 So I'm going to call this meeting to order. So the first thing is just to explain some logistics. So if you're joining remotely, if you would change your name to be your first and last name, so I can call on you properly. When you speak, if you could stay your name and where you live, try to keep your comments to under two minutes if you could. And Donna is going to help us out with that in terms of timing. She's got a card to let you know when you're at one minute, and then when you're at two. Oh, you want to talk to the engineer, Mike, though? Thank you. It's OK. For the people online, I'll put this in front of my face so they can look at my screen and see it. Yes, sometimes it's not in focus. But they can see the yellow, and they can see the red. OK. Yes? Sure. You can tell me how far I can put it. Maybe I can get it focused. Yeah, just be conscious of that. Yes, but I think that's good. Yeah, OK. If, yeah, so please keep your comments to germane to the topic. If you have something to say that is related to something on our agenda, then you can make that comment generally as we get to that item. If it is not on our agenda, then general business and appearances is the best time to do that. And if you wish to speak, you need to wait for me to call on you. And if you have multiple questions, if you could like pack them all together, because we don't generally like to get into a back and forth kind of comments here. All right, I think that is it. So any adjustments to the agenda? OK. So with that, we will consider the agenda approved general business and appearances. Yeah, so if there is anyone who would like to make a comment on a topic that is not on our agenda, now is the time. And we'll start with folks in person. Steve Whitaker, I want to protest the two-minute limit. It's arbitrary. It's not consistent with open meeting law when I have a lot of topics to cover. The dust, the street sweeper might not be here for a year. We've got a dysfunctional street sweeper that leaves as much behind as it picks up. So I think that the council members should be like that don't take at the carnival. You should be out walking on Main Street and eating dirt the way all the rest of us are. It's the only thing that's going to drive home the point that we need either men with shovels and brooms or a vacuum cleaner. I proposed the vacuum cleaner several years ago after Steve Everett found it in Europe, be in use in Europe. And it's electric. You can pat yourself on the back and buy one that one person can pull around town and vacuum up the sidewalks and the inaccessible traffic calming places where the street sweeper can't go. I mentioned the fire escape being blocked by a Christmas tree since last Christmas. I mentioned it two weeks ago, it's still there. It's like where is our enforcement? Where is our permit enforcement of Jacob's building falling into the river? His dumpster overflowing across from Bent Nails and going directly into the river. And those cardboard boxes sat down there before since before clean up day, green up day and then floated away because nobody's going to climb down the river bank. Right now the dumpster is way over overfilled and the lid is resting on the guardrail. So anything that rolls down from the overfill goes directly to the river. As does the human feces that y'all refuse to deal with. Your toilets committee has not met in a year and that's absolutely untenable. It exposes the disingenuousness of this council's priorities. The river banks behind Shaw's, the quantities of garbage and trash and tarps and everything that's just floating away at every high water and y'all pretend that everything on your agenda is environmentally sustainable and pretty and you're just deluding yourselves. There's still public records request. I made a request for administrative processing. I was denied records related to the water. I think there's a cover up going on because there's no excuse for not giving me the records that I was assured I could have in a machine readable Excel format. I did find out from the documentation that the software does export in Excel format and you allow him to continue to break the law and you don't hold him to account. For the record he was provided the records. You're interrupting my two minutes, Tom. I was not provided the records. I will, I'll go into it if you wanna make the time for it. I will be happy what I was provided and what I was not. A PDF, a fixed PDF of records is different than an Excel spreadsheet which I can find anomalies and do calculations with it. That's a big difference and the software does export PDFs and John and I met with the Secretary of State about that. So, Steve, you're at three minutes now so if you could wrap up your comments, thank you. We had a blowout of a pipe or we didn't but city center had a blowout yesterday and the lack of maintenance, the chronic lack of maintenance dating for at least the entire tenure of Bill Frazier has left, it took nearly an hour to get the valve turned off while tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of gallons went down the drain and undermined a big sinkhole in the driveway. They'll be repairing it today and tomorrow. Thank you so much, Steve. All right, so we're gonna move on. I still have a couple more items. Thank you, you've already used up more than your two minutes. I'm allowed more than two minutes under law. No, you are not. Thank you so much, Steve. You are not an autocrat. Steve, I'm asking you to stop and you need to go sit down now. Thank you so much. I'm gonna finish my comments. No, that is incorrect. This is your first warning, Steve. If I have to speak to you again, I'm going to ask you to leave. You can do that. Who paid for the flags? Steve, I am asking you to sit down. You gave me my warning. I'm gonna finish my list. No, you are done now. Thank you so much. And I also think you ought to know how many strangers are coming up to me thanking me for holding your feet to the fire. I'm asking you to leave. Twice now you have talked over me. I gave you a warning. You're talking over me, man. No, you refused. So I'm asking you to leave now, Steve. Thank you very much. That's not leaving. If you are not gonna leave of your own volition, I'm gonna ask that you be escorted out. You can cite me. Sight me, trespassing in a public beating? No. You can write your site. No. Don't put your hands on me. Don't you dare put your hands on me. Okay, I'm an adult and I'm gonna hold my ground. Go write your citation and hand it to me. Trespassing in city hall? We're under-resisting on this. You're under-resisting? Put down your hand please. Handing my shoes. You haven't locked that? You're doing damage right now, too? You are a brute. Handing my- Stop. Handing my- Ouch! You are- Oh, man. Whoa! Oh, man, you asshole. I feel like we might need to take- Is it a- Well, how would you feel about taking a- Just a little quick break. Yeah. Is that okay? Okay, thank you. Okay, thanks, team. Let's take a quick break. Thank you for sticking with us here, team. We are still in general business and appearances. If there's anyone in person who would like to make a comment, now is the time. Yes, go ahead. It's a hard act to follow. My name is Richard Scheer and I live on Loomis and I am not here in the litany of complaint tonight. I'm here to commend the council and ask the city manager if he will explain tomorrow night's meeting, virtual meeting at five o'clock and how to access that meeting and what the meeting is about. I think it's a great idea. I think it's long overdue and I want to commend the mayor and council for setting it up. I think I still have a minute and 30 seconds left. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Richard. And I'm afraid I can't accept any credit for this. This was 100% on the chief of police who set up, is what he's talking about is the chief has set up an open town meeting for him just to, for anybody who wants to debrief the situation with the student who guns were taken away from the alleged threat at the high school. He had promised when that was concluded that he would make himself available for people. And so he's got a online form. I don't have the link. I think it's on our Facebook and website and front porch forum and those kinds of things for people that wish, but it is at five o'clock tomorrow and it would be with chief Pete. Great. Thank you. Anyone else in person wish to make a comment? Okay. Vicki and Lane, I see you have your hand up. Go ahead. There's something a little hanky about your, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay. Cause you all stopped moving. There's something a little hanky about the feed tonight. So maybe if somebody could, could investigate that a little bit, it comes and goes and things like that. And I do hope, I mean, I was looking at some of the facial expressions while you were taking a break. And I do hope that you weren't enjoying yourself because that was difficult. Although it may have been a long time coming. That was difficult to see. Yeah, thank you, Vicki. Yeah. It was also difficult to be a part of. All right. Anyone else with us virtually? Okay. Right, so we're gonna move on to the consent agenda. Is there a motion? Yes, Jack. Move the consent agenda. Second. There's motion and a second. Any further discussion? Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay. So the next item is a legislative wrap up. And I know we have at least one person with us here in person and one person with us here virtually. So I'm gonna invite you, Representative Hooper up to the table and Senator Perchlick, if you wanna turn on your camera, that would be great. Oh, there you are. Great. And we have a committee dedicated to this. So I'm gonna turn it over to you all to be this part or if you have questions or we could start with the representatives and senators. I can jump in. Yeah, go ahead. Thank you for that committee. So at our last meeting, Council Member Hurl, who was a member of our legislative committee, just thought it'd be a good idea to see how we ended up with the session, what of interest to us passed, what didn't, what we still need to work on and just get a general sense to touch base with our folks. And thank you all for the work you've done, particularly Representative Hooper and for your long career. So that was really it. I don't know that there's a firm agenda there. I mean, just in particular, so good to see you Representative Hooper and a lot of conversation. So there's obviously the policy action and then just with the unusual budget and if there's opportunities that in what past with ARPA funding and so on that you wanna just make sure that the city's aware of, I mean, our staff's amazing as you know and scouring everything but just to make sure that we're setting the city up as successfully as possible with this short-term funding opportunities. So that was part of why we appreciate having you here. Thanks. And good to see you Senator Pershing. Anything you wanna say, Connor? Oh, okay. Awesome, but I would echo thanks so much, Representative Hooper who announced her retirement recently and for all you have done for the city both in the municipal capacity and in the state house. So thanks so much. Thank you. Am I sitting too far away? Yeah, so yes. Yeah, I wanted to pull it right over to you. Pull it right over to you. Do you mind if I move? Oh, go for it. Yes, thank you. Yeah, I just wanted to be able to see you but having said that, I'm taking these off. I can't say because I fog and yeah. So thank you for the invitation to be here and I hope it feels so odd for you all to call me Representative Hooper. I am Mary and I do hope Senator Perchlich will jump in or he'll do his own thing. I didn't come with prepared comments that I did thanks to Mary Smith, remind myself of what your legislative agenda was. And I think that we have taken a number of really important steps and a variety of areas of interest to the city. We have made historic investments in housing and I feel really fortunate that we have such great city staff and community partners that I hope we will leap on that as quickly as we can to take advantage of what is there. So there's money for the development of housing but there is also money say for planning of accessory dwelling units. So I urge you to take advantage of that. I know the agency of commerce and community development is a little worried that we put too much money in that area but their funds there, I know that's of an interest to the city. So there's good money there. I'm personally really, really proud that the state made the commitment to assure that everybody was housed during the pandemic and we've been able to do that and we have continued to do that to provide housing to people who desire it. What I'm really sad about is that what we thought was going to be an opportunity that would go through, so we're approaching state fiscal year 23, we thought that we would have sufficient federal funding to get us to state fiscal year 25 to really create a great path for people who need permanent housing. So build that permanent housing, have a great path to keep folks housed. The way the federal government is rearranging its money, those funds are going to go away in, I always get breathless when I have the things. I know my voice is being wavery. I just can't breathe. The funding is going to go away for that program and all likelihood in the third quarter of FY23. So March, April, May, sometime through there. And that's really worrisome and concerning. We tried to put some breaks and some back and forth so that we the legislature could manage that. I'm on the committee that they're supposed to be reporting to, so I get to watch it for at least another six months or so, but I know this is something that we're all going to need to pay really close attention to. We put in money in language that said if there were available state dollars that we would spend them or they could be available to spend in that last quarter of the fiscal year, it looks like it's going to be available but that's going to be a decision of the next legislature. So watch that one closely, please. So that's housing. We made really remarkable investments also in the climate arena and also in clean water. And again, I hope that again, we have such great city staff that we can really jump on it, particularly in the clean water arena. There's massive amounts of money that are there and in my experience, it moves to the people who are prepared for it. So another good area to be looking at. We also put funding in S11 for the economic, what the state was looking for for economic recovery grants, the legislature has never been too fond of those. So we created a program with $40 million that municipalities, nonprofits, and businesses could apply to that they could do economic development work, read the details of it. Then S11 is just signed into law today. I think it's designed to go to areas with declining grant lists. I'm not sure that sounds like Montpelier, but I would still take a deep look at that. I was thinking about that in terms of, say the public bathrooms that it's been a priority, that maybe that would be something that y'all could apply for. I could ramble on, but I don't want to, I'd rather answer questions that you have. We did, to the best of my recollections, not take particularly strong action on PFAS, unless somebody wants to correct me. When you're in the Appropriations Committee, you go in there and you're so unaware of so much else that goes on in that building. Yeah, let me stop there and get Senator Purchlick a chance, but also answer questions if I can. Sure. Before we jump to Senator Purchlick, any questions for Mary? Yeah, go ahead, Connor. Mary, what do you think is the future of the Hotel Voucher program for homelessness? Now you just talking to a worker the other day that said some of these hotels are really increasing rates and have full capacity. I don't know if the number is right. I heard like 150 a night at full capacity and it doesn't have a math on that. And it's like you're talking millions, you know, for a single hotel. So I didn't know if that's sustainable or if there's maybe a shift in approach on that. That's the program that I was referring to that we had hoped would continue for a year or more longer and it's not going to. Yes, I have heard that there is a view that the hotel owners are seeing a good profit. That's been one of the interesting things in this is fabulous that we were able to house folks and just I should also acknowledge under really pretty credit conditions. There's no way, I mean, thank heavens we have a roof over people's heads but the thought of there being kids living in motel rooms for a year or two or even three is just really horrifying. And there are, I haven't looked at the numbers recently but we were still at well over 2000 people that we were housing and 500 of them were children. So really, really distressing. It's a cobbled together program, bottom of the line. It's cobbled together and it's continued to be cobbled together. I would have hoped that if we had, if it had had the life span that we wanted that we would have spent more time figuring out how to make it better. But my focus is to how to figure out now how to do a fair transition out of that program. But I've heard similar concerns and also that people have refused permanent housing where they have to use some of their own income to meet the housing needs whereas they're receiving free housing under the current circumstances. It's complicated. Every story is individual and hard. And so I'm not surprised that we hear the stories that we do. Yes, Donna. When you're talking about housing, Mary, did the state ever look into increasing the program to prevent people to become homeless? I know it became a focus in some areas to look at where people were sliding into trouble. Was there any money or focus? Yeah, there was actually pretty massive amounts of money. It's the same program that is paying for the so-called hotel voucher program. Acronym is ERAP Emergency Rental Assistance Program and it was also available to anybody and continues to be available to folks to pay to help with rent. Forgetting the details, but a significant air effort was made both to help folks with rent or first and last if they're moving to new circumstances and other programs that were available to folks who own their homes, who may need assistance with tax payments or other provisions, including paying utility bills. So thanks to the rather phenomenal federal largesse, we were able to try to look at a whole variety of areas of ways to preserve housing, to construct more housing or rehab more housing as well as to shelter folks. That thought went through and kept going. That was good. But I also just wanted to thank you personally. You definitely carried the ball in getting the regional public safety dispatch centers through, so I appreciate that very much. It was very important to us. Thank you. I know it was, that's something else that the Joint Fiscal Committee will continue to watch and we will watch. I know it was important to Montpelier. I really worry about what is going to happen on a statewide basis and that there isn't a good plan in place for what are we going to do on a statewide basis? And when this money goes away, I don't know what we're going to do to attend to other people's needs. This amazing bubble that we're on is that there's something very frightening on the other side as we have to figure out how to manage within the state's resources. And that will probably be in, I was worried that FY24 would bring the hard times, the really hard times where we see cutting, but I think it may stretch out to 25. Thank you. Yes, go ahead. Just quickly on housing, you mentioned that there was a lot of money going to housing and you mentioned planning funds for ADUs. Are there other funds that municipalities can access? I've been, I've heard there's a lot that if you're a housing developer, you can get, but what can local government do to assist? Is there other funds available for that or should I ask elsewhere? We have tended to lean really heavily, as has the city on and other municipalities on the local housing developers, so Down Street, et cetera. And so that's been the majority of it. So there would be those sort of nonprofit developers, not necessarily just someone who wants to put in this big subdivision that we could help with, are there funds available to assist people with infrastructure or anything that might happen? So to my point about the massive amounts of money available for infrastructure, they are there. There are the federal match requirements, although there's interesting maybe opportunities with the IIJA where you can use federal money to match federal money. So let me kind of delve into the memory banks. It's not, the thing that is also there that I think was an interesting experiment that it'll be to watch is that we put a good deal of money into the private hand, we're making money through the HFA available in the private sector for the reconstruction of existing properties or also the development of new properties. So that could be, sorry, that could be an area that is worth exploring if you had a partner with a private developer who can access the funding that's available there, the city could figure out how, I mean, the obvious, I wish that we would spend more time trying to figure out how to lay sewer and water and streets and lights and just get ready for the development. And you have kind of a turnkey where you let the developer come in, but there may be opportunities for partnership there. And that would be in S226 who's the bill to read. Okay, thank you. Yeah. Any other questions for Mary at this point? Okay, great. Thank you so much. I'm gonna go to Senator Perslick. Thank you. And thanks for having me here. And thank you, Mary, Representative Hooper for your work and explaining a lot of the budget things. Like Representative Hooper, it's hard to call her Mary, but like Mary, I didn't like prepare a specific thing, but looking just at the last kind of emails we had with the city council on the priorities, that seems like some of them we were successful of them on some of not like public bathrooms in the city, trying to find a way to get that to work. I think it should be a state responsibility. I think it's an issue for the state as well as for the city. So there should be cooperation on that in the future. So I'm hopeful we can find a way to work on that. I don't know what happened to the TIF issue. I know that was on the list and I know Senator Cummings was working on that, but I wasn't involved. So I'm not sure how that turned out for what the city's priorities were there. I was on, as you might note, on transportation and education. So I focused on there. One other issue that I think came up last year that at one of these meetings was the issue about people's titles for their properties in the racist language that folks had found in their titles, former council person, Richardson had worked on that and was helpful in his new roles. And I had introduced a bill after a council meeting like this. I couldn't get the Senate Judiciary Committee to take it up at the house, did passed it and the Senate Judiciary Committee to take up that bill and passed it. We can't clean that language completely out. We can't go into the records and actually scissor out that language, but the law allows a way to address the issue, which I thought was, we did what we could do and I applaud the council for bringing it up as a city priority when they did. I also just thought communication was better. One of my goals was just to be able to know more about what the city wanted. I think this was of the four years that I've been doing it. I think we talked the most this year. I don't know, it's up to you to tell me whether that was good or bad if it helped. I felt like, at least I knew what the city's position was or what they were looking out for. So that's helpful whether we were able to deliver on that I guess is up for you guys to decide. The other couple of things that I think I brought up before that it's more wait and see is with the schools. The waiting study passed signed by the governor that is going to be good for students across the state. It's gonna be a positive step forward on equitable education, but it could mean a sizable property tax increase for the residents. And so that's something that the city is gonna have to be watching and pay attention to as you do your own municipal budget, what the impact of that is. And then there's the PCBs issue. I'm not sure where the Montpelier schools lined up on the list of priorities, but we did provide a lot of funding, making sure that all schools will be tested and some money set aside for remediation. There's also some money that the state put aside of ARPA money that is available to schools that are Title I schools, which are considered quote unquote high poverty schools. And actually Montpelier schools qualify. Not all the schools, it's a ratio per district, but there is some money for Montpelier schools. I think strangely enough, like the high school and the elementary are eligible, but not the middle school. Don't ask me why, but there's some money for HVAC and other heating and air conditioning near quality money that I think the, it's more of a question for the school board or more of a thing to highlight for the school board than you guys, but I thought I'd just bring that up to something that I worked on, that I think the city might be able to benefit from. So that's, I know I worked a little bit on the dispatch stuff on the Senate side, but folks in appropriations and other committees were the ones mostly focused on that, but I helped where I could. So that's all I really have to do is my report, but happy to answer any questions. The other thing I did is supported, which really give credit to the house members on transportation to support not only a bunch of climate stuff, but really looking out for town budgets when it comes to the amount of money that the state flows down to towns. And I supported the house position on that, which will provide a little more money for the town to do its road infrastructure work. Great. Thank you so much. Any questions? Yeah, go ahead, Connor. Yeah, sure. Thanks a million, Senator. Question on, you know, our my ride program in town, I think has been generally pretty successful, you know? You know, it's not just going in circles anymore. You know, folks with mobility issues off town Hill Road can have a come to their doorstep now. So I think it's been really good, except, you know, we don't feel like we're up to full capacity, the wait times are long, which has been a deterrent from some people doing it. And I think my concern is GMT looking to expand to other communities before we feel like we're really where we should be, you know? So I just wonder what the status of that is and if there's any way to sort of say, okay, let's do it right in Montpelier before looking elsewhere. Yeah, I agree with you. Other than I hear mostly from people that are not happy with it. But maybe that's just the way it goes in government. You hear from the people that are complaining more than the people that are happy with it. But I have a lot of hope and optimism for on-demand transportation services like my ride. I think there are some issues that need to be worked out for sure about people that don't have phones, about what you do during peak times and other issues. But I think they're fixable. And maybe there's a fixed route somewhere where a lot of people need that. And there's other ways of addressing the shortcomings of that, but I don't think it's, I think agency of transportation considers to the success and wants to keep working on it. One thing that I did do in Senate transportation is increased the budget for microtransit up to three million, three and a half million dollars so that there could be some more funding. We didn't direct, you know, we're not directing where they're gonna send that, but I know Capstone and Barry is working on a similar project. Maybe there's an opportunity for that money to also help the Montpelier my ride. I think one thing that would be really helpful is some money to get different buses. I think it would work a lot better with vans than the cutaway buses or at least part of the time. So the short answer is there is more money. I can't promise that the state AOT would grant more money to Montpelier because there is a lot of interest amongst towns across the state that really want it and want to figure out, can it work for their rural communities? Cause they're pretty confident that they're never gonna get a fixed bus service in some of these small towns, but they think they can do a non-demand my ride type of project. So I'm very supportive of it and hope that there's some more money available for the city because I agree with you to be good to figure out exactly what is needed to do it the right way. And then then other towns and cities could learn from that. Thank you. Anybody else? Okay. Oh, yes, Lauren, go ahead. Just a couple other bills that passed that might be of interest to council. There was not a PFAS ban bill, but there was a bill on medical monitoring for people impacted by toxic chemicals. But another part was allowing the state to sue chemical manufacturers if their impacts to public resources, natural resources or facilities like wastewater treatment facilities. So I think that could just be good for us to know down the road, knowing the potential contamination issues. So that would be the state, it wouldn't be the city, but it could be something that just for us to know that that is a new legal remedy that the state authorized this year. The state also passed an environmental justice bill. So there's gonna be a lot of work and I think just very in line with our city strategic plan and values. So a lot of work of looking at getting more communities more involved in city government and impacts of making sure every person has access to a clean environment and nobody's being disproportionately burdened by environmental harm. So that will be going on and I don't know how the city will be involved exactly, but it will be impacting how kind of ANR to start and city government more broadly is gonna be looking at environmental issues. And then finally, the municipal energy resilience initiative was signed last week. So that's the bill that created grants for municipalities for up to $500,000 for climate investments for municipal buildings and doing efficiency or renewable energy projects. So that's exciting too. And just thank you. So thank you. I should have mentioned that 518 that the municipal programs there's a lot of money in there and not only money for the projects but energy engineers and building engineers that will come and work with the city to find the most cost-effective measures that could be done. So I think that's definitely something the city should be raising their hand with and working with both buildings, general services and Vermont League of Cities and Towns is gonna be running that program. It was interesting that the governor signed the medical monitoring because it was one bill that he's vetoed before but he vetoed a lot of bills this year but that was fun that he did much. It was good. Yeah, just one question about that. So we are advertising right now for a sustainability coordinator. And but we also do have a person who would have been responsible for doing a lot of grant managing. Do you anticipate? I mean, I'm hoping that we are gonna go after this and some of the other money that has been mentioned. Some of the items that Mary mentioned as well. Do these. So is the new person who like the new Kevin basically? Oh, is it Josh? Josh, right. Yes. Will he be the one that's writing these grants or for the resiliency, municipal resiliency grants do you anticipate that the new person? Probably the new person. That's probably too much in the weeds but I'm just really excited to go after some of this money. So just thinking about logistics of making that happen. Great. Super. Yeah, do you have anything? I remembered one other thing that I wanted to ask you all to watch next year. One of the teeny things that I've done ever since I've been on the appropriations committee is to watch our pilot payments and to say, come on, we can find a little more money. And you know that comes from the sales tax revenue from the local options tax. That pot is very full. There is a lot of money there. I was already to say, okay, let's put some more in. Here's a problem that I didn't understand until the waning days of the legislature which is that in fact in statute, it says that those funds are distributed based on the insurance value of the state property. It's not on their appraised value. So the state gets to treat itself to how it manages its program entirely differently that it requires every municipality to do, which makes me not. But what I am really concerned about is that my soon to be former colleagues are going to see that there is a good deal. There will be an increasing amount of money sitting in that local options pot that will not be able to be distributed because of the way the statute reads. And so I would hope that we change the statute to say that the state has to assess properties in the same way that it requires of municipalities. But it is something to be watched. And I don't know, but I think there was a study of alternative uses of it in some tax bill. This has never been something that our tax committee has been particularly fond of and they keep, over the years, tried to whittle away at that. So watch the whittling, please. The City of Montpelier by the standards that are being used is over 90% at its 90% of the insurance value. So we're almost at the cap and it's gonna be hard to add much more to that. So watch it, please. Thank you for that, that's really good to know. Do you mind? Yeah, that's always been a pet peeve that they get to decide how much taxes they pay and what basis they pay it on. Where we got it, the League of Cities and Towns was that there was talk of their suggestion from the taxing committee that these funds be converted to some sort of general revenue sharing to towns and cities if not, you know, it may be due away with local options taxes and most tax fees. So, which doesn't really impact the communities who actually have the, you know, the local options taxes in those communities have a lot of activity. Right. And so they need the extra funding. So we'll say, yes, we're watching you closely. There has historically not been very much sympathy for those communities that, you know, Montpelier, you know, that has extra services because of the number of people who come in. Yeah, so I hadn't heard about revenue sharing. That's an interesting idea. I bet it turns. Until the appropriation goes away. Yeah, right. Peter Kiliman, I see you've got your hand up. Go ahead. Yeah, I'm on the My Ride Community Action Group, sorry, Community Advisory Group. I've been on it since My Ride began. I'd like to suggest that you invite Green Mountain Transit to make a report on My Ride. Connor's description of it does not match with what we've in our group have learned. First of all, let me just say two things. One, My Ride was a pilot. It is a pilot from which we are learning a great deal. And one of the things that we're learning is that having Barry have a similar situation would be good for Montpelier, but not attract at all. There's so much movement between Barry, Montpelier and Berlin that it would be terrific, in fact, if it was expanded. Also, there are not long delays. You have occasional delays, which are an artifact of many factors, including people booking and then leaving. It's a much more complicated situation. In fact, we just had a data report from actual data and the Montpelier My Ride is outperforms almost any other similar system anywhere in the world, not just in our country. It's actually very successful. And I really suggest that you have a report on it and get the facts. Thank you. Thank you. We do usually have, thank you for that, Peter. We do usually have GMT come in and it's usually around budget time. Actually, they're originally gonna come tonight. I think they're coming next meeting. Okay, great. I think they're gonna come in very soon. Okay, that's great. Okay. Mayor Watson. Oh, yes, go ahead. It just reminded me one other thing if I can just tune my own horn on transportation. One of the issues that came up with transit is the I-Link bus to Burlington. They cut one of the buses. And so I heard a lot from people in Montpelier that instead of being able to take the bus to Burlington, they have to drive their car with the fuel prices going up and just the amount of time and effort that it took. They were saying, why are we cutting the service at this time and also continuing the fare for free? There was a little bit of a discussion of like, what's more important, free fares for all the buses or more service. I was able to restore some of the service. I think it was restored June, the first week of June, maybe instead of June 8th, was the day that we're gonna restore that I-Link commuter bus to Burlington. And so some routes like those commuter routes might start charging fares, but they won't cut service. And I think it's a good trade-off where there are some services we wanna fare free. And that's why I think that's really important. I support the fare free effort, but I really didn't wanna see the bus service cut so that there weren't the same number of trips every day for those folks that are working along the I-89 corridor. So if you've talked to anybody that was concerned about that one morning bus to Burlington that got cut, it is being restored. If it wasn't restored today, it's being restored a couple of days ago or in a couple of days. Great, that's great news. I also heard about that as well. And I used to take that bus when I didn't live in Montpelier. And so I'm glad to hear that it is back. For the record GMT schedule for July 20. So next meeting the one after. Okay, great. All right, any further questions for our delegation here? Okay, thank you so much. Thank you for your service this past session and in sessions prior, we're so grateful. And yeah, we'll be in touch. Yeah, okay. Thank you all for the work you do. Okay. All right, so we have some appointments to make. So to the development review board, and I know we have folks here for that. So if you are one of the applicants for, or yeah, that's the right word, for the development review board, if you would come up and introduce yourself and just tell us about you're interested in staying on the committee because I think all these people are currently on the development review board. So, yes. Hi, I'm Rob Goodwin. I've met all of you. Chair of the JRBA. I used to actually switched over to sitting here because like they are, I couldn't see the Zoom screen and everyone at the same time. So like there you can see it all. And it was definitely clutch. Yeah, one thing I would bring up is that over the last year of pandemic stuff, we've all morphed into every meeting format you could possibly imagine. The, as we sort of move forward, we're looking to see which way the city moves on its hybrid meeting format. I'm sure we're also figuring it out. I don't have any grand solutions for it from my experience at the DRB. I'll just say that having 25 people trying to public comment on Zoom and then 15 in the room on a very sort of popular application. I guess that's the right word, is difficult. And so we have to sort of manage that. And there's definitely a format that better incorporates everyone's comments and has a more productive discussion than others. I don't know what that is, but we've got, yeah, if you sort of, you look at the last like five years in the DRB, there's a lot going on in Montpelier right now related to housing and whatnot, some stuff on Northfield Street expansion, I guess in, you know, Herbert Road, Isabelle Circle, all have lots of public interest, which is great. As chair of the DRB, I couldn't say much more about like people showing up for meetings and voicing their opinions. And cause that's the point in the process where things can actually change. And we can actually approve housing projects in this town, which is incredibly important. And I will say as chair, I'll do everything I can that, you know, move forward housing projects within the bounds of our regulations. But I guess I can't say enough that whether you support a project or are against a project or nowhere in between, please show up to the meeting and instate your comments. And if you have ideas about how it can move forward better and whatnot, like that is incredibly vital in order to like actually moving this town forward. Because we don't, the last thing we want to see is great ideas come forward and then die because they got, you know, hung up because no one could, you know, agree on a solution, on a common sense solution. And I'll do everything I can to, you know, make sure that happens. I don't know if that's a whole lot, but, you know, we're stuck in the DRB between the regulations written by another committee and applicants and a public, probably no hunter attached than you all have every day before you. But that's what we're in. And so just leave you with that. And also I heard that there was an applicant, Sharon Allen, right here. And I full support for having Sharon return to the DRB in a position that's been open for quite some time. So. Oh, okay. Now I understand. Okay, sorry. Welcome. Hi. Hi. So I feel like I know just about everybody for over the long time. Maybe people watching don't know you. Sharon Allen, Main Street resident, long-term Montpelier resident, previous DRB member, vice chair 2001, 2002, I think, 2003. I stopped doing it because we started looking at owning our open business. And that became very overwhelming and I just didn't have the extra time. It, however, zoning regulation weirdly is something I really enjoy. I really like seeing how rules and regulations work out in real life. I think it's fascinating to put those into effect. My work that I did in between owning a store and being here was with the Department of Public Service working with utility regulation. And it was some of the same kind of complexity where you had a lot of very complex minutia about how things are supposed to work and I worked doing consumer protections and making sure that those rules were really evenly applied and was in front of the public service board fair amount, trying to get people involved, hearing what they had to say, trying to represent consumers. So I feel like that all kind of matches pretty well with what the DRB does. Questions? Super, yeah. Any questions? Okay. Thank you so much. Thanks. Yeah. I don't see Jean Leon in person or on line with us. I think those are the only three folks. Is there a motion? Jack. I move that we go into executive session to discuss the appointment of a public officer or employee pursuant to one VSA section 313A3. Okay, is motion and a second for the discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. And a post. Okay, we will be right back. Is there a motion to come out of executive session? So moved. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right, so is there a motion? Jack, go ahead. I move that we appoint Robert Goodwin and Sharon Allen to full positions on the development review board and Jean Leon as an alternate on the development review board. Okay, motion and a second for the discussion. Okay, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. And a post. All right. Thank you for your willingness to serve. We so appreciate that. All right. Welcome back, Sharon. Yes. Okay, all right. So we are gonna move on to an update on leachate. Welcome. Hello. Good evening. Welcome back. Yes, very well. How are you? Good. My name's Joe Gay. I'm an engineer with the Salloway Systems, regional engineer and oversee the permitting environmental compliance construction and engineering for the landfill in addition to the other facilities across the state of Vermont and some in New Hampshire as well. With me is Sam Nicolai, the regional or the vice president, sorry, companies vice president for engineering, for Kasello. So we wanted to do just a few things tonight with you folks. First and foremost is, we were here in November to talk a little bit about leachate is somewhat preliminary. Some of the discussion points around the leachate being delivered to the city's wastewater plant and the concerns over PFAS, which we're gonna speak to tonight. We offered at that time to come in and give you guys updates periodically on how things are going with the process. We wanna do that. We also wanna extend the invitation other than Kurt and Chris to come up to visit the landfill and get a tour. The invitation to you all is still there to come up and get a tour of the site. We also are happy to answer any questions about the landfill or leachate tonight as well. I think the first thing probably we'd like to do is give you an update on where we are with the PFAS treatment system. So as you can imagine, there's quite a bit of permitting associated with such a facility. So we have submitted our solid waste certification amendment to construct a building and the associated piping to move the leachate from our existing storage tanks at the facility over into the building. And inside the building, we would have a treatment system that would be, right now we're thinking, and we'll get into this a little bit specifically targeted to treat for PFAS, but there's a possibility that other contaminants might get treated as well through that process. But our focus is PFAS at this time. So that solid waste certification amendment has been submitted. The agency has reviewed it. We understand that a draft certification is about to be issued. So the public and we will get an opportunity to look at that draft permit and then usually about 45 to 50 days following that, a permit is issued. We have also submitted an active 50 application because where we wanna put this building at the site requires a bunch of fill to establish the site. So we've submitted that application and that permit is also been issued as draft contingent upon our stormwater permit getting approved, which we expect that will get approved. And then we can, we actually have a contractor on site that'll start moving the soil over as soon as that gets permitted. So we can start building the area we wanna put the building. So that is moving. And once the draft certification is issued, we'd be able to submit our full active 50 permit for the building itself for the leachate pretreatment system. So we've come a long way since November with the permitting. We have teamed with Brown and Caldwell and we have a member, an engineer with that firm here tonight to help answer any questions that you guys might have. And Sanborn Head & Associates, they do a lot of our landfill permitting. So we have a couple of consulting firms that we've hired to help us with some of the permitting up there. So any questions on where we are with that treatment system and where we are in the process? Yeah, go ahead. Just to understand, so this is a pilot project, right? So is the permits that you're getting and like the active 50 and stuff, do you have to go through all of this again? Are you sizing the building that it could fit the whole thing? Or is it gonna start all over again for the full treatment? All these permits, are some of these things that carry forward? Yeah, we certainly hope we are positioning ourselves to be able to build a full system. And so I think it's also probably important to point out too that probably when we were here in November, there was some discussion about a condition we were gonna have in our pre-treatment discharge permit that we have to bring leachate to the city. That permit has not been issued, but we know in that permit, or we're fairly confident that there'll be a condition in that permit that requires us to do the pilot treatment system. But we're way ahead of that. The company is taking initiative to, we're not waiting for that permit. We're moving forward with the permitting. And when that permit condition, when that permit is issued, if that condition is like we expect it to be, we'll be way ahead of the game. So we're really not waiting for that permit. And that was something we talked about in November that we probably wouldn't move forward without that and we have. Yeah, Jack, go ahead. And so what you're talking about doing, that sounds like you're moving along as fast as you can with getting everything permitted. But it also sounds like even once you get the permits, it's gonna take some time to get everything running. And so I'm thinking, well, how does your construction and work in operation timeline mesh with our July 2023? We are pushing very hard to meet that timeline for sure. No question about it. And we think we can do it. It's not gonna be easy. It's a tight schedule, but one of the reasons we're here tonight is to demonstrate that we're moving forward as diligently as we can. One thing I didn't mention was we have partnered with a company to provide the treatment system and we've sent them samples of our leachate and that leachate is being analyzed in the lab right now. We're pretty confident. And Sam and Kevin that's here can speak in more detail if you have questions on the treatment system specifics, but we're hopeful that this pilot, or the bench test that's being conducted currently will have favorable results and we can just continue to move forward. The system is basically in a very broad sense plug and play. So if we think it's gonna work, it's basically something that's essentially built that we just, you know, the permits that we're getting for the piping that's specific for the leachate delivery system that I spoke about earlier. It's basically bolting the pipes up, which will already be in the building and, you know, hooking the power up and going. So probably not that simple, but... But they're just gonna truck them. Once the building is done, the machine will just come in a truck and you set up in the building. That's correct. And all this will take place at the landfill. We have two large storage tanks. So our intent is that the treated material, ultimately that would get delivered to the city, you know, we have storage for. So we can, you know, the volumes we're talking about, we're gonna need some storage. I don't know if this is something you can discuss. Hopefully it's not like a trade secret, but could you describe how the system works? Like, is it just absorbing it? Is it versus osmosis? Is it pyrolysis? Like, what are we talking about? Yeah, I'll take a quick stab at it. I'm sure Sam's gonna wanna jump in. So the primary system that we're looking at is foam fractionation. And it's, we understand that the foam that the leachate will pass through, the PFAS likes to collect onto the foam where we can remove the foam and in essence, remove the PFAS. And the PFAS would end up getting combined with some sort of solid waste and go back in the landfill. And then the leachate would be PFAS free, essentially, probably not 100%, but pretty close. And that's what would come here and be back to like the leachate that, you know, we'd, you know, well, perhaps leachates always had PFAS in it, but we didn't, society didn't understand kind of the situation we were in. And that's all of us, by the way, not just Kasella. Oh, yeah, no, I understood. Okay, just make sure. Yeah, so that's the learning curve for us as well. Yeah. Yeah. Great, well, thank you. So it'll effectively go back into the landfill. So it'll just, there'll be an accumulation of PFAS basically over time, more or less. That's right. That's right. And, you know, there's other technology. We are looking at, we've been in contact with a company as close as Sherbrooke. That's interested. So we've engaged them and we're like, hey, you know, if we can get somebody, you know, that's got a better system, you know, we're all ears. And we are also are considering reverse osmosis as well. The trick with that is there's more waste material to deal with that are going to, it's going to be a higher concentration and a lot more of it. So that becomes tricky to get to deal with as well. So probably not our frontline option, but it is an option that we're considering. Okay. Great, thank you. Lauren, go ahead. Just on that point, is there, you mentioned that, so this is particularly good, the foam fractionation at getting, because the PFAS chemicals are attracted to it. Like does reverse osmosis get more other contaminants out and the foam would do a really good job with PFAS, but it's really focused on PFAS and doing less on other contaminants in the leachate. I believe that's the case. Okay. Sam, I don't want to chime in on that. That's correct. So the advantage of the foam is that the foam is a much smaller quantity. So if we're able to get the PFAS in the foam, then you have a much smaller amount to get rid of. Reverse osmosis will work well, but the residual stream is much, much larger. And so that's not quite as attractive from a PFAS removal standpoint. That makes sense. Cool. Other questions? Okay. Well, yes, go ahead. Sorry, we had just one more item we wanted to bring up. Yes, yes. So in May, the agency Natural Resources announced a release of potential grant funds under ARPA. So American Rescue Plan and this particular set of funds are targeted specifically for pretreatment of high-strength wastewater for businesses and municipalities in Vermont. And so that grant proposal was released in May and proposals are due in August of this year. The RFP addresses a number of areas, but it does allow and does focus on treatment of high-strength waste from industrial facilities and which would include the landfill. So one of the things that we would like to request from the city is a willingness to work with us on that grant program. So this would involve both us working with Kurt and Chris as in developing a solution, but also the grant funds must be distributed through the municipality to the private businesses. So a private business can't apply directly for the grant. The funds must run through a municipality. And so our request tonight is that you would agree to allow Kurt and Chris to work with us in the development of a proposal under that program so that those grant funds potentially could be authorized and potentially could be a solution. The pilot testing that we talked about is going to happen regardless. So our proposal would be for the full-scale system that some of these funds could be obtained and utilized under that system. Just real quick, we've talked to Kurt and Chris about this. So they are very much in the know. Next question. And we would do the heavy lifting on the proposal writing as well. And you all are game. Yeah, I mean, they basically mean certainly felt to me like that was consistent with the council's priorities and strategic plan, but felt like you should also endorse it publicly since if you wish. Yeah, Jack and Lauren. This wouldn't be in competition with any other grant that we would also want to be applying for. Okay. Okay, Lauren. I guess on that point, but more specifically, I mean, we haven't talked much, but I've been like, I feel like Montpelier should get one of these pretreatment, could get a filtration system because we know that even what we're talking about here, there's still going to be more contaminants coming in as the, assuming we're continuing to be the offtaker of the leachate. So I guess I just want to make sure we're not precluding ourselves from being able to potentially pursue that with ANR. If we were pursuing this would be my main question. I would also love if we are going to be partnering on it, that we're looking at systems that are going to remove the maximum contamination over putting state dollars in, that it's the best possible system as opposed to the most cost effective system. So that would be what I would hope the city participating would be kind of bringing that lens to it. Any comments on that? Kurt or Bill about is, are we precluding ourselves? Well, I'll leave that to Kurt since he has a better handle on all the things we might be looking for. This particular grant is specific to pretreatment. So it's outside the plan. Well, our plan wouldn't be eligible to directly apply for these funds. So I don't see it as, you know, restricting our ability to do any other projects directly at the plant or because it's not, we're not eligible for this particular pot of money. Great, thank you. Donna, go ahead. She's laid ahead the space and the cost of that. Is that another building? Is that what? Yeah, I mean, it would be its entire own treatment system. I do expect we'd have to have another building for that. I don't have no idea what the cost would be. We haven't. Where are you going to put it in the play field across the street? I'm serious. Yeah, I don't have the answers to that. We haven't, you know, gotten into any design. You know, kind of have our hands full with us all at peace at the moment. This is how you think about it, okay? I asked the question to have you think about it. Yeah, okay. We will do that. Yes, go ahead. I just want to thank you. You really explained things that I understood and I don't have the scientific understanding of some council members. I appreciate how well you did and thank you. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, Lauren, go ahead. And just on that note, I'm really excited that the progress is being made and that things are moving full steam ahead. I think when we had, you know, we're really wrestling with this issue a while ago. The hope was by continuing to partner with you all that this is exactly how things would be going. So I'm just grateful that it is and, you know, excited to hopefully keep getting these kinds of updates of the ongoing progress. And so, yeah. Yeah, I just want to agree. I appreciate you all coming to give us this update. This was really helpful and it's really encouraging to know that things are moving forward and even regardless of, you know, waiting till permits are issued, et cetera. And so we'll continue to do that as well. Super. Thank you. Great, thank you. Yeah, thank you so much. Okay. All right, so I think we are ready to move on to discussion on the water super budget and then the water rates. So one question, I assume we're gonna take these one at a time, unless you would like to combine them. Well, I think they are related, but yes, we should do the budget first. Okay. Unless the finance director tells me otherwise, in case we'll do what she says. Perfect. We'll do that. Yes. I'm gonna move. Some of you haven't yet started. Today, the folks of this commission would start as well over the water and sewer budgets. Matt was trying to get back in December and January. We did took forward a placeholder budget. Since then, this education represents where the budgets are to date with all of the categories. And then, perhaps, we'll start here. Chell, you might wanna be a little more on top of the microphone. I think so. There we go. Okay, perfect. So the slide represents where the composition of water sewer fund has a links to everything else within the budget, all funds. And so you can see here that the water sewer and the pieces of a pie, the water fund is in the yellow or marital and the sewer is in the blue. It's gathered that represents 28.4% of the total budget. And so I just wanted to kind of highlight this slide and give you some perspective on what portion of the whole these two funds are for the city's budget. Then moving along into the water fund, the sewer fund to follow. I've got a similar representation here in terms of a pie chart, which breaks down the individual components of the water fund and how the funds are used. The bar chart is representative of budget to actual. And you can notice from the bars that dark green is where things actually remain. And so as I mentioned in the memo that accompanies this presentation, the rates are up while the budget is down. And what we're trying to do here is reconcile revenues in public coming in to date based on consumption. And the next slide that I'm gonna show is have all the details at a high level for this budget. If I'm moving too fast, please let me know. But essentially what I have noted in the prior slide is that the words really aligned with the case. Okay, that's much better. That's sorry everyone. Okay. So here we go. So really what we're doing here is aligning budget to actual with trend. And so much like everything with a pandemic, the revenues within the water fund track to consumption and consumption is down because anecdotally we have seen folks remote working, the state's not fully back yet. And then also maybe some trips into town for businesses and the like. And so that's really where the water fund is in terms of the revenues. And so we have booked that accordingly. And then with the rates, we increased the rates by 8.2% which is representative of policy and is 7.2% CPI from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the Northeast region. And I think that's important because it's something that we typically do tie back to for best practice. It is representative of inflation for our region. And then 1% is growth on the budget for projects as we've stated in the master plan. And then identified below are kind of some high level things of what's in. So for the water fund, it funds staff, operating supplies. And so I've identified some of the items that are included in that category for $81,000. There is an investment in pipe fittings for $30,000 equipment, maintenance repair, some of the truck mower items, radio upgrade. And then investments in water equipment will be fog sealing the parking lot for 30K. And then also investing in distribution and meter supplies. And then there's also a piece for other purchase services which is really the contracted services for water leaks, engineering services and cardiograph. Cardiograph is an asset management program that will really help us identify the assets that we have, track them, and then also identify what needs to be replaced and when so that'll really help with capital planning. And then in terms of capital improvements, we are investing 60K in the CVMC pump. And then 20K in water main adjustments. And then I didn't put it on the slide, but I did want to highlight that there are items that are not in this budget because we did need to bring things in to revenue where it's coming in. So the things not in was an item related to electric valves and then also additional small water line improvements. And so I can take questions on each fund or I can keep going. I'm gonna keep going, moving along. So next up is the sewer fund. This one is a little bit more interesting, I'd say, just because we've had a lot going on within this fund. Much like the water fund, this budget is down, rates are up. You can see in the pie chart what makes up the sewer fund, what we're spending our money on. And then you can see in the bar chart where we've been coming in budget to actual and you can see that in FY 21, there was a little bit of an overage in what we had booked in the budget. And so what we're trying to do in this year in 23 is to bring things into alignment. So getting into the details here, this takes into account adjustments to revenue coming in in terms of rates. We've tied the rates to actuals rather than budgeted forecasts to make sure that those are realistic. We've also adjusted the Berlin revenue lines to come in with what we're actually receiving. This budget is also 8.2% per the master plan, which is 7.2% plus 1%. And then getting on into some of the items that are associated with the sewer budget. And actually let me back up for a minute here. I would be remiss if I didn't mention something that is putting a little bit of pressure on the budget and that is leachate and the adjustments therein. So within the revenue lines that captures items associated with septage, not leachate. So leachate actually, we didn't account for it in this budget because we have not been taking it due to certain factors at the plant. And so I just wanna highlight that because it is impactful. And so this is more reflective of what has been happening at the plant today, not necessarily decisions here. But I just wanna make sure that there is definitely a monetary impact to that particular item. So moving on down the line back into sort of the detail. Just taking a look at this list at Fundstaff, but then also adds on a new operator position to start in April. Initially, we had budgeted this for a full year, but then took it back to align the budget with the revenues that we had coming in. And then you can kind of see here just big ticket items, operating supplies, other purchase services. You can see that we've got a grit dumpster, sludge disposal, contracted lab, work and site work, professional services, the ESG operational support and engineering services related to phase one. And then equipment repair and maintenance. And then a few other items associated with purchase services, such as engineering root control, sewer main cleaning and inspection, and then the cardiograph piece that's split within the sewer fund. And then for capill funding, there is an apportionment here that goes towards the equipment plan. And much like with the water, there are things that are not funded in the sewer fund, such as funding for coming street, which is about $75,000. And then also pump station replacement, that total project is about $500,000. The first installment would be 250. So I just wanna put that out there because in future years we'll likely bring that back forward because there are things that need to be done, but because of the conditions, we just don't have the ability to put them in FY23. So moving on to the next piece here, which has been the subject of some inquiry, as of late, is how much this is really going to cost repairs in FY23. I wanna note up front, as I've noted in the note on the bottom, this is FY23 and it's associated with the revenue downgrades. It is not associated with phase two or East State Street. We are currently still working on those projects and assessing the impact. Things are extremely variable right now and I'll get into that in a minute. But as it stands right now for FY23, the average increase for a user would be about $9.80 per month combined. And you can kind of see the map there within the sheet and I can get into the detail. But annualized, that's about $117. And then just taken another way, a family of four with 12,000 gallons of consumption would be about 1032. So just kind of bearing ballpark just to have an understanding of what these rates mean for folks. And so just kind of getting on with the other item here in 24, we will be assessing the impact of the major projects that we have moving forward. We put them up for vote back in March because we needed the authorization to move ahead with the projects. It doesn't necessarily mean that we are spending this money yet until we have finalized plans. And so I just wanted to kind of call that out a little bit. And then the other thing I will note is we did do an assessment and confirmed the assessment that, in terms of our debt service ratios, we are really close to policy. That being said, it's all dependent on what happens with project costs, interest rates, what we get for grant funding, and then what happens with consumption and revenue return. So there are a lot of factors right now that we're monitoring within these two budgets. And that's kind of the story across the board when it's in all of our budgets, but here in particular. And then the other thing I wanted to kind of show is just where we stack up to other communities. We're highlighted here in the yellow bar. We are, this is based on FY22 rates. And so we are not the highest. And I just wanted to highlight that. And you can see where there are others that are sort of within the realm of Bottle Park or are close to us, just for comparison's sake. We also have a pretty complex system. And so, I think we do provide a good service to our residents. So with that, that's kind of the presentation in total of the budget. I can get into more details. And Kurt is here if there are any technical components that you wanted to talk about. And if not, I can stop my share and move on to the next presentation. But I think maybe some folks may have questions. Okay, Jack, go ahead. Thanks, Kelly. The first question I have in this is that I wonder if you could explain how the, what the components of the readiness to serve charge are and how we determine how much of our total costs to be put into readiness to serve as opposed to volumetric charges? Sure, that's a good question. So generally, and I may phone a friend also here, we, that's a flat fee. So everybody pays that flat fee for hooking on to the system, if you will. And so that's that part. And then the other part is based on usage. And so those are the two components of the rate and how they're charged. But for the historical perspective, I might lean on Bill a little bit for this. I'll try and we may have to dig back and get more information. But essentially, Kelly's right. The readiness to serve is the fixed costs of the system that allow you to have water at your tap, the bond costs, sort of basic things that don't change depending on the amount of water that used. And it's just functional for us to have a functioning water and sewer system. Then there are variable cost chemicals and all those other things that do vary with use. So people pay for those by their actual use. So it's, you know, it's not, it's not perfectly lined up that way, that the council spent a number of years ago now, sometimes looking at the rates and trying to figure out that particularly the bond costs and those kind of things that want to be sure that we could cover those even if people were reducing their rate use. Okay, so it's actually, they're all cost-based and the usage rates are as much as possible based on incremental costs of service. Correct, okay, thanks. Other questions from council. And then we'll get to your question, Vicki. Any other questions? Okay, Vicki and Lynn, go ahead. I beg of you, I can't afford any more increases. I mean, people like me, single, elderly or older women on very fixed income. I live on Medicare. I mean, I live on Social Security. We just can't afford any of these increases. I mean, it's bad enough going to the grocery store, the gas station, it just, it can't, it's not sustainable. We just can't do it. Thank you, Vicki. Thoughts or comments on the budget? Okay, yeah, I just want to acknowledge that that is really, it's really hard, but it's kind of, I'm not sure that I see any good alternatives at the moment, but open to talking about stuff in the future. So, is there, so if folks are okay with this budget, we should have a motion. Is there a motion? Connor, go ahead. Yeah, I'll move to approve the rates and just know. So this is the budget. The rates are next. Oh, I'm sorry, the budget. Okay, that's all right. But yeah, I would know, we do know this is a hardship for some folks there, but what this funds are very essential services here and we have to pay for it one way or the other. So this is the most logical way to do it. So that's a motion to approve the budget. Is there a second? Okay, motion and a second. Further discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay, all right, thank you. And so now we're gonna move on to the rates. Great, this will be quits, I promise. Okay. Cameron, sorry. Excellent, thank you. So this is, and it's FY23. I'm just gonna get rid of the front side there. I was able to pull this from last year. And so this is the rate history to support the budget within the revenue lines that we just discussed. And so as you can see here, we're up by 8.2%. The thing that I wanted to note is looking at this and comparing it for a trend over five years and then comparing that to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Labor Statistics is at about four, well, so this, considering the average over five years based on this sheet here, we're at about 4.6% increase. And if you look at the same period of time for CPI through Bureau of Labor Statistics, they're at about 4.02%. So for that same five year period, we're very close to what the regional increase should be based on those inflationary costs. And so then just going into the details provided within the resolution and the increases, there are some items here that are adjusted a little bit differently than the 8.2%. These are some of the flat fees that are being adjusted. And so I just wanted to call those out here there in the resolution, but what we just discussed and what was on the historical sheet are the metered rates. And then I just wanted to highlight these based on the resolution that hopefully you'll take action on in short order here. And then this is just another summary of what we talked about in terms of the impact of two consumers, $9.80 per both water and sewer rates. And then lastly, just to highlight and summarize where we're at, recommended increase for the rates is 8.2% for the metered rates. This would be effective for FY23. It's important to note that the billing period ends September 30th and the due date is December 15th. We have been trying to move these budgets forward to align with the fiscal year so that people can maybe change their usage once the rates take effect. So they'll see that in their first bill. And then just to highlight what this really covers, it addresses the revenue downgrades, funds, operational expenses and stabilizes funding for future years. We're gonna be taking a really close look at the revenues and seeing what we find as we go forward. But for now, this is what it is. And so I hope that you'll approve the rates as they are and the resolution that has been presented in the packet. Okay, Jack, oh, and then Kari, go. I remember it must have been about 20 years ago that we went through, and I know that you weren't here then, but we went through a process where a lot of people in the city, a lot of the residential accounts were flat rate accounts. And I thought that everybody was required to move to metered accounts. And now I still see that we're still got a lot of people on flat rate accounts. And I wonder if I could understand that. So I'm not sure, and we can certainly provide the data if you'd like in terms of the number of accounts that are flat rate accounts. A lot of them are metered accounts and the majority of them are, but we still do have some that, for which there's a flat rate. Yeah, Council Member McCuller is right that we did require everyone. So at one point I thought we were down to like one flat rate account. So I don't know why somebody would be, but I haven't paid close attention to it. We can get that information and get back to you. Absolutely. Thanks. No, here we go. Good to be here. So a lot of these are at the Berlin accounts. There's some trailer parks out there and due to freezing issues, a lot of times with mobile homes, it's difficult to keep those from freezing. So they go on a flat rate. The rate is structured to be higher than metered. So it's structured to encourage books to get meters in their buildings and those that are not paid more. Okay, thanks. You can think further, go ahead. The other thing that I don't know if tonight is the night and this is the time to do it, but there's been a lot of public commentary on the quality of the water and all that stuff, which I actually do not share those concerns that I've toured the water plant and I agree with the person who wrote that to front porch forum that you could literally eat off the floor at our water plant, but because there's been so much public concern either tonight or at some point, we should have a conversation about that. Thoughts? Yes, Carrie, go ahead. Yeah, I have a question about the rate increase and you had referenced it as going up foreign policy and tied to consumer price index and inflation. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about what that policy is or actually, let me back up. The impression I'm getting from that is that there's kind of a formula or there's a process set in policy and that that is what is used every year to set the rate. So first, is that right? And then second, can you explain a little bit more about how it works and why it is so much higher this year than it has been in recent years on an individual year basis? Sure, so I'll start and we'll jump in likely, I hope. But so, yes, I mean, so the rate is based on CPI and that's inflation and so that's based on what the economic conditions are and it is quite a bit higher than it has been in years past. And it's also based on prior year past practice for the master plan. And so that's something that the council has approved and authorized. And so that's the policy that I'm referencing in terms of using that as the formula in which we would evaluate the rates and how much we would increase them by. And so that's how I arrived there. I hope that answers your question. Great, so just to amplify a little bit the master plan she's referring to, but again, I lose track of the number of years but recognizing we had aging infrastructure and that we couldn't just pay to fix it all at once. We actually I think laid out a 50 year plan which included some of these planned upgrades and some of these major streets and looked at ways to finance that including existing debt dropping off in future years and the decision at the time was at least until we got things more stabilized was to adjust rates by inflation plus 1% to sort of catch up on the infrastructure. So that's been what we followed. It's, I think what's different this year is, last year I think it was what 1.7 plus one or something in this year it's 7.2 plus one. So it's, we've only proposed the same policy that the council's adopted, obviously, and it matches the budget, which, and then we're, it's amplified because our use is down. So you think about the national lives of the world and the state buildings and all those things that are big water users that have been closed or had low occupancy. And so we're not even seeing the same water usage and revenue is passed. So we're just trying to, we need to deliver the clean water and sewer treatment and everything to citizens. So try, you know, I appreciate what Vicki said. She's right, but you know, the cost to do these systems are also up because they're relying on fuel and inflationary factor. So it's in order to do what we need to do. So it's a struggle. Anything to follow up on that? Just that I appreciate that. Thank you. That's what it sounded like. And I think it's just important to really understand that 8.2% is a huge jump and a lot of people are going to feel that. I'm going to feel that, but that it is not arbitrary, that it comes from somewhere that it's connected to our needs and our use. And thank you for explaining that both you, Kelly and Bill. And the other thing that I might just add for a little bit of clarity there too is that we did look for the past five years just to see, you know, and because it is a big spike to kind of, you know, maybe see what the smoothing out of that number would look like if you look to get on five years rather than just the one. And so we are on point within our historical rates at about, you know, 4% or so and tracking accordingly. But still, I mean, yeah, that's... Yeah. Yeah, that's a lot. Jennifer and then Jack. It seems like an apropos time for me to get on my indigenous soapbox. Water, we can't live without it. Nothing on this planet can live without it. And we are in a crisis when it comes to having clean, healthy water on this planet. And so when we get in these positions learning how to manage your use and this is such a wild thing to be saying in 2022 but it's the reality that we're in, it's something that we're all gonna have to do because we are running out of water. It is a precious commodity and I don't think enough people understand how dire the situation is and we're gonna continue to have these inflations. We're gonna continue to have to pay extra for real basic things because of what we're doing with our water and we're not protecting it and we need to protect our water and there's not enough words that I can come up with on how important this is. And it may seem a little weird that I'm getting emotional about water but I'm a water protector that I am charged with that by my tribe, by my people. And I know that this inflation is gonna affect everybody. I mean, everybody is gonna feel it but it's gonna continue unless we learn how to use less unless we learn how to consume less unless we learn how to let our lawns do what they're gonna do, figure out ways to shower shorter. I know it's crazy notion but it's doable and it's something that we're gonna have to move into because there's no other options once the freshwater is gone, the freshwater is gone and yeah, I'm sorry, water is a huge thing and I know this is gonna be a lot and hard for everybody but I feel like this is a really good time to start buckling down and thinking about the future and thinking about the young people that live on this planet right now that are gonna have even bigger struggles when it comes to water and affording water. So tightening the belt, I can't believe I'm even saying that but trying to figure out ways to tighten the belt so that you can afford your water and so that there's water left for the future generation. So that's all, thank you. Yeah, thank you. I'm Jack, go ahead. One thing that might be of interest to some of the people I agree that it's a big hit at one time but on the other hand, if you look at the table that was provided of the historical rates, it's really pretty amazing because there were years like from 1995 to 2000 there was a 0% increase and then it went way up and there were years where multiple occasions where there were years of 0% increase a couple of years in a row and then people got hit with a big increase and they didn't like that because nobody likes getting hit with a big increase and I think the policy of having steady consistent increases was really the way to go. People obviously are getting hit when we have a big increase in one year but it is because it's reflective of the rate of inflation. Yeah, thank you. I don't know. Well, as a single household person, I am zapped with a minimum of water and sewage and I cannot use that much water. So unfortunately, probably Vicki's in the same boat. She gets charged more water than she begins to use. So it is rough. I would suggest thinking about how sharing Vicki reduce your costs because it really is hard to maintain a household by yourself. It makes me wonder if there is a structure out there that where the minimum charge is... The minimum gallons is less than the current one. Does that make sense? I mean, I realize we're probably not prepared to do that tonight. And I'm not suggesting that right now but I think that's maybe worth looking into especially if people are trying to conserve and it would be interesting actually to see because we would know if the usage was significantly less based on the meters, right? So it'd be interesting to know if people's... How many meters out there are using significantly less than the minimum charge? Yeah, yeah, just supporting the idea that people should be incentivized to use less water based on how much they're paying. And so right now it's hard to make a dent because of the way the billing is for various reasons. You can reduce your water usage a bit and still not notice any difference in your bill. And so, I understand it's a complex system but I think it's worth looking at to try to address that. Just putting out the radar, yeah, okay. Vicki, Vicki and rain, go ahead. Oh, you are muted. We still cannot hear you. Oh, there you go. Because you didn't unmute me. You didn't allow me to. At the risk of getting myself arrested like Stephen, it is more than hard. This is more than hard. Saying it's hard and you realize it's hard is like saying, oh, yes, we need thoughts and prayers at the next school shooting. So this is more than hard. And the way you're billing, you can't tell whether or not, unless you guys start billing for actual water gallons used instead of to the nearest thousand, there's no way that you know what you're doing. There's no way you know whether you're conserving. I'm a single person. I take one shower a day. I wash my dishes. I don't have a dishwasher. I drink the water. I'm like many people who complain about it. I do drink it. I wash my clothes. But as much as I have tried to conserve and have tried to find every possible leak that I might have in my house, it doesn't make a damn bit of difference in the bill because I still get, and I can go back 28 years, 5,000, 6,000, 7,000, bouncing from 7,000 to 6,000, 7,000 to 6,000. It's like you don't even read my meter. So don't tell me. And I don't want to continue to subsidize big employers who have closed up and are making lots of money because their people are now working from home and they're not using as much water. So me, the single people on Social Security, we're paying the bill for that. Now, I don't want to hear how hard you agree it might be. This is more than hard. If it was just this increase, that might be something, but it's five bucks a gallon for gas. It's six bucks a gallon for heating oil. It's twice, I have to have a window replaced in my house because that thing is rotting out twice or three times the cost. I don't care what it says. You can send the cops after me. Three times are twice the cost of what it was before. So if you got to cut some people's salaries, do it. I don't give a shit, but this is more than hard. Don't keep telling me thoughts and prayers that are with the homeowners, because this falls on deaf ears. And to Jennifer's point, I am a Vermonter. I am a native Vermonter. My ancestors were here in the 1600s. So yes, I guess yours probably were here first, but I grew up with the Vermont, the Vermont ideal and devotion to the land and the water and everything. So don't tell me that your tribe is any different than my tribe because my tribe had a tremendous appreciation for water, sea, land, sky, trees, forest. Just don't tell me all of that. It's gonna be hard. You're just saying thoughts and prayers for the next 20 kids that get shot. And God forbid they happen in our country, our city. Okay, would you like to say anything? If not, that's fine. Yeah, so I'm just gonna make comment. Thank you, Vicki, for sharing your opinions. I would ask that we consider with more respect the native perspective, but otherwise, thank you. I am very interested in figuring out how we can make conservation efforts show up for folks and feel like they're actually affecting their bills. So perhaps a discussion for another time, unless folks wanna talk about that now. Otherwise, other thoughts or comments? Okay. Yes, go ahead. I'm just gonna say, Vicki, I'd ask you to be a little bit more specific about what you're doing. Yes, go ahead. I'm just gonna say, Vicki, I'd ask you to be a little more sensitive in the future with some of these comments. And you think that was very offensive talking about indigenous people and comparing the hardships you face on your water bill to a school shooting with the thoughts and prayers. It's completely out of order, Vicki. Yeah, other thoughts. Yes, Lauren, go ahead. I just wanna echo that. And I wanted to thank Jennifer for her statement. I appreciate it and value her perspective and hope it is respected. Yeah, really? Yeah, I agree. Okay. It's 830 and we're gonna take a break. All right, thanks. We'll vote later. We'll vote. We're gonna take a break right now. Thank you. Thank you. I make the motion that we passed the resolution on the water and sewer rates. Second. Okay, further discussion. Yeah. Jack, go ahead. I think the point is correct that. This is, this is a big increase for people. And people will, will feel it. But I just think we. Have no choice but to pay the cost of operating our water and sewer system and supplying. Healthful, potable water to the. To the customers. And so I support the. Proposed rates. Okay. Further discussion. Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay. Great. Thank you. All right. So we are up to an update on the district heat plant. Welcome. Yeah. Yes. Yes. So I did not prepare a PowerPoint. Okay. Oops. Is that working better? Okay. So, you really need to pull it closer to you. Like that. All right. Is that better? Yes. Okay. Good. Stay in front of you. That's all. Yes. Okay. So. I think you all know who I am. I'm the public works director. And one of my responsibilities is to oversee the city's district heat program. But I also want to acknowledge that we have a core team that includes both the public works deputy director, Kirk Monica and finance director Kelly Murphy. And we collectively engage with other city staff. Who bring specific expertise to the program as we need it to. Be beneficial to our participants. So this evening, I'm going to provide an overview of the program, the benefits. District heat brings to both users and our community. Recent. Beneficial modifications that have been undertaken. And potential new opportunities that are being explored. So first, a brief introduction, especially for those who may be joining us. And some folks who may not really understand. What the history of district heat is. So presently, my pillars district heat program is one of 660 district heat energy systems currently operating in the United States. I was a bit surprised that there were that many of them out there. So that's good news. And there's an organization called the US district energy services organization. And it has indicated that there is continued growth in district heating programs nationwide at this point in time, which I think speaks to. Our ability to manage this program going forward, but also to the innovation that created it originally. District heating provides communities with energy related advantages when compared to other forms of heating. And district heat also provides environmental benefits to both participants and their communities when compared with more traditional fossil fuel heating systems. So overview. 1.3% of all commercial buildings in the United States are currently using district heating system networks for seasonal heating. And I was surprised by that data. Recent data identifies Montpeliers district heat program as one of 660 systems in the United States. Users as participants in district heat program users, I'm sorry, as they are known in district heat programs benefit from energy efficiencies, security for their businesses and organizations, and experienced resiliency that are inherently beneficial from this type of energy system. Since it's inception. Our district heat program has provided local businesses. Participants. Local business participants the opportunity to manage their respective heating systems in environmentally friendly manner. That is consistent with the city's ongoing commitment to engage in sound environmental practices and clean renewable energy. District heat Montpelier was originally developed by the city of Montpelier in conjunction with state of Vermont. To provide local renewable, reliable and effective heating solutions to Montpelier and its local businesses. Presently we have 18 buildings and downtown Montpelier participating in district heat. And the city continues to pursue potential opportunities to generate capacity for additional users. To date Montpelier system has been operating for eight years. And the city's district heating system allows customers participating in this program to connect to customers building heating system. To their own building heating systems to the district heating system. The city agrees to continuously provide thermal energy to customers sufficient to satisfy the customer's individual capacity needs. And those situations are identified. During user contracts. I'm sorry, I have a slight cold and my lips are sticking together. Sorry. Customers of district heat Montpelier are signed on to 20 year contracts for the supply of thermal energy to their buildings. The commission of the program was clearly established and accepted by all the participants as providing renewable local affordable heat to the capital city's historic downtown and adjacent neighborhoods. Its objectives are. The following reduce the demand for and use of fossil fuels in the city provides stable thermal energy rates. Increase the energy efficiency of buildings connected to district heat Montpelier and grow district heat Montpelier to reduce heating costs, increase the efficiency for all users and increase the utilization of renewable energy in our community. There are a variety of benefits to users. Sorry, there are a variety of benefits to users. And the energy and they include energy efficiency, security and resilience. So district heat systems use steam distribution to provide thermal energy for space heating hot water needs of buildings connected to systems like our own city offices. Put simply district heat is a network of underground pipes that deliver hot water to steam. The question was, were you going to read all five pages of the report? Oh, I was planning on doing that. Well, did, did you all get a chance to read this document? Yes. So we've got it. It's okay. I'm sorry. No worries. All right. Given that. Is there anything. Additionally that you want to add. So you, we've also gotten to the, you've also read the part of the new options for programming that we may be able to focus on those highlights. Okay. Yeah. Sorry about that. That would be great. I didn't realize. I haven't been here presenting in such a long time. I just didn't think about the fact that you all had this. We have it. It's okay. So, yeah, but those notes, no worries. Um, So let's see. So Montpelier is looking for grant opportunities and other opportunities for the district heat system. And one of those applications under consideration is a snow melt system. The projects intended to maximize snow removal. Reduce travel time and distance for winter operations. Results in energy savings. Um, for us. And. We have the current infrastructure to manage that process. There's, um, there are also, um, potential safety issues for residents that come from that when snow fall and cleanup has been delayed during a particular storm. Um, added overtime for collection and trekking is diminished. Um, potential accidents as residents attempt to maneuver around heavy equipment or park vehicles with snow are also diminished so that there is, um, a direct, um, benefit to the larger community and not just to the users of the district heat system. Um, the second project that's under consideration is the downtown snow. Um, Effort. Um, I am sorry. Can I just get my, um, I sure I have. Well, that's fine. Whatever you need. It's all good. So there are air emissions that would be achieved by using renewable energy for heating from the snow melt program. And, um, Significant benefits in creating a renewable resource for us to manage. Um, as an addition to our current operations. We would reduce trucking. Um, there would be lower staff time. We could, um, We could reduce the cost of water emissions. Um, We could reduce the fee purpose. Um, hours of staff who currently have to, um, Pick up and plow and move things long distances. Um, It would improve water quality through treatment at the wastewater plant. And, um, Just in general reduce emissions throughout the whole city. Um, The, um, one of the other things that we've done this year. Um, and I. Um, As I mentioned it is our contacting evergreen energy. And, um, as leader in district heat programming. Um, We, um, Asked them to evaluate our current system. And to give us a response so that we knew, um, Where we stood in regards to our. Um, Optimal situation, um, we got a very good report back from them. There were no, um, inconsistencies or, um, Suggestions that we needed to make dramatic or non dramatic changes. Um, And so just clarify, just so people are clear that that was really regard to our rates setting and how we set capacity rates. Um, And so we've been doing this for the past years. Um, We are hoping to have them look at our overall operations, but, but for now, There were questions, did we. Use the proper methodology for rate setting and they. They reviewed and said, yes, you did the industry standard. And match it. So I think that was important for our customers to understand that we're doing things correctly. Sorry to interrupt, but no, that's okay. That was a good clarification. Um, Yeah. I mean, I mean, I don't know if you can come back and do the whole system. Yes, but they're also going to do the rate. Structure again. This year. What do you, what do you mean? Like they're going to do it. They're going to look at it again, or they're going to help set it or yeah, they're going to help set it this year. Okay. So what. If I may go ahead, please. We had not really done an overhaul. You know, looking at the capacity rates. The capacity rate that you pay for sort of how much you're expected to use and then your actual heat rate. And the capacities were initially set based on estimated. Capacity. So now we have some history. So this past year we reset them based on the actual history, the actual usage of prior year. That caused some people to go up, some people to go down. And obviously for those, particularly those that went up, there was a lot of concern, understandably. And one of the questions was, you know, did you do it right? And we thought it was a fair question, given the fact that we hadn't really recalibrated it before. So we asked evergreen and outside entity to, to look at our work and they said, yes, you did it right. And then so what we committed to the customers was we would do it for three straight years to get a recalibration. Just to, just to get sense of people's use patterns and, you know, some of the users have made improvements to their systems, you know, become more efficient. So they should see a drop. So, so does that mean they, they'll be doing it again this year and then next year. And then we'll probably go back to like an every three year cycle once we've seen some use pattern. Got you. So like the, the history that the capacity rate is based on will reset every year for three years. Right. And then we'll, then we'll, and then after that, we'll, then we should see pattern. Okay. People by then will have made enough changes to their building. So it should be settled. Okay. That is helpful. Our goal is to give you exactly as possible. Right, right. Okay. I'm not sure that I have a lot more information to explain since you've already read what that's in your packets. Maybe we can just go to questions. Go ahead, Donna. Well, one of my questions is, whenever we talk about expansion, I think about the cost in whatever additional digging we have to do to allow that expansion. I mean, is that anywhere been thought out? So, so the expansion that we're looking at is what can be done along the existing route. So obviously if we were to expand by adding new lines, then that's a whole new capital costs and capacity. And that would have to be, you know, caught, we have to do cost benefit to see what it was worth doing. The idea is to find users that are on the existing loop that it may just be a connection and there are other ways that we can help subsidize the cost of connections. And there are some grant funds to talk about that. I'm actually meeting with Senator Parchel. I can his day job capacity next week to talk about some of those opportunities. So, you know, it's kind of, it's sort of like we have this capacity that we paid for. So the more users you can, everyone's, everyone's cost goes down. It's kind of a cooperative type thing. So we're one of the best ways to help bring everyone's rates down is to have more users. One of the users would be our own snowmelt system, which would, we would, we, the city would be paying for, but that would be a revenue that would help offset other people's costs. And that actually is one of the things that we apply for with the Northern borders grant, along with studying the feasibility of other experience. And we've been talking to some other potential customers. And part of that Northern borders grant, if we were to get it would be to design that and see if that could work. Yeah, I must have missed it. So when the, the existing piping was laid, every potential business has a connection already dug. I think we'd have to dig from where it is to them. So, so yes, there would be connections from the main line to the businesses would need to be done some, depending on the side of the road that, that the main line is on, you know, some are further than others. There was, there was only one business that was contemplating coming on that hasn't yet that, that because it was so close proximity to their building and they were actively interested. They agreed and we agreed to put a loop into their building, just in case. I mean, I'm not sure it has a loop that isn't a customer, but there are others that are approximate. Jack, go ahead. Thanks, Donna. Couple of questions. One is that I. I think I recall some. Dispute between the state and the city about how much capacity we have to add customers and. So do we know how much capacity there is? And do we have the ability to, to add customers or. I would guess that this is a good year to be. Talking to this, this business that has the loop to say, well, you know, if you were paying for. Woodchips instead of for fuel oil, you'd probably be happier than you are now. But so what the first question I have is. Do we have people that we could add to the system. Within our capacity. And then the other thing is if you could just explain a little bit more about how the. How the snowmelt system would actually work. What it is and how it would work. Sure. So we do have potentially for more. Interested parties. That we could bring on. We have capacity to handle that. And something Kurt and I will be looking into. As we move forward in terms of. The snowmelt system. The. I'm sorry. I'm just trying to find my. I'm just trying to figure out what to do. While you're pulling that to get like, I can give him. Okay. So I also. So with regard to the issue with the state, as far as capacity, there's two things. Actually, one piece of good news is that the. Energy savings that some of the larger customers made. Has freed up capacity on its own. So that. So not only did it help them and make our home overall system, but now it creates capacity. More people to come on. So that's good. Thank you. Thank you. I think I have had a couple of conversations with the current commissioner of BTS. And they are open to sort of talking about that issue. I think it was. A misunderstanding or I think it was just a question of how things were looked at, you know, so they're willing to have a conversation. We're trying to set up a meeting with them. I think in the next week or so to talk, we've got to go through rate stuff with them. We're going to have a conversation about what works. I think. You know, we have technically purchased up to. You know, what we're supposed to purchase the issues. Can we, can we buy more in the future? And. You know, from their perspective and the contract clear, it says we can buy it if it's available. And I think their perspective was. We really need that extra capacity for backup. In case, you know, we can't have the whole state system go down and because there's two, two boilers, they need to put in the third boiler to really explain it. So I think their, from their perspective is if one goes down, we need the second one. So we couldn't sell any more capacity because that's all it could handle. And that's not an unreasonable position. So the question is how might, you know, what are the, what's the risk? What's the likelihood? What's the management? What would it cost? We're going to have that conversation and maybe we can resolve that. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. And. Wasn't so much about dispute as much as trying to understand where everyone is. Thanks. I see a hand up from Alyssa. Sure. Go ahead. Hi, thank you. And thanks for the. The presentation. Donna and Bill. It's nice to see you both again. I was actually here for the police review committee work that we're going to be doing next, but it's such an interesting topic. And I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point as well. As. I think most folks know, I'm on the best area at Christ church in my pillar, which is on the district heat system. And we have had some very productive meetings with. With Bill and Donna and city staff as we've been making improvements over the last year. To make sure that our rates go down because we saw a really big jump. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point as well. I think that's a good point as well. I have one remaining question that I don't think has been. Answered and maybe you'll be getting to this over the summer, but. You know, you set the rates based on the first peak. So rates are set on peaks. Folks probably know that. And the highest peak. Is how rates were set. But then the, which is much closer to reality in a more consistent way, at least for Christ's church, like if you, just to give people a sense between the first peak and the second peak, it was a 43% drop. So that's a major usage drop. And then the overall allocation of the church for the whole system dropped 3.1%. So I just think it's worth thinking as you're setting the rates on like, do you do it on the. Highest peak? Do you do it on the second? Do you do it based on an average? Like what is the most equitable way to do this? I don't think it's going to be a problem for us in the future, because we have so many conservation method, like mechanisms we've put on our system at this point that I don't think we're going to be experiencing peaks in the same way we have in the past, but it is. I think it is a broader question for all entities on the system. I don't know how you'll be setting the rates if it will be based on that first peak, or if it will be based on a second peak or the average. So I'll defer to the real expertise, probably to Kurt if necessary, but I think we'll be setting them as per what the contract says, which I think is on the peak, but I'd have to look at it. I don't have it in front of me. So I'm not trying to hedge. I just don't know for sure the answer. I do know that our capacity with the state is based on the high peak. So that's what we get charged for. So we've based our fees off of that. So we'd have to look at that word. Like I said, we'll be talking to them soon. So that's it. That's as good a non answer as I can give you a listen. Okay. Thank you. All right. Any other questions or Kurt, do you want to add something? Sure. Okay. I'm going to go out a little bit to that. So the peak is based on a 15 minute rolling average. And, you know, I think maybe what Alyssa is referring to is when the system comes on, some customers experienced a high peak because, you know, you're going from a cold heating system to a warm system. And there's a big change there. We, I am planning to recommend to our consultant that we do not count the very first startup peak. But I believe for contract, we still have to, like Bill said, stick with the high 15 minute average omitting startup. And that that is going to be re looked at every year. How that's measured and how it's allocated. But the, the rate structure system is our contract. It's our contract with the state and the user. So require major amendments to make big changes. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Not to say we wouldn't consider it. If it was the right thing to do, but it was just, it's not like we can just teach it. I voted council. Right, right. Okay. Okay. Other questions or comments. We didn't get your second. Right. Jack, go ahead. What is, what is the snow melt. The thing what. How do you do it? What's the. Right. You just shovel all this snow into a tank and. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Heated up or what? It's sort of the way. It's. Got any pictures. So. Expert on this one. So they make systems for parking garages. And we actually looked at them when we were exploring the parking garage that are fueled from. Oil or propane, which obviously it's not. Consistent with council goals. So. I'm not, I'm not aware of any of them that are built from a district heat system. So we would be sort of creating the design, but. The idea is a large. Three sided concrete bunker with hot water pipes. Or into the concrete. That would connect our district heating system with a heat exchanger, just like a customer building would. We would turn it on, you know, maybe an hour or two before snow removal operations. So we would be able to do that. And then we would be able to do that. So. Our snow removal would be just like it is now. We would. Go out with dump trucks and. Load snow. From along the curb line into trucks. And then drive it over to the snow melt system, which would be back in this parking lot here. And dump. Dump the truck into this band. And so it'd be. Re-resist into the ground so that now we'd have some depth there to fill with snow. And allow it to melt. From there, we'd have a screen on it. That would be connected to the collection system, the sewer collection system. So that we could treat all the. The salts and everything at the plant. Thanks. So it would effectively just eliminate large snow banks. Is that. So. Right. So we do that now, right? We. We eliminate the snow banks, but we bring it. We truck it all the way up to the stump dump every bit of snow that we take out of the. Yeah. And so there's all that trucking. Right. Staff time it takes to get there. And then we have a salt issue from the runoff at the stump dump because there's no treatment in place. So we're solving a lot of mental benefits, saving staff time. Okay. Saving gas. Savings there. That is. Fascinating. Okay. Cool. Thank you. One caveat. I'm not a hundred percent sure that our. Hyping in this area is big enough. To support the volume needed. You need a lot of BTUs to melt the snow. Right. So. And the piping here was designed for three buildings. So we've part of our grant is to, you know, the first step is to evaluate the capacity of the system to make sure that we. Can actually make this work. So I don't want to get everybody's hopes up too much. It's a great concept, but we haven't done the engineering. That it's feasible here. And then would. With the sewer plant. Charge. The department. Public works for. The volume of whatever goes. From the snow melt. Facility to the sewer plant. I think that's a valid question. I think we would be an unmetered. Account. But yeah, I think. That there should be some sort of. Adjustment from the general fund to the sewer fund to cover that cost. Yeah. Yeah, thanks. Right. Yep. Fair question. Any other questions. For now. Okay. All right. Well, thank you so much, Donna. Hi. It's helpful to have this, this update. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you all read it. I'm sure. Sorry. I. Oh, it's okay. Going on. Okay. All right. Thank you so much. All right. And I think we are ready to move on to. This police review committee. Item of our officer recruitment. So. Welcome chief Pete. And also, I know we have. Melissa Sharon on from the police review committee. And. We have there were counselors also on that committee, but I don't see anyone else on with this digital. From that group, just wanted to make sure. So we'll start with you chief. And then. Melissa, if you have anything you want to add. We'll do that. And then we'll, we'll talk about it. Okay. Good evening. Madam mayor. Members of the city council city manager and assistant city manager. I'm Brian Pete with the Montpelier police department. And today, I'd like to present to the council. The cities or our response related to the police review committees or the PRC's recommendation regarding. Minimum hiring requirements. These are the topics I'd like to, to discuss, which are what exactly the PRC's hiring recommendations were, what MPD's position is. What MPD's current hiring practices are. As well as what our hiring process is. And then to take the opportunity to discuss with the council or to inform the council regarding a national and statewide trends and obstacles in attracting applicants and retaining officers. And then finally give a summarization of what MPD's current staff numbers and future strategic planning. And then we'll go to the next slide. So I'm going to give you just a few moments of details. And then the next slide I want to give you a, a, a, a summarization of what MPD's current staff numbers and future strategic projections are. I'd like to begin this again. By recognizing. The, the time. The patience and the commitment that the PRC. Has done. This is, this is good stuff. And, and it's, and, and we honestly and sincerely appreciate all the effort that they, to make sure that this department continues on with the cultures and the values that this community wants from us. It's a partnership, it wasn't an adversarial thing and we know and we acknowledge that. And so I just want to make sure I put that out there. So what the recommendations of the PRC were to quote, were looking at minimum requirements to do revisions for the minimum requirements for hiring to include a minimum of one year post-secondary education with preference for an associate's degree or equivalent in life and or internship experience and then a demonstrated commitment to volunteer to a paid community service. Again, this is done with a spirit of how do we find? This is something every law enforcement agency across the country is struggling with. How do we find the right people to do a job that has so many responsibilities associated with it? And this is a concern for everybody. So I applaud them for working to tackle something that's elusive to all of us still. And I'll get into that. And so with that saying, I believe there's no greater demonstration to the commitment of community service but then to volunteer for community service to go for an elected office, to work as a member of a city staff or municipality for the state is to donate your time because we sure as heck, nobody's getting rich off doing this work and it's often very thankless. So that's my particular point on that one. With the position for the Montpelio Police Department, I believe that this requirement's going to be an additional barrier as we as a department are already struggling and attracting and retaining applicants. That my recommendation is to maintain current hiring standards and practices as they are centered around state requirements. The state had put out, I believe I have it in an attached packet, what it recommends for how we go about hiring and onboarding people. How do we get the right people into law enforcement in the state of Vermont? And they're also, our practices are also looking at and mirroring national best practices. And we should always never stop trying to figure out how do we streamline our process? How do we make ourselves better? And again, this is why I'm extraordinarily grateful to the PRC for bringing up something that's very, very difficult to tackle. Since 2020, we have streamlined our hiring process. What we do is we expedite the decision processes. We use modern technology and we've incorporated emotional intelligence or EQ factors into how we hire. And I'll specify that more as we continue on to show why. We emphasize consistent ongoing training. So we maintain a current professional culture that we improve officer resiliency, confidence and competence and we increase job satisfaction and fulfillment. And this is the heart of what the PRC wants to make sure that we do. I will also, if I can take the time to let the council know that the Vermont chiefs of police are also looking at how do we do this? The chiefs in the state are trying to tackle the same question. We're having the same questions, same answers. How do we do this? But we're looking at processes that are barriers, potential barriers to folks that are coming aboard and now again dive more into that as we continue on. So continuing on the position, we believe that a college education may be, that actually it is, oh, I'm sorry, did I jump ahead on that one? Yeah, I think I'd mash the wrong button. Sorry, we'll just go to the next one. So let's see where are we at? Okay, so our position continue. We think that college education is not necessarily an indicator for a better officer. We look for integrity. We look for a high emotional intelligence factor and the adaptability to a career in law enforcement. That is, this is not a sprint, this is a marathon. And how do we get people over that line in a way that's going to be safe for them, safe for our community and safe for the city itself? So it's our belief that a higher educational requirement limits opportunities for otherwise good people who do not have access to a college education. College education is getting more expensive nowadays, even to the fact, even to the point that there's a national movement in debate and discussion as to college debt, folks who are going into college and debt with the acknowledgement that it's a financial hurdle and an obstacle. And there are of course, and which is, which the PRC raised themselves throughout their internal discussions that there are many reasons people can or don't go to college. We're looking at things like caring for children, other family responsibilities, financial hardships, access to the proximity. So currently in the state of Vermont, the only way to become a police officer, if you've got no prior law enforcement experience is to go to the academy for 16 weeks. All the way down, it's an hour and a half drive from Montpelier and an hour and a half drive back. So if I'm a single parent, and those are the people who we wanna get, we wanna get somebody with life experiences. And if I'm a single parent, how can I afford 16 weeks to go down to the academy every day and then what's daycare like, what are all these different things like? And these are the obstacles and the barriers that we in law enforcement as chiefs recognize is limiting a pool of people that we need to try to reach to bring on. Because again, these are folks who have life experiences. I thought I knew everything before I had my daughter and I realized I don't know anything. But having children, to be honest, really helps you understand that you can't control what people do and the only way to do it is, you learn how to use your mouth a little bit more than you learn how to use your physical body. So this is an untapped pool that we wanna look at. As we push to diversify, we already know that there are obstacles for women and minorities to attend college. There's a recommendation that we believe that this recommendation may have an unintended consequence to provide additional hurdles in attracting these pools. 538 noted, and I have a quote there at the bottom that the race gap narrows in college and there's a typo there, but in college enrollment, but also in graduate, but not in graduation. So again, there's a potential obstacle there. New York City, Chicago, New Orleans and other municipalities and state agencies across the country are reducing these requirements, these educational requirements from mandatory associates degree to just some type of a life experience or just a clean background. And the private industry is doing it as well. Glassdoor has down there, the firms like Google, Apple, IBM don't necessarily now require a college degree and a majority of their positions now. They're looking for certifications or certificates at certain schools to show that there's some level of technical competency to come in, not necessarily a college degree to reach what it is that they need to be doing. And what has guided me was there's a quote that Chief Norton has used on me when we first started talking about streamlining this process back in 2020. And he told me that he's looking for good people because he can't teach a good person because he can teach a good person to be a cop. He cannot teach a bad person to be a good person. And that is our driving moniker and that is the spirit. That is the concern and that is what the PRC really intend, what they support. And we just have to find the way, how do we get there? Especially with access and limited opportunities with where we're at now. So in continuing forward, I would venture to say that there are a lot of studies out there that talk about college education as an indicator or correlation to reduce use of force actions. So in 2016, one such study, the Justice Policy Journal published that our research findings indicate that college educated police are less likely to fire their weapons, more likely to use reasonable force, not like over the top force, but reasonable force to maintain control in a situation and to maintain better communication skills with the community. They're also less likely to receive community complaints. But that same study talks about the relationship between higher education and use of force complaints is weaker than in other measures that they've looked at. So for example, specifically, increased field training and pre-employment tests for personal attributes, for example, personality inventories like the MMPI too, polygraphs, psychological evaluations, things that we do and things that are required by the state reveal a strong association with the reduction of use of force complaints as well. And with the use of force incidences compared in Vermont compared to a lot of other places that I've been and compared to other states, it's, there's a world difference because the culture here is entirely different than a lot of places that I've been. So we share that spirit with the PRC and believe that our focus is, it should be on attracting an ethical person with integrity and conduct our due diligence to ensure adaptability and fitness. And again, for the record, this is something that the PRC strongly advocates for. And so we're definitely in agreement, always there. So I'd like to give an idea of the, what happens with our current project or with our current hiring process. We've moved up, we've gotten gone away from just saying, hey, there's a job, a position, go to the city website, which is what the city is working on to try to update to apply on the fair job. And it's an antiquated system. And so when you get some young person, I used to be in the day that I thought I was the stuff when my grandparents would ask me to program the VCR. Now my daughter can use my phone a lot better than I can. So things are definitely changing. So when we have a younger generation who's looking at, it's part of an indication, that attraction level, that's that first impression. Where am I coming into? And so we have police app and police app is, it's like an indeed, it's like LinkedIn, it's like, it's a job space for law enforcement that all the folks who are interested in going there, you go to police app, you see who's hiring and what they're doing. So that's our first step and it streamlines the process for, so folks will apply there. And this is typically for somebody who has no law enforcement experience and comes in without any previous certification. Coming into the state, looking for certification, it's an entirely different thing. I'm on year two, June 15th is my date of hire of 2020. I am still a level two officer in the state of Vermont because the only thing that I need now is a fingerprinting class. I need to learn how to fingerprint. So that's keeping me from my level three certification. So there's some antiquated stuff that's going on with the academy and the academy is aware of it. The chiefs are aware of it and we're working to do our best to change it and to work with the Vermont Criminal Justice Council. So then we do an initial pre-screening of the application. Sergeant Molton is handling this one. So he'll look through, just look through some open source intelligence, look through some normal preliminary stuff, see if the person is going to be a good fit. Is there anything in the background that's of a concern? We will never, despite our manning situation, I'm sorry, our staffing situation, we will never compromise the standards and the expectations of this community. We won't do it. In some cases, with all due respect to those who have applied, if they haven't made this initial pre-screening or anywhere else within the hiring process, there are other agencies within the state that are calling us and asking us, hey, we're thinking about hiring this person, and I think that's just a testament to again, to us making sure we understand the strength of the recommendation of the PRC. So there is that pre-screening application process. Then we do an immediate follow-up and interview. It used to be in the good old days that you go in, you put it, you put an application to become a cop. We tell you when we're ready to tell you and you know, or you wait till the end of the whole closeout period and then in 30 days we'll get a hold of you, we'll have a meeting and then you'll be sitting around with all these men who will be looking at you and be very stoic and they'll be judging you and all kinds of different stuff. We got away from that crap. What we do is we bring in people and we invite them to come do ride-alongs, we invite them to come see us warts and all. When we're looking good, when we're looking bad, get to know where you're coming because just as much as they're interviewing us, or we're interviewing them, they are definitely interviewing us. This is a more savvy generation entering into the workforce. So we do an immediate follow-up and interviews. You also have to strike when the fire is hot because the majority of folks who have been applying for our department have applied for several others in the area. We've modernized and streamlined the interview process. Then at that particular point in time throughout that interview if everything's looking good, we work on a more in-depth background investigation. We do the MMPI-2, the physical fitness test. It used to be what's called the Cooper Standard in law enforcement where you had to do push-ups, sit-ups, a stretch, a long jump, or whatever the case may be, or run a mile and a half, and whatever this, that's antiquated, especially via case law. You can't, I mean, look at me. I mean, I can't do push-ups. So how can I make somebody else who's coming in the job? So it's just a measurement of cardio. So the state itself has gone away from the Cooper Standard and we're at a role standard right now just to measure the cardiovascular capabilities of the person who's coming in. So there's another hurdle that we're still keeping that expectation and that standard, but we're modernizing it and we're looking at how does it make sense for the job that we really do on a day-to-day function? And then we've implemented critical hire, which is that EQ test. And within your packets, you should have like a sample printout of what that critical hire is, what it looks at and gives us a good read on that person in addition to the MMPI. And it is blacked out in certain places just to make sure that we don't corrupt the test when if somebody gets a hold of this and they wanna take the test, kind of like doing a polygraph and putting that needle in your shoes. So every time you're gonna lie, you hit it and it's like it's a false positive kind of thing. So then again, we look at doing, we encourage ride-alongs, different other things like that, do that very thorough background check, hit that polygraph and oh my God. Then there's a conditional offer of employment. And then once that offer of employment's made and folks come through, all right. You're all welcome to the Montpelier Police Department. We just need to help you through the process, not look to defeat you through that process. So this just gives a breakdown of where we're at. Again, please see the attached information to the packets, that's where we are on a police app. We also have things on there that talk about what our culture is, what my leadership philosophy is, because when I bring folks in, I want you to ask me about anything. What's my favorite color? Cats, what do I stand on this? Where I stand on that? Because if you're gonna work with me, you need to know that the person who is in charge of the department is going to meet your expectations. And I always tell folks that you don't work for me. I work for you. My responsibility is to get you everything you need to do your job and to trust you to do your job correctly. And to trust folks to be autonomous, I need to send them through a very rigorous hiring process. So again, and then there's another document for the states recruiting and hiring practices. Again, critical hires there. And the NDI, so there's some participation in some states and some municipalities across the country that folks who have been decertified in other states, they collect this information, but it's like anything else. It's like Niber's data or uniform crime reporting data with the FBI, you have to participate to be in it. So this is something that Vermont's looking to do with a lot of like Act 56 and other things that are coming down within law. How do we know that if there's a person in department A who's decertified for something, how do we make sure that person doesn't jump ship from this department and then come over to another community and start that same thing? If you're not gonna be in a law enforcement profession, we don't want you to start the same crap that you started over here and bring it over to our community. We've worked too hard to make sure we have a very good culture here. And then one of the other recent things that we're doing is with the Air National Guard now that they have a system that we've become a partner with them. So when folks join the Air National Guard and they're looking for like full-time work or other things like that, there's a list of other places, like I think the Vermont Teddy Bear Company, several other places, and the Montpelier Police Department's on their website, get ahold of us. There are personal emails are right there. You can email sergeants, the deputy chief, the chief and say, hey, tell me what this business is about. What's your culture like? So I'd like to, this is not directly related to the PRC. This is just, I wanted to take the opportunity since we're talking about recruiting and retention, I wanted to give the council a transition into the state of things right now within law enforcement. So I say this not to pile onto anything or to rebut anything that the PRC comes. This is entirely separate to give the background because things have changed even substantially since the PRC partnered with us to give us their feedback and their recommendations and advice. So since implementing police app, and that happened back in December 17th of 2020, we've only had 53 submissions to that. And we've only had five hires from that. Of those five hires, three people came from another agency, whether I poached them and I don't go out and I make jokes when I'm around other agencies like, hey, what do you think about Montpelier and all that stuff like that? I make the joke, but anytime somebody's realistically inquires about the Montpelier Police Department, I'm gonna go after them like a pitfall. I'm gonna tell you everything that we have to offer, but ultimately, me taking from South Burlington, Burlington, Essex, any other place, it's the same problem statewide. I'm just taking, we're just robbing Peter to pay Paul. So I'm very cognizant and respectful of that, but three of those people have come from other agencies. So traditional ways of people coming in has only been two. And so basically that's a 3.77 on-board rate of already low numbers that are applying for the department. And then I also wanna take this opportunity to tick off whoever may be ticked off by it, but to honestly think or to say like Jeanette White in the state Senate has been talking about regionalization. A lot of folks have been talking about regionalization. I think we're at the point that serious discussions have to be had at municipal levels and at state levels regarding regionalization of law enforcement services. And well, I'll tell you why I mean that. So the national and state trends, PERF, the Police Executive Research Forum, which is one of the foremost experts on studying law enforcement, did a survey, 194 law enforcement agencies responded on workforce trends, and they found that only 93% of authorized on average of authorized numbers are being filled. Fewer officers are hired. Resignations and retirements have decreased substantially. 5% overall decrease in hiring rate from the previous years. Resignations saw an 18% increase from previous years and a 35% increase in a retirement rate. This is consistent with what we're seeing in Vermont, except for our numbers are worse than that with our percentages and hiring rates. And I say this is truth. I'm not saying this to throw bars because anyone who's entering into this conversation and pointing fingers is not helping anything whatsoever. We need to deal with where we're at. We need to partnership, be respectful of one another and move forward. But I'd be remiss if I didn't say that amongst unofficial law enforcement circles, people that I know from other places, people that I've been trying to recruit to come into the state of Vermont, Vermont is not a state that law enforcement want, that folks who already have certification want to come to. And there's a myriad of reasons for that. Housing, taxes, a lot of things that the council is struggling with on a day-to-day basis. But there's also a perception issue with relation to Vermont. And I tell them, I'm fine, we're where I'm at because my council supports me. And my council holds me accountable. My city manager supports me, but they hold me accountable. They have expectations as they should. They're a very, very significant job. But we have support. And that's what a lot of places can't say. So that's one of my selling points when I talk to people, I let them know what that is. So with this, the commissioner of public safety, a commissioner, Mike Shirling, had a memo back in 2021. And in that memo, we voiced concern about a staffing crisis within law enforcement in Vermont. And I'm here to tell you, there is a significant staffing crisis, not only here, but in the academy as well, who's probably down about 50%. They were understaffed to begin with, not about 50%. So with all due respect with everything they're struggling with, if I get somebody bringing to the academy, how am I gonna know that there's gonna be an academy class? We have, they're always sending out emails saying, we don't have an instructor to do this. Can someone come down and teach us or teach this course? So the crisis is real. The current level of hiring does not keep pace with our reported departures and the obstacles in hiring where a lack of qualified applicants and a dwindling number of applicants. And there's several different reasons why. So some numbers on that is this year, I'm sorry, in 2021, I believe the number I had, 75 retirees and only 23 people who entered in into law enforcement in the state of Vermont were coming out of that class at the time that I got that statistic. Looking at, in last year, there was a projected 102 people to retire, resigned. This year is a projected of 168 retiring and resigned. The average class is looking at about 25 people, if we can get them into the academy. So again, the academy's doing their best to work through this and we're all trying to rally around each other and trying to figure out how do we get through this? So of the commissioners in his report, I've cut, I've clipped some of the arts, some of the graphs here to give you a visualization, authorized versus actual officer staffing. This is back in April of 2021, is when this information was taken. The one in the bottom left talks about those who responded to the survey, what the staffing totals are, authorized funded positions, actual positions and who's actually available. So I can have 17 authorized positions funded. I can actually have say, I'm down two people. So now I have 15 people and of those two people, one person's down, one person's on maternity leave. So now I'm really only working with 13 officers in the department, which coincidentally, we don't have anybody who's out on medical or anything, but with folks who we do have level two and folks who just got out of the academy and still through the probationary program, we are realistically at 13 officers, including me, who's still a level two officer and I can't go out by myself and Nord keeps me on a choke chain so I don't get out the car. Does he have a pay, a low or just pay? He's only a two. I'm only a level two. So then the last graph talks about the available officer attrition by year. So these are some very obviously concerning trends and how do we as leaders in the state tackle this? So the next step just talks about some obstacles in attracting and retaining officers. We did a study, the Vermont chiefs of police did a survey of the estimated if you look like under Wikipedia or some other places, just like an unofficial number, 1300 law enforcement officers for the state of Vermont. I don't know how old that number is, but I think we have an estimated back then when we did it in 2021, 1100 officers. Of the 1100 officers in Vermont, no one in VSP participated in the study if I recall correctly, but 330 law enforcement officers took the survey. They were motivated enough to take a survey and they highlighted the following that only 28% of the respondents felt that they were supported. And again, this study is part of that part of the packet that only 28 respondents felt that they were supported a great deal or a lot by their respective communities. 65% felt little to no support by locally elected officials. Nearly 87% felt little to no support by statewide elected officials and nearly 89% felt little to no support by nationally elected representatives. So whether it's true or not, there's a perception problem. And as we are all in the public eye, perception is unfortunately something we have to combat what. So 95% felt that their concerns and voices were not being heard or respected in conversations regarding changes in policing. Nearly 50% believed their agencies provided little to no training, nor the resources or equipment needed to perform their duties and meet their responsibilities. 80% described overall morale and law enforcement is moderately low or low. 75% of respondents said they would not recommend policing to anyone as a career. Law enforcement used to be legacy. It used to be my grandfather with a cop, my dad was a cop, my mom was a cop. Now I'm gonna be, it's the legacies are saying no, don't go into the job. And nearly 72% stated that they've had conversations in their household or their support systems of whether they should remain in law enforcement because of the current climate. That's them going to family and that's family saying, I think you need to get out. So why are people leaving the Montpelier Police Department? In 2021, we implemented an exit interview program. Of this report, three staff members provide the report since then four members have resigned or retired from the positions and only one of those four participated in the exit interview program. His feedback is exactly consistent with the numbers that I'm going to discuss with you here. And I'll list a few things but the working conditions, they said our working conditions is good. Again, our council supports us, our community supports us, we're good to go. Salary, they listed it as poor. I want to say that the union said big kudos to Bill and Cameron and to the city council for stepping up and for making us competitive. And when I put this slide show together, it was stressed to me to make sure that the council knows that we appreciate what the council did and the value that the council is putting in to law enforcement. So I want to make sure that you all know, this didn't come from Brian, this came from other people. So communication with management was listed as either outstanding or good. Career advancement was listed as poor or that 33% is good. There's some things beyond our control that we can't deal with that. We're a small agency. But that again makes the case. Regionalization, how can I get somebody in succession planning? How can I get somebody promoted? How can I give somebody different responsibilities? How can I have a traffic? If somebody, if that's their spin is traffic, if somebody's spin is crisis intervention team, if somebody's spin is I want to go after people who do narcotics, drug dealers, how can I get them and funnel them and keep that fire lit on why they came into law enforcement? So benefits were listed as good. Again, this is, but now there's, in an environment that municipalities are looking to poach other municipalities, that's difficult. Since we've had our contracts, it spread like wildfire. I had chiefs saying, hey, I'm getting a whole bunch of feedback here. Everybody's saying that Montpelier really hooked up a very good contract with the union. Can I have it? Can I see yours? Send them there? I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'm proud of where we're at. Then come to find out that those SOBs are like at the starting numbers or at the starting salaries, they're beating us on the salaries. So now we're right back again behind the eight ball because they're trying to out salary us again. So, it's public knowledge. I had to give it to them, but now I'll be a little bit more reluctant next time I do it. So the workload is again, it's good. We make sure again, that there's something to be said that every day I'm out there, I get a chance to interact with my community. I get a chance to help people and I also get a chance to make a difference. But not every night I'm dealing with somebody being shot. Not every night I'm dealing with parties from one end of the street to the other. So the workload here is great. Training opportunities and then work culture and morale. So moving forward, so I would say with this one, the only thing at this point that we can control for this solution is our ability to attract officers and keep them here based on our culture. So our current staffing numbers were a lot at 17. This is pretty much, again, this is what we're at. Realistically, we have two folks who are coming on. They're currently in level two training right now. I think they have one more week to go and that's another thing. It takes two weeks. You come out as a level two officer, two weeks. I can't be a gun, two weeks. But so again, this is an older slide. So while it takes time to fill these positions, then it takes time to get folks trained up to the point that they can go out there and work. So I will tell you for that second bullet there, our OT budget, this is the numbers have changed since I've done this slide. This is a regurgitation of the slide. Our budget is $123,000. For overtime as of April, we had spent $183 on the budget. Numbers we pulled earlier this week, we're at $212,495.29 in our overtime budget. And that's for a myriad of different reasons, but the officers are burned out. And we're trying to deal with that. And then there may be some reimbursement in those numbers because we do have officers on task force and we get reimbursed through the federal government. Just to be clear for people watching that, the largest part of that is for, because officers are filling shifts because we don't have the people. It's not above and beyond a full compliment of officers is people working overtime to make up for the lack of officers. Yes. And it's mutual aid assistance and it's also the academy needs somebody down there to teach now. For better or for worse, we're better off in a lot of other departments. I can name them, Hinesburg, Norwich, Battleboro, Berlin, Hartford, Burlington. They are very much worse. So I honestly don't think, in my opinion, I don't think that there are gonna be some places that are gonna survive within the next year or two with law enforcement, which is why mutual aid is gonna be so important. VSP is just not in the position. You've got captains now who are working patrol. I'm on patrol. You got captains who are on patrol and streets and working cases and investigations. And it's legit. And I'm not trying to be an alarmist, but I'm just trying to say it's legit. So again, I would encourage some serious conversations. I don't necessarily know if I have the right answers to those, but I would encourage some serious conversations and looking at what regionalization may look like and what mutual aid assistance may look like. Because sooner or later, we're gonna end up burdening a lot of help to neighboring communities. And that's where our budgets are gonna end up going to. Because Montpelier is not the type of place that's gonna say, ah, you're on your own. We don't do, especially in law enforcement, we don't do that. So again, I apologize. I kind of, not kind of, I rambled on a lot, but thank you all very much for your time and your attention with this one. And I stand ready to answer any questions. Or unless there's anything burning right now, I do wanna go to Alyssa. Actually, I need to probably move back there because my computer's gonna die. But Alyssa, would you like to add anything at this point? Yeah, thank you for that presentation, Chief Pete. And I do appreciate the department's rigorous hiring process. I know it from being invited to sit on a hiring panel and hire two of your corporals, I believe. So I've seen it up close and personal and appreciate the rigor and thought and community orientation that goes into it. You even let me make a bunch of my own questions and ask them, which I really greatly appreciated. I think the PRC's recommendation, I guess I will say here, in no way is an attempt to indicate that the hiring process happening right now isn't rigorous. So I'll just start with that. It was more the conversation, the thinking around the conversation was to allow flexibility to the department, which is why we didn't require an education. We agree that there shouldn't have been an education standard and that that could be difficult in terms of the recruitment. And so that's why we have the or in there where we say one year post-secondary education or life experience or internship experience. And I think the conversation was such that we wanted to create a broad tent, but we also appreciated some experience outside of, the idea that the brain is like fully developed at age 18 to come straight out of school and straight into a police force. And on patrol, we had done some research that indicated that life experience or the further any type of experience whatsoever, whether it be like life or community orientation, life on the job or community orientation or education, all of that led to a more resilient officer. And so we were, when we talked with some of the officers to get feedback on this proposal, I did personally talked with, I think it was four or five. And folks, we're torn saying like, yeah, I know we don't wanna close the door on we don't wanna make any recruitment any harder than it already is. And of course, if someone has a couple of years of life experience or community orientation or internship experience, they're gonna be a better officer, like without a doubt, but should we have that standard here? So I guess I'd leave that in your hands so the city council to figure out what to do with, but that was the sentiment behind, we know we want our officers to have a community orientation. We know that we don't want them, we know we want a resilience and judgment in that process. And thinking about having one year out of college, I mean, one year out of high school, maybe isn't such a far stretch around as a standard, but at the same time, we don't wanna be, we don't wanna be so restrictive that it causes recruitment problems in this current context. So I'll leave it to others to weigh in here. I know I have a couple other committee members, maybe they're members of the public, but the gist was we wanted the officers to have a community orientation have better judgment through some life community oriented experience or education and be equipped for the kind of the stresses that they're gonna experience on the job. Thank you. Questions for either Chief Pete or Alyssa or comments. Jack, go ahead. Thanks, Chief. There's a great, very interesting presentation. I just first I'll observe that regionalization is a whole different conversation. And I just have to say that I approach it with some trepidation, because in our work with the Police Review Commission and talking to members of the community and people who deal professionally with the Montpelier Police Department is that we look very good when we look at how our police interact with the public and our police force and our values are really very positive and what I wanna see out of the Montpelier Police Department and that's not true of every other police department that some of the people we heard from interact with and so was one of the real pressures or tensions I think is gonna be how do we preserve the values that we've tried to have our police department embody if our police department becomes part of a regional force. And so I'm sure you're thinking about that same question with regard to this particular issue of hiring qualifications. There was a lot, as you know, there's a lot of discussion about, well, how, what are the qualifications? How should we, how should we determine what should we be looking for? And I know that I went to the police app, the Montpelier Police Department police app page today and when we talk about our qualifications, we have high school diploma or equivalent as a minimum and then we have completion of college courses, military duty or relevant work experience desirable but not required. And so I'm just curious of the 53 people that we've had apply in the last couple of years. Are most of the people coming in with just a high school education or most people coming in with qualifications above that either a bachelor's or an associate's degree or other of the kinds of experience that we're talking about? Yes, sir, it's a very good question. I'll definitely be able to get you the correct percentage and statistic but I venture to say I think that the majority of applicants that we're having coming in do not have a college degree. There may be some with some college, there are a couple that I've specifically seen that do have college, but Sergeant Moulton and Chief Nortonson have been doing that pre-screening and seeing what those backgrounds look like primarily and normally when I see them or see what their backgrounds look like and what their education level was is normally when they get a little bit further throughout the process. So you think that having any kind of requirement for post-secondary education would screen out people that we want to at least be able to consider hiring? Yes, I think that there's that potential unintended consequence and like Alyssa was saying, there is no substitute for life experience. Life experience helps you build a judgment and helps you not to take things personal, it helps you not to build a grudge, it helps you use your mouth more than use your fists and when I see somebody who's coming on the job I'm like, oh my God, you look like my sister's, or my daughter's friend in third grade. I look at it from the same point. Who is gonna come to my house if I need some help or my wife, my daughter needs some help and where is that judgment level gonna be? Is this person going to be able to treat the community members like they would treat their own family and there's gonna be no substitute for that experience. So there is a legitimate concern there, there is a legitimate concern bringing somebody on and it's scary when I hear some of the old stories, oh yeah, I went through one day of an in-processing class, they gave me a gun and told me to go patrol the street. Now it's 20 years ago, I'm like, oh crap, I mean, that's scary as any citizen. But in looking and answering that question, I think that there may be a potential unintended consequence. I think by saying that we do prefer that and that's something that as long as that's in the back of our mind and we're looking for that because that does equate to life experience, that does equate to the ability to have a more sound judgment and to adhere to the culture that we're trying to set. So that is definitely a preference and I can tell you that if we're getting somebody who's coming in at a very, very young age, we take very due care and diligence and looking at that person's level of judgment. One of the people who must have been a defense attorney, one of the things he observed is within the Montpelier Police Department, we're not seeing a lot of angry young guys who are on the police department, which is obviously a very good thing. It's good, Trevor Whipple came two weeks ago to the office and gave me the, Brian, let's look at your liability, let's look at how many use of force instances have you been in, how many injuries, how many lawsuits and everything and we look pretty good. And he said, you guys are doing very well and especially that there's a difference in what I can see and I give that to the sergeants and the corpals and to the officers and staff and dispatchers themselves because they're policing that culture. It's not, I'm along for the ride. They're establishing that culture. That'd be a really interesting thing for us to see, I think just what's our track record, how many claims are made against us, that kind of thing. I don't think we, I don't recall seeing that as part of the police review process, but anytime they have a chance to see, well, what's the actual performance, which I'm sure we will look pretty good. Thanks, yes sir. Other comments or thoughts? Connor, go ahead. I would just like great presentation. It was good to hear from Alyssa too, because I think I got a better sense of the intent of the language. And I think, we'll probably agree with staff recommendations in some cases disagree in other cases. In this case, I think the language is a bit problematic there because it does seem like it's focused on the educational piece of it. And I definitely think a couple of things Chief is saying, bad outcomes when we overwork our force and bad outcomes when we limit the hiring pool there. So I would probably oppose this particular recommendation. I know like I hire a lot of campaign operatives, right? And you get some folks like with policy side degrees, some great universities and everything. The best ones I hire are like, ones who delivered pizzas like our bartenders because they do have that life experience. And I think that's getting to the root of like with the deputy Chief was saying there with, you can't make a bad person a good person, but I think you've shown that you've done a lot with people with limited experience who come on and become fantastic police officers. So I think that's just where my head's on this one. Carrie. Yeah, thank you so much Chief. This is a really great presentation, really informative. And I want to thank Alyssa as well for all the information that you provided. And my heart really agrees with the idea that we want to have those well qualified people as we can and the arguments for life experience and for a little bit of age. And I mean, I have an 18 year old son, I'm not sure I'd want him on protecting the public safety. He has lots of other gifts, but maybe not that one. And so I appreciate the sentiment of where this recommendation has come from. Yeah, it's gonna be always a very, very tough argument to make to me as a city counselor to convince me to step into a city agency, a city department and tell them something so specific as a hiring requirement. That feels like there may be times when it's appropriate for us to do that but would have to be under pretty extreme circumstances. I think that the police department knows what it needs in its officers. It knows the way to get that much better than I think that we do. So I'm not inclined to support this recommendation just on that basis alone. But also the information that we've received here is very compelling that even though there may be, there can potentially be some benefits to this additional education requirement. It sounds like they're probably fairly limited in a realistic sense. I've worked a lot in higher education including in the school that had a criminal justice program. And so I know that there's a huge variety of what comes out of that. There's no guarantees. And it seems like the potential drawbacks that you've described are very, very compelling. And so I am also not leaning in favor of supporting this recommendation. Alyssa does have her hand up. Alyssa, go ahead. Thanks. I was hoping to drop the language into the chat because I'm hearing from council members that you're taking away that there's an education requirement and that's not in the language. And so I want to just be really clear on that. And I would love to draft. I would just love to show you the language. And is there any way for me to drop it in there? Can I activate that? Or can we not do that? Unfortunately, we can't activate the chat. Okay. Would it be okay if I just read you the two sentences that is the recommendation just so people have it in their mind? And I understand the sentiment and I have a suggestion that I think kind of threads a needle here that for Chief Pete to consider, but I do just want you to know what the recommendation is before you vote on it. Okay. So let me just read that to you. It says, the Montpelier City Council should authorize revisions of the MPD minimum requirements for hiring officers to include one, a minimum of one year of post-secondary education or equivalent life or internship experience. And to a demonstrated commitment to volunteer or paid community service, and that's the recommendation. So you can see it's either education or life experience that would be relevant to the profession or an internship because we were trying to marry some experience that would gain judgment outside of high school, either education, life or internship. And also a indication of community care and orientation. So I just wanted to make sure you saw that before you voted and I hear what you're saying, but I just wanted to make sure that language is clear. And then the other thing is, if the council isn't interested in getting involved with this, I mean, Chief Pete, what you have on your website that Jack read earlier is very similar to the sentiment that we were already saying at the PRC, you're basically saying, you need to have a high school education plus you'd love for them to either have some other education or some other life or internship type experience or community engagement. Like it feels like what you already have written is really close to what the recommendation is. And so I almost wonder if it's worth just a follow-up conversation around that paragraph that you have to kind of get at that sentiment as a preferred or option and if that's just worth another conversation. But I'll leave it at that. Thanks. May I respond? Oh, for sure, go ahead. I would say that, yes, and again, we do internships now and guess where some of that motivation came from? So we acknowledge the partnership and the strength of bringing ideas. We can't see the trees or the forest from the trees. And so that is another way that we're looking at it. The pipeline is getting folks to come in, do internships and move forward from there. So again, I think that our spirit is definitely in cohesion. We have partners in this and we're definitely, and I know that the council doesn't have that sentiment but I just wanted to put it out there for everybody who's watching us that the PRC and Montpelier Police Department are very much in sync, especially with the spirit of the recommendations because we're all trying to tackle the same concerns that have universally plagued our profession. All right, go ahead. Yeah, thanks. I love the idea of looking at that line because that strikes me too as it's trying to get at the same sentiment and really appreciate the presentation and walking through. And I know it came out in the PRC process, the challenges with law enforcement hiring right now and it sounds like it's gotten even worse since then. So I mean, to me, I think in large part, even just sparking the conversation we're having tonight and putting a spotlight on the sentiment and how this feeds into the culture and hearing how you're working to kind of embody this in the hiring practices. I mean, I think that's going a long way to getting at what the PRC and having that as part of the recommendation to kind of live on in that document as kind of a placeholder for continuing this conversation and making sure we're keeping an eye on hiring practices and all that. So I mean, to me, I think I love the idea of trying to just see if there's a way of, you know, any tweaking of that language that you already have as a, you know, however it's preferred but not required or whatever. But I don't think we need to adopt a policy tonight. I think that seems like a great approach to me. Yeah, you know, one of the things that you said, Chief, that is sort of sticking with me is that if there was a position that needed to be filled and you didn't find someone that you felt was the right fit, then you just wouldn't fill it. Did I am I, is that accurate? It's very accurate. And it's also something that the officers themselves. Right. And they understand that they tell us all the time, don't put another body in here just to put a body in here. Right. Somebody in here is going to do the work. And that to me is a really hard thing to capture because what I feel like I heard, well, what I think is hard to capture actually is this sentiment that Connor referenced about like you can't teach him necessarily a bad person, be a good person. And then like how, but what does that mean? And how do, like, I feel like it relates to the process that you talked about, like with the polygraph and with the emotional quality testing. Is that, it's EQ. Is that? Emotional intelligence. Oh, emotional intelligence. Okay, cool. Right, so, there are ways to try to get at that but then like how do you turn that into a policy? And I'm not sure that that is something that's so easy to just say that, you know, that's our standard, right? Like I'm not sure that I've mixed feelings about that as well rather than even just, you know, like life experience might lend towards that or, you know, college experience might lend towards that but not necessarily kind of what you were saying, Carrie, about how, you know, you can go through an experience and get all kinds of outcomes of folks, you know, at the end. So I guess all that is to say, I'm also not in a place where I'm ready to, you know, adopt policy, different minimum standards right now but, you know, if we do, it feels like there's something there beyond like education or experience that is what I heard you say. Which I feel like was clear from the presentation but anyway, I guess I'm gonna stop talking at this point. Donna, yeah, I think some of what you're trying to get at is that whole subjective aspect and you can't put it there and that's why you hire and put confidence in your chief or your city manager who does hiring and that's where you let go of it. So I don't think we need to change what's there, we can modify it but I think we do our due diligence with our city manager and with hiring my chief. I'm getting the sense that we're probably not gonna change things tonight. And if folks wanna have more conversation about like what's on the website, I mean, certainly open to revisiting this at some other time, if that's what folks wanna do but I'll leave that to the police review committee to work with the chief on. Is that sufficient? Okay, thank you. Thank you chief for this great presentation. Thank you, Alyssa and please pass on our gratitude to the police review committee, you know, at this, it's, yeah, I appreciate that the sentiment that this suggestion encapsulated was also sort of very close to what was on the website. So yes, Donna, go ahead. One of the pieces, you sent us a lot of material which was made a great picture but the one that I really was impressed with that you shared evaluations of people who exit. And I think you almost need to require people to do an exit form, really some sort of enticement because it's so helpful to hear those comments. So thank you, it was very helpful. Yes, ma'am and thank you for that. And if I may, the city already has an account with Polko who reached out to me again today. They also have another tool that will help us not only reach out to the community to find out where we can, you know, improve our communications and legitimacy but there's also an internal component that we can send out random polls that are anonymous that fill this out and how are we doing? And they can track me, they can track chief Norton and the Sardons and we all track each other to keep ourselves accountable to make sure that we are leaning into a direction that we're not hemorrhaging talent. And I think that's extraordinarily valuable to us because I'd rather know before you walk out that door how I'm screwing up and how I can fix it. So that's something that we're actively looking into right now. Thank you. Lauren, did you have anything you want to add? Just really briefly, it came up earlier, gratitude for the public meeting that you're convening tomorrow night. And I just wanted to, I mean, very much in line with other recommendations of the police review committee and the spirit of how, you know, and things that are kind of traumatizing for the community are happening, how we're engaging. And so just grateful that's happening and, you know, we'll be interested to hear how it goes and if there's ongoing, but I think, you know, in terms of just, yeah, kind of best practices for how we're actually responding and giving people a venue to talk through and process together as a community. So I'm really happy that's happening. Yeah, I agree. Okay, thank you. All right, no, I just want to acknowledge that it is quarter after 10. I would like to do this next item. Is that okay? Yeah, how fast? You mind if I skip it, Mike? Okay, ha-ho. This is gonna be fast. It's so big, sorry, half time. And I'm smart enough to know I'm not turning these lights out for a PowerPoint presentation. So Mike Miller, Planning Director. So you have in your packet the proposed fee schedule and the existing fee schedule. And I'm just gonna go really quickly through some of the reasons why we're, I'm here needing to update the fee schedule. And this really comes back to 2018, the zoning update that we did and one of the major goals of the 2018 zoning update was to streamline the permitting process. And the numbers you saw that were in your packet which had the numbers was, in 2017, the DRB had 74 hearings and we issued 74 administrative permits, pretty much 50-50. 2021, there were 19 DRB hearings and 124 administrative permits. Why that's important is that the DRB hearings, not only do they take a lot longer but they also cost people a lot more money. There's a lot more fees involved. So in 2017, we collected $30,000 in fees. And in 2020, we collected 13,000, 21,000, 15,000, I think we're about 16,000 right now. So pretty much we cut our fees in half. The other change that happened from 2018 is the amount of support that we provide applicants through the process. Our staff works very hard. Meredith came on board in 2018 and so she provides a lot more and we encourage a lot more hand-holding for applicants. If you come in, you don't need to know the zoning and a lot of it was new zoning. So we told people, don't learn the zoning, we know the zoning, just email Audra and we'll hand-hold you through the process. And we pretty much have continued to do that. That's our policy now is you don't have to fill out applications and bring them to us and we review them. You email us and you say, I've got an idea, I wanna put a deck or I wanna put a shed or I wanna open a new business. Here's my address. Can you tell me what I need to do? We read all the zoning, we send you all the documents, we tell you whether you can or can't. And so we really that, so the amount of work we do for each project is much more than it used to be. So those are the things, we're collecting less money and we're doing more work. In the fee schedule, the things that are not changing, so we have building fees and we have zoning fees, the building fees portion isn't changing. That's pegged to the state. We have a contract with the state. If we weren't doing building permits, the state would be. So Chris Lumber does the building permits and we charge the same fees that the state does. And the overall structure of our zoning fees hasn't really changed. That's the layout is all still there. Some things moved around, but overall it really hasn't changed. So what has changed is some of the quick highlights, the idea is a new construction previously had really been tied to use and how it was calculated varied and it was really kind of all over the map. And what we've done is kind of simplified everything to a square footage. So all building construction is 30 cents a square foot with a couple of different minimums for accessory because accessory structures don't take as much work. So they'll have a less minimum. And non-building construction is a flat rate $50. So a building is anything on four walls and a roof. So non-building is something that misses one of those. So a porch, a deck, a swimming pool, offense, non-buildings, those would be a flat $50. Changes of use stayed the same. We increased fees from minor site plans and design review. And this really is because of the amount of work that we do. The staff does a lot of work. These were completely new. Previously, there were no minor site plans. Every site plan went to the DRB. And now what we did with the 2018 rules is said some of these don't need to go to the DRB. We can do these administratively, but we really weren't charging enough for the amount of work we were doing. In the flood hazard permits, we added a new category for minimal, which we've made cheaper. So we tried to just reflect the amount of work that we have to do with the amount of the proposal. So we actually made those cheaper, but increased the fees for the other ones, which we do a lot of work for. So if you're in the flood hazard area, we help you because the NFIP rules, National Flood Insurance Program rules, are very complicated. And again, Audra's a certified floodplain manager. She helps people through those process and spends a lot of time working on those. So we should increase the fees a little bit. Some other changes, when you go to the DRB, we now provide much more assistance. We write much more complete staff reports. Meredith does a lot more work than previous zoning administrators did in that realm. So we've increased the fees from $50 to $100. I would note on the new zoning fee schedule under appeals, I'd like to recommend that there be a reimbursement of fees for an appellant if they win. So in a zoning administrator appeal, somebody's basically making the argument, you screwed up. And if you make the case that says, you screwed up and you go to the DRB and the DRB says, yep, the zoning administrator screwed up, it just seems fair that in the very least, we should reimburse them their appeal fees. So we don't have that ability right now. So that is in here as one of the notes on the side. The recording fees are set by the clerk's office. They were most recently updated in 2019. So those are all accurate at this time. And then what we did to kind of ground truth these is we ran a couple of recent permits through some small like a fence and a deck permit. Right now that would cost you about $130. Under the new system, it would cost you $130. We really weren't looking to increase the cost of these small permits. But as you get to the ones that take more work by staff, conditional use, DRC review, currently it would cost 425. Under the new system, it would cost 550. A new accessory structure being to a commercial use. So a commercial business is adding an accessory structure in the design review district. That's $340 today, 430 under the new rules. So it goes up about 90. And then application four is a big project, 10,000 square foot residential project in the design review district, major site plan, waiver, river hazard. Currently we charged $1,530. That would go up to $3,900. As much as $3,990 sounds like a lot of money. That particular project is about a $6 million project. So adding an extra couple of thousand for the amount of work that our staff has put into that to make that project get to the finish line. That isn't unreasonable. We also compared these to similar sized communities and these were comparable to or less than most of the other communities. Like our 30 cent per square foot rate in Heinsberg, it's 50 cents. So we're significantly less than Heinsberg if you were doing a similar project in Heinsberg and in Montpelier, you'd pay significantly less here. Our goal wasn't necessarily to drive up to fully replace that 50% loss. We just wanted to recapture more funds. And if we have to, we can come back next year and keep kind of adjusting things a little bit. So our goal really wasn't to kind of come through with a wholesale, let's really jump up the rates. We just wanted to go through and kind of make a tweak, get some things. Some of the things in our fee schedule were missing. Some of them really weren't classified right. We really wanted to kind of make things fairer. So these small projects occasionally will get a thing like a flagpole for a business that'll cost somebody $500 for a permit. We're like, that doesn't make any sense. They're $500 for that, but this person over here is building a huge building for 330, which we spent a lot of time working on. So we really just tried to balance a few of these things out and that's what you have before you. And if you've got any questions, I will take them. Thank you. I particularly appreciate that these rates are not as much as surrounding communities. That's great. And that it's important that we get paid for time spent. So I'm in favor of approving this. Would anybody like to discuss it or make a motion? I'll make a motion that we approve the amended zoning and building the schedule as proposed. Second. Further discussion. Yes, Don. Just to comment. I mean, it really is more than just the time of night. I mean, you sent us all this material and initially it was like, oh my heavens. But you sent it all to us. Thank you very much. It makes it all easier when you come tonight. Agreed. Okay. Anyone online, wish to make a comment. Okay. Any further discussion? Okay. All in favor. Oh, okay. Yes, Jack. I just. Want to say that, you know, for years, you know, and I was on the barriers to housing development committee, which was. 10 or. 15 years ago, I'm not sure exactly how far, but Montpelier has always had this reputation as being. Hard to work with the can't get approved to do anything. You can't build anything in Montpelier. And, and the fact that you're. The, the evidence shows the opposite. And the fact that you're doing all these permits administratively without making people go through. DRB is. Is, is really. One, it shows that the changes we made to the zoning ordinance a few years ago, it really worked. So it really shows that Montpelier wants to do exactly that wants to. Make it easier for people to. To put their property to, to productive use. And so I think this is a good reflection on. On the department. Thank you. Yeah. I agree. Further discussion. Okay. All in favor. Please say aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay. Thank you very much. Yeah. Okay. We are up to council reports. Donna. You want to commend your mayor Watson. I thought you handled yourself extremely well tonight. And it was not a meeting. I hope to repeat because it really stayed with me. But on the lighter note, I want to encourage people to go to the Mountaineer games. They've started. And I also want to give people a heads up that the Berry street bike path. That's going in temporarily with lines and some. Very tall white cone like things will. We'll be starting at the end of June 1st of July. We're having a little bit of issue as to when they're exactly going to get the lines painted. But the intention is to have it operating and through July and August into September. So heads up that's happening. Letters are going to be written to go to the neighbors and the businesses. Thank you. Thank you. Carrie. I don't have to. Okay. Just a plug for this Saturday. Gun sense for month and March for our lives. And mom's band action. We're hosting the March for our lives. Rally that'll be on the state house lawn. Two o'clock. Good lineup of speakers there. Thanks. Jack. Thank you. I just. Want to comment briefly on the events of earlier. This evening. Because we've heard repeatedly that. Our time limits are illegal and. With this or that thing that we do is illegal. It's true that. The city council is required to hold. Public meetings that are public and that are open to the public. However, I want to. Point out from the statute. It says at an open meeting. The public shall be given a reasonable opportunity to express its opinions. The opinion on matters considered by the public body during the meeting. As long as order is maintained. Public comment shall be subject to reasonable rules established by the chairperson. And. It's just essential that we be able to have a. Public meeting doing the public business. And. Be permitted to proceed through. The course of our agenda. Without unreasonable disruption. I. Support the action the mayor took tonight. Thank you. I'm going. Okay. I want to acknowledge that graduation is happening on Friday. So congratulations to all the graduates. It's very exciting. And. Yeah. I think I'll, I think I'll leave it at that tonight. It's been. An interesting evening. Yeah. Thank you. Good. I will just remind people that water and serve those I'll do next week. And I was going to pass, but I do feel I'm, I've already sent this out to you, but we did get an appeal of a violation of the open meeting law that the two minute. Rule is. A violation and also. An alleged illegal gathering of a quorum of the council outside of council chambers. I'm warned. So we will have to, there's. Respond to that within this, you know, we'll probably have to call a special meeting some sort within a certain number of days. Okay. I've already forwarded it all to our attorney, but. Okay. And what theoretically would we do at that, at such a meeting? Well, we've had a couple of these already. So we would have a finding. Yeah. You know, I don't want to prejudice what the finding. Okay. Okay. But for example, we would hypothetically. If we adopted what council member McCulloch just said, we would say we denied that. Okay. Two minute. Is a violation. And we would say something potentially of the effect of. Yes, there was a quorum of the council gathered for a personal reason. Yeah. One of the council members. And no discussion. Okay. Was held and no discussion with chief Pete was held because that was the allegation. And. Yes, we did inadvertently. Okay. Okay. Theoretically. Theoretically, that could be an answer. Okay. Or, or. Yeah, go ahead and make another example. I think one. There was a challenge to. For someone pointed out that. We had an electronic meeting and not everybody had to introduce themselves at the beginning of the meeting. And so we just. Held the meeting and pointed and. Issued a statement. Yes, that's true. We overlooked that requirement. So that's the kind of, that's the kind of thing that we might do. Okay. But I think it, you know. Well, we can talk about, I think it would be important to emphasize no city business was being conducted. So inadvertently more than four people gathered. Okay. Talk to one council member, but it's personal. Okay. Okay. Thank you, everybody. I appreciate you all. And thank you all who are still here and still with us online. Very grateful. Okay. With that, we will consider the meeting adjourned 1031.