 I would like to call to order the South Burlington special city council meeting Monday, January 23rd, 2023. And we will start with the Pledge of Allegiance. Megan, do you want to 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. Okay, just so people are clear, we're having a city council meeting to have a hearing on the education package. And our public hearing on the impact fees and then we'll move into the steering committee. So the second item is instructions on exiting building, case of emergency. Thank you. So for those in the room, there are two exits on either side of the auditorium at the back of the room. You can go out either one and then left or right will get you outside. For those participating remotely, thank you for joining us. If you are interested in speaking to any item on either the council's agenda or the steering committee's agenda, you can turn your camera on to be heard or indicate that you'd like to speak in the chat, and we will call on you. Otherwise, we're not monitoring the chat for content. Thank you. Okay. Item three, agenda review, are there any additions, deletions or changes in order of agenda items? Tom, you okay with them? Good enough. Okay. We'll move on to comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. Chris. And please make sure the bright green light is on. I think so. Chris Shaw, I'm a 23 year resident. I don't think it is. It has to be bright light. It is bright. Oh, okay. The light closer is good. Thank you. My name is Chris Shaw. I've been here 23 years. And I am speaking tonight in regarding to Ann Pugh, who has just retired as a 30 year legislator. And so I'm asking the legislators here in city council to put on your agenda, an item to figure out a way that you can honor and service to the city. And yes, she's only represented a small portion of the city. But at the same time, her presence in Montpelier has been. Absolutely significant for South Burlington. And that carries over to our new legislators that I'm about to go see. So we hope they'll be around for 20, 30 years. So I think her 30 year stint is remarkable. I think we have had a remarkable representation with Michael Serotkin and made a Townsend and John Kalaki, who also retired. But I think Ann deserves special significance. And her latest constitutional amendment has been one mark, but I think we can do something as a city. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other comments? Oh yes, I'm sorry. Please come to the mic. Sorry. In October 28th, 2021, my 14 year old son was struck by a car in Dorset Street. He suffered a severe traumatic brain injury and he is still currently living with those injuries. He will never, most likely never live a normal life. If, you know, one of the comments that had been made at a previous council meeting was that lighting was, could have been a factor in his accident and had the lighting been better in that area, that tragedy may have been avoided. I think that it's important to note that that area on Dorset Street where my son was hit is a school zone. The, the speed limit through there is 35 miles per hour and the lighting is not very good at all. You have children who are going through that intersection, which happens to be very busy throughout the entire day and in the evenings when it is dark because they are leaving activities after school activities. You have children who are running track who go through those intersections and the lighting is not great. It's a, it's, it is a potential area where you have so many children and people in this area that another tragedy is, it's not a, it's not a matter of if it will happen, it's when it will happen. And I do think that it's important that, again, we remember this is a school zone across from it. We have the middle school, we have the high school across from there is a housing complex with a lot of small children. My son was leaving a friend's house when this happened and I just want to bring this up again because this has completely changed my life, my children's life, my son's life forever and if there's a chance that you guys could make a decision that could save another child, another parent from having to go through this, I think it's important that that happens. Again, that's, there's a middle school and high school there. The speed limit should not be 35 miles per hour. People who are not familiar with the area do not even know that that's a school zone. They're not aware. And due to the fact that there's so many children going through that walking, riding their bikes through that intersection, there should be more lighting in that area to keep them safe. That's all. Okay, thank you very much. We do have item 12 when we join with the school board for a steering committee. We do have this that on this agenda for an update. So if you want to stay, you're certainly welcome. If you want to go home and join in remotely later, that would work as well. But thank you, Ms. Moore. Are there any other comments? Anybody at home? No. All right. We'll move on to the consent agenda. We have one item. Consider and sign disbursements. I'll move that we sign, approve and sign the disbursements. Second. Any discussion? All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. The consent agenda is accepted. Now I want to open a public hearing on an ordinance to implement education impact fees. We can be early or not? No. Okay, we're a little bit late. Okay. So a motion? Move that we open the public hearing. Second. All in favor? Aye. Okay, thank you. Paul, are you going to? I think actually the superintendent was going to kick this off. Oh, okay. About the school board's request and then Paul can walk us through the ordinance. And of course, of course, Jonathan Slason is here as well. Great. Thank you. Good evening everyone. My name is Violet Nichols. I'm the superintendent of the South Burlington school district. You're going to have to forgive me. I do probably hear in my voice. I'm unable to be here this evening due to COVID. I'm unable to be here this evening due to COVID. I'm unable to be here this evening due to COVID. However, please don't take that as a reflection of my. Priorit. My feeling about prioritizing this important conversation. This evening. I'd like to thank the council for having us here. For this important discussion. And I'd also like to thank Jesse Baker and Paul Connor for their partnership. In the work that we've done so far. We've had a lot of discussion going on for quite some time. It's a discussion about finding space solutions to support our students, which supports growth within the city. Growth that I believe enriches our city and our schools. I understand that our schools are some of the strongest in the state. And many people come to our great city. So that their students can participate in the, that is the main thing. Thank you. I appreciate the presentation provided by our five South Burlington school district schools. We are in a situation now. And have been for the last year where we have over enrollment in two of our elementary schools. Orchard elementary school and Rick Marcott central school. This pressure. Has absolutely impacted the way that we're able to deliver education to students in those schools. and a most recent update that we received in the fall, noting that over enrollment is 31 and 32 at Orchard and Rick Marcott schools this year with 24 and 12 respectively expected next year. And the growth will continue throughout the next projected five years. And in order to continue at this point with providing literally roofs over our students' heads at these schools, the school board and the former and superintendent convened the committee so that we could have some robust community discussion regarding how to solve these space solutions. The enrollment committee composed of educators and parents, community members, and school administration moved forward this idea of these zero energy modulars to be put at Rick Marcott central school Orchard school for at each location to provide some alleviation of this over enrollment that we're currently having and will continue to see over the next coming years. The school board accepted this idea without funding being in place. Conversations about impact fees were of course happening at that time. We have since worked with Jonathan Slason who's on the call this evening consultant an impact fee consultant through RSG. And also we partnered with Doran Whittier, long time architects who've worked with the school district to tie specific impact fees with this STEMS project. As you've heard me say at other city council meetings this is part of a phased project. We know that we will continue to need impact fees to support our cohorts of students as they move through matriculate through our system. And we are certain that we're going to need middle renovations or new builds. And same at the high school whether that's a new build or renovations there. So we view this as a phased project because impact fees are tied specifically to one project to the cost of one project. This conversation is regarding an ordinance for these elementary STEMS, which are absolutely vital in providing us with the opportunity to continue to welcome school students into our schools. And we have advocated for a phased in approach with 50% of these fees being collected as early as July 1st. And then at 100% beginning January 1st, 2024 this is because we support development within our city and we understand that many developments are already underway and certainly wouldn't want to impact the financing of those developments. We feel this is a very reasonable approach to phasing in impact fees, which are absolutely essential to the funding of these STEMS projects because we do not have the funds budgeted or the funds available. We are going to be asking the community to go to bond to vote on a bond for these STEMS and other capital improvements packaged together on town meeting day, March 7th. We do anticipate that if these impact fees are in fact, the ordinance is implemented this evening that roughly 91% of these fees will be paid back to our voters. I'd also like to highlight the versatility of these STEMS being something that we could use and shift another portal. These STEMS could be used at the middle and high school level to transition us as we move forward into any future planning, however the impact fees would be tied specifically to this elementary STEMS project. I think that I've covered sort of the high level pieces here, Jesse, do you want me to add more at this time or should we pass it to Paul? I think that was a great summary, thank you. And sure, Paul can walk through the ordinance. Hi folks, Paul Conner, Director of Planning and Zoning, Colin McNeil, our city attorney next to me here. So this is the council is considering this because the power to adopt impact fee ordinances rests with city council. So even though the project is with the school as the superintendent described, the request was made for the council to consider establishing a school impact fee. There was one back in the 2000s and so this would be reestablishing one as proposed to compliment the impact fees that the city has already on police services, on roadways and on recreation. As proposed, the impact fees would apply to new development that creates dwelling units, homes, or expansions to existing homes that add bedrooms. It is based, all the math is based on the report that was prepared by RSG and John Slason who's here this evening. And per the state statute, there has to be a reasonable nexus identified between the capital projects and what drives the demand essentially. And after, through their research, RSG identified that a strong correlation exists between number of bedrooms and number of students. And so the proposed, the recommendation from RSG and what is in the ordinance has a stepped fee based on the number of bedrooms in the new or expanded home. Ranging from about $2,700 for a zero one bedroom dwelling unit up to about $12,500 for a four or more bedroom dwelling unit. As proposed and as recommended by the school board and school district, anything that qualifies as perpetually affordable housing under the city's land development regulations would be exempt. And I believe that's essentially as Ms. Nichols described this specifically for the purpose of zero energy modular classrooms unless modified by council in the future. The fees would be collected by the city and then transferred over to the school district. The various different procedures under state law regarding accounting for and if the fees go on use for whatever reason and refunds are all carried into there. And then lastly, the proposed ordinance does include an administrative fee that would apply to all impact fees not specifically the school impact fee of $100 per issuance of a permit. And so that would be to cover the costs associated with administering the impact fee ordinance and would be eligible as well for preparation of future amendments to the ordinance. Those would be kept in their own separate fund. So that's the quick summary. Anything to add, Colin? Nothing further. All right. So I would open it to the public then. If there's any comments or questions or thoughts from the public at this time. I don't see any. Are there any comments from anyone on the council? I'll just reiterate what Superintendent Nichols says that this is to have roofs over the heads of our students and that this is an essential step in addition to the bond vote. So hopefully that's what the public understands. Matt, did you have a comment? Three just technical questions. Tim, would you lend your mic? Nice sharing. The green light. Thank you. I agree with council memory. The school board and superintendent made the best of the situation that we're in. But as we, if this is approved tonight or subsequent meetings, three questions for you, Paul and for Colin. One is, is there a sunset attached to this based on population growth or it does have to be an act of the city council in order to remove this? It would sunset upon collection of the fees needed to pay the project that was identified. So if the project identified was a, I believe it's in the neighborhood of $6 million, once that's collected, whether that's in one year or 20 years, we would no longer collect the fee at that point, I see. So if there was a proposal five years from now to bring in eight more ZEMs, that would have to be another vote of the council. That's a new capital project that would be a separate action of council. This is specifically for the ZEMs identified in this report only. Thank you for that. And the authorizing statute, which you refer to regarding, it's fulfilling a need impact because we're more students, more houses, more students. And it's, and we're growing. So unlike other districts where students are, populations are going down, does that account for the students that are tuitioned in to the high school from outside of South Burlington? I'm gonna pass that question to John Slason because he did the analysis report if he's still around. I know he had a seven o'clock. I see him there. Yeah, you're getting the priority tonight. That's right. So this is in terms of the students who are tuitioned in, they account for the overall population. However, we are focusing on the resident students only since that is the population that is associated with the land use development within the city of South Burlington. And those are the, they live in the households that would be under the jurisdiction of our land use regulations, which the impact fee is a land use regulation. In terms of the student body population, excuse me, that is the tuition students is an annual topic that could change and annually does fluctuate. However, we are focused on providing a certain amount of capacity associated with these ZEMs. And so the actual topic of tuition students, if you will, is somewhat outside of the bounds of this conversation or analysis. That's great. Thank you for that, John. That's what I was hoping to hear. But the tuition students are mostly high school. We're talking specifically about the element of schools here, right? But according to Jonathan, they took that out of the analysis, which is good. I appreciate that. One last question. The phase then, oh, I know we've gone over this, Paul, but could you explain it to me one more time? The phase in for projects that have been approved by the development review board, but which a permit has not been pulled. Right. So the impact fees are charged at the time of the issuance of a zoning permit for construction. So that is, you know, some of our larger projects often like South Village got its approval many years ago and they come in for a certain number of homes each year. It's at the time that they go to build the home or the multifamily building. That's when impact fees are paid. For the school impact fee, as Superintendent Nichols described, the proposal and recommendation was that no fee be charged for zoning permits issued through the end of June 2023. Starting in July 1st, 2023, any permits applications submitted then for construction would pay half the fee. So the number that I gave of $2,500 to $12,500, half that, so 1200 to 6,200 would be due for any projects, would be owed for any projects where the application is submitted July 1st or afterwards. And then on January 1st of 2024, the full fee would take effect. So it's essentially acknowledging that financing takes some time. And so projects that we're gonna pull their permit next week can't just sort of change on a dime to prepare for that. That was the recommendation from the school district that we were supportive of. Thank you for that clarification. Okay, any other comments or thoughts? Linda Bailey. Oh, Linda, Bailey, did you wanna speak? Hi, yeah, I just had a question on if this was considered when you were coming up with the TIF idea, would it be something to consider to make it on all home purchases, not just new ones? That way it would accrue faster and you could probably make the amount of impact to any homeowner less. John, can I have you maybe answer that question if you don't mind? Sure, I will make an attempt. An impact fee is a land use regulation and at that point it applies to new construction only. It is not a site plan regulation which would be eligible for a reconfiguration of a property. But we're not able to legally justify that an existing home that may have been paying property taxes has already constructed and operating and has residents in it, they are already paying into the system, so to speak. And so the impact fee language is that we're looking for the net difference of new additional users into the system and how they may burden the existing users of the system. And the idea is that these fees would be apportioned to compensate or pay for that additional capacity that these new users are requiring. So that's how the impact fee system is derived and it's a separate legal mechanism. What you're introducing is more akin to a general tax and that requires a separate process that the council could consider per your comment but it is a secondary, it's a separate process than what we're in right now which has a very legally defined set of rules that we're operating within. Okay, thank you. I appreciate the information and I'd like to ask the council to perhaps consider doing this not impact fee type of arrangement because most people who buy homes here are moving in from outside of the city and for things like I live in a two bedroom home with no children, but I could easily sell it to someone who would be bringing in children. So just a thought. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Elizabeth? Did Cheryl? Can you hear me? Can you hear me, Helen? Yes, yes. Thank you. Thanks, I appreciate that. My recollection in years past was that the impact fee was linked to grand list growth and I had a couple of questions because I do think that the challenge the school district finds themselves in is the lag in getting this ordinance passed through city council and the fact that the enrollment at Orchard and Central has already exceeded capacity in a lot of ways. So there's a premium being paid for and there's a lag in time and a strain on resources within the two school facilities. But my question was are any exceptions by the city impact fees made for affordable housing the way that the school district has proposed? And is there a similar sunsetting scenario for city projects that are funded by impact fees? Hi, this is Paul Connor responding. So yes, any housing that is perpetually affordable as defined by the city's land development regulations would be exempt from this fee. That was a recommendation of the school district and the direction from council was to support that. So that would be exempt. And effectively all of the impact fees operate under the same premise that I just tried to counselor Coda, which is when all the fees have been collected that were anticipated then or when all the projects are complete then we no longer collect the fee. And that took place, for example, with the fire impact fee a couple of years ago the project was completed. And so we no longer collect that fee. Elizabeth, I think another important caveat with the impact fee and part of the lag problem is you need to have a specific capital project tied to it. And when we first started talking or the school board or the superintendent started speaking with us at that point there wasn't a specific project. So there was a little more lag time. So I would anticipate or hope going forward that as the school board and the administration come up with the next plan for the students that are moving through and might overcrowd the next school, the middle school that those plans would be in place so potentially this impact fee could just continue with another project. Yeah, thank you for the response to those. Given that the formula seems to be linking bedrooms and student correlation it would be nice to come up with some different kind of ordinance that really looked at some kind of funding associated with projected growth based on that new construction and maybe as Linda Bailey mentioned as well but I appreciate the response. Thank you very much. Okay, are there any other comments from the public? I guess I would just comment that I personally have received no emails from any developer that I can recall that was opposed to this. Maybe Matt, did you? I did not. In fact, I had one say this isn't a problem at all. I got a phone call but I think it's important that we are also as taxpayers gonna be paying into these plans so it's not just the newcomers, it's also in new construction, newcomers. It's also those who are already living here and paying taxes. So we're sure, yeah. Okay, well if there are no other comments from the public, I would move that we close this public hearing. Second. All in favor? Aye. So we'll move on to item seven which is taking action on the ordinance to implement the education impact fee. So I move to adopt the proposed amendments to the impact fee ordinance as presented in this meeting's packet. Second. Any further discussion? All in favor, signified by saying aye. Aye. So the ordinance impact, education impact fees will appear on the ballot. Oh no, no, we just passed, excuse me. So they're implemented. So the first one will be implemented in July one of this year and then fully. And so we'll start collecting soon. Yeah. July first. Well, it'll be here before you know it. It will, looking forward to it. Yeah. And regarding what Linda Bailey and Elizabeth Fitzgerald said, I think Superintendent Nichols, this council would be open to hearing further suggestions if the timing is not working and you need to have more resources seeing more students than perhaps have been forecast. I think that's, those are definitely fair ideas for people to consider. But we, I would look to the school board and to the superintendent for lead for the lead and direction on the need in order to take that to the next regulatory level. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. You know, we've been taking up conversations to move from this reactive place that we find ourselves in now to try to avoid that as we look about supporting these students as they matriculate through our system. And we think about the needs that are going to exist very soon here at the middle level and then at the high school level. And so the board is gonna be establishing, has established has taken action to establish an enrollment committee and an infrastructure committee is following that so these conversations are gonna be starting very soon here at the community level and our hope is that we can be sort of a head of this enrollment issue so that we don't reach this over enrollment point at the middle school and the very near future. Thank you. That sounds great. Can I make one clarification that while the ordinance is not on the ballot it is true that the bond for the ZEMS is definitely on the ballot assuming that the percentage covered by the impact fees is covered by the impact fees. So you are correct to say that. I thought we were doing something on the ballot. Yes, okay. All right. And Jesse, can I provide an clarification to that as well that I would, I'm just going to take this at this time. You know, one question that we get pretty frequently from parents and community members and folks who attend board meetings is regarding the cost of these ZEMS. And so I really do wanna just take this opportunity to point that out. We don't have the revenue budgeted, the funds budgeted to pay for the ZEMS now which is why we are going out to bond. And it is very much our expectation that now that this ordinance has passed thanks to your support and the community support we will be, we anticipate recouping 91% of the cost of these ZEMS over the years. So that's just something that we've really been trying to communicate with the community and appreciate the opportunity to highlight that here. And thanks again to the council and Jesse and Paul for your support and partnership on this. Okay, thank you. So we'll move on and I guess we will convene as the steering committee meeting with item eight, an agenda review for the remainder of this meeting. Are there any additions, deletions or changes in order of business? Seeing none, we'll move on to nine. Are there any comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda? Seeing none, we'll move on to item 10 which is the FY school budget and bond vote and the presentation by the superintendent of that proposal. Or, well, I'm sorry, Tim will do this. Yeah, I'm sorry. It's your superintendent plus. Great, thank you. Tim, is your mic bright green there? Okay, you have to. Sorry, Tim, I can hear your voice but I can't hear your words. Are you asking me to screen share? No, he was just saying you'd be a tag team but maybe he wants you to now. Do you want her to share the, are you gonna share? I think Jesse was gonna run the presentation. Is that correct, Jesse? I shouldn't get involved in the technicalities. You would ask to have screen presenter abilities. Would you prefer me to do it? Happy to do it. I have no preference, whatever is easiest. I'm happy to do it either way. Thank you, Jesse, for pulling these up. If anyone's just joining, my name is Violet Nichols. I'm the superintendent of the South Burlington School District. Joining me is our school board this evening, our chair, Dr. Travia Child, remainder of our board. And we also have our senior director of operations and finance, Mr. Tim Jarvis, will be presenting this board approved budget to the steering committee this evening. We'd like to thank you for the opportunity to have this conversation. When Jesse Baker and I first met when I took this post, we had a conversation about this very meeting. And I think it was one of the ways that we started a strong partnership between the school and the city, one which we believe strengthens both the school system and the city. So excited to be here with you all this evening. And we're gonna launch right into the proposed fiscal year budget for the purposes of this, so Jesse, thank you. First, I just discuss a little bit of what you all can expect to hear this evening. We're going to provide some of the proposed budget spending information, some of the factors that impacted the creation of this proposed budget, some of those being changes in revenue and state factors. And then you'll hear a little bit about our enrollment and our staffing, as well as the impacts of some of the pandemic funding we've had in addition to the tax commissioner's letter. And finally, just the general economic factors play. Next, we're going to talk about our approach. How did we have this conversation where we got to a budget that our school community, our administrators and our board ultimately brought to you all this evening that will introduce to our voters in March. We'll provide details on the budget workshop, some of the capital improvement requirements and walk you through some of the upcoming events. We love community engagement throughout this entire process. It's essential for us to communicate some of the highlights of the budget with community and welcome the community to attend any of these upcoming events. Finally, we'll have some time for discussion and questions. And at the end of the presentation we've included a glossary and this is to help support some additional understanding with some of these jargon heavy terms that we'll be using this evening. So we'll launch right in here. I'm going to pass it over to Tim Jarvis our senior director of operations and finance. He's going to talk a little bit about some of these highlights here including the proposed increase in our expense budget. So thank you, Tim. Okay, thanks Violet. And thank you for the opportunity to meet with you tonight. Give you a little caveat that not only am I the senior director of finance and operations where I'm also a resident of South Burlington was born here. I'm an alumnus, South Burlington High School and all the other schools. And despite my appearance, I have two girls who are in seventh grade at Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School. So I am completely vested in this budget as a parent, as a taxpayer and as an alumnus. So I hope that you feel as strongly about this budget we put together as I do. We started the presentation just with these headline numbers. We spent a lot of time on this. We spent many weeks creating this presentation, updating it as new facts came in. The trouble with preparing the budget for the school board at this time of the year is that we don't have all the information that we need to be able to come up with some of the final numbers. So those have been coming in over time and we're obviously in pretty good shape. Now, although some of these numbers are still proposed at the legislature level and they are oftentimes not completely ratified until after the March vote, which you're probably familiar with from previous years. But where we stand right now for our expense budget are expenditures, direct expenditures, it's a little over $62.5 million. This does represent a 7.1% increase from the approved budget last year. And what we're gonna spend the next few minutes doing is explaining some of the headwinds that we were facing and coming up with a proposed budget, both in terms of absolute numbers as well as the impact that that spending level would have on our taxes given some other factors. So we'll go into all this in the context of the presentation. The second figure you see of the increase for net education spending per equalized pupil, that's a technical calculation and we're gonna walk through that a little bit later in the presentation. But the reason why those two numbers vary so significantly is that in last year's budget, the expenditure budget is offset by a number of different line items relating to revenues. You have the tuition revenue in there that you kind of subtract out. You can subtract out certain types of state and federal funding. But most importantly in comparing last year or this year to next year is that we were carrying about a $2 million surplus in the budget last year, largely because of money that could not be spent during COVID for what it was originally intended for. So because we were carrying that $2 million surplus and we're not carrying it anymore, that's why you see a difference in the percentage increase. It's simply the math of having the net education spending higher this year than last year because of that $2 million surplus. So it probably is too much to digest at this point. And we're gonna look at the budget worksheet later and it becomes a little bit clear. I just wanted to explain that first time we showed this it's like, well, what's the difference between the two numbers and that's what it is. This is how we are proposing to spend the money. This is simply a breakdown of where the money goes to. So about 78% of the total budget is allocated to salaries and benefits. I don't think this is atypical for a school district but it certainly is a very large chunk of the overall budget that we have to play with. And it's just important for everyone to understand how much of that is caught up in salaries and benefits particularly when all three of our unions are either currently wrapping up negotiations or are still engaged in negotiations. So this was always going to be an area of the budget that we were treading carefully and somewhat blindly because we didn't know what those negotiations were gonna end up being and the impact that it would have on this huge chunk of the overall budget. The other pieces of it, we have a variety of services that we pay for, professional services. We have supplies and equipment for the school. We have a contingency component of the budget and then a small debt service sliver there. So this is where the money, this is where the $62.5 million is allocated against from a large category perspective. If you take out the salary piece, this slide is showing you where those salaries are being paid. Unsurprisingly, given the number of teachers we have relative to other positions, a bulk of it, 65% of the salary money is going to teachers. And then if you work counterclockwise from that big blue slice, co-curricular, these are coaches and sponsors of extracurricular activities, receive a certain amount of compensation for that. Administrators, basically Violet's team gets 6.3%. Maintenance and operations, bus drivers and monitors, these are people who work for me in the various operations functions that keep the schools running. Support staff consisting of a variety of different types of jobs, paraprofessionals, the nutrition services staff, things like that, take up 15.87% and then there's a small slice that we allocate for substitute teaching. So again, this isn't the percentage of the entire budget, it's the percentage of that salary component that we saw in the previous slide. So what factors are impacting the budget? What were we dealing with as we put this together? If you look on the left-hand side of this slide on expenditures, first of all, we were dealing with inflation at a rate that we have not had to deal with for a number of years. When we first were working on this budget a few months ago, the annual CPI was very high, it was 8.2% through October. Fortunately, not just for us, but for the budget and citizens across the country, the inflation rate is showing signs of softening and the most recent statistics from the Department of Labor is showing a 6.5% inflation rate over the past 12 months as of December of 2022. But there's no doubt that whether it's 6% or 8% or 10%, that's a high number when you're dealing with the types of expenditures that we have with supplies, professional services, equipment, and also the impact that those inflation figures at the time we're having on the labor negotiations. Second point, again, I'd mention that they're all kind of in motion right now. Some are wrapping up, some are starting. But those negotiations, especially for the teachers, were initiated at a time when inflation back in, last spring, was only running at about 2.753%. And those were the types of contingencies that we were looking at at that time, which we've clearly needed to change and adapt with the way inflation actually occurred over the summer into the early fall. Another big increase, which we have no control over, is the health insurance increase, expected to be around 12.7%. We've had to deal with certain hiring and staffing decisions because of staff shortages. We've importantly put off a lot of work on maintenance for our facilities, which is an important part, not just of this budget, but also of the bond that we are proposing to put on the ballot in March. We spoke a lot about this at the school board meetings that we simply have not kept pace with the needs of our aging five campuses. It's really been a lot of band-aids, a roof leaks, patch it, something breaks, fix it. But we really haven't made a commitment in the recent past to investing the money that is required to bring our school facilities up to a standard that I think we would all be proud of and expect our children to enjoy. There's another, with the debt, with the bond, there is gonna be an impact from an expense perspective, which we'll share the exact numbers later. So those are all things on the expenditure side. That we had to take into consideration. On the revenue side, I had mentioned the surplus that we had last year, the $2 million is no longer there. Essar funding, which proved to be a very critical part of the budget last year to allow us to bring in the resources that were required for our students and staff to deal with the ramifications of the pandemic. Those funds will largely be used up this year and only a small amount will be available for us in fiscal year 24. From state factors, there's a commissioners, tax commissioners letter, I'll reference in a few slides. They were expecting to see education spending to rise by over 8.5%, which is historically a very large number. The yield was announced at 16.2%. And for those of you familiar with the calculation of the various components of the Education Fund, this is a very high number and we didn't think it was gonna be this high. It was high last year too, which is why people thought that it probably would not be as high this year, but it's actually acting as a hedge against even a steeper tax increase. And we'll show you how that all works in a few minutes. The Equalized Pupil Count is calculated. We were questioning it. It went down by, I think, three or four student heads. This is why we have the glossary. It's a complicated calculation that there is a census done between the 11th and 30th days of a new school year to count how many students any school has. And then there's a lot of weights applied to it. Weights applied to how many of those students are in the elementary, middle, or high school. There is a poverty level test of these numbers that change the calculation. So this doesn't mean that you have exactly 2,559.93 students sitting in a desk learning social studies. It's a calculation taking a variety of demographic factors into account. And what the state is trying to do is to create sort of an average student so that it can do comparative cost analysis across all school districts. This last point on this slide is probably one of the most important ones. Common level of appraisal for those of you who aren't familiar with it is a very important ratio used to determine what the education tax rate will be. Last year in South Burlington, it was 100.99 and this year it's at 92.97. So what that means is it's a ratio comparing the value of homesteads on the grand list to a survey that is completed every year that looks at actual sales prices for homes. The state, rightfully, I think, believing that, and I think it's a three year average of sales prices. So believing that, especially in towns who have not done a reappraisal for a number of years, of which there are quite a few, they look at that ratio. And so in a situation like ours in South Burlington where we had a reappraisal done just two or three years ago, I believe, but housing prices are going up so fast or they are, they were. I believe they probably, I bought my house here a couple of years ago. I moved here from Connecticut, so at that time they certainly were. But in the calculations done for this year, by having the common level of appraisal drop as much as it did, that almost immediately has the impact of raising the tax, the education property tax rates just the way the math works. Now this was not in any way unique to South Burlington, but when these figures didn't come out until I think December 28th from the state. And I did a quick analysis of the statewide information. I think it was 94% of all the towns in South Burlington had their CLA go down. And some towns, we're at 92.97, some towns are in the 70s. And I believe that it reaches a certain level and that automatically triggers the need for a reappraisal and now there's not enough people to do reappraisal. So it's a little bit of a mess across the state. But I just want to make sure everyone understood that number because it's gonna show up again and it's gonna be a significant reason why even at this spending level, our tax rate will go up and we'll go into that in more detail in a minute. Tim, can I jump in for a minute? So just so the elected officials know that this is a real problem statewide that Tim is identifying of more than half the municipalities in Vermont right now are under reappraisal orders and there's three or four companies in the state that do reappraisals. They're booking out three or four years right now. So there's a move in the legislature to think about a different system statewide to doing those reappraisals, doing it on a more predictable, for example, every five year cycle and packaging them. So like Chittenden County all would go the same year to get an economy of scale for appraisal companies to be able to bid on work with the idea of hopefully we could pull in companies from outside of Vermont. So I think that you're gonna see some bills at the legislature to try and address exactly the challenge that Tim is identifying. Yeah, thank you, Jesse. Okay, the next slide. This is our student enrollment history and projections. It shows you on the left by school and then there's a roll up for elementary schools and a total. So these are our enrollment numbers and these are the actual bums on seats numbers. This is not the equalized pupil number. These are how many students we had registered. Obviously it can change weekly almost if people come and go but these are the numbers that we use. So you'll see in fiscal year 23 which is our current year we have 2,515 total enrollment. And then the numbers to the right, the projections for fiscal year 24 through 27 are derived from a demographic analysis done by the McKibben group. So as an example, if you just look at the bottom total enrollment we're gonna go up by 49 projected to go up by 49 total students next year and then increasing after that. So this is largely correlated with the discussion we had about the impact taxes and the growing population of South Burlington in general that's bringing more students into our system. You will see some nuances from school to school but from an overall perspective, we are increasing enrollment by 49 students but you'll also see in future slides that we're reducing our staffing FTEs by 23.75. So these are some of the decisions that we had to make in order to have a budget that we felt was acceptable and fair to the voting population. On the next slide, looks like a little bit of this got chopped off at the top when we turned it into a presentation but this is comparing enrollment numbers that we saw on the previous page with our staffing numbers. So it is a ratio of students to staff FTEs. And what's interesting about this graph is that if you look for the years 2019 through 2022, these numbers were extremely correlated and you can tell that by the ratio on the bottom line of the 5.17, 5.17, 5.15, 5.14. So over at least those four years, the numbers were extremely correlated. In 2023, the current year, we see that get skewed significantly by the number of FTEs that were added in the current year's budget primarily with the ESSER funding that came in from the government. So we were able to hire a number of different positions to help address the needs that the students had coming out of the pandemic, a lot of student focused support groups. And those were intended to be a one year, largely a one year phenomenon. So probably the biggest challenge we had in doing this entire budget was recognizing that if you're in the schools every day, the needs that were created by the pandemic and the way that the population has evolved through the pandemic, we have some really significant needs of our students have very significant needs that the traditional teacher standing up in front of the classroom and teaching science just doesn't quite address. And at the same time, we don't have the funding for those positions. And it would, so it was never a situation of us going into this budget by saying, well, let's just start assuming that we're gonna, we need the same programming that we have today, which means we need the same level of staffing that we have today. And we'll just have a huge budget increase. That wasn't gonna cut it. And so we had to make some very difficult decisions about how to get the spending down. And with 78% of the budget being salaries and benefits that largely translates to how many number of FTEs can we afford under the current economic climate with all of the other factors and headwinds that I described before. So that's where we decided that we were gonna cut the FTE number by almost 24 FTEs in order to strike as much of a balance as we could between not taking away the level of support that's required in this day and age for our students, but at the same time trying to be as fiscally responsible as possible. So that's kind of the headlines of that. And we do believe that although we couldn't address that in full in fiscal year 2024, it would have just been too much of a jolt. You can see on the ratios in the bottom that we are moving back toward the historical ratios that we had. The next slide is about comparative tax rates and I'll put a caveat here because this information quite frankly has created a lot of robust conversation, let's say in some of our school board meetings and community budget forums because it's hard to compare one town to another town. It's these are black and white statistics from the state. And I mean, I personally think that in presenting the school budget, it's perfectly appropriate to show what is South Burlington's tax rate and cost per pupil compared to our neighbors. I don't think the concept is wrong. The conversation was generated because there are so many nuances that can make these tax rates different. Every town is different. They have different number of campuses. They have different number of students. They have different debt levels that they need to carry in their budgets. There's poverty level differences. I mean, all of these things, it makes it very difficult to compare South Burlington with anybody else. So I just want to be on the record by saying that I acknowledge the commentary that came from depicting the slide, the way that we have somehow, perhaps implying that South Burlington is more efficient or better or whatever, which was never my intention. But the truth is in black and white terms, South Burlington enjoys a very low education tax rate compared to the rest of the state. In fact, in fiscal year of the current year, fiscal year 23rd, we're in the 17th percentile for our tax rate, which means that 83% of the towns of Vermont pay a higher education tax rate than South Burlington. Why is that? That's, again, every town is different. But it is important because we are asking the voters to approve a budget that is gonna raise the property taxes. We just wanted to reflect some data that suggests that South Burlington is currently paying a relatively low tax rate to the rest of the state. The next slide is simply showing that in a picture. Some people find pictures easier to understand than complicated charts. So this is nothing more or less than the education tax rate for these six towns or districts. The question was also raised at one of the board meetings of you can't just look at fiscal year 23. So I did take the time to look at these six districts or towns across the past three years. And in one year to the next, the deck chair shuffle around a little bit. Burlington might be higher, might be in Champlain Valley, might be lower or whatever. But over a three-year period and not just a one-year period, South Burlington has the lowest tax rate amongst its neighbors. So whether you're looking at one year or three years, it's the same result. Slide 12, the tax commissioner sends out a very important letter on December 1st every year, which announces what the yield is, has some commentary about what is proposed. It talks about the $64 million surplus. This slide used to be a lot busier in our earlier presentations, but we decided it just had too much information on it. So we're really just looking at the homestead rates. Obviously these aren't locked in until budgets are passed and whatnot. But this is where it stands comparatively for the time being. We used to have a quote on this slide that we removed, but if you just let me just read it, I think it kind of summarizes how the state is viewing this fiscal year 24. This is a quote from the tax commissioner's letter. There is a projected increase of 8.52% in overall education spending across the state in FY24, higher than any growth rate in at least the last decade. Continued inflationary pressure, policy initiatives and capital maintenance and remediation costs will continue to create cost pressures for the education fund. So it isn't just South Burlington that's in a challenging situation this year. It's the entire state. I think Jesse's comments about the CLA help support that as well. Okay, so I think Violet, this was our handoff point number two, if you are ready to take the next two slides. Thank you, yes. So as Tim described a number of the state factors and the economic factors, such as the yield and the CLA and the tax commissioner's letter, which certainly impacted the budget, I'd like to outline some of the local factors and talk to you all a little bit about our approach here to creating this budget. So first and foremost, students are at the center. We know that the needs of our students have not been remediated during the short time this pandemic relief funding has been available. We also know that we have a responsibility to support our students with a budget that our community can afford. We knew that we needed to really evaluate staffing levels to return the curve, not completely, but certainly make a significant difference in returning this ratio of students to staff as Tim outlined in an earlier slide. So to support our students' needs and create a fiscally responsible budget, we also evaluated some of the state factors. We have phase two of Act 173 coming into effect July 1st. This is a significant impact on the way teachers deliver instruction in general ed classrooms. Act 173 and multi-tiered systems of supports, I think, have historically been seen as special ed initiatives and that is really not the case here. We're being expected to have huge changes in our classrooms where we're asking our teachers to really meet the needs of all of our students with fewer supports. To do this, we've got to really prioritize our multi-tiered systems of supports. So our universal teaching, I'll liken that to a trip to a cleaning at the dentist. And then we know some of our students are going to need also a cavity filled, right? So maybe that's a time with a math interventionist. And we know that also some of our students will need to get a root canal, hopefully not very many. And so we need, say, some behavior interventionists, perhaps, to fill those needs of students, right? And all the while the students needing a root canal may also need a filling and they certainly will need regular screenings and cleanings. So that is a dental analogy to help you all to understand a little bit about how we plan to support all of our students in a variety of ways. We also know that the capacity issue is impacting the way that we can deliver instruction with our universal design for learning tenants and our multi-tiered systems of supports. We know that we need a broad variety of instructional strategies which require flexible groupings and for students to have the ability to have voice and choice and autonomy and maybe engage in learning through a group game or silent reading or electronically with a partner. And our facilities right now at the elementary level and two of our schools are impacting that ability. We also know that our facilities stewardship plan shows a significant backlog of deferred maintenance. And in this bond, you'll see that while 6 million is being brought forward for the impact of overenrollment for ZEMS, the greater majority of the bond is really to address these facilities needs identified in our published facility stewardship plan. Jesse, if you'd advance us, please. Thank you. So thinking about staffing, I wanna say I am incredibly grateful to all of our staff who are essential for teaching and supporting our students every single day. We knew that we had to reduce staff coming off the back of the ESSER funded which allowed us to fund about 28 full-time positions. And there was not a gradual plan to sunset these positions. We knew that we would be at this cliff. However, the sunset was planned and we of course, hope to maintain staff through attrition. I will walk you through some of the positions that were the only positions that we're proposing maintain in ESSER funding for FY24. We've not yet exhausted all of our funding but it is significantly and almost nearly exhausted for the FY24 year, in other words, the 23-24 school year next year. So in ESSER, we'd like to continue a student engagement coordinator at the high school. This person supports students in a broad variety of ways through co-curriculars. So our students who maybe aren't engaging in athletics but maybe interested in knitting club or underwater basket weaving is kidding. We don't actually offer that one but we do offer hundreds of activities and we know that engaging students is an important way to support their social and emotional learning and their wellness. We're also going to continue to fund a math interventionist at Rick Marcott School. This position is also currently funded in ESSER like the student engagement coordinator and the art teacher at the high school right now, this 0.4 of a position. So those currently funded 2.4 positions for ESSER, we'd like to continue to fund again in this next coming school year. So as we think about the local budget here and the many, many positions that are important to us and to supporting our students' social, emotional and academic needs now with the exhaustion of the lion's share of the ESSER funding, we think about our taxpayers and what can we support? So we've identified the most critical needs here. We have, we're proposing a 0.5 communications coordinator which is at the district level. This is being shifted from ESSER. This is currently funded in ESSER, so shifting to district. These are these three math interventionists currently funded in ESSER, proposing that we shift them from ESSER as well. Finally, a 1.0 special education coordinator. This is a position that was formerly in place at the middle school as a special education building coordinator and special educator position. And we'd like to have this be a special education coordinator who supports our middle school and elementary schools. I think, Jesse, if you could, yep, thanks, great. So to talk a little bit more about how we were able to get down to this 7.17% tax increase with the headwinds of CLA coming in and again, wanting to introduce a tax rate that is lower than the average, which we have done. We sought those reductions through a 5% reduction in overall operating costs at each of our schools as well as central office. This was about a $50,000 savings. We did reduce significant proposed facilities upgrades and are differing about 265,000 in projects. We do have the awareness that we're going to be engaging the community in decisions about moving the fifth grade and re-engaging the community in conversations about infrastructure. So when we evaluated which costs to move forward, we thought about student safety, asbestos remediation in the windows, for instance, which is on the bond. We thought about ADA compliant bathrooms, which is also in the bond kitchen upgrades, being able to heat dishes to appropriate temperatures, things like that. But the community should know that facilities-wise, we have made more costs. Some of you may have also seen the report released recently by the state aiding that South Burlington is the 11th neediest district in the state for facilities. So a systemic problem in the state, one in which many communities don't have the taxpayers to support facilities needs. And it is my belief that our community can really support some of these projects we've received a lot of support and are grateful for that. But the need remains great. And other approaches here is we looked at cost-neutral and cost-saving positions. One example is we remodified the delivery of nursing, we modified the delivery of nursing services. So we looked at how rather than perhaps paying a greater number of subs per day, we could have in-house staff to support nursing needs on a daily basis. That's one example of a model change. Right now, we have 28 open requisitions. We made the decision to close eight of those. And many of those are unfilled due to the current low unemployment rate. Some of you may know, we have about 1200 folks in Chittenden, all of Chittenden County seeking employment. And we know that many of those 1200 aren't even interested in the job. And then those who are not all will be a good fit for our students' needs or our district or if they have that skill set, right? So we felt safe closing eight out of these 28 positions. And then finally to our valued staff watching these presentations and hearing about shifts in funding. You know, it's important to note that it would be premature for us to say which staff is not going to be able to come back next year. And it is our hope that through attrition, we're able to maintain staff as many as possible every year. This is an option. We have retirements and folks who have other opportunities. So again, it would be premature to discuss any further specifics. And at this time, I will turn it back over to Tim. He's gonna talk through the budget worksheet here, articulating exactly how we get to our per pupil, equalized per pupil spending, CLA tax rates and then finally that actual residential tax rate. Thank you. Thanks, Violet. Trying to be respectful of the time allocated for this because I could spend an hour on this slide, but I won't. This is really an extract from a much more detailed budget worksheet. It really is kind of one stop shopping for the major data points. At the very top of it, you'll see that 62.5 million number. That's what is lined up in our system for the budget. That is the number that the school board approved on January 11th for us to go forward with. The next line is this offsetting of local state and federal revenues that I spoke about. That's where that $2 million surplus was last year. So when you look at this year's education spending of 49.6 million, all other things being equal, it would have been 47.6 million and the increase would not have been as significant from last year to this year. There's the equalized pupil number again that we've discussed. The cost is simply a ratio between the education spending and the number of equalized pupils. The yield set by the legislature gives you a equalized tax rate of 1.2521. And then we've talked about the CLA itself. So you put all these numbers some come from us, the proposed expenditure budget, some come from the state and it spits out this number at the very bottom of the page which is the actual residential tax rate of 1.3468. Now, if we go to the next slide, I wanted to show you, is 1.3468 an anomaly or is it a spike or what is it? I don't think the data really supports either one of those conclusions. We wanted to make sure that the residents understood where this number sits relative to our historical tax rate. So we've been fortunate as taxpayers the last two years to actually have the education tax rate go down. And then when it goes up to 1.3468 with the current proposed budget, the numbers at the very bottom of the graph show you what the averages have been. So the five-year average from 2019 through 2023 was 1.4815, 10-year average 1.5352 and 15-year average 1.4860. So whether you're looking at it from a short-term perspective compared to other school districts in the state where it's 83% of a higher rate than us, even looking at it on a standalone basis within South Burlington, I think demonstrates that 1.3468 is lower than all of these five, 10, 15-year averages and really is not anything resembling a spike, in my opinion, when I look at the numbers. The next page, I could easily spend an hour on. This is the detailed budget workshop. I have no intention of walking you through this. I just wanted to show you that such a thing does exist and we have submitted it as part of our materials for anyone who wants to take a closer look at it. But it really, this is the Excel spreadsheet that drives all of these various numbers. What I do want to focus on is an extract of this, which is on slide 21. So this shows, I'll just orient you to this. So this is what last year's or the current year's budget look like when we actually had a decrease in the tax rate. And then on the right-hand side, it's what this proposed budget, what the impact would be. So this 1.3468, which is rounded to seven, there's also some rounding in these numbers because some of these numbers go out to four decimal places. But basically that's a $51 increase from last year or a monthly change of a little over $4. That's for a $100,000 homestead value. That's what the rate is based upon. Now, what we do every year is we look at, we get these numbers from the city. What is the average cost of a condominium in South Burlington at present? And what is the average cost of a home in South Burlington? And we wanted to look at what the impact of this tax increase would be on those two variables. You could also construct a chart showing every number between zero and 10 million. We didn't want to do that. So if you were the owner of an average priced condo, the change in your education tax bill based on this proposed budget would be $193 higher than the average condo last year or just over $16 a month. If you owned the average valued home of 437, 384 this year compared to an average priced home last year, this budget would raise your education tax rate by $285 or just under $24 a month. So that's the impact that this 3.96% tax increase year on year will have on the average home owner in South Burlington. Next slide, we'll go into capital requirements and the bonds. So slide 23, is simply a snapshot of what our current debt load is in the school district. So these are bonds that had been approved in years past that are still being paid off through the amortization schedules that each of them have. So we have an outstanding debt of about $5.2 million at present, which in this year's budget cost about $580,000, $580,000 to finance. That is comparatively speaking for a district as large, diverse and complex as South Burlington to be a fairly low principal balance at present. Burlington just approved their $165 million bond and there's obviously different debt levels in every town, this is a pretty reasonable sized debt at present. If we go to slide 24, this is the new bond item that's gonna be on the ballot in March. So the total bond request is $14,550,000. As Violet said earlier, this is really split into two parts. One is $6 million for the ZEMS. Again, we want to reiterate thanks to the action taken earlier this evening. The impact fees are expected to cover a very large percentage of the cost of the ZEMS as much as 91% excluding financing. So we can't get an actual quote on a bond. Well, we can get a quote. We can't get an actual cost because interest rates change every day and we can't actually apply for this bond funding until the voters approve it on March 7th. So this is a point in time illustration of if we had borrowed the $6 million on December 19th, this is just reflecting what the financing costs would have been in the interest rate. So it would have been $6 million in principle plus 887,000 in interest. We mentioned earlier that there is an impact in the fiscal year 24 budget, but only for interest. Obviously in fiscal year 25, you will start making principal and interest payments, but for the purposes of the fiscal year 24 budget, because of the timing of when principal is due, we'd have about a $151,000 interest payment for the ZEMS. The bottom half of this slide is the other capital improvements in the facility stewardship plan for which we're asking $8.55 million. There's a variety. There's a fairly long spreadsheet that's maintained across a multi-year period. The items that the bond money in this year's bond would be applied to include, I just put down some general categories, and the list is by school and by project. So you can get down in the weeds, but for the purposes of tonight, there's roofing projects costing 2.35 million, HVAC plumbing, air handling units around 423,000, window replacement, bathrooms, parking lot sidewalks and kitchen renovations. Those are the categories that the 8.55 million will be applied towards. And I did the same thing with an illustrated quote for those items. So if you go to the next slide, this is information that people in the public were interested in seeing. So this is the detail behind the previous slide. So this is actually the quote that the Vermont bond market gave us based on the funding. The ZEMs have a different amortization timeframe than the general capital improvements. So that's why it's paid back in a shorter number of years. Again, we wanted to show that the large portion of the ZEMs principle will be covered by the impact fees, which takes down their overall cost tremendously. And then it just shows you what the principle and interest payments would be on the 8.5 million portion of the bond, the stewardship plan. And then what the grand total would be each year. So again, that's for reference. Should the voters approve the bond on March 7th, these numbers will be different, but they should be illustrative depending on what happens to interest rates between now and March. And that's it. We are obviously preparing a number of presentations that are already on the calendar, various civic groups around the city, school PTOs. I think Violet and I and our school board members are gonna be very busy between now and March 7th, trying to get the word out and the rationale out for why we feel this budget is critical for the continued success of our students in our schools. Everything's leading up to March 7th. And then the next page is, if you care to look at the link on the agenda, we go into this glossary. So if some of those terms were a little bit fuzzy, which they can be for sure, if you don't live this every day, we've just gone through over the next few pages to explain some of these terms. So that's the presentation. I think Violet, did you wanna have some final thoughts? Thank you, Tim. Thank you so much. I think at this time we can welcome questions or comment from the council and the community. Tim has one. Yeah, why is there a substantial difference in the interest rate charged by the bond bank of the eight-year loan versus the stewardship loan? Just curious. I think it's because of the duration of the bond. One is amortized over a nine-year term, amortized over eight years, and the other is 20 years of amortization. So when they look at the bond as a whole, they take that factor of the size of the money they're borrowing as well as the duration of the loan. We'll have a different rate. And if the Fed raises the prime rate by another 25 basis points this year and then stops, will that affect what their projected interest rate will be? Not if we've locked in, not if, I mean, it's where we have fixed rate. So it depends on what happens. If the voters approve it on March 7th and we're getting our act together and we borrow the money very soon thereafter, whatever those terms are, similar to a home mortgage, or a fixed home mortgage, I should say, that's the rate that we will have. So we'll have this amortization schedule that I showed you locked in for the ensuing years. So then the payments won't show up as a bill that taxpayers until the next fiscal year, is that true, or will it be on the... There'll be a, as part of our local budget, if you go back to this slide where we showed the pie, there is a slice called debt servicing. That's the categorization of the payments that need to be made to the lender from our budget. And so these two bonds that they passed will have a slice in this budget as well. Or will they be in next year's budget? I'm not for fiscal year 24 because it's only the first year of interest. Right, so next year, next year. Megan. Yeah, I was just looking at the fiscal year 24 budget, the white pages following the glossary, and there's plant repair. Let me find that just a minute. Plant repair services that go up 723.53%. I was curious to know more. I'm sorry, what are you looking at? He's looking at the, you sent me the, what I think of as the roll-up budget, that line item budget that I attached after the slide deck presentation. Yeah, I don't have that in front of me right now. But if you have any questions about that, just please send us the question and we'll give you the answer. In some cases, those percentage increases are either off a very small number. And so, you know, if we spent $1,000 on a certain line item this year, but it got categorized in the same line item as a $3,000 expense for next year, I mean, that's 300%, right? So some of those numbers, it's actually better to look at the high level categories, I think, than it is to look at any individual line item, although, again, any questions you have regarding those detailed numbers that we happen to answer? It's over half a million dollars. So it's not just a little amount. Yeah, we'll have to look at it. What specific account that is in the budget, yeah. Thank you, Peter. All right, are there other questions or comments, Tim? I was trying to understand the attrition versus the number of unfilled positions versus the cut of 24 positions and then the new positions. So what's the total, what's gonna be the total change if you were able to hire everybody you wanted to and you had the attrition rate that you expected, would it be a flat or would it be increase? No, it'd be down 23.75. It'd be what? Down 23.75. It'd be down 20. So you expect, if all things go well, to be down 23.75, all right. We will be. So it is planned that we will be down those 23 positions. What, how that will look is what's not determined. So we hope to retain valuable staff. I'll use the example about multiple licensures. So we might have a teacher who is licensed in multiple areas and maybe receives a RIF notification in one area and applies for another area that say has become vacant because a teacher has selected to retire. So every year we have sort of sort of a shaking out of who lands where, but we will this budget is reflective of a reduction of 23 positions, full-time positions. And part of that getting to that number of 23 is the eight requisitions that we've closed. Any questions from the audience? Comments from the school board? It's tough. You made your decision, that's rough. Okay, oh, did you raise your hand? Oh, okay. All right. Well, thank you very much. Okay, thank you. And now we'll move on to item 11. So we get to do to you what you just did to us and share our budget proposal. Good evening. My name is Jessie Baker. I'm City Manager here in South Burlington. I'm also joined, you can't see them right now without the little box with the boxes hidden, but joined by Martha Machar, our finance director and a parent of Kiddos in the school district, as well as Alana Blanchard, our community development director and Tom DePietra, our public works director. They will, tonight we wanna talk you through our general fund budget, which will be on the ballot on town meeting day, as well as highlight for you the two bond votes, the municipal bond votes that will be on the ballot as well. I do wanna say a huge thank you to the city councilors who have spent two months with this budget, approved it as presented last Tuesday night. So this is their approved budget now that will go to the voters. So this is what I'm gonna talk through this evening. All of these documents, as well as all of the line item and rollup budgets are on our website, linked off of our finance department website. It is my honor and privilege to present this, but it is a huge amount of work that goes into developing this budget by our finance director, our leadership team, and of course the city council. You're gonna hear a lot of the same things from me as you heard from Tim and Violet. We were presented with some pretty significant challenges going into the FY24 budget. You see a lot of those here. One of the things that may be slightly different is during COVID, as I think you all know, municipal revenue streams are significantly different than school revenue streams. We have a lot more different revenue streams that come into our operation budget. So we are, and we don't have to deal with a statewide education fund. We are solely raising our taxes from our decisions here locally. As a result of that during COVID, we really scaled back spending locally. We did not fill a number of positions to ensure that if we saw revenue decreases that they could still meet expenditures. So one of the significant challenges building this budget was growing out of those reductions and holds on staffing that we had experienced during the COVID lean years. And then of course continuing to meet our community service expectations as our city continues to grow. So we made some very similar assumptions building this budget as the superintendent and her team made. We are fortunate enough to have all three of our collective bargaining agreements currently settled. So we implemented the requirements that are in those CBAs. We are projecting with this budget a 1.75% increase in our grand list from a, that's as Tim mentioned, the aggregate value of all of the assessed property in South Burlington. I think here it is important to note that 1% of that is associated with this city-wide grand list. And almost 10% of that growth is associated simply with the growth in our tax increment financing district, which is this, you'll hear more about this in a little bit, but is this area of the city that you are sitting in now that shows the success of the investment the community has made over the past several decades investing in our growing downtown. Slightly, I wanna make one comment for the school board. I think you all know this but ARPA is our equivalent of ESSER. It's the funding we got from the federal government to support communities as they came out of the pandemic of COVID. And we have the ability to spend those funds through FY26. So as we were, as the council was making decisions about allocating those dollars, we put into place several kind of step down plans where we invested in bringing back staff and funding our capital needs in a step down approach through those couple of years. So we are currently actively implementing that step down approach. So the big goals that we as a leadership team and now the council have as part of this budget is again to restore a number of those positions that were frozen or unfunded in order to maintain our healthy fiscal picture through COVID and through some reductions in revenue streams. So we wanted to address obviously rising inflation rates and cost of living adjustments. You heard about that earlier. We did want to be sensitive towards our tax rate, our community's ability to handle tax rate increases. So this is what we are considering a two-year budget. We are making recommendations as part of this budget that will need to continue to be filled in FY24 with an FY25 with another increase and I'll talk more about that in a minute. We heard a lot, the council heard a lot in the last year as we came out of COVID about the importance of our parks and open space during COVID and our need to maintain those well in order to have those areas for our community to connect. So we are refunding a position in our parks department to help maintain those open spaces. We are also restoring one police officer position that had been not funded during COVID, again to adjust that revenue concern and a second police officer in FY25 and restoring a deputy chief position. We currently do not have a deputy chief position in our budget. We also heard a lot from our fire and EMS professionals about the need to restore a 30th firefighter that was unfunded and stand up a second ambulance. I'll talk about that more in a minute and then invest in our capital improvement plan, general fund funding and restore a GIS analyst position that had previously again been unfunded in order to make sure that we as a community are really making those data-driven decisions. Can I just again reiterate that those positions were vacant? It's not that the council, there was an attrition that the council could have acted to hire a firefighter or a police officer. It's simply that we couldn't recruit, right? Okay, yeah, the unfunded just really makes, leaves it kind of ambiguous. So a little more about each of these goals for the budget. So as I mentioned, this year we are prioritizing, are maintaining our parks and open space. Next year we will be adding another highway position in public works and over the last 22 years we've added 20 miles of roads in South Burlington and have not added staff to keep up with those. Similarly in 2020, we did an analysis of the staffing levels we would need to properly police and meet the community's goals around public safety, which resulted in the recommendation to have 40 sworn officers and 10 civilian officers. Right now we have 32 sworn officers and nine civilians. So again, we are making a two-year recommendation to put funding for those positions back into the budget. And then on the firefront, again, we are restoring a 30th firefighter position right now we are experiencing, let me pause for a minute. I should have said this in the beginning of the public safety section. One of the unique things about public safety as you all probably know is that we have to staff 24, 7, 365. So there is always, there are always police, fire and EMS personnel on duty every minute of the year to support the community's public safety needs. In order to do that with our reduced staffing on the fire side, what that results in is mandatory overtime. So somebody is at work and we are telling them you have to stay for another 24-hour shift. That is not an optional thing that they have signed up for. So right now, 84% of our overtime is mandatory order in overtime. They have to come and give another 24 hours of service to our community. That's unsustainable from a health and wellness standpoint for our staff and that 30th officer will let us or 30th firefighter will hopefully reduce that mandatory overtime. Additionally, you can see on the lower left-hand side are medical calls for service. In the fire service nationally, we are seeing this shift as buildings meet a higher standard of construction and are sprinkled that and we have aging populations and mental health struggles and substance misuse issues. Our medical incident calls are increasing drastically in the city. So right now, we are seeing about 3,000, 3,200 calls for a 911 calls for ambulances a year. 23% of the time right now, those calls are being answered by mutual aid, by a non-South Burlington ambulance because our ambulance is already in service to somebody else. That's compared to 723 times and outside ambulance came in to serve our residents. 30 times last year, we went out to serve another community. So it's not mutual aid, other communities are really supplanting our service. So because of that, this budget includes the recommendation to stand up a second ambulance. Right now we operate one. In order to do that and be sensitive to the tax rate, we will stand that up in January 2024 so that the tax capacity needed to cover the salaries to fund a second ambulance will be half covered in FY24 and half covered in FY25. That's what we're talking about as a two-year budget. I talked earlier about the need to invest in our capital improvement program or plan. This is how we invest in our infrastructure, pave sidewalks or implement sidewalks, pave streets, facilities, parks, maintenance, buildings and our water waste water funds. That general fund capacity over the past couple of years has fluctuated relatively significantly. And we really believe that we need to be incrementally investing general fund tax capacity in maintaining our infrastructure over time. So you see 430,000 of new general fund tax capacity in this budget to fund our CIP. And we anticipate that that will continue to increase in the years to come. So here's the bottom line number that Tim rightly put right up front and I have buried down after the goals. So with this two-year budget, the FY24 impact to do all the things I just mentioned as well as continue our current operations results in a two and a half penny increase to the tax rate or a 4.75% increase to the tax rate. So as Tim did, the annual impact of that for the average condo owner is $78.49. And for the average homeowner is $117.11. That's for the year. In this slide, you can also see the difference between our change in general fund expenditures, which is a 9.4% increase and our change in the non-property tax revenues we've been able to raise. So we're raising non-property tax revenues at 12%, which is significantly over our property tax revenues. Does that make sense? I do wanna make a couple of quick comments about other general fund related things. So as I talked about, we have the step down, the council's approved the step down uses of ARPA funds. You can see here how those are being allocated over the next several years. So we have a balance of $2 million remaining in those ARPA funds for the council to make future decisions about. During the budget process, we did have a conversation about using, potentially using ARPA funds to fund the implementation of our climate action plan that the council adopted this year after a great deal of community engagement and work. Also on the tax rate is in South Burlington, we have a pennies for paths and a pennies for open space. So there's one sent on the tax rate on the municipal side, raised to increase our path network. So here you see how the council has approved us using that penny this year in that series of projects. I'm not gonna read through them all. Again, they're linked on our website if you wanna go dive into them. I think a great fact for our residents is that 86% of our residential buildings are within a 10th of a mile of shared use path. And then similarly on the penny for open space side of things, these are the projects that that penny will be used to fund this year. And about 68% of our residential buildings are within a quarter mile of open space or park. The utility enterprise funds. So we are talking to you about the general fund because that is the fund that property taxes go to pay. We also have a number we actually have about 30 other funds that we administer as a city. Or three of those are our utility funds. So that's stormwater, water and wastewater. We are anticipating increase or the council has approved these budgets with the rate increases you see here that results in about a $54 annual increase for the average homeowner in South Burlington. Those increases are really driven by upcoming capital needs. We have not invested in capital improvements for these utilities over the last couple of years. So as we consider upgrading our Bartlett Bayways for our treatment plant that you'll hear more about and investing in our water infrastructure, we need to be putting more money into those capital budgets. So there are, I think it's always important for us to highlight some emerging issues that are not addressed in this budget. The council has heard, Harry's me talk about these a lot, sorry guys. So again, this is a two-year operational budget. I do want to foreshadow for the school board that we are also considering bringing to the council a bond vote in 2024 for additional water storage tank that would be not on the property tax rate that would be in the utility fund. But we are exploring that right now and there'll be much more conversation about that over the next council year. And also not included in this budget is any funding allocated to the exploration of a recreation center. I think as we as a community have further conversations about school infrastructure and needs, community service infrastructure and needs, we're really hoping that some of those conversations can be done in partnership or we'll find other opportunities for more public private investments for a recreation center. So that is our general fund budget. I believe, I can't see the people. I believe Tom DiPietro is here with us as well. Tom is our public works director here in South Burlington and we'll walk us through the first of two bond bond votes on the town meeting day ballot. Go for it Tom. Good evening everybody. As Jesse said, I'm Tom DiPietro. I am the South Burlington director of public works. And here to talk about the Bartlett Bay wastewater treatment facility bond vote, the wastewater facility under discussion here is Bartlett Bay Road on the west side of town. And so what we're proposing is one bond vote related to issues at this facility. And it's a $33.8 million vote. And there's kind of three separate components to it. So I'll talk about each individually. The first is for the plant itself. The plant was constructed originally in 1970, it underwent an upgrade in 1999. And we find ourselves some 24-ish years later ready to do another facility refurbishment and upgrade. That's sort of the planned life cycle of these things. And again, it's due to some normal wear and tear. So just some examples of that is on this and the next slide. So you could see item one there is just wear on the interior of a clarifier. Item two is just a leak in a ceiling in a pump building. Item three is sludge storage blowers that were installed in 1987 are still in use. And then a large sludge storage tank above the ladder in that for there's a little hole, a little pinhole that leaks. So just another example, we can't fill it up above that or it leaks out. So we're at limited capacity there. On the next slide, a couple of items that are critical age-related needs. We're calling these is our grit removal in the headworks. So with the wastewater first enters the facility, it's the photo on the right. We need to upgrade the screening that takes place. This can lead to issues downstream. So that grit gets into our pumps and other processes. Also, our UV disinfection system was installed in 1999. It is no longer supported by the manufacturer. So that needs to be replaced. Here is just a general overview of the facility sort of in graphical format. I'm not going to spend too much time here, but you can see the different components of the facility. Some of the shaded pieces are where buildings are, where they're going to move to kind of a new headworks building, for example, is labeled in A there, a new operations maintenance building, things of that nature. So the second of the three components related to this is involved the solids handling. So as material settles out of the wastewater stream, we call those solids. All of the solids produced at the Bartlett Bay wastewater treatment facility are trucked to the airport parkway facility. There they undergo treatment through, we call a two pad process or a two phase anaerobic digestion process. And they're all processed out of creating class A bio solid. Our two pad system is currently limited by the volatile solids reduction. So the solids that come from the Bartlett Bay plant are what we call a waste activated sludge or more of an inert sludge. And so we need a blend of those and the volatile solids that are at the airport parkway plant. And so right now we have some concerns about our ability to blend those. And if you go to the next slide, I could talk a little more about that without getting into too many of the wastewater treatment technical details. But these are really exciting technical details. This is what allows us to maintain our public health in the city. Sorry, Tom. Yes, so this is just an overview of the airport parkway facility. And you can see that the circle kind of hides it, but there's three big circles. Those are clarifiers. And there was a fourth in that design, but it was value engineered out when the airport parkway facility was upgraded in 2009. We feel we needed at this time, again, to deal with the solid blending issue I talked about, but that gives the staff some more flexibility in their operations that can take down the clarifier for emergency or for cleaning and things like that. Next slide. Also related to this is just sludge storage. So we have a tank at the airport parkway facility that is dedicated to storage of sludge that gets trucked over from the Bartlett Bay facility. That was taken out of service primarily because the grit removal is not as good as it needed to be in Bartlett Bay. So what we do now is we truck it up and we run all that solid. We run it again through the headworks in the airport parkway facility, which is much better. But in any case, that tank that is currently at airport parkway would store that that needs some minor repairs as well. Next item. And the third of the three items is some pump stations. So there are nine pump stations in the Bartlett Bay wastewater treatment facility, Sewer Shed. We have 32 in the city. And four of those are in critical need of replacement. They've been in service for over 50 years with some minor upgrades and maintenance, of course along the way. Typically a pump station service life is about 25 years. And as these things get older and other more prone to failure, we feel these are also critical because these are the closest pump stations the city maintains to Lake Champlain. And so any issue that occurs is really a high risk of spill into the lake. Next slide. Very difficult to see on these, I realized they're kind of zoomed out, but three of the four pump stations in question here are down in the Queen City Park area. And on the next slide, there's one off Bartlett Bay Road. And again, if you time to zoom in, you'll be able to see the maps a little better, but they're all right near the plant off Bartlett Bay Road and then in Queen City Park. So again, these pump stations are getting older. We're starting to see some failures, nothing drastic yet, but we did have a force main break on Queen City Park number two, which resulted in a kind of leaking the sewage surfaced on some land, didn't get anywhere else, quick repair there. And we did have to do a repair for Queen City number one, the force main. And so of course, any release obviously would be a permit violation, which we're also trying to avoid. Getting into the numbers of this and why we are looking to have a $33.8 million bond vote. So the facility upgrade is about 22 million. The solids handling works about 1.8 million refurbishment of the pump stations, about four and a half, factoring in engineering design and construction engineering services. Another approximately five million, that's just a formulaic assessment moment of that cost. And then other legal administrative permitting fees, all for that grand total of about 33.8 million, which is on the bond vote. So the impact that this would have on our wastewater rates in South Burlington. So over the last 20 or so years, we've had about an average a 2.2% increase. We are currently working on a rate study that will sort of inform our rates and plans going forward. I'm looking forward to having that presenting that to council and the community, not too far off in the future. But the bond vote for Bartlett Bay would increase our annual expenditures by about 46%. That's our payment on the low end of the bond. That would result in injustice these projects, that would be about a 6.75% increase in the next four fiscal years, which is about a $71 increase to the annual, $71 annual increase to an average homeowner versus what we normally would have if we just had our 2.2% increase that we've had over the last 20 or so years. And I think Jesse had mentioned this previously, but we had called around in the beginning of fiscal year 22 to check rates and did the math to figure out what it would be or how we compare to other communities in the area. And we found that we are on the lower end in the $200 annual fee versus the mothers. And project schedule. So we have prepared the bond language, which council approved at their last meeting. I will be doing some public informational meetings along with Jesse and Alana in the coming months. And the bond vote is on town meeting day. And from there, we will get into final design for all of the things I've described. Hopefully bid the project in 2024 summertime and then start construction later that year. We're anticipating about a two year construction period with our first bond payment would occur in 2027. And just finally kind of a question, the obvious question, why now? And a couple of bullets on that. So we've anticipated the need for this upgrade for a while now. We've documented with an engineer the critical needs and identified a plan at this point. We're currently observing some of the operational issues you would anticipate with sort of an aging infrastructure, aging plan, aging pump stations, et cetera. And also as we look towards funding this project, we have been looking for and pursuing grant opportunities. And so a positive bond authorization on town meeting day kind of indicates support from the community for this work. And that makes our grant applications a little more competitive. And finally, just one important note that if approved, we do not have to spend the full amount. So if we are able to obtain grant funds for this, the actual amount that we borrow could be reduced overall. So this is the end of the conversation about Bartlett Bay. Are there, before we go on to a conversation about TIF bond votes, are there any questions for Tom? Being none, thank you very much. Yes, thank you everybody for the opportunity to speak with you tonight. Leave Alana, it's also here. You're muted Alana, there you go. We can't know, you still are muted. You can't hear me at all. No, we can't know, we can't know. Okay, good. I have a new computer, so I was worried maybe there was some other configuration, but I'm really glad you guys are still sticking with this. My favorite position is to be, I believe I'm the fifth presentation of budgets tonight. So you guys are pretty amazing. So for the record, my name's Alana Lanchard and community development director. Really excited to talk to you about our city center TIF district and the upcoming bond vote for the TIF district. This slide shows the boundaries of the TIF district. It's about a hundred acres and it's rounded on the west by Dorset Street, the east by Hinesburg Road, the north by Wilson Road and extends all the way to the school's property at the south of San Diego Drive. And so if you have not heard a lot about TIF or you have heard a lot about TIF, it's a pretty complex program, but pretty simple in terms of where the funding comes from. TIF districts establish a boundary around a set of properties and as those properties grow in value from a certain point in time, the tax value on that new growth, a portion of it goes into a fund that's set aside to pay service on TIF district debt. So the state, this is a state economic development tool. The state has allowed the tool to be used by the city of South Burlington for our TIF district. We established the TIF district in 2012 so that green, those greenhouses you see there, that's the value in 2012 and going forward, all of that, the taxes on that value continues to go to the city general fund and the state ed fund is normal. And then since 2012, beginning in 2017 or FY 2018, each year until 2037, as the city's tax rate and the state ed fund tax rate is applied to that new growth, 75% of it gets set aside into a special fund. 25% still goes to the city and to the state ed fund. And just so that you know, the South Burlington school district is made whole by the state. So it's a state economic development tool and they make the state budget whole, our budget, we have to make up for those taxes. So it's huge because it combines both of those tax rates but it doesn't actually change the taxes on those properties. Next slide. So this bond vote is really important because in March 31st, 2024 is the last date by which we can incur debt. And when I say incur, that means sign all the paperwork on debt to be issued. And all to debt requires the approval of the voters. And so for us, this upcoming town meeting is the last regularly scheduled vote during which the voters can, during a normal voting cycle vote on the TIF debt. And we have four projects left to be authorized by the voters and that will, those projects will complete the overall to district plan that was established and subsequently amended a few times by the city council in 2012. So next slide. So these are the four projects that are on the ballot. And this is article four. They include the east-west crossing, which is the Walk Bike Bridge over I-89. That's been in the press a fair amount. And each of these projects on this, this graphic is a little bit dense, but it's helped you to understand where each project is in relation to each other, the cost in a relative size of value. And then if you look at those pie charts, the orange is the federal funding that we have secured for the project. And the blue is the contribution of the TIF debt that is under consideration by the voters. So the east-west crossing is, the TIF is 4.3 million would be the contribution to the overall cost of the project. The Wilson Road Street scape will go on the south side of Wilson Road from Dorset Street to Midas Drive. The Garden Street project is so named because it actually is part of Garden Street, which begins at Healthy Living and goes to Al's French Fies. Part of that was already voted on by the voters in March of 21. And what we're asking the voters to consider in March is the second phase, which is shown in orange. And Jesse's pointing it out on the slide. And I'm gonna show you some really cool things. That's one of the most, all of the projects are really cool, but I have some nice graphics for that one coming up. So that one is 100% Tif Eleguals. You'll see by the big, giant blue pie. And then the city center park, I think especially for the school district is really interesting. It's a north-south connection between Barrett Street and Garden Street and Market Street. So a really nice connection that gives a nice off-road bicycle and pedestrian link between the southern part and the northern part of neighborhoods in city center, south to neighborhood, south of city center. And that is essentially a shared use path between those areas as well as a boardwalk over the wetlands. So next slide. So in all, the bond question asked for authorization for 15,086,430 dollars. And that is just the TIF district financing eligible portions of each of these projects. So Garden Street is actually the largest while not the most expensive project. It is the most TIF eligible at 100%. And that's estimated eight million of the overall bond. So each of these projects combined add up to the total question. And the question is a single question for all four projects. Next slide. So the Garden Street project includes pedestrian, bicycle and vehicular safety improvements as well as facilities. The biggest, most noticeable aspect of this is the realignment of the Midas White Street Williston Road intersection. And that's the graphic right there on the left side. It also includes the intersection at Heinzburg and I'm sorry, Heinzburg Road, Patzen Road and Williston Road. And this project, we would like to take it out to bid in 2020. Okay, next slide. So this is the existing condition for Garden Street. And you can see the two intersections on the left, White Street, Midas Drive and on the right, Patzen, Heinzburg, as they are today. And then next slide. Yes, this one, thank you. Oh, no backup one, yeah, there we go. Okay, so big changes right across from Al's French Fies, the realignment. So this really allows much better pedestrian bicycle access. Right now there's no access nor south across this intersection. And then it adds a bicycle and pedestrian accommodations all the way along Midas Drive and on Williston Road between Midas and Patzen, I'm sorry, and Heinzburg Road. So from the Staples Plaza, all the way over to Gracie's, you end up with a continuous shared-use path. And then it also tightens up the intersection at Heinzburg Road and Patzen Road and makes significant safety improvements at that location for pedestrians and bicyclists. And then overall, especially with the realignment there's vehicular improvements. Okay, next slide. The East West Crossing Walkbike Bridge over I-89 between Staples and CVS also includes a connection to the University Mall and a future connection to Corey Hill. This project is the largest project in our TIP district plan, but over 60% of it is funded with federal funding, excuse me, and it's only 30% district funding, financing eligible. So this project is expected to go into construction in 2025 and that's actually starting construction in 2025. Next slide. And then the Williston Road streetscape for which I have no beautiful graphics, sorry, is essentially a shared-use path with a space between the shared-use path and the curb, no changes to Williston Road, just the roadway itself, just on the south side of the curb. So adding a much larger buffer between the shared-use path and the curb with pedestrian-oriented street lighting, some improvements to some of the pole locations so that we can actually have this facility in this location. And this will create much better separation for pedestrians and bicyclists from traffic and create a buffer where we can have some snow storage in the wintertime without encroaching on where pedestrians and bicyclists might wanna travel. Next slide. And then the city center park phase one, so it's just a closer look at that between Garden Street, Market Street and Barrett Street, it's really not so much park changes but more just adding the shared-use path to this location. And especially because it gets so dark in the winter months and we know that sometimes kids are going to the high school or the middle school, I'm sorry, leaving the high school in the middle school at night. So this path will have lighting on it because it is such a great more self-connection. So good to know, this is TIP district financing so our revenue comes from properties, from, I'm sorry, this come, so our revenue comes from the TIP district properties and will not increase the property tax rate. Next slide. So I wanted to talk to you a little bit about some pipeline development and we're showing in the center of the TIP district, Catamount Run in case you haven't seen all the construction that's happening on Garden Street recently. Next slide please. So Catamount Run is a project of Snyder-Reverman on the South Burlington City Center LLC land. And this is what we consider pipeline development, it's a development that is in permitting in some state of permitting. Obviously we have a lot of different permitting agencies so they've gone through and are at the city level at the moment. So the purple is projects that are already fully permitted and in fact, they're on the last project right now, Prospect Place Apartments in the lower left and that one is in construction. It's 120 units and includes daycare. And then Union Place, which is at the corner of Garden Street and Market Street is about 60 units of housing and that one is going to open this spring. So the red buildings that are on Market Street, there's four of them. Those are all being invested in as a partner with Snyder-Reverman by UBM. And those are required to be open very soon. I'll show you on the next slide. But, and then the pink buildings are also buildings that have been in permitting. We don't have a date for when they would be completed. But the Catamount Run buildings in next slide are required. Oh, okay, sorry. The Catamount Run buildings are required to be completed by 2026. It was, yeah. Next slide. So this, we have a big bottle for a TIP district increment and it tells us, you know, how much do we expect to be developed within the TIP district? We also include all of the debt and the debt that has already been issued and the debt that we would expect to issue with this authorization. And we look at it all year by year. We look at our balances, both in the TIP district fund and in the city reserve fund for city center. And use that to evaluate how much we can, how much we can finance with the TIP district and then, you know, what the risks are, what the upsides are and what the downsides are. So this model will be in the public information notice that we'll go out to the public at the beginning of February and we'll be sent to the council and happy to make it available to anyone. And it will also be available online and at the clerk's office. So what this shows is all projected development. This is sort of a very high level summary and the existing development and pipeline. So the projected is green, the pipeline is yellow. So in our first year of our TIP district, we collected 72,000 and that's the 75% of the city and the ed fund. In the last year, we collected, we would project to collect sort of if everything develops 5.9 million in the last year of the TIP district and if everything stops at those pink buildings and nothing else develops, we would expect to collect 3 million. And then at the, in the increment total, you can see all projected development would be 47 million existing development and pipeline, nothing else ever develops would be 32 million. Now what we would anticipate the principle and the interest to be is somewhere in the middle of those two. And so we will be working with developers over the course of the TIP district. We will also be using this time between when looking at federal grant opportunities that come forward in the next several months to look for other avenues of funding in order that we don't necessarily have. Like as Tom said, just because the voters approve the debt does not mean that it needs to be, it does not all need to be issued. Next slide. So all debt is general obligation debt. So even though it's backed by the TIP district, it's also backed by the full faith and credit of the city. So if we do not have sufficient increment to service the debt, the city is still required to make payments. And that's important. And that's why we'll be looking very carefully at all opportunities moving forward. And then probably, well, that's okay. I think we had this on a slide that we edited out. So I just was going to mention that to date we have 14 million that's been authorized of which 10 has been issued. And then the total that would be issued would be 29 million, 29.5 million. So next slide. So this is the question. As I mentioned, all four projects are on the same question. And this is how we have it formatted currently. It's article four. And in the past, their ballots have been formatted differently. So we'll see what it looks like. It may look like one big paragraph. So just before we're going to, okay. Thank you. Thank you, Alana. We have some questions. Yeah, Dr. Charles. Hello, you mentioned more lights on the path. Yes. So the path that goes from Barrett Street to Garden Street and Market Street would have low level lighting. So it wouldn't have like a full giant street light in the forest, but it would have lights that are sort of like waste height so that people could find their way on the paths. And those paths would be paved. So they would be cloud, but we would not be salting them because of the sensitivity of the wetlands. And you said something about the middle school and high school. So the high school and the middles, I'm sorry, go ahead. Yes, using the path with the lights. So the path connects to Barrett Street and then there's a sidewalk on Barrett Street that connects directly to the fields beside the middle school. Okay. So yeah, so it's a very nice North South connection that's not on Dorset Street. Thank you. Thank you. All right, Hinesburg Road and we do take Barrett Street to get to Chamberlain neighborhood from the high school and just so you know. Yeah. Any other questions or comments? I just have a comment. Yes. So I just want to point out that with the diagrams that you saw with the massing of the proposed and projects that have been built so far in the core of city center, there is still a hunk of land at the eastern end of Market Street for which there is no plan, right? But which will probably be built out at some point and that will also add to that TIF value. And the Pune property. And the Pune property. Tim, isn't that four acres that you're talking about at the end of Market Street for sale? I wouldn't know particularly if it is. I saw a sign. There's a sign. I haven't paid attention, but were you interested in buying it or? Yeah. Sure. All I needed is a couple million. Sure. I'd like to know more about the process of selecting those four locations for the ballot. How were those four projects considered and were there other finalists that didn't make the cut? Or you could talk a little bit more about that process. Okay. Yeah, sure. That's a great question. Yeah. So these projects, the city center has been around conceptually for a really long time since I think it started being mentioned in comprehensive plans in the 70s. And the city started working on many of the projects that are in the TIC district. I'm not sure, maybe I would say 30 years. So like by the 90s, the city had already acquired the park, the city center park, they called it the Dumont parcel. By the 90s, the east-west crossing bridge was in the official map. So, and then I think in the 90s or the early 2000s, there was a quarter study on Williston Road. Feel like in the 80s, I found a drawing of a realignment of the Midas Street, Williston Road intersection. So a lot of these plans have been out there and been talked about for a long time. And then in the early 2000s, the city received funding for Market Street. And as part of that funding did a lot of planning for city center. Hired people had charats. I think there were by the time I started in 2012, there had been three community wide charats on city center. I think in like the early 2000s, 2009 and 2011, so many. And so when we developed the TIC district plan, there were already a lot of projects that had gone through considerable study. And some of them were an environmental assessment that was done for Market Street, which had federal funding. So the plan was really, the TIF district was really a way to organize all those projects that had been out there. We did have some more community outreach during the development of the plan, just to talk about the projects, to see if they were the right projects and if there were other projects. And then once the plan was developed, there were some additional projects that were included. So there was a rec center, there was a parking garage and there was an urban park. And so those projects had been in the plan. And then recently in 2021, we went to Pepsi and we explained to them and asked permission to remove them from the plan because they were either too expensive and the TIF district was not going to be able to support them or we had been trying to obtain land for those projects and we had not been able to get anyone to sell us the land. And so that's how we ended up with these particular projects. If that's helpful, if that answers the question. There also are some limitations on how the TIF money, what it can be used to fund. So that also directs the choices you make or we make. Thank you. Yes. They have to be tied to economic growth. Any other questions? Okay. So if I can just wrap up and actually Diane is asking in the chat, I say I don't want to have a chat for content about a document for March 7th. I think both the city and school are working on those. I know we on our side are, I believe the school is as well working on those materials to summarize in maybe slightly more concise than tonight what is going to be on the town meeting day ballot. Additionally, on the city side, as the school is, Alana and Tom and I, as Tom mentioned, are spending a lot of time together in the next couple of weeks doing community outreach and engagement along with our council partners. And you see here where you can get more information and come to one of our meetings. For example, if you want to come have a Valentine's Day date with your city before your dinner reservation on the 14th, please join us for our Love Your City informational meeting. Okay. Thank you. Well, it was very helpful. I hope the public thought it was too. Moving on then to item 12, if there are no more comments or questions. Monica Otsby is in the chat asking to make a public comment not related to this agenda item. Not related to what agenda item? The city budget. Oh, the city budget. I can't, Travis, can you open the chat for a minute? Oh, that's the joint document which summarizes the bonds. I think we need to do that and we'll be working on that. I think that would be important. So to see it all in one spot. And then, yes, I guess we can hear from Monica briefly. Hi. Hi. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Sorry that I missed the earlier thing. I just, it's so infrequent that you're, both of your groups are together. I wanted to share an idea for future discussion in terms of a potential land swap that I would ask you to think about that is exchanging the high school campus for the Veterans Memorial Park campus. I did attend the affordable housing committee meeting and I explained it to them what my idea and her concept is and Megan and Jesse both happened to be there. I don't want to take your time with it tonight but I did give them a mock up. But while you are all there, the idea is to build a new high school and fifth through 12th grade campus at Veterans Park and then later switch the high school campus over to the city where the high school could be repurposed for affordable housing and the middle school could be repurposed for a rec center. So anyway, I drafted mock ups that potentially show how that can all fit but I'm not an expert and I just ask that maybe you add it to your list of things to consider perhaps in a future steering meeting or just in your own, in your own meetings. And Megan, you had those images I sent to you if you think they're worthy of sharing with everyone and Jesse has them as well, then you can do that. Okay, well, thank you. Thanks. Always thinking you are. Alrighty, let's move on to item 12 then discussion on George Street safety and possibly feedback for staff. Sure, so this, you heard from Miss Moore this evening at the beginning of our council meeting. This is something that she and one other constituent had come to the city council to talk about before. So I want to give you a quick update on where we as the city stand and as the school board has future conversations about your request for infrastructure improvements or your longterm plans for the middle school and high school campus. Certainly we would want to integrate that into any longterm planning for Dorset Street as well. So what we as city staff are currently working on obviously after any significant traffic accident we do a full after actions review between our public safety and public work staff and evaluate if there was a infrastructure cause for an accident in this case that was quite an extensive review and did not result in any improvements having or any needed improvements. Having said that we are doing a number of we obviously we are doing three significant infrastructure looks at that area right now that could inform a future change to that infrastructure. Obviously changing infrastructure like that requires what we call warrants. It requires professional engineers to indicate what needs to happen in the infrastructure. So we are currently in partnership with the regional planning commission doing a lighting study of Kennedy Drive as it leads into Dorset Street that would may have implications for kind of turning that corner and what improved lighting in that area would look like. We just submitted last week funding through the regional planning commission to do speed and traffic counts along Dorset Street to really do an assessment of as Ms. Moore was saying the speed limits, how fast vehicles are traveling how many vehicles are traveling through there that could result in a warrant for improved infrastructure along the way as well. And then finally the city project that is currently underway and has been underway for years is to do signal improvements through the entire intersection between on Dorset Street between Kennedy Drive all the way to Williston Road that will make those signals adaptive. So learn the traffic patterns as well as significant pedestrian improvements. So that's what we're currently doing. I want to update the school board about that. And if you and future conversations would like to make a more formal ask of us to do a different infrastructure change we would be open to that. That was the extent of what I wanted to share. Okay. Dr. Child, do you want to make comment and then. So do we have access to the things that say, hey, you start beeping saying you're going over 25. Can we not put those up there also? The like the radar, the flashing radars. Because I didn't know it was 25. I'm saying right beside the school. We could look into doing that. And more of the blinking lights also. Do you mean the rapid flashing beacons, the like crossing signs, like the rectangle ones or the speed limit ones? Yes, speed limit and those too. Okay. We can look into that. Any other? Yes. Kate. What's the timeline on the projects that are already underway that you mentioned? So the lighting study will wrap up this fiscal year. The signal construction starts this summer and the speed and traffic counts are part of next year's regional planning work. So that starts in July. If they select it, right? If they select it. Yes, because we submitted a number of project requests to CCRPC and they tell us what they'll do. So we're hoping that's one of them. So if I can add just a quick follow up comment to that. I think it's, I understand the TIP project and being proactive and it's part of this larger plan and obviously Wilson Road is a busy road and needs a lot of attention. But the way I see spending a lot of time on Dorset Street because of the school district office and the schools, the pedestrian and biking needs are so significant and it just feels like Dorset Street is a real, there's so much congestion. And so I would hope and I imagine if I were Ms. Morris here listening to all of these projects that are putting a lot of attention to right next to where this like major accident happened in her family's life. I just want to point out that I want to make sure that Dorset Street is getting the attention that it deserves in particular because we have two of our five school buildings there and it feels really important as our sort of hub for pedestrian and bike traffic. And this is the first I'm hearing of Monica's suggestion but I do like the idea of potentially if we were going to have new school buildings and new school property and not having it be in such a congested place where there's so much car traffic. Okay, thank you. Other comments or thoughts? Anyone listening in? Quick thought that it's good to do the review of the lighting especially in conjunction with Kennedy Drive like you said before because the new flashing pedestrian crossing right there at the interest of Grandview it's at nighttime this time of the year it's really, really hard to see the pedestrians that people will stop but they're like where's the pedestrian and then they just kind of come out of the darkness and appear so that's good to review that as well, thanks. Okay, thank you. And then item 13 is discussing the charter committee's work to date and associated next steps. Great, so again just seizing the opportunity to have both of our bodies here together and actually our chair of our charter committee is here as well. I just wanted to share information about where we currently are and make sure we're all on the same page. So when the council originally started talking about looking at governance models in our community they were very intentional actually just about last year at this time I think at this meeting last year we talked about the resolution establishing the charter committee. They were very intentional about putting two members of the school board as voting members on the charter committee. So I want the school board to know that there is real representation on that committee from the school board. Since September we've been meeting regularly hearing from others in Vermont and local government about different governance models. We are as a committee looking at or they are as committee looking at different models and the pros and cons for those models here in South Burlington. Once we wrap up that work we are going to bring all of that information to the community for public engagement this spring. Not saying this is the model we recommend but saying here are a variety of models and the advantages and disadvantages of these models. Please provide us and put on or provide the committee and put on what you think. The charter committee then makes recommendations to the council. The council then decides what to move forward to the voters. The voters have to put on ballot then goes to the legislature and then the governor. So it's a very long involved process with lots of opportunity for community engagement. I guess I was feeling personally like there was a tension between the school board and the council about this work and really wanted to ensure at least to speak a little bit on behalf of the council that the real really the intention was if we're going to change anything about our governance system we wanted to be doing that in partnership with the school district and that's how we will continue to move forward. That's all I want to say. I don't know Peter if you want to add anything as the chair. Okay. Well, thank you. Is there any other business? Yes. The tension. I'm just trying to understand between us because it was me in haste trying to put everything out and then when you told me I understood so I removed it. So I think everything is okay. Okay. Great. I hope so. Yes. Good. As it should be. Yes. Yeah. Great. Is there any other business? We'll then a motion to adjourn. All in favor. Aye. Aye. Thank you. Peter. Can I just talk to you? Oh, yes.