So we're looking for a few more volunteers for that, ideally with trucks and trailers if people are interested. Contact Olivia Miller through the website or call City Hall for her contact information. Pumpkin carving, you know, we're trying to carve a thousand pumpkins for festival pumpkins. So pumpkin carving will be October 19th from 9 to 5 at the center. And then until 9 or starting at 9 until we finish on the following Sunday as well. So come and carve pumpkins with us. The fire department and public works will also be providing a food for that event as well. And then of course the pumpkin festival is October 25th and 26th in the rotary with the Saturday evening, 5 to 8, the community services Halloween party for our youngest neighbors. Those are all the fun things coming out for our next council meeting. Thank you. Next up we have council reports. Can I start with you now? Sure. I met recently with Nicole Mace and Julie Hubbard and we were talking about the structure of the equity council. We were unanimous in terms of it being a model that would provide expertise to various city entities and engage them around issues of equity. It was also discussed to really adopt your proposal Mayor Lott to have a real clear focus on the first year of the council. Specifically the budget process, the way in and that, and when we have our annual city council retreat. We also felt it would be great to explore applicants for the new council through the equity dialogue group that had met for several weeks and provided this idea. So that's where we are at this point with the council construction. Thank you. So on September 19th, I attended the airport commission meeting, which happened to be the same day that the F-35s arrived. There was a concerted gathering of people opposed to the basing who were there to speak during public comment, raising similar concerns that we've heard here around safety issues, damaged hearing and health impacts for children. There were some pretty specific requests made at that meeting, including second environmental impact statement for assessment. More information, unexpected afterburner use, and we need to warn travelers at the airport of potential exposure to noise. So quite a long public comment period. After that, there was a pretty short operational period discussing the expansion of taxiways and terminal rearrangements that are happening. Also just wanted to note the airport says it's being conservative in case of a recession, reducing operational revenue. So a lot of their construction and operations forecasting is on a cautious note, and there is still work on a hotel. Pretty excellent notes on the commission meeting. Definitely interesting to hear how content is discussed there. I sat around for an hour and then joined the TAC meeting with Jesse, and I would only say that many of their requests that we made as counsel relating to how funding will be prioritized, the stuff that will happen at a later date when they develop the planning and policy documents, and not specifically noise compatibility program. So there's just a need to kind of keep on that as it comes up. So that's going to happen at a future date. And just want to add that I feel very lucky that I got to go and watch Jesse do her thing and be a great advocate for our city and our residents. So thank you so much for the work that you do there because I was pretty blown away with how on it you are. So thank you. Not surprised just delightfully blown away. I'm 926. Councilor Colson and I met with residents of senior housing facility at 83 Barlow to highlight some of the major issues that we're going to be addressing over the next year, such as mean street revitalization, noise mitigation for the airport, all resident voting and financial planning. We've got a number of great questions about some of these policy level issues, but then also some operational pieces that we followed up with. Some of the input that came in was around continued parking with redevelopment. If we can provide warning of one F 35s will be flying and a clarification, some good questions around also doesn't voting that kind of highlighted some far needs for clarification around what is being proposed and what's not being proposed. Finally, and then I'll stop on this afternoon. Councilor Myers and I went to 65 Barlow and other menuski housing authority property and met with the resident there kind of a similar vein talking about some of the priority issues that are going to be coming up in front of council and just gathering some more input. We're happy to have that opportunity as well. Thank you. I also have several updates to share. First, excellent to excellent community meals. The international peace day meal put on at the senior center via St. Stevens and the women's peace initiative. Very well attended. And then also the brand community center event that North End Studios put on this kind of opening ceremonies. Also very well attended both exciting community events. I was able to attend a presentation at the senior center with the new American Nepali group that attends there on Fridays. Put on by age well Vermont and technology for tomorrow where they are assisting both of those organizations are assisting that group with getting more familiar with tech and building skills there. How the world in the world of when you see episode featuring the presentation that we saw previously on the diverging diamond interchange at exit 16, as well as the East Allen presentation that we're going to see tonight. So that is out there recorded for easy access for folks who want to check it out. Had the ribbon cutting at Casavent overlook, which is the new building on East Allen streets with mixed income housing in place. So that was really exciting being able to see that those units are open to the public and already fairly well rented out. And that we have that those new affordable houses, affordable housing units in our community. I also attended the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance meeting. We are going to see a presentation from them at a future date. The efforts that are happening in Chittenden County and in Manuski to prevent homelessness. And Jesse and I had some meetings with the new principal at the school and the teachers of the culture and community capstone class to talk about how we can support students in their learning and tie it to things that are actually happening. In the in the community. So we will continue to move forward on that. All right. On September 30th downtown Manuski hosted a small focus group of local businesses and talked to them about some of their unique challenges that they're having and how the organization can better serve them in the future. Some of the biggest takeaways that the businesses shared is a feeling that they needed more foot traffic coming into their businesses and just more people coming into Manuski in general. Downtown Manuski is also actively recruiting board members and specifically looking for members from the business community. So if anyone is interested in learning more about that or potentially joining the board, there's going to be an informational meeting on October 22nd. And you can visit downtown Manuski dot org to learn more about that. And finally downtown Manuski is also co hosting the festival of pumpkins with the city. And in the past folks have asked how they can support the festival and especially the pumpkins. So downtown Manuski is hosting and adopt a pumpkin this year, which is $5 per pumpkin or more. If you would like to donate more to the organization and you can find out more about that at downtown Manuski dot org slash Halloween. And I have nothing to report. Thank you. Moving into our regular items. Our first agenda is an event permit for the pumpkin festival. Welcome Heather Carrington and Ray Coffey. Oh, we've been talking about pumpkin festival all night and now we need to permit it. Staff has received an event permit application for the annual festival of pumpkins. For the past few years, the festival has been held in Rubbery Park. The display of approximately 1000 jack-o-lanterns lit in the park draws hundreds of community members and visitors to our downtown. So there's some of the foot traffic we were talking about. This year, the event is scheduled for Friday, October 25th through Sunday, October 27th from dusk until candles burn out. And this is the first year that the event will be sponsored and organized by the city in partnership with downtown Manuski. So staff recommends approval of the permit. And because the event is co-sponsored by the city, staff also recommends waiving the $200 Rubbery Park use fee. And I brought Ray to answer any questions about how we're doing with the pumpkin so far. I'm also going to beg you all to come roughly 25 to 50 pumpkins each. How is it taking over from the work of the season's greetings? If it's not obvious, I am no Sally Tipson. But so far, so good. I think Meredith from downtown has been awesome to work with so far. I think this adopted pumpkin piece is really cool. An interesting way to get some people engaged early and in a different way. The farmer has been great to work with. So I've been on the phone with her quite a bit recently about the lens and the wares. But yeah, we're ready to roll. I think it's going to be a lot of fun. And I'm hoping, hoping we can get everything carved on Saturday. That's my optimistic hope. But we'll see. I have a feeling we'll be back someday to do it. If we need our shoulders. If you hold up, you should be good. You don't have to look good, right? Definitely by the end of Sunday, there's some questionable techniques. Yeah, all good. Are there any questions, concerns and counsel? Any questions from the public? Cory. Cory Mack, resident on Wood North Street. What do you do with all the innards of the pumpkins? Great question. So in the past, we have taken those to local pig farmer, actually. We have not as yet been able to get said pig farmer on the phone. But we are either going to get in connection with him or work to compost those. So we'll get those into a responsibly stream channel. Great. Thank you. No problem. Any others? All right. Then I would entertain a motion to approve the event permit for the pumpkin festival and wave the rubbery perky. So? Second. Motion by Amy, second by Mike. All those in favor, please say aye. We next up have some municipal infrastructure commission appointments for approval. John National will join us. So we have some new applicants for the municipal infrastructure. And I do say we really have some exceptional folks that came forward for the commission. So we're really excited to bring them on. We are looking to appoint or reappoint our three existing members. Laura, Corey and Chris, Corey's here tonight. Those folks have agreed to go for another two year term, which is great. And then our new members, Jason Williams. We're requesting Jason's here tonight. Jason, we're looking to have him for a one year term. Timmer, to your term on the regular commission board. And then we have two alternates as well to kind of to fill out our commission. So Jerry Thorne and Peter Wernsterfer. Awesome. I assume that Jerry and Timmer and Peter are not here. Okay. Did Jason or Corey want to say anything? We all saw your presentation. I mean, as a group kind of looked over their applications a couple of the last meeting, they were all really qualified. I think we have five people and four open slots to active and two non-voting members. We wish we could have had all five. Hopefully we can engage everybody that comes in any way that they want. So I think that the selection committee had a tough choice choosing four out of those five. And you know, I think that they did a good job doing that. Awesome. Let's hear it. I also, you know, reading these applications was impressed and thought this is going to be a good group. Are there any questions or concerns from council? Any from the public? All right. So I would entertain a motion to approve all four appointments to the municipal infrastructure commission Jerry Thorne, Timmer, to Peter Wernsterfer and Jason Williams. So moved. Second. Motion by Mike, second by Amy. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Can I just, for the record, ask you to also approve the current? Yes. Thank you. Can we also approve the current members of the reappointments? Second. Motion by Jim, second by Mike. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you. Motion carries. Great job. Along that lines, we have one appointment for the planning commission for an alternate seat. Please join us, Eric. Eric, John said a high bar for you. I know, that's why I was ready. All right. Thank you very much. I'm here tonight to request an appointment of Sarah Van Rijkavorsel. Is that right, Sarah? Yes. I've been working on that all day to position of the alternate on the planning commission. Sarah has been attending our meetings regularly for the past probably four or five months, I would say, just as a citizen and has been engaged with the, with the planning commission over the past several months, we've also, we've had some of our membership change over due to people leaving the city most likely for the most part. So Sarah has, has agreed to volunteer as a member, as an alternate member on the planning commission and help us fill out our membership. We still have one alternate position available. So if anybody else is interested, but we're requesting that we, that you all appoint Sarah to that position tonight. I was also excited to have Sarah apply because she has been very engaged and has been a great addition to the discussion. Did you want to say anything? No. Any questions or concerns from council? Any questions or concerns from the public? All right. So I would entertain a motion to approve Sarah Van Reichavorsel as alternate on the planning commission. So moved. Second. Motion by House, second by Mike. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next we have a discussion item. We have Charlie Baker here from Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission to give us annual presentation. And Michael Bryan, our Winnieski representative to CCRPC. Charlie told me not to say anything. Good luck. If that's possible. You're doing a good start. I didn't ask. He offered that, which I have the same kind of reaction you did. So thank you very much for the time on your agenda. The report, I think you got in your packet. I'm just going to review that real quick. And this is really, from my view, a customer service call with the city. We're an organization that has made up all the municipalities of Chittenden County. The first page gives you a little bit of background about that makes up our board. In addition to the municipalities, how we're funded, which is a small percent from municipal dues. And then we leverage federal and state funds into our budget and into the county. At the bottom, you also see your representatives. Thank you for all of them. And Mike, who is now our chair of our board. So thank you for volunteering him to help us. You're welcome. We've got to keep him busy. And on the second and third pages are specific things that we worked on in this city of Winnieski over in FY19. So this is a report for FY19, including the main street bridge, looking at impact fees, the East Allen scoping study that you're going to hear about in a couple of minutes, some brownfields work. I'm not going to read every single one of these. The municipal rose general permit assistance, traffic counts, other general assistance to your planning department and other sections. So happy to answer any questions or take any feedback on any of that work. But I think that our staff has been working very well with your staff. So I appreciate all that professionalism here. And then on the bottom of the third, going over to the fourth page are a couple of projects that are in our transportation improvement program or also the state's capital program, including some pavement repair on the class one roads that you have and some crosswalk enhancements. And then going a little bit further is what you have in our work program in FY20, which is the phosphorus control plan that you just approved. And following up on some inspection and inventory of your storm water system. So again, happy to take any questions, feedback on any of that. The last two or three pages are things that we're doing without regard to any specific municipality, but just more generally in our region focused on our regional plan, Eco's plan implementation, legislative for building homes together. Again, I'm not going to read every single one of these, but energy planning, emergency management, some public health issues, other transportation issues, regional dispatch. And we started up the 89 study just recently. So that will be a bigger topic over the coming fiscal year or two. Happy to answer any questions or take any feedback on any of those topics. If I could just underline a couple of points. I think it's, especially for the new counselors, I want to really thank Mike for his leadership as I came on board as well. The UPWP programs which you see through grant application requests every year is something the city hadn't fully utilized. The past and Mike really advocated for us to put in some applications for that funding. So again, this is a way that we're trying to bring in funding to support scoping and other project development work in the city that's not born on the backs of our local taxpayers. And Charlie and his team, which you'll hear later on tonight have been huge partners in getting a lot of thought done, a lot of community process done in our community. So it's a huge resource and they are located here in West Canal Street. So glad to be here. It's been over 10 years since we moved our office here. And I don't know if you want to add anything. You told me that's talk. Again, I did not do that. Christine's looking at me, don't talk. No, I echo Jesse's. I mean, with John now being involved on the TAC, believe it is TAC, right? Yep. And Eric on the TAC, excuse me, one of the things we talk about is all these acronyms that we have, just TAC and TAC. So Planning Advisory Committee is the TAC. Eric's on that. John on the Transportation Advisory Committee, which is the technical aspect of the organization. And John Cho on a couple of committees. And Amy, I'm sorry, Abby is the alternate, trying to get her involved too. Who's on the Planning Commission? She's on the Planning Commission. And I should thank you for pointing Sarah to the Planning Commission. And I'll again echo Eric's saying we need one more alternate. So if anyone's out there that wants to join a fun loving group. I would just say that CCRPC for folks who don't know what you do. So there's an extensive list here. But having this resource of somebody who is thinking regionally, who is working across towns and stakeholder groups and also bringing expertise in when we don't have the staff capability is just tremendously useful. Also pretty impressed by the statistic in here. It's an 11 to 1 return on our dues investment. So can't be mad at that. That's why it's there. Are there any questions from Council? Anything you want to hear more about? I would say this. If you do have any questions, feel free to call me or Charlie anytime. I did want to ask if you were going to do another legislative forum this year. Yeah. Actually, I think the email to save the date is going out tomorrow morning. Good guess. Yeah. So I think early part of December. Yeah. We're getting that set up right now. And also the other thing that we're doing that we haven't traditionally done is communicating with all the legislators in the county to let them know that like these annual reports, they're obviously all how representing a municipality also in the legislature. So we want to make sure they're aware of what we're doing with you all. So that I think that communications going out tomorrow morning also. I also had a note. I saw something in here about elderly and disabled transit service and wanted to hear more about that discussion. So the short version is I think about a year and a half ago or so, you know, we had some conversation about could we do more? Could we look at that system? So we've contracted with United Way and there are staff that has been working in this area in the neighbor rights program you may have heard of. And so we had, we worked with United Way and Green Mountain Transit to really work with all the partners in the elderly and disabled service area to just kind of look at that service. Being Chittenden County, we don't do it the same way as they do with the rest of the state for better or worse. And I'm not sure. I think some better, some worse. So in most of the rest of the state, they have one consistent program for the entire county or region. Here we really have kind of a patchwork based on which communities kind of joined the E&D partnership maybe 20 years ago. And so it may be something we follow up on just to kind of say should we relook at how that system is structured. And there's a few dynamics that I think GMT is going to be issuing an RFP for that service which right now SSTA provides. That, you know, is nothing overly magic. I think that they do a great job at providing that service. They may do it again. But every so often GMT puts that out to bid. And then the other part of the conversation is much more municipally based which is some municipalities are partners and contribute some match to that service. Others are not. And I can't remember Wienersky's situation in that. I don't know if you contribute, if you have a line item in your budget to contribute back to that. Yeah. And so, you know, maybe a conversation that we want to have at some point about making it easier on the residents of Chitton County, particularly as they may move from town to town to have a consistent level of service which is just, and again, no judgment, but it's just not consistent level of service from town to town right now. So that's a little brief background. And, you know, I think we've been more focused on the information pieces that are available to riders and trying to get some consistent communication that's more useful. But it still has a table attached that says, you know, well, if you live in Colchester, you get X. If you live in Essex, you get Y. It's a little complicated for a resident to understand. Thanks. It's nice to hear that while still early stage that that's a conversation that's happening. Yeah. And there's some opportunity, I think, to improve that. Any other questions? Great. Thank you very much. Questions from the public first? Oh, sorry. All right. Thank you very much. Thanks for coming in. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Charlie. Thank you, Mike. On that note, our next item is the presentation of the East Allen Scoping Study. So we are going to see some alternatives that are being proposed for the future of our East Allen corridor. This is a chance for public feedback. So folks who are here now is an opportunity to, you know, share what your thoughts are in this for the project team to hear before they finalize alternative selection. Thank you. So where is it? You sit down. You sit down. So you're at the mic, please. Sorry. So this project, as Charlie mentioned, is part of the FY19 UPWP solicitation. So when we put this application in, we really had sort of three major questions in mind for this corridor. One, you know, how do we sort of improve the East Allen hoods crossing intersection? It's kind of a, it's not an ideal geometry for that intersection that comes in. And then you also have the issue with the railroad crossing that goes through there. So we really wanted to explore what are some feasible options to make that intersection easier to navigate and what are the costs associated with that. Two, how do we kind of better align this corridor with our new form-based code regulations and align with the transportation master plan? So, you know, we looked hard sort of behind the property lines on what those building massings should look like, but we need to also spend some time looking at the right-of-way and determine what are the best sort of uses for each mode of transportation with that new form-based code regulation. And then three, you know, what are some feasible sort of interim options that we can do that are sort of less expensive than a full build-out. So, you know, as you know, we've got some pretty large capital projects moving forward right now. We don't have a lot of debt capacity to take on another major project. So what are some sort of short-term things that we can do to maybe implement some of the vision of this corridor study? So that was our initial application submission request and, you know, more questions came up as we went through this study, but, you know, this is sort of the, I guess, the light at the end of the tunnel, the tail end of the scoping study where, you know, now we're presenting to the council and we're gonna present sort of advisory committee recommendations and they'll be in ask sort of at the end of this slide to give either your feedback or endorse some alternatives. So that's kind of where we're at. This project did start in 2018, November 2018, so it's been a pretty long process to get here and a lot of really great community feedback to get to where we're at. And just to add a few more sentences. While this project started in 2018, I think it's important to remember that this planning work started significantly before that during the development of the form-based code, the acknowledgement that some of the road, the right-of-way would need to change and then through the transportation master plan in 2017 as well. So this is kind of a high-level, you know, we started with the zoning, high-level transportation master plan, then into more scoping specifics about what could actually be done on the road. So you were picking that up at this point in that multi-year conversation. Great, yeah, and so that, I just want to introduce Dave Saldino. We have Erika also with BHP Jason from CCRPC and Aleini from CCRPC who've been great throughout this whole process. And now I think it's been a great scoping study just hearing all the community feedback and getting their thoughts and looking at concerns throughout the corridor. So with that, take it off to Dave to go through it. And the timing has been great with all of the activity happening on East Allen Street during the course of the study, so I think it kind of energized the discussions around what the future holds for the corridor. So I think it's the timing worked out nicely there. Let's see if this should be answered. Okay. So we're going to try to keep it fairly high-level, happy to pause or stop to answer questions or to go into detail. The idea here really just a brief overview of the project itself. John did a great job summarizing the why and the what. Touch on the purpose and needs, why we're doing the study, what we're looking to resolve. Really the meat of the presentation is around the corridor plan elements and we'll show the different alternatives that we looked at and then end with next steps. So this is the project team noted everyone on the left so far. On the right-hand side was the project advisory committee. Got some good kind of diverse viewpoints from different members from both public and private sector. So we met with that project advisory committee three times through the course of the study. This is the project study area. It's maybe a little hard to see the context, but the circulator is down here just off the left-hand side. So East Allen Street Route 15 runs across here Spring Street and the railroad tracks. So we go all the way from the circulator all the way up to Roland Court. So just past the interchange exit 15 and looking at the transportation corridor along this route. I won't read this in detail, but the idea really was to identify, was to carry forward the recommendations that came out of the gateway study and the transportation master plan to really look at accommodating all modes along the corridor, looking at this as a gateway into an escape. So looking at aesthetics and how it's perceived for those folks who are coming into town, improving mobility and safety along the corridor. Obviously as John alluded to, the intersection of Spring Street has not only is it a designated high crash location but it feels unsafe pretty much any mode that you're in if you're trying to walk through or drive through the intersection. And then looking at ways to maximize gateway development and redevelopment opportunities. The needs fall pretty much in line. So again, addressing pedestrian and bicycle accommodations, balancing accommodations for all modes. I can see safety there. Better accommodations for transit service along the route. This is a pretty high-frequent route, but there's not a lot of actual accommodations at those stops for transit users. And then addressing some of the operational issues both at either end, both at exit 15 and at the circulator as well as at Spring Street. As John noted, we kicked this off back in November and there was three advisory committee meetings through the course of the project, as well as this being the third public meeting. So we had initial local concerns public meeting in February and then an alternative presentation public meeting in June. The local concerns actually fell on Valentine's Day. We got a really good turnout. We had trace paper out and people were willing to come out and dedicate their time, which is great. So that feedback was captured and we've pulled together an actual report that's in draft form until we see where we land tonight. And then the final scoping report will get issued once we hear where we land, and we can wrap that up in the final report. So while we're looking at the entire corridor improvements along the corridor, it became pretty clear that the interest and kind of the issues were concentrated at certain locations. And so we broke out these focus areas. The ones in yellow are ones where we looked at multiple alternatives, and we'll touch on some of those. And then the two locations in red were a single alternative to show that as well. So starting with the first focus area, so we're just, we're down by the circulator. This is Barlow and Cascade Way. Some of the issues, this is the existing conditions here. You can see, we do have one crosswalk across East Allen Street here, but a missing crosswalk on this leg. We've got brick sidewalks on both sides. You can see on this side though, we've got trees and lights within the sidewalk so that minimizes the effective width of the sidewalks in those locations. The no left turn in or out does limit some turning movements, particularly those who would like to get to the parking garage, obviously, cannot do that legally. Now, we heard from a number of residents and others who are intentionally kind of bypassing this to get across to go up Barlow Street. We've got this wide expanse of pavement here and essentially an acceleration link coming out of Cascade that in an urban environment you don't necessarily need that much pavement or an acceleration link to move. It also represents a break in the bike lanes. We've got a striped bike lane back here and then it picks up off this screen. So it's an opportunity to reclaim some of that space for bike lane for bicycle usage. So we looked at three different alternatives at the intersection. And as John alluded to, we really wanted to focus on some short-term mostly striping improvements as an initial way to get some improvements and then a longer-term alternative. So in this case, the short-term alternative is this merge lane removal. So again, I'm addressing this lane here, repurposing that asphalt. And then the two kind of more intensive alternatives looked at getting rid of the triangle, splitter island, turning this into a full four-way intersection. The main difference between these two were whether both alternatives have moving the southerly curve up to be able to get a green belt in this space. The second alternative, which was the alternative that was recommended by the advisory committee, was also involved moving in the northernly curve line. And I'll show that on a graphic. Lots of information here. I'm happy to go into detail, but these will come back. The same matrix appears for each of the locations. The different alternatives are shown here as the columns. Total cost estimate, probably the one that you would be interested in most is on the top row here. So the merge lane removal or essentially restriping is a fairly low-cost item, and there is a VTrans paving project coming through in 2022 that could essentially make that almost non-existent and could be wrapped into the striping plans that go along with that paving project. The alternatives two and three are more expensive because it involves moving curve, moving some catch basins and drainage, potentially repaving the roadway, what's remaining of the roadway. So this is what the short-term recommendation, and again this is what the advisory committee had recommended to move forward with for short-term improvements. So essentially just striping out, hatching out that the merge lane, well essentially turning that acceleration lane into roughly eight foot, sorry, six foot hatched area and then a bike lane, getting the full bike lane all the way through this section. There's opportunity to put some planters or something else out in the street during the warm months to utilize that space so it's not just striped hatching. This also carries bike lanes through with the bike crossings at Barlow and Passgateway. So mostly striping here and then additional treatments or planters within the roadway if so desired. Can I ask a question? What was the discussion? Why would you start with striping? Why wouldn't you just put parking in the first place there if that's a potential pathway? We had quite a bit of conversation about that. The concern was that, or I guess the prevailing, the sentiment that won the day was the long-term solution that was recommended doesn't have parking on the south side and so the concern about providing parking or depending on when this moves forward in five years, it's hard once you provide it to then take it away. It's certainly the spaces there. It would also preclude, it would make it difficult to fit the bike lane in there as well if you were to go to full parking, long-street parking there. I see, it's not the same depth. The combination of both the bike lane and the hatching would be enough for one for a parking lane. Is there any concern about traffic congestion by coming out of Cascade Wade onto East Island instead of having that first stripe should there be more of an on-ramp to get onto East Island? If we were just looking at pure traffic flow, sure, but most intersections in the city are more like Barlow Street with more of a 90-degree turn and so we felt that this radius here accommodated some higher speeds but essentially in an urban environment you don't necessarily want people kind of gunning it around the corner at high speeds. I see, okay. It also gets the angle such that right now sometimes people, the way that they're angled, they almost have to turn 180 degrees to see behind them. This orients them so it's a little bit easier to see to your left as you're looking at oncoming traffic. So this is the long-term alternative and as I mentioned before, can't quite see the existing curb line is back here at the edge of the existing sidewalk. We've got six feet for a new green belt which could be planted with trees moving that out of the existing sidewalks along with the lighting as well. This missing crosswalk gets filled in here. We remove the splitter island here to create more of a four-way intersection, traditional four-way intersection and then also moving the curb line in six feet on the southerly side to get green belts on both sides. And again, that conversation came up. It was almost a one-for-one discussion in the green belt. So trees and other green things versus parking. In this case, the recommendation was to go forward with this enhanced landscaping and green at the arrival just as you're heading into downtown to have that buffer from the sidewalks and from the cars in that section. I got a question for you. The cast-way intersection. Is there enough visibility by a V-SAC building to see oncoming traffic? It looks pretty far back behind the building right there. It does. Yeah, this corner here. We did look at the... If you were at the stop bar, it would be... It is a difficult sight lines, but the rule is that you've got to stop at the stop bar and then you can pull ahead to be able to see before entering the traffic stream. So at this point, you most likely would not be able to see fully to the left. But you can see at the crosswalk if there's pedestrians and you can pull forward and you have a clear view to your left Does this plan or did you talk about having a flashing pedestrian crosswalk? I've walked my dog in that area a lot and I've seen people stop at that crosswalk kind of to no avail. People just drive through anyway. I just was curious if there was any discussion about a flashing light or something that would draw more attention to the crosswalks. We did talk about it. I think where we landed with this, and I'll look to others too, but this is close enough into the urban center where there was enough other things going on. The flashing beacons tend to lose their function or they don't stand out as much if you have them at every intersection and so kind of selectively placing them in places where there's higher speeds and potential for more nasty accidents if one were to occur. So there is one planned further east on here. That's not to say one couldn't go in here and we did talk about it a little bit, but we felt that the speeds here, the crossing distance was short enough, the speeds were slow enough that this would work just as is with the striped crosswalk. Yeah, and to add on to that too, there was quite a bit of discussion on that particular crosswalk, because I think a lot of people have the same issue. I've had that issue too going across there. VTRAIN has also recommended sort of a raised crosswalk to just give a little more notification of drivers so that could be something to look at. And then to follow up on the on-street parking, just to give you a little bit more information on that. So part of the on-street parking discussion, one, the parking garage is in close proximity. Two, we don't really know with those developments that are currently residential what that might look like. So we are leaving the door open so if there's a development that comes in, there's opportunity to do maybe a curb cut and add some parking spaces depending on what the development looks like. So if you have a quick stop coffee place or something where you want to provide some on-street parking, you could potentially do that down the road as well. Let's get back to Amy's question. Jim and I are at a meeting today, and that was one of the concerns about the residents on Barlow Street at the senior living places. The intersection right there, one side of traffic will stop when they see somebody, but the other side doesn't. So most people at that corner do not cross until both sides stop, which is smart. But I think by hearing from the residents, I think a flasher, if that would be implemented into this kind of plan, would be good for those folks going down to the marketplace downtown. I would say, though, with the configuration change in the narrowing of the crosswalk traffic, the experience could change on its own just because the feeling is going to be different than what it is currently. Yeah, I was just trying to figure out because you have a lot of seniors and just disabled people living in that section of town, and they tend to walk down that way to get to the resources downtown. And that was one of the questions the resident brought up today. So, food for the op. They said there was a nearby flasher that might essentially conflict for attention that's too close further upstream. I know we're going to get to that, but what part of the project was that going to be at? So, up at Manso. Not so close at what conflict, but just the repetition of seeing. How do other folks, does that feel like a really important location to have the flashing beacons? Well, I think Christine makes a good point that. With the bump out and the additional crosswalk delineation, it's sort of hard to tell, I guess, until that's bill, what the experience will be like. It is, for sure, just from a psychological standpoint as you're driving into the city. As you get to, oops, sorry, the VSAC building, you kind of have, there's a lot going on. You've got this big building that all of a sudden appears. You've got lots of traffic, there's pedestrians, and so there is a lot going on right at that location that as a driver who's new to this area is kind of taking in at that point. There's shaded there too, which I mean, you can see in the photo as well that may deter, I guess, visibility there for the driver. It is a questionable crosswalk. Especially with all the senior living in that one area, they must use that intersection quite a bit. I would guess. I don't have a fact to back that, but all of them are located right in that section of the town and resource it downtown. I know some will walk to, I mean most of them do. I know sometimes, I know Woodstock and Middlebury just stand out that have gone kind of old fashioned and they just use flags with a little PVC pipe at either side on the signs, and so you just grab the flag and it makes you more visible as you cross and you stick it in the pipe on the other side and you can use it on the way back. Middlebury has it up on Route 7 as you go through the village. It's a pretty high traffic volume. No, that is interesting because it catches your eye. Because I know the one at the rotary when people see it flashing all traffic stops now, unless someone's not paying attention. That's four lanes. That's four lanes that they do when they work, but that's an interesting point too. It would be less expensive for the city too. Way less, yeah. Good trip to Hodebo here. So now moving on. The next one is a Casavante natural area. This was one that just a single alternative to just highlighting some of the things adjacent to the parking. We've got vehicle scale lighting. Signage is a little bit hard to see for folks who aren't familiar. Not much in the way of trailhead accommodations and parking is a little bit undefined. So this is just a sketch of a way to better delineate the parking from kind of an arrival area. Also better breaking apart the parking area and kind of segregating this area out from the adjacent parking for the adjacent home. Opportunities for all kinds of things here. So an information map, some benches and stone seating areas and then some landscaping to buffer again from the street side as well. So next focus area is the Spring Streety intersection. And so we looked at primarily the intersection itself but as you can see, one of the alternatives expanded out a little bit to the west here and we'll show that as the second alternative. Here's a look at the intersection looking down the hill. Striking has changed a little bit since the photo was taken. Again, we've got kind of the high Cobrahead vehicle scale lighting. No left turn movement coming out of Wienewski. Not that there's a huge demand that's not there. I've seen accurate rail crossing. The right-of-way, so the publicly owned land is 66 feet. It's a four-rod right-of-way which falls just about at the back sides of the sidewalks which means there's not a lot of room, really no room to expand beyond kind of what's here without impacting private properties. In this location, 8 foot multi-use path we've got no crosswalk across this section of East Allen Street. This merged lane or the additional lane for folks coming off of East Spring Street. A narrow five-foot sidewalk on the side with no grass bell. And then this pedestrian crossing that is marked but a number of folks get concerned crossing here as there's some high speeds coming off of East Allen onto Spring Street. Putting that all together, we looked at a number of different alternatives. The two that kind of filtered to the top based on the advisory committee's input were the signalized option. So essentially putting a signal in at the existing, using existing geometry with a few modifications. So for example, adding in a left-turn lane with the signal now you have that ability to make that left turn. Adding in the crosswalk with pedestrian actuation, pedestrian crossing signals for each of the approaches. Carrying through the bike lane as you can see on the next slide comes through here, through the intersection coming west to east. And then the signal itself and we kept the configuration of Spring Street and Hood Street as shown there. This does have addresses traffic congestion so the existing conditions the backups are in the level service D to E range which is noticeable those who have driven through it you see the queuing and delays on Spring Street because of the difficulties pulling out onto East Allen. The signal basically gets it back to level service A so it's almost free-flow less than 10 seconds of average delay for each of the approaches. So that's the kind of straightforward signalized option. This one was a little bit outside the box and kept moving forward. I think we threw it out as wouldn't that be a crazy idea if you did this and then it seemed to make sense as we looked into it a little bit more. This is the intersection down here. This takes East Spring Street and peels it off to the west of East Allen comes across the railroad tracks at a new grade crossing past this is Wafs Deli here out into a teed intersection out on East Allen Street. We're showing here Resmont Street Parking. This does have bike lanes and one sidewalk along this length. Basically the same configuration on the left and right turn lanes of through lane each direction and left and right turn lanes. Then there's some real opportunities to do some things. This is the existing East Spring Street that can be either converted back to grass or this could become potentially public space to do something, maybe a small park or some other public use. Then we're showing Hood Street going as a cul-de-sac here the only way to exit would be to the north. There's some caveats here some major hurdles that would have to be crossed. The two biggest one being doing on Central Rail does not dole out new grade crossings very easily and so just to get in the door currently it's about $10,000 to just submit a request for a new grade crossing at which point they can just say no. There's obviously some nuanced discussions and some opportunities to look at maybe there's another grade crossing that can be scaled back or there's some other ways to pitch that we're moving some of the conflicts at this grade crossing so this one by allowing this one it smooths out traffic flow here so it's not quite as complex as the trains are crossing through this intersection. That's one if doing on Central we're to say no that basically would kill this option to get across the railroad tracks and then the other one this does have some private property impacts and so there would have to be some pretty lengthy discussions with the park. I was just going to ask you the parking lot that that stays a market taking all the parking out plus if memory serves me right is that one lot now or is that still considered two lots where it lost ellios because there used to be a house there and they filled it in and Waff bought it to make the parking lot so that I don't know if that's considered two locks still or one so if we're going to get rid of that I might have a tax impact too. You're saying the house was in between there was a house in between those two properties when Waff moved his deli there the property burnt down it was just a big sinkhole and he took it over and the reason I know is because my former boss used to be right next door and he wanted to buy it but Waff had to buy it before him and he made it into his parking lot so I don't know if that's considered one property now or if it's still considered two if it's zone I bet you I bet you it's zone for two so that's another something to think about too when you're talking about this I have larger concerns I think unless this is significantly cheaper or significantly better for traffic it's a non-starter the railroad first of all is a large challenge the right-of-way acquisitions involved here are too much and I don't see how there's substantially more benefit to this than signalizing what's already there we'll be some of the last I was going to be a little more I think the residents would go I don't think the residents would like this one at all I just didn't want to say that I don't think the residents would care for this one because there'd be two months of a change for most of the people that have been living here compared to what they've been used to and making Hood Street a dead-end street would just, I think that came up during we had several folks who lived on Hood Street and none of them had any issue with it it's an inconvenience for them because they can't get right out onto East Island but it also creates less traffic on their streets so it's kind of a positive thing but I'm with Christine I think that this is pretty cyanic from a purely operational standpoint in terms of how traffic flows they're both about the same they're both the same number of lanes speeding in, one's at a skewed angle one's perpendicular, but since they're both signalized they both operate fairly similarly if there's some way to negotiate a purchase of this piece of property here that does open up opportunities for the city not that you're looking for, you know, untaxed more untaxed parcels but that would be one of the benefits here it does also create there's a missing there's a gap in the pedestrian network kind of coming up the hill on East Springs there's no way to walk legally I guess in this section so this would allow for a sidewalk or a shared use path but, yeah I think geometry-wise like from a purely sort of planning standpoint it does untangle that intersection by pulling that street off but, you know, that's from a blank slate trying to like, you know, do a model city sort of planning exercise so the first alternative is it possible to still get a sidewalk on East Spring and make that connection I mean the roadway width is wide enough there right so could you, even if you did the first alternative could you still add that to connect those sidewalks? Up here, yeah it's pretty steep grade on that side of Spring Street which is the side that you'd want to be on to tie to the sidewalk up the hill so that's I think that's why there is no sidewalk here because it's really tough with Spring Street being there we did look at one of the alternatives was looking at making Spring Street one way only and we looked at both directions if you made it because then you could use the other lane for some kind of pedestrian use but it operationally just complicated things and then detour routes other routes people would use Barlow more so that didn't play out well we also looked at a roundabout here as another alternative which processed traffic fairly well but it's a tight fit here you know the roundabout kind of extends out generally here and you've got a steep drop off here so you have to be retaining wall it gets pretty expensive pretty quickly with a roundabout also double rail crossings at the railroad yes yes is there any concern that a signalized intersection right there would further back up traffic getting in and out of Linooski? you know depending on how the signal the way we looked at it with the signal we optimized we looked at how the signal was flowing and we didn't see extensive backups I think the summary on the slide may just have this just has the overall delay on average during the busiest during rush hour in 2039 so we projected out the 20 years looked at traffic volumes we saw it going from an F to level of service B so on average 16 seconds I don't remember I don't know if you remember any of the queuing on East Allen Street itself but it was fairly minimal from what I recall so the way that the advisory committee had recommended to you to consider this was to tentatively advance this alternative to basically going testing out the railroad to see if this is an option and then having conversations with the property owners if those were if you hit some red flags there then move back to advancing the signalized option but it sounds like you may have other thoughts on that I mean it's not up to me obviously but if you go back to that your alternative comparison slide it's twice the price it's slightly better improvement it's way more effort, way more impact I personally don't see the value in spending more time on that approach but I would definitely want to hear from others if they disagree unless they sold out land to a private developer that they're discussing instead of making it a park that could ease but I don't know I don't I think number one would be the one to go with if it was up to us I mean I think right now though the price difference is 10 grand that's 1% of the cheap cost to find out whether or not alternative 2 even has likes like that's the first piece is asking for that grade crossing and if they say no that solidifies it so I'm wondering if it's still worth spending 10 grand to find out if there is improvements in bicycle and vehicle safety that are better under alternative 2 if there is one thing level of service is one thing but if there is better safety for pedestrians if there is reestablishing or establishing new connections right now that don't exist with some of our residential neighborhoods to East Allen then that could be an improvement worth paying 10 grand to find out if we could do it or not not saying that I'm in favor of alternative 2 but it might be worth like you said tentatively looking at that and investing that small amount of money to decide what we could do but it's not just that it's also the time for their appetite for property what's the word I want I'm just joking yeah and I don't gather that that's something that they have been particularly interested in in the past as well one thing to note too that that 2.4 number does not include any property acquisition values so like if we had to purchase the WAAS parcel or any sort of permit easement work that's really just design construction so it's actually a little bit higher but she's trying to sell that property now anyway but if that happened I don't see that commercial space being there because there's no parking if someone else bought that commercial space to put a sandwich shop there where you're going to park so you'd probably be killing that and making that into a residence which I'm not even sure if it's zoning for residents right there so there's some things to think about too on that on this full cisteria number 2 I should also point out that we welcome community questions here too the question about the bike lane going east eastbound where does it end because it doesn't continue out throughout the east island so you're saying the bike lane that's out there currently it looks like it ends around Barlow maybe no it goes to Abenaki way and then converts into a multi-use path so the paved path that's on this outside which runs all the way through the interchange okay it's kind of hard to see sometimes because it kind of blends in with people's front yards and goes through the gas station driveway so it's kind of hard to tell that it's there okay should I press on we have a last slide that kind of summarizes the recommendations almost there so focus area 3 this is the 3 and 4 lane section just east of east spring street had some fun with PowerPoint graphics here because the photo that we had has changed in the last couple weeks so they're best to represent what's out there today so obviously a new building is in place here here's that path that goes along the west side here this is Manso just to orient you spring street is down at the bottom of the intersection again the right of way on both sides is just at the back of sidewalks right now we've got 3 lanes 2 in the eastbound direction 1 in the westbound direction some on street parking here a new crosswalk that's going in with the raised median so this is just a depiction of what is out there today or just about complete out there today the primary alternatives we looked at for this section were kind of short term basically not moving curbs looking at primarily just striping and then a more advanced alternative that involved shifting curbs to get some additional landscape buffers so this is the short term alternative this is probably hard to see and I think you have something that's a little bit easier to read but essentially this carries this adds in a 2 way center left turn lane so right now if you imagine you've got 2 eastbound lanes 1 westbound lane this converts this one of the other eastbound lane so at the end of the restriping you've got 1 lane in each direction a center left turn lane and then a bike lane on the westbound side on the north side of the corridor crosswalk staying here at Manso maintaining this merge this it's a little bit hard to see but the idea this assumes the way that this is configured assumes that there's no signal at spring street as of the restriping of this corridor and so the idea here is to keep a lane for somebody to turn into so they're turning off u spring turning left onto eastbound they've got a couple hundred feet here of merged lane but then they have to get down into a single lane before this crosswalk so that's how we accommodated that neck down to a single lane coming out of town in the other direction it's kind of already been addressed but the idea as you're coming from Colchester Essex you come under the interstate rather than having 2 lanes come through and then neck down to 1 which is what happens today converting that center lane into a left turn so you've got 2 left turns going on to the interstate which is really where heavy flows occur particularly in the morning so you don't have that lane drop as you come in this direction that gets you the single lane in each direction shifting the bus stops a little bit closer to where some of the primary action is on either side of this crosswalk formalizing this median here with raised curving and landscaping and carrying that curving around the front of the crosswalk to enhance the safety of that crossing so this is the short-term alternative this is mostly striping as I mentioned a lot of this could be addressed as part of the paving project in 2022 the longer-term alternative again hard to see apologize for that but this incorporates moving the curb lines on both sides to get the green belt on both sides this has a 7 foot landscape buffer on both sides still maintaining the center to a left turn lane and single lane on the eastbound direction this one does pop out to two lanes as you approach the on-ramp to I-89 which allows for pull-off for buses on the eastbound direction and the remainder stays fairly same the cost here is really all in moving curbs moving drainage and to accommodate that additional landscape buffer so what is happening with the bus stop on the other side stop traffic we did we thought that there might be an opportunity you know this again this is kind of scoping level for any of these the next level is to get into more detail design and survey and so forth there may be an opportunity to on this side of the intersection not start this island quite as soon and so keep a little bit of a little bit of width here so that's closer to where the existing transit stop is now so that there is so that that would maintain some room for the bus to stop and allow traffic to get past it and that's a good point for council and for the public is that these studies are here to inform future work this isn't saying like this is what we are going to do we have a plan for this there are many many next steps in years before any of this would be enacted but this conversation does say put this on the books is like this is what we start from later and so it does the input does matter that's a starting point question back there please have for 30 years how many vehicles travel east and west in this section every day it's 18 to 19,000 per day okay then second part of my question is how would having one travel in this direction affect congestion traffic congestion from the best that we can tell so we've done quite a bit of traffic modeling with these volumes typical rule of thumb for two lane roadway is about 20,000 cars per day so we are under that and again that's just a rule of thumb so we're under that threshold there aren't really other than a potential bus stopping there aren't really things that would be stopping vehicles as they're moving through so there's certainly enough capacity the volume here is less than what's out on Colchester Avenue or roughly the same similar conversion from four to three lanes I won't say it's congestion free but traffic certainly moves during peak hours it's really around intersections and signals where you see the capacity constraints with a single lane since we don't have signals any signals in this section where it goes down to three lanes we didn't see any issues with that you have the center turn lane so anybody who's stopping to turn left can get out of traffic if you wanted to turn into home or something you're out of traffic and cars can pass so the turning lane is the third lane that's right okay any thought about the on ramp right there with congestion because I know between seven and eight o'clock in the morning it's almost like a deadlock and if you're going to start bringing in more people coming down from Colchester onto the interstate it's usually between most times it's usually deadlock during the week Monday through Friday you're saying on the main line on the main line but now you have one lane coming on and then you have two lanes coming onto their on ramp if you're going to allow more traffic to get on the interstate that's already deadlock what's that going to do to the single lane traffic trying to get up to Colchester Essex well you know I guess just to clarify this doesn't necessarily we've got two lanes here it doesn't necessarily mean twice as many cars will go what will likely happen is that this will get less green time because you can have two cars go for every second that passes instead of just a single car so you get some more efficiencies so you can give that green time back to people coming out of town so it'll still be roughly the same number of cars getting onto the interstate they'll have to jockey for position and merge as they move up the ramp but it won't be that probably not that many more vehicles but it makes the whole intersection operate more efficiently because you can, you know, of your time that you can give green to you're giving less to these left turns and giving more to this direction so you have less backups in that direction and the interchange covered most of it in the previous slide this basically carries through with some striping carries the multiuse path through the intersection to Rowland Court a future connection to the Vermont 15 path once the alignment gets better understood and we talked about converting to two left turn lanes and then the merge lane on the access so that kind of takes us through the entire corridor what you have in front of you are kind of all of these pieces put together on the corridor to show both what a short-term and a long-term alternative would look like that's not to say that those are the right answers and, you know, this is really a for discussion or to see where you guys want to land just to summarize where the committee recommended so at Barlow and Cascade Cascade it was the short-term striping in that merge in the acceleration lane and then the more expensive of the two long-term alternatives that moves both curve lines and so that was the recommendation of Focus Area 1 as we talked about Focus Area 2 was the tentative exploration of Alternative 2, the realignment and if not then moving to the signalized option and then Focus Area 3 again striping that short-term ideally capture as part of the V-Trans paving project and then the long-term alternative looking at moving both curve lines and getting some additional landscaping in there so that's essentially the recommendations and I guess I'll leave it to you to discuss or decide. Can I first just check if there's any more public comment? Start back here. I was really hoping to see more on-street parking I was on the advisory committee went to two of the three meetings and we talked a lot about trying to get more on-street parking or at least some it's a tough balance but I'm wondering if some more light can be shed on that decision and how we might be able to look at that to see if we can bring in some on-street parking on that stretch. Yeah and I guess I can speak to that. So as I kind of mentioned earlier we did show sort of the bumped out ideal curve option where we have added green space but I think our intention was as developments come in for example like 268th development where there's a need for some on-street parking to potentially cut that curve and provide the needed on-street parking so I think with planning we would look at a sort of case-by-case development to see what the need is for any potential on-street parking. I think that all makes sense but this sort of memorializes kind of the approach to push away from that so I just think it's important as we move forward if it's possible to get some of that language in there because I think it's really important to create this walkable urban downtown to continue with the fabric of on-street parking or at least some on-street parking in this stretch so you know I would ask that we put a little more thought back into that I know it seemed like we were moving in that direction from the first two meetings you know really trying to slow traffic down this corridor we have a lot of you know property along this corridor I cross the street along this corridor a lot and anything we can do to calm traffic I think is really important so adding the on-street parking not only does it add value to future retail spaces and things like that but it also calms traffic so it's really important to me and hopefully there's a way to get that into this report so we don't forget about that just along those lines one comment that came up a couple of times was the concern that if there is no one parking in those parking spaces then it almost works in reverse that it's excess pavement and people will drive faster it's hard to say and I think it's hard for people who don't do this every day to come in and try to imagine what the future is down on buildings and you know mix uses and I think today people are having a hard time imagining who would park out there so I think that was part of the conversation as well yeah and the other big part of that too David is we're bringing in these residential developments we'd like to have retail commercial components to them but we can't support that without some on-street parking so having that availability helps to steer the development of day one towards something that's more urban something that fits a vibrant downtown a little better so we can't really wait too long on that but I completely understand the challenges of getting everything through this corridor that would be the challenge if we're going to take away from something that parking or can we get it all in there? it's only the balance so unfortunately there's never enough to fit sort of the streets gate which is usually 6 to 7 feeds for the nice tree plantings and the bike lane and the necessary sort of drive lanes which are 12 foot for the center lane and 11 foot for each drive lane and trying to get that all in a 66 foot corridor so it's always a given it's usually a bike lane in parking yeah I'll probably wrap that up though because if you're going to retail no one's going to walk up there and we're having that problem on the road or whichever you know on the road there's no street parking on that corridor going towards McKee's it's a hard place to rent to businesses because there's no back doors and there's no front off street parking right there and I think that needs to be that's a good idea I'm glad you brought that up and I will say with the new form-based code there is a requirement to have parking in the back I know that's not ideal for the quick trips in and out but the intention is that a lot of that parking will be in the back that's why all the buildings are sort of pushed up to the right away so again I think we would have to look at it on a case-by-case basis for on-street parking instead of just showing it sort of carte blanche and then removing all the green space okay Corey, you heard something? Yes, I did I didn't know what the focus was at the beginning so I actually had comments starting at the very beginning so just going to that first focus area when we were talking about the short-term and the long-term recommendations there and also kind of works into this parking discussion I think that it is possible to maintain parking there and also have some of this green space that kind of breaks up that and that can be done with like bump-outs curb extensions in those locations to kind of give you the opportunity for planting but also you know, you don't want to park right up to the intersection or anything so you need to have some amount of like a bump out or something there there was also some planters showing we can use planters like the corners and let people park in between them or something but I think that parking is really important for you know, first floor retail and also it's revenue for the city so that like each parking space you know, gets two bucks an hour which adds up over the course of a year so I think that those are good things to have so yeah, so in this situation here like I see five potential parking spaces there you know, I'm not exactly sure the widths there you know, you don't want a bike lane right next to a parking aisle so if there's room for that kind of thing I would really suggest that we have a development and in the longer term moving those curbs I don't really see the benefit of moving the curbs you know, you have the green space along the curb line which is good for like snow storage or something but I think that overall I'd rather see parking there and have that be an option for people to do and I think it's not worth the expense of moving all those curbs so questions here I didn't have much of a comment on the Casavan although there's a note about how the the existing sign is like kind of hidden and then like a new sign proposed it's kind of parallel to the roadway it's like I don't know how that would be any less hidden but it's probably good to have some sort of thought put into that parking lot for the Hood crossing intersection I'm not so quick to write off the roundabout it does seem like a lot to consider having a railroad go right through it but I think that it does have some potential to it the signalized the signalized intersection it's kind of drawn pretty simple you got to do it simply in a scoping study like this but the way that the two pedestrian crossings on the east corner there come into the railroad that's going to be a little bit of an issue how not the other previous one thank you how the two pedestrian crossings come right at that there I see that and how the curb curls into the railroad we're going to be impacting the railroad there it's not like they don't have a choice in this one I think that a roundabout is challenging but they're proven to be safer far more capacity it would be challenging for sure with a roundabout here I'm much more of a proponent of looking at this versus a roundabout versus that whole new roadway alignment like that to me is like a right-of-way nightmare, a railroad nightmare a bunch of other things not kind of about the railroad but the other thing that kind of disappeared here is that eastbound uphill bike lane how you brought that up it does kind of I guess go into that path so I guess that's what what happens here but we have the downhill westbound bike lane that's kind of showing through here and that kind of brings me into the next area when we're looking at the concept for this area we have that downhill bike lane drawn in but in the existing condition we so the down it gets complicated and it really comes down to I don't really understand how we got from the four lane condition that we had two months ago to what we have now I think that we kind of lost an opportunity here where we had like studied this whole we're doing it in the middle of the study looking at this corridor and in the middle of that study there's a decision made to almost irreversibly change the corridor and I don't really understand how we got from looking at this corridor to doing something without having this discussion first because right now there's basically where the way we put it in that curved island with a crosswalk there's no downhill bike lane anymore without moving curves which we're all trying to do this without spending as much, spending as little money as possible using a 2022 to our advantage so I, you know, I'm a little disappointed that we're here where we are now and I think that, you know, this no road, no curb relocation it wasn't really good alternative but it's kind of lost a lot of that appeal with how it kind of got developed in the interim so there's that and then also on the can I just one click or one point this, this, what's showing here does you can go account all of the you know, basic everything that's out there today is accommodated here so this does you know, take into account this has this raised island here this does have, you know, right now it's two lanes in this direction but it does accommodate the geometry that the striping could work here those raised islands those may need to be that that would be the only thing that might these islands would probably have to move to the north to be in the in the right lane as you're heading you know I guess those would not have to move because we have two lanes no, I'm sorry so this is the second eastbound lane in the center right here yeah, you dropped that eastbound lane right there so this might be a good opportunity to actually John, if you want to talk about the recent changes that remain so we we met with the developer last year when they came in with 268 East Island and you know, one of the big concerns as this project was sort of in design phase was the pedestrian safety aspect of sort of going first being one of the first big buildings on the east island corridor with the high speed traffic that's currently going through there you know, we reviewed some preliminary plans for potentially changing these lanes permanent but you know, we were cautious whether we didn't want to move ahead without kind of seeing what that looked like without you know, going through well, for them, they ended up taking out a lane for construction activities which was sort of a good pilot to see what this kind of lane configuration would look like before ultimately we would approve anything because we had concerns about what traffic queuing would do with reducing a lane you know, what kind of what that crossing would look like for pedestrians and currently we were going through the scoping study so we wanted to kind of get some data from that before we actually made a decision so you know, with VHB's work we were able to confirm you know, okay, modeling wise sort of one lane in each construction was adequate for the traffic lane capacity so that gave us sort of level of comfort for reducing to one lane but ultimately it came down to how do we provide some pedestrian safety in a short term and you know, developer came back to us a year later after that sort of construction phase work was done and we monitored it throughout that period to see what traffic flows did we worked with public safety to kind of get their input we also put it in front of we put this plan in front of the advisory committee to kind of get some feedback from VTrans you know, there was discussion on where the crosswalk was located and potentially moving that there was even some discussion about going further and doing the necking it down into two lanes with the two center turn lanes we didn't want to go that aggressive for this round but we did want to provide some pedestrian safety given we're adding residents on south side and you know, there's a new development on the north side of East Island so, you know, what's what's something we can do quickly to slow traffic and help those crossings and you know, luckily we worked with a developer that was willing to kind of basically build that out and they were the ones that funded the money to to build out this infrastructure to provide sort of pedestrian safety there so that's kind of where we were coming from to me where a developer was willing to do this work provide some pedestrian safety and you know, and it's not a cost to the city and where you'll pull out some elements from the scoping study to kind of do that and I will say there, you know, a lot of this was when we were looking at this, we also had a pedestrian fatality further up to quarter which you know, we looked at how can we improve the safety of pedestrians that's ultimately where we came down to Any more questions from the public? Decided that there were going to be parking spaces in front of the new the Casavante Overlook building Is that what the name is? The new building that's from When was it decided there would be permanent parking spaces there? So that occurred after the construction staging work so that was roughly around I think it was May 2019 And will there be commercial uses on the ground floor of that building? Or is it all residential? That is all residential Okay I have another question that's not right in this section Up in front of the gas stations in the last few days there appeared some diagonal yellow cross hatching I don't understand the middle of the road, I don't understand what that means I don't understand the beginning roughly so much where we're showing it here Those two lanes coming downhill Is that what you're talking about? Well it's right in the middle of the road There's an island there Going west where you turn your left signal on to turn into the mobile station for instance There's this big section of yellow diagonal cross hatching painted in the middle of the road now But there's now a left turn into the industrial part So it may have to do with that delineation of that left turn Does that sound right? I don't know If you're going to be turning left you can move your car into this yellow hatching and stay out of this yellow hatching I don't know what it means It's confusing to somebody like me who drives every day Okay, well I'll never mind Just a closer of the lane Yeah Can we go back and show the existing conditions I think it's just closing the lane I guess my concern earlier was that we were in the middle of this scoping process where we were evaluating this corridor as a public all gathering this doing this as a community and then it was changed Parts of this scoping said maybe it's the right answer this is the right way to go forward It was like done overnight and I love moving quick that's awesome but I don't know if it was what everybody had in mind We discussed in the beginning of this presentation a very extensive public outreach process attack and all that and I guess maybe it was confirmed with VTrans and there was some outreach outside of the public process but all of a sudden PowerPoint drawings on to show a new existing condition So I would say and Jesse John correct me if I have to speak that we did not deal with a job of communicating these changes They are also not meant to be long term It was addressing a safety concern that came up with these new developments And the fatality for sure But so they are meant to be like a short term fix for that right now and then this would still be on the table for what the future would be But I do agree that we didn't tell people it was changing We have the developer also footing the bill so why don't we just have him do what we wanted to as a community three months later or something I feel like I'm missed opportunity I think that we should moving forward whenever we make changes to the public roadway to this extent but I think that and when we're actively studying it and for that part that's something that we need to consider It definitely wasn't a popular decision because if you read front porch form like I do there are a lot of people that aren't too keen on the new changes I haven't heard any positive ones in your life but that said the ones that are negative they're not offering any suggestions but I agree with Cory it kind of you raise a process issue and I think that as my understanding city council previously delegated some authority to city manager to make these kinds of decisions about roadway reconfiguration so that was made I mean the process was followed that we as a council at that one doesn't mean it was the best communicated as you alluded to mayor I would hope that the scoping report would include that original the no alternative isn't shown no action alternative is no longer part of this presentation of leaving the road as it is so I hope that the scoping study still addresses that so that is shown and because I think I'm hopeful that that this configuration actually does lead to a lower likelihood of a person being killed crossing this road and I think that I feel okay with miscommunication if it means that someone's life is endangered but I would hope that we could still show the value of this change in light of the no true no action alternative in the scoping reports so we can see that and show that to the public as well and let me make one very important point is that traffic design road decisions, crosswalk placements changes to configuration are the purview of the city manager and staff they are not the purview of this council because they shouldn't be political decisions and so that is the proper process that they go through staff if you know these experts say this is the change we need to make then they have the authority to make that change so again we could have told people so just as the person who ultimately made that decision I think absolutely we could always have done a better job communicating this I guess from our perspective this is something that we have been talking about since 268 was originally permitted through those public hearings and then what's the number 243 across the street as well I think from our perspective and just reiterating what John said a few minutes ago we really saw the construction traffic pattern as a year long pilot to test what this safety measure would do with the community value that we've heard through the transportation master plan and the form based code zoning to slow down traffic coming through that stretch of road to really have enter a neighborhood to create some more safety opportunities some more pedestrian crossings we saw that in practice over the last year through the traffic enforcement data and the accident data we saw that it was making that positive improvement and actually we did get some positive comments about how traffic calming was working in that in the interim realignment during construction so when the developer came to us willing to incrementally move towards an improved pedestrian orientation improved neighborhood orientation we really saw that as an opportunity for the city to move quickly in an incremental way personally I don't think that decision of mine limited it or closed off any future decisions we may make as a community about what goes into that area but as we've talked about all night this is scoping that's going to take several years to reimplement and while we had a solution that was working on the street with people used to a traffic realignment we took the opportunity at no cost to the city to make that change permanent until there was another change the community decided on so that's why I made my decision absolutely we could have done a better job communicating it always lessons learned but just that's how I made that decision and Councillor Duncan is right this is a process question for the council whether you want to reopen that ordinance and reallocate that authority did I sorry no I just saw a hand just for someone who rides in the firetrucks going through that intersection I'm going to tell you around the right path to change that intersection conversations in the firetrucks to see every morning when we went through there was wow it's changed traffic actually yielded for us as we came off each spring and we often used that to get to the interstate so that hasn't been the experience for many many years we get in two lanes going up the hill and that's a racetrack you're calming it down and again traffic's yielded so that's probably four or five times I've heard that conversation for those of you who go through that intersection I'll just add to Jesse's point too so this is kind of a unique situation we don't usually have developers coming in best to do some work in the right way so as you've probably seen our typical sort of you know where city is doing the work there's a whole outreach piece that goes along with a city project that's a little more difficult to do and it's really a developer driven project and I think you know some of that is you don't always know the schedule because it depends on the contractor and whether so I you know these kind of situations I think are going to be kind of far and few between versus like our typical you know public works type projects so just added so I think the only other issue raised that we haven't really given guidance on is the on-street parking I liked the point about making sure that there's some language in there or some way to say that this can exist it did surprise me seeing these on-street parking being very important in our main street you know what came out of that study and then not seeing it here I think the point about folks not viewing that corridor as a place in need of it makes sense I personally would be a fan of showing somehow showing that that is an option here's what other thoughts are I guess my biggest concern is we have a shared use path right now and I was on-street parking work with that in that upper section of East Allen and then and I guess where does the parking go John if you had that vision of a future cut to break into what right now would be the green belt pedestrian bike or green belt pedestrian space does that mean I wrote like a routing of sidewalk along like who's providing that I guess I'm just curious if it's like case by case basis and there's actually need in the development for on-street parking it would be great to have it be only developed as on-street parking on a neat basis because then we don't presuppose the use of every single building along there needing that parking that when we could be making better use of that space some other way so does the parking end up on the public right of way how do you deal with sidewalk issue how do you maintain bike and pedestrian continuity I guess I'm just curious if that seems clear to you because it doesn't to me that's a big question I had about providing parking in that needs basis and it is tough because you I mean you can see all the sort of existing curb cuts there those lots could all get consolidated and there's only two or three big buildings but I mean I guess I could see is some curb cuts getting consolidated with you know a developer consolidating lots and then you could have some curb cuts bumped in even into you know potentially portion of that brick section which I think is like wide right now to create sort of that parking width for a car so I mean without knowing like what the development plans are it's hard to say where those kind of future on-street parking spaces would be what we're going to say to a developer who follows the suit 268 says on-street parking from my building or else I'm not in the build here we're going to say okay see you later or we're going to take down a consideration that's why I think the language in this study needs to be there because you just can't have one building with five parking spots and none or 100 feet down the road and have another one I mean it's got to have some continuity to it to make it look appealing to I mean that's got to be realistic as well it's good for one contractor I think that's what we're suggesting is that until we know what the market will bear in these areas that we leave that potential on the street I think it is a good point that the language of the final report should reflect that potential for developers but I think what we're suggesting is that intention as properties change as the future growth becomes more evident that we proactively work with folks on what those solutions might be correct yeah and I mean we can add call-outs to the plan showing you know potential on-street parking just to make it clear that anyone's looking at sort of these basis and design scoping studies know that that's something that we have in the back of our minds that needs to be accommodated that's a thought it's going to take about this but up at the upper section there are 7 foot green belts so in the future condition there is an opportunity not ideally a parking lane maybe 8 feet wide but you could probably find an extra foot somewhere but the idea is that you could you know take a bank of these so this so this is this is the 248 right here but if you needed this parking here here you know any of these could this is a 7 foot landscape buffer so you could in theory rather than put that in there at some future point that could be the parking lane it could be all of those it could be one block with the rest being bumped out in landscaped so it could fit in there at some future date and I think to John's point maybe the call-outs on the plans just say landscape buffer or parking to be determined at a future date or so and I would just be worried that this is a kind of degradation by a bunch of cuts of the form-based code vision for green a city scape with green scape if every option if the option is like you can opt for parking or if you don't then we'll put in a green bell I would worry that we could see a lot of parking opted for that may not be necessarily needed but then the result is that we've done a lot of work for gateway zoning that doesn't result in the form for approving the form-based code so that would be the one concern about making it a blanket if you want to get it otherwise it's landscaping that we need to have some sort of there has to be some achievement of the form-based code to you it's a business case scenario for it would be related to knowing what development is coming a business case scenario of like a quick stop situation like morning light baker or somewhere like that not every I mean and this is this is great we're having this discussion because these are the things we want to pin down you know as more development start coming through because these are the questions we're kind of grappling with as staff as with these developments like what is what are the criteria that is sort of the vision for this corridor any final questions that's one more kind of my new question on the north side between Barlow and there's the brick sidewalk with the trees and lights in the brick sidewalk as you pointed out which I don't think if we think about accessibility probably it's not wheelchair compatible at this point so if we don't extend the curve line we have to choose between sidewalks or green space trees basically, trees and lights or sidewalk because we can't if we don't expand that north side down looking at the point that you are making quarry if we don't bump that curve down we don't have space for both accessible sidewalk and light and basically infrastructure is that am I reading that correctly? yes you know technically you have any accessible sidewalk on the south side but it doesn't help someone who's trying to get down on the north side especially as a sidewalk adjacent to our senior housing facilities is that a good point? is there any other specific feedback that would be helpful to you tonight? I guess just if you could on the parking piece are we talking the change to the call out would that apply to this block here between Cascade and Abenakiway and also up the hill? yeah I think anywhere that has retail having that option if your commercial space really warrants it that has retail or could have retail right because some of this could get redeveloped with retail but I agree making that distinction about like you have to have a business case for why you need these spaces so yeah with that address I don't know I didn't touch base with these guys beforehand if we're looking for a formal motion or just kind of in the notes kind of not again it's an endorsement for this question well thank you for answering many many questions tonight thank you Eric I have two for all of you I'm going to call a two minute recess and reconvene us at 8.02 alright it is 8.02 so I will reconvene city council meeting we will move to our next item on the regular agenda F this is discussion of our FY21 goal setting session great thank you so this is the first hard conversation of your FY21 budget process Angela has put together this memo for you so our key questions for you tonight we are in the midst of building the departments are in the midst of building there individual budgets for someone else us in the next two weeks and then Angela and I will work on the citywide budget we go through a budget congress process to get to a budget that hopefully meets your goals and moves the city's work forward through November so as we go into that process we are really looking for your values your thoughts your priorities as we build a budget to present to you so you can kind of get some of that out ahead of time we are not looking for any votes tonight as much as what you are thinking about for these key questions so your tax rate goals for FY21 what are your priority areas to fund given that we may need to identify cuts are there areas of that you would be willing to consider service reductions and then are there new initiatives or programs you really want to see us include in the budget we've given you some history here of the tax rate history over the last couple of years as well as the voter approval of the budget Angela has made a note that a 1% tax rate increase this year raises $57,000 so on the next page you see in our memo some initial assumptions we are making about the budget about the cost of living we are anticipating what is grand less growth might look like how health insurance rate increases may impact our bottom line and some other small changes so the upshot of those bullets is that with just cost of living and health care changes assuming a grand less growth that we had this year which will raise an additional $42,000 we are looking at about a half a percent increase in our tax rate with nothing else changing so no paving increase no pavement increases no electrical cost increases no community liaisons etc that's just baseline to keep our doors open that's what we're doing then we've also started to bullet out for you some things we're thinking about some things we've heard from you and heard from community conversations so obviously we intend to open this pool we've just built so we're building out the operations cost for that we are considering because we don't have access to our JAG funding this year our department of justice JAG funding building that into our operations budget we've heard you talk about the affordable housing trust fund potentially interest in seed funding that we mentioned at the priority setting session in the spring the potential need for a new finance system given what the state decides on the tax department education grand list system which that announcement should be coming out hopefully in the next month or so the chiefs and I are working on the trending county public safety regional dispatch proposal we've talked about equity work and how we want to consider that moving forward and of course later in your agenda is the scholarship policy and if we want to seed fund that we've also heard from you a real emphasis for FY21 on improving some sidewalks through the capital plan and then just another item for consideration although with no general fund impact is the potential of lot 70 being redeveloping and starting to fund that through the parking fund in FY21 again no tax rate impact for that so those are our initial thoughts but really tonight we are here to hear what your priorities your thoughts are what you want us to be thinking about as we try and give you initially a budget that is more responsive to your values so last year we we we I think kind of discussed a range of what we felt comfortable with atop in a low end of what a tax rate increase would be atop obviously being like this is all we can stomach to present to voters and I think about them to recognize we're not going to do a half a percent we're not in a position to do that a big part of the discussion last year was what do we have to increase to support Main Street and the pool that is still a factor here and then to Jesse's point new initiatives I do want to call out though that in addition to funding constraints we also just have capacity constraints for staff and for ourselves and we should be really careful when we think about entering into any new initiatives at this point we have Main Street pool operations the charter commission lot 70 the noise compatibility program that's coming out there is a lot of work on the plates of staff so in addition to providing that guidance on like here's what's priority for funding here's what we can hold off on I would think beyond funding to actually ask staff to achieve in the next year it would be helpful I think to confirm where we are with the Main Street and pool funding I think in last year's paperwork it was estimated so I think we did like 3.6 for this fiscal year and it was estimated to be 4 I think is what we had like in the modeling the modeling that is not necessarily 100% accurate but that last year we had estimated a 4% increase needed just for the pool and Main Street funding this year and you'll yes and you'll be getting a full presentation on that in November before a month before you get any budget so and before we finalize our proposal to you so as you see that as you have that larger Main Street conversation you can provide different guidance to us along the way that John is not in here so can't speak immediately on the projections so just to clarify at a bare minimum between the pool Main Street COLA health insurance we're looking at 4.5 as a starting point is that correct yes except that when we discuss Main Street that 4% is based on some current financial modeling it's based on the assumption that we go through I think with the entire project in bond it's also based on assumptions before the grants we've received in the last year so there are some pretty significant revenue offsets as well okay in addition we got much better rates from the Bond Bank than we had modeled so the costs for what we've taken out so far are less I got a small scale question back in 2016 when the pool closed it was already in the budget for 2016 did that money stay as a pool budget item or did that we get reallocated to summer sales so it's currently sitting in specialized supplies for the recreation programs budget within the general fund it is a whopping $16,000 there wasn't really much of an operational budget for the pool which is one of the reasons why we've run into the deferred maintenance issues that we've had wasn't it $50,000 originally but not all of that money was carried forward and kept built into the budget okay okay so I think unless you want to reallocate I'm just wondering if it stayed as that budget item back then if it could stay at pace I know it's a small scale to compare to the 4.6 or whatever budget but I want to make sure if it's that money's there we should implement it back into the budget for a pool it's $16,000 $16,000 does it seem safe to assume that 4% is base COLA health insurance pool main street because I've gotten like 3.6 or 3 something like between 3 and 4% no matter what we have to do that just to maintain existing services and do main street in the pool I haven't seen modeling for the pool operations yet so I can't say with certainty what percentage it would be that is the rough number that I not a financial professional was thinking about too I'm starting to figure out what the room is we want to be between 3 and 4% so it would be nice to know that that's our floor maybe that would help this conversation because our floor is probably going to be at least 4% 3.5 with cuts something like that I guess I would encourage I know I forced you into the tax rate conversation I guess I would encourage you to think at a because I am not prepared right now to talk specifically about the main street and pool numbers I'm not updated that modeling yet in advance of the November council meeting with the current revenue streams so I guess I would encourage you to talk to provide us any feedback you have on what are the value statements what I think I'm hearing you say from a high level is you want to move main street forward but you don't know at what phasing yet you want to operate the pool I'm hearing you say you're not super interested in staff reduction or operational reductions if you're talking about 1.5% to maintain current staffing do you see what I'm saying what are those high level goals that you know policy goals you have and then let us bring you the numbers that fit into that certainly I don't think we as a leadership team have any interest in an unpassable budget increase we would like to get a budget past the first time so then can we drop question one what is the council's tax rate goal let's say that for the end I think hearing you say you are okay with some tax rate increase is enough for us in the past we have had the experience of saying level fund the tax rate which has very different implications for how we build the budget doesn't seem like that's even a possibility we can do it we can cut the budget it would just be people and operational it seems like if anything we need to be adding positions to run the pool and operate some of these other things that we have going on so I think from my perspective hearing you say there is some commitment to a tax rate increase is enough for the amount of information we're giving you right now okay this is a very different conversation than we've had in past years I think that we have my personal feeling is we've made some commitments that we no one here is trying to back out I think along those lines when I was looking through the list of ads that you had marked out the JAG funding is one where also council has made a past commitment that has a direct departmental impact and between that and the CCPSA which council has also opted to move forward with in the past I would like to see something dedicated to making those two like some combination of those happen and maybe because we don't know the costs of CCPSA becoming a reality what it means to reforming the police department space and the window and everything I would love to see that there's some funding dedicated to making up the JAG funds or CCPSA or a bit of both personal preference from mine so I would say for some background the messaging has been that when this authority is actually goes into operation that for the first year or two municipalities would contribute exactly what they have in their current scenario and that if there was a potential need for additional funding we could do a one-time fund balance because it would be one time we wouldn't be in a position to say this is an operational ongoing need yet would you agree with that? I think those sentences are alright but for the administrative support that's going to stay locally so you're right in theory right now although this could change in the next few months our contribution to dispatch as it stands up is what we have previously funded dispatch at just moving to a new organization with one time capital expenses which is what you're suggesting what that doesn't keep into consideration or take into consideration is with dispatch moving there is going to remain with us some things that dispatchers currently do for us to administratively support the police department that we're going to have to reallocate here amongst staff so there may be that small administrative ad. I think the timing here is important too when does this change happen if it is late in the year I think we would still be in a position to do a fund balance and then consider the actual operations for the next fiscal year. So right now with the CCPSA board is considering is an August 1 flip over next year so it's early in the fiscal year but that is in discussion I hope to know more before I present a budget to you I would take the housing trust fund out of this discussion as a concern there is money there to get going with there's $1,000 to start the fund with there's not a need I think to worry about refilling that in the next fiscal year I'm in support of programming that has a positive impact on our youth because if we don't spend the money upstream then we're not spending downstream with all kinds of issues so I think that's an investment Are you talking about two different things? Yeah Yes I said remove housing trust fund from the list and then Hal is stating a new value Okay, sorry Hal So invest in our youth families and youth Can I ask a follow up question about that? Sure. So one of the things and Ray feel free to jump in here we've been talking a lot about is with the opening of the pool granting programming to the pool to the new community room to Landry during the summer months especially with North End taking off at the OCC and really building off what we learned this summer in the need to better provide out of school time pro like structured programming for our young people is that kind of aligned with what you're thinking are you thinking something just continues I think I may have been one of the people that brought up the sidewalk improvements at the retreat that we had in the spring and I think that that is important but just given the scope of work that the staff have to take on with all the infrastructure projects I would be happy to put that off for now as a priority I don't know how others feel I also wonder if some of that can be handled through existing projects and CIP work that's one of the main concerns of residents when you talk to them on the street Jim and I just heard it again today women's sidewalks some of them are dangerous for older folks not even older folks anybody walking at night it's dark early now walking your dog people have rolled their ankles some of the sidewalks like on Roger Street I don't know if that's been fixed yet John I don't know if you hit that up there some people were reaching out saying that the sidewalks up there are pretty in rough shape I don't know if we take that out because we have to have something in there for all residents not just for a select group and the sidewalks are mainly for every resident I value the concern I would go back to the fact that we actually to get down to it my personal value for the next fiscal year is that we continue with what we have committed ourselves to and that we avoid adding new initiatives I do think that some of these sidewalks are going to get addressed in existing work plans but adding that as you know let's try to get a let's try to address a majority of these issues in the next year I don't think it's feasible from a staffing level frankly when we have main street lot 7D like that's a lot of the public work staff and zoning staff time can you remind me if we have a sidewalk prioritization like a prioritization system right now I forget if it's disgusting what we have right now is we're options for all these sidewalks and that's not part of the anticipated work plan at this point for this upcoming yes it is so maybe it's just about communicating that work plan to people so that you know people know that it's going to happen at some point we're not just turning a blind eye to it it doesn't happen overnight as we know you can't be everywhere at once but I think that people will have it done by the end of the month or next month it's on the agenda I think that's good enough for people until it doesn't get done just like potholes the same thing I mean that should be almost city maintenance it's for safety of people walking for pedestrians and I don't see the taxes go up a whole lot because we need to replace sidewalks but I think what we have currently maybe they can get tweaked or adjusted if they're just out of line I know there's ways to do that I mean your staff is pretty good at what they do so it's short turner fix and so I guess I would just say that maybe if sidewalks are not something we're actually going to fund the reconstruction of in the next year but as lot 7D wraps up as most completely programmed wraps up we don't start the year the next cycle with okay what do we need to actually do for sidewalks if there is some funds that need to be allocated for doing the prioritization work and having a roadmap plan that we can look at in FY22 I think it would be great to not start to start there and not six months later I don't know if that's the kind of middle ground like kind of in the weeds but some sort of a little bit of resources towards scoping so that we are moving faster towards that and able to act more quickly when the time is right would be great and then yeah like we said there's going to be times to address it anyways through other scopes I like that I do feel like if we're going to put effort into scholarship funding that one if we think about service reduction to offset I almost wonder if it's in cost shifting in the fees so considering making our scholarships more widely available but up in the fee structures so those who don't or won't apply for scholarships would pay a little bit more to help offset the cost of that funding I don't know if that's feasible with the fee structures and if that drives people away from the program as a result but if there is some wiggle room to think about that I think that would be worth exploring in combination with the scholarship funding I think that's also like this is a new program and we can use this as a learning year so we don't dedicate funding to it yet we figure out what that's need is going to be in the future I feel similarly for the equity work like we are in conversations about how this can play out but we can use this as a learning year you know obviously Jesse and Sean haven't even been able to meet yet Me neither use this as a learning year do some of these incremental steps and then be prepared in the next year to talk about what does an actual financial need to operate these changes and we'll still roll over incentive funds and that's not in the level funded budget right like if there was no increases that would still be that's built into the budget at this point 5 grand a year 5 grand a year so in theory that could be 10 grand next year correct sorry we spent all of that they would have to re-dedicate we have not spent this year do you have any broad idea of the cost to implement a new finance system um yes I mean so I think I think there are a lot of moving pieces to this and one of the things that I spent a lot of time at town fair talking with other people about was because so many communities use what we have now NEMRIC that if the state doesn't go with may go out of business there the state and the league are actually thinking about opportunities to power purchase other products that then we could get a state rate for a lower rate right now to just buy an off the shelf Tyler technologies or an off the shelf um munis or something like that you're looking at probably I don't know between 20 and 40,000 dollars of annual subscription costs and probably 100,000 dollars of transition one time transition costs those are wild ass guesses I mean those are informed wild ass right now we pay for NEMRIC less than 5000 dollars a year including all disaster recovery and support that's a great price why are they switching so it will be essentially all new money so my recommend NEMRIC will not go out of business in FY 21 if they do and who knows the state may stay with them and this is a non-issue um is that by the time we present the budget to you we will know what the state has decided to do and that at a minimum we start building up that increase so if we do need to change in 22 or 23 we have started to build up that capacity built up some reserves for that one time cost and built up that tax rate capacity to fund the annual system and I'm going to assume the state has not offered to provide any funding for municipalities to make a mandated change alright that's helpful what's the benefit for that system so there are enormous benefits to either a modernized NEMRIC or a new system NEMRIC is a home grown and into a way in here but as a basically a home grown Vermont system they do provide some services to a few other New England states it is very customized it is very hard to export the data to do any modeling with it Angela is a wizard with it so we are okay but it was a system that was built in the 90s so a modernized system is going to have far higher reporting abilities far superior abilities to run different reports to look at how we're expending money or how revenue streams are coming in they provide the opportunity to look cross municipality at benchmarks so how are we budgeting cross municipality the benefit to the state and to municipalities of what the RFP as written by the state says is right now the education grand list that is set that we maintain locally but is managed by the state is all done by uploads so they download a system to us we upload the new values to them and it goes back and forth like this there's no live you can't log on to a screen and see the same screen so often what happens is they'll download something to us say there's a mistake here go find the mistake we don't know where it is as opposed to being able to run a report that we can both look at and say oh this value is mismatched between you know 203 Weaver Street my house there's in the municipal system at one thing but the education assessment says that's an odd example but but it doesn't allow any real time information sharing right now on a statewide basis when you're managing the education grand list statewide that will have huge service improvements to the tax department and the property tax payers on a statewide basis when you see it's actually one of the things the tax department said at town fair was when new skis relatively basic but for the tiff district the tiff district throws this all off again where it gets extraordinarily complicated to manage between the communities and the state is current use so property in the state that is actively being forested that may have an assessed value at the local level based on just around but then the property owner applies to put their property into current use because it's been being actively forested that information is very complicated to get from the state to the municipality and back so that will be greatly improved statewide with the system doesn't impact us where you don't have any actively managed forests but statewide it will have a huge impact the state did send out surveys to all communities to use the Nemeric system asking about pinch points that we experience and the ones that we've responded with is support there's a very small group of people that do support when you do run into an error and I'm usually waiting for somebody to call me back and that stops work I think there's three staff there was until we went to the cloud based Nemeric system now there's really only one that can handle the major issues where we have work stoppage so Angel for example experiences this where we run into some kind of glitch we need Nemeric to update a restart or something and she can process payments at the counter because Nemeric's frozen not a great I mean it's not a ton of times but it's frequently enough to make customer service thank you should we open to the public any comments chief you're not allowed to mention new fire trucks you're all set for now any other priorities any other any other specific questions no this is to me this was very helpful thank you excellent let's move on to item G potential approval of a global FM for community risk reduction grants so this is a quick insert not really inserting an agenda item but we would like to introduce our new fire captain to you with this agenda item as well this is Liam Keating and I'll turn it over to the chief to give some of Liam's very exceptional background yeah so the departure of assistant fire marshal Courtney Brown we went through the process of putting out the effort to fill that position and to also have that position do fire so the position of assistant fire marshal fire captain it's a full-time position really focused on the inspections and community risk reduction very competitive we're fortunate to have some great candidates Liam's from Portman Maine has experience in emergency dispatching inspections, firefighting fire prevention so we're extremely happy to have him on board he's in week four so he's continued to come back we're happy with that he's a great cook he cooked us lunch on Friday so he's still looking pretty good welcome yes thank you I'm happy to be here like the chief said I'm originally from New York, Long Island area, I moved up to Portland in 2015 to take a job full-time with Portland Regional Communication Center dispatching full-time there I was doing firefighting in New York in Maine took about three per diem jobs I was doing that fire prevention in the town that I was living in before I applied for this job and I was fortunate enough to be considered and decided to accept and just so happens this is Vermont's opportunity city and this was the opportunity for a whole lifetime for me so I'm happy to be here that was excellent to hear, thank you how are you finding Wineski so far it's a very it's a progressive city it's growing and it's a really neat place to be and it's cool to be on the ground level of so many changes awesome any questions for our new staff welcome thank you we'll spin right into the grant so while at the Chief's Fiddle the New England International Fire Chiefs convention in Rhode Island were lucky enough to sit through their educational seminars and one of the presenters was FM Global FM Global runs a worldwide fire prevention grant program I forwarded some information to you and the theme of the day for them was about prevention and the theme of the whole educational seminar was community risk reduction so we felt pretty good to be here at the table and kind of be able to better understand what we're doing and just how much we're on the forefront of community risk reduction and the efforts that we do every day and some of the other people are still just trying to figure out what this is so I'm pretty happy to have the opportunity to lead that charge and to carry on your values and turn that into community risk reduction so with this grant it's pretty straight forward there's no match I think it's four times a year they accept applications for us we're trying to we're trying to fill a gap that we feel exists with those trying to resettle here for the first time or settle here for the first time and those that are relocating to our community and what I mean with that is a lot of people just don't understand the fundamentals of basic life safety what a smoke detector is cooking safety fall prevention so the idea here is we had a very good experience with our recruitment video production working with channel 17 on a very local level very grassroots effort if you will to really be able to carry our your values forward in that recruitment video so the idea would be to do the same with this life safety fire prevention video that we could then use our external partners to help us carry that message so the idea would be send a couple languages and we can maybe have a couple videos depending on cost one that we can use in some of our higher risk buildings the 83 miles just pieces some tools so put it in perspective why a community risk reduction now we're at about 1193 events for the fire department between emergency response and inspections 900 of those or 66% of that is all inspection work so about 33% of that is emergency response so I'm just trying to really paint the picture of the workload that we're doing here and that we continue to be on that forefront of community risk reduction and the fire prevention pieces of what's happening here every day in Manuski very important stuff on the emergency response side to date it's so I'm talking January 1 to current again it's about 293 calls approximately 40% of those responses were in multi-family dwellings so the same dwellings that we're talking about putting this video in and really trying to educate people seven of those properties we responded more than three times and the top two of those seven one property we responded so far 15 times and the other seven times so again this data is really telling us where to try to concentrate our efforts so more to come on the data again this goes back to firehouse you guys have heard me talk about that a lot in budgeting where we're putting our resources where you're trying to put future resources for me it's all going to be not all but we now have some very good data we're starting to see some good data to be able to help us make those decisions so this it's a way for us to get further move our program forward I think it's an exciting opportunity I was really excited to read about what your plan is for it and also just no match no strings attached and to hear that it's going to be translated the videos that's really important I mean we know it has to be right and that's they give this out four times a year yeah so once you're awarded it you're done for three years you're done for three years is there any opportunity to reach out to your partners that you want to team up with to maybe throw a couple bucks in to make that video service translated for everybody is that an opportunity that you see you could run and yes I mean that's a great suggestion we're just trying to get the seed money to get this type of program off the ground and then we would as this developed further we certainly would be sitting down with our partners there's certainly some interest to work with us we know that we've been asked I believe when Ray was in the seat we were there's people coming here saying can we get you guys to do a video you know either through the school or so again this will be the seed money I haven't crossed all those bridges yet I think applying for this with the concept in mind the goal in mind and then we'll work forward and certainly if we can get some other folks to contribute and make a better product that we can you know have reach more people we're all on board with that for sure any questions any questions from the public all right I would entertain a motion to approve the global FM for community risk reduction grant so I'll move motion by Mike second by Hal all those in favor please say aye motion carries thank you thank you you too yes thank you for coming in apparently we only hire redheaded fire maybe the guy hiring them Ray will join us for item H approval parks RFP contract redheaded hello hello again so couple items here in a row but first one is kind of a heads up and request for authorization for city manager to enter into a contract with Omnis which is the group that we are recommending as the vendor for our parks planning parks and open space planning process so that is funded through the national record parks association grant that we secured last year that grant 32,000 of that $40,000 grant was set aside through the application to cover the cost of this contract and so we're requesting authorization for the city manager to enter into a draft contract with this group we had five bidders really actually very competitive group there was I think five firms that could have all done a really nice job for us so it was a hard decision I definitely want to give some kudos to Eric who is a great resource he sat on the sort of decision making group as did Alicia and Claudia from Wreck and then Lauren Jakodi from Moonee Ski Valley Park District and ultimately felt like Omnis was the best fit for us so some really strong elements visually they've got some really nice aesthetic to the work that they produce really strong use of infographics which for us here in a multilingual community I think is really valuable and some really innovative and interesting outreach techniques too some things that we weren't seeing in other groups I sort of jokingly said at the end we did two follow up conversations about top groups and I was actually pleased neither of them in either conversation said the word sure at once which I took to be a really good sign I think we're trying to really take this down to a level where everybody can engage and be part of the process so we're recommending them and hoping you will enjoy what we put in front of you here yeah so I think for the public point of view this is an agreement to go through a public process to do some design for our open and park spaces yes the question I had is how does this work with our master plan I think the master plan simply doesn't address those spaces yeah and so within the master plan itself there is a call for further development of parks and open space planning so in the development of the master plan and Eric feel free to throw tomatoes away off we didn't get into a lot of depth about land use as it relates to parks and open space I think there's a lot more look at the zoning code the built environment those sorts of things and I think just for lack of bandwidth frankly we didn't get into a lot of depth around parks and open space planning so this is an opportunity for us to do that and then layer that on top of the master plan that exists so one thing actually both groups said which was pretty cool is that they had read through the master plan so I think there's a general awareness that this is not going to be a standalone item this is going to be incorporated into a plan that exists and I think both groups had some really positive things to say about the plan and what it says about the city so that was encouraging as well right right specifically for us to go into more detail park and open space planning so it was part of the master plan to take this next step correct thank you and just like the master plan was designed to be an umbrella document for all the other planning efforts that we had done so that allows us to update those smaller planning documents while the master plan is in effect this is basically doing that but adding it in it's like the transportation plan exactly any questions or concerns from the council I would just call out I liked looked like they had a pretty like deep and broad data collection plan including qualitative feedback and just quantitative that impressed me I think like having the master plan the proposal here so yeah we feel good about it if there are no questions from council I would entertain a motion to approve the parks RFP contract second motion by Amy second by Jim all those in favor please say aye motion carries thank you now move us along to item I grant approval for CSWD container application Mark's planning to trash cans so we are seeking funds through the CSWD container grant program to upgrade their receptacles at the O'Brien Center in particular the compliance check done through CSWD weeks ago and when the staff member arrived on site some of our trash cans and recycling bins were not side by side those are free standing units they tend to move about as things do down there and so we have the correct number but they're not built in such a way that they're bolted down in stationary so this would allow us to get some upgraded units I think improve the aesthetic down there and also help us come into compliance with the ordinance so we are proposing an application to the container grant program and then would also be looking to use our community cleanup fund dollars as a match because there's a one to one match requirement so essentially there's a net zero impact to the dollars that we're putting out beyond what's coming out of CSWD's funding streams if that makes sense because that cleanup fund rejuvenates every year maybe a thousand dollars every year so I think um like me many other folks might not realize that there are chitin and solid waste district ordinances that we need to abide by what is what is the penalty if we were not to comply I will be honest I did not look into that I'm not sure I think at this point the compliance checks that they're doing are really educational it's not a gotcha effort the woman that I met with was super helpful she was the one who pointed out the resources available so I think it's really as an agency I think they're really committed to trying to improve the ways that waste gets into the waste stream and help support agencies to do that so I don't know off the top of my head what those penalties are I think our representative Bryn to CSWD would be very upset with us especially since they are also giving us the funding stream to make the improvement so we're essentially matching their grant with their money right that is exactly what we're doing at their recommendation that was the staff person's suggestion um questions from council it's really $6,000 but three containers the nicer sort of more stable side by side units are about $1,500 a pot so it doesn't make it to myself all right I would entertain a motion to approve the CSWD container application grant grant application motion by Jim second by Amy all those in favor please say aye motion carries thank you and final item J community services scholarship policy update so we are back to share some of the updates that we made out of the initial feedback that we got from you all so on the policy side of the equation not a ton updated there in the language primarily just removing the specific language that in the initial draft prevented city staff from applying I believe that was Amy's recommendation so we've made that adjustment a lot more work done on the procedural side and again as noted here even though those are procedures that would ultimately be approved by the city manager wanted to put those in front of you to contextualize the policy and kind of let you know behind the scenes what was happening on an implementation front and then just kind of final contextual piece and then questions wanting to make sure folks know that because this is a policy that will have a pretty broad impact we have a pretty robust outreach plan we're going to use our current recreation software to do a blast out with the language post that throughout our facilities and really make an effort to connecting residents with this information so that as it goes into effect folks know what's coming we can answer questions ahead of time I'm excited to hear that there's a communications plan in place yes and I also just thank Amy for the widget that helped me bring my language from grade 19 to grade 13 I will say it took several iterations yeah it's tough it was great though it was a really helpful tool and I think a good exercise for me to go through so thank you for sharing that I wanted to bring that up too I think that's super important and something that we could consider not as a new initiative but from time to time having staff go through that exercise maybe with one document just to try to make our documents more accessible is there any coordination I'm just looking at the outreach venues you have identified and I know the school is not part of it the housing authority properties aren't part of it what can we do to help not necessarily lessen staff but is there other opportunity to help extend that communication with the communications person in the school or other ways yeah those are both great questions and suggestions so I think the school we have a great report with and can very easily get that information out the door there and I think with Housing Authority 2 we do a lot of work and that avenue is also a really easy one for us to look into so I will noob those both and add those to the list thanks are there any other questions or concerns alright so having addressed our previous ones I would entertain a motion to approve the community services scholarship policy second motion by Jim second by Hal all those in favor please say aye motion carries thank you that brings us to the end of our agenda I would entertain a motion to adjourn second motion by Jim second by Amy all those in favor please say aye meeting adjourned